by DB King
There was no sign of any resistance as they approached the breach in the wall. Bodies of dead monsters were scattered all over the ground behind the wall, as if when the breach had opened there had been a crowd on top of the palisade who had fallen and died in the rubble.
“Be wary,” Marcus said. He slipped into the augmentation view and cast Ultimate Stealth on Dirk and Anja. With his native stealth, and the silence augmentation that was already on his armor, Dirk became almost invisible. Even to Marcus’s eyes, Dirk was difficult to see.
Spell: Ultimate Stealth Level 1
Level Increase: 7%
Progress to next level: 92%
“When we get in, Dirk, take your powder up to the building in the middle of the stockade and place it around the entrance, then use that slow burning cord to set up a fuse that will light the powder on a time delay. If they retreat inside, we’ll blow holes in the building to gain access. If not, the powder will blow up the building anyway, and probably take out some of the monsters with it. Anja, let’s take the lead.”
With Anja at his side and Dirk following, Marcus approached the breach. As soon as he stepped inside the palisade wall, he realized the trick the enemy had played.
They were clustered in a crowd behind the wall on both sides. As soon as he stepped in, they let out a roar and attacked from both sides. The enemies had hidden silently, disguising their presence, but now they appeared in a noisy, monstrous mass.
There were lobster monsters, the size of humans and walking upright. Each creature had the body of a lobster, with rows of jointed legs behind, but they had upright bodies on their fronts. Each one had four arms—one pair of human arms, and they were armed with swords and bucklers for the most part, and some carried tridents and nets. Their upper arms were like the pincers of lobsters, but like the monstrous crab they were made of silver and they were sharp as swords.
Their faces were far from human. Black eyes glinted malevolently, and long, wavy feelers tipped with sharp metal spiked extended from either side of their mouths. They chattered and roared abominably as Marcus and Anja leaped to engage them.
“Take that!” Anja yelled as she lopped the head off one of them. Liquid silver spurted up from the stump of its neck as it died, pooling on the sandy floor. Marcus dived in and took off the arm of a lobster monster with his sword. He swung his mace up to deflect a blow from a metal claw as another charged in to tackle him.
There were some silver men here, too, like the men they had fought on the ship. They attacked in a group from Marcus’s right, and he blasted a spray of Elemental Water at them, driving them back against the inside of the wall.
Elemental Ability: Water
Current Mastery Level: Apprentice
Level increase: 5%
Progress to Journeyman level: 30%
Dirk slipped past him, nearly invisible even to his senses. The monsters didn’t see him at all. Marcus and Anja fought back-to-back, driving the lobsters back against the wall. The silver men reformed and charged again. Marcus cast Fleetfoot on himself to boost his speed. His sword danced and his mace crushed, and silver splattered all over the ground. Some of it landed on his skin and he brushed it off with a gloved hand.
A glance over his shoulder showed him Anja moving through the crowd like a scythe though ripe corn. She was unstoppable, her katana a bright arc of death as it swept through the crowd of her enemies.
“Press toward the central building!” Marcus said, and Anja nodded her acknowledgement. As she fought, the sunlight caught something bright around her neck, and Marcus realized that she was wearing the golden stag amulet that he had found in the vampire coffin and given to her to keep.
He shoved a lobster back, dispatching it with a blow from his mace, and taking out two silver men with his sword. On a slight mound in the center of the circular stockade, there was a solidly built single-story wooden building. The building had no windows, and Marcus could see enemies moving through the only door.
As he was looking at the building, he saw Dirk appear at the side. He waved a hand and smiled. As he did, the Ultimate Stealth bonus wore off and he became visible again. He drew his sword and charged down into the flank of the crowd of enemies.
Anja and Marcus had been slowly driving them back up the hill toward the building, but now they panicked as they were attacked in the rear. They broke and fled back up toward the building, calling to each other in their weird, chattering voices.
