by Mike Wild
DUNGEON MASTERS
Mike Wild
Copyright 2017 by Mike Wild
For
Dave Holmes
It Wouldn't Have Been Half As Much Fun Without You
Sleep Soundly, Old Friend
I
High Roller
The exonexus was by far the fastest way around DOME. Also the most bone-jarring, nauseating, and noisy. A rib cage of roller-coasting iron-barred pods, each slung with netting for one, the no-frills transport was used not by DOME clients but keepers, for rapid deployment wherever in the sprawling complex they needed to be. At any given time, four or five pods were hurtling over the surface of DOME, launched from base stations by hydraulic rams and then guided—flung—to their destination by a series of mechanical points. Had the exonexus the luxury of computer control, it would have been precarious enough, but given that such technology worked haphazardly in these parts, it had more health and safety issues than a hundred-year-old ride on Coney Island.
Trix Hunter hated the bastard thing. Hated more that those spared its tortures—the clients—were mostly those who necessitated its use in the first place. If it wasn’t for the fact that without them she’d be out of a job, she’d happily throttle each and every one before they could set foot in DOME—let alone the levels below—because no matter how much they had the rules drilled into them, they always found one to break.
Trix entwined herself in the netting with one hand while disentangling a radiophone’s spiralling lead with the other. She held the mouthpiece close as she launched with a WHUMF, shouting to be heard as her pod clanged upwards.
“Okay, Shen-Li, what is it now?”
“Not sure, Trix. A disturbance on the mezzanine. A bar fight, I think.”
“A bar fight? So what do you need me for? Can’t the ’trols handle it?”
“They’re saying not.”
“You do know I’m booked to lead a crawl in an hour, don’t you?”
“Yep, but that’s in an hour. You’re the only keeper available right now.”
“Bullshit. What about Prince Adam?”
“Still nursing his dick petrified by that basilisk’s gaze.”
“Still milking it for all its worth with some bimbo or other, more like.”
“I wish you hadn’t used that phrase.”
“Come to think of it, so do I.”
“Trix, do this for me, please?”
“I’m in the pod, aren’t I?”
“Good girl. I owe you one.”
“Shen, you owe me more than—”
Trix’s ‘one’ exploded from her as the pod reached DOME’s exterior and was clamped, gimballed for travel, and flung dizzyingly towards its destination. She was heading east, the far side of DOME from her current location, and as the pod rattled and rolled over the summit of DOME’s expanse, she was transfixed by the orange brilliance of a setting sun filling an unobstructed horizon. She shut out the racket of the exonexus and concentrated instead on the outside world. She sometimes forgot it was there. She breathed deep of the air and gazed out across the almost featureless hundreds of kilometres around DOME, wondering, not for the first time, what the consequences would have been if, back in ’18, the levels had manifested in New York, Paris, Manchester, even Beijing, the centre of civilisation nearest to here in the Chinese desert, one of the last truly isolated places on Earth?
Her moment of reflection was interrupted as the pod was clamped by a point and she careened violently left. By the time, seconds later, she was plummeting back inside DOME, Trix had returned to her previous state of mind—a pissed-off pea in a perilously perambulating pod.
The pod hit its buffers, and Trix’s arms, both now entwined in the netting, almost ripped from their sockets. She yelped with the affronted indignation this always engendered and then angrily kicked open the pod’s hatch.
Goddamnit, this had better be good.
“What?” she demanded of the ’trol waiting to escort her. He was sporting a livid bruise on his face and moved with a distinct limp.
“Sorry, ma’am. We have a client who’s … a little out of control.”
“And?”
“Well … we’re not equipped for it.”
“You’re patrol—how can you not be equipped?”
“I think you’d better see for yourself.”
She nodded, let him lead the way through the crowd of scientists, researchers, mercenaries, treasure hunters and tourists packing the mezzanine. They paused briefly as a golem thudded by, the technician inside the towering exoskeleton on his way to try to bypass the latest electrical outage, the price they paid for sitting on top of a glitch in dimensions. The crowd thickened at the trouble spot—or rather, outside it. There were maybe two hundred people rubbernecking through the windows of what was officially referred to as Hospitality One but most just called the Grimrock Café. A wide horseshoe shape, it embraced and overlooked the pit where the glitch lay, and within was where DOME’s owner, DragonCorp, entertained its executives, its investors, and those with other financial interests in the exploration of the transdimensional rift: armour manufacturers, weapons developers, pharmaceutical companies and the like. They might not be able to see much—without actually going through the rift, there wasn’t much to see—but there was always a chance, as they chomped bartok steaks and slugged Chateau Romani, they might witness the bloody end of some monster wandering into our world from the other side. They were all but guaranteed to witness the return of any number of groups who had fared badly on their crawls. Out of at least twenty departures each day, fewer than half ever returned, and fewer still returned intact. Trix despised the baying mobs that gathered on the Grimrock’s balcony when there was such gore in the offing. They’d have been at home turning down their thumbs in a Roman arena.
Unusual, though, for things to kick off in the Grimrock itself. Trix entered a plush lobby of softly lit alcoves displaying treasures from beyond and was met by Elly Dean, head of patrol, her favourite face in DOME. Back when this was an army operation, they’d seen action together. In a way, they still did.
