by Zac Gorman
“Run! Straight to the tunnel!” shouted Thisby. “Go!”
Iphigenia was wild-eyed, and Thisby thought for a moment that she might be frozen with fear. She’d almost expected it. To her surprise, however, Iphigenia only paused to hike up her dress in order to make more room for her knees, before taking off fast as she could toward the tunnel. Iphigenia, it turned out, had the special thing that Thisby had so often observed to be badly lacking in the vast majority of outsiders who came into the dungeon. Iphigenia had survival instinct.
People who fancied themselves “adventurers” were often the worst offenders. Thisby figured there was something intrinsic in the idea of wanting to be an adventurer that meant you had to forgo your survival instinct, or else why would you willingly go where things were trying to kill you in the first place? Some people might mistakenly interpret this sort of behavior as bravery, but Thisby knew better.
Thisby definitely wasn’t doing what she was about to do because she was brave. In fact, she prided herself on being prepared and, more often than not, considered bravery the antithesis of preparedness. After all, you don’t have to rush headlong into battle if you’ve already won the war, now, do you? Rather, she was doing what she had to do to keep the Princess alive, because if the Crown Princess were to die here, then a war on the dungeon was inevitable. This meant that not only would she likely be killed anyway, but so would the rest of the monsters who lived in the dungeon, whose care she’d been entrusted with. It was a simple decision, ultimately, but still not one she was thrilled with at the moment.
Thisby ran several steps behind the Princess, hobbling a bit as she went. Once she was certain that the manticore had seen her, she made her move, running off the path with her awkward gait to hide herself behind the nearest heap of bones. The gamble worked, and the manticore followed.
On their approach to the room, Thisby had come across an interesting note she’d written several years ago concerning manticores. LAZY, it said, in big capital letters. Thankfully, it turned out to be true. The manticore had chosen the path of least resistance and had gone after the slower-moving lunch—at least, the one Thisby had wanted it to think was slower moving.
As soon as Thisby was out of its eye line, concealed behind the remains, she took off, running as fast as she could toward the exit. The manticore was fast, but so was Thisby. She darted through the stacks nimbly, and as she did, she caught the break she needed. The manticore slipped on a loose skull and tumbled headfirst, rolling head over heels and sending skulls and femurs and tibias scattering as it went. By the time the manticore had righted itself, Thisby was only thirty-odd yards from the tunnel—a tunnel that, by her best estimate, was too narrow for the manticore to squeeze through.
Thisby was essentially home free! Her brief moment of triumph was interrupted, however, by a sharp pain in the back of her leg, and somewhere in the back of her mind, the word essentially repeated ad nauseum. Thisby looked down to see a needle about the size of a porcupine’s quill sticking straight out of her right calf. Her heart raced—or rather, it would have, if the toxin rapidly spreading through her body hadn’t already slowed her heart considerably.
It felt as if she were being slowly lowered into a warm bath. She pushed herself forward. In the distance, she thought she heard somebody calling her name, only whoever it was sounded as if she were underwater. Thisby tried to keep her focus, tried to continue to put one foot in front of the other, but it was becoming more difficult to stand, let alone walk. Her legs felt like wool socks stuffed with room-temperature yogurt, and it took all her energy just to keep her eyes open.
The tunnel was only a few yards away now, but she was slowing down even more. Her arms went limp—had her hands always been so heavy?—and as she tried to yell something, anything, she came to the horrible realization that her mouth wouldn’t respond to her brain’s instructions.
The footsteps of the manticore were getting closer. He was closing in.
Thisby made it as far as the threshold of the tunnel before her legs finally gave out. She collapsed. She had been so close.
Thisby looked up sleepily with a vague feeling that she’d wanted something a few moments ago. Wanted to be somewhere, perhaps. It was blurry. But it didn’t matter. Everything felt fine now, anyway. She closed her eyes. It felt like she was floating in a pool of tepid water, caught in that perfect restful moment right before drifting off to sleep.
The manticore lunged.
Its teeth snapped shut inches from Thisby’s foot, which had begun to somehow drift out of reach.
