by Nick Harrow
The drow muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “motherfucker,” but I let it slide. She was my guardian with benefits, but she was also an evil dark elf with goals and motives all her own. I couldn’t fault her for wanting to increase her personal power, but I wouldn’t indulge her dark dreams at the expense of the rest of my dungeon.
“You should improve your ability to earn ka,” Zillah suggested. “You’re only getting one mote of ka for every three monsters with challenge ratings below one, and one mote of ka for every monster with a challenge rating above one. My old boss wasn’t much more powerful than you, and he got a lot more ka than that when he killed monsters who wandered into his dungeon.”
I summoned the Tablet of Transformation and scanned the list of third-level upgrades.
“Minor Enchantment, Healing Aura, and Ka Purification,” I read. “Those are the second- and third-level transformation abilities.”
“Ka Purification,” Zillah said with conviction.
“Enchantment might be nice, actually,” the drow countered. “I could use a set of magical armor that would protect my assets better than these rags.”
“I could have made you new clothes,” I pointed out. “But you told me you liked the rags.”
“I said I liked the way the rags made you look at me,” Kezakazek corrected. “Not the same thing.”
“Healing Aura could be useful,” Nephket offered as she returned from her sidebar with the wahket. “It could help the worshipers recover more quickly from battles.”
My familiar had a point there. Anything that could keep the wahket in fighting trim was a good thing.
But my heart sank as I read the description aloud.
<<<>>>
HEALING AURA
Duration: Permanent
Cost: 10 motes of ka
When this ability is purchased, the dungeon lord’s core emits a soothing golden aura that doubles the healing rate of all guardians and worshipers within fifty feet of the dungeon core.
<<<>>>
“That’s the problem,” I sighed, then continued with a lowered voice so the cat women wouldn’t overhear. “The wahket aren’t guardians or worshipers. They’re followers, but that doesn’t seem to really to give them any of the bennies that come from working for a dungeon lord.”
Nephket’s brow furrowed, but she nodded her head.
“Until we get a temple and can properly indoctrinate them, the wahket are in limbo,” the priestess said. “We need to rectify that situation. Soon.”
“I’d love to, but I don’t see a temple chamber anywhere on the Tablet of Engineering. It must be a higher-level ability,” I said.
Minor Enchantment looked nice, but I was positive that minor magical items were probably worth a damned fortune, and my hundreds of gold pieces did not constitute much of a treasure trove.
“Ka Purification it is,” I said. “At least that should let me get more ka, faster.”
“That’s what it’s all about,” Zillah said. She patted my back approvingly, and I felt ka gush out of my core as I invested in the new ability.
<<<>>>
KA PURIFICATION
Duration: Permanent
Cost: 5 motes of ka
When this ability is purchased, the dungeon lord harvests ka from monsters based on their challenge rating relative to the dungeon level. The amount of ka gained is equal to the cost to purchase an encounter equal to the challenge rating of the slain monsters.
<<<>>>
I briefly looked through the other tablets for more options, but there weren’t any that seemed reasonable. The incarnation tablet had several spellcasting abilities available at third level, which would’ve been nice if I didn’t have to incarnate to cast spells. There were some other abilities that would help with the cost of incarnation, but that was just digging myself a deeper hole in the short term. Incarnate Efficiency was a level-two ability that would reduce my cost to incarnate to eight motes per minute, but it was a five-mote investment to purchase the ability itself. It was a nice discount on incarnation costs, but I would still only get one minute of body time for a total cost of thirteen ka.
That was just too fucking expensive to even consider. Irritated, I vanished the tablets back to wherever they were stored when I didn’t need them.
Then a thought occurred to me.
“Do the wahket gain experience from fighting in my dungeon?” I asked.
“They don’t,” Nephket replied. She shook the gore from her feet as she rejoined me. “They aren’t guardians, so you can’t advance them, and they aren’t raiders so they can’t gain experience from fighting. As your familiar, I’m in the same boat for the moment. But a temple would fix that.”
