by Layton Green
“Leonidus wouldn’t want such important magical items to fall into the wrong hands, even if those hands were well-meaning.” The geomancer hesitated, then said, “I don’t think Leonidus is simply protecting his keep. I think he’s testing invaders.”
Val’s eyes lingered on the ominous inscription. Allira looked wary but unruffled, and she took the lead as they left the chamber and started exploring the maze. Val observed the labyrinthine passageways as carefully as he could, but failed to detect any irregularities. He knew there had to be a purpose to the maze, an exit of some sort, and he felt confident the three of them would find it.
They found the first door, standing back as Alexander blew it backward with a wave of his hand. When the door disappeared without a sound, they peered over the bottomless chasm that loomed on the other side. Val’s fingers closed around his staff as he thought about one of his brothers opening a similar door, without the protection of a wizard. He turned on his heel and marched back down the corridor, face pale.
They reasoned the longer intersection after the second passageway on the right signaled the correct path. At the next crossroad, they found a disturbing sight: a pile of human bones next to a caved-in hole. Jagged pieces of granite littered the floor around the fissure. It looked as if someone had dug out a five-foot wide hole in the stone with a jackhammer.
No one knew what to make of it. They edged around the hole and proceeded with even more caution. Not long after, Allira pointed out a knee-high tripwire, and then another. Alexander snapped them in half from a distance.
“Can you use magic to get the layout of the dungeon?” Val asked.
Alexander shook his head. “Astral projection is spirit mage territory.”
They found another of the longer passages, which gave them hope, but they got lost down one of the side corridors and couldn’t find their way back. They kept expecting the passage to dead-end, but it led to intersection after intersection, all of which looked identical.
“I thought I’d remember the way back, but I don’t,” Val muttered.
They passed more of the dug-out holes, growing more nervous with each one. It was obvious there was something else down there, or had been at one time.
And they had to assume the piles of bones belonged to previous explorers.
They reached an intersection with a spherical hole in the ceiling. Val looked up, relieved to find a variation in the unchanging warren. Alexander illuminated the vertical shaft, which disappeared into darkness. Surely, Val thought, whether the opening was an airshaft or served some other purpose, it led back to the keep. It would be impossible to traverse without a wizard, but good thing for them they had one.
As Val stared up into the hole, an explosion sounded in the distance, like a stick of dynamite had shattered one of the walls. Allira crouched, boomerang in hand. Val looked to Alexander, who was peering in alarm down the corridor. Val thought he saw something else in Alexander’s eyes, however.
Knowledge.
“I never had a chance to ask Mala about the pieces on Leonidus’s side of the board,” Val said. “One of those is making that noise, isn’t it? We’re playing a twisted game of Zelomancy.”
Alexander looked away from the passages and back into the shaft. “The creatures in place of the giants, the ones representing earth, were titan crabs.”
Val felt a stab of fear, despite the fact that he had no idea what a titan crab was. “How does it make that noise?”
“By digging. Titan crabs live underground, burrowing tunnels deep into the earth. In rare cases they inhabit dungeons, usually compelled to do so by a wizard. Their pincers and tusks can bore through earth and even solid rock.”
“But you can deal with it?”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out,” he said quietly, and Val didn’t like the tone of his answer.
Alexander peered into the shaft. “I don’t like the look of this either, but we’re out of options. I’ll return as soon as I discover where it leads.”
Val watched Alexander rise into the shaft as Allira stood guard in the intersection, a boomerang in each hand. Another of the explosions sounded, this one nearer than the last. If they got any closer, he would have to call Alexander back.
Val watched the geomancer rise higher and higher, the light moving with him. He ascended at least fifty feet above the floor, then disappeared from view. A few seconds later Val heard a clicking sound coming from the chute. Something about it didn’t sound right.
“Alexander!” he yelled. “Watch yourself!”
As Val stared upward, he heard a scream, and then something spattered his face. He wiped his cheek and looked at the red streak on his hand.
Blood.