“Sorry, girl, it was me who decided to call you in.”
“In that case, there’s probably good reason.”
“Oh, I think there is.”
Elly pointed it out and Trix sighed. She might have known. Other than the financial bigwigs, the only other guests allowed inside Grimrock were DOME’s equivalent of high rollers, big winners, in a sense, who’d pleased DragonCorp by bringing back from the levels something really tasty in terms of artefact, and the guy in the bling and the flash new suit was clearly one of those. It was just a pity for him that he was dead. Standing over him, equally besuited and blinged, the effect marred by red-faced sweating and snarling, another client, the one who had killed him. ’Trols armed with tasers, some already discharged, circled warily around him, and a web of thin wires trailed between the respective parties, intertwining as they went. They looked like they were doing a Maypole dance. What was weird was the discharged tasers hadn’t brought the client down, which considering he was built slightly lighter than the preying mantises to be found in the desert outside, was something of a surprise.
Trix recognised the guy as one of a party of six salarymen who’d gone down two weeks before. God only knew where they’d ended up, but he’d returned nine days later as one of only two survivors. It was pretty clear to Trix what had happened here. They’d rested. They’d recovered. They’d cashed in. Then the recriminations had started. Why couldn’t the other have done more to save their friends from the bugbears or orcs, yada yada yada? Had they really pulled their weight, yada yada yada? After that always came the argument about who deserved the lion’s share of the loot. Trix had seen it happen a thousand times before, tho
ugh not usually with such fatal consequences. The head of the dead guy was a concave mound of mush. He’d literally had his face punched in.
Such power made Trix suspicious. Maybe Elly had been right. Maybe this was a job for a keeper after all. She waved the ’trols off and stepped up to the bat, warily eyeing the guy’s fist, which still dripped blood and bits of bone and brain. “Problem here?”
“No, no problem … I just wanted my fair share of the gold, is all.”
“Looks to me like you’ll be using it to pay for your friend’s funeral.”
“My … friend … was a fool.”
There it was. A resonance to the voice—difficult to pin down: arrogance, for sure, but something beyond that—that Trix didn’t like the sound of at all, and she went to place a hand on the client’s arm in an attempt to placate him. It never made contact, the client swatting her away. Were it not for her natural instinct to roll with a blow, her neck would have snapped. As it was, she was propelled across the Grimrock, thudding into the rail of the balcony overlooking the pit with such force she almost flipped over and down. For a second or two, she had a dizzying inverted view of the broad horseshoe of boom guns—all three times the height of a man—which constantly tracked back and forth before the rift from which her attacker and his less fortunate friend had so recently returned—and from which, she now knew, he’d smuggled a ring.
She’d spotted it as she’d been swatted, a giveaway flash of magic, or rather something magical, on the thumb of his right hand. As Trix tried to regain her footing but collapsed to the floor, she growled, scowling at the client as she wiped blood from her mouth. Her anger wasn’t born of the slapping she’d just taken but from the fact the client had broken the rules and held onto something he shouldn’t have.
Shithead. The rules, after all, couldn’t be simpler—keep as much gold and all the jewels you want, all the nonenchanted weapons and armour you can carry, even, with certain exceptions, all the goddamn plants and herbs, but anything magical, anything at all, was considered DragonCorp property to be surrendered immediately upon leaving the rift. That was the deal. The foundation on which access to the levels was granted. The Corp Rules. DragonCorp didn’t take kindly to folk who ignored them, and it was a daring or stupid man who did. Trix suspected the latter in this case, but that didn’t mean she was going to go any easier on him.
So—what kind of ring was she dealing with? She guessed a ring of strength, common enough, and a plus 3 or 4, most likely, as it was on a man whose thumb was the only digit thick enough to take such a ring without it slipping off. She should be able to handle that with a single potion of power. She dug into her padded belt and extracted a small sugar-glass vial, bit off its top, and chugged its contents. The extradimensional herbal rush allowed her to rise once more, and not only rise, but smile. She strode back to the point of her unceremonious despatch, where the ’trols had returned to their Maypole dance and Elly herself had leapt onto the client’s back to help her out. She took advantage of the distraction they provided and sucker punched the client in the side. Her fist sank deep, breaking his lowest right rib, and the client spun to face her with a roar. The potion surging through her, Trix stood her ground. Shen-Li’s ‘potions’ had in the past enabled her to do so against far more fearsome opponents than this psychotic runt, most of them green, scaly, leathery, and on one or two occasions made entirely of rock.
Right, pal. Now let’s see what you can—
Bam.
Trix found herself hurtling along one of the Grimrock’s glass banquet tables, taking with her a slew of abandoned meals and drinks, the heads of trophy kills mounted on the walls watching with variously coloured glass eyes. She counted a bugbear, a rat king, and a kobold among their number before crashing off the table’s far end, stunned. A salad bowl plopped onto her head.
