Dungeon Masters

by Mike Wild

  “You know what the wreck of a thing Kh’Borian has become wants from you, Garrison? He wants your heart, your kidneys, your lungs. He wants your sinew, muscle, tendons, skin, and bones. Your arms, your legs. The only thing he doesn’t want, Garrison? The only thing he doesn’t want is you.”

  “Gaaaahh …”

  Garrison was dragging himself forward on his elbows now, and though Trix despised the man, even she winced at his fate. His flesh no longer rippled but rolled back and forth, rending itself from the bones of ankles and wrists as if he were pulling up trouser legs and sleeves. His skull expanded and contracted, cracked with a sound like ice. Ribs burst from his torso, between his armour, splayed, as if inviting someone in. He spasmed violently, and his eyes blew out. His mouth opened to scream but instead vomited up his internal organs. All of them, like discards on a butcher’s floor. What wore the Glow of Deephold now was nothing more than a twitching, flopping thing.

  Trix knew this would be her only chance. She ran for the nodes, booting in the gate of the service cage at the power point. She followed Shen’s instructions, and the lights and thrum of DOME briefly died. In the ensuing darkness, she ignored the liquid sounds of flesh in flux, concentrating instead on engaging the secondary node. Nonetheless, she was relieved when the node locked in place and light returned as the system came back online.

  “You’re up, Shen.”

  “Confirmed, Trix. Bombs are live.”

  “Then get ready to set your timers. He’s coming through.”

  “Understood. Monitoring dimensional degradation. Calculating countdown.”

  Trix took a breath. Ignoring the sounds behind her had been all well and good while doing what was needed, but it was time to face them. Time to make a decision.

  She turned.

  If she could do one thing right now, it was this—she wanted to save her game.

  XX

  Endgame

  She could have run, of course. Could have done what Shen had told her to do and got the hell out of there. But she didn’t leave people behind. She most especially didn’t leave Shen behind.

  And so, with or without the bombs, she was probably going to die.

  The last of Garrison had been sucked with a slurp into the form that had used his flesh and bone to rebuild itself. The Dungeonmaster was gone. In his place was Kh’Borian—a shrivelled thing no more. That which had escaped her clutches in Deephold had fleshed himself out and now resembled how he—how all godleeches—had presumably once appeared.

  Which was, roughly speaking, Torb on steroids—an imposing, towering form with the dodgem-car hair and writhing tattoos but an aura of infinitely greater power. What was more, becoming more imposing and towering by the second—the Glow of Deephold gifting back to him the godlike abilities denied for two thousand years. As the seven suppressors, original purpose reversed, flooded Kh’Borian with that they should have forever contained, he began to transform once more from godleech into demigod. Already having to crane her neck to look up at him, Trix had to crane further still as Kh’Borian reached such height, such size, and then more, that the Glow became like toy armour, popping its rivets, before sloughing away to clatter on the floor.

  The transition was clearly exceeding even Kh’Borian’s expectations.

  “Yessss!” his voice boomed. “Yessssssssss!”

  “Do you mind not booming?” Trix shouted. “It’s been a shit day, all right?”

  Kh’Borian, surprised, stared down at her. His expression changed to one of no little belligerence. “You, still,” he said, his voice reverberating throughout DOME. “The only one to resist me.”

  “What can I say? I’ve always been an awkward cow.”

  Kh’Borian smiled. A viper’s smile. “There is no need to fight me. Join me.”

  “And get used as your new big toe? I don’t think so. Besides, arsehole, this is my universe, and I’d kinda like to keep it.”

  Kh’Borian looked amused. “What do you think you can do?”

  Actually, not much at all, Trix thought. I’m just the decoy who’s decided to stay behind to make sure you don’t stop the man who can do something from doing it. Also, then I have to save said man’s suicidal ass. What she said was:

  “Whatever it takes.”

  The godleech’s eyes flared, and Trix involuntarily hopped back. Then she saw the flare die and wondered why he hadn’t taken a swing at her. Of course, she realised, as he gazed around—he was concentrating not just on bringing himself through, but the whole of Yillarnya, to, in Shen’s words, burst the balloon. For the time being, at least, it seemed he was relatively powerless. The problem was she didn’t know how long that would be the case. She whispered into her mouthpiece.

