Dungeon Bringer 1

by Nick Harrow

  “What is she doing?” Nephket asked. “Why doesn’t she just get in here so we can run?”

  “She’s buying us time,” I said. “If she comes this way, the raiders will, too.”

  “Then we need to go,” Nephket said. Her eyes gleamed in the dying sunlight.

  “Follow the tunnel,” I said. “If it gets too small for you to walk, you may have to crawl until I can expand it again.”

  “I won’t leave you to face them alone,” Nephket said. “Please don’t do this.”

  “I have to stay here until Zillah can get into the tunnel,” I said. “And I have to seal it behind us to keep the raiders from coming this way. Get your people to safety.”

  “Don’t leave us,” Nephket said. She stood on her tiptoes and cradled my head in her hands. Then she pressed her lips to mine in a brief, fierce kiss and headed into the darkness with the rest of the wahket. They wouldn’t be able to see as they walked, but they wouldn’t have to. There were no branches or hazards in the tunnel. They just had to keep moving.

  Zillah darted around the leading edge of the raider mob, and her spear lashed out like a flickering serpent’s tongue. The weapon’s tines ripped open the chest of one raider and sliced off another’s ear. A third wailed and threw his shield up, but he wasn’t fast enough to stop Zillah’s stinger. The barbed tip buried itself in his throat, then ripped free in a spray of blood and venom.

  That display of savage violence made the rest of the raiders rethink the fight. There was no treasure here, but there would be plenty of pain for anyone who got too close to Zillah. Their postures changed from aggressive to defensive.

  Zillah sprinted away from the turtled raiders and scrambled down the hill toward the passage. A wild grin stretched her cheeks tight, and her eyes seemed to glow with joy. I’d never seen her so happy, not even when we’d been banging each other’s brains out. She was built for war, and she loved it.

  The sorceress didn’t hesitate for even a second to chase after Zillah. Kezakazek was bent on vengeance, and her dagger glowed with a hellish red fire.

  I don’t know where she’d picked that little gadget up, but I didn’t like the looks of it. It was time to get the hell out of there.

  Zillah was faster than the drow, but not by much. She leaped across the last yard to the dungeon’s entrance and shot past me like a charging bull.

  Kezakazek was hot on the scorpion queen’s heels, though, and I knew I didn’t have time to seal the dungeon before the drow could cross its threshold. And once she did that, I wouldn’t be able to change the passage at all until we’d forced her back out or killed her. That delay might give the raiders their nerve back, and then we’d have a big fight on our hands.

  Time for a different plan.

  I raised a three-foot-high wall at the mouth of the passageway and then surprised the dark elf by moving it five feet forward. She was moving too fast to change course, and she slammed into the barrier. Her dagger flew from her hand, and she flailed her arms wildly but failed to regain her balance. Kezakazek hit the sand hard and glared into the passage’s mouth with raw hatred in her eyes.

  “I will have that core,” Kezakazek shrieked. She dragged herself to her feet and scrambled for her dagger, then rushed the dungeon’s entrance. I pulled the barrier back to the dungeon’s entrance and waited until Kezakazek leaped to cross the low wall.

  Then I sealed the barrier.

  There was a faint thump as the dark elf slammed into the stone wall. Despite the fact that the beautiful, crazy dark elf was separated from me by a few feet of stone, I still didn’t feel like I was out of her reach. I hoped she believed I was on my way back to my dungeon right now with Zillah and a small army of wahket. I did not need her storming my castle while I was tied up with the Guild’s gate.

  “Everything all right?” Nephket asked. She’d found her way back to me in the dark, and her hands gently stroked my chest and face. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Just have a lot of balls in the air right now,” I said. “What can I do to help your wahket?”

  “Light,” she said. Nephket pressed her body against mine and kissed my chin, my cheeks, and my lips. She nipped at my mouth, and a rumbling purr throbbed from within her chest. “But not just yet.”

  For that one minute, Nephket and I were alone in the dark. We breathed in one another’s scent and tasted each other until our cares receded. Her kisses were like fresh jolts of energy to my system, and by the time she pulled away from me I felt like the Energizer Bunny with a fresh set of batteries.

