“We’ll be back!”
Back? But why? Why return? They outnumbered and outgunned me. Why wouldn’t they just attack and get it over with?
Then my shocked brain kicked itself out of neutral and into a halting first gear. Scarface was hurt badly, and one of the Mooks had just run headlong into a trap. The group probably guessed there would be more traps like that one, and had decided the odds of hunting down a man in his own personal house of horrors were not in their favor. So they had gone off to find a few buddies before coming back to get some revenge.
This felt right to me, but I had to know for sure. My adrenaline high was gone, which meant my strained muscles were starting to shake and the graze along my shoulder was beginning to throb. The stairs I had raced through in seconds seemed to stretch on for miles, now. This was something I had to do, though. I forced my shaking limbs up one step at a time until the top was once more in sight.
There was no sign of Pretty Boy, Scarface, or Mook Two. However, Mook One was lying in the middle of the floor, half a dozen heavy bronze darts sticking out of her motionless chest. I crept over to check the body, and body it was. She was dead as a doornail. I was kind of torn about this fact. On one hand, there was a dead woman lying in a puddle of her own blood within arm’s reach. On the other, she had probably been trying to kill me, and I was likely in shock, my emotions dulled.
I noticed she was missing her sword. It looked like this group didn’t give two shits about leaving their fallen comrades for scavengers, but weren’t going to leave behind valuable gear.
Asshole priorities.
After judging I was safe for the moment, I hobbled back downstairs on aching legs, terrified at what I might find when I reached the bottom. It must have been five minutes since I left Gazra-tam, and if she was dead—No, don’t think about it, I thought. Just keep working the problem!
I made it down the last few steps and nearly cried when I saw the Mo’hali girl’s chest still moving in rapid, shallow breaths. I thanked God, Dolos, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whatever higher power granted miracles on this hellish world!
Grabbing my pack, I dumped the contents on the floor and searched until I found the red cloth bag of medical supplies. I rushed to Gazra-tam's side. Yes, still breathing.
Now that I was listening, her breaths sounded strangely normal, actually—a bit wheezy and shallow, but nothing like the wet slurping I’d expected from a shot-out lung. My hands were oddly steady as I unbuttoned her shirt to find the wound slowly oozing blood. It wasn’t gushing, just trickling out like a bad cut. I looked closer and saw that in the mess of flesh and blood, and bits of bone…was a flash of copper or something. Holy crap! Gazra-tam’s rib had stopped the bullet!
For a moment I just sat there as relief mixed with exhaustion. To think that less than an hour earlier I’d been getting ready to leave Gazra-tam here, alone, while I went off to who knows where. Over the last few weeks after saving my life, she’d taught me the language, showed me how to survive, and had been nothing but the best friend a person could ask for. The moment stretched and I began really thinking about how different my time on Ludus would have been if I’d been truly alone.
But then when I’d begun getting curious, wanting…more, instead of putting more effort into working together, I’d wanted to go solo. And for what? Better food? New faces? Cities? Pardon my Luda, but rot that.
I snapped out of my funk and stopped beating myself up. My best friend on this screwed-up world was hurt, bleeding while I was daydreaming. She’d likely lost consciousness from the kick in the head more than being shot, but who knows? It had all definitely been traumatic all around. I stained her skin orange with a bit of iodine, then hunted for my tweezers. Oh, right, they were steel. Well, more than one way to skin a…no, bad analogy. Fingers would have to do. I put on a pair of gloves, and carefully reached down to grasp the bullet embedded in Gazra-tam’s muscle.
She screamed.
In hindsight, I should have expected it. I sprawled backwards as the Mo'hali girl reacted with all the frenzy of a wounded animal. Her cries were primal and gut-wrenching as wild eyes searched desperately for an enemy to sink her claws into. Then they settled on me and the rage instantly left her as she slumped back to the bedroll. My own heart was pounding as I looked down at the small lump of metal in my hand. I showed it to Gazra-tam. “Something on you,” I offered weakly.
