by Hugo Huesca
Spider Clusters: 1 Empress, 1 Queen, 5 Princesses, 23 warriors, ? spiderlings.
5 Elite Kaftar Hunters (in process)
Areas
Living Zones:
5 Living Quarters
3 Storage
1 Campsite
1 Mess Hall
Military Facilities:
1 Batblin Camp - hidden
1 Training Facility
2 Spider Dens - hidden
1 Kaftar Habitat
Research Installations:
1 Witchcraft Laboratory (Upgraded: Library)
1 Herbalist Workshop
Sacred Grounds:
The Seat.
1 Light Altar
1 Dark Altar
Production:
1 Forge
1 Brewery
3 Hell Chicken Farms
1 Kitchen
1 Mining Facility
Defense:
Small Dust Traps
Defensive Spears
Batblin Sentries
Spider Sentries
Avian Mercenary
Dungeon Upgrades
Internal Heating
So much has changed since I first arrived here, Ed thought. Back then, he, Lavy, and Alder had had to sleep in tents by the dungeon’s entrance, shivering from the cold, and vulnerable to the attacks of horned spiders and the creatures of the forest. They had been hungry, weak, scared, and barely able to cast four spells per day between the three of them.
From those pitiful days, an entire community had arisen. If only it hadn’t taken the mindbrood attack for it to happen…
If Ioan had waited a month before he attacked, then we could’ve stopped him easily, Ed decided. Burrova would still be standing, innocent lives would’ve been saved. If the Haunt was all that stood between the innocent and the Ioans and Nicolais of the world, then there was no time to lose. We must become strong to the point where there’s nothing we can’t face.
The only thing he needed was time. Let his enemies wait and lurk in the dark. The dungeon would grow and hunger in the meantime.
He headed for the Mess Hall, but as he did so, the sound of hurried footsteps coming his way claimed his attention. He turned back. A batblin was running his way.
“Lord Wraith!” the critter shrieked. “Lord Wraith! We need you outside!”
Ed felt like he had been suddenly doused with freezing water. He recalled Alder’s words: Whatever you do, don’t tempt fate… “What’s wrong?” he asked.
The batblin’s eyes were wide with excitement. “It’s the prisoners, sir!” He jabbed a finger in the direction of the campsite, at the glimpse of purple sky, which was quickly growing darker. “They’re trying to escape!”
22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Like Thieves in the Night
“They’re trying to escape!” Rolim’s roar thundered through the clearing like an explosion.
Nicolai rolled his eyes. It was lucky he had chosen a spot far enough from Wright’s dungeon, otherwise his friend’s recklessness would’ve given them away before those damned horned spiders.
“Don’t let them reach the trees!” someone snapped. Arrows and magical bolts surged through the air in the general direction of the three spider warriors, which were dashing toward the dungeon’s outskirts as fast as they could.
Most of the bolts missed, but enough found their mark. One of the spiders stumbled as a fire bolt caught her on her haunches and punched through the chitin, sending strings of blue goo flying in all directions. The spider let out a screech, lost her footing, slid as her legs buckled under her, and blundered through the rocky terrain, leaving bits of exoskeleton in her path.
Another spider warrior got caught by two arrows in her upper body section, the part where most of her vital organs were located. A spasm shook her entire body, and she tried to keep running, but her body had lost all coordination, and an ice bolt punched through one of her eyes. Blue mucus ebbed out of her mouth as her mandibles pinched at the air.
Rolim caught the third seconds after the last of the projectiles landed. The burly man could be surprisingly fast, and he had come out of the Portal ready for a fight—unlike the spiders, who had been caught by surprise.
He grabbed the spider by her leg and stopped her dead in her tracks. The leg bent and broke, and the spider turned, screaming in pain, and tried to stab her fangs into Rolim’s underside. The man lifted his mailed arm, and the fangs broke around them. Without so much as a change in his expression, Rolim raised a fist clad in a metallic gauntlet and brought it down with brutal strength right over the spider’s eyes. There was a crunch, then a wet splat. The skull of the spider caved under the hit, and her eyes exploded out of their sockets at the same time brain matter oozed out of her spasming mouth and marred the snow beneath.
