“I’m betting arrows,” said Pumphrey. “Aimed at groin height. Cores are sardistic.”
“Sadistic,” said Cheeks.
“Nu. Feels like fireballs tu me,” answered Seabright, in that nasal accent all Untryuns had.
Pumphrey patted the coin purse on his belt. Everyone knew he kept it padded with tissue so it looked bigger. “Wanna back up those big balls with some coin?”
“Two cuppers,” said Seabright.
“Two coppers for this? Easiest money I ever made. Done, spit on it and we’ll call it sealed.”
“What if it’s fire arrows?” said Gammon, named for his love of the cooked pork dish, who never got involved with Pumphrey’s and Seabright’s bets except to point out details that needed clarification.
“Fire arrows are still arrows,” said Pumphrey. “I win.”
“What if it’s magical fire arrows? Ones made from fire but still shaped like arrows?”
“Seabright said fireballs. We’d call that a null bet.”
“Boys,” said Sider. “Shut it.”
Sider stared at the tile puzzle, but she couldn’t make any sense of it. There was a pattern here, there always was, but it was too complex for her to recognize. Her brain just didn’t work that way.
“Cheeks?” she said.
Cheeks, the shortest and stockiest of the group, stepped forward. While the others were all athletic, Cheeks was like a block of fudge. His body wasn’t hard, wasn’t soft, but somewhere in the middle and that came with its advantages and disadvantages. She’d once seen him win a fight by letting his opponent, a farmer whose duck Cheeks had stolen, punch him until he dropped out of sheer exhaustion. Cheeks had simply stepped over the farmer, collected his duck, and walked away.
His peculiar size meant that his leathers were all custom made, and as such were pricey. Cheeks took better care of his stuff than most heroes, even buying leather oil from an apothecary to protect his chest piece. He wore a tan leather bag on his back, and a duck stuck its bill out of it and looked around, blinking.
Sucking in his cheeks, Cheeks took just a few seconds to glance over the tiles.
“What do you think, Matilda?” he said, reaching back and stroking the duck. She quacked at Cheeks, who furrowed his brow. “What? The green tiles always follow the red, then every third step, two blues meet, and then there’s a diagonal yellow adjacent to another green. You’re so clever.”
Sider had given up asking Cheeks to stop pretending his duck was the brains behind his puzzle-solving abilities. “Matilda found a way through?”
“Of course.”
“Such a clever duck. Then lead the way, Cheeks. Seabright, Pumphrey, Gammon, keep a lookout for gnorks, goblins, gronks, all that kind of dungeon crap.”
As Cheeks led them safely across the tile puzzle, Pumphrey hummed a song. Sider recognized it as the priest’s buxom daughter, and she was glad he didn’t actually sing it. As a priest’s daughter herself, she’d hate to have to break his nose again.
“Luuks like uur cure is playing it safe,” said Seabright. “I prefer the impulsive cures. Easier to defeat an enemy whu half defeats himself.”
Cheeks stepped off the last tile, followed by Sider and the rest of them. Safely across the puzzle, Sider took a metal tin from her pocket.
The walls on this side of the tiles were nothing special; just blocks of dirt like in most dungeons. But given that there was no sign of a tunnel or door anywhere around, it stood to reason that the way out of this room was hidden.
She opened the tin and scooped two fingers full of goo from it, before dabbing it on various parts of the wall.
Soon, one patch glowed yellow, the light reflecting in Matilda the duck’s eyes.
“Found our door,” Sider said.
An answering quack gave her the duck’s seal of approval.
With the illusion broken, a door appeared on the wall. It was seven feet tall and had a bull’s head for a knocker.
“Heroes are here, but they’re standing too near,” the bull said, in the rhyming way typical of what had to be a riddle door. “Sure, they stink, but more importantly…can they think?”
Matilda quacked and flapped a wing out of her bag, shocked at the sight of a talking door.
“A riddle duur,” said Seabright. “Always with the riddle duurs.”