Surprisingly, she smiled at me. “Thank you, Zac Riggs.” It must have taken a considerable effort for her to get that out, much less keep her tone calm. One of her ribs was well and truly messed up, her chest had to feel on fire, and she probably had a terrible headache. Still, after the initial shock she was bearing the pain stoically.
“Be still and don’t talk. I’ll help.” A quick spray from my water bottle flushed the wound, and then I added another swab of iodine before finishing off with a pressure bandage. I eyed a roll of athletic tape skeptically. In movies and books, people wrapped broken ribs with the stuff, but I only had one roll and if the wound swelled, the bandage could make breathing even harder. I decided to leave it alone until later and moved to my handful of painkillers.
Aspirin wasn’t going to work, since it would thin the blood. Maybe ibuprofen. I also had a few doses of oxycodone from back when I had gotten my wisdom teeth out. I’d kept them with the intention to help me hike out of the bush if I got a cracked ankle or something, but Gazra-tam needed the good stuff more than me right now.
For a moment, I thought about relative reactions to drugs, that what worked for humans might be poison for Mo’hali, but dismissed it. We could eat the same food without a problem, so it was likely that our physiologies would be close enough to use each other’s medicines.
“Eat this. Don’t, uhhh—bite. Only eat.” I didn’t know the word for chew. But she understood and took the little pill and a swig of water to wash it down. “Stop the pain. Help you sleep,” I explained, and she nodded, then winced.
“You are a friend, Zac Riggs.”
The tears that had been hovering at the corners of my eyes finally fell. I felt guiltier than probably ever before in my life. “No… I… I left you… I…”
She cut me off. “You are a friend. My friend.” Her breathing was ragged and shallow, but she must have tapped a store of inner strength. “Didn’t leave. Saved me. Protected me. Important. More than a friend.”
I thought about that for a long second. This alien woman had been a part of my life for less than a month. We hadn’t even been able to speak complete sentences to each other for half that. And yet, despite all of this, she really was like a sister. No, screw that, she was my sister in all but blood. “Yes, more than a friend. Family.”
She sighed. “Thank you, Zac Riggs-tam.”
I blinked. That…wow. I didn’t have anything to say to that, so I didn’t say anything, just sat there holding Gazra-tam’s hand. Slowly her grip relaxed and her breathing evened out. I didn’t know if I had been there for five minutes or five hours, and it didn’t matter. As screwed up as Ludus was, it had at least one thing in common with home: At the end of the day, being there for your family was everything.
Once I was sure Gazra-tam was asleep, I quietly stood. Sitting here wasn’t helping her get any better and she didn’t need my comfort right now.
Now it was time to focus on survival. There was no telling how long it would take Pretty Boy to get back. He’d sounded confident, like he had a gang of friends to back him up. We weren’t being rushed by an army of assholes yet, obviously. Maybe I’d met a scouting group or something and we had a few days to get out of here.
But Gazra-tam wouldn’t be moving in a couple days, not fast, at least. This meant flight was not an option for us, which left, “Fight.” Would fighting even be viable? I decided it depended on a lot of things, not least of which was luck. Maybe we could just move, though. If I moved Gazra-tam into the middle of the dungeon then—
Wait. The middle of the dungeon. There was supposedly a hoard of tr
easure at the middle of every dungeon, at least Gazra-tam had said so, and this seemed to be common knowledge on Ludus. For a minor dungeon like this, the rewards generally wouldn’t be amazing, but they might be useful, not the gold and gems of video games and tabletop RPGs. Ludus dungeons had useful treasures like enchanted weapons, stuff from Earth, magic gadgets, and even healing potions. Yeah, supposedly there were real-life miracle cures waiting at the bottom of a giant fortress designed to kill you. This was ridiculous, but I was choosing to believe it and not complain about it—much.
