by Troy Neenan
Copyright © 2019 by Spectrum Audiobooks, Troy Neenan
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Words from the author
More books from Troy Neenan
The Fomori Cipher
Within the Red Sands
Chapter One
The usually silent night was disturbed by the howl of some alien threat and the smashing of glass. The creature, for there was no better word for it, had sent its fist through David's windscreen.
As its hairy reptilian claw searched wildly for its latest victim, said victim kept his foot on the accelerator, not daring to ease off or slam on the breaks. He screamed as the monster attempted to claw his face off, its four clawed fingers leaving gouges in the upholstery. Was it David's imagination or was the horror saying something? It was hard to tell as he was trying incredibly hard not to shit himself.
David could feel every bump and small lizard that was unfortunate enough not to get out of the way. The thing that he had hit had seriously taken him off-road and it was taking all of the call centre agent's flabby strength to wrestle the steering wheel. He wanted to see where he was going, but it was a moonless night and the furry son of a bitch on his hood was taking up most of his view.
There was a hard bump which was immediately followed by the sound of paint being scraped off both of the car's doors. He could feel something come loose below him. All of this quickly became irrelevant as David's night-time drive came to a sudden and harsh end when he hit solid rock.
His head bounced against the steering wheel like a rubber ball and all became dark.
The creature hadn't fared much better. The car had been going eighty kilometres an hour when he drove into the mouth of the cave, practically stomping on the throttle with his substantial weight. When the car crashed into the cave wall it was the creature’s spine that had absorbed the impact. Sandwiched between solid rock and a speeding pick-up truck, the monster’s stomach was compressed like a tube of toothpaste.
It was alive long enough to vomit and defecate blood, its body twitched spasmodically in reflex. As the light drained from the creature’s eyes, its hideous maw continued to open and close. Its body wanting to get one last fleshy meal in before it finally stopped.
Stuck in the car seat, David slipped in and out of consciousness for several hours. There were no dreams, just an endless parade of jumbled thoughts and dizzy spells. Through some of these moments of semi-lucidity, David caught sight of dirty red shag carpet and yellow bent nails. At some point during one of these episodes, he managed to open the door to his ute.
The truck door slid open and the punch drunk occupant attempted to be free. Forgetting to take off his seatbelt, he hung there, his head dangling just outside like a pendulum. At that time, David was beyond pain, the darkness that fogged his senses thankfully numbed him. He was so out of it that he failed to register the bloated flies that were currently trying to use the gash on his forehead as a nest.
A drop of blood flowed from the wound, navigating its way through the invading army of pests, travelling down to the tip of David's broken nose. There, it stayed for just a moment before bending to gravity's rules and falling to the cave floor.
In his fevered delirium, David thought that he heard a small voice saying, “Say yes. Say yes.”
Not knowing anything and utterly lost to the world, David whispered, “Yes.”
A voice pierced through the blackness, cutting right into David's psyche. David's very being was scarred for all of time and he felt as much as heard the howling voice of an ancient being that was not meant for this world.
WELCOME, DUNGEON MASTER.
Pain and pleasure struck the trouble shooter like a comet. What he could only best describe as his soul was yanked from his broken body.
Everything he was and had been was weighed and judged. His mind was segmented and put back together again dozens of times. His grief, his anger, his frustrations, his desires were all laid bare before something incomprehensible. And every second of it, David was screaming.
***
David awoke with a strangled scream. He jumped onto his feet feeling himself for wounds, “What's happening?”
The last thing he remembered was going to that stupid coms station. The bloody thing had broken down and the first guy they sent over hadn't reported in, yet. So the company, in its infinite wisdom, failed to call the police but did manage to send in a second lemming. Enter David.
David had been to the tower before. It was a very memorable moment for the dispensable corporate cog and not in a good way. He remembered suffering heatstroke the moment he got out of his air-conditioned car.
This time the naïve computer monkey had thought himself prepared. He had loaded his car up with large bottles of water, had double checked his spare tire, and he had even made a point to get a new phone charger. It was an utter pain in the arse. Then, he got to the tower and things went to hell quickly.
The tower had been a literal bloody mess. The guy they sent over had been torn into chunks and what was left of him was scattered across the dirt like sticky confetti. The tower itself had been sabotaged by something that clearly wasn't human. David had thought he had seen bloody claw and teeth marks all over the upholstery.
Having seen enough horror movies, the tubby trouble shooter got into his car and tried to call the police. That was when Werewolf Skippy came out onto the road.
