Dungeon Explorers (Tales of Magic and Adventure Book 1)

by Max Anthony

  On the cavern’s floor, Rasmus suddenly felt alone and exposed. He cast frequent glances at the dead spiders in case some of them had been sheltered from the worst of the ice storm by the bodies of the others. He knew that the undead were resistant to cold, but his spell had been a very powerful one.

  “How’s it going?” the wizard called upwards. The webs seem to absorb his voice and he received nothing in reply. He considered shouting louder, but thought better of it.

  Rasmus stepped away from the closest mass of webs, in order that he would have a better angle to see upwards. Wherever Viddo was, he was lost in the threads. The wizard took another two steps, just as he heard the faintest of rustlings and saw the faintest of shapes at floor level.

  “Shit!” he thought, as something flew from the shadows of the webs towards him. The spell he’d been about to unleash was ruined by a thick, sticky blanket that covered his body, filling his mouth and tangling his fingers. With his legs comprehensively trapped and tangled, he fell over with a thud.

  “Ummf!” he cried at the top of his voice, with no idea how loud it was, since his ears were also blocked.

  The shape he’d seen came through the webs - it had been hiding and watching. The depths of its weavings had kept it away from the light of the wizard’s spell. This was no knee-high spider. The one that approached was the queen of them all, five feet high at the top of its head, with its bulbous body huge and bloated behind it. This spider had markings of red and green. Its eight black eyes were featureless, but Rasmus could see the hunger behind them.

  With tantalising slowness, it approached. Mandibles opened and closed in anticipation, two feet wide, sharp and hollow. Rasmus’ eyes were free from obstruction and he saw a clear fluid drip from its jaws, which he was sure would paralyse him in moments, though he knew the spider queen would be more leisurely with the time it took to suck out his innards. The wizard realised that this spider wasn’t undead, but had no idea what it was doing down here, so far from the surface.

  Unable to resist for longer, it scuttled quickly over the last few paces, eight hairy legs carrying it with a disgusting speed. It loomed over Rasmus and he saw that it intended to bite him on the torso. Lower it stooped until the wizard thought that all was lost.

  The bite did not come. Moments before the mandibles could sink into juicy wizard flesh, Rasmus saw the creature flinch. Then, without any ceremony, it plopped down dead atop him, without piercing his skin. Through the coating of webs, Rasmus felt something sticky and glutinous flow copiously over him. Then, he saw Viddo’s face appear and felt himself being dragged out from beneath the heavy mass of the spider queen’s body.

  “She’s burst all over you!” exclaimed the thief, with what sounded suspiciously like happiness. “You’re properly covered in guts.”

  “Ummmf!” said Rasmus.

  “What’s that you say?” asked Viddo, obtusely ignoring the fact that the only thing Rasmus could be asking for was to be freed from the binding webs.

  “Ummmmmf!” said Rasmus, with more feeling this time.

  “I’ve no idea what you’re saying,” said Viddo. “Come on, let’s get you out of those webs so that you can tell me all about it. I’ve found a super new sword, by the way. It’s just what I’ve always wanted!”

  Had he been given the opportunity, Rasmus may well have shoved the thief’s new sword somewhere that it wasn’t welcome, but alas his limbs were still incapacitated.

  Spider webs in general were known to be particularly tough, so the wizard expected it would take some time for him to be freed. Not so – the daggers that Viddo carried sliced through the webbing with remarkable ease, owing to their magical nature.

  “I could have been a barber,” the thief told him as he continued with his sawings. “I’ve not cut you once, have I? Phew, you’re not half going to stink when these guts dry out.”

  When the wizard’s arms and legs were freed, Viddo stood up and stretched. Rasmus sourly tore away the remaining webs, noting how they also tore away the hairs from his legs and arms where they had made contact with his skin. The juices from the spider queen had seeped through the webs she’d used to bind him, soaking his robes. They had already started to reek. He pulled a wad of chewy webbing from his mouth and spat a few times, though the gut juice had mercifully not reached that far.

