by Eric Ugland
“A party of five went in. The traditional number. I was the lowest leveled, but I had the most skill with the blade. I was there as direct bodyguard to the emperor, to give my life for his. We entered at dawn, and we were optimistic. Headstrong. Foolish. We fought through throngs of undead on the first level, more enemies than I’d ever seen in my time with the Legion, and it was a real challenge. We suffered wounds and we burned through our potions at a distressing rate. But we beat the first level.
“The second level was more difficult. We were in a hallway that was only lit by flickering candles. There were shadows everywhere, moving shadows. And doors. Doors where we heard things. Cries of terror. And though our Emperor told us not to open the doors, Vendross heard his mother calling for him, and he could not help it. He opened the door and was devoured by a creature which still haunts me. We fought the creature as best we could, eventually beating it down, losing another brave soul to the monster. The three of us, wounded, we limped along as the cries grew worse. More believable. More terrible. The doors would open, and we would see the horrors inside, sisters being defiled, fathers being tortured, loved ones of all kinds subject to the worst you can imagine as well as all sorts of foul deeds beyond your conception. At the end of this hall, there was a tower of bones. It soared taller than anything I had seen. Creatures formed out of the bones, over and over again. New horrors would emerge, and we would fight and fight and fight. Swords broke. Back up weapons broke. I knew I would die — I bled from a hundred wounds. The Emperor bled next to me. And then, we saw it. The jewel to the next level. Shofie Rhen dove into the tower of bones, his body shredded before our eyes, but before he died, he threw the gem to us. His blood turned its white glow crimson.
“The Emperor grabbed the gem, and we thought the danger would pause. But the bones pressed us, and I fought to keep the man alive. I know he debated, I know he thought about continuing on, so I turned, and I struck the man across the face, knocking him unconscious, and I took the gem. I made the choice. The choice to exit. We were deposited where we entered, all our belongings stripped. Naked with a single hitpoint and not one experience point above our last level. Nor any of the experience we gained in the dungeon. We were wholly defeated. None of the magical gear we went into the dungeon with remained. Precious artifacts were lost. The prince and his four best men had only managed to get to the end of the second level. Three men died for him. The Emperor and I never spoke about what happened there. And I have never revealed anything about that misadventure to anyone else until now. The Dungeon knew what it was doing. It knew how to break us. It is a thing, a living thing of some kind.
“I became obsessed with understanding it. I spent all my free time, the little I had, learning of the Dungeon. Of Dungeons. I read of the days when Dungeons were built. I tracked down the mad man, and I spoke to him at length. And I learned. But the more I learned, the less I knew.”
Our group sat in silence for a moment. Emeline sat down on the bed, and pulled her knees up to her chest. Her bravado seemed to have disappeared while Nikolai spoke. Donner squatted on the edge of the bedroom, staring out at the labyrinth, and the sky above. It didn’t look real — it looked painted. As if someone painted the biggest dome that had ever been conceived.
“Dungeons were built?” Emeline asked.
Nikolai nodded, eating a handful of the trail mix stuff.
“I cannot say who built this one, the Dungeon of the Ancients, likely whomever built Osterstadt before it was Osterstadt. The exact rituals to make a Dungeon have been lost, but there are a few texts which speak of the act. And it requires a terrible price.”
“What does that mean?”
“The Dungeon demands sacrifice. It requires feeding to start. Thousands must be killed for the Dungeon to grow strong enough to do that which it is built to do.”
“Which is?” she asked, somewhere between curious and horrified.
“Protect whatever it is those who have power treasure. The Dungeon’s core is summoned, and it is planted, then it is watered in blood and fed in flesh. The more blood, the more power.”
“Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” I said. “Why go through all the trouble to hide your treasure in the Dungeon? Don’t you need to go through the whole thing when you want to get your own treasure?”
“No. That would be stupid. There are magical means to get to the treasure room, controlled by those who build the Dungeons.”
“So wouldn’t it be easier to just, like, take that method to get to the treasure?”
“It might be. If you are able to use that means. It might be tied directly to the magic of the king. So you would need to take over the king to get the treasure. Or, go through the Dungeon. And, the Dungeon itself offers immeasurable treasures. The treasure the dungeon protects and the treasure the Dungeon creates. As you’ve seen here. Magical weapons, armor, and plenty of coin, just from a single layer. The easiest layer. I never earned as much coin as those two levels of the Dungeon. And legend says conquering a Dungeon brings great power.”
“Your tone makes me think you disagree,” Skeld said.
“I tend to think it is all a ruse to attract fools. More food for the Dungeon. The Dungeon must be fed to grow, and that is all the Dungeon wants — to grow, to be bigger, to gain power.”
“Are they, like, evil?” I asked. “Should we be destroying them?”
Nikolai leaned back in the chair, and I could see the cogs in his brain turning.
