by DB King
Anja was smashing at the bone spider with two-handed blows, working on the legs and the delicate face-parts of the horrific monster as it snapped at her. With a sudden flurry of blows, she smashed the front of the monster to pieces, then drove her blade all the way into its face. It reared up on its back legs, the ruined front legs waving in the air ineffectually as it tumbled backward.
“Take that, you bony horror!” Anja cried exultantly as she held up her blade.
Ben bulled his way through a knot of duelists, grinning as he smashed them with his shield and sword.
But then the trees came to life.
Anja turned away from them, preparing to come back and help Ben. The nearest tree suddenly morphed. A massive face with raging eyes and a huge, toothy mouth appeared in the middle of the trunk, and the roots smashed up through the paving stones like massive tentacles that tried to grab Anja around the legs and arms.
Anja yelled out in horror as the mutated tree tried to catch and neutralize her sword-arm. A mighty swing of her blade slashed through a creeping root, but the tree lifted her off the ground and began to draw her slowly toward its gaping mouth. The upper branches of the tree shed all their leaves in a sudden cloud, and burst outward as long, whipping tentacles, each one tipped with a bulging, bloodshot eye.
Ben roared out his anger at being kept back from the fight, but more and more skeleton duelists were flinging themselves at him, and no matter how hard he fought forward, he couldn’t get to her fast enough.
Anja was on her own.
She swiped her sword, lopping off the tree roots as they lashed at her, but she couldn’t reach the ones that wrapped her feet and hips. The monster was lifting her toward its gaping mouth, where two rows of massive teeth awaited her. At the last moment, she made a lunge upward, bringing her blade up hard across the creature’s right eye.
It writhed in sudden pain, and a dull roaring noise spilled from its yawning mouth. It stopped drawing her in for a moment, and that was all she needed. She plunged the sword into the monster’s eye right up to the hilt, then drew it back and did the same to the left.
The tree monster roared, a deep thundering boom that rose and rose until it reached an unbearably high pitch. Dark blood spurted from both eyes, and black smoke poured from its mouth as if the monster was giving up its spirit. Then, with a shudder, it dropped Anja to the ground. The leaves swirled around it, and it turned into an innocent-looking tree again.
Anja didn’t waste a second. She leaped to her feet and charged across the chamber to aid Ben. As the tree monster had died, a skeleton duelist had managed to yank Ben’s legs out from under him, sending him sprawling to the ground in his heavy plate. As he struggled to rise, the skeletons piled onto him, tearing at his armor and trying to stab their blades in through the weak spots.
With a roar of battle-fury, Anja smashed into them like a tidal wave, sending them flying in every direction as she tore into them with her sword. Ben, given the moment’s respite that he needed, managed to launch himself up from the ground, and the skeletons fell back from him, smashing onto the ground.
Just like that, the tide of the battle turned. The skeletons were driven into disarray, and the two fighters charged them again and again, until there were none left. As Ben smashed the last skeleton’s head with a mighty punch from his gauntleted fist, an eerie quiet fell over the chamber. It was broken by a solid, metallic clink from over by the door.
“What’s that noise?” said Ben, whirling to look, but Anja was smiling.
“The legends of the dungeons are true,” she said. “Look by the door. It’s our reward for fighting the monsters of the dungeon.”
“Our… reward?” said Ben. “But I thought… well, that is, I never truly believed… I mean, I hoped…”
“And your hope has been rewarded,” said Marcus as he stepped into the chamber. When he realized that the battle was over, he’d quickly disengaged his awareness from the Dungeon Meld, bringing his full consciousness back into his body. He’d then hurried up into the chamber. Now was the time to try to bring these two fighters over to his side.
The two fighters raised their blades, but Marcus smiled and held up his empty hands. “I’m not here to fight. Come, take your gold. You’ve earned it. There’s more than gold here, too, it looks like. Potions, perhaps some jewels. These dungeons never cease to surprise me.”
“But who are you?” Anja asked warily as she and Ben approached.
