by Hugo Huesca
“Will you be alright?” he asked. He was scared out of his wits—had the heroes in the bardic songs felt as scared as he was now, while they were doing the deeds that earned them their fame? No way, he told himself. No way. Heroes are never scared. But maybe Kes was right. Maybe a terrified Bard was all they needed.
Because, after all, a Bard was always near one hero or another. You never knew when one would show up…
Kes nodded and managed to stand. She scavenged one of the vitality potions for herself, then handed Alder the tray. “Good luck, Alder.”
The Bard took a deep breath and made an effort not to think of the possibility of being devoured alive by an arm with teeth in the next few seconds.
LANCEL AND POIRA, dead. Nicolai began to feel like twenty deaths wouldn’t be good enough to punish Dungeon Lord Edward Wright. I’ll have to take everything from him. He’ll have to watch as his loved ones beg for death; I’ll force him to wield the sword himself! He was going mad with physical pain, and he knew it. The dead monster inside his body was screeching silently at him, drowning him in animal fury and hunger.
Hurt. I’m hurt. Food. I need food… I need to hide and feed until I’m recovered. Hurt…
No. He pushed the monster’s instincts down below, where they belonged. You’re dead. I’m in control! The Lotian had been very clear, and Nicolai had made damn sure he wasn’t lying. The creature was dead, and whatever instinct was left was merely a vestigial afterthought, not entirely unlike a zombie born out of necromantic residue.
He stood, leaving the broken corpses of Lancel and Poira behind—he’d have to mourn them later. He stumbled his way toward the avian woman, who was staring at him defiantly.
“Good,” Nicolai whispered. “Good. That means I can still break you some more.” His arm slithered across the floor with every step. It was hungry, eager to taste blood. “First, I’ll take your hands. Then, I’ll take your feet…” He flashed her an unhappy smile. No pain was enough. No pain would ever be enough. But he’d take whatever he could get.
A glint of eldritch green came somewhere to his left side. With speed forged by years of bitter fighting, Nicolai turned, the maw of his hand snapping at the air.
“First, you’ll have to get through me,” said Edward Wright, his Evil Eye blazing with terrible anger past the green-hooded cape that covered half his face in shadows.
“You!” Nicolai roared. How? He was supposed to be out there, fighting Torst!
The Dungeon Lord was armed to the teeth, a silver longsword in one hand and, in the other, a short sword with a black steel blade, the edge glinting red. He was clad in full plate armor of Lotian design, the breastplate engraved with depictions of ancient Dungeon Lords crushing their enemies. His cape shone with powerful enchantments sewn at the seams by silver thread. His ancient lord aura was so strong that the surrounding air glimmered as if near a bonfire.
“That’s right,” Wright said. “Me.” He raised his sword in challenge, tip aimed at Nicolai’s neck. “You’ve come into my house, you fool of a man, fully aware of the consequences. You have killed my minions and inconvenienced me. Under the ancient laws of the Lordship, I’m free to crush you and use your experience points as I desire. There will be no mercy.” His Evil Eye shone brighter than ever. “I am Lord Edward Wright of the Haunt, called Lord Wraith by his minions. I command terrible, otherworldly powers. If you have any last words, you should speak now.”
No way, Nicolai thought. Despite himself, he was scared. Did I underestimate him somehow? The man standing in front of him was far more powerful than the one he had met a month ago. Could someone really change that much during that time span? Or has he been tricking me since the beginning? The realization felt as if someone had dunked his head under freezing water. He hid most of his stats, and let me believe we could beat his dungeon… Lord Wraith, he had called himself. Could it really be a coincidence that he had stumbled upon Nicolai’s ritual when his rebels were raising an actual wraith?
He’s mocked me since the beginning. Past the fear, came the hatred. This time, he had neither the strength nor the desire to resist the impulse of the dead monster. He gave in.
Wright must pay!
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with, Dungeon Lord,” he said. His arm whipped across Wright’s neck in a flash of motion. The Dungeon Lord made no attempt at dodging, and Nicolai knew he had struck a mortal blow. He expected to be treated to the sight of Edward drowning in a pool of his own blood.