They packed toward the door. A sudden, thunderous roar drowned the patter of feet on wood. And standing in the doorway was Marcus’s old friend—the captain.
He was as monstrous as ever, a huge version of the lobster monsters, but more human-looking in a strange way. Unlike the others, the captain wore a blue coat that would have done credit to any seafarer on the Kraken City docks, and he had a thick beard of black, oily hair that spilled down his chest. The sight of the beard on the lobster face was horrific, and it made Marcus’s stomach churn.
“The fuses are set,” Dirk said as he reached Marcus through the crowd.
“How long?” Marcus asked.
“A minute,” Dirk said, “maybe a little longer.”
“Then it’s time for us to act like herders for these monsters. Spread out, and drive them toward the doors!”
Anja and Dirk did as Marcus asked. They spread out, Dirk on Marcus’s left and Anja on his right, running back and forth to corral the monsters toward the building. Every time one tried to break out, Dirk or Anja would leap after it and cut it down, and the others would retreat.
The monsters were soon packed tightly around the door to the building. They seemed to be clustering around the captain. He was trying to push through them, but they hindered his progress. He roared and lay about himself with his giant claws and his silver cutlasses. He cut down his own monsters, flinging them aside and trying to make his way toward Marcus.
But before he could reach them, the powder went up.
Dirk had done as Marcus had asked—packages of explosive powder were packed around the entrance to the central building with a strip of slow match cord acting as a fuse. He’d set three stacks of powder with three fuses. Now it became apparent that he had judged the lengths of the fuses perfectly.
The explosions went off almost simultaneously. Three detonations ripped through the air, and huge balls of orange fire blossomed right in the middle of the tightly packed crowd of monsters. The building’s whole front section was smashed to pieces, and bits of heavy timber were flung up into the air. The shockwave from the explosion flung Marcus and his friends off their feet, but the explosion destroyed nearly all of the monsters in a blast of liquid silver that flew up into the air like a geyser.
Marcus saw the captain himself go sailing through the air, his arms pinwheeling before he smashed with incredible force against the inside of the stockade wall. He slid down it, leaving a trail of silver in his wake.
But that was not all. As the explosion cleared, chunks of burning wood fell down through the air and landed in the silver on the ground.
“Back!” Marcus shouted to Dirk and Anja. “Get back! The silver is flammable!”
In his last run of this dungeon, Marcus had used the flammability of the silver to great effect. Now, as the hunks of burning wood crashed into the piles of broken monster corpses that littered the stockade, flames burst up from the ground all over the battlefield. They shot upward with a great whoosh and spread, catching the silver that was splattered across the whole area of the stockade from the battle.
Marcus and his friends backed away from the blaze. They made it to the breach in the wall and continued to move away from the wreck, watching in amazement as the whole stockade became a giant inferno. The heat was incredible, and black smoke billowed up against the clear blue sky.
“That was impressive!” Dirk said breathlessly after a moment.
“You did well!” Marcus said. “You timed the explosions perfectly. We couldn’t have planned it better.”
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nbsp; “Explosives,” Anja said thoughtfully. “It’s an interesting idea. We don’t use explosives much in Kraken City anymore. It feels like if we did, it could give us a real advantage.”
“The only reason it’s not used is that it’s considered hard to make, and most people don’t know how. But here, in this dungeon, it would seem that we have an opportunity…”
There was a click, loud and clear enough that it carried over the beach and made them turn their heads.
Over at the little dilapidated beach hut that concealed the way in and out of the dungeon, the door had opened.
Chapter 19
As soon as the door opened, Marcus felt the sudden regard of the sentient dungeon. It was turned on him, benevolent and even proud of him for defeating every stage of this difficult dungeon run. However, under the dungeon’s attention, Marcus felt something else—an impatience, rising slowly. It would soon be time for them to leave, but they had a little time left before the dungeon became really impatient.
“Come on,” Marcus said. “Let’s move quickly. It’s time to put those stone jars to use.”