Marcus spread his hands, indicating the expanse of the dungeon chamber. “I’m the Master of the Dungeons. These belong to me, and I’m in charge of guiding their creation and their progression.”
“You!” said Anja. “So you’re the one the Diremage is looking for!”
“Are you a vampire, then?” said Ben. He had pushed his helmet up, but the expression on his face was suspicious.
“I’m no vampire,” Marcus assured them. He lifted his upper lip so they could both see that he had no fangs. “I’m just a man—a man who got lucky and was granted great power.”
“We ought to capture you and take you back to the Diremage,” Anja said doubtfully, watching Marcus’s face. “The reward would no doubt be great…”
“No doubt!” Marcus agreed easily. “It’s true that he’d probably pay you well for the job. Once. But have a look at this haul. Would he pay you this well?”
The fighters seemed satisfied that Marcus did not have any drawn weapons and did not pose any immediate threat to them, so they approached, lowering their blades. Keeping a wary eye on Marcus, Ben stooped to look at the treasure. Gold coins piled in chests, alongside bags of rubies, ingots of good steel, and a couple of potions in small bottles.
“There’s a small fortune here,” he said in amazement, then he looked suspiciously at Marcus. “We could take this loot, and take you. That way we could profit twice!”
“That’s true, you could,” said Marcus. “But you’d never get to run a dungeon again. If you let me continue as the Dungeon Master, then you will be able to come back as often as you want. Every time you run the dungeon, you will get loot like this, or maybe even better. You can try to capture me and take me back to the Diremage, or you can ally with me, and return here to fight dungeons and earn massive rewards every time, as many times as you want.”
“What’s in it for you?” Anja asked suspiciously.
“Twenty percent,” Marcus replied without hesitation. “You fight, you earn, and I take a cut. I get to keep working on creating dungeons, and you get to keep earning. Everyone wins.”
“Unless we die in one of your dungeons,” Anja pointed out. “That was a near thing with the tree monster.”
Marcus shrugged. “You’re professionals, right? You fight for pay? This is the best offer you’re going to get to fight and do what you do best. You get consistent, reliable income, and the chance to sharpen your skills against a wide range of interesting monsters. I’ll have dungeons for you every time you come, and I’ll be creating new ones all the time. Or, you can take me back to Xeron and collect your reward. I guarantee you’ll never get a chance like this again if you do that.”
Anja glared at him. “How do we know we can trust you?” she demanded.
Marcus knew then that he had her. He smiled and spread his hands. “Come on,” he cajoled, “you’re an intelligent woman. You don’t get far in this life if you can’t tell a truthful man from a liar. You know as well as I do that I speak the truth.”
Anja looked from Marcus to the gold and back again, and a smile dawned on her face as she nodded slowly. She looked at Ben. The big guy saw her smile, shrugged, grinned, and then stepped toward Marcus, extending a hand. “I’m in,” he said.
“Sure, why not,” Anja said with a wry smile. “As you say, we’re paid fighters. What better way to earn than this? And you’re right—I can tell a liar when I hear one. I’m in.”
She stepped forward and shook Marcus’s hand as well. Her palm was callused with many years of practice with a blade. Her eyes
were hard and gray, but she smiled at him as she shook his hand.
“What will you do about the Diremage?” Marcus asked.
“Nothing,” Anja replied with a shrug. “We’re free agents, and we’ve not been paid yet. We got wind of this job through the bounty hunters’ guild, but we’re not under any obligation to see it through. Xeron put an advertisement out through the bounty hunters exchange up in the guild quarter. We’ve registered our interest in fulfilling the terms of that advertisement, but if we don’t report back before dawn tomorrow, our names will just be struck off the register of interested parties and someone else will be entitled to try. That’s it.”
“So, you’re bounty hunters by trade then?” Marcus asked.
Anja shrugged. “We’re just fighters. We do lots of things. I’ve been all over and fought for loads of different people. I partnered up with Ben here about a year ago, and we’ve done some good work together.”