Another scream. Val heard a whooshing sound and stepped back just as Alexander plummeted down the hole. The geomancer arrested his fall at the last moment, though not fully, landing on his back with a thump. A boulder came down the shaft right after him, stopping in midair half an inch from Alexander’s nose. Before Val or Allira had time to react, the geomancer rolled out from underneath the giant stone, which crashed to the floor.
Then Val noticed the knives sticking out of Alexander’s chest, legs, and back.
Val cursed and rushed to Alexander’s side, but Allira held him back. She gently extracted the knives as Alexander moaned. “Wizard trap,” he gasped. “The boulder came, and then the knives. I couldn’t stop them all and stay afloat.”
Allira applied a brown paste to his wounds as fast as she could, then wrapped them in bandages.
Alexander was pale. They eased him to his feet. Val tried to help him walk, but Alexander shrugged him off and limped forward. When they reached the next intersection and paused to consider their options, Alexander leaned on Val for support, blood seeping through the geomancer’s bandages.
“What were the other monsters on the board?” Val asked, joining Allira as she peered down the passages, trying to determine the best route. He wondered why they hadn’t heard the titan crab again. “What do you think my brothers might be facing?”
“One was a wyrm of some sort. The two blocks of stone in place of the kethropi, I’ve no idea. The majitsu—”
Twenty feet away, the corridor Val was facing erupted in a shower of earth and stone. A hulking bipedal creature burst out of the hole, landing on two feet in front of the newly formed crater. Even hunched, its squat head neared the ceiling. Dirt clung to skin the texture of bark, and its four arms ended in marble pincers with knife-edged tips. Curved tusks, also made of marble, jutted upwards from its maw. Sunken into the rocky face were twin obsidian orbs peering straight at them.
Alexander spun to see what had caused the noise, then spread his arms to keep Val and Allira behind him. The titan crab lurched forward, its footsteps shaking the cavern.
Alexander limped backwards. “Run,” he whispered.
-41-
Caleb hit the bottom of the chute, stunned and disoriented. A torch flared, and he heard Mala giving commands before he had time to process what had happened.
“On your feet! Torches up! To the center!”
Caleb imagined Mala would have made a great drill sergeant. Though he didn’t deny that he was happy to see her. When he had been sliding down the chute in abject fear, sure this was the moment of his demise, his only thought was that he hoped he wasn’t alone.
More torches illuminated the room. Caleb realized he was in an underground chamber with Mala, Hashi, and Lance. It could be worse, he thought. They would miss their geomancer, but he had landed with their best fighters. He struggled to his feet, hoping against hope his brothers were safe and sound in the room above.
Mala inspected the blue-ceilinged room and the inscription above the door about three monsters and a Minotaur, which made Caleb’s mouth go dry. After conferring with Hashi, Mala led them through the exit passage and down the dungeon corridor. She put Lance behind her and Hashi in the rear, with Caleb just in front of Hashi. Proving herself to be as good at detecti
ng traps as she was at fighting, she led the four of them carefully into the maze, finding a slew of near-invisible tripwires and snipping them with a flick of her dagger.
Caleb watched and learned, but felt as useless as always. He doubted he could spot the next trip wire, even after Mala pointed out the slight irregularity in the wall that had tipped her off, an inch-wide opening that looked like a crack in the stone to Caleb.
They barely averted disaster at the first door. After Mala picked the lock, she agreed to Lance’s request to go first, with Hashi right behind him and Mala twirling her sash at Hashi’s back. Lance burst through the door, but without the strength and quick reaction of Hashi, who caught him by the back of his shirt after he stepped off the cliff, Lance would have plummeted into the chasm.
After that they proceeded more carefully, Mala using chalk from a pouch to mark their way. They were able to track their route but had no idea if they were making progress through the maze. None of them had a clue as to the pattern, or even if one existed.
A few of the walls they passed glistened in the torchlight. Without touching the translucent, jelly-like streaks, Mala and Hashi inspected the portions of the walls that were coated with the substance. Both ended up shaking their heads.