Sider sighed. When you’ve raided one dungeon, you’ve raided a thousand. As a professional dungeoneer – she hated the moralistic implication of the word hero and so never used it – she had read too many riddle books to count. Once, after a solid week of memorizing them, she had begun to dream in riddles.
“Get on with it, you ugly bovine,” she told the bull. “What’s your riddle?”
“It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening,” said the bull.
Sider sighed. “You could have at least tried to make it difficult. The answer is a man and his aging process.”
The door creaked open, and Sider stepped through it, emerging in a tunnel. Ah, this was more like it. Dungeons were supposed to have tunnels, and the tunnels would no doubt lead to a room brimming with treasure. Now that they’d gotten the tiles and riddles out of the way, it wouldn’t be long until they encountered something to kill. Loot and fighting, who could ask for more in life?
Soon after that thought, Sider caught sight of something at the far end of the tunnel.
A small shape, perhaps as tall as her waist. It was too dark to make out in more detail, except for something curious.
“See that?” she said.
“Goblin?” said Pumphrey. “Some little dungeon beast desperate to taste steel, anyway.”
“Steel? Yuur sword is pig irun, yuu cheapskate.”
“Ah, shadup.”
Cheeks squinted. “It appears that the creature has something metal in its hand.”
Matilda gave a soft quack in agreement.
“A key. Must be,” said Seabright.
A key. That might mean secret treasure. Loot there for the taking.
Or it could mean something else.
Sider weighed the risks, then shook her head. “I’m not being suckered by dungeon critter with a key. Whichever way it’s trying to lead us, we’ll go the other way.”
*
From my core room, I watched Shadow standing at the far end of the tunnel between the two riddle doors, doing her best to goad the heroes in an all too obvious way.
She held a steel key in her hand, which we’d rubbed with an alchemical ointment so that it glowed in the dark. The key was useless, but that didn’t matter; it had done its job. The heroes had seen it, and they’d realized it was a trap.
I didn’t want them to follow Shadow, you see. In fact, I wanted them to be so opposed to following her down that part of the tunnel, that they’d purposefully go another way.
It really is a pain that I don’t have hands at a time like this. In the Soul Bard book series, all the villains rub their hands together when their plans show promise. Of course, those villains always end up dead or incapacitated via the bard’s lute, so perhaps they weren’t the best role models.
Ah well. Onto the more pressing matter of hero murder.
This was going just as I had planned for now, but as much as this was playing perfectly in the early stages, I still had reason to worry.
These guys weren’t chumps.
I mean they were, since all heroes are chumps, but they were a little less chumpy than the rest.
The podgy one had figured out my tile puzzle with barely a thought, and the woman cracked the riddle doors straight away. These guys weren’t green-gilled clowns going on their first dungeon raid. That didn’t bode well, and it meant I’d have to alter things just a little.
Staring at a top-down map of my dungeon, I began changing my plan. Not much, but enough to ensure maximum murder for the lowest cost, tweaking it to account for the heroes’ surprising brainpower.
“Gary,” I said, using my core voice, “I need you
ready to go to the poison chamber. Stay in one of the tunnels nearby.”
“I would be delighted,” answered Gary. “Any excuse to stretch my legs.”
“Death, Fight, Kill, join him please.”
The three fire beetles squeaked at me.
“Fight!”
“Kill!”
“Death!”
I smiled. “Aw, you guys always know just what to say to cheer me up.”
Staring at the view of my dungeon using my core vision, I saw three little dots moving through a tunnel as the fire beetles Death, Fight, and Kill headed to their positions.
Way across the dungeon, five hero dots were walking through a different tunnel at a slower pace, with each one in a single file. It was to protect them from traps, no doubt, but the joke was on them; there were no traps in there, and their slow pace worked in my favor.
Now, with Gary and the beetles (which was also the name Gary used when spending his downtime making the horrific sounds he described as music) heading into the poison chamber, and Shadow tricking the heroes deeper into my labyrinth, I could only hope I was prepared enough.