Thisby caught a glimpse of Iphigenia as the Princess dragged her by the backpack up into the tunnel. The manticore snapped its terrible jaws at them. Three rows of pointed, sharklike teeth biting and thrashing, desperate for one more inch to reach its dinner. Thankfully for Thisby, its shoulders were stuck solid in the tunnel, and there wasn’t another inch to be had. Thisby gazed back at the manticore lazily, her eyes half closed.
“What a weird dog,” she said dreamily.
Iphigenia dragged Thisby farther up into the tunnel, away from the manticore, and propped her up against a wall, where she smiled contentedly.
“Hey, buddy. Hey. Hey,” said Thisby, adding a final, delayed, “Hey.”
Iphigenia looked at her bewildered.
“I’m McGeepy.” Thisby grinned.
“You’re what?”
“I’m McGeepy.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m McGeepy!” she demanded.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I’M MCGEEPY!” screamed Thisby.
“Uh—”
Thisby laughed. “I’m Sleepy McGeepy!”
She proceeded to laugh so hard that she fell over.
“I think you need to get the barb out of her leg,” said Mingus. “I think the poison is, uh, doing this to her.” He pointed a nub at Thisby, who was attempting to see if she could stick out her tongue far enough to see it.2
Iphigenia wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea of performing surgery. In fact, she wasn’t even sure she was completely comfortable with the idea of touching this strange girl who she had just met. The Larkspurs weren’t exactly a touchy-feely kind of family. She thought she could recall her father giving her a pat on the shoulder once during a funeral, but it was possible he’d just lost his balance and used her for support.
“I can’t . . . I don’t know what I’m doing!”
“You just need to pull it out. I’d do it, but I don’t have hands, and I don’t think we’re going to get too far like this,” he said, motioning to Thisby, who’d moved on from trying to see her tongue to trying to lick her elbow.3
Thisby was the one who knew the way through the dungeon, there was no denying that. Iphigenia sighed and went over to look at Thisby’s leg. There was a long quill sticking from the back of her right calf. Iphigenia resigned herself to the inevitable.
“Give me your leg,” she insisted.
“No. I need them. I need both of them,” replied Thisby, earnestly.
“Give me your LEG,” she tried again.
“YOU GIVE ME YOUR ARMS! HOW ABOUT THAT?” shouted Thisby.
Iphigenia grabbed her leg, and Thisby began to thrash wildly. Thankfully for Iphigenia, Thisby’s muscles were still weakened from the poison, and she was able to overpower the wild gamekeeper with a little effort. She grabbed the quill and yanked it from Thisby’s leg in one swift pull.
The quill was about the length of a knitting needle with a hooked barb on the end. Iphigenia went to toss it away but stopped when Mingus yelled excitedly, “Sorry, Your Highness! I just know Thisby, and I know she’d want to keep it. To study. Would you mind?”
Iphigenia opened Thisby’s backpack and was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff inside. It reminded her of a general store in southeast Nth that she’d been to once as a child on one of her rare trips away from the castle. Every inch of the store had been overflowing wi
th wonderful items that triggered her imagination: boxes stamped with the insignias of their exotic places of origin, bottles full of strange elixirs with labels written in languages she couldn’t comprehend, bizarre plants and gems and spell components, every sort of trinket one could ever need for a life out on the road. It was the first time she’d realized there was a whole other world out there beyond the castle walls, a world she was never meant to be a part of. Thisby’s backpack was all that, only portable.
She picked a spot that looked suitable for the quill and stashed it away.
Hesitantly, she reached out and took Thisby’s hand, much as Thisby had done for her when they fled from the tarasque, and helped her to her feet. Iphigenia felt like they were even now. Which was good. Now she wouldn’t feel as if she had to speak up on the girl’s behalf if Thisby was held accountable for what happened to the royal party while they were touring the dungeon.