“Some type of natural moisture, perhaps,” Mala said, though as they looked up at the dry ceiling and down the dusty narrow passages, Caleb knew she didn’t believe her own theory.
They came to an intersection with a circular hole in the ceiling, the opening to a vertical shaft. Using her glow stone for illumination, Mala peered upward into the darkness.
“Can you climb it?” Lance asked.
“Aye,” Mala murmured, though Caleb didn’t see how that was possible. “But I don’t trust it. It’s too obvious, and too hard to defend oneself inside.”
She reasoned they could return if presented with no other solution. Caleb was growing increasingly worried about his brothers. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that everyone had fallen down a similar shaft, landing in a different part of the dungeon. What if Will or Val had landed by themselves, or together and without help from one of the others? Any one of the traps they had encountered could be fatal.
Mala disarmed more tripwires, a couple of loose floor stones that released a swarm of pressurized darts, and an open pit that almost fooled even Mala. Cleverly placed mirrors disguised the top of the pit, making it appear as uninterrupted stone floor. Just before she fell, Mala detected a pinprick of refracted light glinting off her sword, and stepped back. She found and broke the mirrors on the side of the pit, and Caleb stared downward at a forest of three-foot long spears jutting upwards from the bottom.
Things were getting worse rather than better. Caleb grew more nervous with each step, wondering how many of the devious traps they could avoid. The maze grew more and more convoluted, with more intersections, more switchbacks, and more side passages. Without the chalk they wouldn’t have stood a chance, but when they doubled back and found themselves at an already marked corridor, Caleb wondered if the chalk was even helping.
The creature came at them without a sound, and Caleb only saw it because he had a habit of checking over his shoulder every few seconds. The rust-colored monstrosity looked like a cross between a giant worm and a centipede. Its fifteen-foot long body was divided into rounded segments that took up half the corridor, its multitude of tiny legs propelling it forward in a wave-like fashion. A nest of tentacles surrounded a toothy maw as big and round as a porthole, and two compound eyes fixated on Caleb.
The thing was thirty feet away and coming fast. Caleb bellowed at the top of his lungs, and everyone whipped around.
“Maw wyrm!” Mala yelled. “Shields up! To the next intersection!”
Caleb wondered why she had yelled shields up at about the same moment the creature spit a gob of green goo down the corridor. Hashi blocked it with his cudgel, Lance caught the next one with his shield, and Caleb reflected another with a bracer. Some of the viscous substance remained on the bracer, and he wiped it against the wall as he ran. He didn’t want to know what would happen if it touched him.
The next intersection wasn’t far, but it turned out to be L-shaped, with an open passage on the right and a closed door—the first they had seen—blocking the left. The maw wyrm was approaching fast. Caleb felt his knees buckle as he watched the nightmarish creature wriggling towards them.
Mala moved to stand beside Hashi, facing the wyrm. She took Lance’s shield and drew her short sword. “Here, where we can maneuver,” she said.
“Mala!” Lance yelled, pointing down the other corridor.
Caleb looked down the passage to the right and saw another of the wyrms fifty feet away, wriggling towards them on the ceiling. A wave of fear shuddered through him.
Mala threw the shield back to Lance. “We can’t fight two in close quarters. Watch my back.”
Caleb helped Lance and Hashi deflect the green projectiles as Mala ran her hands over the door, checking for traps. “It’s acid!” Lance screamed. “It’s eating through my shield!”
“Mala, you must hurry,” Hashi said. It was the first time he had spoken since they had entered the dungeon, and the first time Caleb had ever heard him worried.
The creature on the ceiling scuttled to the floor. The other was ten feet away and closing quickly. It lifted its front legs as it approached, its head rising above Hashi’s.
Mala whipped the door open as Hashi swung his cudgel at the giant wyrm, keeping it at bay. “Inside!” she yelled.
