There was a thud. Then a scream. Then the sound of kobolds yammering excitedly. Dogs growling. Gulliver shouting “We’re under attack!”
“I know I told you to drag that thing back to the hole,” I said. “But you might have checked nobody was standing beneath it.”
Eric shrugged. “Job’s done, ain’t it?”
“Not quite. We needed that thing alive so it could guide us back to its nest. This is a poor last resort.”
“Then why’d you make me drag it across the wasteland? By the axe, I’d chop your head off if you had one, core.”
“We were supposed to have a live insect, and instead we have a carcass. But it’s still an opportunity to learn more. We don’t know how to kill these things, and yet it’s dead. So what happened?”
“The brew the alchemist made. Never trust an alchemist, I always say.”
“It wasn’t supposed to kill them, and Cynthia isn’t known for mistakes. Let’s talk to her.”
When we got back into the tunnel we found Cynthia testing Maginhart on some kind of artificery equations. Tomlin had made a crude figure of a man out of clay he’d dug from the tunnel walls, and he was punching it. He’d scratched a name into the figure: Riston.
Nearby, Brecht was teaching Jopvitz how to play tambourine. I’d always thought an instrument like that only needed a hand and the adequate coordination to slap it on the drum. But the two kobolds seemed locked in discussion about it.
“Come on, Anvil,” said Brecht. “Follow my rhythm. Tap, tap, slap.”
“Grr! Music is tough!” said Jopvitz.
“It is,” agreed Brecht, and then muttered under his breath, “When you have the musical talent of a broom.”
Wylie, lacking his preferred medium of heroes’ blood, was using a stick to scratch a drawing into the walls. It was a drawing of Gary, and it was much more detailed than I’d expected.
I realized something then. Something hard to take for a dungeon core. When we were in the dungeon, the guys would spend their time training in the arena, or listening to me drill them on hero-killing tactics. I thought that was what they enjoyed.
But we’d been out of the dungeon for a while now, and not one of them had even mentioned heroes, training, or combat.
They’d been doing it all for me. Or not for me exactly, but under my orders. Take them away from the dungeon, and other interests, other instincts, surfaced.
It made me wonder what kind of place the dungeon needed to be when we got it back. It was hard to think about, but maybe I needed to make some adjustments.
Not everyone was enjoying their time away from the dungeon. Death and Kill were away from everyone, lying on the ground with their little feelers interlocked. Shadow’s pups were sleeping in a ring around them as if protecting them. Or were they trying to comfort them? Either way, I hoped it helped Death and Kill a little.
Poor things. Fire beetles lived in groups of three, everyone knew that. Fight had been taken away, leaving Death and Kill as a sad double act. If I had any essence, I’d have created a new fire beetle to complete their trio. He wouldn’t have replaced good old Fight, but it would have been something. Without essence, I couldn’t even do that.
“I know some of us are getting hungry,” said Gulliver, pointing at the dead insect. His eyes were puffy as if he’d recently had a nap. “But that wasn’t what we had in mind.”
Everyone moved away from the carcass. Only Cynthia approached it, pulling her goggles down over her face. “Interesting…”
Eric pointed. “It was your bloody poison that did this, woman! By the axe, it ruined everything!”
“It wasn’t poison, barbarian. The draught I made is entirely herbal.”
“So? Elswhyte is the deadliest poison in the world, and that’s made of herbs.”
“Koxain is the deadliest poison, actually. And then dreamspray. Not as well-traveled as you like to think, are you?”
“Settle down,” I said. “I’ll have no squabbling in the dungeon.”
“This isn’t our dungeon,” said Shadow, standing next to Eric.
“No. I suppose not. Cynthia, the brew you made put this one to sleep. When it woke, it hovered a little, and then just died.”
“Interesting. Very interesting. Maginhart, fetch my scalpel, my saw, my clamps, and some nose snuff. This thing’s innards won’t smell like roses, I can tell you that much.”
“What in Xynnar are you doing?” said Gulliver.
