Empire Builder 1: Breed, Populate, Conquer

by Dante King

  “Go!” he shouted to her.

  With a certain nod, she dashed toward another ghoul and gave it a hard kick to the knee, one almost as deadly as the one Imogen had delivered, cracking the giant’s leg. The ghoul dropped down onto the ruined knee, cracks running up its leg. A hefty punch to the side of the head shattered the stone shell and exploded the monster’s jelly brains onto the wall behind her.

  Nipper growled and raised his haunches as the ghouls ceaselessly approached.

  “Stay right where you are, Nip.” Ben put out a hand and dragged the kitten closer to his own feet. “We don’t want you getting squashed on your first day.”

  The other ghouls appeared to sense that they were being attacked. Their red eyes focused on the three women, and the stone giants all hurried toward the center of the passageway, their loud steps booming through the vast space.

  The monsters were quite swift once they had sensed their target. They moved with more speed and agility than Ben would’ve expected from stone beasts. The women had their work cut out for them, and Ben hated that he was forced to witness. He wished for nothing more than a massive warhammer, one he could use to crush the stone ghouls into dust.

  Lulu had summoned the pool of water from where she had strangled and decapitated the first giant with a whipcrack of water, and was manipulating its streams into tendrils for another attack. Imogen laid into the nearest ghouls with gusto. Melody did the same, using her now-powerful muscles to drive her fists into the ghouls, their stone heads splitting one after the other.

  Ben stood in the eye of the storm, surrounded by great giants and flying stone fragments. He did his best to stay out of the fray, dodging massive, flying chunks of stone and sprays of the fleshy goo inside of the beast’s stone shells. Focusing, he summoned his mana and examined the strands of energy extending from the gravel ghouls, to see how else he could attack them.

  Maybe draining their meager intelligence would prevent them from moving entirely, he considered. He tried hauling on the faint strand of intelligence from a ghoul close to him, but nothing came out. He figured the stupid creatures were immune to such an attack.

  Looks like I’m going to have to stick to pulling out their physical strength, he thought. Melody would need more of that soon anyway, he saw—she’d already exhausted what he’d given her.

  Ben drained the nearest ghoul, sapping it of so much strength that the monster slowed almost to a halt, only feebly shuffling along. The strength filled Ben’s body to bursting, his muscles growing powerful. He considered using his strength to smash the nearest ghoul to pieces. But he didn’t want to risk pulling off a clumsy move. Not to mention Melody had already proven herself adept at using the strength with deadly effectiveness.

  He quickly moved closer to Melody and shoved the energy into her body. She let out a loud, barbaric cry as the power flowed into her. She didn’t waste a second running over to the nearest ghoul and using her renewed vigor to smash the beast in the side, spraying fragments of stone and blobs of flesh across the hall.

  The women kept a tight perimeter, not allowing any of the monsters to pass. But as the monsters all approached, the women were forced gradually back into a tighter circle. Despite their skill, they were outnumbered. And Ben knew he only had so much mana to use to pull out their strength. He focused, draining the power from another ghoul. Melody, seeing what was happening, promptly tackled the ghoul to the ground. Once it was down, she stomped its head in with a splat.

  Ben’s mana was dipping now, and he was still full of strength he couldn’t get rid of. He still didn’t have anything like the martial abilities that Melody and Imogen possessed, despite his training. Giant stone ghouls were not a target he’d practiced against. He didn’t feel confident entering the fray himself just yet, so he would have to be content with feeding more strength into the women.

  Ironically, Ben would have liked a way at this point to disperse his energy into the air, making room for more. That would allow him to drain the strength of more ghouls. Try as he might though, he couldn’t find a way to do it. And when he tried to push the energy into Melody, her body would not accept it. There just wasn’t enough room yet.

  “Lulu,” he shouted. “I’m going to give you some strength, I have to get rid of it.”

  Lulu glanced at him while casting another one of her spells. She appeared puzzled, but shrugged.