A young boy, no older than fourteen, flinched and turned away at the sight, covering his mouth with his red cape. Nicolai glanced at Rolim one last time, to confirm there weren’t any more spider warriors around, then turned to the kid and patted him on the shoulder. “Easy there, Peter.”
Peter’s eyes widened in surprise at the sight of Nicolai, and he fought for control as he heaved. “Sorry, sir. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Disgust is natural,” Nicolai assured him. “Take a minute. Don’t worry, it’ll get easier… in time.”
He left Peter and hurried to Brondan. The trip through the Portal had weighed heavily on the elf—he was even more ashen than usual, and had spent the brief fight with the spiders puking. “Scrolls,” Nicolai told him, his voice cold. Peter is just a kid. It’s understandable that the sight of brutality sits badly on him. But you? You are a man. There’s no excuse. He spat at Brondan’s feet.
The elf raised his head, grimaced, and used his sleeve to clean his lips. “Here, Nicolai.” He rummaged through his pockets and handed the rebel a pair of scrolls.
Scrolls, unlike runes, served to cast complex spells that required more input than simply aiming at something and saying a trigger word. These had been made by Manfred, and Nicolai activated them in a hurry.
Normally, handling the scrolls would’ve been Lyndis’ job. She was the spellcaster, after all, and she could’ve gotten more out of them than Nicolai. But Lyndis wasn’t here, and the other spellcasters were busy near the Portal, spraying a semi-circle of salt behind it.
A wave of magical energy surrounded his body—he could feel the parasite stir—and flowed into his mind. Information followed soon afterward: a vague knowledge of his surroundings, both of geography and of the forest’s inhabitants. He saw his rebels, with himself at the center, a blue blob in the middle of the clearing. In front of them stood the dense forest, a thick growth of shrubbery that hid a group of spiderlings—tiny red dots—running away from the clearing.
“There!” Nicolai ordered, jabbing a finger in the air. “Fireballs, on my mark!” Marius, Lancel, and Poira ran in front of him, took to their knees, and aimed a fireball rune each. Nicolai waited for the spiderlings to leave the faint protection of a tree trunk. He couldn’t afford to let even one escape, not if he wanted to retain the element of surprise. “Now!”
The fireballs shot at the same time. Their aim was true. Although the divination spell was fading, Nicolai could see the dots disappear as the simultaneous explosions shook the ground and a rain of broken branches and dirt showered the forest.
Nicolai headed for Marius and handed him the last scroll. “There are a few individual spiderlings left. Grab two men and hunt them down. They can’t move as fast as we can—don’t let them get away.”
Marius nodded, grim as always, and did as he was told. Lancel went with him.
Poira remained behind—she had to help with the salt circle. “You think they heard the explosions?” she asked.
“Honestly? I’ve no idea,” Nicolai told her. “If they did, they did.” It wouldn’t be ideal, but soon, the dungeon would have something else to worry about.
Behind them, the port
al cracked with arcane energy. Purple lines blazed across the snow, melting it to reveal the grass below and marring the green with smoldering black.
“It’s coming through!” someone yelled, somewhat unnecessarily.
“Rolim, get back!” Nicolai exclaimed. His friend was busy kicking the brains out of one of the wounded spider warriors. If the wraith came through…
Rolim may have had a temper, but he thankfully wasn’t an idiot. He heard the warning, took a look at the Portal, then ran to Nicolai, who was just now taking his spot behind the circle of salt, next to Brondan and Peter.
The scent of decay and rotten flesh seeped through the Portal. A purple line cracked the salt line, breaking it. One rebel hurried to replace it, risking his life in the process. Nicolai made a mental note to reward that man later, if they survived.
First came the specters. Dark shadows, black against the purple of the sky. They retained the shape they had had in life, but little else. No features, no eyes, only blank expressions and that constant, maddening humming. They poured out of the Portal, a few at first, then more followed. Nicolai knew exactly how many there were: one for each prisoner he’d had remaining.