Okaaaay …
Trix rose again, unsteadily. The client was heading towards her, taser wires snapping from him as he left the ’trols behind. Elly was still riding him like a bronco, but her friend was tossed away as insignificantly as the others as Mister Furious reached the table. Trix kept its length between them, swaying from foot to foot, ready to dive either way, but both choices became redundant. The client brought both fists down and the table’s metal legs buckled and its glass exploded into a thousand shards before her. At least the moment had been enough for Trix to be able to reassess the situation. She knew now that she wasn’t dealing with a common ring of strength—not plus three, four, or even bloody ten, for that matter. This was something else entirely. Something bad.
And it was going to kill its wearer.
The client was completely oblivious to the damage he was taking, but it was plain enough to see in the way his face grew ever redder while veins and sinews corded and pushed against his skin. He was enraged—not just pissed-off enraged, but magically enraged. Something in that ring had him in its thrall, which meant the damn thing was probably cursed. It was easy to come a cropper with such items as they had a way of insinuating themselves into the system far beyond the attributes they initially seemed to bestow. A little bit of the enchanter always seemed to come along with enchantments, and if the enchanter was bad news, the chances were the item was, too. The guy likely didn’t have a clue what was going on, or at least why he was doing what he did—everything since he’d slipped on the ring had probably been just an increasing blur—but if the pressure on his system continued, he’d puff up so much he’d blow himself to bits. She was tempted to let him do it for being such a prat. But … that would mean paperwork. A rise on her public liability premiums. Definitely the loss of her no-claims bonus. And she wasn’t having that.
A change of tactics was called for. Trix feinted so the client was occupied swinging a blow and then put some space between them, giving her a chance to chug another potion. Not power, this time. The shimmering, cream-coloured liquid was an agility plus five, one of Shen’s more potent concoctions, which he’d dubbed ‘quicksilver’. It took a second to take effect and then she turned to face the now-roaring client as he stomped towards her.
The client slapped at Trix as he had the first time, but this time she ducked under the blow. The client swung again, and she leapt over it. The second miss left him somewhat off balance and he lurched to the side, and Trix whipped behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, then, as he spun and swung, ducked once more. Again, she whipped to his rear, this time planting the sole of her boot firmly on his behind and kicking out with all her strength. The client staggered forward and half fell to his knees. Trix judged whether now was the time to make her move, decided not, and whipped around to stand before him, waiting for him, all but taunting him, to stand up.
The magical rage was accompanied by actual rage now, and the client came at Trix with everything he had. Nothing came close. As the combatants worked their way through the Grimrock, tables and chairs shattering and scattering in their wake, ’trols moving aside to let them through, Trix moved virtually as a blur, dancing her way around all the incoming blows while positioning herself for the next in such a way as to exhaust the client as much and as quickly as she could. She wasn’t doing this maliciously—she just knew that she had to bring this thing to a close, either before the effect of the quicksilver wore off or the client blew like the bomb he was. At last the moment came—what she had been waiting for—the two of them coming to rest in a squatting position, face to face, each awaiting the other’s next move. The client looked barely human now—like a big, fat, red Gollum—which was pretty much what Trix had expected, but there was something else, too, something in the eyes, that she hadn’t foreseen. Whatever it was that was in him—whatever malign force—was, for a moment, right there. Staring out at her. Trix had never seen such pure evil, and it brought an unaccustomed swallow to her throat.
“Who are you?”
A smile.
“That would be telling.”
A frown.
“Go on, you know you want to.”
An
actual wink. Grotesque, as it came from a battered and bloated eye.
“Not yet. Soon enough.”
And that was it. The visitor was gone. Well, not quite gone, because its influence clearly still remained within the client—but that was something Trix was about to sort out. She dismissed the shiver that had just run down her spine and kept her gaze locked on her opponent’s eyes, waiting for the tell which would give away his next move. And there it was—a slight lifting of the gaze. He was going up.
Trix rose at the same time. His arm was already arcing over his head, coming round to deliver a skull-smashing blow, but Trix had the knife out from its sheath in the small of her back in the blink of an eye. She swept her blade in an arc of its own. It seemed to miss its target, but only because there was no sound of impact and no immediate reaction from the client, including any blood. What did make a sound—a metallic chink as it struck the floor of the Grimrock—was the ring. The half pound or so of flesh it was attached to made barely a plop. Trix’s blade usually ended things before you knew they’d started.
Trix stepped out of the way as the client’s arm began to spew blood. The client gazed at it, then at Trix, then collapsed to his knees. She knelt beside him, and without saying a word applied the fingers of his remaining hand to pressure points on his wrist, stemming the flow. She tilted his head up by the chin, swivelled it, and looked him in the eyes. The arrogance was gone. Now all she saw was pain, confusion, and the growing glassiness of shock.
“My hand. You cut off my hand …”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
Trix picked up his hand, slipped off the ring. She wiped blood on her tunic and put the ring into a side pocket. The hand, she tucked wrist first into the client’s breast pocket, arranging the upthrust fingers like a bloody buttonhole. She patted the pocket when satisfied.
“Maybe,” she said slowly, “to teach you to keep it out of other people’s pies.” She beckoned to a couple of ’trols. “Get this idiot up to medlev, will you? We’re done here.”