Dungeon Lord: Abominable Creatures (The Wraith's Haunt Book 3)

by Hugo Huesca

  Gallio bit his lip as silence extended between them. Alvedhra hadn’t been there for the battle of Burrova. But she had seen the ruins, and she remembered Edward Wright’s deception while they battled Queen Amphiris in Hoia, along with Ioan and Vasil. She knew nothing of the mindbrood or Ioan’s true nature, so she blamed the village’s destruction and all the mindbrood’s killings on the Dungeon Lord, and on the avian who had betrayed her to join him. Worst of all, Gallio couldn’t explain what had happened—not without damning her and himself and all the village’s survivors. As the Ranger’s zeal grew with every passing day, Gallio’s hope that she’d come to understand his reasons—and the reasons of Kes—diminished further and further.

  He suddenly felt very alone. Alvedhra had been one of his first friends back when he had arrived in Starevos, and nowadays she was his only reminder of the years he’d spent as Sheriff. And yet, the distance between them grew, with her being none the wiser.

  “Alvedhra… I…” He searched his heart for answers, trying to find the courage to tell her something that would lift the burden off her shoulders. Perhaps, even, the truth. Shouldn’t he trust her? She was an adult, and his apprentice, and certainly had a right to know. If only he were strong enough. “There’s something I haven’t—”

  She grew silent, her entire body tense. “Shh,” she urged him, raising a hand his way. “Listen.”

  Gallio could hear nothing, except the sounds of the forest and the faint current of the river against the rocks. His hand reached for his longsword anyway, and he eased an inch of steel out of his scabbard. He felt very naked without his armor, laying forgotten inside his tent. “What is it?”

  “The silence,” Alvedhra whispered. “The birds grew quiet. And I swear I can see mist in the distance… but at this time of the year? But it can’t be. The alarms, and Zeki’s spells…”

  “Trust your instincts,” Gallio said. “You’re a Ranger. Those skills are part of you, and will always be. Use them in the service of the Light.”

  The Ranger swallowed and reached for her sword. “Then I’d say we’re under attack,” she said gruffly. “There’s black magic incoming.”

  It was as if her words had frozen the air in his lungs.

  As he gathered air to raise the alarm, one of Zeki’s hawks dove like a falling star toward the forest and exploded in a circle of light that surrounded the treetops only a few hundred paces away.

  All around camp, the shrill sound of the alarms went off. Gallio could see Zeki’s stunned face as he squinted at the light of his own spell pointing unerringly at the direction danger emerged from.

  “To me, Cleric!” Gallio ordered, his voice charged with authority. In a fight, there was no time for personal likes or dislikes, and both he and Zeki knew it. The old Cleric grabbed his spiked mace and rushed toward Gallio and Alvedhra, his long gray whiskers shaking as he ran.

  Inquisitors poured out of their tents in varying degrees of undress. Gallio noted with disapproval that most hadn’t had the presence of mind to grab a breastplate or a helmet. Then again, neither had he. Victory has turned us complacent, he thought.

  “What’s going on?” Zeki asked as he reached Gallio. Like Alvedhra and the third lookout, Zeki wore a breastplate and a helmet over his thick gambeson tunic. Protocol dictated full armor for lookouts at all times through their shifts, but in practice it was too cumbersome and most Inquisitors turned a blind eye to the rule.

  “We’re about to find out,” Gallio said. It was incredible the way adrenaline cleared the mind. All his worries were gone, carried away by the wind. All his fears, gone. Only what was to come mattered. “Ready your buffs, cast at my signal. Golden stone carapace on me, avenging grace on Alvedhra, and prepare a salvo of holy bolts on my signal.”

  “Got it.”

  “Alvedhra, switch to arrows, ready an explosive one.” At that moment, Hector, the third lookout, reached them. He was a young Heiligian blond, whose beard needed a trim. “You’re to come at the front with me, kid.”

  “Yes, sir!” Hector said, his yell piercing the night like a bolt.

  Tendrils of mist spread out of the woods as the night grew colder and the light of the torches seemed to falter. Here we go, Gallio thought, just as the first figures rushed out of the mist and through the underbrush. Eerie screams filled the air.