“You’re not from Kraken, then?”
“I’m native,” put in Ben. “Anja’s from…”
“Somewhere else,” Anja cut in firmly, then changed the subject. “Come on, let’s get this loot packed up.”
They loaded their loot into a sack, and the three of them made their way back to the corridor. Back in the Underway, they found Jonah, Tyler, and Jek counting loot on the Underway floor.
“What’s this?” Jek asked as he saw the newcomers. All three duelists leaped to their feet and put their hands to their swords.
“Nothing to worry about,” Marcus said in a reassuring tone. “Just some friends of mine who have just done their first dungeon dive.”
He introduced the two teams to each other, and they exchanged greetings warily. Plainly, the duelists and the fighters were not about to become best buddies all at once. Marcus smiled. He took his cut from the duelists and from Anja and Ben, then sent the duelists on their way, telling them he would send them a message at the Challenger’s Blade Inn at the Duelists’ Plaza when he was ready to let them have another run.
“It won’t be more than a week,” he said, “but I might ask you to come to a different entrance next time.”
He didn’t want to have to walk all the way out here again if he didn’t have to, and if the fight with the ratmen happened between now and then, Marcus wanted to remain flexible and not have to leave to keep his appointment with a bunch of dungeon runners. The duelists left, after saying goodbye to Ben and Anja with cold courtesy.
“These duelists,” said Anja. “Never particularly friendly with outsiders.”
“It’s true,” said Ben. “Well, we’d better be off…”
“Where can I reach you?” said Marcus.
Anja gave him the name of an inn where she and Ben ate most evenings, the Rainy Maiden up near the guild quarter. Marcus bid farewell to his new adventurers, assuring them that he’d contact them when he was ready for them to run the dungeon again. They left, carrying their loot in sacks and chatting happily.
As they left, his dungeon progression updated.
Dungeon Master: Level 2
Dungeon Chambers: 3
Dungeons Fights: 5
Progress to next chamber: 150%
New Chamber Available!
This was good. Having the two teams run the dungeons simultaneously had given Marcus the progress he needed to get one new chamber, and half of what he needed to get the one after that.
That was a satisfactory result.
“All in all, a satisfactory day,” he said to himself. “New adventurers, and a new chamber to create with the ingredients I bought in the market!”
As he got ready to leave, packing up his chambers, he found himself thinking about the guild quarter. That was where his new adventurers spent most of their time, and they’d said they’d seen Xeron’s advertisement on the bounty hunters’ guild exchange. Marcus hadn’t been back to the guild quarter since he’d been chucked out of the thieves guild.
Situated on a high bluff overlooking both the docklands and the Merchants’ Town, the guild quarter was where the headquarters of nearly all the guilds in Kraken City were situated. It was quite an extensive area, and there was a wall around it on the side that faced the town. The wall was guarded, but not so much to keep people from coming in as to stop apprentices from getting out and causing trouble.
Just inside the wall, there was a cluster of inns, boarding houses, and exchanges where people could post advertisements of jobs for guild members to take up. Since many of the guilds were nefarious—the thieves guild and the assassins guild to name but two—the exchanges allowed prospective clients to post jobs anonymously if they so desired.
The client paid the exchange agent a significant fee and gave over the payment for the completed job to be kept in trust. If the job was successfully completed, the guild member who had done the job could claim his reward from the exchange agent and the whole transaction could be carried off without the client or the guild member ever knowing each other. Often, that was for the best.
This meant that the exchange agents were some of the most secretive men in the city. They knew all the dirtiest secrets of all the wealthy folk in town, because they handled all the nefarious business dealings between client and guildsman. The exchange men—and they were exclusively men—had one of the most sensitive, secretive, and well-paid jobs in the city. They lived in almost monk-like seclusion, but in great luxury. They never married or had children, and they only ever mingled socially with other members of their exclusive, elite social group.