I had to be, didn’t I?
I stared at the top-down view of my dungeon as if it was a chessboard, trying to work out every single way I could be tricked, flanked, forced into a blunder.
“Brecht,” I said, casting my core voice out to my bard. “I want you to go get your tambourine ready.”
“It is strapped to me, Dark Lord. I am never without my drum.”
“You keep a great big drum strapped to you all the time? Even when you aren’t playing it?”
“It’s good for my calf muscles. Helps them get stronger.”
“It’s terrible for your posture; you’ll give yourself a hunchback. You’ll be lurching around like a troll butler before long. Stop doing it.”
“Oh, now he cares about our welfare,” said a voice in the background. I didn’t know if it was Karson or Tarius, so I took a guess.
“Tarius, I’ll deal with you later.”
“It’s Karson.”
“Shut it. Brecht, I need you to be ready. You too, Rusty.”
“Yip yip,” said Rusty the shaman. “Ready to serve. Give me a time, a place, and a person to kill.”
“Kiss-ass,” muttered a voice nearby.
Rusty was new to the dungeon, but I liked him already. He was always asking me how he could be useful, always eager to find ways to use his shaman spells so that he could level up. Unfortunately, without heroes there were few targets to cast them on, so he was stuck at level 5.
Maybe I could bring him into action today. Not too early, because as a shaman his defense was weak and if I sent him straight into the fray, he’d just get stabbed full of holes. But if I was careful, he might get an opportunity.
“Rusty has the right attitude. You could all learn a thing or two from his desire to commit murder,” I said and turned my attention back to my plan.
I had given Rusty the shaman class when I created him. Sending a shaman and a bard into battle meant that I could pose a magical threat, and Gary covered the physical combat side of things. My biggest weakness was that bards and shamans weren’t battle mages, at least not in an attacking sense. They were better suited on the periphery, acting as support for other fighters.
I quickly checked both their spell sheets to see what we could use.
Brecht
Race: Kobold
Class: Bard Lvl 16
Songs
Psalm of Persuasion
[Gentle caress a person’s mind with your ballad, winning them around to a viewpoint of your choice.]
Fable of Fear
[Cast fear in an opponent’s mind. Dependent on bard and opponent’s levels.]
Lullaby of Lethargy
[Exhausts enemies to vary degrees, dependent on bard’s level and enemy’s level]
Chorus of Courage
[Removes fear from nearby friendly creatures, and gives improvement to combat strength and endurance while reducing accuracy.]
Rusty
Race: Kobold
Class: Shaman Lvl 5
Spells
Shamanistic Spirit Animal Possession
[The Shaman becomes possessed by his spirit animal, gaining its strengths and weaknesses for a limited time. The toughness of the creature possessing the shaman depends on the shaman’s level, with the creature leveling alongside its host. While shaman is possessed, he cannot use his other spells.]
Shabby Shamanic Totem
The rookie shaman can cast a simple totem within an area of 30x30 feet around him. Totems have a magical effect either to work against enemies or to help allies when they enter the totem’s range.
Totems available:
-Fire sentry: Shoots fireballs at enemies who enter totem’s range, until totem mana runs out [dependent on shaman level]
- Remedy: Casts healing light at nearby injured allies
Not a bad box of tricks, but any sufficiently bloodthirsty war general would look on my magic users and make a tutting sound. Brecht, as a bard, was weaker than tissue paper thrown into a volcano, so he couldn’t be risked too close to combat. His role was to ply his trade before a battle, filling my creatures with courage. I could only use him to sing his songs of fear and lethargy if I was sure I could protect him from enemy attacks.
Rusty, similarly, wasn’t someone you’d ask to lead a battle charge. He was just a level 5 shaman so only knew the possession and totem spells, though these were a little more threatening than Brecht’s. His possession ability would let him turn into an animal, gaining its strengths and weaknesses. Knowing my luck, Rusty’s spirit animal would be a snail.
