Dungeon Explorers (Tales of Magic and Adventure Book 1)

by Max Anthony

  “That body looks a bit fresher than the others,” said Rasmus. His eyes noted the quarter-filled glass of deep red fluid on a table nearby. Even in the dim light from another of the glass balls, he could see that the fluid was mostly congealed, with its surface glistening to suggest it was not entirely dry.

  At the wardrobe, Viddo had the doors open and was rifling through the garments hung within. “This is all good stuff,” he said conversationally. “Think you can find something here that will fit?”

  Rasmus didn’t think so at all. The reason for this was that he’d suddenly realised where they were, and he thought it best that they scarper quickly. Before he could voice his thoughts, he heard Viddo speak.

  “Look there’s a chest under the bed! How did I miss that?”

  Then, the body sat upright on the bed, snapping up so quickly that it was clearly possessed of an exceptional strength. Its eyes opened – they were blood red and without feature, standing out starkly against the whiteness of its flesh. The creature opened its mouth in a wicked smile, showing rows of sharp teeth, with the incisors almost two inches long.

  “Shit!” said Viddo.

  Twelve

  Even before the vampire could threaten him physically, Rasmus heard its insidious voice whispering in his mind. What hope do you have? it whispered. Come and join with my people.

  “Piss off,” said the wizard out loud. The vampire was a powerful foe, but it didn’t face weakling adventurers who would crumble easily to its mental assault.

  Viddo still had his arms full of clothing, like a shop keeper bringing out his finest wares to show to a rich merchant. He abandoned these wares swiftly, throwing them over the vampire’s head and torso in order to foul its arms. The thief pulled out his sword and lopped off half of the creature’s hand before it was able to free itself. Where the sword contacted the pale, dead flesh, a flame ran briefly along the blade to assist with the cutting. The vampire made no sound and Viddo’s second attack was thwarted by the same piles of robes that he’d just thrown on top of it.

  Rasmus didn’t delay and sparks jumped from his fingers, connecting with the undead creature and the clothing. The robes smouldered and the vampire jerked, but the wizard knew it to be much tougher than the simple skeletons that this same spell had killed in numbers.

  With a sweep of its arm, the vampire threw aside the robes and it practically flew to its feet on the bed, avoiding a third swing from Viddo’s sword. Where the cut from the sword had removed part of its hand, new growth was already visible as its ferocious regeneration began to heal the wound. Using its other hand, the creature made a summoning gesture towards the doorway and the sounds of groaning and stirring reached the ears of Viddo and Rasmus.

  The wizard unleased another volley of sparks. The vampire grimaced but didn’t fall. Here and there, black marks of electrical burns appeared on its skin. Viddo swung again with skill and precision, but once more the vampire stepped aside with astonishing speed. Then, it took them both by surprise. It jumped off the bed and ran through the doorway, with Rasmus only just in time to avoid a slash from the creature’s claws aimed at his throat. Recovering his balance, the wizard spoke some words of power and sent a fireball after it. There was a low, rumbling thump as the spell detonated against the far wall of the room with the bookcase. Rasmus had known the blast was coming so had quickly pressed himself away from the door. Viddo had not known it was coming, but wasn’t surprised when it did and he managed to hide behind the wardrobes. Flames roared in, but their force was already spent so far from the centre of the explosion and Rasmus suffered no more injury than a single lost eyebrow, which was burned away in spite of his efforts to shield his face. Viddo was completely unharmed, assisted by his thief’s sporadic ability to somehow avoid incoming magical damage.

  “After it!” shouted Rasmus, pushing himself away from the wall and through the doorway. The room was a mess – tables and chairs had been scattered to the walls, many of them still burning. One of the doors closest to the blast had been torn from its hinges and the bookshelf had been tipped over. Smoke poured out from underneath it, in testament to the irreparable damage that had been done to the proud contents. The bookcase had landed on two of the bodies, which had been burned beyond recognition. The other bodies which Rasmus had seen here earlier were also blackened and ruined. In spite of the parlous situation, Rasmus felt a certain satisfaction at the destruction he had wrought.