  The creatures floated inches above the ground, their arms extended toward Gallio and the others. Their bodies were gray and transparent with hair floating as if underwater, with their open mouths and eyes resembling dark graves.

  “Specters,” Zeki uttered, stating the obvious.

  “Specters!” Hector brandished his spear, and took several steps forward. “Abominations! Blemishes in Alita’s eye! I shall smite you all!” The tip of his lance burst in a white light as if having grown suddenly forge-hot.

  “Get back here, you idiot!” Gallio reached for the kid’s shoulders and shoved him hard. “Let them come to us, that’s what the circle of respite is for!” Hector turned with flared nostrils and showing his teeth, but stood his ground. Good. Wouldn’t want the kid flogged for insubordination.

  Letting the undead reach them was the best option, and not only because it gave time for the rest of the men to catch up. As long as the circle’s magic stood unbroken, the specters would have a hard time breaking the invisible barrier that protected the camp. And when they did, they’d fight severely weakened.

  “How many?” Gallio asked at Alvedhra, who had the keenest eye of the bunch.

  She turned her head like a hawk, ready to draw her bowstring and launch an explosive arrow at a moment’s notice. “Just five. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Gallio raised an eyebrow. Just five? That few specters wouldn’t give pause for a single Inquisitor.

  Then a shimmering skeletal hand came out of the ground midway between the specters and the lookouts’ fire. The hand floated up, grasping at the empty air as if pulling the rest of its body by an invisible rope. A skull followed it with blazing green pinpricks of flame burning in empty eye cavities, along with a tattered shroud that swayed in the nonexistent breeze.

  “WRAITH!” someone screamed.

  Gallio frowned. Is this the same wraith that appeared in Hoia? The Diviners told us it had been destroyed. A voice in the back of his head told him that there was something that didn’t add up with that wraith. It looked wrong. But why?

  The undead abomination stood at its full height and regarded the Inquisitor with its terrible smile as its five specters rushed forward. And then it charged… to the side, away from the lookouts. Toward the back section of the camp. The one filled with non-combatants.

  “Oh, dunghill,” Gallio muttered. All hell broke loose.

  9

  Chapter Nine

  Despicable Heroics

  The light from the magical hawk engulfed the forest.

  “How long until they figure it out?” Kes asked. She was covering her eyes with her forearm, protecting her sight from the sourceless daylight. It was fading, quickly, but its blinding surge had ruined the group’s night vision. The kaftars had still not recovered—their eyes were more sensitive, and the spell had stunned them.

  “Probably not long enough,” Ed said, squinting past the line of trees toward the camp, which was still hidden by the light’s aftereffect. He was surprised by how well the simple spell had worked on him. When it had gone off like a giant firecracker out of nowhere, he’d been sure the Inquisitors had launched an artillery shell his way. The light had stunned him and sent him sprawling down as if the surge had gone off inside his own brain.

  Dungeon Lords are vulnerable to the Light’s spells, he reminded himself. Better not be hit by one again. Back in the Haunt, he and his minions had pooled their knowledge about the spells and talents the Inquisitors would have at their disposal, and had been sure that none possessed a combat spell that worked at such long range. Since they were all still alive and unhurt, the spell hadn’t been meant for combat. Ed guessed that it was an
alarm variant on steroids—not only warning the Inquisitors of incoming danger, but also briefly stunning said danger and pinpointing its location.

  He knew that no plan survived contact with the enemy, but seeing how close they’d come to damnation chilled him to the bone. Thankfully, neither Alder nor Lavy shared the Dungeon Lord’s vulnerability, because otherwise the entire plan may have gone to hell.

  The Witch knelt with her hands oozing black and purple energy which flowed around her. She was already hard at work raising the second wave of specters, which was probably a good idea, since the Inquisitors would make short work of the first five.

  Lavy’s spell was called summon specters, and she had learned it on her own by sheer enthusiastic research. Unlike necromancy, which worked only with flesh and bone, her Witchcraft could summon the spirits of the dead, lay curses, and perform a bit of scrying. It was the swiss army knife of black magic.

