Thisby Thestoop and the Black Mountain

by Zac Gorman

  Iphigenia nodded and followed her over to a coffin. Thisby grabbed the lip of it and pulled, drawing it slowly back. Iphigenia gasped when she saw what was inside.

  The creature in the coffin was ghostly white and had a bulbous, bald head. Its eyes were enormous, almost insectlike, and its fangs stuck out over its lips, jagged and yellowed. Its two hands were folded over its heart, thin, gnarled fingers with long, curling nails. It looked far from human, let alone a handsome young man in formal wear. Iphigenia could barely stand to look at it. It was disgusting.

  “Close it. Please,” she said sadly.

  Thisby, realizing she’d failed, closed the coffin dejectedly, and they made their way from the crypt.

  They walked in silence for some time. Thisby had barely looked at the Princess since they’d left the crypt, so she was startled by her sudden outburst of laughter.

  “Can you imagine trying to play the piano with those fingernails?” howled Iphigenia, clutching her stomach.

  Thisby watched her for moment unsure of what to say.

  Iphigenia mimicked a doofy-looking vampire playing the piano. “Donk! Dum! Dee! Donk!”

  Before long, Thisby couldn’t contain her laughter, either, and the two of them laughed until their sides hurt at the thought of it.

  Chapter 14

  The levity didn’t last. By the time they’d reached the grotto of the acidic ooze, Iphigenia was at the end of her rope. It was their second day in the dungeon, and by now the Black Mountain was back in full swing, having recovered from the tarasque. Since their time with the vampires, Thisby and Iphigenia had been chased by death bears, hassled by banshees, hounded by bioluminescent wereplants, and of course, there was the incident with the spectral goat, which they’d both vowed never to speak of again.

  Thisby sat in the corner of the room, next to a small, slow-moving waterfall, flipping idly through a notebook. Whatever she was looking for didn’t seem to be in there, and after several minutes she tossed it back into her backpack and grabbed another.

  Iphigenia, meanwhile, was stomping around impatiently.

  “What are you looking for?” she demanded.

  Thisby continued to scan her notes. “A map.”

  “More maps. Of course. Don’t you know the way around here? Isn’t that your job?”

  Thisby paused but refused to look up.

  “Do you know the roads in every city in your kingdom?” she asked as politely as she could manage.

  Iphigenia looked like she wanted to say something rude, but Thisby continued before she had the chance.

  “The Black Mountain is larger than your two biggest surface cities combined. Do you know how many passageways and tunnels and nooks and crannies and rooms and dens and pits and ladders and stairways and caverns and rivers there are in here? Not even a brainlodyte could remember all of it!”

  “What’s a brainlo— You know what, forget it. I don’t care,” said Iphigenia.

  Thisby went back to her notes as if to imply that their conversation was over, but she had a sinking feeling this wasn’t the case. She could feel Iphigenia’s eyes burning into her.

  “This place is terrible, you know,” said Iphigenia at last. “Do you even realize that? Let me guess—this place is all you’ve ever known, right? So you probably think that it’s okay. But it’s not. It’s not okay.”

  Iphigenia had moved on to phase two of her frustration, in which she sought out ways to share her misery with somebody else. It was a trick she’d picked up from her father. Thisby kept her focus squarely on her notes, knowing she’d get too upset if she looked at Iphigenia’s arrogant, pretty face.

  “It’s a dungeon. Full of terrible, filthy, disgusting, violent monsters that want to kill you! The only reason any rational humans ever come to visit is that they want to steal your gold! You’re going to spend the rest of your life trapped here, and you’re never going to get to do any of the things you really want to do—you know that, right?” Iphigenia concluded in a huff.

  Thisby flipped another page. “How’s that any different from your castle?” she asked.

  Iphigenia’s face turned bright red and she stalked away.

  “Oh, boy. I think you’ve done it now,” said Mingus.

  Thisby continued to read her notes as if nothing had happened.

  “You should go after her. She could get hurt.”

  “That’s her own fault,” said Thisby.

