by Eric Ugland
“Any one mind if I light this up?” Bear asked. Before anyone could reply, six orbs of light popped into being, each about two feet in diameter. They had a gentle yellow glow. Offering diffuse sort of light that seemed like they shouldn’t be able to illuminate such a wide area. And yet, they did.
Bear sent one of them shooting straight up. It finally hit the ceiling about two hundred feet above us. She spread the other orbs out above us, and we could see that the floor had been finely crafted to look like tile, but it was really just carved mountain rock. Farther down from us, the area opened up, so it was not only massively tall, but also just as wide. A truly massive chamber that had been designed to impress. And it worked.
I looked over at my companions, just to make sure we were all okay. And, a little bit, to make sure Wulf hadn’t run off again. But there he was, looking a little shocked, maybe a bit amazed. Similarly with Meikeljan. Skeld and Ragnar stood on either side of me, both peachy keen, raring to go. Amber was near the door, wrapping a bandage around Tarryn, who was starting to recover from his mana over-expenditure. Bear had her tiny hand on his leg, and I wondered if she was helping restore his mana. Or if that was even possible. Fritz was stood off to the side, eight heads facing in eight directions, scanning everywhere at once. Vreggork, back to his usual self, was leaning against the wall, carving a small rock with one of his claws.
“What do you know about the Mountain Kings?” I asked Wulf.
He looked at me, almost surprised I’d spoken to him.
“Nothing,” Wulf replied.
“Old people,” Vreggork interjected without looking up. “Been gone many years. Leave ruins behind all though mountains. Some like this, preserved. Some more weathered.”
“Are they, I mean, are they human or dwarf or—”
“Are Mountain Kings. Is own, um, race. Mountain King is old enemy to Snowbold. We fight, we lose. We run. Mountain Kings have deep mines. Want to empty mountains of all gems and metal, use kobold miners. But is said they go too deep. Find the Darkness below, and things are there. Things that come up and kill Mountain Kings. All dead. Leave behind ruins.”
“If they all died, how do you know they dug too deep?”
“Is legend. Maybe stupid.“
I shook my head, stifling a smile, and started walking.
Though the scale of everything was impressive, it was pretty clear the Mountain Kings were our size, or thereabouts. The carvings along the walls showed humanoids engaged in all sorts of interesting struggles and victories. All the famous moments from their history. Or, at least, the bits of their past the Mountain Kings wanted to celebrate. Which was definitely dark in tone. They seemed to focus on killing other races. One of the murals looked like kobold corpses made up the floors of the Mountain Kings.
The others spread out behind me as we walked into the open area, our footsteps echoing in the absurdly large room. It made little sense. We saw some doorways leading out of the room, but nothing as grandiose as where we’d entered, and nothing leading up. Or flat. It all went down.
“Which one do we take?” I asked.
All I got in response was my team looking at me.
“No ideas?” I asked.
“It’s random chance,” Tarryn said. “We know nothing about this place. Wulf here is supposed to guide us—”
“I said I knew little about the inside of this place. I know two entrances, one here and one where we want to go. The connection between them is a mystery.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” I said. “Should we be looking for an up or down tunnel?”
“Down is the only option,” Ragnar said.
“Here, but—”
“We are heading to another valley,” Wulf said. “From there, it will be uphill to the south, and there, over the pass, is where we will find the corrupted ones.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sounds like a plan.”
“Meikeljan could do his prayer thingy,” Ragnar piped up.
Hearing his name seemed to startle the little dude. He literally jumped back a step.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I wasn’t listening.”
“You mind asking Eona for help?” I asked. “Which door should we take?”
“I could, yes. I could try.” He nodded a few times, then set his things down on the stone floor and started praying.
While we waited, I took my magic rock out. It pointed in the general direction Wulf had pointed, southeast-ish. Not helpful, so I put it back in my pocket.
“Is that the guide rock?” Wulf asked.
“Yeah,” I replied softly, not wanting to disturb Meikeljan. “Too far away for anything specific.”
“Ah, okay.”
It felt like Meikeljan was taking a little longer than the last time he’d done this, and his prayer-chants were getting a bit feverish. And nothing was happening.
“There a problem?” I asked.
“She is not answering,” Meikeljan said, a bit haltingly.
“Probably just all the stone,” I said. “It fucks with reception.”
Meikeljan nodded at me as if I’d just said something profound. “Oh yes, probably then.”
“Okay, then! Who’s got a good feeling?”
Bear just started marching towards a doorway. All the orbs followed her and revealed a down-sloping hallway.
We all followed. Except Fritz. He was too big for the hallway. We barely got him through the door, and it looked like we were going to be squeezing him through everywhere.
“Fly over?” I asked him.
His heads nodded. So we went back, opened the damn door up again and shoved the big bird back outside.
“Do you think you could just fly us all around?” I asked him.
He looked at us, one at a time. Then he pointed to Bear with one head and Meikeljan with the other.
“Those,” he said.
“You carried the witches.”
“Not. Much. Up,” he said. “Very. Much. Tired. Go-ing. Up.”