His totems were much more interesting. These were little sticks that he’d cast into the ground. They were usually decorated with feathers and bones, because shamans love that sort of thing. They acted as magical sentries; when an enemy got close, the totems cast whatever spell was in them.
It gave me something to work with at least.
“Brecht, meet up with Gary, fight, Death, and Kill before they get to the poison chamber. Sing them a song of courage. I want them feeling so brave they’d walk up to a dragon and slap its bum if I asked them to.”
CHAPTER 14
Sider and the Four versus Core Beno
Sider and her crew followed a different route through the caverns, refusing to be coaxed into whatever pit of horror the key-holding creature wanted to lead them to. They headed further in a different direction, leaving the periphery of the dungeon and striding into its heart where the outside breeze was at first a whisper but then became silent, leaving in its place a stifling air filled with dread and the promise of dangers ahead.
Ah well, that was dungeons for you. It had been a long time since Sider had feared stuff like that.
“You don’t sniff at a dungeon creature waving a dungeon key in your face,” whispered Pumphrey. “Might have been for a secret room. A sneaky little door filled with diamonds and gems the size of apples.”
“Ever met a kobold, Pumps? Tricky little buggers,” answered Sider. “Always either too clever or too stupid for their own good, and either way I want nothing to do with them. I’m too long in the tooth to get coaxed through a dungeon by the lovechild of a wolf and a lizard. In fact, my tooth’s so long that migrating geese use it to navigate from the air. Let’s reassess, plan our route, and don’t lose our heads. A key to secret loot would have been nice but being led into a trap would ruin an otherwise pleasant day.”
“Was it definitely a kobold?” said Pumphrey. “Might have been a goblin, gremlin, halfling, some kind of troll, maybe a breed of giant rat…”
“I know a kobold when I see one.”
“Do you, though? Do you really? The mind is a trickster. I spent years of my childhood too scared to sleep in my room because a ghost lived on the wall and watched me. Turned out it was a damp stain.”
“And here you are, fearless dungeoneer.”
“You either master your f
ear or you put a collar around your neck and let it take you for walkies.”
“I’d bet your left nut on it being a kobold. Anyway, never mind that. There’s a room ahead. See it? Cheeks, check it out.”
They had followed a maze of tunnels for almost an hour by Sider’s judgment, navigating loops, long stretches of passageways, and passing numerous other alcoves where the tunnels spread out in different directions.
And now, there was a room ahead. She could only see the tunnel arch now, and beyond it was a wide space lit by mana lamps fixed to the walls. Sider had never been in a dungeon that was so well lit. Usually, they had to bring their own torches or alchemical goo. It was unnerving to have so much illumination because it was so different from the norm. It meant this core might not behave in the way she’d come to expect.
“Cheeks?” she said. “Make sure we’re clear of murdery and killey things, please. I’m not in the mood for pitfalls or swinging steel ball traps today.”
The rotund man lumbered over to the archway of the room ahead. Matilda the duck looked around, her head poking out of Cheeks’ bag. She gave a series of quacks, ones so varied in pitch and volume that Sider was almost convinced the duck really could talk. Cheeks kneeled by the archway.
“Meant to say,” whispered Pumphrey. “Now’s not the right time, I guess, but I can feel it spilling out. I just gotta say it.”
“If you declare your luve fur me, yuu’ll be disapuinted, my friend,” said Seabright. “I prumised my heart tu a girl back hume.”
Pumphrey gave a nervous laugh but fixed his stare on Sider.
He had to tell her something? What did he need to tell her? Was he joining another hero group? Maybe even a heroes' guild? That would be stupid; guilds taxed the arse off you.
Or perhaps he was becoming a King’s dungeoneer or something like that. Whatever it was, he was worried to say it to her. This man with twenty years’ experience of fighting and killing his way through underground crypts was scared of saying a few words.
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