by Eric Ugland
The Vuilighelm kept its tentacle on my back, seeming to usher me along. Sure enough, as we walked, I could see Ragnar and Nikolai standing on a platform well out of the feces. There was a staircase leading out of the muck, and, at the back of the platform, a heavy wood door. I basically ran there, just desperate to get out of the poop water.
To one end was a chain hanging down with a handle, and I pulled it. Clean, clear water came pouring out of the ceiling, washing me off. I stripped down to nude, and I pulled that handle again and again until I was finally cleansed of all the filth I’d bathed in. It was terrible in so many revolting ways I’d prefer to never think about again.
The creature seemed amused, watching us wash the gunk and grunge off, but made zero hostile movements. The gross old guy was fat and happy for the moment.
I dug out some clothes for me, getting down to the last of the stuff I’d purchased in Arenberg. It didn’t exactly fit, but was close enough for government work. As a duke, I figured that meant me. The bigger problem was armor. At least for me. Nikolai and Emeline only had their prison rags, and those certainly weren’t worth anything for our dungeon crawl.
For the moment, though, that’d have to do. I wanted to get into the dungeon. And fast. Everyone but me looked like shit. At least not in the literal sense as much, since the showers.
I pushed the door open just a little, and peeked outside. I saw a hallway made out of dark stone, just like everywhere else I’d seen here. A fair distance down the hall, there was another door coming in like a t-junction, and then another door opposite that door, and, waaaay down was just darkness. I could tell there was an end to the hall, but I couldn’t make out anything there. Clanging and banging came from one door, and relative silence from the other.
“Okay,” I said, putting on my best glare for Emeline, “no running and screaming this time. We have to move quietly to get the fuck out of here, okay?”
She frowned at me, but then gave a slight nod.
And then we left the poop zone.
Chapter 117
The doors opposite each other were just a little annoyingly off. I opened the one that didn’t have the loud clanging and banging behind it, and it was stairs going up. I could hear the faint tromp of boots and the yelling of guards.
Wrong way.
I turned and checked the other door. As soon as it opened, the noise inside stopped, and an intense dry heat washed out and over us. Looking through, a brilliant orange light came out, and as soon as my eyes adjusted, I was looking at a forge. And a smithy. And a smith. A ridiculously muscular man without a shirt stared at us, a heavy-looking set of tongs hanging loosely in one giant mitt. He had a super square head on top of a body that seemed like it was nothing but muscle.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Montana,” I replied instinctually, “just, uh, passing through. Are you, uh—” That’s when I noticed the chains. They were hanging down from the ceiling, and went under the man’s oft-singed beard and attaching onto a collar around the man’s neck. It looked painful. “We are, well, escaping.”
“There is no escape,” the man said.
“Yeah, I don’t believe that.”
“This is my rescue party,” Emeline said.
“Some rescue,” the man replied. “There is no escape from here.”
“Going through the oubliette to the dungeon,” I said.
“That is real?” the man asked, his eyes going a little wide, hope very evident.
“It is,” I replied, forcing myself to believe I was telling the truth. “Just, well, I’m not exactly sure where the oubliette is.”
The man was just about to say something, but then he stopped himself. “If I tell you,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully, “you will take me with you.”
You have been offered a quest by [NAME UNKNOWN]:
A Potent Rescue
Trapped for decades, a man asks for your help in escaping the prison.
Reward for success: Directions to the Oubliette and [unknown]
Penalty for failure (or refusal): None
Yes/No
I looked to Nikolai, who shrugged.
“Okay,” I said, selecting yes.
The man grinned. His teeth were a reminder that neither dental hygiene nor technology had advanced much in the land of Vuldranni. The dude reached up and pulled the chain. Up high, I could see the anchor point in the ceiling.
“First step,” I said.
I walked over to the chain and pulled. Hard. For a moment it was just pressure, but I could feel, somewhere along the chain, one link was starting to go. There was a hard ping, and the weak link exposed itself. The chain fell from the ceiling.
Another big smile.
He took the chain far closer to the forge than I’d want to go, and chucked it in. After a moment of the intense heat, the chain was short enough not to get in the way. He still had a collar around his neck, but that’d have to be something we dealt with later. He tossed the tongs to the side, and picked up a big sledge.
“I am ready,” he said.
“You got a shirt?” I asked.
“No.”
“A name?”
“Donner.”
“You’re not with a party, are you?”
He looked confused, but shook his head. “No.”
“Fair enough! Lead us to the oubliette.”
Chapter 118
Turns out I really didn’t need a whole lot of help finding the oubliette. It was just at the dark end of the hallway. For a moment I felt taken advantage of, but I decided saving this dude from solitary confinement was probably worth a little trickery. At that moment, I thought about the fact that I’d just saved a man who’d been chained up in the bottom of a dungeon, and, yes, it would have been wiser for me to have found a little bit about Donner before I agreed he could tag along. But you know, worst case scenario, I figured we could use him to test for traps in the dungeon.
The door to the oubliette was more of a hatch, really, located in the floor, and made of metal.
