Dungeon Bringer 2

by Nick Harrow

  The dick monster flailed all its many tendrils in a mad, desperate attack. They slapped against my back and knocked my guardians ass over teakettle as they swept through the gas-filled chamber.

  That flurry of attacks put my guardians in dire straits. With Kozerek’s poison gas spell chipping away at their hit points, they wouldn’t last long. I needed to heal them, but my spells could only affect one of them at a time. I needed something stronger.

  “You get your wish, Kezakazek,” I thought, and purchased the Advance Guardians ability. The status circles for Zillah, Kezakazek, and Nephket all instantly jumped out of the red and into the yellow as their levels jumped up to match my dungeon’s. Delsinia, unfortunately, didn’t get a boost, because she was already at the same level as the dungeon.

  Kozerek clawed at my eyes with the fingers of his left hand and pressed his right arm across my chest in a desperate bid to shove me away. He was stronger than he looked, and it took far too much effort to keep the asshole pinned in place.

  “You cannot kill either of us,” Kozerek slurred through his split lips. I tried to choke him out, but my fingers couldn’t squeeze hard enough to crush his throat. “We are bound in a web you cannot unravel. You die here, today, dungeon lord.”

  A ring on Kozerek’s right hand glowed like an ember, and he slowly pushed me back. I threw my weight against his arm, but he was stronger than he had any right to be, while the poisonous fog sapped my strength.

  “Zillah, Delsinia, need your help with this fucker,” I thought to my guardians. “Grab his arms. Nephket, Kezakazek, get that door open.”

  The after effects of the Light of Condemnation still had Kozerek lit up like a ball about to drop into Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and my guardians found us in seconds.

  Zillah arrived first and hooked Kozerek’s left arm with her mancatcher. Before Kozerek knew what had happened, the scorpion queen had his hand pinned against the bulk of the chained dungeon lord.

  “Fools,” Kozerek howled. Enraged, he slammed his forehead into my face. The action dislocated his shoulder, but the dark elf was far past caring about such minor issues. Before I could react, he repeated the headbutt, and stars filled my eyes.

  With an angry roar, I clenched my free hand into a fist and clubbed Kozerek in the face. I yearned for my khopesh, but it was still stuck in Insuxexara’s gullet, far out of my reach.

  Another ring on Kozerek’s right hand flickered with sparks of power, and I dreaded what magical trick he’d pull next. I snatched at his hand, but I couldn’t get a grip on the ring. It grew brighter with every passing moment, and Kozerek’s bloody fingers slipped out of my grasp.

  “Got it,” Delsinia shouted. She whipped the spine between her bone daggers around Kozerek’s wrist and yanked his arm away from me.

  The dark elf shouted something in a language I didn’t understand, and Delsinia flinched like she’d been slapped. An amber light flashed between my guardian and the dark elf, and I feared he’d reasserted his control over her.

  “Fight him!” I shouted and smashed Kozerek’s front teeth out with another punch.

  Delsinia shook her head and worked her daggers back and forth. Every motion sawed the surprisingly sharp vertebrae through another layer of Kozerek’s flesh.

  He howled in pain as Delsinia hacked through his arm, and I knew it was now or never. I had to end this.

  One of the tentacles wiggled from the beast’s torso next to me as it tried to protect its master from us. I grabbed the copper rod that connected it to the body and tore it free of the dungeon lord’s body. Milky fluid splashed over me and coated the floor in front of the creature.

  “I know,” I said to Kozerek. “Neither of you can die while the other lives.”

  The end of the copper rod’s tip was barbed and ended at a sharp angle, like a hypodermic needle. I wrapped both hands around the copper shaft and drove it up into the wizard’s gut.

  The makeshift weapon pierced Kozerek’s abdomen and sliced through his belly. His mouth fell open in a silent gasp, and the joints in his arms popped as he wrenched them out of their sockets in a desperate bid for freedom.

  My breath caught in my lungs, and my body refused to bring in any more of the tainted air. Sparklers of crimson light fizzled across my vision, and I knew my time was almost up.