  “Rise, my beauties,” Ed could hear her whisper. “Heed my calling and spread terror among the living!” Maniacal rapture contorted her face. “Yes!” she exclaimed as five new silhouettes took shape among the mist. “Yes! Rise!”

  Nothing about that incantation was part of the spell, Ed told himself. She was only doing it out of love for her trade. Admirable, yet a bit concerning.

  Close to Lavy, Alder held his flute to his lips and played a quick, eerie melody filled with jarring shifts in rhythm and tune. The surrounding air rippled with spent magic, his eyes were closed, and sweat poured across his forehead. The Bard was earning his weight in gold, because his part in Ed’s plan involved using almost all his magical arsenal at once. First, he had cast minor illusion to create a facsimile of Torst near Lavy’s specters, and then had used his bardic utterance bardic images to create five copies of the original wraith illusion. In total, the combo ate two spells and one utterance, but the result was worth it. Bardic images created five indistinguishable copies of the original target. They were easily dispelled, but a powerful Spirit rank wouldn’t reveal them as a fake. Furthermore, these images were smarter than an illusion. They moved around on their own—designed to pull aggro away from the caster by tricking his enemies into thinking each image was the real version.

  As long as Alder kept the magic of his melody going, those five images would do their best to trick the Inquisitors into thinking each was the original wraith illusion…

  Probably best that we don’t overuse the combo, Ed thought. Objectivity probably wouldn’t like the concept of illusions copying illusions to deny the enemy a Spirit contest. He wished he knew of a way to test the limits to which Objectivity would let him go. Instead, the way the magic of Ivalis worked was a sort of honor system. He could bend the interpretation of the spells and talents’ descriptions, but if he tried to break them, or went too far, he’d simply be deleted out of existence—no take-backs or do-overs.

  Magic and the scientific method, it seemed, didn’t like each other.

  “He can’t keep going forever,” Kes warned him. The light had faded enough by now that Ed could see the first image of the wraith fly around the Inquisitorial encampment, dodging bolts of light, arrows, and javelins as best it could. One lucky bolt made contact and caused it to dissipate into magical raindrops.

  “Whoops,” Alder said, stopping his melody for an instant. He took a deep breath and resumed playing. Another of his images flew out, bellowing dramatic threats in its otherworldly voice.

  “Lavy? More undead, please,” Ed said. He activated his Evil Eye. Technically, they were standing above a single-chamber dungeon he’d created as soon as they arrived—in fact, it had been that action which had prompted the blinding spell to fall down on them.

  As long as they were in the same dungeon, Ed could sense all his minions in a vague way, as if he had a dungeon-sense that brought that awareness inside his head, along with other nifty details such as the right spots to build a cave, and what to break in order to collapse one.

  “The riders are waiting,” he went on. “But the drones can’t dig into the camp as long as the area is contested.” When Heroes, Inquisitors, or other powerful foes consciously controlled an area, it greatly hindered his attempts at creating a new dungeon there or expanding through tunnels, but it also established a clear limit to his dungeon-sense, as a sort of magical ownership keeping him at bay. Not all of his enemies possessed this talent, but most of the magic users did.

  Instinctively, he knew that contesting an area was as simple as getting a group of living creatures in there. In other words, the easiest way to take a controlled territory was to get a couple of his minions there to throw the previous occupants out.

  Luckily for him, his Spider Empire had a lot of living creatures.

  “Second image is down!” Alder announced. His cheeks were reddening from the effort of keeping the utterance up. “I think their leader is on to it!”

  Ed glanced up at the second hawk-like spell that still encircled the sky above. As he watched, the hawk dove at full speed in the opposite direction of the fight—toward the river. The shine that followed claimed the attention of most of the Inquisitors not fighting shades or wraith images. The dome of light turned the murky waters of the river into crystal for an instant and revealed dozens and dozens of horned spiders swimming in complete silence toward the camp.

  Screams ran as the Inquisitors bellowed orders and split their forces to deal with the new threat. An instant afterward, Ed’s dungeon-sense informed him that the camp was currently contested.

  His Evil Eye blazed as he relayed his will to the drones underneath him.