“Dungeons themselves, I hesitate to call them evil, at least as you or I might believe. They just are. They are as they are intended to be. They are as evil as we let them be. Do I feel we need to defeat them? No. But nor do I think we should aim to make more of them, nor should we continue to feed them. Whatever power or treasure they may offer the individual, that power is born of the blood of others. I feel, and I am not sure you will wind up agreeing, there is little gained in the destruction of Dungeons.”
“Noted,” I said. “Leave Dungeons alone. Good rule. Also, um, if we exit, we lose everything?”
“Everything.”
“And we’ll be back in the prison?”
“Yes.”
“That seems less than ideal.”
“It might be more ideal than death.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The light never changed outside. It was always that vague sort of late afternoon, early evening when the sun was threatening to go down, but hadn’t quite yet. The air was still. More warm than cold. And it smelled stale.
We rested in the room above the labyrinth for what I guessed was an hour. Time was nearly impossible to track there. Long enough to pull out some actual rations. We ate some dried meat, drank some water, and stretched our muscles. Donner didn’t do any stretching or eating or talking, rather, he just looked at us like we were crazy.
I pulled some parchment out and did my best to draw an approximation of what I could see of the labyrinth from above. I had no idea if it’d do us any good inside the maze, but any help was something. And inside a maze, well, if there was a little something something that could prevent me from getting lost forever, I’d take it.
Emeline took some time to change out of the original ball gown into the next ballgown I pulled out of the bag. The initial one was covered with slime from the underside of the creature that tried to eat the party, as well as the blood from Duskalk’s beheading. The creature slime was increasing in stickiness as it dried, and the dress was basically gluing itself together.
I pulled a piece of mostly intact chainmail out of the bag and put it on. I thought about pulling out a shield as well, but that just didn’t seem like the wisest of choices. I didn’t have a whole lot of ass left for Nikolai to chew, and no reason to become known as Montana the ButtLess.
We stood in a line: myself in the middle, Ragnar and Skeld to my left, Nikolai, Emeline, and Donner to my right. I noticed that Donner and Emeline were never particularly happy to be near the Lutra. They’d always find a way to put more sp
ace between them and the otters. One more problem to tackle once we were free of the dungeon. I tried to think how bad it would be, to lose everything I had and to start back in the prison. Pretty bad. Mostly the prison part, because while I could get out of the prison exploiting the whole dying and respawning thing, it’d take me a long fucking time to get all the way across the Empire, especially through winter and a war. No way that Nikolai or the Lutra would last that long. So the only way out was through.
Great.
I took the first step, plunging my foot out of the weird bedroom and onto the dusty, dry grass of the hill. The moment I hit the dirt, it was as if a ripple shot out through reality itself. Reality, obviously, in quotes of sorts, because who knows what the fuck was real in this stupid fucking Dungeon. A prismatic wave rolled around everything: sky, ground, labyrinth, everything. It was as if, at that moment, the dungeon came alive again. As if the game was back on. We’d been given a respite, and now it was no holds barred.
“That can’t be good,” I said.
“It never is with you,” came Nikolai’s inevitable insulting reply.
He was already moving though, hiking down the hill.
I’d managed to get left behind.
Again.
Whatever.
I brought up the rear, walking behind my party, watching everything around us. The labyrinth was at the base of the hill. There wasn’t a single entrance to the place — there were many. From our view, the maze as a whole looked mostly round, that we could mosey all the way about the place looking for the perfect entrance, or seeing if there was just a straight shot on the other side, some particularly easy way to the middle, to the goal. The walls were high, thirty or forty feet, and made of a blue-grey stone with a surprising amount of growth on them. Lichen or mold in a prismatic hue. There were a few trees on the landscape between the top of the hill and the start of the maze, but they were closer to dead than alive, their leaves few and far between, and most decidedly not green. Everywhere outside the maze was muted in color. And life. Frankly, at that point, I hadn’t seen much in the way of life inside the maze either.
Nikolai was first at the labyrinth entrance, the one that had been directly at the bottom of the hill, and there he waited. Looking in, but not breaking the threshold.
“You think this is the entrance we should take?” I asked.
“I think the first entrance is likely the worst entrance,” he replied. “It seems too easy. Unless…”
Silence for a moment. I think we were all waiting for Nikolai to finish his sentence, but, instead, he let it hang in the air.
“You’re thinking,” I started, “that they might offer the best entrance first, knowing we’d never take it.”
“Right, but—”
“But, then they’d think we’d think the first entrance is good because we’d think they’d think we’d think it would be bad, and so they’d make it bad.”
“I think I follow you,” Nikolai said, “but—”
“But by knowing that they’d think we’d think the first entrance is bad because they’d think we’d think the first entrance is good because they’d think we’d think the first entrance is bad, they’d make the first entrance good to throw us off.”
“I see,” Emeline said. “He does say stupid shit all the time.”
“He does,” Ragnar said.
I frowned. “I don’t think I say that much stupid stuff.”
“You do,” Ragnar replied.