Moving as quickly as they could, they dashed over to the dungeon entrance and grabbed the stone jars. Marcus used Fleetfoot to increase their speed, and they sprinted back to the little boat.
Summoning his waning strength, Marcus leaned over the edge and blasted Elemental Water again, carrying the little boat over to the galleon in the bay.
Elemental Ability: Water
Current Mastery Level: Apprentice
Level increase: 5%
Progress to Journeyman level: 35%
They clambered up the sides. Marcus directed them to gather as much of the liquid silver as they could into the stone jars.
The stuff stung if it got on your skin, but it had pooled in the gunwales of the ship and they were able to quickly fill their jars. It was awkward to lower the jars down, but they managed it. After the jars were full, they ran back below and dragged up the second barrel of gunpowder. This one was sealed, but Marcus used Hero’s Might to give him the strength he needed to get it down into the boat.
He was flagging, and the dungeon’s impatience was beginning to show itself. The sky was darkening, and Marcus could feel a steady pressure on his mind coming from the dungeon. He pressed back against it, and the dungeon subsided, almost sulkily.
Gathering the last of his strength, he used Elemental Water to jet them back over toward the entrance. This time, with no reason that he could account for, there was no level increase. His instinct made him think that it had been somehow blocked by the dungeon, but that seemed crazy. Could that happen?
As they hit the shore, they ran the boat up the sand and carried their loot back up the beach to the entrance. By the door, there was a smaller barrel, about the size of an ale barrel. Dirk put down his silver and lifted the barrel lid to glance inside.
“It’s full of gemstones,” he reported, “but we don’t have enough space to carry it, and you can’t carry anything out of the dungeon, Marcus.”
Marcus had to think fast. “Alright,” he said. “You two make two trips up the stairs. I’ll stay here and keep the dungeon open until you’re done. Be as quick as you can.”
Anja and Dirk obeyed immediately, grabbing their jars of silver and hurrying up the stairs.
Marcus was alone in the dungeon now. He looked out over the beach. The sky, which had been clear blue, was now darkening with a thick bank of purple-gray storm clouds moving over toward him—at him, as if to push him out. Flames leaped from the stronghold, and the black smoke rose in a high pillar above the darkening beach. Out in the surf, the empty ship was bobbing back and forth more violently as large breakers rolled in.
Out to sea, there was a flash of forked lightning, and a distant rumble of thunder.
The pressure greatly increased. The dungeon was pushing him to leave, and the pressure felt like a literal weight that he was holding up with his mind. A sudden sweat broke out on his brow. A first spattering of cold rain peppered the sand as the clouds above closed over.
Leave, the dungeon was saying—no, demanding. Marcus could almost hear the word, like a voice speaking just below the range of hearing. Across that sands, the wind howled. Leave. Leave. Leave.
For a moment, Marcus quailed before the awesome power of the dungeon, before the massive pressure that was exerted on him. But, like light dawning on a dark night, he saw himself as if from a distance. He saw his whole story up to this point trailing out behind him.
No, he thought. “No!” he said out loud, straightening his back, squaring his shoulders and turning his face into the wind.
He felt the dungeon’s presence hesitate, and the pressure relented for a moment. If a barking dog had retreated under a stern gaze and a raised hand, the message could not have been clearer. The dungeon became wary of him.
“I am the master here,” Marcus said firmly. “I am Eloran, dungeon bearer, the master of evolutions and the master of the dungeons. By my will you exist, and by my work you are sustained. In the dungeons, I rule and no other. I will say when I leave, and I will say when I enter. Remember your place, dungeon. You exist by my hand and no other, and I will not be pushed out against my will.”
The wind dropped. The rain, which had been whipping around the beach in a chaotic swirl, now fell straight downward. Marcus felt the pressure of the dungeon’s impatience lift completely, and he took a breath. It was as if he’d put down a massive load and now felt light.