In this case, however, it was clear that Diremage Xeron had waived the right to privacy. Such jobs carried less of a fee, but also allowed the rumor mill that thrived in Kraken City to run overtime. Guild members of all classes were notorious gossips, and if a man wanted news to get around, he had only to mutter it in the guild quarter to be guaranteed that it would spread like fire through the city.
As Marcus packed up his dungeons and prepared to leave, he pondered the fact that Xeron had deliberately waived his anonymity. Xeron was a rich man, and he wouldn’t need to reduce the fee. He could have paid for anonymity if he’d wanted it, and so not paying for it was a calculated move.
The news of the dungeons, the Diremage’s interest, and the fiction that there were vampires in the Underway, would be all through the city by now, and for some reason that was exactly what Diremage Xeron wanted. The dwellers in the Underway could expect an ever-increasing level of interest in the near future, Marcus suspected.
In the past, the Underway had generally gotten no interest from anyone, and that was why it had remained such a relatively safe place for the desperate and the fallen to live for so long. The dungeons—and Xeron’s rumor-spreading—would change that, for sure.
Marcus waited for half an hour to give Ben and Anja plenty of time to get away, then headed out into the late afternoon sun. The two dungeon spheres bounced along in his pockets as he strode up toward Merchants’ Town through the docklands.
As he walked, he thought through his next steps. There was no doubt that in the very near future, Marcus would have to consider building aboveground. The thought of the Wasteland came to him, and he pondered once again the potential for a stronghold there. It was boggy and haunted, sure, but the bogs might be drained with Kairn’s expertise—dwarves were very good builders, after all—and the ghosts and wights should not represent too great a threat. There was a good entrance to the Underway, surrounded by ruins, that could be rebuilt.
An above ground stronghold with an entrance to the Underway, and a permanent place for his dungeons. Yes, it would be asking for trouble from Diremage Xeron, but that was inevitably going to happen at some point anyway. Better to have a strong place to defend above ground and be able to set the terms of the engagement.
Yes, as soon as the fight with the ratmen had been concluded, Marcus would move toward establishing the Gang aboveground. That would be the next milestone for the Gutter Gang.
Chapter 20
As Marcus made his w
ay back to the Wasteland, through the quieting streets of Merchants’ Town, he decided to take a short detour to have a look at his old stamping ground, the guild quarter. He walked past the closing market stalls and shops shutting up their storefronts in the dimming light, and found that people smiled at him as he passed. A few even greeted him cordially with a nod or a friendly word.
He looked down at himself. His clothing was clean and obviously well-made. His cloak swirled behind him, and his hands were warm inside tight gloves of soft black leather. Outside the glove on his left hand, he openly wore the gold ring with the black stone that the mysterious hooded woman had given him on his previous trip through the Merchants’ Town. His long, well-made sword jogged his hip companionably as he walked.
I’ve really come a long way from the days of my youth, he thought. Before he’d joined the thieves guild, he’d been a ragged street-child, by turns thief, beggar, and pickpocket as the situation required. Afterward, his time was spent exclusively within and around the guild, except when he was sent out on very specific errands. Now, he was a well-dressed man in his prime with time of his own to spend. He strode through the town, with a sword at his hip and gold in his pouch. And, of course, an immense magical power at his command.
Feels good, he said to himself. It certainly feels good.
The wall around the guild quarter looked smaller than it had seemed when he was a youth, but the guards on the gates and the man in the watchtower looked no less fierce. The wall was guarded exclusively by guildsmen—members of the fighters’ guild, generally. The city guard were known to be lax, corrupt, and prone to taking bribes, and so the Council of Guildmasters had long ago agreed that they would use only their own men for the role.
The guilds operated almost like an independent body within Kraken. They paid their taxes, nominally, but no tax inspector ever passed the walls and dared to try to inspect the books. The guilds’ independence was tolerated partly because they were such a long-established institution, but mainly because they provided a steady flow of highly trained fighters, assassins, spies, diplomats, and artisans for the use of the merchants and high nobles of Kraken City.