Dungeon Lord- Ancient Traditions

by Hugo Huesca

  She almost leapt for the safety of the Portal, then stopped.

  Sephar and Wright had fallen close to each other after the sunwave had thrown them across the room. They ought to have shared something akin to Everbleed’s fate, but even then Sephar’s half-burned body was starting to stir. He is not aligned with the Dark, she realized, and something like dread swept through her like a freezing breeze.

  Wright stirred, too, somehow. Unlike Sephar, he was Dark-aligned, and his character sheet lacked the protections a normal Dungeon Lord had toward divine magic. Apparently he had tried to survive the sunwave by using a barrier spell, but that shouldn’t have been enough.

  There was a degree of intent inherent to high-level magic. Something had changed between the dying Inquisitor and the Starevosi Dungeon Lord in the few seconds Vaines hadn’t been listening, she decided. It was the only explanation that made sense.

  And, more importantly, something had happened between Sephar and Wright.

  “Lady Vaines!” Virion called. “Hurry!” And then, “What are you doing? Come back!”

  She dodged the spear-like tail that attempted to run her through and dashed toward Wright. They declared themselves archenemies. I didn’t imagine it.

  Vaines had never been one to care for tradition, unless it provided some sort of benefit. And this? Two opposing wills standing among the ashes of divine wrath, with the Light and the Dark watching from above and below, making larger-than-life proclamations they couldn’t possibly accomplish? There was power in a confrontation like that in a way entirely separate from Objectivity—something that the newer generations would’ve dismissed as mere superstition. Ancient traditions, unearthed.

  “Fantastic,” she said as she reached Wright and began dragging him back one-handed toward the Portal. “I’m starting to sound like damned Gossiping Golsa.”

  A half-transformed mindbrood came too close for her liking, so she blasted it into oblivion with an advanced spell. Now she was down to improved-ranked magic and below.

  Good, reliable Virion kept a path for the Portal clear, but the mindbroods were almost fully transformed and what had started as a mere testing feints was now a nightmare of serrated fangs and chitin. She flashed her Evil Eye at one of the creatures and was dismayed to realize the damn thing had somehow retained its Assassin talents even after the transformation.

  “Yes, we’re getting out of here,” she told herself.

  Wright pulled himself free of her grasp. “Not yet,” he muttered. Whatever bits of his face weren’t covered in soot and dry blood was a mask of concentration as he fought through what had to be agony in his bones, but somehow he wasn’t unconscious. He ran—stumbled, actually—away from Vaines and the Portal, toward the mindbroods. No, he headed for the Inquisitor. That one, at least, had had the decency to lose consciousness and was bleeding out like a polite man.

  Hogbus’ resistance, Vaines read on his character sheet. How in Murmur’s name does a Dungeon Lord earn favor from a deity of critters?

  The Dungeon Lord reached the Inquisitor, somehow, and tried to drag him toward the Portal. Even at a simple glance Vaines knew he would never make it. She looked past her shoulder—Sephar had disappeared.

  “Gods damn it,” she said, and ran toward Wright. How long had it been since the sunwave had gone off? She had kept her reflexes burning at maximum for the duration, and her body felt like a furnace through the effort, relying on all her resistance-related talents to stop her brain from cooking like an egg inside her skull.

  “This is a waste of time, Wright,” she told the Dungeon Lord as both of them carried the dying Inquisitor toward the Portal. Virion was a few feet away, blood pouring from a dozen new wounds, barely keeping at bay a black sea of monsters with fangs that tore through enchanted armor as if it was wet paper. “No sense in dying to save an enemy. This is not how a Dungeon Lord acts.”

  “If… stop Sephar… need all the help… we can get,” Wright told her through gritted teeth.

  As if summoned by the sound of his name, something huge and full of legs dropped like a boulder from the ceiling right in front of them. Rainbow-colored insect wings larger than those of a griffin somehow kept the massive nightmarish monster hovering a foot above the ground. Its multiple mandibles spread open to reveal sections of teeth glistening with acidic saliva and a slithering black tongue. It’s smiling, Vaines realized in horror. All its pupils shone with the Evil Eye. “I agree with Lady Vaines,” Sephar told Wright. “At some point, you need to learn your limits.”