  Thisby looked up from her notebook to see Mingus studying her with his fake button eyes. Somehow this didn’t make her feel better like it usually did.

  “She’s just worried about her brother,” said Mingus.

  “I’m not so sure. I get the feeling she’s always like this.”

  “Thisby!”

  “Fine! Fine!” Thisby threw on her backpack and attached Mingus to his usual hook.

  “But I’m only doing this for the sake of the dungeon. Not her,” she said.

  From the day she was old enough to carry her enormous backpack, Thisby had worked in the dungeon. It wasn’t exactly cozy—Iphigenia was right about that—and it definitely was full of monsters that wanted to kill her—she was right about that as well—but the dungeon was the closest thing Thisby had to a home, and she worked hard to keep it running well.

  But it was more than just a job. Thisby actually really liked it here. Possibly despite her better judgment, at times. And the monsters weren’t all bad. Not all the time, at least. The monsters—just like all living things—had their idiosyncrasies. Thisby had just spent the time to learn them.

  Even if she didn’t like all the monsters in the dungeon, at the very least she respected them. Her bribery, if you could call it that, didn’t hurt, either. It was nothing too extravagant, just some rosemary sprigs for the troll, sugar cubes for the nightmares, hambones for the gnolls, a child’s blanket full of whispered secrets for the spectral goat, that sort of thing. It wasn’t much, but Thisby knew if the Master ever found out, she’d be punished, which only made her all the more determined to find the just-right little bribes to give.

  While Thisby liked to give the monsters treats, the Master believed in alternative methods of “encouragement.” Starvation for the monsters who let the rare, wily adventurer sneak away with some of his precious treasure, beatings for the ones who saw it happen and did nothing. These punishments, as always, were dished out by his faithful servant Roquat, since the Master himself never seemed to make an appearance in the dungeon. Sometimes she suspected that Roquat was acting without the Master’s authority since he was never there to give the orders himself, but of course, if Thisby or Grunda or anybody else ever brought this up to Roquat, he was quick to say that they’d just missed him, or laugh derisively and remind them that “The Master was always watching.”

  That part, at least, seemed to be true.

  For a princess in a long dress, Iphigenia moved faster than Thisby had expected. Thisby had been following her trail for hours and was beginning to wonder if she’d somehow taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way. Her hopes of making it to the castle before nightfall were rapidly diminishing, while her concern was growing—not just about Iphigenia, but also about the situation in general.

  Assuming that Iphigenia was correct—and Thisby had no good reason to doubt her—Roquat had kidnapped Prince Ingo, but why? Knowing him, it was possibly an ill-conceived attempt at ransom, but for all of Roquat’s failings, he never seemed to care much for money. It would have to be something else then. Power?

  And there was something else nagging at the back of Thisby’s mind, something that she hadn’t given a proper amount of time to consider since the events in the City of Night; namely, that something had passed through from the Deep Down. She’d been good to her word and kept Catface’s secret, but now she wondered if she’d possibly made a mistake. Maybe Catface had known more than he’d let on. Maybe he was even in on it. Maybe after all those years of sitting in that stinking pit, staring at that impassible gate, escaping only for brie
f moments to hunt for food before returning to his post, maybe he’d given up on the Black Mountain. It seemed unlikely. But it was as fair a theory as any others she had right now—as absurd as it may have seemed.

  The important thing was that somehow, something had passed through the Darkwell. Assuming Catface could be trusted, of course. But how? The gate was still closed. How does something pass through a gate with no hinges and not leave a mark?

  The only way to pass through a solid wall in the dungeon was by blackdoor. But the Master controlled the blackdoor supply as tightly as anything in the Black Mountain. Besides, a blackdoor bead only worked one way, and they were made in the castle, not the Deep Down. Second, Grunda had told her once that not even magic could pass through the Darkwell, although that might’ve just been something Grunda said to keep Thisby from being too scared to venture down there as a child. Still, it had to be magic.

  “Magic.” Thisby sighed. Of course it was magic! That was why she hated the stuff.