Thirty of them. Thirty beggars, thirty nobodies, foreigners to Starevos that now served, in death, a better purpose than they could’ve ever dreamed of in life. The shades floated around the clearing, ignoring the line of rebels just a few steps behind the Portal—nobody dared speak, not even Nicolai, although sound would’ve made little difference.
That was the beauty of it. Undead had no noses, no eyes, no ears. Whatever they used to hunt after the living, it shared little in common with normal senses. Salt did the trick. With the line of salt between the rebels and the undead, it was as if the world behind the specters didn’t exist.
Of course, had an intelligent undead been around—a vampire or a mummy—it would’ve known that something was wrong: the sight of a blob of darkness in the middle of an otherwise well-lit garden was suspicious even if you couldn’t see inside. An intelligent undead, perhaps, would’ve realized the trick and figured out a way to break the salt line.
Neither the specters nor the wraith were smart enough, so they headed in the only direction in which they could sense life. They headed for Marius, and the other two men that Nicolai had sent to deal with the spiderlings.
The same direction as the dungeon.
A skeletal, translucent hand clad in a black, tattered tunic came out of the Portal. The humming of the specters intensified as the wraith poured forth into Hoia. Whispers of dread spread through the rebels when powerful aura of magical fear reached them. A few of them broke off and ran away, only to stop some strides later, out of range. They turned back, pale and sweaty, as the wraith of Torst headed into the forest. The wraith didn’t even look back once.
Let the Heiligians stand by their gods and their rituals, their holy water and their blessed weapons. A clever Starevosian with access to some salt could outsmart them all.
Good luck, Marius, Nicolai thought, clenching his fist. If Marius were smart, he’d lead the others out of the way of the undead. If he wasn’t… Then you’ll be remembered, my friend. Your sacrifice won’t be in vain. “We move,” he said aloud, once he judged the undead were far enough from the clearing. “Time to let Dungeon Lord Wright know he isn’t welcome in Starevos.”
The place was empty, yet trapped. They removed two ice bolt runes guarding the entrance, and a couple explosive trap glyphs carelessly engraved next to a stall.
As they delved farther into the warehouse, the stench of death and decay intensified. They could hear the faint song of the undead now, a constant humming and throbbing, all around them.
“They’re watching us,” Katalyn whispered, staring left and right at nothing in particular. The spirits of the dead were barely out of reach. If the barrier of reality became just slightly thinner, how many would pour in, eager to drink the warmth out of living veins?
“Let them watch, then, as long as they stay away,” Pris said. The Thief shivered behind her mask of bravado.
Katalyn stopped. Something nagged at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t figure out what. She activated her perception talent, and the fine details of the world around her gained a new definition, like someone had infused them with a faint golden aura and highlighted all the important clues that she otherwise might have missed.
“Our cultist friends were here,” Katalyn said, staring at the vague outline of fingerprints and footprints spread all over the dusty floor. How could she have missed them before? “Left recently, though.” The footprints, the ones that weren’t broken by others stepping atop them, went only inside the next chamber. And the exits weren’t in that direction.
Necromantic energy, people that disappeared out of a warehouse, the spirits of the dead hammering at the fabric of reality… “There’s an active portal here,” Katalyn whispered. “And someone is alive over there.” She deactivated the talent, just before the throbbing behind her eyes developed into a migraine.
“How do you know?” Pris asked, while she disabled the traps around the entrance.
“I heard someone sobbing,” Katalyn said, then shrugged. It was now impossible to distinguish the faint noise from the ghastly humming. “Pris?”
“Yes?” Pris asked harshly. Her hands were trembling, and she couldn’t stop glancing at the shadowy corners.
“There are a lot of dead people back there,” Katalyn said, trying to soothe her friend with her voice. “Save yourself the sight, will you? I can handle it from here.”
Despite her fear, Pris managed to ask a faint, “Are you sure?”