  Ben took that as a green light to give her more strength. He could explain what he’d done to her later when they weren’t surrounded by giant stone killing machines. Lulu paused for a moment as the physical energy filled her body, but she didn’t allow it to distract her from casting her spell.

  Ben managed to fully drain himself of the extra physical energy, allowing room to take more from another ghoul. His mana was still slowly regenerating. With any luck, he could keep doing this for a little while, weakening the giants enough to make things easier for the women.

  He glanced down while he was summoning the mana for another Drain spell, and saw Nipper chewing on the soft, inner flesh of one of the fallen giants. The sight turned his stomach a little. Ben wasn’t entirely sure what his lynx child was supposed to be eating though, and he didn’t have time to find out.

  With a shrug, he located the nearest ghoul and drained it of its energy. This time, he put the energy into Imogen. She didn’t exactly need it, but the result was spectacular. With a single flying kick, Imogen cleaved the stone giant in half, cracking its hardened outer layer and splitting its jelly torso into two big lumps that fell to the ground with a wet plop.

  Only a handful of giants remained. Ben topped Melody up with physical strength again, and used some of his mana to drain one more giant, making sure he didn’t exhaust his mana supply completely.

  Melody leaped into the air, bringing her elbow crushing down on a gravel ghoul’s skull. Apparently, her limbs had the strength of steel when he filled her up with this much energy. The ghoul collapsed under the blow. With a stomp, Melody squashed its brains out, the flabby, pink goo spraying up into the air. The tackle-stomp seemed to be a favorite move of hers, and Ben could see why.

  Lulu’s water tendrils were wrapped around the torso of another ghoul, constricting him and causing fragments of stone to smash off and ping into the high ceiling above, until finally its whole torso snapped in two, bringing the monster crashing to the ground. The floor of the dungeons was quickly becoming covered in pulverized stone, globs of pink ghoul guts sprayed here and there.

  Imogen danced like a mad woman, dodging heavy swinging blows from the giants. She moved with the finesse and practice of a trained martial artist, cracking knees, smashing torsos, and stomping in heads. Ben watched her, having a hard time keeping track of her as she zipped here and there.

  At last, the women attacked the final standing ghoul together. Lulu bound its ankles together with her water spell. Imogen shoved the monster with her foot, toppling it to the ground, and Melody caved in its skull with a mighty stomp. A final splat sounded out, the guts bursting beneath her foot and getting up before plopping down onto the ground.

  The silence after the fight was almost deafening, broken only by the heavy breathing of the exhausted women. Ben was worn out as well, having burned through nearly all his mana. He wished he’d been able to take part in the fight himself. For one thing, it would have been a more efficient use of the energy he drained.

  He’d never wanted to be the sort of leader who gave orders from behind, never having the courage to face the enemy himself. For a little while longer, that’s what he’d have to do though, until he gained the strength and skill to go head-to-head with monsters like the others. But he couldn’t wait for when he’d be able to lead from the front, wielding powerful weapons and spells.

  “Damn—nice work,” said Ben to his group, pride in his voice. He stepped over to his scimitar and picked it up from where he’d left it on the ground. A bit of monster goo was on the blade, and he wiped it off with a drag of the flat part of the sword again
st a patch of moss growing on the wall.

  Nipper trotted over to Melody and rubbed himself against her, evidently happy to see her alive after that fight. She scratched his ears, then pulled out her wand and absorbed what remained of the ghouls to refine into mana crystal. This time the substance she pulled out was a pale white color.

  The silence was broken by another loud grating sound, coming from the far end of the hallway. The hair on the back of Ben’s neck stood up at the possibility of more monsters to fight.

  “Not more of them,” Melody groaned.

  Ben looked up at the giant statue at the end of the passage. The grating sound did not herald more gravel ghouls. The statue was twisting around, so that its back faced the adventurers.