  I can take him, Vaines decided. She only needed to distract him for a second and—

  Sephar’s tail, a massive slab of muscle and razor-sharp chitin, enveloped around her legs like a giant snake. There was piercing pain as the tail constricted, and she could hear her bones splintering. There was a surprising lack of pain, she noted. Then Sephar threw her into the air like a cat tossing a mouse after growing tired of toying with it. She could see the mindbrood’s mouth as it spread to impossible widths to receive her, and she knew she was about to die. She gritted her teeth and readied her sword—maybe she would have time for one last strike.

  A beam of fire smashed into the side of the mindbrood and toppled the creature, sending it tumbling away at the last second. Zamos’ wrath. Virion’s spell. She hit the floor, hard, and the splinters of bone inside her legs shifted, like a dozen daggers inside her body. Her vision turned red with agony, and the last thing she saw before losing consciousness was Wright standing above her, dragging her and the Inquisitor toward the Portal while good, reliable Virion kept the nightmares at bay.

  “Virion, get in!” Wright’s yell reached the Dungeon Lord as if from a faraway place. Monsters surrounded him, and, as if he were in a nightmare, his movements were sluggish, slower after every second. He couldn’t even think clearly, as if someone had stuffed gauze inside his skull.

  He tried to run toward the Portal, but he realized before he took the first step that he would never make it. The mindbroods had fully transformed now, and they were closing in. Toying with him. The second he showed them his back, they would spring.

  “Go!” he yelled to the Portal behind him. “I have this under control.”

  “Don’t be a—” Wright called, but then one of the mindbroods—which had snuck quietly toward the Portal from a side—tried to jump through. Argent ended the spell an instant before the creature reached the edge of the Portal.

  Virion was alone, surrounded by monsters.

  The mindbroods closed in, saliva dribbling from their mandibles as they softly opened and closed. They are laughing, Virion realized.

  Furious, he began to cast every spell in his arsenal. For a couple seconds, he held the tide at bay.

  “Enough, Dungeon Lord, you are embarrassing yourself,” the Sephar-thing said as it calmly stood up, its side already regenerating the damage Virion had done. Necrotic energy spread in a circle around Virion’s feet. He attempted to jump out of the range of the spell, but he had lost too much blood, wasn’t fast enough. Black-and-purple hands sprouted from the ground and caught him, pinning him down and draining his Endurance. Air fled his lungs and was replaced by a terrible cold that spread from his limbs, headed inexorably toward his heart.

  “You can cast spells in that form?” Virion muttered. “It isn’t fair.”

  “Nothing in life ever is,” Sephar said.

  It was known that, when a Dungeon Lord died, if the man or woman had been notable enough, Murmur himself came to take his soul to the eternal halls that inevitably became the final dungeon where all Dungeon Lords would come to dwell.

  Virion wondered if he was notable enough for such an honor.

  Well, the best part to ensure that is with a worthy death, he decided. Dragging embers of strength from somewhere within his body, Virion pushed through the spell and dove into the mass of creatures and attempted to force his way through, his sword hacking and stabbing as far as his arm could swing. “Sephar!” he roared. “I am Lord Victor Virion
of—”

  Sephar tore his sword arm right out of his shoulder socket. “We are not doing this,” the monster told Virion as the Dungeon Lord screamed in agony. “No final speeches, no brave last stand.” His claws dove into Virion and spread him out like a kid playing with clay. “You are nothing. Your mind is not worth preserving. You are no one. All the Bards shall ever know of you is that you were another stepping stone among thousands that Emperor Sephar climbed toward his inexorable destiny.”

  If something could be said about a high-level Dungeon Lord, it was that they could take a beating. It took a long time for Lord Virion to finally lose consciousness.

  By the time the darkness finally arrived, Virion welcomed it.

  The Portal vanished so close to Ed’s nose that he had to wonder what would’ve happened if part of him had still been on the other side.

  “Damn it!” There was no point making any pretenses about Virion’s fate. He had sacrificed himself for Vaines. Even among villains like these, there was honor…

  Ed cursed, trying to use anger as fuel to remain conscious. The pain in his bones was agonizing, but somehow the sunwave hadn’t killed him. Had Gallio pulled his punch at the last second?