  It was time to move.

  With a snap of my fingers, I lit up the passage with a golden glow that banished the chill from the subterranean air and provided the wahket with enough light to see by without ruining their night vision.

  “All right, kids,” I said. “Let’s kill a gate.”

  Chapter 11: The Necropolis

  NEPHKET HERDED THE wahket forward while Zillah scouted ahead with Pinchy and her friends. I didn’t really think we’d run into anything in the tunnel I’d just created, but far better safe than sorry.

  As the cat women and the scorpion queen moved ahead of me, I sealed the passage behind us and moved the extra volume to the passage in front of us to make sure the way ahead was clear. We needed to move quickly, and to do that I had to keep the passage open wide enough for the wahket to walk at least two abreast and stand upright. Crawling wouldn’t get us to the Guild’s gate in time.

  Handling the passage on both of its ends was a welcome distraction from my worries about Kezakazek. The dark elf’s ambition and allies had thrown a monkey wrench into my plans. It weighed so heavily on my mind that it must have shown on my face.

  “You don’t look very happy to see me,” Nephket teased as she and Zillah fell back from the front to check in with me. She swished her tail across my shins and gave me a devilish grin. “You did miss me, right?”

  “Yes, we did,” Zillah said, her voice low and husky. “I’ll show you just how much later.”

  Nephket blushed at that, but she also raised an eyebrow in a way that suggested Zillah might be about to bite off more than she could chew. Things were about to get very interesting in my life.

  If we survived what came next.

  “I did,” I said. “It’s that dark elf. She’s more dangerous than I thought.”

  “One problem at a time, Lord—” Nephket said.

  “Clay,” I cut her off.

  “—Rathokhetra,” she continued. “You cannot conquer the world all at once. You must first remove the pebbles from your path.”

  That sounded an awful lot like a Bible verse, but I let it slide. Nephket was a true believer, and I saw no sense in fighting against that. I wanted her to work with me, and if she needed to believe I was this Lord Rathokhetra, I’d swallow my pride and let her believe that.

  But I really wished she’d call me Clay.

  “You’re right,” I said. “The gate, then the rest of the raiders.”

  “Do you have a plan for that yet?” Zillah asked. “Other than turning me loose to do your evil bidding.”

  “That’s the plan so far,” I said with a grin. “You should be able to handle fifty or so first-level raiders by yourself.”

  “I like your confidence,” Zillah said. She swirled her tail around my shoulders, then brushed it across Nephket’s lower back. “I’m headed back to the front.”

  “Me, too,” Neph said. As she walked away, her tail swished from side to side. Every movement lifted the back of her skirt a little more. By the time she’d walked into the crowd of wahket to make her way to the front, the view had chased my worries away.

  By the time I’d made it back to my original tunnel, the wahket had all gathered near the edge of the chasm. They peered into its depths while Zillah and Nephket watched over them. I took a moment to peek at the Tablet of Engineering and was relieved that I saw no enemies inside my dungeon. Whatever else Kezakazek was up to, she hadn’t convinced the Guild to raid my core
.

  Thank the gods for small miracles.

  “Everyone accounted for?” I asked Nephket.

  “Yes,” she said with a grateful smile. “We didn’t lose anyone.”

  “I’m glad,” I said and meant it. I felt personally responsible for these cat women, and I’d be damned if some punk-ass first-level raiders hurt them.

  I tried to reclaim the last segment of the rescue tunnel, but as I willed it away a red message floated into my view.

  [[[Do you wish to seal this passage? Once sealed, a passage cannot be recreated until a new path is found.]]]

  Well, wasn’t that special?

  I didn’t expect to need that rescue tunnel again, but I still felt a twinge of regret when I sealed it off. That message also told me I’d have to think hard about sealing up passages until I was sure I wouldn’t need them.

  Being a dungeon lord was a tremendous pain in the ass.

  I moved to the end of my original passage, which was open on the chasm end. I draped my arms over Nephket and Zillah’s shoulders, and they both smiled at one another, then at me.

  “Are your ears burning?” Zillah asked.

