by Eric Ugland
Slowly, I stepped into the room. I poked a tomato. It rolled off the table and plopped onto the floor, breaking apart, internals externalizing. It smelled great. Like the freshest, ripest tomato ever.
“This is super weird,” I said.
“Tastes good,” came Ragnar’s voice from behind me.
I turned around to find Ragnar stuffing fruits and vegetables into his face.
Skeld was next to him in a second, also eating voraciously.
“You know if that’s poisoned?” I asked.
They stopped, bits of fruit falling off their lips.
Ragnar looked to Skeld while Skeld looked at Ragnar.
“You alive?” Ragnar asked.
Skeld nodded in agreement.
“Not poisoned,” Ragnar said to me, smiling around the apple he was busy shoving in his mouth.
Skeld, for his part, grabbed a leek and bit into it heartily.
The rest of the party came into the room, but barely. They moved cautiously, looking over things with a careful eye.
I went over to the barrels in the corner to look inside. Apples in one, carrots in the next, and sacks of flour in the last. Looking around, I just couldn’t help feeling I’d seen this place before. It was triggering memories of life on Earth, but I couldn’t point to anything specific.
Donner sniffed the pot simmering above the fire, then found a ladle, and spooned a ridiculous amount of the delectable smelling stew into a large wooden bowl.
“Guys,” I said, “don’t you think this is a little weird? You don’t think that maybe we shouldn’t be eating this food?”
Donner sat down and tucked into the stew.
“Tastes fine,” he said. “Good to have hot food.”
“Hot food?” Emeline said, practically salivating. She took one step forward, but Nikolai’s arm shot out and held her back. She raised her eyebrows and looked over at him like he was about to get slapped. He shook his head, then nodded towards the Lutra sitting at the table.
Their eyes were heavy, and they’d slowed down their eating. They looked a bit like toddlers eating when they should be napping. Jerking upright, chewing slowly, eyes practically closed.
Donner face-planted into his stew, spoon flipping high the air before clattering on the ground.
Ragnar laughed, then fell forward, his skull making a dull thonk on the table. Skeld went backward, and I managed to grab him before he hit the ground. Gently, I leaned him against his fellow hirðmate.
Nikolai pulled Donner’s face from the stew, and leaned the man back.
Donner snorted, the stew dripping off his face and out of his nose, then he started snoring, and I shook my head.
“Sleeping,” I said, checking the pulses of my zonked out companions. “They’re just sleeping.”
“This is bad,” Nikolai said.
“Yeah, you think? We’re down three people.”
“Down three people who must be watched,” Nikolai said. “It means we are down four at the very least.”
“Game plan?”
He shook his head as he poked around the various things in the room. “We have yet to find the problem. We have no idea what this level is throwing at us.”
“Okay, so, do we need to take these idiots with us?”
“No,” Nikolai said, sitting on the bench. “You and Emeline make your way through this level. Discover what we are dealing with, and then come back. Hopefully these fools will have awoken in that time.”
I gave Emeline a bit of a glance. “Why don’t the two of you remain behind?”
“Because Emeline has quite a bit of experience looking for traps and unlocking doors.”
Emeline glared back at Nikolai. “How did you know that?”
“I may have lost my levels, but I did not lose my spells. Your low-level disguise self spell is child’s play to one as me.”
“So she’s a rogue,” I said with a smile.
“A rogue what?” Emeline countered.
“Like a thief.”
“I am not a thief.”
“You are a variant thereof,” Nikolai said waving his hand dismissively at her, “and while I always enjoy a good semantics argument, I would prefer to get out of this dungeon in my lifetime. So go.”
Emeline swished by me in her blue silk gown, quiver hanging off her round hip, short bow in her left hand. She looked pretty good in the gown; blue was definitely her color. And it was nice. I mean, you know, as far as ballgowns go. It accentuated the curves she had and—
She was staring at me. “Are you checking me out?”
“Nah,” I said, “just appreciating the dress.”
She flattened the wide gown, and did a little turn. The dress spun a bit.
“Outdated,” she mused, “almost amusingly so. But I suppose it will do for crawling through a dungeon.”
“Well then, let’s pick a door and crawl.”
Chapter Forty-One
She picked a door at the top of a small set of stairs and knelt in front of it. She did some peering and poking at the door, then swung it open.
A corridor.
Stone floors.
Same as below.
“Fucking corridors,” I said. “Nothing but goddamn hallways here.”
It was lit via candles on the ground, on small bronze or brass plates. Still no sign who was lighting them.
Doors were here and there along the hallway, with a final door at the far end. If someone was designing a prototypical medieval western European fantasy hallway, they’d make it exactly like that one. It was unnerving in that way.
Emeline led, but I stuck close behind. I noticed she shuffled her feet along the ground, never really picking them all the way up. I tried to step where she’d stepped, just in case. Part of me thought we were being a little overly cautious, but given that the food was laced with sleeping poison of some kind, I didn’t mind. She put her hand up, and I walked right into it.