“Meet us on the other side, then,” I said, wishing he’d been turned into a giant eagle. Or a G6.
As we walked through the hallways, we confirmed that the Mountain Kings were big fans of showing off their shit. Lots of carvings, gems tucked into the wall in dazzling patterns. We saw statues tucked into small alcoves. I stopped at one to get a better look.
Human, as far as I could tell. It made me, honestly, wonder if the Mountain Kings had just been human. The statues wore ornate clothes, layers upon layers, at least insofar as I could tell via the carvings. Several shirts, pants, boots, and capes. Or cloaks, I suppose. But I liked to believe they were wearing great sweeping capes. And I could see why — there was a serious chill in the air. It was warmer than outside, but not comfortable.
We came to another open room, this one smaller. There were remnants of furniture in the place that made it look a bit like a sitting room. It was a square about a hundred feet by a hundred feet with a ceiling maybe ten feet off the ground. I could reach it with a slight jump. No textiles remained in the space, but there was still a bit of wood around. And a lot of busted stone.
We were faced with three more hallways.
“Ragnar, left,” I said, “Skeld, right. Let me know what you see.”
The lutra darted away. I pulled some water skins out of my knapsack and passed them out.
It was dry as hell in there.
Ragnar was first back.
“Doors,” he said. “Opened one, and it looks like sleeping quarters.”
“Same,” called out Skeld.
“Anything inside?” I asked.
“Garbage,” Ragnar said. “Rotting crap.”
“Nothing of interest?”
“Not to me.”
“Skeld, check the other hallway, then drink some water.”
I passed a water skin to Ragnar as I walked into the hallway he’d come out of. There were doors on both sides, about fifteen or so feet apart. I could see the one he’d opened. The doors were made out of stone, but o
pened with a soft push, not a hint of squeakiness. Peeking inside, it was just wrecked. Dust all over everything, desiccated belongings, busted up furniture of stone and wood. There was nothing to salvage, even by the standards of a loot whore like me. .
“More sleeping rooms,” Skeld called out.
“Back up,” I yelled in return. “Let’s try another hall!”
Chapter Forty-Nine
We went down a few more halls, and then around a few more. We found more rooms. Lots more rooms. There was nothing really to see beyond the walls and the halls. Anything that had remained in the place had turned to junk a long time ago. I was still holding out hope that we’d find a piece of jewelry or something. Sometimes, the thought of loot was the only thing that kept me going.
After a while of wandering around, I got curious about the layout of the place. At some point, there had been someone who thought it was a good idea to plan out all this nonsense. The main hallway and big stupid room seemed like a grand entrance chamber, a place to impress people. But only people entering from that side. Which made me curious as to why that side mattered — It was on the same side as my settlement, and yet, that had been a pretty closed valley the last time I checked. I mean, at least until we’d cut a hole through the mountain. But the Mountain Kings had their giant entry that way. Which made me think there had to be something else in my valley, something that would be impressed by a big door and a grand entrance chamber. Maybe another civilization collapsed. There was the group that built Osterstadt before Osterstadt was there. The people who made the Dungeon of the Ancients, maybe they had some other way through the valley. A bridge over the river, something through the canyon?
But putting those thoughts aside, we managed to find the tunnels which led down to the more industrial areas, where the workshops, the forges, and the entrances to the mines were.
The industrial area was another large open space. Big, sure, but it lacked all the grandeur of the entrance chamber. When we walked into that open space, we finally started to hear noises.
High pitched chirps and calls of some sort. No identifiable language. It wasn’t sinister, not at first at least, but it was unnerving.
“Anyone recognize that?” I whispered.
A bunch of shaking heads.
“No offense guys,” I said, “but I’m starting to wonder why I brought all of you. I carry everything, and you guys—”
“I got us in here,” Tarryn said. “And I killed the bone things.”
“Can you cast a spell right now?”
“No, but—”
“Sorry, that was rude. You get a pass. What about you others?”
Silence.
“Shit. Sorry again,” I said. “That was fucked up of me, and I apologize. I’m just feeling some stress, and—”
A loud screech echoed out of the mine entrance up ahead.
“It is what is coming up from the depths,” Vreggork said softly, eyes fixed ahead.
“What is it?”
“No one is knowing. Creature must be very bad for doing the killing of the Mountain Kings.”
“But you have no idea—”
Vreggork and Amber put their hands up, almost at the same time, a very clear signal that it was time to shut up. Then I heard what they must have: hard sounds as something scrabbled up the tunnels. And it wasn’t just coming from the obvious spot, where we’d heard the shrieks and chirps. It was coming from everywhere. Including the tunnel we’d just come from.
I got my biggest shield out, a great tower shield made out of a chunk of cast iron an inch thick. Even for me, it was heavy. Not painfully heavy, but I wasn’t above resting it on the ground when necessary. I turned the shield sideways as I stuck my arm into the loops. It gave me a better ability to protect my comrades.
“Any tunnel where there’s no noise?” I asked.
Ragnar and Skeld pointed at the same time, to the same tunnel.
“You lead,” I said, “I’m on rearguard. Go slowly, and Bear, dim your fucking lights.”