He could still feel the dungeon’s regard, but it was thoughtful now, and it kept a respectful distance.
Far off on the beach, by the tideline, Marcus saw something unexpected: a gray and black figure, unsettlingly tall and thin. Long black hair whipped around its head. At this distance, Marcus could not tell if it was a man or a woman, or even if it was human. In the dim, rain-lashed storm light, he could only see a pale smudge where the face would be. It seemed to be dressed in long, ragged robes of black and gray that hung slack around the figure’s thin body.
As Marcus watched, the figure raised a hand, palm toward him, and held it there. It was looking at him, the raised hand a greeting.
Slowly, Marcus raised his hand in return.
“Marcus?”
He jumped and glanced over his shoulder. It was Dirk. He and Anja had returned from their first mission up the stairs and were now ready to take the second load of stuff up.
“Is everything okay?” Dirk said, looking at Marcus’s face. “You’re pale. You look like you’ve seen something…”
Marcus turned his gaze from Dirk and looked back down at the tideline. The figure was gone.
“I’m fine,” he said. “All’s well. Come on, grab that barrel of powder. I’ll augment you with Hero’s Might so you can carry it on your own.”
Anja took the small barrel of jewels under one arm—it was light enough that she didn’t need any magical strength to lift it. Marcus dipped into the augmentation view quickly so that he could apply Hero’s Might to Dirk, and the small man hoisted the big powder barrel up onto his shoulder with a grunt. As he did so, Marcus got a small level up.
Spell: Hero’s Might Level 2
Level increase: 2%
Progress to next level: 55%
Together, the three of them stepped through the door. Anja and Dirk made their way up the stairs, but Marcus glanced back through the doorway at the tideline. There was no trace of the figure.
The wind rose again.
Marcus stepped away from the door, expecting it to close behind him. When it didn’t, he smiled. He reached forward, and pushed it closed gently.
Dungeon Master: Level 3
Dungeon Chambers: 5
Dungeon fights: 11
Progress to next chamber: 100%
When he got to the top of the stairs, Marcus found his friends waiting for him, their jars of silver on the floor next to them alongside the barrel of gunpowder and the barrel of gemstones.
They looked at him oddly. Evidently
Dirk at least had picked up on the fact that something strange had happened to Marcus at the last moments in the dungeon, but Marcus chose not to say anything. Now that the loot was out of the dungeon, he could carry it without issue. Together, the three of them moved the loot up the stairs and up to the study. They left the barrel of powder in a shed by the wall, and Marcus spoke to the man in charge of the guard telling him that no one was to enter the shed, and that no flames were to be brought within ten yards of the wall of the shed.
The guard captain didn’t even raise an eyebrow at this strange order. Instead, he just nodded curtly and saluted. Marcus took that as a sign of the loyalty that his folk showed him. It pleased him. He had earned that loyalty and respect, he thought, through good deeds and behaving generously. He smiled. Some men might have to buy loyalty with coin, or impose it through fear. There was no doubt that gold from the dungeons, and his immense magical power, had played a part in the earning of their loyalty, but he knew it was not the whole.
Up in the study, Marcus found Ella sitting by the fire. She had a sheet of paper in front of her and was writing. Since he had taken to writing down his thoughts and reflections on everything that had happened, Ella had begun to do the same. She was private about her writing, however, and turned the page over when they entered.
“Oh, you’re back!” she said with a smile. “What have you brought? Were you in one of the dungeons?”
Marcus explained briefly that he had taken Dirk and Anja to test the upgraded Pirate’s Cove, and that he had brought two jars of the silver back with him. “I have an experiment in mind,” he said as Ella peered into the gleaming contents of the stone jars.
“Interesting,” she said. She glanced at Dirk and Anja. They looked at Marcus, then at Ella. Dirk cleared his throat. It was clear that Marcus had things to discuss with his dungeon faerie which he did not want to mention in front of anyone else.