It wasn’t that she blamed Thisby for what had happened. So far, Thisby had merely shown up and offered to help her return to the castle. But Thisby was the gamekeeper, and technically that meant the tarasque was her responsibility. Iphigenia had been around politics long enough to know that blame always rolls downhill, and it was hard for her to imagine anybody lower down the hill than Thisby.
Still, that was an issue for later. For now, Iphigenia needed to get to the castle, and, whether she liked it or not, the girl who had moments ago been trying to lick her own elbow was still her best chance.
Chapter 13
Iphigenia sighed and looked at the map again. From where Mingus watched, he could see the frustration on the Princess’s brow, but the last time he’d offered help, she’d snapped at him—something about not needing help from a talking booger—and hurt his feelings. Since then he’d kept his mouth shut.
Mingus’s lantern swayed back and forth awkwardly as Thisby shuffled along, dragging her feet sideways like a zombie, barely able to keep herself upright beneath the weight of her enormous backpack. Normally, Thisby could bear the weight of the pack all day long without issue, but thanks to the manticore’s poison, the poor girl could barely walk, let alone carry anything. Mingus thought it would’ve made much more sense for the Princess to wear the backpack, but he hadn’t spoken up when the decision had been made, and he certainly wasn’t about to say something now.
“Look at this stupid thing! Did you draw these maps with your feet? How could anyone make sense of this—this nonsense!” Iphigenia was fuming.
“Mmmmmmuuuuhh,” groaned Thisby. Her senses were beginning to return, it seemed.
Iphigenia had her nose buried in the map. So much so that she wasn’t looking where she was stepping, and by the time Mingus had mustered up the courage to yell, “LOOK OUT!” it was too late.
Squuuuuiiiiiiisssh!
The Princess recoiled in horror as cold, wet slime met the skin of her foot, squishing into her fancy shoes and wriggling between her toes.
“Ewwww!” she shrieked, pulling her foot back from a blue puddle of ooze.
Sliding across the path in front of her were several dozen semitranslucent blue slimes, each no bigger than a croquet ball and shaped like a spoonful of mashed potatoes dumped carelessly onto a plate. The slime on which she’d stepped spluttered helplessly on the ground in front of her as Iphigenia scraped the goo off her heel against a nearby rock.
“What are those disgusting things!” she demanded.
Thisby lurched to a halt, causing Mingus’s lantern to swing to and fro.
“Slimes,” he said.
There was an air of sadness in his voice, which Iphigenia decided to ignore.
“Is it going to hurt me?” asked the Princess. She was already wiping the residue off her ankle with a rag she’d borrowed from Thisby’s backpack without asking.
“No,” said Mingus. “But you killed it.”
Iphigenia hesitated.
“In case you’re wondering,” he said, “I’m not a slime. They’re mindless creatures. I’m different.”
“Oh,” said Iphigenia.
“But that doesn’t mean they deserve to die due to carelessness,” he added. “Please watch where you’re stepping.”
Iphigenia said nothing, and they walked on in silence for some time.
It was several hours later when Thisby fully returned to her senses, only to discover that they’d been wandering around hopelessly lost since the manticore cave. Apparently, Iphigenia’s cartography instructor hadn’t prepared her well. Neither, it seemed, had her manners coach.
“Finally, you’re awake! Now help us get out of this mess!” Iphigenia demanded.
Thisby still felt a bit groggy from the manticore sting. She looked around, trying to place where they might be. It seemed likely that they’d backtracked and probably lost any of the time they’d saved by cutting through the manticore cave to begin with. It was a horrible feeling.
“Did you head Up or Out at the junction after the manticore cave?” muttered Thisby, rubbing her temples.
“How should I know!”
Thisby turned away from her and addressed Mingus.
“What do you think?” she asked quietly.
Mingus felt ashamed that he hadn’t tried harder to get the maps away from Iphigenia even though he’d known that she was lost. He tried his best to recall what they’d done, but in the end, he could only guess.
“I think we went Up,” he said, “but I’m not sure.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mingus.”
