“Listen to me, Kaz,” Roark said, gingerly removing the panicked Changeling’s sharp claws from his arm. “There’s no reason to fear that overgrown bully. He’s got all the brains of a chamber pot and twice the stench. We can beat him, but we need to be stronger and better prepared. We may need allies as well.” He fingered the amber pendant on his chest, thinking about his 1/2 World Stone Authority. There were any number of creatures inhabiting this citadel, but he was reluctant to choose one at random. He’d gotten lucky recruiting Kaz as his first Greater Vassal, but luck tended to slip out the back door when one relied on it too much. No, better to wait until he found the right vassal for the job. “The latter will take time, but the former I have a plan for. Come on.”
He started off in the direction of the cell where the heroes’ bodies lay waiting, watching out of the corner of his eye as the red in his Health vial crested the halfway point. Kaz caught up to him.
“Roark has challenged tyrants before?” the Changeling asked hesitantly, disbelief lingering beneath the words. “Tyrants mightier than Ugoraz the Vile?”
Roark snorted. “Trust me, mate, Ugoraz would soil his loincloth if he ever ran up against Marek Konig Ustar. Now there’s a tyrant to make a man quake.”
Kaz’s jaw dropped, rows of serrated teeth glinting in the torchlight.
“Where did Roark fight this Marek Konig Ustar? In another dungeon?”
“No, not exactly. I’m not from this world.” Roark frowned at the thought of his home in the clutches of an enraged Tyrant King. How long had he been gone and what was that bastard doing to Korvo in his absence? “I came here through a faulty portal. Similar to the heroes who raid the citadel. Though you said they travel back and forth through Hearthworld, didn’t you?”
Kaz nodded.
“I have to get back to my home world as quickly as possible,” Roark said. “There are people there who need my help, people my disappearance has put in great danger. And Marek will send agents after his pendant.” He tapped the amulet hanging around his neck. “There are special burung wizards in my world who can track portals given enough time, but they’re rare, and actual travel through the portals is hit and miss. It’ll take them time to find me and longer to send someone through to the right place without killing them.”
“But Roark survived the portal.”
“Not without complications,” Roark said, gesturing to his body. “No offense, mate, but I didn’t always look like a malformed fetus growing shark teeth. In any case, I think I may be able to open a portal back if I get the right materials. My magick works here—we know that now—but it comes at a much higher cost than back home. At the very least I’ll need a stronger Constitution to cast a portal spell without killing myself. The Health increase might even help me survive my return trip.”
“So we level more?” Kaz guessed, shrugging narrow shoulders.
“Exactly. Which brings us to …”
The words died on his tongue as they rounded the corner and he caught a glimpse through an open door he hadn’t noticed before on their walk to the throne room, either because of the angle or because his mind had been on his upcoming chat with the Floor Boss. Roark veered off course and into the unfamiliar chamber.
Stocks and shackles lined the wall, occupied here and there by grinning skeletons, some human, others distinctly not. Hooks dangled from the ceiling on ropes looped around pulleys and tackle, and a bloodstained table covered with a variety of whips, brands, and mean-looking cutting tools sat in the corner. A heavy iron mask lay in a pit of glowing red embers while a metal cage swung gently overhead, the crispy remains of a burnt corpse lying inside. A solid metal coffin lined with wicked spikes rested against one wall, and a pair of well-worn racks bookended the room.
“… everything we need for this plan and more,” Roark finished. “Grab everything you can carry, Kaz. We have work to do.”
While Kaz set to work coiling rope and collecting tools from the bloodstained table, Roark slipped around the room, which conjured an odd mix of emotions within him. He could use this place to his advantage, yes, yet he couldn’t help but think of Marek Konig Ustar. The Tyrant King was well known for his creative use of torture to elicit both information and loyalty. Roark’s family had been killed quickly, brutally—an example for the people of Traisbin—but many of the T’verzet had met their end in rooms similar to this one.
