by Dante King
Ralph paused halfway down the stairs into the Nature dungeon and spoke. “I don’t like this,” he muttered to me.
“Bolnir and the others, you mean?”
He nodded. “I can’t harm them—and neither can Puck. Not without breaking our oath. And this is the perfect place for an ambush. How hard would it be to put arrows in us while we’re busy cutting down the monsters of the dungeon?”
“I’ll bring up the rear,” I answered. “You and Puck help the others.”
“I won’t let you down,” he said as he gripped his new glaive.
I met his eye seriously. “I know.”
Ralph slid down the wooden steps to the First Floor of the dungeon. I checked our rear and saw no sign of a following party of adventurers. Not yet, at least. With two seals of Swiftness +3, a Might +3, Fright +1, and Embolden +3 flowing through my veins, I was ready.
Twisting roots threaded themselves through the earthy wall of the initial entrance and first room like veins. A wide, grassy floor was lit up by lantern-like flowers.
Bolnir and the Harrowbark brothers battled wolves in a flurry of snarls and ringing steel. The minions had gray fur with streaks of green and bared, dripping red maws of white teeth as they lunged at the invaders.
Puck clung to the ceiling, upside down, and hurled shadow-spheres to blind the wolves. Ralph used Manipulate Earth to cause the ground to ripple beneath the minions’ feet, then carved them apart with his glaive.
Bolnir’s axe flashed and cleaved deep into a wolf’s skull. He drained the fresh green essence from the expired wolf. Another beast pounced toward the dwarf’s exposed flank, but Quinn and Vaughn were there in an instant. Their swords flashed, and the wolf’s head toppled to the ground.
Ralph now had the glaive in one hand, and the Greatsword of Inner Strength in the other. The Might +3 seal I’d carved into the sword allowed him to wield both giant weapons, and he proceeded to dice a wolf into a dozen bloody bits. Green essence poured from the corpse and flowed into Ralph’s adventurer sigil on his back.
My new crew handled themselves like professionals. For the moment, they didn’t need my help. I scanned the walls and the floor with a keen Elvish eye. I’d have placed traps near the entrances, exits, and center of the first room, but I couldn’t see anything that looked irregular.
“Where are the traps?” I shouted, over the din of snarls and steel.
“None on this floor!” Bolnir roared back as he claimed a wolf’s hindquarter.
Ralph kicked a minion in the bared teeth and sent it end over end toward Vaughn, who rammed his sword deep between the creature’s ribs. The minion yelped before dissolving into leaf-scented Nature Essence.
I stood to the left of the entrance and kept my eyes open. For two reasons. Lucius might return from Elderwood Clearing at any moment, perhaps with more guild members who wanted me dead. That, and I needed to keep Von Dominus safe from any new traps. Better that the expendable members of my party triggered them. Dungeons evolved, after all. They weren’t static, or set in stone.
The last minion lunged at me, and I figured it saw me as a lesser threat. I half-turned toward it and kicked in one of its legs. The beast yelped and twisted, but it wasn’t fast enough. I caught hold of the scruff of its neck and rammed my dagger deep into its throat. Blood fountained from torn arteries as I let the animal collapse feebly to the ground. Nature Essence leaked from its corpse and floated in a cloud above it. So much essence here that I couldn’t absorb.
I heard a soft creak, like a number of bows being drawn back.
“Move!” I roared.
My new raiding party obeyed instantly, without thinking. They dove to the sides, away from the stairs that led up to the dungeon’s entrance. Arrows hissed down into the dungeon and buried themselves in the grassy floor.
“Ralph!” I yelled. “Manipulate Earth!”
My adventurer thrust his glaive forward and furrowed his brow in concentration. The ground rippled in front of us, and I thought for a moment that he wouldn’t be able to make it work. Then, the ground suddenly erupted in a shower of soil and tree roots, and a mound formed. My party and I took cover behind it as arrows continued to pound into the other side of the mound.
I heard someone say something softly in a language that was lost to me. I recognized the voice, though. Lucius. It looked like he’d decided to follow us, after all. Well, you couldn’t make friends with everyone.
