by Ivan Kal
“Understood, Sub-Commander,” Lucius said and walked through when the gate rose high enough, with Vall and Ves following him.
Morgan walked behind them while looking at the walls on the other side of the gate. He frowned when he didn’t see any levers for opening the gate from that side. Why would the kobolds close their own people on the other side? Morgan turned around only to see Emily standing next to the lever with a grin on her face.
Morgan narrowed his eyes, and then she pushed the lever back down. The gate slammed down, trapping them on the other side.
“What the hell are you doing?” Morgan yelled out. The others turned around on the noise and ran to the gate next to Morgan.
“Sub-Commander?” Lucius asked, baffled.
Emily laughed, a full-blown villain laugh. Realization came to Morgan and he just couldn’t do anything other than stare at the orc woman.
“Ah…” Emily finally managed to get herself under control and she shook her head as she looked at them through the bars. “It’s always so much fun to see the looks on your faces. Priceless!”
“What do you mean?” Lucius asked slowly.
Really, dude, are you that dumb?
“Oh, the moment you figure out that you are not getting out of there.” She showed them her teeth as she grinned evilly. “I mean really, what kind of a Guild would just accept low-levels like you, especially an idiot chosen, a traitorous Corvus, and two half-breeds? You are nothing but a waste of resources. Well, you should be honored! You are the last farming group that we got through this dungeon, and unfortunately I won’t be doing this again.” She almost seemed sad. “The Guild Master has recalled us back. At least I won’t be needing to stay in this rustic area anymore.”
Morgan glanced at his group, seeing the looks of shock and betrayal on their faces.
“You’ll not get away with this,” Vall ground out.
“Everybody, chill. I am a trained negotiator,” Morgan said. “I mean, I took an on-line course that one time, and I played a hostage negotiator game that one time when I didn’t have anything better to do. And I mean this isn’t really a hostage situation, but still.”
Emily just blinked at him. “I can see that you think that all that you just said made sense. But really, what kind of a moron are you?”
Morgan raised his bow, firing the arrow faster than he ever had. It flew through the bars of the gate right at the orc.
Emily simply smashed her two-handed mace’s butt into the ground and his arrow struck something that looked like a shield before breaking apart against it.
“Nice try,” Emily said.
“Okay, I did not mean to do that. I just slipped.” Morgan glanced at the others, who were all in a state of shock.
“It won’t do you any good to try again,” Emily said.
Morgan gritted his teeth, preparing to fire another one, when he noticed people coming in from the other side of the tunnel. Hope sprung in his heart for just a moment, before it was squashed when the two humans saluted the orc.
“Sub-Commander, all the loot has been gathered, and the caravan waits outside of the dungeon,” one of them said.
Emily nodded. “Nice work. I’ll be right outside.”
“All of this was just for some loot? You are going to leave us to die just for loot?” Morgan asked in disbelief.
“Of course. Even a low-level dungeon dive like this can be profitable. And there is a lot of ore up there. What can I say? Growing a Guild is costly.” Emily shrugged.
“I will kill you for this,” Morgan said. I did not get hit by a car and then get to this crazy world just to die like this!
“Good luck with that. The only thing that awaits you is death—either from hunger or, if you are brave enough, at the hands of the manticore.” Emily shook her head and turned around and started walking out. “Next time, don’t be so trusting. Oh, wait! You won’t have the chance.” She started laughing again and the echoes of her laughter stayed with them long after she left their sights.
Morgan turned to look at the others. Ves and Vall still had shocked looks on their faces, as if they just couldn’t believe that this was all real. And Lucius, poor Lucius, had a look of heartbreak on his face. Dude was crushing on the orc big time.
Morgan was himself somewhere in between shock and disbelief. “Did she really just Lando our asses?” Morgan asked. “And wait…did she say manticore?”
Emily Dor has left the dungeon group
Goddamn it, Morgan said to himself. What do I do now?
They spent the next half an hour in simple disbelief. They had tried to raise the gate by themselves, but it had proven too heavy, and it didn’t even budge. After that Lucius had fallen into a state of shock, too, sitting on the ground with his head between his legs. Ves was sitting down as well, crying. Morgan tried to console her, but there was nothing that he could do, so he gave up.
Vall was angry—like, really, really angry—and he was attempting to chip away at the gate with his sword, but the only thing that he was managing to do was dull his blade. Morgan was thinking, trying to find any way out. He used his Nature Sight, but he couldn’t see anything useful. He tried even to make the gate rust quicker with entropy. It didn’t do much except nearly exhaust him. The gate seemed to have been made with some magical protections.
“Why didn’t she just kill us?” Morgan whispered to himself.
“Because of the rules,” Vall said.
“The rules?” Morgan asked.
“The Guiding Force frowns on killing between the ascended except under very special circumstances. The punishment for murder is severe.”
“But it doesn’t matter if she just lets us die?” Morgan asked incredulously.
Vall shrugged. “She won’t have killed us with her own hands.”
Of course! Every time you have rules, you have loopholes. “Fuck!” Morgan looked around the room, the oppressive walls and the eerie light from those cracks. This was not the place that he had imagined himself dying in.