Having survived a brutal collision, David checked himself for injuries and was surprised to find that he didn't have a wound on him. In fact, he felt pretty damn good. Considering that he had just crashed his car and banged his head on the wheel, he felt incredible.
“Must have got kissed on the arse by a fairy.” David said, noting his good fortune. Smiling, he turned back to the car and his smile vanished. Sitting in the driver's side seat was some fat arse trying to steal his ride.
“Hey, you!” he called o
ut in hopes of scaring off the thief. Then he saw that this particular land whale was wearing his red polo shirt. That was when it clicked. The two legged hippo that was trying to pinch his car was him.
Seeing himself from this angle, David could only shake his head. He wouldn't have called himself handsome; even if he was fit he was just going to be average, but seeing that overweight arsehole with a neck-beard just made him feel sorry for himself. David had tried, oh, he had tried to lose weight, but living so close to a fried chicken restaurant had completely ruined that plan.
The extra-extra-extra large red polo shirt didn't really do much to hide his girth.
He had a sudden thought of the movie Ghost, where Patrick Swayze was looking down at his own corpse, while a hot Demi Moore cried. He really didn't want to do the whole wandering spirit thing looking like he didn't know what a treadmill was. Then again, he guessed that it could have been worse. At least he had died with his clothes on. An afterlife as a naked fat man would have masterfully sucked.
David looked at his busted truck. It was a Toyota. Not being a gearhead, David knew nor had a desire to know things like torque. All that he knew was that his truck was that it looked like a monster car that hunted big stags for fun. He had gotten it for just over $16,000 and up until a while ago it had earned every dollar. He had called it the Beast the moment he saw it.
Not knowing a damn thing about cars, David had made it a point to bring his local mechanic to the second hand dealership where he had bought his truck. After all, he was the one who had to fix it and David was under no delusions that a car was unbreakable. His last car had been working okay until it got to the point that the parts cost more than several months’ rent. He had been pretty bummed when he had to retire his old junk-heap, but the Beast had done its job.
Even now the pick up truck had taken a hit and it still looked about ready to go bushwhacking.
A deep fury filled David, he turned to the prick of a thing that killed him and hurt his car.
Having hit a kangaroo when he was eighteen, he knew from experience that you did not try to stop when you knew a crash was inevitable. Hitting something that was built like a tree was just going to piss it off, so you accelerated and hoped to God your insurance was covered.
This thing though, wasn't a red kangaroo.
The thing was as ugly as sin and David recoiled in horror at the mere sight of it. It looked like a velociraptor and a werewolf had twisted hate sex and this was their unholy baby. It had long shaggy red fur which covered most of its arms and back, and everything that wasn't fur was bright blue snake scales.
David grew fascinated by the ugly bastard’s teeth which twisted at odd angles. Animals didn't have mouths as bad as this thing. Hell, he didn't think Europeans had teeth this bad. They looked like a kid bent a bunch of rusty nails for a laugh and stuck it in a Halloween mask.
Besides the obvious out of body experience, it was that David could smell the horror show. It had that rank odour of an old fridge, specifically when you discovered that the motor had died a week ago. It was a stench that penetrated through Kevlar.
Could the dead smell?
David rolled his eyes at the joke, but this was starting to get on his nerves. How could a ghost have a sense of smell? Then again, how could a ghost see? The lack of eyeballs and brain kind of ruined that.
He again looked at the creature and for some unknown reason knew that this thing was not of this world. It was an odd sensation, like trivial pursuit. Somebody asks a stupid question and suddenly a light bulb goes off in your head. David didn't know how but he knew this creature's name, and also knew that it had been built and not born.
An Ikky Goran. That was the name that popped in the troubleshooter's head when he looked at this creature. Its creator had taken an Ikis, a creature that looked much like a crocodile, and then spliced it with several other mutated monstrosities. This thing had been chopped up and put back together so many times that there was almost nothing of its original form in there.
This thing was a mutated creature from some amateur dungeon that wanted to create a shock trooper. It used pack hunting and ambush tactics. Its teeth were covered in acidic slime, but because of the dumb-arse creator's design, it may have looked terrifying but it couldn't chew or bite in the traditional sense. The only things that it could physically eat were small rodents and insects.
David was all for experimentation, after all, if you stopped doing something because it was insane and bad for the environment, mankind wouldn't have landed on the moon. But this was... he didn't know how best to put it. It was like 70s monster movie bad.