Cynthia looked at him as if it was the stupidest question she’d ever been asked. “I’m going to dissect it. Learn about it.”
“Could your brew have done this?” I said.
“Impossible. You’d have to feed it a barrel full for the brew to be toxic.”
“And yet, it died.”
“Only so many ways a thing can die,” said Eric. “Trust me. I’ve seen ‘em all. There’s stabbing. Bludgeoning. Poison. Burning. Falling from a great height, not that it would affect our insect friend here. Then there’s suffocation, freezing to death…I could go on.”
“Tomlin asks you don’t,” said Tomlin.
Warrane, who had long ago stripped off his combat leathers and was wearing just a sweat-stained shirt, looked thoughtful.
“This one observes that it does not appear to be injured. Not a single wound. See?”
“I agree,” I said. “And anyway, we were watching it. We know that nothing attacked it. Even if something had, the insect wouldn’t have died. It would have made a copy of itself. So there is a way these things can be killed.”
“Give me an hour,” said Cynthia. “Let me see what I can find.”
With Maginhart as a willing helper, Cynthia cut the insect open. She removed organs. Placed them in a pile. Tomlin couldn’t watch, but Eric just looked on, bored, as if he’d seen disembowelment hundreds of times. Gulliver scribbled furiously in his book.
Soon, Cynthia and Maginhart were covered head to toe in blood, and the insect was just a husk.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m not an expert in these things, but if there was an obvious internal sign of the cause of death, I’d have seen it.”
“So there was no damage internally or externally,” I said, floating in a circle. Trying to get my mind working better. The problem was that the tunnel was so cramped and crowded that there wasn’t much floating room. “It’s as though the thing just chose to die.”
“Or someone commanded it to,” said Gulliver. “We suspect Riston is involved with the insects, and we know what he can do to people’s minds. It’s not beyond possibility that he can control these things. Maybe he can even see through their eyes.”
“What are you saying?”
“That he knew we were going to use the insect somehow, and he commanded it to die. He controlled its mind. Willed its vital functions to just…stop.”
“Sounds like poncy scribe talk to me,” said Eric. “Things don’t just die on command.”
Gulliver frowned. “Things don’t die on command? You’ve obviously never served in a lord’s army. You might try reading a book, barbarian. You’d learn a lot!”
“I’ve read more books than you’ve had haircuts, you ponce!”
“You’re one to talk about hair! I admit that yours is luscious. But still!”
“If you two don’t quit it,” I said, “I’ll have to make a time-out corner. Since this is a tunnel and has no corners, it means Wylie will have to do some digging. Then you’ll have me and my tired kobold both annoyed with you. Now shut it!”
I floated around some more. I completed three tiny circles. Shadow’s hounds watched me, thinking it was a game. One tried to snatch me out of the air.
“Sit!” commanded Shadow.
“Gulliver might be right,” I said. “This whole thing smells like Riston.”
“Fine,” said Eric. “But it still leaves us with a dead insect.”
“And we also supplied them with hero corpses to turn into ultra-wraiths. On top of that, Morphant was hurt in the fight, and he won
’t be able to mimic anything for a while. Without him pretending to be Pvat, I don’t have any control over the heroes’ guild. I lost a valuable resource by doing this.”
Wylie stood up. “Hate heroes! Hate insects! Hate Riston!” he shouted.
He swung his leg and kicked the head off Tomlin’s clay statue.
“Hey!” said Tomlin. “Good kick, Wylie!”
“We just need a way to find their nest,” I said. “Then we’ll know more. If your theory about Riston is right, then he killed the insect when it looked like it was going to get captured. He’d only do that if there was something he didn’t want us to see.”
“We could always try capturing another?” said Gulliver.
“It was hard enough getting this one, never mind another.”
“Then how do we find the nest? Ask one of us to lead us there? Open up a magic nest portal and just go through it?”
Wait a second.
I looked at the dead insect.