It was very heavy, and the hinges groaned in protest, like the hatch hadn’t been opened in some time. The candle I carried barely made a dent in the darkness below, but I could make out vague stonework about thirty or forty feet down.
“So they just throw you in?” I asked.
“Yes sir,” Donner said.
Everyone looked to me. I wanted to look to Nikolai, but that didn’t seem to be an option. He looked wiped, barely standing. If someone was going to figure this nonsense out, it was going to be me. I reached into the bag, thinking rope, and I found rope in my grasp. I pulled it out and whipped up a quick double bowline. It’s a comfortable knot for the purposes of lowering a person. Much better than a single bowline, which can cause some real pain.
I said, “Donner, go grab a few of the candles or whatever around here, and chuck ‘em down in the hole. I’m going to drop Skeld then Ragnar down, just in case there’s someone, or something, down there that might cause us some problems. Then, the rest of y’all’ll ride down, and I’ll drop down last.”
Blinks.
“Let’s go!” I snapped. The people moved.
It took a second to drop the otters into the pit, and I could barely see them, spears out, forming something of a perimeter. Nikolai was next, and he needed a little more help. Emeline didn’t want to get into the de facto harness.
“There is no way out of there,” she said.
“You can go up the stairs if you like,” I replied.
“You know that is a death sentence.”
“Yup. So I guess the only question is, do you want to die in their hands, or do you want to take a chance with us?”
She paused. Thinking.
“And dude,” I continued, “this is the last time I’m asking. From this point on, you need to be with us. Whatever is down there, we need to be a cohesive unit if we actually want to survive.”
“Death or death, eh?” she asked.
“Giving up
or having hope.”
“Your hope is misplaced.”
“Hope is hope. Once that’s gone, you’re done.”
“Let us hope you are right,” she said, stepping into the loops. “Lower away.”
She was down by the time Donner came back, and it was just the two of us standing above the hole. Thundering sounds were coming from the staircase.
“Guards coming,” Donner said, chucking a hefty sack down into the oubliette.
“You do something vile to get stuck down here?”
Donner shook his head. “Debt,” he said softly.
I could hear the guards tromping down the stairs. I knew our time was almost up, but I needed to find out more.
“Doesn’t make sense, man. You’ve been down here on your own for, what, years? All because you were in debt?”
“Never could get out of debt. They have me working here to pay it off.”
“How much money did you borrow?”
“It never is how much money you borrow, it is how much they ask you to pay back.”
I looked at the guy, trying to get a read on if he was lying. Was he some mass-murdering fuckhead who’d kill me as soon as I went to sleep? Was this guy the Osterstadt Hannibal Lecter and I was just setting him free to eat people’s faces off? He didn’t seem that smart, and his story was just dull enough to believe.
“Okay. You’re up, Donner. Or should I say down.”
He grinned, and got in the harness. I lowered him down. By far, he was the heaviest of our party. As his feet touched the ground, the door to the stairway shot open, and guards thundered out. I dropped the rope into the hole, gave a jaunty little wave, and then stepped backwards and fell into the darkness below.
Chapter 119
I hit the ground a whole lot harder than I expected, and it hurt a whole lot more because it wasn’t flat. There was a protrusion, round and bricked and definitely made for the purpose of breaking ankles when people were thrown down in the oubliette — a detail made explicitly clear by the remains of those who’d been thrown in recently. Most of whom had broken leg bones, and most of whom had died in the midst of crawling away in what had to be excruciating pain. I did a quick check to make sure nothing was broken, at least not in an incapacitating way. I was good, but still, my shins hurt like hell.
The guards glowered down at us as they hurled invectives at me, mostly along the lines of how I was the stupidest prisoner in the history of the prison, the only idiot who voluntarily went into the oubliette to die and that I deserved all the hell I would find starving in the darkness below.
Then they slammed the hatch shut, and I heard a lock crunch into place. Darkness.
“Hey Donner,” I said, “about those lights?”
“They are in the bag,” he replied. “Candles.”
I pushed into darkvision and saw the bag a few feet away from me. Inside were a bunch of candles, different sizes, definitely handmade, and mostly half-burned.
“Anyone have a lighter?” I asked.
Nothing. Not even stares because, you know, it was dark. But I could feel the irritation swarming over me from nearly everyone in the oubliette.
Finally Skeld walked over and produced a small tinder box. With a little work, he had a small flame going, and we were in business.
“Let’s find that dungeon,” I said.
The oubliette was depressing, in a fundamental way. I mean, obviously it was done that way on purpose. It was built to send people to their ends, a way to execute a person without actually having to execute them. Pretty much the ultimate expression of passive aggression.
The place was a large upside down bowl, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 yards or so wide, with a rather shallow angle where the wall met the floor. I have no idea how the place was constructed, but it couldn’t have been fun. The floor was a bit unorthodox in that it seemed only accidentally flat. Bricks had been put in at odd angles, so I was constantly tripping. Emeline, for her part, face planted, made a few noises, and then promptly plopped down and announced she needed to rest. Nikolai just sat on the floor near the middle, somewhere between meditating and sleeping. The Lutra scurried along, moving fast, finding nothing. Donner was slower, picking a point on the wall and looking very carefully. He, too, found nothing.