“Goddamn it!” Morgan yelled out. “This is all your fault, Oxy! You fucker!”
The others looked at him like he was crazy, which he could understand—he was yelling at the ceiling, after all. There was no response, of course. He walked over to Vestella and sat down next to her. There was nothing left to do. They sat like that for a few minutes, in silence.
“With my death,” Lucius said, breaking the quiet, “my family loses its last chance to reclaim what was stolen from us.”
Morgan looked at him, only to see a solemn look on Lucius’s face.
“What happened to your family?” Morgan asked.
Lucius didn’t respond immediately. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “My family used to rule over one of the top Guilds in the World…until my older brother betrayed us. He conspired with two other Guilds and they took control of the 13th Legion. My brother gave away our Guild, and the two Guilds split between themselves our territory and resources. They then lied about what happened; my family was turned into traitors who had attempted to break the peace between the Guilds. We were exiled.”
“Huh, well… That sucks,” Morgan said.
They lapsed back into silence, until Vall turned from the gate to look at them. “When I was young, I stole some apples from the neighboring farm.”
Ves turned her head up and looked at her brother, then a small grin pushed through on her face. “When we were seven, I stole your training sword and then lost it in the river.”
Vall’s mouth opened wide in surprise. “You stole my training sword? Father lectured me for hours because he thought that I lost it!”
Ves chuckled. “Sorry,” she said.
Vall joined her, chuckling a bit himself.
“We’ll never find out what happened to our parents now.” Ves’s voice was filled with sorrow.
“No, we won’t…” Vall added. Morgan could see his sadness now, too. Vallsorim had tried to pretend before, but he cared, and he wanted to find out
what happened to them just like his sister.
Again, they lapsed into a silence.
Then, after a while, they all turned to look at Morgan.
“What?” Morgan asked. Ves just raised her eyebrow at him. Crap, now we’re sharing. Ugh… Such a cliché.
“Fine, I once stole a piece of bubble gum,” Morgan said. There, now I’ve shared.
His sharing was met with silence. ”What?” he asked again. When they didn’t respond, he exhaled and rolled his eyes. “Fine.”
“I… Once…” White floor, red blood. “When I was eleven years old…” Fuck, I shouldn’t do this. Morgan closed his eyes. “I…I killed my step-father.”
Complete silence met his words. He opened his eyes only to see everyone looking at him in shock.
“Wow…” Ves was the first to say anything. “I mean, I stole a training sword, and Lucius’s family was betrayed and all that… You think that you know someone, then… Just, wow.”
They were all looking at him like he was a completely different person. “He was a drunk, and a bad person,” Morgan said. He bowed his head not looking at them. “He was beating my mom.”
Ves put her head on his shoulder, and they stayed like that in the silence. He had never told that to anyone, except his therapist, and the cops, and the old lady that lived across the hall. Okay, I might have told a few people. After it happened, he and his mom moved away, and at their new place no one knew about it. He had started playing video games to cope with it. He had always been told that it was wrong to kill; his mom and his grandmother had been very religious. After he had pushed that knife in his step-father’s chest, Morgan had felt like he was somehow less than. He went to therapy, learned to cope, to push that memory deep down. After that he rejected his mother’s religion. Deep down, he had been hoping that he was worthy of any kind of an afterlife. Now…now after just a short time in this world, a world unlike anything that he had thought possible, a world created by a being so far beyond Morgan’s understanding—after everything that he had done and seen, now, finally, he could feel his guilt evaporate.
His step-father, he was like these monsters here. Like those goblins who were butchering humans to eat. He deserved what Morgan had done to him.
And I am not dying here. Not now, not when I finally want to live. Morgan stood up, earning a look from Ves. “All right, everybody up. We are not dying here. Not like this.”
Vall shook his head. “There is no escape.”
“There is that way. We don’t know what is over there.” Morgan pointed at the two passages.
“A manticore,” Lucius said. “A manticore that hasn’t been defeated in a long time.”
“And so what? Are you going to sit there and just give up? Die like this? I would much rather go there and see for myself. Who knows, there might even be another exit. You all said that most of those who enter this dungeon don’t come back out. Perhaps they just exit on the other side.”
“They were all probably just tricked like we were,” Lucius said.
“Even if there isn’t a way out, better that we die fighting than like this,” Morgan said. He could see that Lucius was thinking, and then he gave a small nod.
“You are right,” Lucius said. “At least we can die with honor, as adventurers are supposed to. Fighting monsters.”
“There you go!” Morgan smiled. He turned and saw Ves and Vall standing as well, resolute looks on their faces.
“I’m not really looking forward to dying,” Ves said, “but I agree. I don’t want to meet my death like this.”
Vall just readied his sword and nodded in agreement.
“Well, I have no intention of dying. Who knows, we might kill the boss, and someone might come along and find us with a dead beast. We might become legends!” Morgan said. He could see that the mood in the group had taken a turn for the better.