  The copper spike passed through the dark elf and into the dungeon lord. Insuxexara squealed and its tentacles battered the walls and ceiling of the bone chamber like battering rams. Chunks of ribs and segments of spine rained down around us.

  “More,” the beast wailed, and a flood of gruesome fluid gushed from the yawning chasm between its legs. The tentacles coiled around me in a hideous embrace, and goo squirted from their tips. “Moooore!”

  I leaned into the rod and shoved it upward with my remaining strength. My improvised spear was almost five feet long, and that brutal thrust buried all but the last few inches of it.

  Kozerek glowered at me as he realized the error he’d made. I couldn’t kill either of these monsters, but I could kill them both.

  “Fuck you,” I spat into his face, and twisted the spike.

  Blood gushed from the drow’s impaled body. It poured from his wound and from his mouth, it gushed from his nostrils, and even his eyes burst in their sockets and wept thick crimson streaks down his cheeks.

  Insuxexara shrieked in a final moment of ecstasy and its tentacles folded around Kozerek’s body in one last, perverse embrace.

  Kozerek and his piece-of-shit pet monster were dead.

  Not that that helped my situation at fucking all. My lungs wouldn’t draw air, and my guardians were on death’s door. There was a horde of zombies outside, and not enough wahket to kill them all.

  Shit looked pretty grim.

  I had to focus. There was a way out of this, but I didn’t have much time to find it.

  My lungs screamed for fresh air, but I had none to give them. Instead, I pushed myself even harder to heave Kozerek’s corpse from Insuxexara’s tattered body. My Dungeon Detects ability told me what I needed was right there. I just had to summon the strength to claim it.

  With Kozerek’s body out of the way, the copper rod jutted almost a foot out of the dick beast’s body. I grabbed it with both hands, pulled it back a few more inches, and rotated it in ever-widening circles to open the wound I’d inflicted. In seconds, the gaping hole was big enough for me to worm my whole arm inside Insuxexara.

  “The zombies are dying, my lord,” Anunaset said in my thoughts. “We’re almost to the door.”

  “Open it as soon as you can,” I said. “But move away quickly. The air in here is poison.”

  Zillah and Delsinia had both staggered away from me, their hands over their mouths, their thoughts racing with panic as the foul air choked the life out of them. Nephket and Kezakazek hadn’t found the door, and I wasn’t even sure they were still conscious. We’d won the battle but might still lose this war if I couldn’t get some air for the four of us.

  My hand slithered through the dungeon lord’s guts, and I tried not to imagine why so many things inside of the creature writhed against my flesh. It had to be the body’s natural gases looking for an escape. It couldn’t be something alive, something searching for a way out of the dying, blubbery body.

  No. Fucking. Way.

  I was up to my shoulder inside Insuxexara before my fingers slid across something smooth and cool to the touch. A spark of power leaped from my hand to the object, and I pressed my palm to its firm, flat surface.

  “Mine,” I gasped, and activated the Claim Stele ability.

  A wave of silver light blasted away from me in every direction. It transformed the bilious smoke into a translucent haze that shimmered with a rainbow of colors. I’d just claim this dungeon and use my powers to open a few windows and then we’d have air. Perfect.

  <<<>>>

  Congratulations, dungeon lord. This stele is now yours.

  <<<>>>

  I wanted to let out a triumphant wh
oop but didn’t have the air in my lungs to spare. Instead, I imagined gaping holes opening in the walls around us. In a handful of seconds, the bad air would be out of the room, and good air would flow—

  The first hole began to dilate in the wall nearest to me. It was a pinprick, at first, but quickly expanded.

  And I knew I’d fucked up before the hole was even big enough for me to stick my thumb into.

  Air rushed out of the chamber with a tea-kettle shriek that stabbed my ears like a pair of icicles. I’d seen enough science fiction movies to know that meant there was nothing beyond the walls of this dungeon but a vast, sucking void that was greedy for our air. I sealed the walls back up before the vacuum caused any damage.

  Well. Fuck me with a chainsaw.

  There was only a sliver of light left in each of my my guardians’ circles. Mine was blinking a shade of ugly scarlet. Time was just about up.

