by Kayla Krantz
“No kidding,” Milo said, grabbing a handful of leaves from the nearby trees and bushes. He felt as if he had already been physically, mentally, and emotionally pushed to his limits. Five minutes didn’t seem like nearly enough time to recover. “But really, this isn’t much different from regular D&D.”
Jack and Shawn stared at him as if he had spoken in Latin.
Nervously, Milo tacked on, “Well, different in that we can get hurt, obviously, but brute force isn’t going to be what makes us win. It’s going to take luck and intelligence. Figuring out the puzzles will get us out faster than trying to fight everything head on.”
“I don’t know if that’s the Ranger in you or something else, but you’ve got a good point,” Jack said.
Shawn laughed. “I can’t argue with it.” He paused. “You know, I don’t tell you much how much I appreciate your friendship, but I do. Without you, I would’ve been down and out. In the cave, I just froze up. I was a liability, but you did everything necessary to beat Mammon, and save me. That takes dedication and resolve. Maybe you should’ve been the Paladin.”
“Then I wouldn’t have had my herbs,” Milo said, patting the side of his boot where his tiny pouch was protectively hidden.
Jack blinked and looked down at his own bag. “Fair enough. I think the next chance we get, we should go through my bag and yours. Get a list in mind of the items we have on hand.”
“Hate to interrupt, but I’m going to let you know now that the items at your disposal will change with each dungeon.”
Jack sighed. “Of course. Why did I assume otherwise?”
Shawn blinked up at him but said nothing.
“Ready for your next trial?” Rhys asked, the tone of his voice leaving real fear in the pit of Shawn’s stomach.
The boys exchanged a glance. None of them were ready, but that wouldn’t spare them from the fact that they were damned to face it regardless.
10.
SHAWN TOOK A deep breath of the sweet air a second before Rhys snapped his fingers, and they were transported throughout the dungeons. Shawn closed his eyes, trying not to let his nausea consume him. He had always suffered from motion sickness, sometimes even finding car rides troublesome. For everything unusual about the situation they were in, it was somehow that normal little detail that cut him the deepest. It was a reminder that regardless of what happened here, life back at home would go on. Even if Milo, Jack, and him were never seen again, the town would continue on, month after month, year after year, until their names became whispered and then were never spoken of again.
When the world swirled back to focus again, Shawn, Milo, and Jack were standing in the foyer of a mansion. White tiles clicked beneath their feet and ice blue walls surrounded them. Above their head was a crystal chandelier, and Shawn didn’t know why, but his skin bristled. He had never seen a place so fancy in his life, and on instinct, he expected someone to appear at any moment to kick him out. He didn’t belong here, and they would know it.
Jack and Milo didn’t speak as they did their own survey, and Shawn found himself wondering what they thought of the place. Like him, both of them had grown up in lower class homes as well. Shawn studied the paintings on the walls, the statues decorating the edges of the corridor. Taking two steps forward, he peered into the first room that he could see, studying the white and baby blue couches and chaise lounges. The surfaces looked plump and silky, and he found himself wondering what it would be like to take a nap on a couch like that. Surely there would be no spring in his back.
“Well, what do you boys think?” Rhys asked.
“I think this is a weird time to show off,” Jack said scathingly.
Rhys laughed. “You kid too much, Jack. It won’t bode well for you here.”
“Who says I’m kidding?”
Rhys ignored him. “You boys have successfully arrived at the lair of your next challenge, Belphegor, the demon of sloth.”
Shawn blinked, pulling away from the trance that the lounge had held him in. “Demon of sloth...like sleep, right?”
“As you can see, Belphegor lives in a comfortable place,” Rhys continued. “One filled with soft surfaces and beautiful scenery. One designed to get you to lose yourself, to rest and to stay like that forever. Good luck staying awake. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Jack curled his lip as he peered at Shawn. “I think he likes to say that ironically knowing he has complete control over everything we do. Luck’s not a factor.”
Shawn raised his eyebrows in silent agreement.