  “Smite!” Gallio’s sword turned into brilliant molten gold and struck the approaching shade with terrible intensity. The creature turned into grains of white light with such violence that it forced back the other two undead monsters. They hissed at him, but the golden sand-like armor summoned by Zeki’s holy carapace protected the Inquisitor from the specters’ drain endurance trait.

  An arrow hit one of them and the creature exploded. Hector handled the last one with three furious thrusts of his silver-infused spear, which bypassed the undead’s resistance to non-magical attacks and destroyed it.

  “Zeki!” Gallio called as he readied himself—several more specters were headed his way from the forest. “What the hell is that wraith doing?”

  “No idea!” came Zeki’s answer as the Cleric shot a holy bolt at the flying creature. The wraith dodged with a speed and agility that, Gallio was sure, was impossible. Has it gone sentient? A sentient wraith was a very rare and dangerous phenomenon, the product of an almost impossible mix of circumstances. But wouldn’t a sentient wraith know it was suicide to attack the Inquisition directly? It wasn’t as if the undead monster was doing much—so far, it was content to do flying passes at the camp, screaming incoherently at everyone in sight.

  One lucky enchanted arrow struck it and the wraith disappeared in a shower of mist—just like that, gone like a common specter. Before Gallio had time to close his mouth, the wraith reappeared, cackling like a mad kaftar.

  Gallio had the sudden certainty that he was being tricked.

  Then the second hawk guardian descended with a fury into the river. Gallio turned to the surge of light and stared at a horde of chitinous creatures half-submerged inside the black, mirror-like water. Chitin. His nightmare was back at the forefront of his thoughts all of a sudden, and his soul froze in cold horror at the prospect of facing an army of mindbroods. He almost dropped his sword and ran.

  Instead, he sprinted over to Alvedhra, trusting Hector and Zeki to handle the remaining specters. “Can horned spiders swim?” he asked the Ranger.

  Alvedhra looked him over like he’d gone insane. “What? Of course they can, they’re arachnids…” She shot another specter, then followed his gaze. “Oh. Oh. Fuck!”

  The first spider warriors had left the river and were charging at a group of bewildered Inquisitors. Each spider had their backs completely covered in spiderlings, which rushed out onto the battlefield as so
on as their adult counterparts touched the ground. Gallio had never seen horned spiders use transport tactics before. As he watched, the spiderlings overran the surprised Inquisitors by the shore before they had time to use their crowd-control talents. In a blink, the spider warriors had them immobilized in strands of web.

  The cold fear in Gallio’s soul was taken over by a terrible, smoldering certainty. He knew the person responsible for this attack. And those spiders are definitely contesting the circle of respite. Hoping beyond hope, he turned to Zeki. “Your spell?”

  The Cleric shook his head before returning his attention toward the wraith—he brought it down with another bolt, and the creature disappeared. This time it didn’t return. An illusion? But his Spirit ranks should have resisted it…

  It was no matter. “They’re mixing illusions along with their minions, be careful!”

  Damn it! There was no time to lose. With a Dungeon Lord involved, it was impossible to hold a zone without heavy-duty magic. Gallio had seen Edward Wright fight before. “Alvedhra, you’re in charge,” he told her. “This is a Dungeon Lord attack, so I must make sure Master Enrich knows to summon the Heroes.”

  Alvedhra knew him well enough to read his face, even in the middle of battle. “Ah,” was all she said, her expression inscrutable.

  Gallio clenched his teeth. Damn it all! “Don’t do anything stupid. The camp needs you to hold the line.” He wished he could tell her something more, make sure she’d listen to his commands, but the Inquisition needed the Heroes right now. Still cursing, he turned and ran toward Master Enrich’s tent. He could see the spider warriors skittering in the dark. They destroyed all lanterns as they went, and somehow one had drowned the fire by throwing mud at it. Here and there, blazes of light shone as Inquisitors smote the critters down, but more always took their place. A Wizard tried to cast daylight, but as soon as he did, spiderlings rushed toward him and the man disappeared under a wave of black chitin. The spell fizzled out, and even his struggle was hidden from view.