Engineering Ludus, Chapter Five
Now that my goal was clear, there were a few preparations to make. I left the water bottle next to Gazra-tam in case she woke up, then picked up my trusty e-tool and the rough dungeon map we’d sketched. I took a final look back at the sleeping form of my friend, my sister. The last thing I wanted to do was leave her alone, but there wasn’t any helping it. I took a deep breath before turning my back on the camp and setting off deeper into the labyrinth.
Exploring the dungeon hadn’t been particularly hard before, just painstakingly slow. Some rooms were a vast expanse of traps while others didn’t have a single one. Each had to be approached one step at a time, looking for anything the least bit out of place before putting a foot down. Even knowing where the safe paths were didn’t do too much to speed things up, especially in my sore and exhausted state.
One weird thing Gazra-tam and I had found before was a jammed door that had led to a big, empty room, empty except for all the weird skeletons. It’d almost looked like something, or lots of somethings, had been locked in there and starved to death. Maybe they’d been Fuzzy’s friends. I could only hope.
Suddenly, I belatedly realized that in my rush to make sure Gazra-tam was okay and then get help, I’d forgotten about the gash on my shoulder. Thankfully it wasn’t doing more than oozing a bit of blood, and even though it hurt like a son of a bitch now that I was actually thinking about it, I could still freely move my arm. In the immortal words of the Black Knight, “Tis but a flesh wound!”
As I moved through the deadly maze, I reflected on the traps. Whoever had designed this place had definitely gone for quantity over quality, or maybe quantity over variety. I wasn’t sure about the relative sophistication of dungeon traps on Ludus, obviously.
What this dungeon had was lots of pressure plates, trip wires, and pitfalls. A few of them were a bit more exotic, like acid sprays from the wall, and a high-pressure water jet that would cut through rock for a few seconds. But by and large, most traps were the same spikes, or rock falls, or arrows. If I had been in charge of the place, I would have laid everything out differently. Let’s just say Kevin McAllister was a role model for eight-year-old Zac and in some ways I’m still a kid at heart.
Then I arrived at what we’d thought was the final room. It was certainly near the center of the labyrinth, and there was more ornamentation in this area than the rest of the place. Walls had little quartz inclusions with abstract swirls, making the magical lighting glint on the walls. The floor was checkered with an odd pattern of stones. This place also had the most complicated traps of the entire dungeon, which was why I hadn’t wanted to risk going inside before.
There was a stone slab just above the entrance that was obviously rigged to drop, and when I started to pry up a trap tile, it had creaked ominously. The pressure plates were booby trapped, and the entire damn floor was covered with them. Nobody could get across without stepping on one, and I was willing to bet that triggering them with a heavy rock would also slam the door in my face, locking the room permanently.
There just had to be a solution. The entire dungeon seemed designed to reward people who were smart and careful, at least after getting past the monsters outside. So why would the designer create a no-win scenario for the last room? It just didn’t make sense. I didn’t know the point of the dungeons on Ludus, but maybe this one was some kind of test.
Were the tiles a hint? The tiles themselves were made of four distinct types of stone, scattered across the floor. But as I searched for a pattern I realized there was no way to walk the whole way across on a single type of tile. Every path of a different stone was broken up in at least one spot. Maybe there’s a lever or button. I searched the hallway leading up to the room but came up blank, no hint of a way through.
“This room won’t beat me,” I whispered. Then louder I said, “Hear that? I’m gonna get through this room like I got through all the others!” Of course, I was speaking English, so even if the walls could hear me they likely wouldn’t understand a word. In fact, they would probably laugh at me. Heck, they probably were laughing at me. There was no telling what magic could do and those sparkly walls looked pretty smug to me right now.
Huh. Would you look at that?
What I had taken for an abstract pattern of light on the walls actually looked a little odd. All of the bits of quartz were evenly spaced, and wandering from the top to the bottom, but always advancing from one end of the room to the other. When I checked the other side, it was a mirror image of the first. Every sparkle matched.
