Dungeon Lord- Ancient Traditions

by Hugo Huesca

  Then he saw the screens and what they showed. His eyes widened as he recognized the man holding a spear in the middle of the Standard Factory’s Armory, and old Everbleed was suddenly faced with all of his worst fears.

  Archlord Everbleed forgot all about the Haunted minions. He went closer to the screens, and the crowd parted for him—those who didn’t he crushed absentmindedly. The fools around him did not know who the man on the display was… and how could they? Most of them hadn’t been alive before the Bane, so they probably thought it was just any other Dungeon Lord, one more twist of the bloody Endeavor that would end as it always did: in failure and spilled blood.

  Everbleed and Korghiran had suspected. They had conjectured. Investigated, even, for signs of activity all over Lotia, and had found nothing, not a single clue. They had hoped they were wrong.

  But the man on the screens was Sephar and there was no doubt about it. Younger and more handsome than Everbleed remembered, but that hardly mattered.

  Korghiran, you better be seeing this. Whatever Sephar was planning, if he had chosen to reveal himself after being hidden for so long… his efforts were probably well underway. And Everbleed could fathom a guess at what old Sephar wanted. The Factory.

  The Netherworld had been ambushed. Everbleed knew a thing or two about mercenary combat doctrine. When ambushed, a warrior’s only hope was to react immediately, with extreme prejudice and violence, and hope to all the gods that were listening that the enemy would not expect such a counterattack.

  If he’d had half an hour to plan, Everbleed would’ve met with Korghiran and assembled the entirety of the Regent’s High Clerics, and as many more fiends as he possibly could. Definitely more Devil Knights, just to be sure. But he didn’t have time. Thankfully, he currently possessed the body of the most powerful Devil Knight of them all. It ought to be enough to deal with a single Dungeon Lord.

  Even if Sephar somehow managed to survive the fight, Everbleed could always possess a different fiend and try again.

  He spread his wings, paying no mind to the people around, and uttered a Heroic-ranked spell that he’d barely learned before his exile from Lotia. The spell cost a thousand experience points just to cast, but he had as many in reserve for just such an emergency, and he paid the price gladly. Fire extended around him, instantly charring a group of fiends that hadn’t been quick enough to clear the area.

  He focused his mind on the screen above and its real location in space and time. Even after paying so many experience points, the spell could fail if he didn’t input the coordinates perfectly. When he was ready, he finished the last part of the incantation and then was surrounded by red energy as the Netherworld was torn asunder and he teleported straight into the Standard Factory’s Armory.

  Ed could not believe his eyes. Without Sephar’s demonstration, the Lord of the Haunt would’ve thought it was some sort of trick. Even with them, he had his doubts.

  But the man’s character sheet clearly said “Sephar,” even if it showed little else.

  Maybe he’s just some crazy person with the same name, the rational part of him thought. This crazy person then found some way to bypass the curse or trick the weapon. If you’ve learned something about Objectivity, is that a dedicated man can find a way to bend it in interesting ways.

  But why would anyone go to such lengths just to convince Ed and Vaines that he was a long-dead Dungeon Lord, hated by both the Inquisition and the Lordship?

  Sephar had captured them. Why would he go to any length to trick them?

  No, even Ed’s most rational part was more inclined to believe Sephar. Finding ways to explain what Ed had just witnessed was merely his way of making sense of the impossible.

  This is happening, he told himself. We can deal with the implications later. The first step is to get out of here.

  Sephar and Malikar seemed distracted, as if they expected even more company soon. Whatever was coming, perhaps it would mean a chance to escape. He whispered in Vaines’ ear while keeping his gaze on Lord Sephar, “Argent’s Portals would be really useful right about now, but he can’t make a move without you giving the order.”

  No answer. Ed turned to Vaines, who had stumbled to one knee because of her wounds, although she still seemed to pay them no mind. She was as if frozen, her gaze fixated on Sephar as he lazily sat on the raised dais in front of his statue.

  “Vaines?” Ed asked. “Vaines!” he repeated, with urgency this time.

  She turned a fraction toward him and he saw fear festering in her eyes. “It’s too late,” she told him in a haunted whisper. “Don’t you see? If he was alive all this time and only chose to reveal himself until now… it’s because he knows there’s nothing we can do to stop him. We’ve lost.”