  “Should they be?” I shot back.

  “Oh, yes,” Nephket said. “Can we cross the chasm?”

  “No, that’s our next problem," I said. “I’m not sure how deep this overgrown sinkhole is, but we’re going to try to go under it.”

  “That seems dangerous,” Nephket said. “We don’t know what’s down there.”

  “We don’t know what’s across the chasm, either,” Zillah said. “Or what’s on either end of that great ugly hole. We’ll just have to take our chances.”

  Nephket nodded sharply, but she didn’t seem put out by Zillah’s words. The priestess was smart enough to know she might not know everything.

  “It will be dangerous,” I said. “We have some time, and I need to think about the best way to approach this big dig. I think it’s time for the wahket to learn how to fight.”

  Zillah raised an eyebrow at my suggestion, then gave a shrug. She obviously didn’t think much of the cat women’s fighting ability, but that didn’t surprise me. Zillah didn’t consider anyone to be her equal in the martial arts.

  “How?” Nephket asked. “And with what?”

  “We’re still in my dungeon, which means I still have access to all that loot,” I said. I summoned the Tablet of Transformation and reviewed my options.

  I took a quick head count of the wahket wandering around near the chasm. There were thirty-two of the cat women, none of whom looked too beat up to fight. Their fur was stained with soot from the raiders’ fires, and their eyes were wide and scared, but I felt in my gut that they were up to the challenge.

  “Let’s keep it simple,” I said. I ran my finger along the Tablet of Transformation until I found what I was looking for. “Half of them get spears and shields, the other half crossbows. Everybody gets leather armor.”

  As I spoke, I went to work on the tablet. I converted two of the breastplates, which paid for all the crossbows and the leather armor with eighty gold pieces left over. I spent forty-eight of those gold pieces on sixteen spears, three hundred and twenty crossbow bolts, and sixteen crossbow bolt cases the wahket could wear over their shoulders. That left me with thirty-two gold pieces, but I needed one hundred and sixty for sixteen shields.

  I broke down the chain shirt and sledgehammer I’d taken from the big stupid warrior I’d hacked apart with my khopesh and then converted the spiked chain we’d looted from the orc barbarian to round things out. When it was all said and done, I had two spare gold pieces sitting in my sarcophagus and a whole stack of gear for the wahket piled up on the dungeon floor in front of me.

  “Zillah,” I said, “get the cat women outfitted and ready for battle. Nothing fancy, all right? Spears and shields need to learn how to rank up and keep the bad guys at bay while the crossbows bring on the pain. Other than that, you’re free to show them whatever you want. You’ve got an hour.”

  “My pleasure,” Zillah said with a dark twinkle in her eye. “I’ll have these furry pussies whipped into shape before you know it.”

  The scorpion queen winked at Nephket and snapped a sharp salute to me and then barked a stream of orders at the wahket.

  “She is something else,” Nephket said. “I hope she’s not jealous.”

  I admired Zillah’s drive. She had the wahket lined up in record time and explained to them how to don their leather armor. It looked like an uphill battle from where I sat, but I had faith she’d get the job done.

  “She’s not jealous of you,” I said. “Are you jealous of her?”

  Nephket placed her palm against my chest, right over my heart. The tips of her claws pressed against my skin just hard enough to break the first layer and make me very careful not to move quickly.

  “Not of her,” she said with a sly grin. “She’s yours. And because I’m your familiar, that makes her mine. She knows that?”

  “Oh, she knows it,” I said. “And likes it.”

  Nephket moved in closer to me, her eyes wide and luminous in the golden light from the passageway. She glanced toward Zillah, who gave each of the wahket personal attention and help in getting into their armor. Then the cat woman looked up at me, and the hunger I saw in her eyes ignited my own.

  I pulled her close to me and leaned back against the wall of the passageway. My hands roamed across the skin between the thin strap on the back of her halter and the low waist of her coined skirt. Her muscles were sleek and smooth under skin softer than I’d imagined possible. I wanted her, then and there, but there wasn’t time. I made do with a deep, passionate kiss that stole the air from our lungs. I felt like I was drowning in Nephket, and I didn’t care. If this was how it ended, maybe that was all right.