“Lucius, you two-faced piece of steaming, rotting, bark-baked shit!” Bolnir roared from behind the mound. His voice filled the whole dungeon room. “They’re trying to help us!”
“Go on ahead,” I said. “None of you can fight them. You’re all under oaths not to harm them.” A bloodthirsty grin split my features. “I’m not.”
Quinn stared at me as if I was insane. Bolnir glanced down and saw the arrows peppered in the floor. There were at least a few dozen of them. Far too many for a single elf. It seemed Lucius had brought friends with him.
“There’s too many. They’ll kill you,” Quinn said. “You might be powerful, but you only have two hands. You can’t just catch all of their arrows.”
I winked at him. “I’m not going to give them room to shoot.”
Vaughn joined his brother and stared at me in utter astonishment.
“Trust me; more of them means that I won’t be bored,” I laughed. “Ralph and Puck will help you. Head down to the next floor and claim your essence. I’ll catch up.”
Bolnir shook his head. “You’re crazier than a bucket of cats fucking.”
The metaphor just made me laugh harder. “Get out of here. I’ll give you something to help.” I squeezed my grip around the Baselard of Bold Agility and tapped into the Embolden +3 seal. The power flowed along my arm and out of my body, and a slight red haze coated the forms of my party members.
“I feel like I could fuck a dozen wenches!” Bolnir said with a maniacal grin.
“I doubt you’ll find even a single one in here,” Puck said.
“Go!” I said as the arrows stopped pounding into the mound. The elves were coming. I wanted them all to myself.
My emboldened crew angled right, deeper into the dungeon. I had to admit, these new allies of ours were growing on me. I kept my breath quiet and waited while I offered Lilith a silent invocation.
Impale, eviscerate, decapitate. The words flowed through my mind like a mantra as footsteps came from the entrance.
It was time to show these heathens which goddess they should have backed first.
Chapter Eleven
The elves spoke softly to each other in their native language as they moved down the stairs. They kept their footfalls soft, but a soft creak of tension told me that they had arrows on the string. These turncoats were ready to shoot at anything that moved, so I waited right behind the mound Ralph had created until the first enemy crossed the dungeon’s threshold.
A gleaming broadhead and a recurve bow appeared as the first elf stepped onto the grassy floor. I lunged out from behind the mound, caught hold of his cloak, and wrenched him sideways. Arrows hissed from strings, and I used my newfound meat-shield to catch them. The elf spasmed and screamed as four arrows appeared in his throat and shoulders.
I did a rapid, fraction-of-a-second head count. Nine elves. Not including the spasming elf in my grip. I kicked the corpse upward into the cramped hallway, and the elves scrambled backward, but even their natural agility wouldn’t be enough to save them.
With enchanted speed, I surged up the stairs while I channeled the Fright +1 seal. It wasn’t enough to send the elves fleeing out of the dungeon, but it made them less sure of their imagined victory, and a slight hesitation was all I needed.
My dagger flashed and cut an elf’s bowstring. The recurve bow buckled in his hands as the tension vanished from it. I caught hold of his mail from the front, but the off-balance elf surprised me with a barehanded blow to the face. I swore and swung back, but I didn’t let go of his armor. I yanked him downward. Bertha’s own strength mixed w
ith the Infernal magic of my daggers and demolished any kind of resistance he could have had. His head hit the floor, and a powerful stomp crushed his skull beneath my boot.
I leaped over his carcass as the next elf wisely abandoned his bow and pulled a well-crafted dagger from his belt. The blade whipped near my face, but I easily slipped aside and drove my own dagger up into his groin. The elf’s shriek filled the narrow space as an arrow slammed into the wall, two inches away from my head.
I drove my dagger upward and carved through the elf’s body to ensure he would never recover. As the next elf came for me, I tore my dagger free. He dived in an attempt to tackle me down the stairs, but I jammed my back against the wall and slashed his throat as he sailed past me. The elf’s lifeblood fountained from his throat as he tumbled down the stairs. Crimson blood splattered the walls of the narrow stairwell. A flash of motion crossed my eyes, and I sheathed a dagger before snatched reflexively at the air with my free hand. An arrow appeared in my grip like magic, and I snapped it between my fingers.