  Shit. Seeing Vaines like this—Vaines, who everyone agreed would be the obvious winner of the Endeavor—was like shoving his head into a tub of freezing water. He could taste his own fear, warm and metallic, festering in his chest and throat like a tumor.

  Malikar’s expression stiffened. “Master, he is finally here,” he told Sephar.

  “He took his sweet time,” Sephar said. “It seems like we interrupted something important on our Archlord’s agenda.”

  A flower of flame blossomed right in the middle of the Armory. Ed smelled burning sulfur, and he could feel the energy flowing through his teeth as if the air was filled with static. The flames spread in a sphere, and Everbleed’s obsidian Devil Knight sprang forth from it, Evil Eye blazing furiously, a massive black blade in one hand and a shield in the other.

  “SEPHAR!” he roared, his entire body glimmering with enchantments and shifting glyphs. “YOU—”

  Ed never found out what Everbleed was about to say to the Dungeon Lord that had come back from death. Because right then Sephar made a small gesture with his hand and the Cleric that had arrived with Gallio stepped forward, dropping his camouflage. He held a box in his hands and had it aimed straight at Everbleed.

  “In Aucrath’s fire,” the Cleric intoned, “be purged, fiend.”

  It happened so fast Everbleed probably never realized what had happened. The box glowed a bright white that hurt Ed on an existential level just by looking at it. He could hear a distant sound like bells.

  Then the ceiling exploded as silver lightning broke the Netherworld sky and poured through the Armory like a titanic lance under which Everbleed disappeared. The white light became bright and terrible, and it began to burn Ed’s gaze even though he had his eyes closed. And above it all he could hear the ringing of the bells, louder and louder, dwarfing all sound until even his own thoughts disappeared under the cacophony of holy wrath.

  He regained consciousness almost expecting to be back in Andreena’s Infirmary, as that was the way things usually went in his life. However, when he opened his eyes the still-smoldering crater in the ceiling was the first thing he saw. A fine curtain of rain—no, it was ash—fell down, white and peaceful, along with a beam of Netherworldly red light atop a perfectly realistic stone statue of Everbleed’s Devil Knight, its powerful arm extended at the spot where Sephar had been sitting.

  So much for our chance to escape, Ed thought, still dazed.

  And to add insult to injury, something nearby smelled like piss.

  “Are you alive?” Ryan asked. The Planeshifter sat next to the Dungeon Lord. They were surrounded by three Akathunians.

  “Ugh.” The Dungeon Lord managed to sit. It didn’t seem like he had been out for long. A few minutes at most. Vaines was tending to her own wounds with Virion’s help. Sephar was examining the statue, along with Malikar. “Yes. I think so.”

  “I thought you were a goner,” Ryan said. “What… what the fuck just happened, Ed?” He pointed at the statue. “It came out of nowhere and so did the… thunder spell or whatever that was.”

  Ed shook his head. Divine magic made him feel as if he’d jumped straight into a giant blender. “That was Archlord Everbleed. He is… was… a big deal in the Netherworld.”

 
“And they just one-shotted him?”

  “I think they’re getting the Light to do the dirty work for them,” Ed said. Just like me, he added to himself. I was the one who brought the Inquisition here. It seemed like Sephar had somehow appropriated Ed’s own plan and twisted it to dispose of a possible enemy.

  Not only had Sephar known Ed’s secret move, he had also known Everbleed would come straight here as soon as he revealed himself. That had to be the work of some extremely powerful scrying, or terrifyingly accurate intel.

  Ed was starting to see why Vaines had reacted like she had to Sephar’s arrival.

  Malikar caressed the smooth stone of the Devil Knight. “Still warm. Say what you will about the Light, it doesn’t pull its punches when push comes to shove. A slightly more powerful beam and we’d have been caught in the blast.” He laughed. “Do you think he’s trapped in there, or has he turned into solid stone?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea, my friend,” Sephar said, inspecting the stone. “In any case, I reckon old Everbleed isn’t going to bother us anytime soon. His mistake was in thinking he was safe inside a usurped body. A foolish assumption. There are things in the world that can hurt mind and soul just as much as body. Speaking of which…” He turned to the Cleric, who still held the box and was staring dumbfounded at the statue. “Better burn that. We wouldn’t want it used against us, would we?”