One of the orbs just winked out of existence, and the other two dimmed so low it was tough to see them.
“Thanks,” I said. “Now everyone move. Quietly.”
We headed to the noiseless tunnel, with me going backwards slowly. I got a spear out of my bag, something that had enough reach to go around the shield, and scanned from left to right to left to right, looking for any movement.
Nothing.
I could still hear things, but I couldn’t see anything.
We got to the hallway, and a few feet in, and I hissed out, “Kill the light. Hold here.”
The light went out. Total darkness. I used darkvision to look into the open space of the industrial complex, and used tremorsense to feel who, or what, might be coming. It was a lot of small vibrations, which meant either a veritable shit-ton of tiny things, or a lot of larger things with plenty of legs.
I rested the edge of the tower shield on the ground and peeked over the top. I wanted to see what was going to come into the room. I felt something on my side, and I almost dropped the spear to smack at whatever was crawling up my arm until I got the faint whiff of Bear’s vanilla scent. Which made me wonder where I’d smelled that recently. But then she was on my shoulder, also peering over the shield.
Nothing but sound.
Finally, something came into view, something more disgusting. They were insect-like, but bigger. As more came into the room, I realized they had a diverse range of sizes. Small ones, around the size of dogs, climbed closer from the ceilings. The bigger ones were in the pony to horse range, and one really big one pushed a lot of the little ones out of the way. It was the size of a buffalo.
They had four legs on the ground or ceiling, and two arms out front. All of which tapered to points, though on closer examination, I could see claws for grabbing. They had wide thoraxes, and what seemed like no discernible abdomen. Kind of left the creatures looking a bit unfinished. Stout. They had long neck that bent over in a harsh ’s’ shape with a big triangular head on top. Their heads seemed like they had a bunch of armor plating on it, and then a little bit of actual head at the bottom, with a little area free to swivel and move around, and some massive mandibles prepared to feed stuff into a mouth lined with either fine teeth or hairs. A nightmare either way. There were four sunken eyes on the head, two facing straight forward, and one on either side of the head, I hazarded a guess that it probably had excellent sight probably at least 270 degrees. If not 360.
“Identify it?” I whispered to Bear.
She nodded, and then I felt a little tingle on my shoulder.
“Deepteeth Workers,” she whispered back.
DEEPTEETH WORKER
Gloom Beast
Lvl ???
HP: Medium
MP: None
Known Weaknesses: None.
“Why do I see the information after you identify it?” I asked.
“Is now really the time for this?”
“Curiosity rears its ugly head.”
“Hirð perk, maybe.”
The deepteeth workers moved through the open space of the workshops. Then one of the medium-sized ones dropped its head down to the ground, and I got a good look at the back of its neck. It was a softer fleshy area, pretty much the only part I’d seen that wasn’t covered in chitinous armor. Also, its neck was the same length as its walking legs, so it could always reach the ground to snatch something with its mouth, I supposed. A little Charles Darwin moment on my part.
I watched the deepteeth workers stalk around, smelling things, looking at things, my guess, trying to find whatever had been making noise upstairs.
Us.
But we were currently quiet, and the deepteeth workers seemed like they were getting bored with trying to find us. Some were even heading back down into their tunnels.
Then, behind me, there was a sneeze.
Everyone froze. Not just us, but all the deepteeth as well. As if they couldn’t believe that happened either. All eyes were
at us.
“Fuck,” I said.
Part of me wanted to know who sneezed so I could throw them to the wolves. Or, the deepteeth.
But that wasn’t allowed. Not here. Not now.
“Run,” I said.
The deepteeth responded before my party did, charging almost as one. It was creepy as hell.
I felt the warmth of Bear’s haste spell, and I readied to receive the charge as she leapt from my shoulder and followed the others down the hall.
As soon as the deepteeth were close, I took a powerstep forward and slammed the shield into oncoming traffic.
I felt a big crunch.
Then I took a quick step back, slammed the shield forward again, and pulped the bug-looking motherfuckers between the metal and the hard carapaces.
A few steps back, and I watched as the gooey remains of a bunch of deepteeth workers got pushed and pulled out of the way by other workers. Then they scrabbled against each other to get into the tunnel.
Overeager little fuckers.
I backed up quickly, stutter-stepping so in case one did charge, I’d be ready.
“Duck!” someone called out.
I dropped to the ground.
A burst of electricity the size of a beach ball zipped by and then smashed into the crowd of deepteeth workers. I looked up in time to see bright white tendrils of electricity shooting over and through all the creatures. Smoke came off of them as they convulsed, and shrieks of pain and who knows what shot down the hallway. I could feel the sound waves crashing over me, and my ears ached.
I pulled two doors open and wedged my big shield between them. Then I turned and burned, sprinting.
Tarryn was vomiting as Ragnar and Skeld tried to carry him.
“I got him,” I shouted. “Go!”
He was light compared to the shield, so I one-armed the mage and we ran, following the tunnel. There were doors leading off it, but they were all either closets or tiny workshops. With no exits. This place was one giant fucking firetrap.