“This is a nice place,” Milo said, hands clenching into fists at his sides.
The words, tone of Milo’s voice, and posture of his body contrasted one another so much that Shawn found himself asking, “Are you okay?”
Milo bobbed his head. “Yeah. I think this should be an easier venture than the experience with Nidhogg and Mammon. They were trying to protect something, but this place isn’t made to keep people and things out. This place is designed to make you tired, to make you want to sit and rest,” Milo explained. “As long as we don’t give in to that urge, this should be a cakewalk.”
Jack and Shawn nodded in agreement, and with hushed footsteps, they began to make their way down the corridor.
“You think he’s somewhere in the mansion or outside?” Jack asked.
“Probably somewhere in the mansion, asleep,” Shawn said.
“That seems too easy though, doesn’t it?” Milo asked. “After the battle with Mammon, catching a demon off guard seems unlikely. I mean he was blind and still put up a good fight.”
“Depends on what Belphegor looks like, what he can do,” Shawn said.
“While we’re on the topic of Mammon, he’s a good indication that Belphegor will be ugly. Hellishly so,” Jack said.
The comment was enough to cause them all to laugh, breaking some of the tension deep inside Shawn. Part of him was suspicious about the lightheartedness that had washed over him. Could another side effect of this place be the ability to knock their guard down?
“How’s your head?” Milo asked as they made their first turn into the mansion.
Shawn came out of his thoughts to say, “Better, thank you.”
“Good,” Milo said and pursed his lips as he studied the hall around them. “This is more like a maze than I thought it’d be. For the demon of sleep, I’d think his dungeon would be straightforward. Thinking like this keeps me awake.”
“If this place is a maze, then Belphegor will be at the center.”
Shawn bobbed his head. “Good thinking.”
They wove their way through the halls, but it seemed as if every room they peered into was a bedroom. Each had a different bed, one more comfortable looking than the last. There were pillows and blankets piled on them, sometimes the stack so massive that it resumed on the floor beside it. The longer he stared at it, the more he forgot why they were fighting. After the scuffle with Mammon, every muscle in his body ached, and he longed for sleep. The kind so deep and entrancing that a person woke feeling as if they could never be tired again. Without thinking, he took one step forward.
He was halted by a hand on his shoulder and turned to look into Milo’s face. “Don’t look at them for too long.”
Shawn blinked and shook his head, clearing away the thoughts that had only moments ago hijacked his brain. The beds were like a siren song, and if sight alone could cripple them, then this dungeon could turn out to be far more dangerous than Mammon’s had been. Maybe Rhys was going easiest to hardest after all.
“Right,” Shawn managed to say at last.
“It’s probably too early on to say something like this,” Jack said, eyes on the path straight ahead, “But I hope every dungeon from here on out is this calm.”
“This is suspicious in its own way,” Milo reminded him.
“Maybe, but I would rather play games with my shadow than actual monsters who want to tear me apart,” Jack said.
Milo blinked and frowned. “Fair enough
, but I think it’s too early to rule out that there’s nothing here. If this mansion is as big as I think it is, there could be creatures waiting around any corner to catch us off guard.”
Jack didn’t admit Milo was right out loud, but the solemnity that washed over his face was enough to tell Shawn. The time for joking and games was long gone. The mud over Milo’s ears, and the scar on the back of Shawn’s head were enough to attest for that.
Traveling onward moved them through a parlor and down several more halls. At the end of one, they could see the walls stretch to the side as the path opened into a room. Shawn halted, and a moment later the rest of the group did the same.
“Could it be possible to find Belphegor so soon?” he asked, patting himself down for anything that he could use as a weapon. He had nothing.
Milo drew his eyebrows together. “It feels too soon, but who knows?” He paused to glance back over his shoulder. “There’s no other way to go. Rhys is herding us in this direction.”
“Doesn’t make me feel better about the answer to your question,” Jack said.