“Then that’s what I’ll save my ka for,” I said. “Maybe that chamber will show up on the tablets next level.”
“Now what?” Zillah asked. She inclined her head toward the iron manacle still in my hand. “The dungeon lord that belongs to will certainly know his little buddy is dead. He probably won’t be very happy about that.”
“She,” I corrected, and Lord Rathokhetra snarled at the back of my mind.
“You know who this belongs to?” Nephket asked. “I thought you said you couldn’t read the runes on the collar.”
“I can’t, not exactly. But I have a feeling,” I said. I considered telling them Rathokhetra had give me the info but decided to keep that juicy little nugget of information to myself. I didn’t see any reason to let my guardians know I had an old ghost rattling around in my thoughts. “But Zillah’s right. The dungeon lord will know her guardian is dead even if she doesn’t know who killed it. If I were in her shoes, I’d send another guardian or three out to see what happened to my little friend.”
“Maybe not,” Kezakazek said. She crouched near a mound of corpses and peered into the puddles of gore that surrounded it as if searching for the answer to some question she dared not ask. “Maybe the dungeon lord’s already dead. The guardian wasn’t in a dungeon after all. Maybe it just wandered off after its master died.”
I raised an eyebrow at Kezakazek and considered her words. She might be right, but that was counting on luck I’d rarely had. It was more likely that she wanted me to live up to my promise to take her to study the crypt of the Buried Kings, which she was sure would be more interesting than fighting undead.
The drow might be right about Delsinia the dungeon lord’s fate, but she might also be wrong. If I had to choose one threat to ignore, it would be the Buried Kings. They were buried beneath the stele I’d claimed from the scarabkin, and I doubted they could claw their way free anytime soon.
If there was another dungeon lord nearby, though, that would become a problem almost immediately. Finding and dealing with Delsinia had to take top priority.
“Nice try,” I said. “But we need to find out if there’s a bad guy in our neighborhood. If Delsinia is alive, we need to kill her.”
Lord Rathokhetra rattled his cage again at the thought, which I took for his approval, and Zillah nodded in agreement. Nephket and Kezakazek, however, gave me wary side-eye glances.
“If you think that’s wise,” Nephket said. “But perhaps we should wait and see if any more undead arrive in the area. We could leave wahket scouts here, and they could report back if they spot any trouble. That would conserve our resources and allow you to continue expanding your dungeon without looking for a fight.”
“I appreciate your caution,” I said. I draped my arm around Nephket’s shoulders and pulled her close to me. “But I won’t be able to rest with a potential enemy so close at hand. If her forces captured our scouts or caught us unawares, I’d never be able to forgive myself.”
And getting stabbed in the ass because I was looking the other way would be embarrassing as hell. No way was I going to get caught flat-footed like that.
“You may be right,” Kezakazek admitted. “There is a saying amongst my people about unwanted neighbors.”
“And what is
that?” Zillah asked.
“Kill them all,” Kezakazek said with a grin and a wink for the scorpion queen. “And use their skulls for soup bowls.”
“I knew I liked you for a reason,” Zillah said and blew a kiss toward the drow. “You’re almost as bloodthirsty as I am.”
“More,” Kezakazek corrected. “I just hide it better.”Zillah licked her lips, and I caught sparks of smoldering fire in her eyes. That look was for the drow, but it was also for Nephket and me. A familiar hunger stirred below my belt, but I pushed it out of my thoughts. There’d be plenty of time for sexy fun times after we’d dealt with the current threat.
“We’ll need the rest of the wahket,” I said to Nephket. “Send Anunaset to fetch them. In the meantime, Zillah, I want you to take Pinchy and her friends and see if you can figure out where that damned trumpet zombie came from.”
“What will we do if we find another dungeon?” Zillah asked.
“Keep an eye on it and send for the rest of us,” I said. “Whatever you do, don’t step foot over its threshold. She’ll know all about you and the scorpions the second you’re inside her domain.”