  It came to a stop with a loud clang, and darkness opened where it had stood. The gleam of torchlight revealed steps where the statue had stood, leading downward.

  “Looks like we beat this level,” Ben laughed with relief. It was hard not to take an analogy from his dungeon diving experience on earth. This first dungeon level at least did seem to behave like the dungeons he knew from video games. “Only thing to do is to go on to the next.”

  Chapter Ten

  After the fight with the gravel ghouls, Imogen and Ben took torches from the walls. Melody and Lulu needed their hands free to cast spells, but Ben didn’t want to risk being left in darkness in the dungeon. Knowing himself, he guessed he was likely to have designed levels totally shrouded in darkness. Any adventurer not smart enough to grab a torch was simply out of luck. Ben held his scimitar in one hand and a torch in the other.

  Nipper gnawed on the flesh remains of the ghouls as they were leaving. Ben felt a bit queasy looking at it, but he assumed the kitten wouldn’t eat something that would be bad for him. He couldn’t help feeling a paternal impulse seeing the creature’s tiny jaws stretching to fit around the large chunks of meat. He had to admit, it was kind of cute.

  Ben wondered if the flesh of the ghouls would be absorbed by the dungeon or if these corpses would just lie there rotting for months. There was no time to hang around and find out of course, since they needed to find Vinata as quickly as possible.

  “Alright. Let’s see what the dungeon has in store for us on the next level,” Ben said, taking the lead.

  The women and Nipper followed him as he began descending the winding staircase revealed by the stone statue at the end of the hall. As they moved, Melody refined mana crystals she had taken from the ghouls.

  Lulu was concentrating hard as she walked, holding a large rippling globe of water suspended in the air above her. She kept it there, ready for any monsters that might attack.

  It turned out to have been a smart idea to grab torches, since there were none on the staircase itself. The crazy flickering shadows of the torch’s flame made the narrow, steep steps appear to spring up and down in the air. Ben simply had to trust his feet rather than his eyes.

  Fortunately, the women seemed to be quite capable of handling themselves. They followed behind him without complaint. Nipper’s claws clicked on the stone surface alongside them, as he hopped from one step to the next.

  Ben turned occasionally and looked back up the stairway to check that everyone was still alright.

  Melody smiled down at him. “You are leading us bravely. But be careful, I have no idea what lies beyond the end of this stairway. I was never briefed on diving a dungeon here.”

  Ben nodded and stayed on his guard. After winding down at least three full revolutions of stairs, they came to a solid wooden door, with a dirty brown iron latch. The door itself was quite plain and practical, bound in solid bands of equally brown iron. The iron appeared strong however, covered in nothing but surface rust.

  There were no keyholes, no gaps. No sound came from the other side of the door.

  Ben gave his torch to Imogen, who held both torches steady. He held his scimitar before him, facing the door.

  He put his hand cautiously on the latch, while Lulu and Melody stood behind him, spells at the ready. Nothing happened.

  He pushed the latch downward, releasing the mechanism, and the door creaked slightly open. Ben slowly pushed the door half a foot open and peered through. A dull green light shone through the crack.

  Suddenly, a loud roar shattered the silence. A weight thudded against the edge of the door, and a pair of jaws snapped shut, attempting to snap at Ben through the doorway.

  Ben yanked the door closed again. “There’s something savage waiting on the other side for us. I can feel it.”

  Melody nodded gravely. “That could be dangerous. See if you can open it again, just enough for us to see what’s in there.”

  Ben turned to Imogen. “Give those torches to Melody for a moment. I need you to open the door. You’re the strongest here—you can slam the door shut if that thing on the other side is too strong for me.”

  Imogen nodded and handed the torches to Melody. Melody stowed her wand in her belt and held both the torches. Imogen put her body next to the door, holding the latch tightly. She left enough room for Ben to attack.

  Ben held his scimitar right up to the door edge, waiting to stick it through and stab whatever was waiting for them. He nodded to Imogen, and she eased the door open, ready to yank it shut again if need be.