  The cavern floor was a mess. Right next to the wizard was a big pile of pipes, tubes and organs, which glistened in the light of his spell. The spider queen’s bulbous abdomen had been completely split open and most of the contents were part of this heap, leaving the body looking sorry and deflated. Flies had already started to buzz hungrily next to the offal, and several landed on Rasmus, drawn by the tasty fluids he had been showered in.

  “What?” spluttered the wizard, batting at a persistent fly. “How did these get here? We must be two miles beneath the surface and as soon as some guts show up, there’s a bunch of flies ready to take advantage.”

  “A swarm of flies,” corrected Viddo. “And you did ask what these spiders were feeding on.”

  “Whatever they are, I don’t want them landing on me. Horrible things, flies.”

  “You won’t get an argument from me on that one,” said Viddo. “But let us be off. Our need to find water is more pressing than ever, since we will have to part ways if you continue to stink like you are just starting to stink.”

  “Balls!” exclaimed Rasmus sourly and with some justification.

  Ten

  Rasmus had to admit that Viddo had an unerring sense of direction. The thief wended a path through the webs, which led them into another tunnel. This one was no straighter or smoother than the others they’d travelled, but it provided welcome relief from spiders. Viddo made a point of walking ten paces in the lead and whenever Rasmus came closer than that, the thief would make theatrical coughing and gagging noises as though he were near overcome by the guts fumes.

  What was even more galling was that Viddo had found a dashing longsword near to the body he’d seen in the webs. He swished this sword around with abandon, to show his companion how smart and magical it was.

  “As soon as I dropped onto that spider queen, flames licked along the blade and her abdomen almost fell apart under my blow!” he boasted. “A couple of backstabs with this beauty and even one of those abominations might topple dead.”

  Rasmus knew that his own upset would wear off, since he wasn’t jealous by nature. The division of spoils would also entail Viddo paying a share of the sword’s value to his companion, since they’d both been present when it was found. The sword was considerably more valuable than the few coins they’d unearthed, so chances were that Viddo would soon find himself in a great amount of debt unless he agreed to sell the blade and split the proceeds.

  “Anything else on the body?” asked Rasmus.

  “Four gold coins of an unfamiliar type. They’d fallen inside the poor chap’s armour and it took some acrobatics for me to extricate them. Hence my delay. Anyway, the loot is slowly accumulating and we’ve not even descended to the lower levels of this temple yet.”

  “We’re not really in a temple at the moment, are we?” pondered Rasmus. “This all looks a bit more natural than the other corridors and rooms we’ve found.”

  “I agree – this is certainly a natural cave. One of the ancient people who had that office must have found it, though who knows what he used it for.”

  “It must go somewhere,” said Rasmus, “because I don’t want to go trailing all the way back if we reach a dead end.”

  “That’s the spirit!” said Viddo. “Ever onwards, that’s the way!”

  Further on, a new sound reached their ears. They listened carefully, though it was obvious what it was.

  “Water!” said Rasmus.

  The passage widened, slowly at first, but then the walls disappeared into the darkness on either side as they entered a much larger space. The noise of water was clear. It wasn’t quite a torrent, but was more than a trickle.

&nbs
p; “This place is huge!” said Viddo. “Is that as bright as your light will go? I can’t even see the ceiling. Or the far walls.”

  “We should pick a wall and follow it,” advised the wizard. “That way we won’t miss any exits from this place that we might wish to take. And we’ll know where to go if we come across something unexpected.”

  The plan was inarguable and they veered off to the left. The sound of water faded, but was still audible when they listened. The walls had a sheen of dampness on them, making both men optimistic that they’d soon be able to have a drink, and in the wizard’s case, a bath.

  The cavern was enormous, but easy to traverse. After nearly two hundred yards, they reached a wide pool, twenty feet across. There was a current, which came from their right and the water swirled lazily around before it disappeared through an opening in the rock wall. As they looked upon the surface, they saw flitting shapes, driven deeper by the light of the wizard’s spell.

