by Layton Green
Or had it been created for the game? Except for the color, the gelatinous cube looked remarkably similar to this thing, and Will had always wondered where Gygax had gotten some of his remarkably creative ideas. Had he been to this world?
It didn’t matter now. What mattered was that the dungeon ooze was going to eat them or dissolve them or whatever such an organism did to people, if he and Marguerite didn’t find a way out of the maze.
“That thing’s almost as fast as we are,” Will said. He was starting to huff. “That’s what happened to the other explorers, isn’t it? It caught them eventually, when they tired in the maze.”
Marguerite was keeping pace beside him. “Aye. Oozes digest all organic matter in their path and leave the scraps be’ind.”
They passed up numerous intersections, afraid to get trapped in a dead end. Will knew the passage would end at some point, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. After a few more intersections, they passed through a junction with a circular opening in the ceiling. Will peered upwards as they passed, into a chute-like opening. Worth investigating, he thought, if they had the time or the means.
A few hundred feet later his left foot sank into one of the stones, at the same time Marguerite tackled him. He heard a whoosh, saw a whir of movement in the corner of his eye as he face-planted, and then yelped as something sharp embedded in his left shoulder.
He looked down at a flattened dart sticking out of his deltoid. A painful tingling spread to his arm, different from the sharpness of the entry wound pain. “I think I’ve just been poisoned.”
Marguerite stabilized his shoulder with her hand, trying and failing not to look worried. “Hold still. I need to extract it.”
Will grimaced. “Is that a good idea?”
“T’is with a wound this small. If it’s poison, we need to keep the dart for Allira.”
He sucked in his breath as she pulled the dart out. It took all of his willpower not to scream.
“Good lad,” she said, pulling him forward. “We mustn’t stop.”
The dungeon ooze appeared in the distance, and Will talked as he ran, both to take his mind off the danger looming behind them and to try to make sense of the maze. “Think about what’s happened so far. The traps are getting more frequent, and I don’t think that’s a sign of progression. If we had chosen the correct passages both times we wouldn’t have encountered a single trap. I think the traps pop up only when we choose the wrong direction.”
“That’s fine,” she said, her eyes wide as she risked a glance back at the ooze. It was gaining on them. “But if we don’t get away from this bleedin’ thing, the traps won’t matter.”
Will saw the passage dead-ending up ahead. He pulled Marguerite down a side passage. “I know how to double back from here, if we need to. But you’re right, we can’t outlast it much longer. We have to solve the maze.”
There was another problem, he thought as he pressed his hand to his sweating forehead. He was dizzy and already running a fever. How long would it be before the poison overcame him? What if they never found Allira or she didn’t have a cure?
He finished a canteen of water as he ran, then chucked it at the ooze. He watched in fascination as the creature absorbed it, slurping it into its body. It made another sucking sound as it advanced, and Will led Marguerite on a harried journey back to the beginning of the second longer passage. He was growing weaker, and the numbing sensation had spread.
They started down the passage, halfway to the next intersection when they saw the dungeon ooze sliding towards them in the distance. That can’t be, Will thought. It’s behind us, not in front of us. As the creature drew closer, he realized the giant cube possessed an emerald green hue, rather than a sickly yellowish color.
He turned and saw the first ooze gliding towards them, in the direction from which they had just come, blocking the other end of the passage.
Marguerite clutched his arm. “There’s two of ’em.”
Alexander tossed four stone balls into the air and sent them speeding at the titan crab, so fast and hard Val could barely follow. The enormous beast flinched but pressed forward.
Val backed behind Alexander, but neither he nor Allira ran. Val held his staff at arm’s length and stared deep into the milky azantite, willing the magic to come. Allira threw two boomerangs in rapid succession. They bounced off the monster and clanged to the floor.