“Stop when I put my hand up,” she hissed at me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Oaf,” she replied, kneeling down. She pulled a small dagger from somewhere in her dress and ran it around one of the floor stone’s edges, and then very gently pried the stone up.
Beneath the stone sat a small pressure plate.
“Trap,” she said, pointing at the plate.
“Any idea what it does?”
“No,” she replied. “I can trigger it if you want.”
“What if it releases poison gas?”
“Then triggering it would be a very bad idea.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Why don’t we keep moving?”
We stopped again at the first door. She gave it a good going over, then opened it.
I heard a very faint click, and on instinct, I grabbed Emeline, and pulled her to me.
A large metal chunk on a pole pendulumed through the doorway and smashed into the far wall, cracking some of the stones as it hit.
“Huh,” she said. “Missed that.”
I grabbed the pendulum to stop it, and then stepped around it into the room.
Storage.
Crates stacked floor to roof on one side, and barrels on the other. Emeline stepped past me, and started opening up crates and barrels to look inside.
I peered up at the pendulum, trying to figure out how it was attached. I wanted to see if I could get it free, use it as a weapon. It’d make a very interesting mace. Long handle, big spherical head. I could smash lots of things with it. But I couldn’t see a connection point. It was somehow just, like, coming out of the dungeon’s ceiling.
“Trade goods mostly,” Emeline said, holding up some rough cloth.
“Leave it for now,” I said. “I’m worried about spending too much time here. I want to know what we’re up against.”
She shrugged, and walked past me.
We continued down the hall, and she found a few more traps. Each time, she’d pry the bricks out and set them to the side, being very careful not to trigger the plate in the
process. Once out, it’d actually be difficult to trigger the trap with our feet because the bricks weren’t quite big enough to step in.
The next room was a bedroom with a single bed, a nightstand, and some other bits of furniture, all with the same rustic style.
No traps on anything, and nothing of interest in the room. There was a dull dagger on a bookshelf, and some books that were so rotted I couldn’t make out anything written on the pages.
I sighed.
And we moved on.
More doors led to more bedrooms, a few more brick traps. A few more door traps. Signs of life in each room, but no actual life. Nothing moved. No bugs. No rats. Nothing.
I frowned. This was weird. And the normalcy, the almost forced normalcy, was making it so much worse. Everything just seemed so fucking, well, standardized.
At the end of the hall, the last door opened onto a large hall. Almost like a throne room, except no throne. Two doors were on the far end of the hall, and a massive double door loomed directly opposite us, a set of doors that looked to me that had to lead outside. And those double doors were currently barred with a massive hunk of wood.
Carefully, we stepped into the room. I looked up, Emeline looked around.
There was a banner high up on the wall, and a set of armor in the corner. Nothing made sense in this place.
“Nothing makes sense here,” I said.
“It is a dungeon,” she said. “From what I understand, dungeons often do not make sense.”
“Yeah, but what are we supposed to be doing here? What are we fighting? What are we solving?”
“Perhaps finding what we are supposed to find is the problem to solve to get to the next level?”
“That seems roundabout.”
“Roundabout has so far been my experience in the dungeon.”
“Has been a bit like that,” I said, musing on the previous two levels.
I noticed her staring at me, also, that she had an arrow nocked. Granted, it wasn’t pointed at me, but I’d seen how fast she could aim and loose an arrow, so the mere fact that she had one on the string unnerved me.
“What’s up?” I asked.
She looked up.
“I see nothing untoward about the ceiling,” she said.
Fuckin’ idioms.
“I meant that something seems to be bugging you,” I said. “What is it?”
“Why did you rescue me?”
I took a deep breath to stall, I needed time to figure out a convincing lie.
“Please do not lie,” she said. “Do not tell me fluffy tales of how you were bowled over by my beauty and—”
I held up a hand to interrupt her. “Fine, truth. When I was looking for help getting in and out of this place, I spoke to someone, and he asked me to rescue you”
“Who?”
“A man named Philomon.”
“Oh gods,” she said, and she sat down with a flomph on the table, her gown spreading out wide around her. “Naturally he would get involved.”
“Who is he?”
“You do not know Philomon?”
“Nope.”
“It is, perhaps, a conversation for a different time then. Too many questions and too few answers for right now.”
“Sure.”
“I have one more question then,” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Shoot.”
“Donner.”
“Not a question.”
“Why did you rescue him?”
“Because he was chained up in the basement of a prison?”
“You have no knowledge of the man?”
“Less than of Philomon.”
“And yet you brought him with us?”
“Yeah. Seemed cruel to leave him behind. You disagree?”
“For what it is worth, I feel the prison might have had a reason to stick him in the very deepest hole and make sure he could not get out by chaining him to the ceiling.”