  Neither of them had been able to see which way the vampire had gone, but through one of the doors, the undead stirred. They shuffled and moaned, for the vampire had called them from death to serve its bidding. Viddo entered the room first. His sword descended in a powerful arc, cutting the head and arm from the closest zombie. It slumped down at once, but six more approached, one of them tripping over a low table in its haste to attack.

  Viddo hewed to the left and right, the power in the sword assisting the expert swing of his arm. The magical blade cut through the undead flesh with ease and pale hunks of flesh tumbled to the floor. Rasmus didn’t want to be left out and sent a gout of flames from his hands, which engulfed two more of the creatures. The magic reduced them to char quicker than any normal flame could have and they fell into a heap before they could do an injury to either thief or wizard.

  “Why didn’t you use that spell on the vampire?” asked Viddo while he worked. “Fire works pretty well on them, doesn’t it?”

  “I didn’t want to risk setting fire to the bed and having that chest get destroyed before we could have a look inside it,” responded Rasmus. He had his cosh out now, but there was little need to use it, given how effective Viddo’s swordplay was.

  “So all that education wasn’t wasted,” said the thief approvingly as he finished off the last of the zombies with a thrust into its skull.

  There was no time for Rasmus to make a wittier reply and he merely pointed over the room. “I think it went in there.”

  There were two additional exits from this room and both doors were open. Viddo chastised himself for not closing the doors behind him, since it had made it easier for the vampire to escape. On this occasion, the creature’s path was easy to determine, since it had raised more of the undead in the dining room area. They jostled and pushed their way around until one of them spotted the adventurers and lurched towards the doorway. Rasmus chucked a fireball amongst them and closed his eyes half shut to shield them from the sudden glare. Through his squint, he saw undead bodies get knocked easily aside and he had no doubt that they’d all been destroyed.

  He was wrong and one lucky zombie came crawling through the doorway. One of its legs had been blown off and its hair was alight, but it gamely crawled towards them. Viddo crossed the room, his sword raised to finish it off. In reality, these were amongst the least of the undead and hardly more of a threat than were the skeletons. The only time they might cause problems for such hardened men as these was when they were in huge numbers, or in circumstances where Rasmus wasn’t able to use his area effect spells to flatten them.

  Viddo chopped at the creature’s neck and took away its head. This time, no flames appeared along the blade and there was much more resistance from the dead flesh.

  “Balls, it’s run out of charges!” said the disappointed thief.

  He had no time to utter more expletives, because something unseen struck him a mighty blow on the head, knocking him over. As he landed, instinct made him roll away and a thump on the floor nearby told him that an invisible foot had just landed in the spot where he’d twisted aside.

  Viddo was dazed, but raised his sword defensively. Now he could make out the outline of the vampire, faint and shimmering. It had cast a spell of invisibility about itself, but the effort of its attack interfered with the magic, permitting those with sharp eyes to make out just enough to see where it was, though with difficulty.

  The thief’s disadvantage didn’t last for long. The quick-thinking Rasmus cast another of his diminishing supply of dispels and the vampire’s prot
ective cloak of invisibility was ripped from it. Most of its clothes had been burned away by the fireball that Rasmus had caught it with and the skin of its back was still scorched from the blast. The creature suddenly decided that Rasmus was the greatest threat, with Viddo dazed and struggling to marshal his defences. It bared its teeth and sprang at the wizard half-jumping, half-flying.

  Rasmus was not a trained swordsman, but neither was he an easy target for anything that hoped to overcome him in hand-to-hand combat. Not all wizards were weaklings. The speed of the vampire’s attack was surprising and Rasmus was only just able to step to the side. The creature landed next to him, just as a cosh struck it on the temple. It sneered at this hit from an unmagical weapon and lashed out with a backhanded blow. The attack would have done Rasmus a serious harm, but it never landed. Without fuss, the wizard vanished and reappeared thirty feet away in the dining room, adjacent to the farthest wall. Had anyone witnessed his expression, they’d have noticed that Rasmus was as surprised as anyone at what had just happened.