  Even the best magic was inherently flawed. Sure, you could ensorcell a stone to transfigure everything it touched into gold, but how did you pick it up? You want to summon some rain for your crops, well, hope you enjoy your flood! Maybe you just want something simple like a cape that makes you invulnerable to arrows, sure, just watch out for the troll who throws rocks. Magic broke the logic of the universe, and yet it always seemed to Thisby as if the universe managed to have the last laugh.

  So she figured it was possible that something had somehow passed through the magic impassible gate, but even that theory gnawed at her guts. If it had been a blackdoor that had somehow overcome the magical protection of the Darkwell, there was still the question of how it’d gotten in there in the first place. Catface had smelled something that came out of the Deep Down, not gone into it. Somebody or something had to get that blackdoor down there to begin with. And the blackweave of the Darkwell was so tightly knit with metal bars that you couldn’t even slip a blade of grass through it, let alone a blackdoor bead, as small as they were.

  Thisby couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a connection between the two things: something passed through the Darkwell and now the Prince has been kidnapped. It seemed like a big leap to get from one to the other, but it couldn’t just be a coincidence. The idea made her nervous. She twisted her toes together in her particular way and tried not to think about it. She’d been thinking—and walking—for hours, and so far all it’d gotten her were a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and sore feet.

  Mingus swayed in his lantern. His glow had begun to shift from emerald green to aquamarine. It was getting late. Typically, when Mingus turned blue or purple, it meant it was night—or that he was feeling sad. Sometimes both. Before she’d had Mingus around, day and night were pretty arbitrary, since there weren’t exactly windows in the sides of the Black Mountain, but since having him, she’d realized how helpful it was to be able to pretend there was a difference.

  “Your Highness?” Thisby called out. It was a desperate move. Typically, the worst thing to do in the dungeon was announce your presence, but her patience was running thin.

  “Maybe we should rest until morning,” suggested Mingus.

  Thisby didn’t need to check her notebooks to know what a bad idea that was. Most of the creatures in the dungeon, especially the most dangerous ones, were nocturnal. She’d hoped they could make it back to the castle before midnight, but she’d known it was going to be close. Now it was essentially impossible.

  They came to another fork in the tunnel. Thisby stopped. The two paths were identical. Same stone walls, same smell, no discernible noise, no footprints, no clues.

  “Now what?” Mingus sighed.

  Thisby thought for a moment and pulled out her most recent notebook. She thumbed through it a bit, and after a moment, she put the notebook away.

  “This way,” Thisby said, walking down the left-hand tunnel.

  “How do you know?” asked Mingus.

  “I don’t,” said Thisby. “But she’s left-handed. Creatures tend to favor their dominant side when presented with two equal options. We might as well play the odds.”

  Mingus snorted.

  “You wrote down she was left-handed?”

  “I grabbed both her hands at some point as we ran from the tarasque. Her left felt stronger. I made a note of it. It’s a guess, but . . . ,” said Thisby.

  “That’s not much to go on,” said Mingus.

  “Is it ever?” said Thisby.

  After a few hundred yards, the path began to slope down at a steep angle, and the air became thick and hot and stinky. Living in the dungeon, Thisby was quite used to thick and hot and stinky, but this air was something special. This air seemed to crunch when she moved through it, and it left a bad taste in her mouth, like week-old cave oyster soup. She clambered down the steep and slippery path slowly with one hand outstretched to brace against the wall for balance, while her other hand was busy pinching her nostrils shut. There was no need to check her map now. She knew exactly where they were heading, and she hoped beyond hope that Iphigenia had turned right at the fork after all.

  The wyvern roost was one of the oldest structures still intact in the Black Mountain, dating back to before the dungeon even existed. All along the walls of the roost were evenly spaced holes, giving the nest a distinct Swiss cheese look. In the corners of the vast room were four great stone towers, connected by narrow walkways that came to meet at a crossroads some one hundred feet above a towering, lichen-covered fountain. A sculpture of a wyvern with its wings outstretched and its mouth aglow with an otherworldly orange light perched in the dead center of the room. The sculpture was so lifelike that the first time Thisby had seen it, she nearly fell over backward.