  My head drooped on my shoulders, and the darkness at the edges of my vision threatened to suck me down into a deep, dark night. It was time to let go. Time to—

  Fuck that. I was a dungeon lord.

  My legs still obeyed me, which was a miracle. I staggered to the door, found the latch with hands that felt like they were encased in wooden mittens, and wrenched the door open so hard its hinges shrieked.

  Air, cool and dry and clean, rushed into my lungs.

  A drow zombie turned toward me, its eyes aglow with amber flames. Its mouth opened wide to chomp down on my face, and I roared in its face.

  My left hand closed around the asshole’s throat and my right hand crabbed its crotch. I raised it overhead, then slammed it into the back of the next zombie in line with enough force to snap both of their spines in a dozen different places.

  A third zombie whirled to face me, and I kicked him square in the sternum. His ribs popped loose with a sound like a packet of saltines being crushed, and he flopped back into his buddies.

  The air in the stairwell had started to reek of honeysuckle. I had to clear a path and then get back and drag the guardians out of the room of bone before it was too late.

  The little light left in their circles told me I didn’t have much time.

  I crushed a zombie’s head against the wall, stomped another’s legs into kindling, and tore another walking corpse almost in half with my bare hands. Blood and clotted gore clung to me like a robe, and my feet were slick with it.

  I didn’t care. The zombies had to die. Everything had to die so my guardians could live.

  Beautiful faces hovered around me, urging me on. There was still time. I could still save them.

  A fanged zombie reared up before me, its face coated with blood and its body slick with gore. I grabbed the fucker and dragged it off the floor to smash its face into rotten pulp.

  “No!” Anunaset shouted.

  My hand was coiled around her throat, my fist raised to hammer her into the ground. For one dark moment, I almost did it.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. The malignant rage that had emanated from Rathokhetra like a flood of poison receded and my vision cleared. “I’m sorry. I thought...”

  “I know,” Anunaset said. She leaned forward, wrapped her arms around my neck, and pulled our foreheads together. “I know. It’s over.”

  Chapter 18: Recuperation

  UNDER NEPHKET’S DIRECTION, I expanded the temple to its frankly ridiculous maximum size. The once cozy place of worship became an enormous hall filled with luxurious pews, life-sized wahket statues, and a cobra throne that stood almost two stories tall and had room enough for me and all my guardians to sit comfortably on its plush cushion.

  That bit of extravagance cost me several thousand gold pieces but earned me the undying gratitude of Neph and the rest of the wahket, so I considered it a good tradeoff. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the money to burn, either. The armor and weapons we’d taken from the drow invaders, along with the gaudy and often disgusting pieces of art we’d looted from Kozerek’s lair paid for the whole remodel and left me with almost ten thousand gold pieces to spare. The drow were assholes, but they had expensive tastes.

  Behind the throne I’d crafted a gargantuan bed with a mattress so thick we needed a ladder to climb into it. A sea of furs and fine linens covered the bed’s surface, and scattered trays of food and drink hung from the ceiling on golden chains in easy reach of anyone who needed to eat.

  “I’m never getting out of this bed again,” Kezakazek moaned from under a pile of blankets next to me. Her violet eyes watched me from the shadows within her comfortable nest, and I caught a flash of her white, white teeth when she spoke.

  “Same,” I said. I felt like I’d gone a few rounds with King Kong, climbed back into the ring with Godzilla, and then went for an encore with fucking Smaug. I didn’t know exactly what Kozerek’s traps had done to me, but I needed time to recuperate from the bruises that covered my skin and the damage the poison had done to my lungs.

  I was still pissed that my lungs hurt even when I wasn’t incarnated. I didn’t need to breathe, so I sure as fuck didn’t need damaged lungs. Maybe there was a higher-level ability to remove the damned things.

  Not that any of that had slowed me down when it came time for the victory celebration with my guardians and worshipers. I was honestly surprised the bed had survived the enthusiastic goings-on. There was something about near-death experiences that made the sexy times much, much more intense.