  Like any adventurer who had survived as long as he, the wizard was quick to respond to the unexpected. As the vampire whirled to face him again, Rasmus uttered a single word of power. There was a shuddering in the air around him, as if the energies required for this spell were too great to be called upon without there being a physical echo. In the other room, the vampire was halted in mid-air and fell to the floor of its living room, unmoving.

  “What was that?” asked Viddo, stumbling to his feet and standing over the vampire. He was impressed.

  “A word of stunning,” said Rasmus, joining him next to the vampire. With an effort, he rolled the undead over with his boot. Its eyes were open and unblinking, staring at them both.

  “You mean it’s not dead?”

  “No, it’s still perfectly alive. Unalive. Whatever you wish to call it.”

  “How long will it remain stunned for?”

  Rasmus shrugged. “Who knows? It may be a couple of minutes or it may be ten. Such is the temperamental nature of magic, that one can never be sure.”

  “I’d best have at it, then,” said Viddo, swinging his sword at the vampire’s torso. He grunted with the effort. “Bah, this sword isn’t nearly as good now that the magic has faded. Maybe I should use my daggers. They’ve got a permanent finesse and damage enchantment, they just lack the fancy flames. By the way, how did you manage to portal away when this thing here took a swipe at you?”

  “That? Oh – it was a triggering spell that I must have set years ago, and then forgotten about. I tell the spell what to do if I find myself in a certain situation and it does it for me automatically. It lasts forever until it’s used.”

  “You mean that some point in the past you set a spell that would portal you away in the event that you were about to get punched by a vampire?”

  “I can’t remember the exact wording,” said Rasmus. “It might not have been as specific as a vampire – it might have been any humanoid that could have triggered it, or it might have only worked if the spell thought that the incoming blow would be sufficient to hurt me badly.”

  “Sounds quite handy,” admitted Viddo with slight feelings of cross-profession jealousy.

  “Oh yes, they’re splendid spells. And now I’ve used that one up I’ll be able to cast another on myself. Except I don’t have one memorised, which is a bit of a shame.”

  As Viddo resumed his hacking, Rasmus found that something was bothering him, but he couldn’t remember quite what it was. Vampires were very hard to kill, he knew and even though his word of stunning was powerful enough to incapacitate even this powerful undead creature, he had a feeling that something was potentially wrong. It was a long time since he’d fought one, and even then he’d only joined the fight late.

  “Stop dithering and lend a hand,” said Viddo, continuing to chop enthusiastically at the prone vampire. The hatred exuded from every pore as it was slowly cut into pieces.

  “I think you should stop,” said Rasmus. “I’m sure I’m missing something.”

  “Why should I stop? This is great fun! And just think of how many people it won’t be able to suck the blood from when it’s in pieces.”

  “Stop!” said Rasmus.

  By then, it was too late and Viddo’s final blow did the vampire’s body a serious enough injury that its eyes faded and, though it was stunned, it seemed to slump as the sword cut open a final huge, bloodless wound.

  “That’s that,” said the thief in satisfaction.

  As they watched, the vampire’s body appeared to crumble before them. It was as though the ages caught up with its body and it withered and shrank. There was a sound like old paper being crumpled as the skin tore, revealing the yellow bones beneath. After a time, these bones sagged and crumbled, falling into dust on the floor.

  “See? I didn’t need to stop, did I?” asked Viddo. “It’s gone.”

  There was a stirring, and the dust from the bones swirled at their feet. Without warning, it whipped up into a cloud and flew through the doorway, heading deeper into the rooms the vampire had occupied.

  “After it!” shouted Rasmus. It was too late – the essence of the vampire became almost invisible and escaped through yet another doorway, travelling at a greater speed than either of them could run.

  “We’ve lost it,” said Viddo, though the chase had hardly got going. “What’ll happen now?”

  “It’ll have a coffin somewhere close by,” said Rasmus. “If it can stay in there for long enough, it’ll eventually regenerate its body.”

