by Eric Ugland
I knelt down to pick up my pet mimic.
It was a small monster, just under a foot long, seven inches wide, and nine inches to the top of his arch. Two eyeballs were on the front of the chest lid, and where the chest would have opened was his mouth. Wide open, the little guy breathed happily, kind of dog-like. The interior of his mouth was a dark purple, almost black. His tongue was only slightly lighter, but still purple. Now that I was holding him, he took an interest in the tent. He didn’t smell like anything. And he felt like wood. It was all very odd.
“You need a name, little guy,” I said to the mimic.
It moved its eyes to look at me. Which was disconcerting, because the eyes literally moved on the chest, from pointing forward to being straight up on the top, looking up at me.
I blinked at him, and he blinked back at me. Mimicking, if you will.
“Okay, so, name,” I said.
One eye went up a little, and one eye went down a little, I think he was confused.
I was confused. What does one name a mimic? Chesty? That seemed a little on the nose, and perhaps a little stupid.
“How about Barry?” I asked. “I’m going to name you Barry.”
The thing made a noise, kind of like a chirp I guess, and it closed its eyes and basically did a little dance in my hands.
“I take it you like the name,” I said.
Barry chirped.
“Are you done goofing off?” Nikolai snapped from the other side of the room.
“Not yet,” I shouted back.
He harrumphed, and kept looking out the gap at whatever was outside.
A little notification popped up.
You have successfully tamed a juvenile Mimic (lvl 1).
Official recognition that Barry was my tamed Mimic. I guess I needed to name him before the game/world considered him to have been formally tamed.
Nice.
I set him on Nikolai’s cot, then walked over to Nikolai. I peered around him, looking out of the tent flap.
It was the jungle.
Or a jungle. Our tent sat at the edge of a large clearing. Trees were all around the tent, but not a single one in front of the tent. About a hundred yards away, a massive green stone ziggurat rose high out of the verdant grass. Everywhere else was unbelievably thick with tropical trees, their tops a virtually unbroken canopy, at least, as far as I could see. Above was a sky of sorts, a deep blue with occasional puffy white clouds. But there was something that seemed a little off about it. Nothing I could point to as being obviously fake, but it just seemed, well, not quite real.
The ziggurat was definitely the focal point of the whole area, and was undoubtedly where we needed to go in order to get down to the next level. It was made of greenish rock cut into bricks the size of Volkswagens, and though it kind of seemed to squat on the landscape, it also seemed to soar into the sky. Big, in every dimension. On the face we could see, there was a staircase running up the middle, going all the way to almost the top. There was a small cube made out of the same type of stone, and, from where I was looking, it seemed like there was a small structure at the very top, something along the lines of a gazebo over an altar. Except made out of stone. A set of stairs was cut into the cube, looking narrow enough to be a perfect ambush spot. At no point on the building, at least where I could see, was there an entrance. No doors. No looming dark passages. It was just a prodigious edifice in the middle of a jungle clearing.
I won’t lie and say I didn’t feel a looming fear at what we might be about to encounter.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think we will not know what we are up against until we step foot out of this tent. And when we step foot outside, we must be as close to one-hundred percent as possible.”
“Which means waiting for the sleeping sickness to wear off these idiots,” I said, pointing my thumb over my shoulder.
Nikolai nodded.
I heard rustling, and turned to see Emeline kneeling by the rations, pulling out some food for herself. This particular dress was one of the more ridiculous ones I’d taken from the ruined castle. It had quite a bit of extra, well, floof attached to it, and looked like she’d have to have assistance to get through most doorways. But she looked pretty in it, a little low cut for adventuring, but for looking good, it was, well, good.
She ate.
Nikolai ate.
I found out that the items Barry was willing to eat were, well, anything I gave him. And several things I didn’t give him. He was the most omni omnivore I’d yet encountered.
But mostly we waited.
And waited.