The archer who’d tried to shoot me seemed to move in slow motion, and I figured my Swiftness seal made it seem like time had slowed around me. As his hand reached over his shoulder to pull an arrow from his quiver, I vaulted off the wall behind me like an acrobat. I kicked out as I spun in the air, and my momentum caught the archer in the face. His skull shattered like glass as teeth and blood exploded into the air before he fell with a scream. I landed, snatched yet another arrow from the air, and raced up two more stairs.
I twisted around a half-drawn bow and rammed the arrow I’d caught into the next elf’s eye. My laughter reverberated throughout the narrow passageway as the unfortunate elf screamed. He dropped his bow as he grasped at the arrow’s shaft, and I ended his life by tearing open his stomach and baptizing the floor with his entrails.
“This all you have?” I roared. “This is the strength of your guild, Lucius?”
“You will die, abomination of Lilith!” the elf snarled back.
I couldn’t see him. Lucius remained hidden behind his friends as they backpedaled frantically out of the dungeon entrance. I debated my options, lightning-fast. If I let them escape, they’d simply come back with more reinforcements. Or, worse yet, Lucius and his buddies would wait for my adventurers to finish their fight against the dungeon. Then, all they had to do was ambush them in the green expanse of Grynwild Forest.
Letting them live wasn’t an option. I needed to end this now.
I launched off the last steps of the dungeon as I dived for the ankles of an elf. My free hand caught hold of the strapping of his boot. I twisted, and my magically-reinforced strength forced him off-balance. Right back into my lethal clutches. The Deadeye Guild member twisted and tried to stomp down onto me. He brought his bow around to fire an arrow into me, point blank, but that only brought his legs into range. I jammed the point of my dagger into the unarmored inside of his thigh and opened his arteries. The elf screamed and writhed as his stance buckled on a suddenly-useless leg. I swarmed over him like a spider and ripped his throat open with a quick jerk. So far, I hadn’t sustained so much as a scratch, so there was no point in drinking from the delicious fountain of fresh blood before me.
I kicked off the corpse and sprinted out of the dungeon’s archway as the other elves fled along the forest path. The survivors of Lucius’s little gang of assassins fanned out. Two carried katana-like swords, and Lucius wielded a leaf-bladed spear. None were carrying bows, so I didn’t have to worry about dodging any incoming arrows.
The trio moved forward and pressured me back toward the archway. It was a smart tactic. An enemy with his back to the wall couldn’t exactly slip away from you. I flicked the blood off my Infernally-infused dagger, reversed my grip on it, and drew my other blade from its sheath.
I straightened up and rolled my shoulders casually. “You know, I thought that for a guild, you’d be a lot better structured. That you’d have better tactics than merely following someone into a dungeon and shooting them in the back.” I made sure to use the cheerful and sarcastic tone that always succeeded in pissing off my enemies. “But, no. Are you still sure you don’t want to join me, Lucius? You really look like you could do better. Maybe learn from some serious professionals?”
Lucius raised his spear and pointed it at my face. “You do not speak, abomination.”
I shrugged. “Are you going to stop me, Oh fearless bootlicker of the Sap Lords?”
The elf furthest to my left lunged in, and her blade hissed toward my throat. The adrenaline, lightning reflexes, and muscle memory of hundreds of hours of combat kicked in before I could even think. I pivoted and turned her blade aside with my own. She changed tactics and moved in close. Her free elbow ripped in toward my face, but I caught it on my arm and effortlessly rammed my dagger up under her jaw.
She gurgled and spewed blood all over my face. The pair of surviving elves watched me with cold, expressionless faces. I bared my fangs in a manic grin as I let their bleeding compatriot fall at my feet. The elf next to Lucius was female as well, and she wore long green robes. Her face was covered in scars, and the only weapon she carried was a small wooden stick. A wand. This woman was a mage of some kind, but why hadn’t she cast a spell? Was she waiting for the right moment, to catch me unawares?