  “Shen, you have any numbers yet?”

  “Trix? You’re still here?”

  “Just answer the question, Shen.”

  Shen sighed. “Right now it’s looking like a twelve-minute countdown.”

  “There you go, Kamikaze Kid. Plenty of time for us both to get to the rift.”

  “I don’t think so, Trix.”

  “Not like you to be defeatist.”

  “It is when I have a minotaur king swinging an axe at my door.”

  “Any weapons?”

  “Yes, an axe.”

  “You, Shen, you! Do you have any weapons?”

  “Arms cabinet. But I daren’t leave the console.”

  Trix cursed silently. “You’re coming with me through that rift just as soon as you’ve done your stuff, Shen. Trust me.”

  By ‘trust me’ Trix knew she was committing herself to not only killing the king but clearing a path through the increasing number of creatures manifesting in DOME. It and Deephold were no longer just swapping their infrastructure at random points but popping in and out of each other with ever-accelerating rapidity all over the place. Some of the interchanges were so rapid that the hot spots became just that—unstable patches of fiery chaos. Shen’s prediction was coming true—dimensionally, the strain was too much, and both DOME and Deephold—Earth and Yillarnya—were beginning to break down. Hell was on its way.

  She glared at Kh’Borian. “Sorry. Gotta go.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t think there’s a lot you can do to stop me.”

  “Perhaps one thing.”

  The ‘one thing’ turned out to be Garrison’s master teamers. Until now they’d been cowering from what their boss had become, finally seeing the truth of things, out of the fight, but with a moment’s redirection of thought, Kh’Borian did to them what he had done to the armies of Yillarnya so long ago. He killed them stone dead. Trix wondered why he didn’t simply do the same to her; she guessed, though, that he could expend only a tiny fraction of his concentration at the moment, so he needed weak, already tainted minds, minds with which he had already forged a strong connection. At any rate, fifteen or so master teamers dropped of what seemed to be cerebral haemmorhage and, a few seconds later, began slapping the floor and writhing in what turned out to be an elastic and somewhat clumsy attempt to stand. But stand they did, corrupted, soulless grey zombies who lurched at Trix, firing weapons as they came.

  She took off two heads with her shotgun but, digging for further shells, found none, her arsenal nearly depleted. All she had left were two Freeman .45 Pythons with just the clips they had. Still, she put both to good use as she backed up, shooting the kneecaps off a few of her pursuers before loosing a few shots at Kh’Borian just to keep his attention on the fact that she, no one else, was the enemy. Then, she ran, leaving Kh’Borian, hopefully, wondering what she was up to.

  Christ, part of her wished she’d gone through the rift. The levels would have been quieter. En route to Shen she encountered two trolls, a giant spider, a flock of lava bats, and some goblins happily looting a set of lockers. The trolls, spider, and lava bats, she took down, but she left the goblins alone—the stupid little bastards would be dead soon enough, anyway. Greater danger came from the hot spots
now starting to flare all around. Luckily, Trix was learning to the telltale signs of their imminent appearance and was able to dodge and weave in areas where the phenomena were particularly bad. Just how bad became evident when there was an explosion from a power point to the west and DOME was plunged once more into darkness. The darkness made the hot spots all that more obvious, frightening in how prolific they were, like splashes of lava on the slopes of an erupting volcano. Combined with the roars, rattles, booms, cracks and hisses emanating from the increasing number of creatures translocating from Yillarnya, Trix feared time was running out—the scales were tipping towards total dimensional collapse.

  “Shen, it’s getting worse.”

  “I’m aware, Trix. Countdown revised to seven minutes and counting. If I were you, I’d forget about me and turn back now.”

  “You know damn well you wouldn’t turn back.”

  “Trix …”

  “Shut it. I’m on my way.”

  It was pushing things, for sure, but they could still make it. If only stuff would stop looming at her out of the dark. If the creatures themselves weren’t problem enough, there were, unbelievably, still civilians milling around—those who, confused, hadn’t had the sense to escape. There was no way they could get to safety in this world, so there was only one route left. “Run for the rift!” she shouted, pulling at arms and shoulders, pointing them in the right direction. “Don’t be afraid of what you see. Don’t stop for anything.”