Thisby knew how bad Mingus was at stuff like this. It was Thisby’s job to keep track of everything, to read the maps, to take the notes. Mingus was just there for company, and Thisby appreciated that. Thisby knew that loneliness was a poison in its own right. When you were down in the dungeon for days on end, loneliness could seep into your veins and ruin you as quickly as any manticore sting.
Unfortunately, now they were at a crossroads, both literally and metaphorically. Thisby would have to attempt to make an informed decision based on what little information she had. She looked around and compared the room they were in to her notes for the thousandth time. Nothing was jumping out at her.
“We should continue on the way we were going,” said Iphigenia. “I had everything under control.”
“I think I know which way we’re going, but I just want to make sure. If we head down the wrong path, we could end up somewhere dangerous.”
Iphigenia scowled. She wasn’t used to being second-guessed.
“Like what?” she spat.
“Well,” said Thisby, “from this junction, depending on the direction we’re facing, we could be walking toward any number of things: giant beetles, wraiths, elementals, vampires—”
“Vampires?” interrupted Iphigenia. “Oh, let’s go see the vampires! I’ve always wanted to meet a vampire!”
Thisby couldn’t believe her ears. “Really? Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know, they always just seemed so romantic in the stories. They’re these eternal, haunted souls, wandering around their mansions, brooding over grand pianos.”
Thisby laughed. “I’ve never seen a vampire play piano!”
“Don’t laugh at me!” snapped Iphigenia.
Thisby held up her hands apologetically. She wasn’t sure where Iphigenia was getting her stories about vampires, but she was happy to see the Princess at least taking an interest in something for the first time since setting foot inside the dungeon. Maybe they could go by the vampires. It probably wouldn’t hurt anything.
“Okay, let’s go see the vampires!” said Thisby brightly.
“Really?”
“Sure!”
Thisby checked her map a few more times before heading out, and off they went.
It took a few wrong turns, but finally the trio arrived at the vampire crypt. To enter the crypt, they had to walk down a spiraling stone staircase that was barely large enough for Thisby’s backpack to fit through. Several times, Mingus’s lantern banged off the wall, causing him to scream in alarm loud enou
gh that Thisby to shush him.
Iphigenia’s excitement was palpable. She tried her best to hide it, but her enthusiasm was infectious, and soon, even Thisby was getting excited by proxy. By the time they’d reached the bottom of the stairs, Thisby had a big smile on her face.
“Here we go!” she said pushing open the door to the crypt.
Iphigenia gazed into the room and immediately deflated.
The crypt was a long, thin room, maybe two hundred yards deep and twenty across, lined with decaying, moldy coffins propped up against the walls. The only decorations were a rotten old runner that went the distance of the crypt and a few iron sconces holding burnt-out candles. There were no pianos to be found.
Iphigenia waved the dust out of her face and squinted her eyes in the hopes it would make some difference, but the scene didn’t change. Somewhere down the long corridor she could hear water dripping.
“What’s this?” asked Iphigenia.
“Vampires, of course!” said Thisby. “Aren’t they awesome?”
The girls gazed into the dusty crypt for several moments, Thisby grinning ear to ear and Iphigenia looking terribly disappointed.
“Come on!” said Thisby, waving Iphigenia forward. Hesitantly, she followed.
Once Thisby had closed the door behind them, Mingus was the only light, glowing a soft blue color. The room smelled like Grandma’s house and mildew.
“Is—is this it?” asked Iphigenia.
The romantic vision of vampires she’d gleaned from stories was falling apart in front of her eyes. Where were the handsome young men in sharp formal wear hosting lavish parties? Where were the exotic women in masquerade costumes drinking from bejeweled goblets? Where were the pianos?
Thisby could sense Iphigenia’s disappointment. She had no idea who was writing these stories about vampires, but she got the impression that the dungeon’s vampires weren’t the kind of vampires Iphigenia had in mind.
“Um, would you like to see one?” asked Thisby, against her better judgement.
Taking unnecessary risks wasn’t something Thisby was known for, but seeing the Princess get so excited and then so disappointed had triggered something deep inside her. The Larkspurs just had that way with people. People bent over backward to make them happy.