Time outside the tent was mostly static. The same clouds flew across the sky. Not quite in a circle, but there was definitely a pattern. No signs of life. No bugs in the grass. No wind rustling the leaves of the thousands of trees around us.
It was odd. Disconcerting.
And, through it all, the snores of the otters. And Donner.
Finally, after the second time the three of us had gotten hungry and tucked into our diminishing reserves of food, Skeld woke up.
He scrambled to his feet, fumbling for a weapon before actually looking around and realizing he was safe. Ragnar was next. Then finally Donner, who woke up like he’d just had the best sleep of his damn life. He stretched, belched, coughed, and scratched himself like he hadn’t a care in the goddamn world. Which, in a way, I guess he didn’t.
Despite food being what got them into the mess, they were all ravenous by the time they were fully awake, and between the three of them, they polished off our remaining rations. While they relaxed, we explained what happened and I introduced them to Barry and Barry to them.
Ragnar found Barry delightful, Skeld thought Barry was weird, and Donner just gave me a look like I was a dark wizard who should be put down for the good of all the people in Vuldranni.
Finally, we were ready to step into the next level of the dungeon.
Chapter 144
As soon as my foot went through the tent, before it even hit the grassy ground below, noise erupted from the jungle. Birds seemed to appear out of nowhere, then flew up and away. Drums thundered out, then echoed off the stone wall of the ziggurat. That was disturbing, but even worse was the primal screams and bestial roars that answered and overpowered the drumming. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach, that of impending violence.
“Run,” I said, picking Barry up and took off sprinting for the ziggurat.
A quick glance back over my shoulder made me realize I was much faster than anyone else in my party. Also, the trees were shaking like something was coming through them. Either a few very big things or a TON of little things.
I tucked Barry in the crook of my arm like a football carry. I could feel him squirming a little, trying, perhaps, to get his eyes in a spot where he could see what was going on. I don’t know. Mimics are weird.
I slid to a stop at the base of the ziggurat, and turned to get a sitrep. It wasn’t great. The Lutra were already catching up to me, but Donner was a ways behind them, Nikolai was struggling to keep his speed up, and poor Emeline was way in the back, a mess of tule, silk, and petticoats.
The real problem, however, was what was emerging from the tree line.
Humanoids. With weapons. Screaming, and frothing at the mouth with an obvious desire to kill everything. The creatures were on the small side, between myself and the Lutra in size. They swarmed over every single bit of the ground, absolutely covering it. Thousands upon thousands, everywhere I looked. I just stood there with my eyes wide and my jaw open. It was more individual beings than I had ever seen, not only in the dungeon, not only in Vuldranni, but in my entire dual lifetimes. All of them coming at us, ready to kill.
But there was a decent gap between my party and the oncoming horde. I felt like we had an okay chance of getting up the ziggurat before the mob got us. And then Emeline tripped on her hem, and hit the ground. Hard.
As Skeld got to me, I pushed Barry into his hands.
; “To the top!” I yelled over the noise.
Skeld nodded, and scampered up the stairs.
“You help Nikolai,” I ordered Ragnar. Then, despite every fibre in my being screaming I was making the wrong decision, I sprinted towards the oncoming horde.
I covered the distance in the same time it took Emeline to get to her feet and untangle herself from her dress-mess. I slid to a stop, hauled her up over my shoulder, and was moving back towards the ziggurat in record time. If this were an NFL combine, I’d have the commenters checking their records. It’s amazing how much bonus speed imminent death offers.
The horde of whatevers was uncomfortably close, enough so that a number thought it’d be a good time to throw spears. But they weren’t judging my speed well, and I managed to expand the gap significantly by the time I stepped onto the Ziggurat.
I didn’t slow down at the stairs, charging up as fast as my legs would allow, and once again, I screamed some internal thanks to Mister Paul for how incredible my body was, powering me up those green stone steps as if it was a Sunday stroll through the park. Carrying a whole extra human felt like I had a lady’s purse over my arm. I was going so fast that I caught up to Nikolai and Ragnar, and I scooped Nikolai up on my other shoulder. Ragnar dropped on all fours and scurried up after me.