While I’d spoken those words, the knowledge behind them was a mixture of my own brief experience as a dungeon lord and images from Lord Rathokhetra’s memories. Dungeon lords knew the instant an enemy crossed into their territory, so we’d have to move fast and hit hard once we committed to the attack.
Zillah nodded and sidled over to Nephket and me. She drew us both into her embrace and looped her long tail around Kezakazek.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” the scorpion queen said. Then she kissed me so ferociously I thought she wanted to devour me. I returned the favor, and she melted against my chest. She looked up at me with fierce, hungry eyes. “See you soon.”
The scorpion queen snatched the drow off the ground with her tail, kissed her almost as hard as she’d made out with me, and then planted the diminutive soldier back on solid ground before she vanished from the dungeon.
“Rude!” Kezakazek called after Zillah.
“You love it!” the scorpion queen shouted back.
The drow’s cheeks darkened, and I realized it was her version of blushing.
“Ah, you looooove Zillah,” I said and pinched Kezakazek’s cheeks.
Nephket laughed and shook her head. She stood up on her tiptoes, kissed my cheek, and then nuzzled my neck. I squeezed her close, and she tilted her head back so our lips could meet.
“I’ll get the wahket lined up,” she said. “They’ll be ready to move when Zillah returns.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll get a temple for them soon. I promise.”
“They’d like that,” she said. “They want to be closer to you.”
Lord Rathokhetra chuckled at that, a low, lusty sound that stirred up all sorts of dirty visions in my mind. I wondered if there would be other benefits to having the wahket as worshipers than just their ability to gain experience and grow in power. If they could all touch me, and I could touch them...
Nephket gave me a final squeeze and left to get her people moving. Her tail swished back and forth beneath her skirt, and my jaw clenched with desire.
I wasn’t sure if that desire was for the wahket or the battle to come. Both were alluring, but I couldn’t deny the fact that the opportunity to crush another dungeon lord ignited a primal lust deep inside me. Now that I knew there was an enemy somewhere nearby, the desire to wipe them out consumed my thoughts. I’d tear her limb from limb, drain her core to the last mote of ka, and—
“That’s what I’m talking about,” the drow said. “I recognize that fire in your eyes, Clay. Sometimes, killing your enemies is even better than sex.”
Chapter 4: War Party
WITHIN A FEW MINUTES of Zillah’s departure, I was as impatient as a kid on Christmas Eve. I didn’t want to wait for the wahket to arrive. I didn’t care what my scouts found. All I could think about was Delsinia.
More accurately, all I could think about was crushing Delsinia’s life out of her and eating her core.
“You all right?” Kezakazek asked. “You look like you ate a poisonous frog.”
“No, I’m not all right,” I grumbled. “This waiting is killing me.”
Or maybe it wasn’t killing me. Maybe the impatience I felt was canny old Rathokhetra banging at the walls of his cage in my mind. I turned away from my people and stared out of my dungeon while I rooted around in my thoughts to see if I could get anything good out of the old dungeon lord.
When I concentrated on Rathokhetra, I felt the boundaries of his personality in my head the same way you’d feel the empty socket of a missing tooth with the tip of your tongue. He was a definite presence in my mind, but he felt vague and indistinct. Almost like there was a piece of me missing.
“If we’re going to be stuck together, you might as well say something,” I thought.
Rathokhetra’s only response was a wave of rage that made me clench my fists and grind my teeth.
“Did the two of you have a lover’s quarrel back in the day?” I asked him. “She wanted to pitch, right?”
Another pulse of anger tightened my muscles like a shot of pain from a bad tooth.
“You have anything interesting to offer me?” I thought at my sullen passenger. “I get that she pissed you off, but it would be a lot more useful if you could tell me something about her. Strengths, weaknesses, really anything would be more helpful than those tantrums you keep throwing.”
A long, rasping sigh echoed in my mind like the stone door of an ancient mausoleum opening. It was followed by the sound of something dry and coarse rubbing against the inside of my skull.