  The Dungeon Lord set Vaines and Gallio along the corridor. Both were in terrible shape, in urgent need of medical attention. No medic was nearby, though. If I somehow could get Andreena here, Ed thought desperately. But he himself was no healer. He knew how to give basic first-aid, like everyone in the Haunt, though, and he hurried to stem the blood-flow from Gallio’s wound, or try to as best he could.

  He wondered if he was supposed to leave the guts where they were or plop them back in.

  They were in one of the sections of the Factory previously cleared while he’d been Vaines’ prisoner. This room wouldn’t be in the same place it had been before, though, so there was no telling what could come from its entrances at any time.

  Ryan’s Portal had bought them some time to lick their wounds, but the clock was ticking, and every second they weren’t on the move Sephar was getting closer to Tillman’s office.

  “Ed, we need to get out of this place!” Ryan told him. It took only a glance to let Ed know that Ryan was in shock—and in for a lifetime of therapy if he ever made it back to Earth. “That guy’s a goner, and Vaines is a shithead, just leave her! If she dies, maybe I’ll be able to Portal us away!” The frenzy in him calmed a bit and was replaced by a sort of sadness. “I want to go back home, Ed. Back to Earth,” he added quietly.

  A long time ago, Ed would’ve simply punched Ryan’s lights out so the man wouldn’t get in the way. “No one’s leaving. Whatever Sephar is about to throw at Ivalis, we need Vaines around to help us stop it.”

  “Stop it?! What do you care? Ed, you saw those fucking things, you saw what they did to Vaines. How the shit do you pretend to stop those abominations? You’re a Lasershark clerk in cosplay!”

  Ed grabbed Ryan by the neck of his shirt and pushed him against the wall. “Listen. When I first came here, Kharon ripped my heart out and replaced it with one of his,” he told Ryan, embers of the Evil Eye reflecting on the pampered young man’s eyes. “This is my home. I have fought for it, bled for it. I am Dungeon Lord Edward Wright of the Haunt. I don’t know exactly what Sephar intends, but I got the gist of it, and it’s nothing good. So I’ll stop it. To do that, I need the help of everyone, including that nut-job psycho woman, and that man who’s too stubborn to die. So we must save their lives. And there’s only one way we can do that. Pay close attention now, Ryan… I need you to almost choke me to death.”

  Ryan blinked. “What?”

  “I think I was perfectly clear,” Ed said. He pointed at Gallio with one bloody hand. “He doesn’t have much time, so just do as I say. Put your hands here and press like this, around the trachea, so you don’t crush it. Keep pressure until I pass out, then let go.” Ed hurriedly guided a very confused Ryan through the appropriate way to restrict bloodflow to the brain.

  “Are you sure?” Ryan asked, his hands around Ed’s neck.

  “Get on with it!”

  Ryan pressed.

  Pledge of Muted Armor - Upon falling unconscious or being otherwise impaired, a team of four rescue drones is generated around the Dungeon Lord.

  There was, Ryan had to admit, something cathartic in choking Edward Wright until the asshole passed out. A cruel part of Ryan wondered what would happen if he just… kept squeezing. The rest of him was horrified at the idea. Murder was illegal.

  Four cracks of smoke came all of a sudden around him. He squealed and jumped away from the Dungeon Lord as four impish creatures lunged at him. They had big, mischievous eyes and were butt-ugly. The color scheme of their tunics seemed somewhat familiar.

  “Wait, is that a Lasershark logo?” Ryan asked them, raising an eyebrow. “That’s trademarked!”

  The creatures waved an obscene gesture his way, and then their attention focused on Ed’s unmoving body. One of the imps shrugged and jumped without ceremony on the man’s breastplate, and then slapped the Dungeon Lord.

  Ed woke up with a gasp and said something nasty under his breath about a woman named Alita. “Finally, rescue drones,” he said, recovering quickly. The drone-creatures looked very displeased with their Dungeon Lord, perhaps due to the exotic way in which he’d summoned them. Ryan had seen that very same look in his Lasershark employees after telling them they’d need to pull extra hours during the holidays. Many times. “You four know first-aid, don’t you?” He nodded toward the Inquisitor’s chest and whatever remained of Vaines’ legs “Since you’re here, we need help stabilizing my friends.”