  “I don’t see anything, do you?” whispered Thisby.

  She watched the holes in the walls. Nothing moved.

  Wyverns were nocturnal, but luckily for Thisby, it was still a bit early for them. Unluckily for Thisby, however, was that once she’d realized where she was heading, she’d checked her notes and noticed that it’d been three days since the wyverns were last fed. This was bad news indeed. Wyverns only ate every few days, but when they did, they’d gorge themselves on anything in sight. Since tomorrow was their feeding day, they would be ready to eat the first thing they saw when they woke up. Thisby hoped it wouldn’t be her.

  When she was younger, Thisby had once missed a feeding day. She’d gotten busy chasing a baby yeti through the ice caves, and by the time she was done, it had simply slipped her mind. The next morning, when she came down to the roost, she found all the nearby ogre dens empty. What she saw on the floor of the wyvern roost that morning was something she’d never forget. She never missed a feeding day again.

  Thisby crept into the room, keeping an eye out for any signs of movement. Mingus dimmed his glow, which had been made unnecessary anyhow due to the supernatural orange light emanating from the mouth of the sculpture atop the old fountain. The light that shone from the wyvern statue’s gaping jaws made it look as if the creature were breathing fire. This was a bit odd, because wyverns didn’t actually breathe fire—at least, none of the ones Thisby had ever seen did. This was, of course, instead a reference to their supposed connection to dragons.

  Thisby had never seen a dragon herself because, well, dragons weren’t real. At least, not anymore.

  When Thisby was only a few years old, Grunda had sat her down beside a crackling fire and told her the story of dragons and how the Black Mountain came to be. The legend went something like this . . .

  Back when the world was still young, before people came to dot the landscape with their castles and kingdoms, before there were even trees and water, when the world was still raw and hot and angry with chaos, dragons ruled the world. They were great beasts the size of cities who fed on one another and drank fire from the mountains, who cracked the earth and darkened the sky.

  Of all the dragons, by far the most horrible was the Black Dragon, the lar
gest of all the beasts. The Black Dragon brought death with him wherever he went. He was the embodiment of hatred and fear, the ruler of chaos through sheer brute force and unrelenting terror. An unstoppable evil, the Black Dragon existed for millennia, seemingly eternal in his claim upon the earth, until one day, without warning, the world grew cold. And all the dragons, even the Black Dragon, perished.

  Where the dragons’ bodies fell, they became the earth. From their bodies grew trees and hills and valleys and mountains. Even animals, including man, sprung from their bodies, fully formed, ready to populate the world. But from where the Black Dragon died, only evil could grow. Over eons, a great mountain formed above his final resting place, a cruel, jagged dagger erupting through the skin of the earth, warning good creatures to stay as far away as possible: the Black Mountain.

  But there are those who believe that the Black Dragon did not stay dead. That as the Black Mountain grew from its ashes, it in turn became his womb, feeding and nourishing his evil spirit back to life. And now, thousands of years later, the Black Dragon is ready to return, fully grown, to reclaim everything he has lost. They believe that deep below the Black Mountain, he lies in the darkness . . . waiting and watching: The Eyes in the Dark That Watch the World.

  Of course, Thisby didn’t sleep for days after hearing that story. Goblins weren’t exactly sensitive to the fears of small children. As a matter of fact, they seemed to enjoy causing them—even the good ones like Grunda couldn’t seem to help it.

  That being said, the story was also very likely nonsense. Just a folktale to help explain things that people didn’t understand. If you believed the wizards—which, again, Thisby never did—the world didn’t grow from the bodies of dead dragons. They said it was created in some sort of cosmic blast. Humans, meanwhile, believed that the world was created by a gigantic, all-powerful human who lived in the clouds. Thisby had even read something once that claimed the world was held on the back of a giant turtle moving through space. She’d quite enjoyed that one. Yet despite the fact that these were all just stories, there was something about living in the Black Mountain that made the idea of the Eyes in the Dark hard to deny. It was hard not to feel as if there was something down there, deep, deep down. Waiting. Watching.