The mound of cracked stone and earth surrounding the hole rose magically into the air, and Alexander propelled it into the titan crab’s face, blinding it. The swarm of dirt and rocks hovered around its head, but it bellowed and began to run, shaking the floor beneath Val’s feet. He felt his stomach constrict with fear, and broke his gaze with the azantite half-moon as he stumbled backward.
Alexander held his ground, then shoved his arms straight out to the side. The walls imploded with a roar. He swept his arms forward, gathering the mass of broken stone and slamming it into the titan crab, throwing it off its feet. Alexander advanced, palms facing forward. He pushed the titan crab and the mass of loose rock straight backwards, skidding along the floor. When they reached the hole the monster had burst through, Alexander shoved the monster back down the hole, burying it up to its neck. He swirled his hands, and the pile of loose rock spun with dizzying speed and then smashed into the creature’s head.
That hurt it. It let out a sound somewhere between a grunt and a wheeze, and appeared disoriented. Alexander flung his hands forward and caved the ceiling. Val covered his ears at the boom, and a ton of granite dropped onto the creature’s head.
Val knew Alexander had taken a serious chance by causing the cave in, but as long as the entire tunnel didn’t collapse, he could always clear the way afterwards. And the geomancer couldn’t help them at all if he were dead.
Val heard the creature wheeze in pain beneath the rock, then fall silent. Alexander stood in front of the pile, heaving with exertion. He turned and started walking towards Val and Allira, face covered in dust and his knife wounds leaking blood. “We need to hurry—”
The floor exploded again, right behind Alexander, and a second titan crab burst into the cavern. It grabbed Alexander in its pincers and flung him into the wall. Alexander recovered just as the thing tried to gore him with its tusks, the blow stopping inches from Alexander’s face, unable to penetrate the geomancer’s defenses. Alexander forced the creature backward with a thrust of his hands.
Val had never felt so helpless. He had been straining with mental energy since the first titan crab appeared, but had failed to produce the smallest spark. He simply couldn’t access his magic.
But he had to do something. He shrugged Allira off and rushed forward, staff raised in front of him. When Val was halfway to the geomancer, the floor ruptured again, just behind Alexander. The first titan crab leapt out of the opening, trapping the geomancer between the two beasts.
“Get back!” Alexander yelled, then blew a hole through the wall next to him. He started to fly through it, but the nearest titan crab grabbed him from behind with its pincers. The other monster gored Alexander from the front, his tusks impaling him through the center of his chest.
The monster lifted Alexander into the air. The geomancer screamed and somehow managed to thrust two magic-hardened fingers into the creature’s eyes, deep into its skull.
The titan crab went limp and then toppled, but it was too late. Before Alexander could turn, the other monster grabbed his arms with two of its pincers and ripped them off. A third pincer caught Alexander by the throat and ripped out his jugular. The titan crab flung the lifeless body of the geomancer down the corridor as if it were a wad of paper, then turned towards Val and Allira.
Val vomited as he ran. He could hear the monster bounding after them. The only thought penetrating Val’s fear was that Alexander was dead. Slaughtered and discarded.
The titan crab was steps behind them. Val prepared to die, sure they could not outrun it. At the next intersection, Allira reached into her pouch and to
ssed a blue powder into the air in front of her torch. She blew outward, and the dust cloud passed through the fire and exploded in the face of the titan crab. It stopped, bellowed, and clawed at its head. Allira grabbed Val and whipped him down the corridor to the left. He didn’t hear sounds of pursuit, but that meant little when facing a creature who could burrow through the floor and walls.
Val assumed Allira knew where she was going, but when they turned a corner and faced a dead-end passage ten feet ahead, he realized with a sinking certainty that she was just as lost as he was.
Another of the explosions sounded, close enough to vibrate the floor. Val peered back around the corner and saw a shower of rock raining down on the last intersection they had passed. The footsteps of the titan crab thundered towards them.
Val and Allira backed into the dead-end passage, huddling against the stone.
