by Hugo Huesca
Thankfully, Tillman understood him. Or, more likely, she had seen Ryan in action and put two and two together. The green embers inside her skull came to life as she prepared a spell that crumbled most of her ribs as well as a section of her skull. Purple and black swirls of necromantic energy converged on her skeletal hand as she pronounced a quick incantation.
“This is the last time we meet, Director Wright,” Tillman told the Dungeon Lord. “Return to the Standard Factory as soon as possible. Protect it with your life. There is much you need to learn, and little time. A war is brewing, a war to end all wars. Unite the Lordship, Director, and sharpen them into a blade to wield against the terrors of the Wetlands. If Lotia is to survive, it’s going to need new traditions to go along with the old.”
Slowly, weakly, Ed raised a shaking hand and gave her a thumbs up.
“Deliver them to safety,” she ordered Ryan’s unconscious figure as the spell washed over him in a way that flashed into view the bones under his skin.
Ryan opened his eyes, and Ed realized the Planeshifter was under the control of Tillman’s compulsion. Ryan stood, and Ed could see power flush through the other man’s veins.
Ed almost allowed himself to pass out then. It was over. He could rest for the moment. Soon he would be back in the Haunt, surrounded by his friends. They would celebrate the victory. Kes and Andreena would chide him for his wounds and the overuse of potions; Lavy would pitch a fit because Ed had defenestrated her undead masterpiece; Alder and Klek would demand a feast, and Ed was in the mood for one. Gods knew they had earned it.
And after the feast was over? Then it would be time to get back to work. The Standard Factory would create an army of monsters Ed would use to unify Starevos and repel the invading army of the Militant Church. He would muster his forces and hunt Sephar to the very ends of Ivalis and purge the infestation of the Bane. Once that was done, maybe then Ed would have enough knowledge and power to give a certain demigod what was coming to him.
He drifted off to a placid sleep, and he knew he would have no nightmares this time. Only a well-deserved rest.
And as his consciousness shut down, in that place between nothingness and existence, the voice of an old god came to him from the dredges of memory:
Grasp it, and it shall slip from your fingers.
Love it, and it shall leave you.
A pang of unease disturbed the perfection of Ed’s slumber. Deliver them to safety, the wraith had ordered Argent Planeshifter, Kharon’s Chosen, Vaines’ protege.
Had anyone told Tillman that Argent Planeshifter was actually Ryan from Earth?
A mind that had undergone the sort of trauma Ryan had experienced… where would it think safety was located?
Ed opened his eyes just as the Portal engulfed him. He had barely enough time to whisper one brief sentence, and it was, “No, no, no—”
33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Aftermath
“—no!”
A murky night sky without stars met his gaze, a single moon, like the eye of a dead god, shone upon him without a hint mockery or judgment. The air was rank with stagnant water, smog, and decaying trash. The screeching sounds of passing cars urged the Dungeon Lord to cover his ears. There were sirens in the distance, roving drunken groups, crying children. He covered his ears. He had landed in an uncomfortable cushion of black plastic. He looked down, and realized Gallio, Ryan, and himself were lying in the dump behind some seedy fast-food restaurant.
Ed stared for a second at the massive towers of concrete and steel that rose past the slash of asphalt road visible past the alleyway. He turned to Ryan and grabbed the unconscious man’s shoulders. “Ryan, take me back right now!” No response. The Dungeon Lord shook the young man’s shoulders. “Ryan, they need me!” Ryan seemed dangerously pale. “I need to go back!” An awful suspicion took hold of Ed. Travel between dimensions had to take an awful lot of juice, and Ryan had been already exhausted before Tillman’s compulsion forced him to disregard common sense and his own safety. With a trembling hand, Ed checked for pulse, but found nothing.
“Shit!” The pale white moon shone, blind and uncaring, over Ed as he frantically did chest compressions on the unresponsive man that was his only ticket home.
Marshal Kessih of the Haunt left the Laboratory with a troubled look that didn’t presage anything good.