“You do not know what you have set in motion,” Lucius snarled. “With your insolence and invasion of our realm, and with your empty promises, the Sap Lords will punish the Deadeye Guild. Bolnir, Quinn, and Vaughn are fools. They help you, and yet they will die because of your idiocy.”
My bloodlusted grin widened. “So, you’re held in check by fear of punishment? You knowingly restrict yourselves of power because you fear the consequences?”
“Our oaths—” Lucius began, but I cut him off.
“Oaths sworn in ignorance and blatant idiocy,” I said. “These lords promised you everything, and you fell into line like good little pets. Even with those constraints, I could have freed you from your oaths. But no, you had to go and act all righteous.”
“Your blasphemy will be punished,” Lucius hissed. “This will not stand.”
“Oh, it will, Lucius. The real question is, are you going to keep standing behind your kin before you finally face me yourself? Or are you just a coward, with no spine of his own? Happy to send his fellow adventurers to their deaths?”
The female elf next to Lucius suddenly glowed with an emerald aura, and vines flashed out from the trees around me. My dagger sliced through half a dozen, but two managed to get through my guard and lash at my face. I turned aside, and the vines only produced shallow cuts. Then, a series of roots broke through the dirt beneath my feet and ensnared my legs. I gripped the dagger in my right hand, and a dry laugh tumbled from my throat.
“Is that all you have for me, sorceress?” I yelled. The power of Might pulsed through my veins, and I tore the bonds from my legs. “You were all too willing to charge down here behind your friends a few moments ago. Or are you finally willing to admit it? That you made a bad decision? That I can give you what you’ve been searching for all this time?”
I would never allow Lucius to join me now that I knew he was a traitor. I simply wanted him to admit that my offer was far better than anything the Sap Lords could promise. Then, I would kill him.
“You talk too much,” the elf beside Lucius said with narrow and cold eyes.
“And you don’t talk enough,” I countered. “Had you been willing to negotiate instead of trying to pincushion my friends and I… well, more of your people would still be breathing. And, gods forbid, perhaps even joined together for a greater cause.”
I spread my arms invitingly and stepped back into the dungeon. The lack of my new dungeon-diving squad’s presence told me that they were either dead or going swimmingly. I knew Puck and Ralph. It was definitely the latter.
“Come, adventurers,” I mocked. “Show me your mettle. Prove your worth. Or, alternatively, run. Cower. Hide. I am not unmerciful. Should you choo
se to flee, I’ll not hunt you down. But tell me; what will the Sap Lords do when they find out that you’ve failed?”
I was running off half-guesses and wild hunches. The usual. And, as usual, my shit-talking worked splendidly. I’d left them between rock or a hard place with my offer of potential freedom. The Sap Lords must have really been scarier than me, because the adventurers followed me down the stairs.
Normally, I’d have proceeded far more carefully, but I’d watched my squad demolish the minions without any resistance from traps. This dungeon’s First Floor had been cleared. I could have taken the elves on the stairs, but it was better if they thought they had a chance. And it would make my victory all the sweeter.
“Let us suppose that your apparent insanity is not precisely that,” Lucius said as he moved off the last of the stairs, “and that your power is as great as you tell us. Even if you are capable of destroying the Sap Lords, what then?”
“Well, they’ll need replacing, won’t they?”
The female elf snorted dismissively. “With your puppets, of course.”
I tilted my head. “Or those that share my vision.”
The elves split up and circled me like predatory cats. I stood in the center and let them play their little mind games.
“Lilith is a deceiver,” Lucius spat. “A craven wretch of a goddess. An oath-breaker. Whatever she promised you is a lie; you must know that. Her offers to you are the same poison you offer Bolnir and the others. False pretences of power and glory.”
I spread my arms wide again to keep up the evil overlord theatrics. “Tell me, Lucius; do my deeds not speak for themselves? And is it not the Sap Lords who make false promises?”
“Enough!” cried the elf sorceress.
She radiated acrobatic grace as she blurred forward. A magical tune sang as roots shot up from the dungeon floor, but I was ready for them this time. I dashed to meet the sorceress, and my dagger plunged into her heart. The emerald aura surrounding her body faded in an instant, and she dropped to the floor as her eyes milked over in death.