Then, she shrugged, then gently pushed past me to walk towards one of the smaller doors.
I held up my hand, ready to keep talking, defend my position on Donner, but she’d vocalized what I’d been thinking. Still, not the time or place. I headed over to the giant double doors. I tried to lift the wooden beam off so I could open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. No matter how hard I tried, the damn thing wouldn’t move.
Frowning, I tried to peek through the doors, but unlike any of the other wooden products in the entire area, these planks fit together perfectly. Even the space between the two doors was too tight to peek through. Pissed off, I pulled an axe out of my bag. It wasn’t my nice big ol’ battle axe since I’d lost that on the previous floor, and I felt a little sad. That was the axe Cleeve had given me the first night out on the caravan. This was a bearded axe, still focused on killing people, or monsters I suppose, but with only a single edge. The lower portion of the axe head extended down quite a bit, and could be used for such fun things as hooking a weapon from an opponent, or providing a spot for your hand when planing or shaving wood. Or, you know, scalping. Whatever brines your pickles. Bonus for this one, the top of the axe had a wicked point.
I was poised to strike, but heard something behind me.
“Montana,” called out Emeline, “you might like what is behind this door."
Quickly lowering the axe, I turned to see her standing next to the leftmost of the two doors on the same wall. She smiled. A big smile, like she’d just won the jackpot. I covered the distance between us in a few big steps, and peeked through the open door.
Inside, there were chests. Treasure chests. Rows and rows of them. It was a big space, big enough that both of the doors led to the same room. I stopped counting chests once I got to 120.
“This is it,” Emeline said. “The treasure room.”
“We’re on level three,” I said, “I can’t imagine this is the treasure room.”
“What if they force you to take the treasure here so you are weighed down and it effects every other aspect of the dungeon’s challenges, so you can’t make it to the end of the dungeon?”
“Okay, fair point.”
“Should we open the chests?”
I took a deep breath, and shook my head. “No, not yet. Once we get close to figuring it out, we’ll come back and loot the joint.”
“I’m just going to take a peek,” Emeline said, looking at one of the chests intently.
“Just make it quick,” I said, mainly because there was a tiny little chest right next to the door and I really couldn’t help myself. I scooped it up and dropped it in my bag.
She smiled, and pushed the chest near her open.
In a blur, a massive tongue shot out. The interior of the chest was lined with huge teeth, and nasty ropes of saliva were everywhere. The tongue wrapped around Emeline, and she shrieked.
Chapter Forty-Two
Without a thought, I swung the axe up, slicing straight through the funky purple tongue.
There was a roar of pain from the creature, and then blood, or some facsimile thereof, poured out, gushing out all over Emeline.
All the chests in the room popped open, all full of huge teeth, long purple tongues, and impressively viscous saliva. Then they started moving towards us, some sprouting tiny little legs, some just launching themselves in the air at us.
I grabbed Emeline’s hand and yanked her behind me.
The door in front of us slammed shut, and I swung the axe with one hand. I expected the hearty thunk of steel into wood, but instead heard a fleshy noise. The axe head sunk in deeply, and liquid seeped around the edges of the axehead. Blood.
With no time to think, I ripped the axe free, and swung a second time, this time holding little back. The axe hit, and I kept pushing, making a long cut all the way through the door. I grabbed Emeline and shoved her through the laceration, then forced myself through afterward.
We both looked horrid, covered in gore. More of the dark red, overly viscous liquid continued to seep through the door.
B
ut then the door just got sucked back into the walls, and the treasure chest-monsters poured into the hallway, and we were only saved because the chests were getting caught on each other.
“Run!” I shouted, rather superfluously as Emeline was already halfway across the hall, and entering the corridor. She’d booked it.
While running, I fired my identify spell over my shoulder, basically blind, and got back:
Elder Mimic
Lvl ??? Monster
That was not the best-case scenario. A fuck ton of elder mimics chasing us, and we didn’t exactly have a long way to go. I imagine it would have been quite the sight, a horde of treasure chests with long purple tongues and nasty teeth bouncing down the hallway after a long-haired bearded fool in busted chainmail. Maybe it would be something I’d laugh at when it wasn’t actually happening. You know, to me.
The door in front of me, the one leading to the corridor, was shutting, and I barely slipped through. If it’d been any closer, I would have lost my hair. I was starting to think all this hair might not be the best choice for this particular lifestyle. We tore down the hallway. Emeline even started closing the door to the kitchen area before I’d gotten inside.
I pushed the door out of the way, and jumped down the short stairway, sliding to a stop in front of Nikolai.
He hopped up to his feet.
“What is all the racket?” he asked, sword out, looking alert.
“Mimics,” I said.
“Mimics?” he asked. “I hate mimics.”
“You’ve encountered them before?”
“Yes, they are often found in ruins, lesser dungeons, or tombs.”