Then I pictured a face in my mind. The face of a man who could do just that; open portals. I’d asked him to open one for me before, after all. All he needed was a drop of the target’s blood. We had plenty of insect blood to spare.
“Eric,” I said. “I need you to go to Hogsfeate. Take some insect organs with you, and go and see Mage Hardere. I’ll give you the last of my dungeon gold; it ought to be enough.”
“You want me to walk into town with a handful of dead organs?”
“Put them in your bag, obviously.”
“But they’ll get blood over everything!”
“Then wrap them in a cloth or one of your stinking shirts, or something. It’s not like you ever wear them. Demons’ arses, is this really so complicated?”
CHAPTER 17
It should have taken Eric just over two days to get to Hogsfeate and back. It ended up taking four. That was how I knew that Eric, being a barbarian, had given in to his instincts and had stopped off in the Lame Mule, a tavern in Hogsfeate. Being a barbarian, one drink turned to two, three, sixteen, until he found himself sleeping in a sty next to a giant boar named Marcus.
In the meantime, we got along as best as we could. Warrane took guard duty at the far end of the tunnel to make sure we knew the second Riston ever discovered the false wall in the dungeon that led here.
Brecht tried composing new music with his tambourine, but as good as his beats were, they sounded strange without Gary’s lute. The hounds did their best to cheer up Death and Kill. They licked them. Tried play wrestling. Wagged their tails incessantly. It worked somewhat, but the beetles’ feelers remained drooped. In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Fight, Kill, come and have a talk with me, please.”
I took the bugs away from everyone to somewhere private. Since we were in a tunnel, this meant that we simply walked away from the group a little. But it was the best I could do.
“Listen, you two,” I said. I was unsure of what to say. I needed to show empathy. Be nice. Not my strongest points. I guessed that honesty was the best way. “I know I let you down. I should have thought about this better. Stayed ahead of Riston. Anticipated what he’d do.”
“Death,” said Death, softly.
“Kill,” answered Kill.
“Don’t try and say it isn’t my fault. It is. I spent all that time trying to win over the traders. Focusing all my energies on the dungeon, and trying to fit in with the townsfolk so I could win their votes. I neglected the dungeon. I closed my mind to everything that was happening. Riston must have been working his mind control for a while, and I missed it. Perhaps if I’d had my priories straight, Fight would…”
Death’s antenna raised a little. He scuttled closer to me. Patted me with it.
It was bloody weird, to tell the truth.
But it was also touching.
“We’ll make this right,” I said. “From now on, I’ll focus only on you guys. My dungeon mates. Forget Yondersun. Forget trying to be chief. You will be my priority. The first thing we’ll do is make Riston pay.”
“Eric!” shouted Tomlin, way behind us in the tunnel.
Death, Kill and I rejoined the others, just in time to see Eric climbing down into the tunnel. He swept his glorious, glorious hair back once, twice, and then stood with his hands on his hips.
“It is I! Eric the barbarian! And I bring you…a little pebble. Here, Beno. Catch.”
He tossed the pebble to me.
It sailed through the air.
Hit me.
And bounced to the floor.
“Thank you, Eric. But this isn’t a pebble; it’s a portal stone. Was Mage Hardere helpful? Did he moan about doing it?”
“He did this weird thing with his hands, Beno. Pretended they were weighing scales, and I had to keep placing gold coins on his palm one by one until the scales were even. When we were done, he turned his palm over and let the coins fall on the floor.”
“Yes, he does that.”
“He’s an annoying old git,” said Eric.
“Still, we have the portal stone.”
“Is this like the one we used for Cael Pickering?” said Gulliver.
A while ago, I’d become enemies with a hero named Cael Pickering. All heroes were my enemies, of course, but Cael had plundered my dungeon several times, and I just couldn’t kill him. So, I had decided to take the fight out of my dungeon and bring it to Cael. Take him by surprise. Mage Hardere had helped me by creating a portal.