Emeline was screaming something, but I couldn’t understand her, so I tried to keep her shrieks out of my head.
The very top of the ziggurat had a small flat portion before continuing up. From there I could see the whole clearing around us, and appreciated the full extent of the horde. It was everywhere. They were everywhere. Everywhere I could see, from the trees to the ziggurat, was covered, not a bit of the ground showed through that horde. Everywhere.
The only salvation of the top was that there was but a singular staircase to the final structure, where Skeld and Donner stood yelling back at me.
I couldn’t hear them over the cacophony of the approaching wave of death, but I had the feeling it wasn’t something nice or encouraging, like, ‘there’s a giant stone door we can close to keep all these motherfuckers from ripping our flesh from our bones while we are still living.’ I had terrible feelings about how this dungeon challenge was going to pan out. A quick glance behind told me that I had, at best, one minute before the wave of things hit.
Once up the final staircase, I saw what was in front of us. Maybe the final challenge, maybe just the puzzle to get into the ziggurat. Yeah. Puzzle.
The very top of the ziggurat, the cube, had eight pillars supporting a dome. Each pillar had a large dial mounted on it, with eight pictograms inscribed around the dial and eight pictograms inscribed onto the dial.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I shouted.
Nikolai just shook his head, eyes wide while he tried to figure out what the hell we were going to do.
“Tell me you’ve got some sort of plan,” I said, starting to pull things off my person so I’d be ready to get into it with the oncoming horde.
“Die?” Nikolai asked, not taking his eyes from the puzzle. “I see nothing to indicate we even have any clues to this.”
“Well,” I said, starting down the staircase, “I’ll give you time. You solve the puzzle. Ragnar, Skeld, with me. The rest of you, figure out the puzzle.”
The two Lutra nodded gravely, and moved to the stairs. I stopped them and handed the Unfillable Knapsack to Ragnar.
“Keep this safe,” I said. “And you make sure you’ve got weapons for me any time I’ve got an empty hand. I have a feeling I’m going to have to empty this bag here. And if I look like I’m going down, pray the Xiphos has gotten enough durability, and you cut through the stone into whatever is below.”
I gave the Eternal Xiphos of Sharpness to Skeld. He nodded.
The creatures came up the stairs in a fury, looking to unleash hell upon us. They were salivating, mouths open wide, screaming something at me. I didn’t understand it, so I had a feeling it wasn’t words, just roaring.
Thirty seconds to contact. I stood at the bottom of the last set of stairs, getting a sword and sheath attached to my belt.
“I do not think this is a wise course of action,” Nikolai called out from above.
“You come up with something better, let me know,” I shouted, grabbing the proffered spear from Ragnar, who was standing above me on the top of the cube.
As the first creature reached about three levels down, I shot out the identification spell.
Slough Tungebur
Lvl 11 Berserker
Large square heads with low slung jaws were on top, and I could see teeth like protrusion outside the mouth and matching teeth inside the mouth. Double teeth. Small eyes tucked back on their heads, facing mostly forward. Predators. Decorative paintings, or maybe tattoos, covered their faces, necks and backs. Forked tongues flicked in and out quickly. Their skin was bumpy, mottled, akin to a toad’s. And they ran surefooted with longer limbs, wide feet, short tails, and a remarkable amount of muscle packed on their small torsos. Basic armor, a mixture of wood, shells, and other natural elements, was all they had for protection, and their weapons were mostly obsidian, gleaming black swords, axeheads, all manner of spears, and spear-like weapons. But no bows, at least not that I saw.
Roars echoed out, and their eyes registered nothing so much as excitement. The first one reached me, screaming bloody murder.
I intended to give it to them.
Chapter 145
I threw the spear as hard as I could, stopping the first tungebur in his tracks. His obsidian axe kept moving forward, and I snagged it out of the air. It was poorly weighted, the head far too heavy, but it looked sharp as hell.