  “Isn’t nature wonderful?” asked Rasmus happily. “Here we are in a place unseen for millennia and there are beautiful sights such as this one for us to behold.”

  “The water must flow in from over the other side,” said Viddo. “It’s not moving swiftly, so the slope must be a gradual one. I wonder where it goes or how it got here.”

  “There must be deep cracks in the rocks,” said Rasmus. “I’ve heard tales of rivers that vanish into holes in the earth. If those tales are true, we may be seeing an example of it here.”

  “It’s got to be fresh water, hasn’t it?” asked Viddo. His thirst had finally caught up with him.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Rasmus. “Why don’t you scoop some up and see how clear it is?”

  Viddo did just that, crouching down and using his cupped hands to reach into the water. His hands were grubby from the journey, so he gave them a scrub to loosen the grime. When they were clean, he tasted the water. It was clear and sweet, so he dipped his hands in again and drank deeply. Rasmus didn’t need to be invited, and rinsed away the dirt from his own hands before he also quenched his thirst.

  “Get your robes off and get in there!” demanded Viddo when they had finished drinking. “You stink,” he added once more, for good measure.

  “What about those shapes we saw?” asked Rasmus. “There must be fish in the water.”

  “It’s unlikely they’ll be carnivorous. What is there for them to feed on?” asked Viddo. “They can’t survive a thousand years of starvation in the hope that one day a wizard will happen by for them to eat.”

  “As unlikely as it may be, I refuse to dive in headlong without experimentation,” said Rasmus. He hiked up the hem of his robes and perched himself on the rock shelf that formed the bank of this underground stream. He took his boots and single remaining green sock off, then dangled his legs in the water. He waited for a few seconds to see if anything would bite them. His toes were unnibbled, though the water was shockingly cold.

  “I’d freeze my balls off in there,” he said.

  “It’ll do you good. Make you feel alive.”

  “But my robes are covered in guts as well!” said Rasmus, spotting a flaw in the plan. “If I don’t wash them, I’ll still stink and if I do wash them, I’ll freeze to death before I can get dry.”

  “Can’t you wash yourself and then use a clean part of your robes to dry yourself off so that you don’t freeze? And then we can go and look for some new robes for you.”

  “If you think I’m walking around an ancient temple flashing my todger at every undead that passes by, you’ve got another thing coming! I’ve never heard such a ridiculous plan in all my life! And on top of that, any robes that we might have found will have turned to dust thousands of years ago!”

  “But not magical robes, eh?” asked Viddo in his most luring voice. “We might find some magical robes.”

  “I’m not falling for your hypothetical enticements,” Rasmus informed his companion firmly. “You’re just going to have to put up with the smell. After all, I have to put up with it myself and we’re meant to be a partnership.”

  “Have it your way,” Viddo responded, not really upset over the matter. He definitely didn’t want Rasmus to freeze to death and had already conceded to himself that the wizard stood a realistic chance of suffering just that fate if he went into the water. “Here lies Rasmus the Wizard. He froze to death,” he said, quoting an imagined epitaph from his friend’s grave.

  “Here lies Rasmus the Wizard. He burgled an ancient tomb and died many years later with his metal staff and clad in his magical robes,” responded Rasmus. “That sounds much better, don’t you agree?”

  “It might be a squeeze to fit it all on your headstone,” said Viddo. “But we shall do our utmost to purloin said robes and said staff, for I already feel unfairly favoured by my finding of this sword.”

  They followed the watercourse back across the cavern floor, looking for somewhere narrow enough to leap over it. If they had to swim, there was a chance they’d both suffer from hypothermia and neither man liked that idea. There was no need for a protracted search and they soon found a place that was easy enough for both to jump over, which they did, and then resumed their journey over the floor of this great cave. They made their way back to the wall, so that they wouldn’t miss any likely-looking exits.