“Kill. Her.”
Rathokhetra’s voice sounded pained and exhausted, as if the effort of making himself heard had drained all the energy he had stored up. His words held a creepy reptilian edge that made me grateful that he wasn’t a Chatty Cathy after all.
“Fine,” I thought. “That was my plan anyway. I’d just hoped that with all your vast experience and mad dungeon lord skills you’d have something a little more coherent to offer. But that’s cool. I’m down for killing.”
“Good,” Rathokhetra grumbled.
“One more question,” I said. “About the Marrow War—”
The touch of a warm hand on my shoulder dragged me out of my internal conversation, and I blinked when I saw Nephket standing in front of me with a puzzled expression on her face.
“Zillah has returned,” she said. Her brow furrowed with concern, and she lowered her voice. “I didn’t want to disturb your meditations, but I thought it best to let you know.”
An itchy tendril of unease wrapped itself around my spine and tickled the primitive lizard brain at the base of my skull with a finger of fear. How the hell had Zillah gotten back so quickly?
Or had I been inside my own head for far longer than I’d thought?
“That’s good,” I said. “Where is she?”
“With the wahket,” she said. “She’s walking them through some more tactics.”
If the wahket were back as well, that meant at least a half an hour had passed, maybe more. My conversation with Rathokhetra had felt like it had taken only seconds, but clearly it had dragged on much longer. I needed to be more careful about that. It was bad enough when I got lost examining my tablets or making changes to my dungeon. If every chat with Rathokhetra burned up so much time, I’d be in real trouble.
With my concentration back on the real world and not trapped in my head, I heard Zillah bark sharp commands at the wahket. I turned to watch and saw the front rank lock their shields into position and brace their spears to receive a charge. The rank behind them readied their own spears atop the shoulders of the cat women in front of them. At a second command from Zillah, all the wahket rammed their spears forward. Anyone who ran into that shield wall was going to get a face full of pointy bits.
“Zillah,” I called. “I’m ready for your report.”
“Ah, th
e dungeon lord returns,” Zillah said with a grin. To avoid the pile of zombie corpses between us, the scorpion queen leaned back on her tail, and her chitinous hind legs carried her through the gore.
When she reached me, her human legs wrapped tight around my waist and she dangled her arms over my shoulders.
“I found something fun,” she said and nipped the tip of my nose with her sharp teeth. “Blood gnomes.”
“Gross,” Kezakazek said, which was quite a statement coming from someone who’d been painting weird zombie-blood glyphs on a fractured skull a moment before.
“And what’s so gross about them?” I asked, very unsure that I wanted to know the answer to my question. I’d always thought gnomes were cute little bearded dudes who wore red hats and hung out in flower beds.
“They’re cannibals,” Zillah responded. She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and hugged me tightly. “Can we kill them? I’ve always wanted to eat a cannibal.”
Clearly, Soketran gnomes were a whole other thing from the kitschy garden dudes back home.
“Can we go around them?” I asked. Nephket gave me a slight nod of approval at that, and I winked at her over Zillah’s shoulder. “I’d rather not start a fight with a pack of miniature maneaters if I can avoid it.”
“Spoilsport,” Zillah grumped. “They’ll be easy enough to avoid, though you may want to deal with them sooner rather than later. I heard a story one time about these gnomes who captured a whole caravan of nuns. They used them as breeding stock, and they ate—”
“Let’s kill the dungeon lord first,” I interrupted Zillah before she could freak out the wahket with tales of cannibalistic infanticide. “We can deal with the long pig cookout next door later.”
“Fine. You ruin all my fun,” Zillah said. She unwrapped her legs from around my waist and lowered her feet to the floor. “Come on, I’ll guide you to the edge of the area we’ve scouted.”
“We’re all right behind you,” Nephket said. “How far is it?”
“Not far,” Zillah said. “There were a lot of false trails to follow at first, but I think we’ve found the way to the bad dungeon lord’s territory.”