A quick Sparta-kick, and I made a little room to get a swing around, getting the obsidian axe straight into tungebur number two’s head.
I reached back, and a spear was placed into my hand, just in time for me to start blocking a flurry of blows from tungeburs. They converged on me, but were getting in their own way more than overwhelming me.
I still worried they might, but a quick stab in one, and a smack upside the head to another, and the two bodies dropping to the stones caused the area to be really hard to stand up in, and several tungeburs slipped, and it was a domino effect, and there was a moment of breathing room as tungeburs tumbled down the side of the ziggurat.
Naturally, there were plenty more to take their place.
Hauling back, I threw the spear as hard I could, going straight through three of the assholes, and, as one connected unit, they spun around, knocking more of their brethren off the ziggurat.
I slid my foot under one of their spears, kicked it up, and threw it, hitting home somewhere in the midst of the horde. Throwing things worked reasonably well simply because there were so many viable targets. But it was difficult to hit the tungeburs who were right up in my face. For those, I had to keep other things around. I chanced a glance back to my hirðboys, and Ragnar was there with a sword. I noticed that Skeld, on the other side, held a spear. Choices.
Snatching the sword, I barely had enough time to bring it around to parry an obsidian blade. It shattered against my steel, the tiny pieces slicing across my face and the tungebur’s. But while it definitely hurt me, it didn’t seem to faze the creature. Weaponless, it just went to bite me, mouth opened way wider than I would have thought possible. With no real thought, I brought the sword point down as hard as I could on the tungebur’s head. The creature’s jaws slammed shut, biting its stupid tongue off, which promptly flopped all over the stairs.
The tungebur died immediately. But as it fell back, it took the sword with it.
Reaching back, I grabbed a spear and spun it around my body, thwocking a few of the tungeburs who were too close. Then I kebabbed two, lifting them up into the air before bringing their bodies down as a macabre club, smashing more tungeburs beneath them.
It was a weird fight. Actually, fight wasn’t quite the right descriptor for what was happening. I was so much stronger than these creatures, and I was d
oing so much more damage. They didn’t even have a chance to get me. There would be incidental damage here and there, but even when one of them got a lucky hit, my chainmail blocked most of the damage. Sure, there were truly minor wounds like when their obsidian blades shattered and cut me, but it was nothing that could ever be able to take me down. Or even slow me down.
One tungebur did get super lucky, taking advantage of one of his brethren dying a gruesome death and holding on dearly to my gloves so I couldn’t get a weapon up. The lucky tungebur scurried up my arm, obsidian dagger poised to go through my eye.
An arrow zipped right by my ear and drilled right through the lucky tungebur’s mouth.
I shot a glance over my shoulder, and saw Emeline give me a wink. I laughed. Covered in blood, I laughed. That’s when I started to get the feeling things were going to get weird.
The stairwell created a natural choke point, allowing me to control the pace of battle. If I wanted to take on more creatures, I went forward onto the flat, where I could use larger weapons and make wide swings. When I took the bearded battle axe out there, I cut them down like I was scything wheat. It was ridiculous. I only had to retreat back to the stairwell because of all the blood and guts, literally. It was difficult to keep my feet there, so I hopped back to the stairwell, throwing the battle axe over to Skeld, and taking another spear from Ragnar.
The spears were going quickly. It was getting easier and easier to pierce multiple opponents at the same time with the spears, almost as if Ragnar was somehow snagging sharper spears from the bag. But as far as I could tell, they were still the same crappy ones I’d taken from the busted castle in the middle of the WarWaters. But with one throw, I got five tungeburs. Five. One spear. That’s a Yahtzee.
Alternatively, the tungebur had spears aplenty. I grabbed their weapons easily, sometimes from dead hands, just as often from live ones. Once I snatched a spear and beat the asshole holding it to death before throwing it down the staircase and watching the spear go through a tungebur and embed into the stone.