Instead, his arm sliced through thin air instead of flesh and bone, and Edward Wright vanished.
For a second, Nicolai could only stare, stunned, at the empty spot where the Dungeon Lord had been. What?
“It seems to me,” said a meek and quiet voice somewhere behind him, “that neither did you.” Nicolai turned in time to see a young man with straw blond hair reach the exit tunnel. He was carrying a small tray in his hands. “Nimble feet!” the young man said, then dashed away with astonishing speed before Nicolai could react.
“What?” Nicolai asked aloud. The avian mercenary had disappeared, too, at some point, the only evidence of her presence being a trail of bloodied footsteps. “An illusion,” the rebel realized then. His plan hadn’t failed. Edward Wright was still dealing with Torst—the mirage in front of him had merely been a minor illusion, the last, maddened attempt of a Bard to save his own hide. “Only an illusion.”
It’s just that kind of day. Chuckling to himself, he passed over the corpses of Lancel and Poira and followed the avian mercenary’s footsteps. An instinctual part of him knew that he was getting closer and closer to the dungeon’s Seat.
THE WRAITH TOWERED above Ed and Katalyn, its skull bright with green rage. “You can’t run away from me forever, my daughter. Come. Join me. Cold can be comforting, too.” It swooped down in a blur of speed, screeching as it went.
Overwhelming fear breached into Ed’s mind, drowning his reason. He tried to fight it, but it was like standing in the path of a train and trying to slow it down with only his bare hands.
He turned and ran toward the trees, his throat burning painfully with each inhalation. At some point, he had dropped his sword—not like it was any use against the wraith.
The fear receded. Now Ed was furious. Torst’s toying with my mind. The very idea of having that dead thing affecting his brain somehow made him tremble with rage. He turned back. Katalyn was running for her life—she had had the presence of mind to head in the opposite direction.
Behind her, Kaga was doing his best to earn the wraith’s attention, but he was running out of knives, and he couldn’t get close enough to the wraith without coming into the effect of the fear aura.
Katalyn tried to run to the safety of the trees, in her panic. Ed knew it was a mistake—the wraith cared nothing for obstacles, and their only hope was to keep it in the clearing, where they could see it coming.
When the last dredges of the vitality potion dried out, Ed downed his agility potion. Enough, he thought. He sprinted to Kaga, pumping his legs as fast as he could, moving faster than ever before. He needed all the speed he could spare. The spiders followed a line parallel to him and Katalyn, still trying to put as much distance between each other as they could—per Ed’s orders. But they couldn’t get the wraith’s attention if they couldn’t hurt it.
“Kaga, close the distance!” Ed told the kaftar when they were close enough. He activated his ancient lord aura. Without the vitality potion’s boost to his Endurance, he could feel the strain on his body like he was being cooked alive by invisible coals.
“On it!” said the kaftar, then he dashed toward the undead monster.
Katalyn was running out of breath, and the wraith was as fast as ever. “Why do you resist, Katalyn?” Torst asked. “Join me, darling, and all your woes will go away!”
“Shut up!” Katalyn panted. “Shut up already!” She threw a smoke bomb at the wraith. A dark cloud exploded in midair, big enough to engulf the creature. Before Katalyn could reg
ain her lost speed, Torst flew out, straight at her, not even slowing for an instant.
It doesn’t need eyes to see her, Edward realized. He was doing his best to stay near Kaga, so his aura could protect the kaftar from the magical fear. It’s tracking her some other way. If only Lavy were here, maybe she could’ve found a way to blind Torst… But she isn’t. Focus, Ed. One mistake and Katalyn’s going to die. And then everyone else would follow her.
“Oy, ugly!” Kaga called after the wraith. “I’m talking to you!” He threw his last knife, and this time he was close enough to the wraith that his hand blistered as he extended it. “Agh!” Ed could see Kaga’s Endurance drain by one rank.
The knife struck the creature’s skull. The hit rang hollow, but Ed was sure it had at least nicked the bone. “You dare!” the monster bellowed, stopping in its tracks. “You dare strike at me, get in the way of my reunion with my daughter!” Torst changed course, faster than Ed had anticipated.