They took the left passageway and started walking. Just behind the wall the other passage connected to the one they were in and the long hallway led them deeper. They walked through the narrow passage and then slowly exited into a large room. It was probably somewhere around fifty meters across, maybe a bit more. It was a domed room—a cave, really, with rocks and broken pillars all over the room. And down there, on one of the rocks, was a monster.
The manticore was lying on a rock, and its piercing gray eyes were watching them. It did not look exactly like the depictions of manticores that Morgan had seen before; it didn’t have any wings, for example. It was large, at least three meters long, and it had a lion’s body, with a red mane on the top of its head and about halfway down its back, and a white mane from its two large horns down to its jaw. The fur on its front legs was golden in color, with the paws being black. About halfway down its back the gold gave way to black and its body ended in a terrifying-looking scorpion tail. It was bulky, much more muscled than any lion he had ever seen. In fact, the only resemblance to a lion was its general shape and feline features. It was its own creature.
Morgan used Inspect on it.
Manticore LVL 14
“Well, fuck me sideways,” Morgan whispered as he saw its level. He pulled the rest of his group back into the narrow passage they had come through—the manticore was too big to fit in there.
“We need a plan,” Morgan said.
“What is there to plan?” Lucius asked. “We charge, we die well.”
“Yeah,” Morgan said. “Not gonna do that. I told you I don’t plan on dying here.”
Vall shook his head. “You saw that room, there is no way out.”
“We can’t know that for sure until we check every corner of it. It’s too large for us to be sure with just a glance,” Morgan told him.
“I agree with Morgan,” Ves said. “We should work on killing the beast and then we can see if there is a way out.”
Morgan felt warm at her support, but he put the feeling aside. They needed a plan. I do have a few enchantments that could be useful. “All right, I got an idea.”
He proceeded to tell them, and they did not like it—but then, they didn’t have any idea that was better.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
About three hours later, they were prepared.
They walked back into the room, their weapons ready. Morgan had enchanted each of their blades with a minor decaying effect—any wound they caused would apply a weakening effect, though one a bit weaker than his arrows, of which he now had six, and another four regular arrows, as well as two Binding Arrows. These weren’t nearly as powerful as his other one, but they could at least be a distraction. They had the time to use their abilities to prepare, but they couldn’t take too long. Without food, they would only get weaker and weaker.
Ves had a new layer of ice on her shield and over her body, giving her additional defense. They had all given her the last of their drinking water for it. Most of the work would rest on her.
Back in the room, the manticore hadn’t moved from its place. Morgan had been worried that it would try to ambush them, but it seemed content to just sit and watch. Maybe it doesn’t think that we are a threat.
Morgan palmed the small bottle of oil that Ves had given him, her torch oil. Hopefully their plan would work. Taking a deep breath, Morgan led his group down the rough stone stairs. As soon as they stepped off the stairs, a low growl spread through the room. The manticore stood, and then roared—and a moment later it leapt forward and started running for them.
“Remember the plan, go!” Morgan said as he took off running around the room. He spared a glance back to check if the manticore was following him. It wasn’t—it was charging at Ves, who bashed forward with her shield sending icicles flying at it. The manticore was caught off guard mid leap, and some of the ice hit it. Most broke against its horns, but some cut the manticore’s skin, leaving shallow gashes over its face and shoulders. As soon as its feet touched the ground, it roared and then jumped for Ves.
Vall sent a wave of fire in its path, but that didn’t even slow it down. Ves jumped behi
nd cover and the manticore skid across the ground and slammed into the wall. Vall was there almost immediately, slashing at its back legs with his sword. It didn’t look like his sword had cut deep, but it did leave a bloody mark. The manticore lashed out with its poisonous tail and Vall jumped back. Morgan had warned them not to let themselves get struck by that.
Morgan found a good position and climbed on one of the rocks. From there he took careful aim, watching as Ves was evading the monster. One of its paws swiped at her and she put her shield up, the resulting blow breaking the ice on it and sending her flying.
That’s when Morgan let loose his Arrow of Decay.
It flew straight for the monster and buried itself in its shoulder. It roared in pain and anger, and its eyes fixed on Morgan. It took a step toward him, but Vall jumped out of cover and stabbed it in the hip. It turned far faster than Morgan thought possible and swiped at Vall. He put up his shield to block, but the swipe carried him off the ground. Morgan saw blood as he nocked another arrow and it, too, found its mark.
The manticore roared as the second arrow struck it, and he could see it shake its head as if fighting against dizziness. Its movements were slower as well. Still, it charged at him. Morgan pulled out and fired an Arrow of Binding at the floor in front of it. The roots and branches spread around, catching its legs and making it tumble and roll over the ground. Morgan fired another Arrow of Decay, trying to hit its head—but it struck the monster’s horn and broke apart. Damn.
Morgan tried to nock another, but by then the manticore had gotten back to its feet. Just as it was to leap at him, Ves crashed into its side, staggering it and pushing her sword deep into its stomach. The manticore’s tail lashed out, hitting Ves’s shoulder and breaking the ice armor there. Ves jumped back and the next strike of its tail hit the ground. Seeing a chance, Morgan took out the oil bottle and threw it at the manticore’s feet hard enough that it broke and spilled the oil all over the floor and the manticore’s front paws.