The former mercenary masked her feelings as she marched down the sprawling tunnels of the massive dungeon complex that was the Haunt, past nervous squads of elite Janitor batblins chasing an escaped ooze, past animated skeletal patrols running onto walls, and past chained steel doors where the screams of unknown beasts thundered against the stone walls. Marshal Kessih paid no attention to the flurry of barely controlled chaos that was the normal state of affairs of the Haunt. She went past the Main Hall where Lord Wright held court at the moment. Diplomats from the neighboring cities or far-away dungeons clamored for his attention, trying to ensure support from the rumored master of the Nightmare Factory, or at least obtain a promise of non-aggression. The Dungeon Lord promised nothing and avoided all compromises, cold and unreachable as he sat in his throne like the statue of a king of old.
Well out of sight of any visitor, the drones of the Haunt stumbled blindly through half-built tunnels. The haggard imps made no jests and followed no orders. They maintained the dungeon, barely, and it was a guarded secret that their numbers diminished by the day.
A horned spider princess guarded the entrance to the Infirmary. The critter had knit a spiderweb around the hallway and crept down a silver thread as Kes’ footsteps echoed on the stone slabs.
“Is he awake?” Kes asked the spider.
“Tell me something only Marshal Kessih would know,” the spider answered.
Kes sighed. It wasn’t the first time this day she heard that question. “When you were but a spiderling you fell into a pot of soup in the kitchens. I happened to be in the kitchens and managed to get you out with a ladle. We agreed never to mention it again.”
Tulip shivered at the memory. “I remember. You went to the kitchens to steal Tzuika from the basement. Good times.” She climbed up her silver web just enough to let Kes pass through into the Infirmary. “Come on in, he is awake and has been annoying Sas and me all morning. He wants to get back to training.” Her mandibles snapped a chuckle. “I almost wish Andreena would drug him back to sleep.”
The Infirmary bed was so big compared to Klek that the batblin seemed like an oversized doll, half-hidden under the covers. “Kes!” he exclaimed when he saw her. He tossed the covers away to reveal a bandaged torso. “Have you found him?” he asked, wriggling his hands nervously.
“Bad news,” Kes told the batblin. There was no point avoiding the subject. “The Diviners made yet another pass. Although they used every single one of their daily spells, there is no trace of Ed. Not here in Ivalis, not back in the Netherworld. I am sorry, Klek. Lavy says there’s a chance he may not even be alive.”
The batblin’s reaction mirrored Kes’ feelings. Unlike Klek, though, she couldn’t permit the Haunt’s inhabitants to see how worried she was. No one except for a select few knew the truth. Alder was busy day and night maintaining the illusion that “Lord Wraith” was still around, Lavy barely left her Laboratory except for frequent trips to the Netherworld, where she practiced dangerous rituals and hunted after increasingly darker tomes of Interdimensional Travel. And in the meantime, Kes herself tried to keep a dungeon running without a Dungeon Lord to repair and upgrade it. She tried to ignore the mounting mold on the walls, the wild growth of the gardens, the abandoned Grey Highway, and even the dry fountain by the Market.
In the Starevosi countryside, in the contested frontier between Raventa and Constantina, every dungeon and every Scrambling Tower had turned into an irreplaceable bastion. Every defeat was a foothold lost under the constant attack of the Inquisition, which, Kes now understood, was but the staging grounds of a far worse threat: Sephar was alive, and he wanted to do
to the Haunt what a lone mindbrood had done to Burrova.
With every passing day, the threat of the Heiligian army grew larger, and so did the unrest in Constantina. There was talk in Undercity of negotiating surrender with the Militant Church. The Pirates became bolder, and there had been attacks against Haunt-aligned merchants. The bandits, which had almost been suppressed, had exploded like a plague, ravishing small towns and making trade by land all but impossible.
It was as if Kes had been tasked with keeping together a sandcastle on a windy day as the tide crept inexorably toward the sand walls. She could feel it crumbling all around her. The name of the game was attrition, and without a Dungeon Lord, it was a game the Haunt couldn’t win.
“He is alive,” Klek told her, with a conviction born of idealism Kes was too old to share. “He must be. Our minionship bond is still active.”
“We don’t know,” the Marshal said. “The Mantle may have… funky interactions with travel between dimensions. We can’t take anything for granted.”