He idly traced a finger over the lid of the metal coffin, studying the wicked spikes lining its interior. In Traisbin, they called it a Blackthorn Bed. Pauli Ironsides, the Resistance leader of Frahoi, had been murdered in such a contraption. Lowen, Marek’s right-hand thug and over-writer of spells, had joked that Pauli’s sides had not, in fact, been made of iron as he strung up the hole-riddled corpse in Frahoi’s town square.
Roark dismissed the dark memory and moved on to the open pit of coals, grabbing a pair of long-handled tongs lying nearby. Curious, he lifted the crude iron mask from the fire. The metal glowed as red as the embers below it. Roark turned the mask this way and that, inspecting the slapdash smithing and purposeful lack of eye and mouth holes.
A page of the mystical grimoire appeared before him, relaying the mask’s properties.
╠═╦╬╧╪
Neveret’s Last Laugh
Durability: 9/41
Armor Rating: 4
Properties: Grants the wearer 100% resistance to unenchanted weapons at the cost of (2 x character level) HP / second!
“You can only listen to a bloke run his mouth so long before you’ve got to shut it for him … permanently.”
╠═╦╬╧╪
That final line had brought to mind Albrecht’s warning about watching his big head before somebody kicked it in. Roark grinned and closed the floating grimoire with a thought. That little bit of wisdom was only true if the bloke running his mouth couldn’t back his words with action. It just so happened that he could. Ugoraz the Vile would soon find that out, and sooner or later Marek Konig Ustar and his cronies would too.
ELEVEN:
It’s a Trap
They spent the better part of the next hour disassembling and carrying pieces from the torture chamber to the cell where the heroes’ corpses lay, then reassembling them to fit the idea in Roark’s mind. That required a considerable amount of checking their work to make sure nothing but the corpses were visible through the doorway.
When they were finished, Roark spent some time catechizing Kaz on the plan, especially the places he could and could not stand without being killed. Satisfied that Kaz wouldn’t get himself caught in the death trap the room had become, Roark sent the Changeling to take his place behind the room’s open door, the Dented Buckler strapped to his left arm and Rusty Falcata in hand. Standing there in the shadows, swaying from foot to foot, black feathers bobbing in time with his motion, Kaz almost looked as if he had spontaneously reverted to the mindless creature Roark first met in the bailey. Only the occasional anxious glance at Roark gave him away.
Roark posted up on the opposite side of the doorway behind the bloodstained table they’d dragged into the cell from the torture chamber and balanced precariously on its short side. The corpses of the heroes lay directly in front of him, the rog close enough that Roark could reach out his foot and kick her.
The atmosphere was tense and uncertain, Kaz radiating distress the whole while. Thankfully, they didn’t have long to wait. The clatter and crash of fighting arose in the sprawling antechamber at the citadel’s entrance. Shouting voices, the growl of Changelings, and the screech of angry Reaver Bats reverberated down the stone corridor, but one familiar voice cut through the rest like fingernails on slate.
“Got three in the air, five on the ground! I got the Bats, you two take out those little over-aggroed buttmunchers! Could use some healing over here, Junior!”
The volume of shouting and clanging rose as the battle in the antechamber hit a fever pitch. Then, as quickly as it had begun, everything fell silent.
“Everybody
keep an eye out for movement,” PwnrBwner_007 ordered. “There are Stone Salamanders down here.”
The shuffle and clank of advancing armor filled the passageway.
Then, “Oh shit. Strafe it, strafe it!”
The roar of flames, twang of a bowstring, and ring of metal on stone reached Roark’s ears. The heroes were nearly to the cell. He pulled out his Slender Rapier and shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, carefully adjusting his grip as he raised his sword and assumed prima guardia alta offensiva. Despite his now small stature and clumsy body, he was certain his skill at martial combat would shine through. He breathed slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth, centering himself, preparing for the flood of adrenaline to come.
“Up ahead on the right,” the female rog said. “That should be it.”
“Yep, I got eyes on us,” PwnrBwner_007 said from just outside the door. “Looks clear.”
“Awesome,” a bored female voice drawled. “While you losers get your crap, I’m gonna scout ahead.”
Roark cursed under his breath. A split party was exactly what he didn’t want. For the trap to work as intended, they would all need to be trapped within—anything else invited potential disaster.