Shawn watched him fumble for his bag. He opened it, rifling through the contents, and a moment later, a pleased smile crossed his face. When he dropped the bag back to his side again, Shawn realized that he was clutching a small silver switchblade. This time around, Rhys had provided him with a weapon. Shawn could’ve cried tears of relief...not that weapons had done them much good in the first dungeon.
They moved to the room, and Shawn looked to Milo. He hadn’t summoned anything close to a weapon either, and his eyes were troubled.
Shawn put his hand on his shoulder. “Stay at the back of the group,” he said. “Just in case.”
Milo opened his mouth to argue, but Shawn didn’t want to hear it. He pushed ahead of him and ahead of Jack as well. He didn’t want to admit to either of them that he felt his role in the group was nothing more than a distraction for any potential threats. After all, Milo had already proved his tremendous worth and so had Jack. Shawn had offered up none of his potential yet.
When the details of the room came into view, Shawn let out the breath he had been holding. Where he had expected a massive demon to be standing was the biggest television that Shawn had ever seen. It was so massive that it didn’t rest on a table. It didn’t need to. The screen reached up to the ceiling, and it made Shawn think of a cartoon TV because surely this one couldn’t be real. Beside it, there was a stand housing every game console that Shawn could think of going all the way back to the ‘80’s. Some of them were so old that he had never seen them in person.
Jack was the first to lose himself and sprung forward, knife tucked away as he shouted, “This is awesome!”
Shawn and Milo nearly tripped over themselves trying to stop him from touching anything. “Wait!”
Jack frowned and turned back to them. There was a confused half-smile on his face as if he had forgotten who they were and why they were there. “What?”
“Think about the purpose of this place,” Milo said slowly. “We’re supposed to lose ourselves here, right? To forget our mission, and what better way to do that than with video games?”
Jack gave the consoles another punitive glance. “You’re right.” He frowned up at the sky, and Shawn assumed at Rhys himself. “You’re not playing fair, you know.”
Rhys didn’t answer.
While Shawn was looking to Jack, Milo yawned. He lifted his hand, trying his best to stifle the sight and sound so the other boys wouldn’t see, but it was too late. Shawn narrowed his eyes as he tried to fight off the sensation, but like a soft breeze, it graced through the entire group bringing sleepiness with it. Shawn thought about the siren call of the bed earlier, and he wondered if there was something in the air that they couldn’t hear. Something on a frequency just high enough that they couldn’t detect but subconsciously would affect them?
“We need to get out of here,” Shawn said, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I don’t think this fatigue is going to wear off until we do.”
“True,” Jack said. “If anything, it will likely only get worse.” He took a step and stumbled over his foot, landing on the soft couch behind him.
Milo and Shawn’s eyes were wide as they watched him, waiting for beasts to come out of nowhere to spell them into a sleep they would never emerge from. Nothing appeared, and Jack easily hopped up before the seat could do anything.
“I’m okay,” he said, meeting the worried glances of his companions.
Milo frowned, looking unconvinced. “Could we be wrong about this place? Could the beds and couches have nothing wrong with them, and it’s all kind of a placebo effect?”
Shawn shrugged. “It’s possible, but either way, we shouldn’t risk it. Better safe than sorry.”
Milo’s bottom lip jutted out, and suddenly, Shawn didn’t like the way he was looking at him. For some reason, he felt as if Milo were judging him for the decision he had made earlier, the one where he had thrown himself first into possible danger with no way to fight it off.
Before either boy could call out the other, scuffling sounded from the hall, and Shawn froze. “What’s that?”
Jack blinked, hand slipping into his pocket to retrieve his knife. “I don’t know.”
The sound came again, louder and with more ferocity. Milo tensed but did little more than clench his hands into fists. Shawn took a step forward, once again ready to stand as a shield. He narrowed his eyes, trying to picture whatever was responsible. It sounded like something small but heavy, a fleet of creatures bumping into the walls and hitting the floors.
“Whatever it is, there’s a lot of them,” Shawn surmised, taking a step backward. While the idea of being a human shield was noble, the actual act was very hard to pull off.