  “Spears!” Zillah shouted. She snatched weapons from the pile I’d created and tossed them to the wahket seemingly at random. The cat women surprised me with their agility and snatched their new weapons out of the air. None of the spears hit the ground, and the wahket raised them in an impromptu salute.

  “Lord Rathokhetra!” they shouted. Their voices echoed through the cavern and rebounded from the steep walls of the chasm. I hoped nothing down there had heard them.

  The scorpion queen glanced at Nephket and me and gave us an encouraging grin.

  “Later,” she mouthed.

  It was a promise, and I couldn’t wait for the chance to take her up on it.

  Nephket blushed, but she didn’t pull away for me. She leaned her head against my chest. The three stripes of fur on her cheek tickled my skin.

  Ten minutes later, Zillah had explained the basics of the spear formation to the wahket she’d armed. They picked it up quickly, and I had to wonder if it was something to do with their past. Rathokhetra’s memories told me the cat folk had once been mighty warriors. Their men had been almost seven feet tall and thick with muscle until a great curse had destroyed them all and left their women alone. Other memories told me those same women had become warriors out of necessity, and their mercenary companies had been just as feared as their departed menfolk.

  “I never thought I’d see this,” Nephket said. There was a wistful, almost sad note in her words, and I understood what she meant.

  She and her people had lived in peace for a long time, hidden away in the Kahtsinka Oasis. She was glad the wahket could take up arms and defend themselves but sorrowful that it was necessary.

  “We do what we must,” I said. “It’s all we can do.”

  We said nothing for the next thirty minutes while we watched Zillah do what she could to get the wahket ready to fight. The spear women could soon drop into a quick blocking formation, hunched low behind their shields with their weapons jutting forward like the quills of a porcupine. Behind them, the crossbows leaned forward to fire over their heads.

  They weren’t professional soldiers, not by a long stretch, but if they could keep their nerve, we might have a chance when we reached the gate
and had to fight the guards there. My hope was that we’d overwhelm them with a sudden surprise attack and superior numbers, but if the raiders had some higher-level adventurers there, I wanted my people ready to stand their ground.

  Zillah stalked back over to Nephket and me when her hour was up. She snapped the heels of her human feet together and offered me a brisk salute. She bowed low to Nephket and took one of the priestess’s hands in hers. She kissed Neph’s knuckles and then shot me a sly wink.

  “They’re as good as they’re going to get,” she said. “I hope it’s enough.”

  “It has to be,” I said. “It’s time to move. Get everyone back in the passage behind me. I’m going to build us a spiral ramp. Hopefully we don’t have far to go before we get below the chasm.”

  “I’m sure you won’t lead us astray,” Neph said. She patted my cheek then and joined Zillah, who’d taken her job as drill sergeant very seriously.

  It took another ten minutes to get everyone organized and ready to move. It wasn’t that the wahket were unruly or difficult to deal with, it was just a matter of lining everyone up in a reasonable order. I’d decided the wahket should march two abreast, with Zillah and me in the lead, followed by a pair of spears, followed by a pair of crossbows, followed by another set of spears, and so on down to the end of the line. Nephket held up the rear, because I needed eyes back there in case of trouble, and there was no one else I could trust for that.

  Pinchy gave me the scorpion equivalent of an angry grunt at that thought, but I just chuckled. She knew her eyes were terrible even if she did have a better sense of vibrations than the rest of us.

  “Let’s move,” I said. “Nephket, if we run into trouble, I need the spears to help Zillah deal with it. Have the crossbows take shots when they’re clear but remind them to check their targets. We don’t want any of our people catching a bolt in the back.”

  That’s how we began our descent.

  I concentrated on the spiral ramp again, which was even more of a pain in the ass the second time. I was getting better at the process, but it still took most of my mental power to visualize the three-dimensional space I needed as I wound down deeper and deeper into the earth. I’d added to my burden by narrowing the passage behind us, because I wanted to keep plenty of volume free if I needed to make sudden course corrections or expand the passage to let more wahket deal with any threat that reared its ugly head.