Thinking quick, he grabbed the Neveret’s Last Laugh from his Inventory and leapt over the bodies. Roark sprinted to the corner opposite the door, careful to avoid the thin dragline without giving away its position, then pointed his rapier at the party in a clear invitation.
“Hey, it’s that little cocktangle who killed us!” Outside the door, PwnrBwner_007 nocked an arrow and took aim.
Roark pulled on the iron mask, still warm from the coals of the torture chamber. Without eyeholes, he couldn’t see out of it, but he felt the arrow thud into his gut. It landed like a stiff punch, but within the darkness of the mask, his Health vial held steady.
[Roark has resisted piercing damage from Shoddy Iron Arrow!]
“What the balls?” PwnrBwner_007 barked, genuine confusion underlying the words.
A sliver of health drained from Roark’s Health vial into the mask as the first second ended.
Another arrow whistled through the air and missed, clanging off the stone wall behind Roark. Hard on its heels, a third arrow slapped into the meat of his scrawny Changeling arm.
[Roark has resisted piercing damage from Shoddy Iron Arrow!]
The mask extracted its next two points from his Health vial. Two seconds.
“What is this crap?!” PwnrBwner_007 snarled. “C’mon, guys, let’s get him!”
A bevy of clunking boots rushed into the cell. Within the darkness of the mask, it sounded like an army was coming after him, but had his play been enough to draw in all of the heroes? Roark couldn’t tell through the eyeless mask. He held his ground, hoping Kaz would remember not to slam the door shut until the whole party was inside.
The thick blade of a longsword slammed into Roark’s shoulder. The blow should have incapacitated him, but Neveret’s Last Laugh deflected the damage again.
[Roark has resisted slashing damage from Inferior Longsword!]
Roark watched the mask wrest its price from his Health vial as he executed a pie’ fermo lunge in the direction he thought the strike had come from, keeping one foot firmly placed so he wouldn’t blunder into his own trap.
“Is that my rapier? Little bitch!”
Another arrow smacked into Roark’s shoulder uselessly.
[Roark has resisted piercing damage from Shoddy Iron Arrow!]
[Roark has resisted slashing damage from Inferior Longsword!]
[Roark has resisted slashing damage from Kopesh!]
[Roark has resisted piercing damage from Shoddy Iron Arrow!]
[Roark has resisted stabbing damage from Chipped War Ax!]
[Roark has resisted piercing damage from Shoddy Iron Arrow!]
[Roark has resisted slashing damage from Kopesh!]
The notices filled his vision as the blows battered him from each side, but none of the weapons were enchanted and they all appeared to be of low or average quality. The Neveret’s Last Laugh was the only thing stealing Health from his vial.
While they attacked, Roark slashed and parried with the Slender Rapier, feeling the occasional resistance of flesh or scrape of armor on the debole of his blade. He could have pressed for an offensive attack—he could feel that they were within his measure—but he had to remain outside the dragline. He was starting to wonder if the door was ever going to close. Surely the heroes were all inside the cell now? He thought he’d counted at least four different weapons named in the notices. What was Kaz waiting for?
“Outta the way, a-holes,” that bored feminine voice drawled.
The arrows and blades stopped. A second later, fire roared.
Roark’s flesh burned and cracked as the flames sapped his Health. In a heartbeat, his vial was down a fifth of its points.
“Decent!” PwnrBwner_007 crowed triumphantly. “Keep it up, Junior!”
[Neveret’s Last Laugh has dropped below 10% Durability! When an item’s Durability reaches 0%, it will break and can no longer be equipped. Broken items are unusable until repaired.]
Roark ripped the iron mask from his face. Even if it weren’t about to break, it was useless against this Junior’s flame spell and would only serve to drain his Health faster. Holding the mask several inches in front of his face as a makeshift shield, Roark tried to disrupt the mage’s attack with a sottamano attack from the bastard position—a slash that would lay her open from thigh to throat—but she was too far outside his measure.
Luckily, this magical attack seemed to be just what Kaz had been waiting for. Heavy wood scraped across stone, and the door clanged shut.