Then I looked up, and down, and back up. “Son of a—” The ceiling had the same inclusions, and, lo and behold, the spacing matched. Well, this is worth a shot, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Some quick work liberated a couple of decent-sized bricks from the wall.
In front of me, I had four choices of tiles to step on, one of each color. Gingerly, I set the masonry on the tile directly below the first crystal.
A click resounded through the room and I flinched back, expecting the ceiling to come crashing down on me, except it didn’t.
I scratched my chin as I stared and worked through the evidence. Either I had picked the one stone in four that wouldn’t kill me by sheer chance or I had guessed right and the ceiling was a map. I was willing to take these odds and keep experimenting.
Moving forward, I crossed the tile, confirmed where I should go next, and put down another brick. I was ready for the click this time and controlled my reaction. At least this time I didn’t jump like someone had put an ice cream cone to my lower back.
So far so good, still no death trap triggered, nor at the next tile, or when I took another step. Step after step I crossed the room with a trail of crystal stars as my guide.
With a final, resounding click I reached the far end of the room. This time, though, it was accompanied by the sound of grinding stone. The small door blocking my path was sinking into the floor. As soon as it settled into place I took my first step into the dungeon’s treasure room.
***
I got back to camp a few hours after I’d left. Gazra-tam was still sleeping peacefully. I stood there watching her for a few minutes because I hated to wake her, but finally gave her a light shake. She sniffed as her eyes cracked, and she croaked, “Zac Riggs-tam?”
“Yes, I’m here, Gazra-tam. How you feeling?”
She was slow to respond, obviously still feeling the medicine she’d taken. “Sleepy. Thirsty.”
“Drink,” I said, holding a bottle to her lips and she gulped down a mouthful of cool water. Then I pulled a small vial out of my pocket, one of two things I had brought back from the treasure room. “Drink this? Heal?” Inside was a thin red liquid that looked exactly like what I would imagine a health potion looked like. Of course, it could very well be the local equivalent to drain cleaner, and I could barely speak Luda, much less read the squiggles on the label.
Gazra-tam, though, certainly recognized it. Her eyes fluttered a bit wider and her mouth opened and closed like she was trying to figure out exactly what question to ask. With fangs flashing, the expression looked much different for a Mo’hali than a human. In the end, she settled on, “How?” I just shook my head and smiled as I yanked the stopper and held it out.
Once she had finished the healing draught, Gazra-tam settled back to sleep. I was a little disappointed when she didn’t instantly heal back to tip-top shape, but if the potion helped even the tiniest bit,
my effort would have been worth it. Of course, I’d found another prize, too.
For a treasure room, the place had been surprisingly bare, just one long stone shelf underneath a giant mural of some odd-looking bald dude with whacky fashion taste. On that shelf had been the health potion, a couple of bronze short swords, some odd crystals, a stack of newspapers from the late Nineties in England, and the small wooden box I held in the palm of my hand.
Gazra-tam had told me about things like the one inside this box. It was a Dolos orb, a little chunk of, well, I didn’t know what, that could give the wielder a wide variety of powers. From what I understood, this little marble-looking thing was worth a small fortune, which made sense.
The money from selling it, although I didn’t know to whom, would be enough for a few very lavish years in civilization, or seed money to start a new life in a city.
I was tempted, damn, was I tempted. If the healing potion worked, the two of us could make a run for the nearest decent-sized city, sell the orb, and start new lives. But this idea had lots of assumptions, and was based on things not suddenly going sideways. It also relied on Gazra-tam changing her mind on visiting civilization.
Ultimately, the lure of money was less than power. I realized the idea of some sort of supernatural abilities appealed to me. A mansion would be nice, but you can’t put a price on being able to shoot lasers out of your eyes—which again, made the high value of a Dolos orb very understandable.
I had no idea what this thing did, though. They were apparently all different, and while this orb did come with a note, it wasn’t particularly informative. In clear, blocky script and five different languages were exactly two words: “Eat Me.” Someone on this world was a fan of the classics.
Delvers LLC- Surviving Ludus Page 4