Klek shook his head emphatically. “Wrong. He is coming back for sure. We just need to hold on in the meantime.”
Kes bit her lips. She was about to say something, then Klek jumped out of the bed and instantly winced from the pain. He stumbled, but didn’t fall.
“Don’t lose hope,” Klek told her. “When a batblin is hiding in a hole and there are hungry wolves outside, he cannot give in to panic no matter how much he wants to. You know why?”
Kes shook her head.
“Because the wolves can smell fear,” Klek said. “If we lose hope, we are fucked.”
The Marshal had seen many idealist mercenaries die brutally and without ceremony on the battlefield. She knew that although morale was crucial, platitudes could only carry one so far. Normally, she would’ve kept her doubts to herself. Klek, however, was right there, trying to comfort her, when it should have been her duty. “We can’t just sit on our asses with an invasion looming only a year away. The people are scared, Klek. They expected the Nightmare Factory to change the tide of the war. If we want them to keep their hopes up, we need to give them a reason why.”
Klek raised an eyebrow. “Well, then, we’ll just have to liberate Raventa ourselves.”
“What?”
The batblin narrowed his eyes. “I know now that there are two types of batblins. Those that stay in their holes when the wolves come… and those that come out and kick their shaggy asses.” He flashed her a confident grin, something Kes had rarely seen in the batblin. “I know what kind of batblin I want to be. What about you?” In truth, despite his wound, he looked stronger than ever. For a forest critter, facing Archlord Everbleed and not dying was a colossal achievement. Legendary, even. It had earned Klek and Tulip a hundred points each—not that much for an adventurer in the grand scheme of things. But for a batblin and a horned spider it was a life-changing amount.
Perhaps Klek Adventurer Slayer was wiser than she had given him credit for.
Kes laughed. “When you put it like that, I can’t really say no without looking like a coward.” She clapped the batblin’s back, which made him yelp in pain. “Shit, sorry,” she said quickly. “Hurry and get better, my friend. We have a city to conquer.”
Klek returned her grin. “Lord Ed is going to be so surprised when he comes back.”
There was not a hint of hesitation in the statement.
Far south from the treacherous Undercity, past the vast green expanse of the Hoia Forest, past the city of Mitena and its farmlands, past rivers and lakes and fields that reached over the horizon, past deserts and mountainsides, past the fossilized remains of dragon-nests, past dry canyons whose phantom waters had quenched the thirst of bygone civilizations, was a land of marsh and swamp. There loomed the Wetlands, where the day was drowned by shadow, where roaming clouds of mosquitoes blotted the sun, and slumbering beasts with no name slept under primordial waters older even than the Regents of the Netherworld.
Few explorers ever returned from the dreaded far-south, and those who had often spent their remaining days telling mad tales of vast cities lurking under the murky waters, and dead beings dreaming inside underwater crypts. Pyramids and ruins and monsters with no name, and things that when they stirred in their eternal sleep made the Light and the Dark shiver in fear and wonder.
Deep inside the Wetlands, through secret paths, was a pyramid of ancient rock. One side had been melted into a charred mess an eternity ago, the rest was carved with images of idols whose names are best left unsaid. Living flesh wriggled inside that pyramid, but to the outside world it was peaceful. At its top was a garden seeded with unearthly vegetation. In the center of this garden was a statue. The statue was of a powerful Devil Knight, face contorted in challenge, arm forever extended as if about to cast a spell. Sitting on this shoulder of the Devil Knight statue was a tall man with long flowing black hair. He was playing a soft, melancholic melody on an ebony flute as the pale sun set over the horizon.
Malikar found Sephar by following the music. As far as Malikar knew, the Dungeon Lord liked to come here every night and stare at the stars as they came to life. The spellcaster stood back, unwilling to disturb the Dungeon Lord’s reverie.
Sephar lowered the flute. “Back from your trip already?” he asked without turning back.
Malikar wasn’t surprised that Sephar knew he was there. The Dungeon Lord’s Evil Eye could see everything that happened under his domain. “I’m happy to report a successful quest. Nightshade Jarlen has a new coffin with earth from her birthplace. She is installed in one of our forts near Starevos and awaits further orders.”