  She watched as they went, her heart falling as, in almost all cases, hot spots or creatures took them in mid flight. A determined set came to her jaw. No more people were dying on her watch.

  The minotaur king turned and roared as she reached auxiliary control, blowing steam from its nostrils. Trix braced herself, staff in hands, as the beast pounded towards her, its axe at the ready. She thought, Here we go again—exactly how this whole mess started.

  Then, the minotaur vanished. Just like that. A hot spot, and it was gone.

  Trix sighed, stepped around the hot spot, keyed in the code to the door. Shen had just punched in some numbers and was wheeling back from the terminal.

  “Shen?”

  “Done, Trix. It’s the final countdown.”

  “Which is?”

  “Four minutes.”

  “Four minutes???”

  “I did warn you not to come for me.”

  “But here I am.” Trix strode across the room, jemmied the lock of the arms cabinet, armed herself, tossed an assault rife to Shen. She took a few rapid breaths, like an athlete preparing for a race. “Okay,” she breathed, “we can do this. We can do this. Just stay behind me. You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  “Off we go.”

  They went, only to find that in their few seconds of exchange, dimensional stability had deteriorated further, the landscape beyond auxiliary control become surreal. The corridor down which the minotaur had pounded—down which they now raced—seemed to stretch to infinity behind them, curling away in a Coriolis spiral, as if the world had tipped and was emptying down a drain. Along its length, explosions blossomed—more hot spots than ever before. The floor tilted left and right, sending Trix into staggers, and Shen skids, corrected with deft applications of his brakes. When they looked up, they saw sometimes the roof of DOME, sometimes the stone of the levels, sometimes stars. The sky was spinning.

  This cosmic funhouse now had creatures spawning from its every corner. Lacking the wit to understand their fate, they were frenzied, attacking their own and anything in their way. Trix took the lead in clearing their own with Shen providing effective backup by taking down anything that slipped through the perimeter of the whirling dervish she’d become. They could not afford to be injured, could not afford to slow. Nonetheless, as they reached the main drag of the mezzanine, near to the pit and the rift, they were stopped momentarily in their tracks.

  Kh’Borian was exactly where Trix had left him, but not exactly as she’d left him. Because the godleech was now the size of a house. DOME, meanwhile, becoming more and more unanchored from its reality, seemed to spin like the sky had done, flinging away parts of itself into some unknown void. Flickering plasma screens—a good number of them simply hanging there in space—showed not DOME’s usual corporate fare but newsfeeds from around the world: the Thames become cataract, pouring both itself and London’s riverside buildings over a raging cliff; the Great Wall of China overrun by mudpuddins while a swamp bubbled up its side; the streets of Los Angeles torn by faults from whose depths demons scrambled; orcs rampaging through Moscow, leaving in their wake arcing plumes of blood. And everywhere in this madness, obliterating both human and Yillarnyan life, hot spots. The great plumes of fire consumed whatever they could reach. Both worlds were literally going to hell.

  Kh’Borian’s laughing face appeared on all the screens, revelling in it all. So much so that he appeared not to notice his transformation progressing a stage further than seemed right, even for him; he was becoming quite monstrous, in fact. Trix reckoned this was marginally better than what usually happened in the video games—the bastard who the good guys just kicked the hit points out of regenerating as a Class-A Motherfucker when they’d barely survived having their arses handed to them on a plate—but only just. Was the snout-faced, green-scaled, dragon-fanged thing the true appearance of Yillarnya’s gods or simply that of Kh’Borian’s ultimate corruption, the price the gods demanded of him for having taken that step too far? Either way, he was pissed, and if he got the upper hand, arses would be served up regardless.

  “One minute, Trix.”

  They made it almost to the rift when Kh’Borian’s full powers returned. What was worse, he spotted them. With a sweep of a clawed hand, he sent Shen’s chair flipping through the air, wheels spinning, and Shen crashed and tumbled across the floor. Trix ran to help, but her legs found themselves pedalling air as she herself was swept skyward into the grip of Kh’Borian, struggling in a hand large enough to enclose her whole. Then it started to squeeze. Trix felt her ribs crunching until a voice shouted, “Get away from her, you bastard!”