“Exactly,” I said. “Eric gave Mage Hardere some of the insect’s blood. Hardere used that to create a portal to its nest.”
“Then we can finally leave this hole?”
“I suppose we can. Although, you do realize that their nest will be underground?”
“A change of scenery is a change of scenery.”
“Eric?” I said. “Can you do the honors?”
Eric looked at the pebble. “Honors?”
I sighed. “Gull, open the portal, please.”
We all stepped through the portal, emerging into a great cavern. The walls were covered in murals that seemed to depict great battles. The whole place gave off an aura of age, as though this place had been here for eternity. I couldn’t help feeling that this wasn’t an insect nest, but something else.
All wasn’t as it appeared.
In the center of the cavern was an old, wooden chest. Unmistakably a loot chest that had long ago been raided. Way over to my right, one wall was covered in black vines.
Tomlin sprinted over to them. “Tomlin thinks these are essence!” he said.
I agreed. But I’d never seen black essence before.
“Jahn?” I said. “What do you think? Black essence?”
Warrane carried Jahn in his hands, showing much more respect than Maginhart when he’d been tasked with the same thing. He and Jahn stood beside me.
“Never heard of it, Beno,” said Jahn. “But then, if it was something we ought to have learned in the academy, then I’m the wrong-”
“Wrong core to ask. Yes.”
I badly needed essence. Without it, I was useless. A core with no skills. Like a barbarian who’d had his muscles sucked out by some kind of…er… muscle-sucking monster. My own essence vines had burned to cinders, and even thinking about that made me want to kill something.
Here was a wall of black essence, and I badly wanted to draw from it. Deep down, I knew it would have been ridiculous to try without understanding what black essence did.
The essence wasn’t everything, though. There was something about this place.
An empty loot chest.
Battle murals on the walls.
“This is a core’s dungeon,” I said.
Eric paced around. “Really? Just seems like any old tomb to me. I’ve been in tons of them.”
“This is a loot chamber. The place where a core stages his last, epic battle with heroes. I’d know a loot chamber anywhere, trust me.”
“I don’t know…”
“Eric, if this was a gian
t leather loincloth, then I’d bow down to your barbarian expertise in the matter. But this is a loot chamber. Right, Jahn?”
“Seems that way, Beno.”
“Then drain some essence!” said Gulliver. “What are you waiting for?”
I tried to think about why essence vines might turn black.
One answer was that the core who once owned this dungeon was long gone. Without being tended, the essence vines had died.
Then again, essence vines didn’t turn black. They’d wilt, die, and there’d be no trace of them left. Whereas these vines looked healthy, except with a color I’d never seen in essence.
“Come on, Jahn,” I said. “We must have covered this in the academy. Black essence vines. What does it mean?”
“It means they are not for you, young core.”
The voice came from above us. A deep, booming voice.
But one that I recognized. It seemed the others had, too.
“Riston?” said Gulliver.
A great buzzing sound filled the chamber. From way above us, insects flew out from behind craggy rocks. They emerged from holes in the stone. There were must have been fifty of the man-sized creatures, all hovering forty feet overhead.
“I don’t suppose we bought a return portal?” said Gulliver.
Eric grabbed his axe. Warrane, once again adorned in his combat leathers, drew his sword. Two hounds stood by Shadow’s side, their tails straight, teeth bared. The other two stayed with Death and Kill, to protect them.
Tomlin looked around, eyes widening. As the buzzing grew louder, he covered his ears. Wylie put his arm around him. Jopvitz joined Tomlin on his other side. It didn’t seem to make Tomlin feel much better, but I was glad to see them protecting each other.
The insects started to move now, but they didn’t fly at us. Instead, they flew into different positions, using their bodies to form the shape of a giant face in the air.
“You shouldn’t have come, Core,” the giant insect face said.
It was Riston’s voice, no doubt about it. The most disconcerting thing was the mouth formed by the insects. They even hovered slightly when he spoke, giving the impression that the giant lips were moving.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’ve got a big mouth?” I said.
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 124