Everyone tumbled through the door after Mala. Hashi slammed the thick wooden door shut on one of the tentacles, which fell to the floor and started convulsing. Mala turned the lock, and the door shuddered as one of the creatures slammed against it. Caleb noticed a red-gold and silver-blue marking on the door that looked similar to a yin yang symbol.
It was then that Caleb realized he was standing knee-deep in sand. He jumped back in alarm, but there was nowhere to go. The floor of the entire room, at least five hundred feet square, was filled with wheat-brown sand that possessed a strange—he was guessing magical—consistency. The grains were minute like sand, but fluffier when he took a step. Like wading through Rice Krispies.
In the center of the room, a silver spear gleamed above the sand, its tip embedded into a waist-high stone pedestal.
“The Spear of Piercing,” Mala said, with a grim satisfaction.
Caleb felt a stab of excitement. Maybe they had a shot at this after all. Hashi eyed the spear with a hunger that surprised Caleb, but he didn’t have time to ponder the big man’s motive.
Caleb glanced around the room. Except for the doorway, there were no other exits. The other three sides were bare except for narrow, foot-long stone levers jutting out from the middle of each wall.
One of the wyrms smacked into the door again. “How long do we have?” Lance asked, backing away.
“Those doors are solid and reinforced with iron bands,” Mala said. “But the wyrms are powerful, and their acid will eventually eat through.”
“I always wanted to die at the beach,” Caleb muttered.
“Shut up, Caleb,” Lance said. “Start looking for another exit.”
“I’ll get the spear,” Mala said, “and then search the walls. Maybe one of these levers will reveal a means of escape.”
She waded through the sand, climbed onto the pedestal, and placed both hands on the notched handle of the spear. She managed to lift the spear about a foot before it caught. Caleb heard a soft groan, and four blocks in the corners of the ceiling swung downward, pouring a stream of sand into the room.
Mala tugged on the handle of the spear, but it wouldn’t release. Everyone else came over to help, but even Hashi couldn’t budge the weapon.
“By the Queen,” Mala swore, taking a closer look at the spear and then pinging it with her sword. “It’s a decoy.”
The sand was rising quickly. Mala plunged into the sand and waded to the nearest lever, on
the wall opposite the door. When she pulled it, Caleb heard another soft groan. Two more blocks swung down, releasing more sand. Mala tugged at the lever, again and again, but nothing happened.
“Try the others!” she screamed, now thigh-deep in sand.
Lance and Hashi waded to the other two levers, while Caleb climbed onto the pedestal and scoured the room, shivery with fear. He observed the deranged architectural genius with a doomed fascination, and had to agree that the only choice was to try to reverse the trap by pulling one of the levers.
Lance reached his lever first. He pulled it down, and two more blocks released. Hashi tried his, with the same effect. Half the ceiling had now hinged downward, pouring sand into the room at an incredible rate.
Caleb looked from the spear to the three deceptive levers as the sand rose to Mala’s waist. “That’s just wrong,” he muttered.
-42-
“What is that thing?” Will gasped, as he and Marguerite fled down the only passage they had yet to try. As he suspected, it proved to be another lengthy corridor, seeming to validate his theory that the longer passages were the key.
Will tried to sift through information as he ran, but he was buzzing with fear, trying to outdistance the monster behind them, and watching for traps, all at the same time. He forced a portion of his brain to isolate and consider the maze.
The second passage on the right had been the first correct choice, followed by the third passage on the right. What did that mean?
Two constants in the equation wasn’t enough.
They had to know more.
“Dungeon oozes were adapted from smaller jellies and slimes,” Marguerite explained as they ran, “to guard places like this.”
“Adapted? By who?”
“Wizards,” she said.
“How do we kill it?”
“We don’t. Or at least I don’t know how.”
Will breathed hard as he looked over his shoulder, thankful for the last few weeks of endurance training. He could see the giant square blob entering the longer passage, moving implacably in their direction. Searching his role playing memory, the closest approximation of a dungeon ooze in the lore was a gelatinous cube, a monster created by Gary Gygax uniquely for Dungeons & Dragons.