Wait. David stepped back and held his head. Dungeon? As in those things in video games and bad LitRPGs novels on kindle? Just what the fuck was going on?
That's when he heard something in the car moan.
Chapter Two
David woke up feeling like he had head butted a jumbo jet. Everything felt wrong, his head being his main concern but there was also an acute pain in his arm and back, which made him think something was broken.
Feeling like utter shit, he managed to undo his seatbelt and fell belly first on to the ground.
Who are you? What are you doing in my body? Get the fuck out of it.
Though he did not know why, David felt pissed off for some reason. He had just survived a head-on collision with... His thoughts drifted back to the crash. What had he hit? It hadn't been a person. Or at least he hoped that it wasn't a person, he was too cute to survive prison, or worse, losing his license and using the dreaded public transportation.
“Hello,” David said as he got onto his hands and knees. He wiped away the dried blood and dirt on his face and opened an eye. He was in some sort of cave and he moaned as his head pounded from within his skull.
Feeling weak and drained, he crawled back to the Beast. He looked up at the massive four wheel drive and felt as though he was staring up at an impassable mountain.
Who are you? Somebody shouted in his head.
“David Mascoff,” he answered and looked around for the owner of the voice. But as far as the trouble shooter could see he was the only one here. Was he losing his mind?
The cave itself was not that big, maybe two car parks wide and just as long. The opening was far smaller. Getting the Beast inside the cave had been like threading a needle. The truck's white paint was ruined and it was going to take more than a few dollars to buff the scrapes out.
David groaned as he used the car as a crutch. He definitely needed medical attention as he had barely made it to a standing position before he needed a rest. He was exhausted and he hadn't done anything, yet.
The voice continued to pester him and mumble. Having never had one before, the trouble shooter told himself that it was just the concussion talking. He needed water and a lie down. Crawling back into the cab, David cursed when he saw the glass on his seats, then he double cursed when he saw the huge furry hand sticking out of his windscreen.
No time to linger on that, he needed water.
It took a control that David didn't know that he had, but after a few tries he made it into the back row. Fortunately, the front seats had shielded the back from most of the glass, but there was the odd jagged shard here and there, which was nothing that David couldn't wipe away. He just lay there, panting like a sick and dying dog, waiting for death to take him.
God dammit you are pathetic, said the voice.
“Screw... You.” David breathed. His hands shaking he reached down and picked up one of the nine spare 1.25 litre bottles of water that he kept for just such an emergency. The water felt like it had been left to simmer on a stove but it felt so good going down.
Having just drank half the bottle, David closed his eyes. Meanwhile, the voice in his head grew agitated.
No. Don't sleep. God damn... Oh shit.
***
Memories rushed into David and he just knew. He had felt the crushing exhaustion, the pain, and confusion of hearing a voice in his head. He also gat
hered the knowledge that if he didn't do something that he was probably going to die.
What was happening to him? What was going on? Was he dead or dying?
That was when David realised that he hadn't been alone. Something was in the cave with him and it wasn't the fat guy in the car.
A thumb-sized humanoid creature with butterfly wings growing out of her back appeared in front of David. She was tiny and wearing a green dress that appeared to be made out of tree leaves. The tiny supermodel smiled at the ghost like she was the smallest beauty pageant queen in history and was about to get her crown.
Her voice was like a wind chime, “Greetings Dungeon, I am...”
Before this bullshit could go one step further, David raised a finger at the midget lawsuit just waiting to happen, and said “No.”
The fairy halted from giving her introduction and looked remarkably confused, “Excuse me?”
“You're excused, now fuck off.” David had played enough games to have instant dislike for anything that dealt with fairies. He had also read enough indie books to get sick of the idea of a cute little sidekick. Why did authors even link their main characters to fairies anyway? You couldn't have sex with them, not unless you were hung like a mouse. There was no reason that they hung around underground labyrinths. You couldn't even use them as a relevant plot device.
“But I'm...”
The dungeon pointed at himself, “Do I look like a two year old girl?”
The fairy, obviously not used to the angry man's foul language looked about ready to cry, “No,”
“Then go pester Walt Disney’s anti-Semitic arse.”
Tears ran down the fairy's face and David felt slightly guilty about being a dick, but he stood by his decision. He didn't have time to have a coma, or dream, or whatever this was. He had to get that tower fixed, and he possibly needed to call the police, or at least the local animal control office.
The fairy stood straight, not daring to show tears in front of the mean man. She turned around as if she was going to leave.