“Come at me!” Kaga howled. He was wielding his fang daggers in each hand, and his tongue flapped madly in the wind. “I’m ready, come at me! My cackle will be proud of me tonight!”
Ed realized that the kaftar was about to try to kill the wraith before it could drain his Endurance. But Ed had seen the wraith fight in close combat before—against Nicolai, in the catacombs. Nicolai’s incredible regeneration had allowed him to tank the drain for a while, but the wraith had broken his body like it was nothing, throwing him around over and over again.
Kaga was going to die. Ed desperately grabbed the last vial in his belt and held it firmly in his right hand—his chest was filled with an overwhelming sensation of impending doom. This either works or kills me instantly.
I’m so fucking sorry, Ed thought as he turned off his ancient lord aura. Kaga’s brave expression was instantly replaced by one of sheer, absolute terror. As his fur began to smoke and his skin to blister, the kaftar dropped his daggers and ran, frothing at the mouth, eyes unfocused. The wraith howled after him, fast like the wind, drinking Kaga’s Endurance with each passing second.
Then Ed activated his improved reflexes and jumped in the wraith’s path. The boost to his Agility gave him a few extra inches of height, allowing him, for an instant, to be face to face with the incoming undead. Fear overwhelmed him instantly… but he had nowhere to run. Not while in midair.
When a terrified man—or animal—has nowhere to run, the only possible response is to try to defend himself however he can. Ed’s skin was slowly blistering and breaking as if it were but wet paper, and there was a terrible heat coming from his right hand. He threw the vial at the wraith without even realizing he was doing so. He saw the crystal vial trace an arc to the wraith, saw its transparent surface crack—almost gracefully—more and more under the pressure of the undead’s aura, until the glass exploded in a thousand shards, showering Torst’s skull in a rain of holy water.
The skull was enveloped in a blinding white fire. Torst screamed an ear-piercing shriek and collapsed down in slow motion as Ed’s fear vanished.
Ed hit the ground, hard enough to drain the air from his lungs and make his mouth taste blood. At this point in his career as a Dungeon Lord, though, he was getting used to pain. He rolled away, darted up, and forced the daze in his vision to clear itself.
Torst was standing up, stunned, his skull blackened and heavy with ash. The green pinpricks of light that were his eyes looked confused and had dimmed. Ed not only wasn’t in pain anymore; his Endurance wasn’t being drained either.
“No!” the wraith hollered. “No! What have you done to me?” It was clear from the animal-like way its spine bent that it hadn’t used its legs in a long time. It dug its fingertips into the ground, arms bent like a spider’s legs. Then it crawled at Ed with dizzying speed, its skeletal hands throwing fistfuls of dirt behind it as it went.
Excellent, thought Ed. I have the wraith right where I want it—he attempted a dodge to the right using his improved Agility, but the effort of using all his talents with his drained Endurance had taken a toll on him. He fell on one knee, and an instant later there was fist like a ton of bricks smashing against his chest.
His feet left the ground and the world spun around him, and then all faded to black.
One second later he groaned and stirred blindly. He forced his green hood away from his eyes. The grass next to his mouth was marred with blood. No one had ever punched him as hard as that in his entire life. He was sure that his chest had caved in over his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. He was going to asphyxiate… or drown in his own blood, whatever happened first.
Defensive talents, he thought in a daze. Point taken, Kes.
He patted his chest—it was still in its usual shape. The leather armor had probably saved his life, and only because of his pledge of armor.
If I live through this, I’m wearing the heaviest armor I can stand, and I’m never taking it off.
Slowly, his mind recovered. He wondered why the wraith hadn’t finished the job. He shook his head to clear it—his ears were ringing, and all sounds came distant and distorted.
Shapes danced about ten strides away from him. No, it was a fight, a brutal one. Katalyn had a fanged dagger in her hand, Kaga had another, and they were coming at the wraith’s flanks like a pair of wolves maddened with hunger. Ed’s spider warriors encircled the fight, searching for an opening. Katalyn had tears in her eyes, and she was screaming something that sounded suspiciously like “sneak attack!” every time Torst faced Kaga. She must’ve bought the talent after I got Torst’s attention, Ed thought. In the end she hated the wraith enough to go against her own build.