  “And it might pop up behind us at any point?”

  “Precisely,” said the wizard. “I think we have to stick a bit of sharpened wood into its heart.”

  “Really?” asked Viddo. “I always thought that was a load of nonsense. Like that stuff about sunlight killing them as well.”

  Rasmus looked doubtful for a few moments. “Maybe some of it’s a load of rubbish. It’s often hard to sift the truth from the fiction. How magical are your daggers?” he asked.

  “Quite magical, I think. They do lots of damage when I stab something and my arms always feel much lighter with these than when I carry something else. Even more so than this now-depleted sword.”

  “Perhaps your daggers will be able to kill it then,” the wizard suggested. “Where’s a priest when you need one? I’m told they’re pretty handy against the undead.”

  “Let us not regret the absence of a priest,” said Viddo. “So you think this coffin will be close by?”

  “Almost certainly it will be close by. But very well hidden.”

  “Splendid. I am an expert at finding hidden things.”

  Although there was a large element of truth behind his bravado, it wasn’t long until Viddo had to concede defeat. Assisted by Rasmus, he searched every nook and every cranny in the suite of rooms that the vampire had evidently called home.

  “Maybe we should just get away quickly and hope that it can’t find us,” the thief suggested. “It probably doesn’t want to run into us again.”

  “I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” Rasmus told him. “Anyway, you keep looking – I need to take another piss.”

  The wizard took himself back to the bathroom, happily noting that the vampire hadn’t managed to raise the bodies in all of the rooms to fight for it. Even so, he still felt a trifle uncomfortable at the thought of the dead eyes watching him and it took a few moments before his waters began to flow.

  “Where can that vampire be hiding?” he asked himself as his urine sluiced away into the darkness of the toilet hole. “There might be a hidden room that Viddo has yet to find,” he considered, knowing already that the thief had a superb nose when it came to sniffing out that which was meant to remain hidden.

  The wizard stood in contemplation for a time before he tucked his bits away out of sight. The adrenaline from the fight had almost dispersed his hangover, but his head still felt a trifle heavy. That breeze is nice, he thought to himself, treating himself to a f
ew more seconds of its gentle caress.

  “Breeze?” he asked himself. “There should be no breeze here.”

  The source of the mysterious zephyr didn’t take long to locate and soon wizard and thief were staring into the toilet hole.

  “It’s gone down there,” said the wizard in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Can you get your light spell into the hole?” asked Viddo. Moments later, Rasmus’ spell of light was strategically positioned so that they could look further inside. The sewer pipe sloped away, but there was no sign of where it ended.

  “It looks pretty deep,” said Viddo.

  “You’re going to have to climb down,” said Rasmus.

  “Eh? Why am I going to have to do it?”

  “Because you’re the thief and that’s what you’re good at. There’s no way I could fit down there.” Rasmus was bigger boned than Viddo, but if push came to shove he could have probably squeezed in. However, his ‘you’re the thief’ argument was a persuasive one and Viddo didn’t really have a good way of deflecting it.

  “Can you throw some fireballs down there until it’s burned to ashes?”

  “The vampire might not be in range, and then I’ll have used all my spells for nothing. Look, you’re wasting time. Just get in there and stop complaining.”

  “Gah, you don’t let up, do you?” said the thief.

  Having resigned himself to the inevitable, Viddo treated the task with the same enthusiasm he would treat a locked chest or stubborn door. Now that his flame sword had run out of power, he threw it carelessly into the bath full of corpses, not wanting to find it stabbing him in the leg as he squeezed into the opening of the toilet. The hole was extremely tight, but he managed to bring his shoulders in close and went into it head-first. Rasmus watched in wonder as his friend wriggled his way downwards. After Viddo’s head went in, his torso followed and finally his feet vanished into the darkness. The wizard was left with the impression that the thief had been swallowed by a giant snake and all that remained was a scraping and grunting sound as evidence of the effort it was taking to inch along the waste pipe.