I found lots of bones. Bones telling the tragic tales of the oubliette’s previous residents. I found teeth marks on the bones, some from smaller creatures, rats or their ilk, but also larger. There were manacles aplenty, quite a few chains, and one dagger. More depressing, there were a few trinkets, clearly precious mementos prisoners smuggled in. A locket with two paintings of young girls. Wedding bands. Thinking as a gamer, I wanted to snag all that stuff and resell it. Thinking as a good person, I took the jewelry with the plan that I’d find a better resting place than in this dank pit.
Along the way, I kept a close eye on the wall. Feeling the bricks, testing for anything that might be pushable or pull-able. Stepping on upright bricks just in case they were hidden buttons. But by the time I’d made two circuits of the place, I noticed everyone else had retreated towards the center, and were sitting very still and very quiet. Only one candle remained lit.
Things were looking poorly.
I needed to get morale up for everyone. Myself included. I stood in the darkness, unable to face my colleagues. I leaned my head against the bricks, feeling the moisture trickle down my neck. Idly I wondered about the water, where it had come from. How it had filtered down to this pit. But mostly I thought about the series of misadventures that led to me leaning against the stone wall of an oubliette. I thought about Cleeve again, wondering what he’d do in this situation. He likely wouldn’t have found himself in this situation, he knew how to play the political games well enough that he’d have found a way to weasel Nikolai free. But that wasn’t me. Could it be me though? What if this was the end? Obviously it wouldn’t really be the end for me, I’d pop back up on the other side of the country, starting all over again. But the people I cared about in this country were in the hole with me and I couldn’t leave them there. And even though I wanted to lay down and scream my frustrations at the sky, to scream that I’d been the good guy and this shit isn’t supposed to happen to the good guys, I knew that’d only make things worse.
These friends of mine, they’d followed me into something most people would consider a hell, and then done it because I said I could get them through to the other side. That meant, no matter what, I had to get them out. I needed to lie to them, and I guess myself. To say I knew the way was still there, and we’d still escape. That I was still rescuing them.
Time to reach into the bag of tricks. And by bag of tricks, I mean my bag of holding. I dug around inside, grabbed the huge feather mattress I’d liberated from the bandits’ castle, and laid it on the floor. Then, I got some of the packs from the men who’d been hunting us, and tossed them on the ground.
“Rations and sleeping quarters,” I said.
I kept digging around as my party made their way over to the mattress, and started looking through the packs.
“New clothes,” I said, pulling out some pants, tunics, boots, and even a set of almost good leather armor.
Donner was quick to descend on the clothes, and had himself decked out in a hurry. Nikolai took a moment longer, but he looked nearly human again now that he wasn’t wearing the rotting cloth that’d been forced on him by the prison. Emeline picked a few things up, held them to herself, and shook her head.
“Nothing for a lady?” she asked.
“Uh,” I stammered, reaching into the bag and thinking of dresses.
Amazingly, something came into my grasp. It felt silky and ridiculous, but I pulled it out of the knapsack all the same.
A ballgown.
“Really?” she asked.
“Kinda all I have.”
She snatched it from me, and walked away into the vague darkness, ostensibly for a modicum of privacy. “This better fit,” she threw over her shoulder. “An
d none of you better laugh.”
Nikolai tapped me on the shoulder, and then walked away, making it clear he expected me to follow. So I did. He walked all the way to the side of the wall, just about as far away from where everyone else was sitting.
“We have a moment to speak here,” he said.
“Looks like it, yeah.”
“Please do not interrupt me. I feel as I have little time left, so to waste it on your foolishness hurts me to my soul.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Montana—”
“Dude, knock it the fuck off. Let’s take a minute and talk about what the fuck is going to happen now, okay?”
“You think to tell me—”
“We don’t need to fight, bud. We need to work together. You can yell at me all you want once you get some levels back in you—”
“I will never—”
“Never say never. Instead, how about you say, ‘hey, Montana, I’m gonna let the ‘tude drop, and we’re going to get out of this mess together?’”
“I will not survive a dungeon, even if you manage to find it.”
“Once we’re in a party, —”
“The party will split all XP equally. You have brought two others with us. We will only receive 25% of the experience, and that will not bring me levels nearly quick enough to not perish in there.”
“Wait, what about Skeld and Ragnar?”
“Your hirð only counts as a single entity within a party. You all receive equal XP.”
“Hardly seems fair.”
“If they leave your hirð, all the XP they accrued while in the hirð is stripped from them.”
“Okay, so there is a downside. But—”
“No.”
“Either you join me, or I join you.”
His face was impassive as he stared at me. “You do not realize the severity of the ask. We will have our lives tied together inextricably. You would be giving all of your political power over to me. It is beyond absurd, and it is completely at odds with what Coggeshall intended for you.”