  Kh’Borian turned, to be punched in the face by something massive and metal. Trix’s surprise was as great as Kh’Borian’s as he staggered back, not least because Elly was piloting the repair golem that had delivered the blow. She manipulated servos, and the huge machine’s arm slammed into Kh’Borian again. This time, he dropped to one knee and released his hold on Trix, who stumbled away.

  “You know,” Elly called down, “I always loved that film.”

  “Elly? Where the hell have you been?”

  “Went to get help,” Elly said, and Trix saw that she wasn’t alone. Strom McFee, Al Shaughnessy, Manny of the Dragon’s Egg, Barking Jack Russell the apothecary, all of them fighting with creatures or what remained of the master teamers—Diablo watching her back. “I figured you’d be in the thick of what’s happening.” Elly winked. “Guess I was right.”

  The wink was a mistake. Kh’Borian took advantage of the slight distraction; he flexed his hand and simply crushed the golem about her. Trix’s heart thumped as the metal collapsed as if in a car compactor, then slowed as she saw Elly leap from the cab just in time. She ran to her side, found her a little dazed but okay. But she wouldn’t be for long. Trix summoned the others and urged them all towards the rift. There was no time to explain why.

  “Go,” she said. “Go now.”

  “Trix, what the hell do you expect to—?”

  “GO!”

  Elly gave her a look, and then, Strom carrying Shen, the folks from Diablo headed towards the rift. Trix intended to make sure they got there. Kh’Borian was on the move, regarding their flight with curiosity, stomping to the edge of the pit to discharge lightning in great strikes. Elly and the others dodged while Trix hammered at the access panel of one of the powered-down boom guns until it broke away, allowing her to hot-wire the interior. It was too far gone to program but pointed roughly in the direction she wanted, and she let
it fire free. Kh’Borian laughed as its bullets bounced off him, but that was fine since shooting him wasn’t her goal. She leapt upwards to grab the rear of the boom gun, forcing it down until its counterweights tipped it upwards, vertically strafing Kh’Borian’s form on its way to the target she really wanted to hit. Which was one of the bacteria tanks that the phasing, ironically, had exposed. This particular element of the Oblivion Protocol, meant to deploy when DOME had sealed itself, was swiftly punctured by the high-calibre rounds, and the flesh-eating goop poured down. Kh’Borian actually wavered under its fall. But while for most anything else this would have been the end of the game, Kh’Borian stared up, let it play over his face and body, let it dissolve his face and body, and smiled. All of the nearby surviving creatures from the levels, along with what remained of the master teamers, was instant sludge, but Kh’Borian just smiled. He stood there, turning, palms held out, as if enjoying a downpour on a scorching summer’s day. He even helped it along by sloughing chunks of flesh away, as if skimming fat from the surface of a stew. His smile was the last to go, sagging, drooping like a Dali thing, until only a skeletal grin remained. Kh’Borian didn’t care, because the body had always been just a vessel and now was needed no more. Even as the last of his flesh fell from his form, his skeleton was changing, cracking, splintering, reforming into the corrupted creature of bone that could stride without harm the coming hell.

  Trix was more than happy to leave him to it, for the few seconds it would last. She looked towards the rift, saw Elly and the others were through. Found herself alone with an insane god in a dying world.

  But not for long.

  She ran for Yillarnya.

  Kh’Borian’s voice boomed in her wake: “Why did you return? What did you hope to achieve?”

  Trix couldn’t resist a smile. “That would be telling.”

  She leapt into the rift just as the bombs went off. There was no sound from their detonation, just a brilliant whiteness that intensified once, then twice. She felt a thud in her back that propelled her forward at a speed impossible to grasp, because as everything turned white behind her, it turned white in front of her, too. She flew with arms and legs trailing behind her, hair scorched from her head, clothes incinerated on her body; flesh and cloth became one. She, a burned rag doll of a thing. A great wind carried her on, whistling, screaming, and she hit walls, corners, bounced into the depths but did not slow. It could have lasted a second, a minute, or an hour, but its end came as she slapped into something—something that pulped her—and the broken remains of her slithered to the floor in an unknown corner of another world.