The sand had risen to Mala’s chest. She climbed on the pedestal with Caleb and swept her eyes across the room. “The exit has to be below the sand,” she said. “It’s the only place we haven’t looked. Look for another lever or a pull ring.”
Caleb agreed, though he doubted they could search the entire floor before the sand smothered them.
Mala left her torch atop the pedestal, and assigned everyone a quadrant. Caleb shuffled back and forth, probing with his feet beneath the thick granules. After a period of futile searching, Mala started diving into the sand for long periods, then coming up for air. Caleb did the same. It was a miserable experience, with sand clogging every pore.
He felt nothing but solid granite underneath him. The sand had risen to his shoulders now, almost covering Mala’s face. She had to tilt her head to breathe when she popped out of the sand. Caleb knew if they didn’t figure something out extremely soon, they were all going to die horrible, suffocating deaths.
He finished probing his section and saw the desperate looks on Lance’s and Hashi’s faces. When Mala surfaced, Hashi had to wade over and pick her up so she could breathe.
She spit sand out of her mouth and gulped in air. “Again,” she said, then pushed away from Hashi and dove back under.
Caleb started to dive again, then hesitated. This was a fool’s errand. They had to be missing a vital piece to the puzzle.
He thought about their experiences so far, remembered the trap door opening and their drop down the chute. He looked up and saw the stone blocks that had hinged downward to release the sand. Whoever built this place was an expert mason, and Caleb sensed the secret was in the stones.
His eyes caught the yin yang symbol on the door, positioned just above eye level. It must have been carved for a reason, he thought. Yin yang. Opposite forces co-existing.
What if they were supposed to push on something underneath the sand, rather than pull? It would fit with the unusual consistency of the grains, thick enough to allow probing dives. Was that also a clue?
The sand reached his chin. If he was wrong, or if they didn’t find the right spot in the next few moments, then it wouldn’t matter. He tried jumping up and down on his quadrant, but it was too hard to gain traction. Also, it seemed too random. There had to be a logical solution.
Everyone else had disappeared beneath the sand. Caleb’s eyes found the spear. Surely she tried that. He climbed on the pedestal and pushed down on the spear.
Nothing.
But he realized the pedestal was constructed of a different type of stone from the rest of the chamber, as smooth as the granite was rough. Yin and yang, he thought.
He dove beneath the sand, found the base of the pedestal, and started pushing. It felt solid until he reached the side opposite the door. This time when he pushed, he felt a bit of give. He pushed harder, with all his might.
His hand slid a foot into the stone, and the floor dropped out beneath him.
A chute whisked him downward on a carpet of sand, though the angle wasn’t as steep as the first chute. He hoped it didn’t release him over that bottomless chasm.
Long seconds later, careening through the darkness, the chute dumped him out on another stone floor. Light flared as Mala illuminated the room with her glow stone. Hashi and Lance stood in different corners of the room, surprised and covered in sand. Everyone brushed off and relit their torches. Mala slipped her glow stone back in her pocket.
“Does anyone know what happened?” Mala asked.
Caleb raised a finger. “That one might have been me. I started pushing on the bottom of the pedestal and one of the stones slid inward, just before the floor gave way.”
Mala pursed her lips and gave him a single nod. “Quick thinking. You saved our lives.”
Caleb felt a tingle of pride, but there was no time to revel in the moment. Mala swept her gaze over the square stone chamber, marched to the single wooden door, checked it for traps, and opened it.
They filed through the doorway into a room with an open passageway leading into a corridor on the far side of the room. Caleb heard a click and looked back. There was no sign of the door through which they had just entered. When he looked up and saw the blue ceiling, he paled.
They were in the same room in which they had started.
Mala snarled and swept into the passage. Caleb had no idea if she had a better plan, and was too afraid to ask. Lance wasn’t afraid, and did ask, but she brushed him off, muttering that they would find a way to escape the accursed dungeon.
They saw the first wyrm soon after they started down the second longer passage, coming at them from the end of the corridor. To Caleb’s surprise, Mala didn’t turn around.