“I am glad you all feel comfortable enough to joke around,” Nikolai said, “but bear in mind we are still in a dungeon. Death is imminent as long as we are inside. Montana, you take point. If there is immediate danger, you are most likely to survive it.”
“Or we’ll miss him least,” Emeline sniped with a smile.
No one else smiled.
“We will have no chance without him,” Nikolai said, his face especially grim. “Right now, you are the least of our party.”
“Oooooh, burn,” I said, smiling.
“Just because you are vital to our survival does not mean you should be talking,” Nikolai said. “Go.”
I shook my head, but started towards the entrance. I had my axe out, and I was ready. Again, as soon as my foot stepped onto the other side, I could sense a change come over the world. I can’t explain it outright, but things felt different. Fundamentally. Like the air was, well, thicker I guess.
The interior of the maze was immediately intense. The walls seemed like they were, at least originally, at right angles to each other. How that translated into a circular maze, I don’t know. Dirt spilled a little from the entrance onto the stone floor, but after about ten feet, there was nothing but stone. Well, stone and the bits of vegetation that were growing up through the cracks. Twenty feet in, I stopped and looked over my shoulder. Ragnar was watching me from the entrance.
“Still okay?” he called out.
“Yeah, what the fuck?” I replied.
“We just wanted to check to see if something was going to jump out and get you.”
“Nothing so far,” I said, wanting to add a bit about them being assholes for sending me into danger by myself. Great hirð.
The rest of the party jogged in behind, and the maze run began in earnest.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Time held even less meaning inside the labyrinth, certainly not at first. Distance was challenging to gauge, partially because everything looked so similar, but also because there were definitely times wherein we’d come across something that looked so damn familiar, we’d realize we’d gone in a circle. Forget the dead end. The most maddening part of any maze is going around in circles.
After the first circle, I put my left hand out, and smacked it on the wall to my left.
“There’s a method to getting out of mazes,” I said, thinking back to some of the fairy tales I’d read as a kid and never thought about again until that moment. “You always keep your left or right hand on the wall, and you will get out eventually. Just might take longer.”
No one had a better strategy, so we adopted it.
We kept walking.
I got thirsty. We stopped for a break. I leaned back against the wall I’d had my hand on, and slid down until I was sitting. We broke out snacks.
The air felt thicker somehow. Like breathing was, well, easy. Open your mouth, and air would almost force itself in. Breathing out was starting to get challenging though. It was tiring in a very strange way, and while I didn’t feel fatigued at all, things felt off. I felt off.
We finished eating, drinking, and resting. My left hand was back on the left wall, and we resumed our march. We had yet to see any signs of life. No footprints, no poop, nothing to indicate anything even moved in the labyrinth. There was no real noise there, not beyond our own footfalls. Because of that, I think we were afraid to talk. Or too uncomfortable to talk. I know that I was doing my damndest to keep my listening holes wide open on the off chance I’d hear something before it could pop in and ruin my day.
Along we went until finally I saw something up ahead. A mark on the wall. A spot where it looked like someone had, perhaps, slid down the wall, knocking off a fair amount of lichen and/or moss in the process. It was on the right hand wall.
I stopped directly in front of it and stared, my left hand reaching out behind me, keeping contact with the wall.
“Is that where I—” I started, but I couldn’t finish.
“The dungeon is beholden by no rules but those it makes,” Nikolai whispered.
“Doesn’t seem fair,” Ragnar said.
“This is ridiculous,” Donner roared, throwing his hammer hard against the ground, and walking up to the wall.
“Dude,” I said, “let’s not be rash.”
“Be whatever it is you want,” he snapped back, not even looking at me, but making his intense displeasure and disgust for me clear.
He reached up against the wall, grabbing stones, and he hauled himself up, barely using his legs. For the
first time I noticed that he definitely skipped leg day. Like, all the time. His legs were tiny. Skinny. And his feet were too small for his body. He got to the top in a few minutes, and as soon as his head was over, there were distant roars. Something was not happy he was peeking over the walls.
Very clearly, it was fine for the dungeon to cheat, but we could not.
“RUN!” screamed Donner, and he slid down the wall.
Every one braced, but no one moved.
“RUN!” he screamed again, yelling in our faces.
“Which direction?” Emeline shouted back at him.
Long claws came over the wall, huge fingers curling around and grabbing the stone. They were spindly, with deep vermillion claws at the ends of fingers that were a disturbing and unpleasant fleshy-pink. Almost like that layer of the epidermis after the top layers of skin have been ripped off. Four of them, each one longer than I was tall, grabbing on the wall like I might have grabbed a piece of toast.
“Away from that,” I shouted, pointing at the claws and promptly moving to the center of the path and waiting for whatever was on the other end of the claws to come over into view.
“That’s not what we are running from,” Donner said, breathless, “the world is collapsing in on itself. The hill is not there any longer, the—”
“Got it,” I said. “I think. And I agree. Running sounds like a fine idea.”