  “We can’t stay here forever,” Nephket murmured. Her head rested on my chest, and her body was pressed close to my side. She traced lazy circles on my belly with her fingertip, careful to navigate around the purple-black bruises that mottled my skin. “We have to find the rest of Kozerek’s allies and kill them before they can continue his work.”

  Delsinia reached across me and poked Nephket’s nose with one long, green fingernail.

  “They’ll keep for a few more days,” she said. “We’ve earned some rest.”

  Both of those statements were true. Most of Kozerek’s castle had been empty. The drow had stolen it from Insuxexara, a dungeon lord who’d apparently spent more time finding creatures to bone than building up his dungeons to ward off invaders. I don’t know how Kozerek had done it, but he’d stripped the tentacle monster’s dungeon down to a bare stele. Kozerek kept Insuxexara fed on the ka he stole from Delsinia. It was the circle of fucking weird life, I guess.

  Those little tidbits of info had come from Kozerek’s journals, which we’d found tucked away in a neat little study in the highest room of the fortress.

  Those journals also told me that the legends about Kozerek were mostly true. The asshole had hunted dungeon lords for sport during his youth, and he believed he’d stolen more cores than any other raider, living or dead.

  But in the centuries since the Marrow War, Kozerek’s ambitions had grown. He wasn’t happy to collect godmarrow and use it for miracles. He’d aimed higher, much higher, and had convinced a circle of twelve other spellcasters to join him in his madness. Together, they’d crafted the first collar and used it to enslave Insuxexara.

  The ritual that Kozerek performed on that debased dungeon lord had transformed Insuxexara into something not quite alive but definitely not dead. Kozerek couldn’t use the Solamantic Web on his own, but with Insuxexara bound to his will, he had access to all the many worlds. The madman and his pals wanted to find enough godmarrow to rebuild the drow’s dead Dreaming Goddess and make her dance to their tune.

  Unfortunately, he’d picked the wrong dungeon lord to mess with and had gotten his ass good and killed.

  “Maybe the princess could have some of her personal guard take care of that problem for us,” I said.

  “Not funny,” Kezakazek said. “Maybe I’ll have my personal guard execute the next person who teases me about being a princess.”

  I chuckled but let it drop. Kezakazek would tell us more about her past when the time was right for her, and I wouldn’t push her to reveal it a moment sooner. The fact that a badass like Kozerek knew her f
amily told me plenty. Maybe we could go back and put her pretty little ass back on the throne some day. That might actually solve a lot of the problems I saw ahead of me.

  “Hey!” Zillah shouted as she entered the room, launched herself off the wall, and landed on the bed. She straddled my hips and scooped Nephket and Delsinia under her arms. Kezakazek tried to scramble away, but the scorpion queen was too fast and snatched the dark elf with her tail.

  “Zillah!” Nephket shouted in surprise.

  “Is she always like this?” Delsinia asked.

  “Always,” Zillah responded. She licked the side of Delsinia’s face, then turned her attention to me. “You look very tired, Clay.”

  “I am,” I said. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I just killed a dark elf wizard and another dungeon lord.”

  “We killed them,” Zillah said. “And I think my poison actually did most of the work, if we’re being honest.”

  “I shoved a copper rod right through him,” I said. “Pretty sure I did the killing.”

  “That’s not how I remember it,” Zillah said. She wriggled her hips against mine, and warmth turned to fire in my blood. “I stuck my stinger right in—oh.”

  “Like that?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” she murmured as she squeezed the other guardians closer to us. “But let’s see if we can get it right with a little practice.”

  Chapter 19: Company Man

  WHILE MY GUARDIANS and worshipers slept, I took a trip down to the Solamantic Web. I’d left the planar gateway where I’d found it for security, but it only took me a few seconds to open it whenever I wanted to amble on through to the other side. A pebble stuck between two of the teeth on the gateway’s rail was enough to keep the door open until I came back through and removed it.

  Handy.

  After I’d claimed the dick beast’s stele, I no longer had to pay maintenance costs to keep my dungeon here, which was nice. I was still aware of this section of my territory when the gateway was sealed, but it felt numb and a little out of kilter. Sort of the way your hand feels when it falls asleep.