  “Here’s a way,” said Rasmus. “I think we should go down here.”

  Both men looked into a passage that led away. The scrapes in the surface of the rocks indicated that hands and tools had played some part in either making it, or widening something that had already been present.

  “I doubt we’ll get a better offer,” said Viddo, turning into this new passage.

  It was narrow enough for one person to walk along it unhindered, but not large enough for two to walk side-by-side. There wasn’t far to travel before it widened into a small room, about ten feet across, which had been hollowed from the rock. The far wall was smoother than the others and Viddo walked across to it, while Rasmus peered around.

  “Seems a bit odd to hollow out this room and have it go nowhere. Maybe the high priest came here for his secret trysts. A bit of you-know-what to bring his followers closer to their gods.”

  Rasmus continued speculating out loud, before he finally noticed Viddo standing in front of an opening in the wall, where previously there had been no such opening.

  “Look – a poorly-hidden secret door,” said the thief.

  Rasmus stopped his guesswork about the hypothetical high priest’s nocturnal habits and strolled over, as if he’d expected there to be a secret door here all along and had merely been waiting for Viddo to stumble across it.

  “What’s through there?” he asked.

  Viddo had already passed through the opening, and didn’t bother to call back with a reply. Rasmus followed him without further pause and found himself in a small chamber. This room was cut in a square shape, with the walls smooth.

  “This looks like it’s been made by the same hands that made the rest of the underground temple back there,” said Rasmus.

  There was a set of steps leading downwards through a five-feet opening in the floor. It would have been easy for either man to point at this opening and say “Look! Steps!” but they managed to refrain from uttering the obvious and began their descent without further word.

  Eleven

  The steps, which had seemed exciting at first, soon developed into a boring descent, owing to the fact that they gave no indication that they’d ever end. They were well-enough made such that the chance of a fall was slight, but the treads were a little bit too low to take one at a time, yet too high to take two at a time. As a consequence, the pair felt as if they were wading through treacle.

  “I can’t understand people,” said Viddo in exasperation. “What’s wrong with your sensible, common-or-garden set of twenty steps leading into the room below? Didn’t they have anything better to do with their time than digging?”

  “They probably didn’t,” said Rasmus. “T
he gods as we know them are all worshipped as if they live somewhere in the skies above us. I think that these people worshipped gods who they believed to live even deeper than they.”

  “That would make sense,” said Viddo. “There can’t be many good reasons for all this commitment.”

  Viddo’s concerns had affected Rasmus by now and as the steps showed no signs of ending, the wizard started to think there might be an illusion at work.

  “I wonder if we’ve been caught in some sort of magical loop,” he offered. “And that we are in fact walking down the same few steps over and over again.”

  “Is that a common use of magic?” asked Viddo.

  “I’ve never seen it before, but I’ve long since learned not to become complacent. Who knows what trickery these ancient people could work?”

  Worried about the possibility of magic, they both studied the patterns in the stone around them, to see if they could detect any repetition. There was none.

  “Hmmm,” said Rasmus. “I’ve just cast a spell to detect magic and there’s no sign of anything afoot. This place is as mundane as they come.”

  “We’d best just keep going. And my stomach is starting to rumble.”

  “Mine too. It’s probably the middle of the night now. We should try and find somewhere to sleep.”

  “I’d forgotten all about sleep until you mentioned it,” said Viddo with a yawn.

  “I think we’ve reached the bottom!” said Rasmus all of a sudden. He reduced the glow from his light spell until it was little more than a dull orange. Then he asked himself why he’d bothered, since if there was anything below them, it would have noticed the light already.

  They emerged into a small, rectangular room, full of broken pottery. There were no shards in the middle of the room, but there were thousands of them close by the walls. Of danger, there was no obvious sign, and a single metal door provided the only other exit. They stared at the sights before them, each doing his best to come up with a plausible explanation before the other could.