  “Burn it? B-but this is Aucrath’s Codex,” said the Cleric, pleadingly. “It’s a Relic. Invaluable. I was tasked to defend it with my life!” Nevertheless, his hands had already unlocked the box and thrown it to the floor. The Cleric looked at his arms with horror, as if they belonged to someone else.

  “Trust me, there’s no point in fighting your own nature,” Sephar advised him. “If it helps, that was an order and not a suggestion, and although I consider myself a lenient Lord, I expect perfect obedience from my minions.”

  One of the Akathunians handed the Cleric a rune. He took it. “A m-minion? But I never agreed to any pact! I’m a Cleric of the Inquisition!” Then he took aim at the box.

  “You did make a pact. A lifetime one, in fact. From the moment you were born,” Sephar said, almost apologetically. He seemed like a cat toying with a mouse.

  Tears ran down the Cleric’s face as he burned the Codex. Wood crumbled and paper cracked, and its ashes soon joined the ashes raining from the sky.

  “Finally,” Sephar said. Even though he acted perfectly confident, he had kept his distance as the Codex burned. Just in case, Ed thought. In his shoes, Ed would’ve done the same. Sephar now strolled toward Ed and Vaines, black hair flowing behind him like a curtain. “My apologies for the many delays, my friends, but we deserve to chat without interruptions, and I believe I’ve managed just that.”

  “Why are you here, after all this time?” Ed asked him. “What do you want from us?” Ryan flinched next to him, as if simply catching Sephar’s attention put their lives at risk. Perhaps he was right. Ed only needed to look at Everbleed’s statue to remember the danger they were in.

  Sephar regarded him with a warm smile. “I believe both answers should be obvious to one with a wit such as yours, Lord Edward Wright. You have thwarted me three times before… and then handed me a greater victory on a silver platter. I am here to make peace.” He nodded toward Vaines. “And you, Lady Aramis Vaines, the last of the proud Dungeon Lords of old. Defeated, indeed, but never broken. I am here because our goals are the same.” He extended an alabaster hand toward the two of them. “I have an offer for you. Join me. Let us share the Standard Factory evenly between the three of us, just as Evangeline Tillman intended.”

  “Join you?” Despite her evident fear, Vaines nodded at the sobbing Cleric. “If that’s what happens to the people that join you, it isn’t a very enticing offer.”

  Even as she spoke, Ed was thinking a different sort of questions. Thwarted him three times, then gave him a free win? What the hell was Sephar talking about?

  “He’ll be fine,” Sephar said. “Losing a deeply ingrained identity can be a traumatic experience for anyone… at first. Soon enough, it shall be like waking up from a pleasant dream. Worry not for my loyal minion. He is back with his true brothers now.”

  Vaines narrowed her eyes. “His true brothers, you say. What are you, Sephar? Your character sheet reads ‘mindbrood’ instead of human, yet none of the old tales mention a monster that resembles a man, nor one that can steal the body of another as throughly as you have. Is that the fate you have in store for us? We are to become monsters like you?”

  Something dark crossed Sephar’s gaze. “Monster. It’s a word people throw around so easily. A simple way to dehumanize someone if his ideas are too inconvenient to consider. Dungeon Lords like us should know that better than anyone. The Inquisition just pointed our way, called us monsters, and then thousands of adventurers felt justified in butchering our numbers without a second thought.”

  “It isn’t as if you lot haven’t done the same to them,” Ed said, despite his better judgment advising him to keep quiet. He couldn’t help himself. Standing up to people like Sephar was hardwired into his nature.

  “Exactly!” Sephar exclaimed. “See? Lord Edward, so young by our standards, already grasps what took me a lifetime of pain and loss to understand. Don’t the Heiligians bleed just like us? Don’t they cry when someone dear passes away? We who live among monsters should know to recognize the plight of fellow humans. Vaines, the Heiligians are not the real monsters here! They are misguided, as we are, manipulated just as we are by the real monsters of history.”