Roark hurled the mask at the mage’s head. Her flames cut out as she instinctively threw up her hands to protect her face. Darting under the slicing longsword of the elf warrior, Roark slipped back to where the bloodstained table stood propped up on end. He delivered a solid kick to its side, knocking it over, blocking the door and springing the trap.
The heavy spiked coffin lid swung down from its mooring on the far wall, jerking taut the dragline he and Kaz had bordered the heroes’ corpses with. The wickedly long spikes slammed into the mage, PwnrBwner_007, and the female rog on the right, while the dragline swept the legs out from under the elf warrior and a new male rog on the left. The heroes hit the floor in a tangled mess of armor, weapons, limbs, and battered red Health bars.
Without giving them a moment to recover, Roark and Kaz attacked with the fury of a pack of starving maka-ronin.
Kaz hacked at the mage, Junior, who had fallen closest to him, finishing her off in a matter of seconds while she struggled to extricate her arms from PwnrBwner_007’s bow. Roark pulled the Kaiken Dagger from his Inventory and set upon the dazed elf and male rog. They cursed and stumbled clumsily to their feet, but Roark spun out of their weapons’ reach, having already slashed and carved his way through three-quarters of their Health bars. The rope was still tangled around their legs, tripping them up. Before the elf managed to hack it in half, Roark finished off the flailing male rog with an underarm thrust that slipped into a chink in the green warrior’s boxy armor.
A cry of rage bounced off the stone walls. Roark’s head snapped around to trace the source, and he found the female rog encased in a pulsating scarlet nimbus, backing Kaz into a corner with sweeping swings of her rough-looking war ax. Roark grinned with pride as the Changeling raised his Rusty Falcata and cut the rope anchored to the floor there. A pile of heavy wooden beams amassed from one of the dismantled racks dropped on the rog’s head, knocking her Health bar down to critical. With a feral screech, Kaz ran up the wooden beams and chopped his falcata through the back of the rog’s neck, ending her rampage.
The elf warrior took advantage of Roark’s momentary distraction, burying his longsword in Roark’s bony shoulder. Roark’s serrated teeth jarred with the impact, and precious Health drained away. The elf warrior wrenched the longsword free and pull
ed back for another swing, but Roark ducked gracefully inside the elf’s guard and drove his dagger and rapier upward into the gaps on each side of the elf’s ill-fitting iron breastplate. The blades came away covered in elven blood. A final thrust—a dritta—with the rapier ended the fight, and the elf slumped dead to the floor.
“What the hell is your glitch, Troll?” PwnrBwner_007 shouted, face dark with murder under his rusty helm. “Why won’t you just die?!”
The archer had backed into the center of the cell, putting enough distance between him and Kaz that he could use his bow. The Changeling was trapped in the corner, trying to duck behind the pile of wooden beams the best he could, but his Dented Buckler was peppered with arrows. More feathered shafts stuck out of his legs and gut.
Roark ran to the spiked coffin lid, planted his foot between the spikes, and kicked with all his might. It swung backward, slamming into the back of PwnrBwner_007’s head with another resonating toll and pitching the archer forward. Roark ducked under the lid’s backswing and sprinted for the archer. Kaz got there at the same time, and they finished the last hero off with a combination of brutal slashes and stabs.
Roark looked up to find Kaz grinning so wide that his round Changeling head was split nearly in half.
“We survived!” Kaz cheered, waving his falcata elatedly and bouncing from foot to foot. “Kaz and Roark did not die again! Again!”
Roark felt a distinctly non-ironic smile tug at his lips. He turned away on the pretense of wiping his bloody rapier clean with the mage’s robe.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” he said, returning the rapier to his Inventory. “We’re going to be doing a lot of not-dying before this is over.”
TWELVE:
Evolution
[LEVEL UP (x2)!]
As Roark rose from the mage’s corpse, golden light radiated from his skin and a pair of ascending chimes rang through the corpse-strewn cell. A look at Kaz’s glowing skin told him the Changeling had gained levels from their ambush as well.
Rogue Dungeon Page 8