“We fight the first one here,” she said, “before they corner us again.”
The wyrm had seen them and was scuttling swiftly down the passage, its tubular body filling half the tunnel. Mala reached into her larger pouch and extracted a foot long stick that couldn’t possibly have fit inside. Caleb watched in amazement as she lengthened the stick into a five-foot long pole.
“Advance behind me,” she said to Hashi and Lance, and instructed Caleb to watch their backs.
Mala held the pole out in front of her and started jogging down the corridor, as a pole-vaulter would. Her jog turned into a sprint, she dodged two globs of acid, and just before she reached the maw wyrm she planted the pole and flew over the creature’s head. The tentacles and snapping maw just missed her legs. Mala landed on the thing’s back, dropped the pole, drew her short sword and curved dagger, and plunged them into the wyrm.
The creature shrieked and reared, its front legs flailing. Hashi and Lance rushed forward as Caleb jerked his eyes away from the awful spectacle. As he turned, he saw the second wyrm scuttling forward on the ceiling, less than fifty feet away. It dropped to the floor and came right at Caleb.
He tried to scream but couldn’t find his voice.
-43-
Will and Marguerite raced back to the intersection, just ahead of the two oozes. They passed so close Will swung at one of them with his sword. He realized that might not have been the best idea, if the oozes were acidic or able to suck up his blade. But he was desperate and wanted to see if his sword would work the same magic it had worked on the manticore.
The sword cleaved through the emerald ooze, but without visible effect on the monster. Will barely felt the resistance, as if he had cut through a giant cube of jelly. It creeped him out.
He stumbled away, thankful his sword was still intact but distressed it hadn’t affected the dungeon ooze. He was dizzy and struggling to breathe, the pain from the poison acute. Somehow he managed to keep running, but as they approached the next intersection, the emerald ooze gliding along behind them, he saw the second ooze approaching from the other direction.
“We won’t make it!” Marguerite shouted. “It’s too close!”
They sprinted for the intersection. Will wasn’t ready to die, but if it was his turn on the roulette wheel, he wanted to at least go down fighting. Not devoured alive by one of these things.
The emerald ooze was almost blocking the intersection. Will a
nd Marguerite were still ten feet away, the yellow ooze was right behind them. They weren’t going to make it. Will prepared to plunge his sword directly into one of the monsters’ guts, knowing it would be a death sentence, but Marguerite shrieked and threw her torch at the green ooze blocking their path.
When the torch made contact, blobs of goo sizzled and dropped to the ground. The thing quivered and shimmied backwards, out of the intersection. It recovered quickly, but not before Will and Marguerite had a chance to squeeze beside it and race down a side passage.
“That’s it,” Marguerite said, her words coming between exhausted gasps. “We can’t use our last torch.”
Will barely heard her. He was trying not to pass out, and concentrating on the maze. Second and third, he said to himself, over and over. The second and third passages had been the correct ones.
What was the sequence?
Somehow Marguerite managed to spot the trip wires as they ran, and every time she spotted one, they doubled back and tried another passage. They stayed to the sides of the passages to avoid the pressurized stones, though Will knew at some point a new and deadlier trap would catch them.
At last, the fifth intersection presented another long passage, and they raced down it. The oozes followed steadily behind them, the sucking and slurping noises plucking at Will’s sanity.
They had lucked into the correct passage. Will had to do better.
Second, third, fifth. Second, third, fifth.
He stumbled, and Marguerite dragged him to his feet, steps ahead of the yellow ooze. “We mustn’t stop,” she said. “This maze can’t last forever.”
Oh, but it could.
Second, third, fifth.
Second, third, fifth.
Second, third, fifth.
Then it hit him. It was so obvious, he had overlooked it. The knowledge gave him a sudden burst of energy. “I think I know the pattern! If I’m right, the seventh intersection from here is the next one. Prime numbers, Marguerite. Prime freaking numbers!”