  The drones grumbled a series of unintelligible noises that Ryan could understand perfectly. It was the universal sound of someone saying, “Dude, not my job.”

  Ed understood the message too, because he nodded gravely and said, “Well, sorry about that. But I wasn’t asking, it’s an order. Get on with it, or I swear to Murmur I’ll put you on permanent hell-chicken-research-detachment.”

  It turned out that the drones were quite competent at giving first aid. While they worked, Ryan rested against a wall and tried his best to imagine he was back home, sitting in his gaming chair, and that he had eaten too many mushrooms and these last months were simply the father of all bad trips. If he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the purr of his laptop.

  He shook his head and did his best not to sob. He missed his parents. He wondered if they’d even know he was gone. They could spend many months away on their business trips, and sometimes they forgot to call.

  He even missed the lame Lasershark stores, the lazy employees, and the same-old-customers. At least none had ever tried to eat his brain through a straw.

  There was some kind of liquid soaking his pants. His heart skipped a beat—was it blood? Was he hurt? Was he going to die? Then he took a sniff. “Ah.” His ears burned bright red. At least Ed hadn’t noticed. The man was rummaging through everyone’s backpacks while the drones worked on the Inquisitor and Vaines.

  It was chilling, watching Ed—or the Dungeon Lord, as Ryan had started to refer to him in his head—so… acclimated to the hellish environment. Didn’t he have family back home? Someone to go back to? And yet, looking at the Dungeon Lord loot the bodies before they were even cold, Ryan could almost believe there was no other world but Ivalis: that the two of them had always been a pair of adventurers that never got along. Possibly because Ed was the ugly one and Ryan was the hot one.

  The Dungeon Lord set a series of flasks in a line on the ground, carefully reading their instructions and grunting to himself. He took out fourteen of them, almost emptying all backpacks in the process. He separated two and passed them to Ryan. “Drink these. One replenishes fatigue, the other will… steady your nerves.” He then handed the drones two sets of four flasks each and left another two for himself.

  Ryan took a sniff out of one flask, then wished he hadn’t. “What are theirs for?” he asked Ed, nodding toward the bodies as the dron
es fed them the potions; he wanted to buy his stomach some time.

  “To get them back on their feet—” Ed gave Vaines’ mauled lower half a sideways glance and winced. “Er… or as close to that as possible.”

  The potions tasted much worse than they smelled, and after drinking them Ryan dug up from between his teeth what turned out to be a beetle’s leg. But they brought warmth to his stomach as if he had drunk a mug of warm brandy while sitting beside his grandparents’ fireplace.

  “What’s in these?” he asked Ed, who suddenly looked slightly less like an asshole at the moment. “We should bottle them up, sell them on Earth, and become rich.”

  “Fairy—You know, it’s probably better if you don’t know what’s inside.”

  After finishing his own potions, Ed helped the drones dress the wounds in Vaines and the Inquisitor—whom the Dungeon Lord called Gallio. There was gauze in the backpacks, and Ed had the drones transmute improvised leg braces for Vaines out of the remains of a broken security scorpion in the next room, as well as a sort of light trolley with wheels. The drones loaded the unconscious Vaines onto the trolley so they could push her around.

  “This is ridiculous,” Ryan said. “How do you intend to beat that Sephar guy? You couldn’t before Vaines turned into a cripple, so what makes you think this time is going to be any different?”

  “I don’t have to kill him,” Ed explained. “Even though I don’t know any specifics, I do know he wants the Factory. So we just need to take it before he does.”

  Ryan wanted to laugh. The potions had returned a resemblance of strength to his exhausted body, but the damage to his spirit was greater. “Ed, we barely made any progress at all with an entire team and three Dungeon Lords. Hell, these assholes have been trying to reach the office for years. The two of us, carrying two wounded, are not going to get even halfway there.”

  The Dungeon Lord’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be so sure about that,” he said, although from his distant expression Ryan could guess he was barely paying any attention to the conversation. “It’s strange,” Ed added after a long silence. “People warned me that the Factory could change its layout, but the Museum was accurate.”