“Then we should get out of here,” Jack said, turning to head in the opposite direction.
Milo and Shawn moved to follow but stopped when they realized the sound was coming from both hallways. There was no escape. Swallowing, Shawn blinked, and then the creatures filled the room. They were fat things with purple skin and tiny wings that only supported their weight enough to allow them to flutter a few feet off the ground before crashing back down again. They bounced off of everything in their path—the floor, the walls, and each other.
They reminded Shawn of cherubs...if Hell had their own version. That meant they should’ve had chubby cheeks and sweet eyes, but instead, their faces showed the horror of their creation. They had gaping mouths full of sharp teeth, red eyes, and holes torn through their odd colored flesh. A few of them were missing their eyes altogether, and Shawn had the sudden thought that they had done that to one another. If that was the case, what would they do to them? Were these creatures like miniature monsters from Jeepers Creepers that rebuilt themselves by stealing the necessary parts from other living beings?
“Rhys, what are these?” Shawn demanded, unsure if he would get an answer. By then, he, Milo, and Jack had backed themselves into a tight circle so that none of the boy’s backs were left exposed. The ugly things surrounded them, a mass of purple bodies slowly closing in.
“Those, my dear boy? Those are known as drudes. They are demons of nightmare,” he said. “They go well hand in hand with the demon of sleep and laziness, don’t you agree?”
“No,” Jack said. “These look like somebody ovened their cabbage patch kids.”
A comment like that normally would’ve drawn a laugh from Shawn, but he could hardly move. His stomach rioted with the feeling that his heart had plunged directly into it. The ugly creatures were moving closer, and even though he knew they wouldn’t physically harm him, the idea of sleeping forever with nightmares wasn’t exactly comforting.
“I don’t think they’ll hurt us,” Shawn said.
“Hurting our eyes doesn’t count?” Jack asked, pulling his tiny knife out of its place.
“In this instance, no. I think they have to touch us to put us under a spell,” Shawn said.
“So smart,
Paladin!” Rhys said.
With that, the creatures advanced forward, the circle of space separating the boys from the beasts growing smaller and smaller by the second.
“Do whatever you have to do, but make sure none of them touches your skin,” Shawn called out though really, he hated the fact that he could be wrong. It could be a spell cast through the air that they could inhale for all he knew, but he had to believe that there was some hope for them.
When the first of the grotesque beings reached them, Milo was ready. He lashed out with a tiny scalpel from his medicine kit, slicing the creature until it gave an angry snarl and backed its distance. The cut across its swollen purple belly healed black, and Shawn couldn’t decide if that was good or not. It was clear they couldn’t hurt these things for long, but if they could do any damage, that could be the ticket to buying them time needed to escape.
“They don’t have a way of fighting us,” Milo said, watching green liquid seep out of the wound he had inflicted on the next creature. “But don’t let them bleed on you.”
Jack easily slashed two at once, watching the things bounce away with the force. Shawn was the only one unarmed and when the creatures approached him, he lashed out with the armor on his arm, listening to the crinkle of metal as it came into contact. A second later, it was sent soaring away. Its blood smeared onto the surface, turning it to rust. That should’ve made him feel worse, but he felt better because a plan was forming. He knew what he needed to do, what they needed to do, and how they could avoid the consequences.
Just like that, they started to inch themselves out of the circle and toward the hall opposite of the one that they had entered from. Milo’s grip on his knife slackened, the clang of it hitting the floor pulled Shawn out of his focus. He turned in time to see one of the ugly creatures charge forward, knocking Milo onto the couch in the center of the room.
“Milo!” Shawn cried out, rushing forward.
Jack grabbed him, holding him back before he could rush into the circle of creatures. The cherub that had knocked Milo over had its hands to his chest, pushing the air from Milo’s lungs while the others converged around to make a barrier. His terrified expression lingered only a second longer before it slid away into something peaceful. His eyelids drooped, and a moment later, closed, losing him to sleep.