  He stepped back, the features of his face now stern as steel. “The Light! The Dark! We call them gods as they grow fat with our worship. We bleed and die in our petty wars for their amusement. They watch from high and laugh as generations of men dance like puppets on their palm, until they bore of us and the same palm turns into a crushing fist. All conflict in Ivalian history can be traced back to them. Inhuman creatures with motivations we cannot possibly comprehend. Isn’t that the very definition of monster? Aucrath, Kharon, Korghiran, Alita, Murmur, those are the names of the true abominable creatures! Lady Vaines, Lord Wright, until we free ourselves from the tyranny of the divine we are but slaves. And Dungeon Lords, if you recall, are not meant to serve.”

  Ed could only stare in horror as Sephar echoed back thoughts Ed had considered himself. How many times had he cursed Kharon’s name? The Dark had manipulated his every step over and over again, and the Light wasn’t the pristine entity it claimed to be either! Cities had burned because of their unbending adherence to their tenets, and because of their zeal the lives of nearly everyone Ed cared about dangled from a thread as the Heiligian army neared Starevos.

  Ever since he’d gotten embroiled in the fight between the Light and the Dark, Ed had become a worse person. The pile of bodies at his feet kept growing, and every kill came easier than the last. He could vaguely remember a time when he had hoped he could survive in Ivalis without ever killing anyone; today he had choked the life out of a man without blinking.

  Vaines began to laugh, harsh and rough, a soldier staring death in the eye and finding the joke hilarious. “I see now. Somehow you survived the Silver Knight’s execution, but at the cost of your sanity. You’d wage war against the gods, Sephar? Why not fight against the mountains and the rivers while you’re at it?” She flicked a tear of laughter from her cheek and her dirty finger drew a long, bloody line in its path through her skin. “You’re a crazy fool, and I am a worse one for having been bested by you. The gods are not the cause of mankind’s butchering one another. They are merely enablers. Without them, man would find a different way. Such is our nature.”

  Again, Sephar smiled triumphantly. “And what if,” he said, “I had the means to both challenge the gods and change man’s nature at the same time?” Reacting to his words, Sephar’s men stepped forward. “Behold, Lady Vaines—Akathunians, Lotians, and even Heiligian Inquisitors working together for the common good. Where have y
ou seen such a thing, other than in Wright’s speeches? This is not the work of a crazy man acting at random. I have planned this for a long time. In the time after my supposed death, I have seen things you wouldn’t believe. Mastered secrets not meant for human ears. Ivalian gods thrive on worship, and worship is nurtured by suffering. I can deny them their sustenance, Vaines—put them under siege. Whatever I’ve learned, whatever I’ve become… I’m willing to share. Imagine what mankind could achieve if we no longer needed fear death, if neither senility nor disease could harm us. If we were united. Is it too hard to imagine we could then break the chains that enslave man to the games of the Light and the Dark? It is said you are the Lady of War. Join me, Vaines, and I’ll give you a war that shall dwarf all wars!”

  He waited for his answer, hair bathed in red Netherworld glow and ash falling on his shoulders like snow.

  Ed found himself almost believing Sephar could do as he claimed. If Ed himself could rid Ivalis of its gods, he would certainly consider it.

  “I know what you mean by joining your side, Lord Sephar,” Vaines said. “I know what the mindbrood does. It’s a larva that devours the brain and steals every thought and memory. You are not human, despite your claims to the contrary. You are a mindbrood, somehow altered to wear a man’s visage. And the world you’re meant to build shall belong to the Brood. That is the brotherhood you speak of, isn’t it?” She shook her head and her Evil Eye shone dangerously. “For all my sins, for all the blood I’ve shed, I am human, and I shall go to Murmur’s halls as one. My answer to your offer is, as Lord Wright is fond of saying… go fuck yourself.”

  “How regretful,” Sephar said after a dry pause. He shrugged. “The hard way it is.”

  Malikar cast a spell then, without warning, and a necrotic claw raked Vaines’ face. Enchantments flared and magic surged in every direction. Had Vaines been fresh and unharmed, Ed had no doubts she could’ve withstood anything Malikar could throw at her and then some. But she had just faced a Devil Knight. She fell to her knees, black veins running through her face and neck filled with necrotic energy.