  The green light came through the opening. The same roar bellowed out, and Ben heard the swift rush of air as something flew toward the door.

  He stuck his scimitar through and jabbed fiercely. The blade was almost twisted out of his grip, but he held on and thrust.

  Snapping jaws impaled themselves on the blade, and after a moment, they stopped thrashing. Ben pulled the blade back through the door, a giant, green head skewered on its point, green blood dripping down the steel.

  “It’s a vine monster!” Melody exclaimed. “I read about these in the bestiary of the Arcanarium.”

  The huge, green head was attached to a long vine which trailed after it. Ben pulled the head through the doorway and hooked his blade around to sever the vine, allowing him to pull the door shut.

  The head was a big round sphere, the size of a basketball. Ben’s scimitar stuck straight through its open jaws and protruded from the other side. The big ball was featureless. It had no eyes, no ears. Its jaws were simply an opening, as if it had been split open on one side and had a bunch of short sharp teeth inserted.

  Ben held the head up for everyone to see. “If it has no eyes and no ears, how does it sense us? It somehow knew we were opening that door.”

  Melody shrugged. “The bestiary was not totally clear about that. Perhaps they sense us through taste, or through some other sense we do not understand.”

  Nipper had certainly sensed the vine monster’s head himself. He stood up on his hind legs, trying his hardest to reach up and sniff at the head, which had green sap dripping down its jaws onto the steps.

  Ben lowered the head slightly for Nipper to reach. He wasn’t sure he felt comfortable feeding monsters to his newborn kitten, but he didn’t know what else a monster child was supposed to eat.

  He didn’t need to worry, he quickly realized. Nipper took one sniff when the head was within reach and gave a disgusted mew, turning away and spitting, as though trying to get rid of the taste. Obviously, he conformed to stereotypes and refused to eat vegetarian. He and Vinata would not get along.

  “How do we defeat these monsters?” Ben looked up at Melody.

  “Old fashioned weapons and combat will do,” she said cheerfully. “Elemental magic should work on them too. Oh,” she added, glancing at the torches. “And fire will do the trick as well.”

  “You don’t seem too concerned,” Lulu commented.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Melody replied, holding her wand at the ready. “The vine monsters are not hard to kill, but we don’t know how many of them are waiting in the chamber beyond. We must all be ready.”

  “Roger that,” Ben offhandedly acknowledged.

  “Who’s Roger?” Melody looked around.
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br />   “Just a saying,” Ben shrugged, not having time to explain. “Let’s do this.”

  Melody smiled. “You have some endearingly strange sayings on your wor—where you come from.”

  That was a close save. It still wasn’t the right time to explain where Ben was from. But he knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d have to reveal the truth.

  That moment, however, wasn’t right then.

  Ben turned to Imogen and took his torch back, knowing it would probably be just as effective as a scimitar against plant monsters. Unlike stone, plants burned.

  He stretched his leg up, ready to kick the door open, while the women waited to attack. Nipper poised on his haunches behind Melody. He was smart enough not to stand in the line of fire.

  Ben put his foot against the door latch and kicked the door open with a bang.

  The hall that opened in front of them was a similar size as the last one, but the ceiling was lower. The passageway was filled with a bright green light, which came from pulsating growths on the walls. Ben quickly reconsidered his plan to burn them—there were so many that if they all went up the resulting fire might prove more deadly than the monsters themselves. Torches would not have mixed well with plant monsters. The walls themselves were carved in a regular but wavy pattern out of stone, with bubble shapes rising and falling across the entire surface.

  And down the whole length of the hallway, vine monsters stretched on their long vine stalks out of the walls. At the other end, these vines appeared to be dormant, but the vines closest to Ben and his party were at the ready, and there were at least twenty of them.

  As the door banged open, the hall filled with the screeching and roaring of hungry monsters. The nearest half a dozen monsters lunged straight for Ben’s face.