Torst was on the defensive, its legs heavy with spiderweb strands slowing its movements. Kaga and Katalyn’s quick fighting styles were making short work of the creature, because it couldn’t land a single hit—Katalyn dodged under its constant, terrible swipes, not even bothering to add distance between herself and her undead father. Kaga was right there then, his dagger leaving long gashes and cuts in the undead’s bones. Its shroud was burnt and torn to shreds, no longer anything more than a dirty rag. The wraith’s ribcage was exposed, and half the ribs were broken and cracked.
“Katalyn, stop!” the wraith roared. “You’re hurting your father!”
Katalyn’s dagger slipped into the wraith’s arm and she forced the wraith down, spine bent all the way to the ground. At the same time, the three spiders came down on Torst as if they were one, their combined weight enough to make it lose balance and keel over, still screeching nonsense about Katalyn’s destiny.
The spiders’ mandibles cracked against bones over and over, sending gray shards flying in all directions. “At last!” exclaimed one of the warriors as it tore off Torst’s left hand and spat it out. “Laurel’s cluster brings its true strength to bear!”
The wraith tried to shake them off, but it was unbalanced. Kaga fell over it in a flurry of strikes, and Katalyn drove her own dagger into the wraith’s empty eye socket.
Torst screamed in agony, the fanged dagger lodged firmly inside his cracked skull. Then his only remaining hand grabbed onto the nearest spider. The movement caught the critter unaware. Ed couldn’t help but watch in horror as Torst, still screaming, drove the jagged end of its arm into the spider’s underbelly—showering everyone with blue blood and goo—and with a single, terrible motion and a sickening tearing of meat and tendon, ripped the spider’s lower abdomen away from the rest of her body.
The abdomen went flying in an arc across the air, its legs still flailing.
“No!” Ed heard himself screaming. “Everyone, get away!” It seemed to go wrong all at once. The spiderweb in Torst’s feet began to sizzle and smoke, and the air around the undead creature regained a faint glimmer as its aura slowly restored itself. In one fluid motion, the wraith smashed Kaga across the chest and sent the kaftar rolling away in a heap. Kaga whimpered and tried to stand, but his strength failed him. One arm was bent unnaturally.
“Yes!” Torst’s laughter came dist
ant and impossibly cold. “Yes! This is destiny, Katalyn! You can’t stand in the way of your father. Now watch as your friends suffer for your own sins!”
The spider warriors tried to push the wraith down again, but this time it was ready for their charge. It reached with its hand and tore one spider’s front legs out like a kid playing with a frail branch. Roaring with hatred, Torst then drove the torn legs straight into the other spider’s eye—
“No!” Katalyn roared. She jumped in front of Torst, drawing its attention away from the two remaining spiders. “You’re dead, you stubborn asshole!” She tried to ram her own dagger into Torst’s only remaining socket, but the wraith parried the dagger with its stump.
Ed could see Katalyn’s eyes widen with supernatural fear. When the aura returned, it almost made a sound quite like the humming of the wraith’s specters. I’m too far away from her, Ed realized with dawning panic. He forced himself to stand. His knees were wobbly, and his entire body shook uncontrollably.
Katalyn turned to run, but one skeletal hand caught her by the neck and lifted her without any apparent effort. The wraith’s feet hovered above the ground, above the three spider warriors—two of them dead or dying—and above Kaga’s crumpled figure.
“Can’t you see, dear daughter?” the wraith told her as she struggled feverishly under his grip. “This is the Dark god Murmur’s will. A long time ago, a pact was made between him and me—a pact of survival.” Very slowly at first, Katalyn’s Endurance lost a single rank. “Of life beyond death, indeed. In exchange for the pitiful lives of a bunch of Heiligian nobility, he assured me that I’d be reborn one day with powers beyond the comprehension of mortals! I only needed one thing to make my transformation complete—the living blood of my most beloved family member… and you are the last one alive, aren’t you, Kat? What was it that I liked to tell you…” Ed could swear he heard the joy in that dead voice. “’We’re all we have left, my dear. It’s us against the world!’ Do you see, Katalyn? DO YOU SEE? It was destiny all along!”