“Good,” Sephar said simply. He seemed to be in a good mood, but despite having known him for years, Malikar had never been able to fully read him.
“Any news of Lord Wraith’s whereabouts?” he asked.
“Lady Vaines blocked our scrying into the Standard Factory as soon as she awoke,” Sephar said. “Thankfully, I have other means. Lord Wright has retreated back into his homeworld to recover from his wounds. There’s no telling when he will return.”
“He may not,” Malikar said. “After seeing what he’s up against, he may have decided to stay in his own world.”
Sephar shook his head. “This is more than likely a tactical retreat to build up strength. Remember, this is the kind of person that pro-actively seeded southern Starevos with spiderlings to single-handedly set back our plans of expansion. He has been fighting a war against me before anyone else knew I was alive. In other words, he’s not the kind of man to run away.”
Malikar had his doubts. The spiderling situation nagged at him. He had spent years in Starevos, and he could’ve sworn Wright simply used spiderlings as spies, and had little to no idea about the ancient enmity between horned spider and mindbrood. An adult mindbrood was all but invincible to a horned spider cluster. But a larva? A lone spiderling could take care of a larva. If it weren’t for Wright’s spiderlings, half of Starevos could’ve been turned into an army for Sephar at a moment’s notice. Sephar thought this move to be part of an ongoing strategical game between the Lord of the Haunt and himself. Deep inside, however, Malikar suspected that the spiderling issue may have simply been a coincidence, and that Sephar’s admiration of Wraith came from a disposition of certain intelligent men to think everyone else played at their level.
“Why are you so sure?” Malikar asked, because Sephar encouraged his minions to ask questions and rarely punished unwilling ignorance.
Sephar’s demeanor grew weary, and Malikar knew he was thinking of times gone past.
“In my previous life, if my friends and family were in mortal danger, I would stop at nothing to go back to them before it grew too late. At nothing.” Sephar shook his head. “No, if Edward is away it is because he can’t come back. Yet.”
Malikar knew how the rest of the story went. Sephar had fought to protect his loved ones, and he had lost them all one by one. And at the very end of his life, at the height of his despair, he had found the Bro
od. In what others called the Bane of Sephar, Sephar himself had found a new beginning. And the dream of the ancient Dungeon Lord had been given one more chance.
It was the stuff of legends. A tale of vengeance and salvation. Malikar was honored to be a part of the great mission Lord Sephar had envisioned. He would follow his beloved Master to the very end of the world if needed.
“I’ve failed you, my Lord,” Malikar said, bowing before the Dungeon Lord of the Wetlands. “It was my mistake that Wraith escaped. I knew what the Planeshifter was capable of, yet I neglected to take care of him. I accept full responsibility. My life is yours to take, if you wish.”
Sephar laughed at that. “If I killed my men every time they failed at something I’d quickly run out of competent minions. I’d have to take care of my own errands, and what kind of Dungeon Lord would I be then?” He pocketed his lute, then turned and gave Malikar a warm smile. “Besides, if I remember correctly you left halfway through the proceedings. I was the one in charge when Argent Planeshifter made a run for it, and I already knew what he could do because I read your report. So if anyone made a mistake, it is me.”
Malikar flushed. “L-Lord! I didn’t—I would never imply…”
Sephar made a dismissive wave. “Oh, come on, Malikar. Everyone makes mistakes. Even us. The wise man learns from his errors and eventually turns them into strengths. That is how one adapts.”
The minion nodded, then the two men stood in silence as the first constellations came into view. There was something that bothered Malikar. Something that didn’t quite make sense. “Permission to speak freely, my Lord?”
“You have it.”
“I believe you are lying, my Lord.”
The Lord of the Wetlands raised an amused eyebrow. “How so?”
“You read my report. You sent me to Vaines’ palace in the first place to learn about the Planeshifter first of all. And in the Factory, you had our brothers keep well away of Argent at all times. You explicitly ordered he was not to be hurt.” Malikar scratched his beard. “I believe you let him get away, my Lord, although I don’t know the reason.”