Katalyn wasn’t, but she knew she could withstand the trauma better than Pris, so she nodded. “Wait here for a minute. If I don’t come back, return to the Guild. We’re going to have to pay a lot of money to the Watch to keep this from reaching the Inquisition’s ears, you know.”
“Right,” Pris whispered. “If a Dark Portal is active in the city…” There was no need to finish that sentence.
Katalyn slipped inside the room, all her muscles tense, ready to dart away if she felt a rune trap being triggered.
Despite having mentally prepared herself, a scream burst from her throat. She covered her mouth with her gloved hands.
The Portal hovered a hundred feet in front of her, a wound in the fabric of reality, faint now, almost closed. The magical circle that powered it was engraved in purple lines on the floor, and the ceiling was blackened and marred with soot, like a fire had broken out right under it.
And the twisted, consumed, gray bodies around the portal… Katalyn caught a glimpse of naked skin, deformed, barely recognizable as human—she let out another muffled scream and averted her eyes.
“Ghastly, isn’t it?” a male’s voice, detached, came from somewhere to her right.
She turned, alarmed, angry at herself for not having noticed him. He was a mercenary caster, that much was clear from his flashy tunic, engraved with gold filigree, and the quartz hanging from a small silver chain around his neck, which identified him as a Diviner with an advanced-ranked spellcasting talent. He was slim and sickly, like he had lost a bunch of weight recently. His eyes had the vacuous stare of a heavy pixie dust user.
“Who are you?” she asked as she made a show of drawing her dagger in one hand. With the other, discreetly, she unsheathed a throwing knife and left that arm hang behind her waist, next to her buttock.
“Does it matter?” the man said. He sighed, and walked to the edge of the circle, close to one of the bodies. “Look at this. What has the world come to? It wasn’t like this in my youth.” He caressed his forehead and winced. “It wasn’t like this. Everything was much better back then. Less death, for instance. Wouldn’t it be better if we could go back?”
“What happened here?” Katalyn took a couple steps closer to the Diviner, making sure not to look at the corpses near him.
“My fault,” the man said. “All my fault. The strange thing is—I know I sho
uld care. I know I am damned. And yet…” He shrugged and kicked at the corpse. It looked like he had hit a wet rag. “I told him where to go, you know. Without my help, he wouldn’t have found the dungeon.”
“Nicolai,” Katalyn said. “He did this.”
“Not all of it. The wraith killed most of the prisoners. Drained all their Endurance away. Oh, it happened so fast. At least they weren’t scared for long, I think.”
“The wraith?” What’s Torst doing here? Nicolai couldn’t control the wraith, could he? Then, how had he gotten it inside the magical circle?
She forced herself to look at the purple lines. She caught the sight of a deflated eye seeping out of its socket and clenched her teeth, trying not to puke. Despite her lack of specialized magical knowledge, she realized that she wasn’t looking at a single circle: there was another, smaller, inside the first one. A summoning circle.
“Isn’t it obvious?” The Diviner turned around and stared at her with his cold, sad eyes. “A clumsy magical display, yet effective. First, Nicolai made the Portal, using the coordinates I gave him. After he went in, the few remaining rebels summoned the wraith here, inside the circle… And it had nowhere else to go, you know? Couldn’t leave the circle, so wraith and specters all went into the portal eventually…”
Torst had eaten the prisoners. So many of them… now transformed into specters, under the wraith’s will. Hungering, dark shapes heading for Ed, and Alder, and Kes, and who knew how many others. Dark-aligned, yes, but good people.
“Oh.” Katalyn’s shoulders hung limp as realization washed over her like a cold wave. “Dunghill.”
“Oh, shit,” Ed muttered to himself as he ran after the batblin. Have they gone mad? If the villagers really had tried to escape, they must’ve run into the spiders… and Ed knew that the critters weren’t known for being soft and understanding.
“Lord Wright?” Kaga matched his pace when Ed passed him by. “What’s the commotion about. Are we in a fight?” There was just a tiny, hopeful edge to the question.