Dungeon Champions

‘Meeting at dawn’ was one of those fickle things—like saying you’ll be there in fifteen, or you’ll be just a minute. I thought it was pretty universally agreed upon that dawn meant when the sun actually rose over the horizon.

Apparently, Agent Kieran had a different definition.

It was still pitch-dark outside the guest bedroom windows when Kieran started pounding on the bedroom door. I jolted awake, adrenaline rushing through me as I looked for danger. Zuri stirred beside me, mumbling sleepily.

“Rise and shine, adventurers!” Agent Kieran’s voice cut through the darkness, her enthusiasm grating against the pre-dawn silence. “We’re moving out!”

I groaned, the fog of sleep still clouding my mind. “Pretty sure there are laws against this kind of torture,” I grumbled, savoring Zuri’s warmth for one last moment before forcing myself to move.

She sat up, blinking owlishly. “What time is it?”

Rolling over, I wrapped an arm around her torso. “Too early o’clock.”

Zuri chuckled, then winced as she stretched. “Oh, I’m sore in places I didn’t know could be sore.”

Planting a kiss on her shoulder, I murmured, “Good sore?”

She leaned into me. “The best kind.”

We dressed quickly, gathering our gear. I retrieved Skullie from Zuri’s room, even though the lich was grumpy.

“I’m mad at you,” my familiar said as I put him in the holster on my pack.

“Because I chose sex over you?”

“No, because you chose carnal pleasures over intellectual discourse,” Skullie huffed, his jaw clicking in irritation. “I may be a disembodied skull, Jordan, but I still have needs. Primarily the need for stimulating conversation and the occasional voyeuristic thrill.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “Sorry buddy, but some things are meant to be private. At least you have all your teeth back.”

“Oh. That is true.” He clacked his jaws together loudly, showing off the new chompers. His canines might have been stolen from the sirens, or maybe sharks, as they were decidedly longer and pointier than I remembered.

We made our way downstairs, where the rest of the team was assembling. Britney looked particularly disgruntled, her usually perfect hair mussed from sleep. Nym was bouncing on her toes, seemingly the only one excited about the early start. Sadie was winding between her legs, rubbing up against the catgirl’s ankles.

Merielle was the only one who looked completely put together. Her gaze flicked between Zuri and me, a flash of something—envy? longing?—darkening her eyes for a heartbeat before her usual stoic mask slipped back into place.

Agent Kieran stood in the foyer, tapping her foot impatiently. “Finally. Let’s move out.”

“What’s the game plan?”

Agent Kieran ignored me and walked out of the house. I looked at my party, shrugged, and motioned for everyone to follow her.

The streets of Boulibar Bay were quiet and empty. In the pre-dawn gloom, only those who had to be on the streets were. Everyone was as dead-eyed and shuffling as I felt, but we had to set a brutal pace to keep up with the tightly coiled Senior Agent Kieran.

“We’re meeting my team at the edge of town,” Kieran said as we walked. “From there, we’ll head to the suspected dungeon site. It’s a short march east of the city limits.”

I nodded, still trying to shake off the last vestiges of sleep. “And what can we expect when we get there?”

Kieran’s expression turned grim, although she kept her eyes forward to try to hide it from me. “Honestly? I’m not sure. We’ve never dealt with an artificial dungeon before. There could be anything from standard dungeon monsters to… Well, who knows what kind of abominations they might have cooked up.”

“Comforting,” Britney muttered.

Zuri cursed beneath her breath. “Should I have prepared some concoctions for us?”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But don’t sweat it. We have a good bit of healing capacity in the group now. Quick Combine will be our ace in the hole, if we need it.”

That seemed to put her at ease.

We reached the eastern gate of the city, I could make out a group of figures waiting for us. As we got closer, I saw they were a mix of various races, all dressed in the crisp uniforms of the Trade Regulation Bureau.

“This is my team,” Kieran said, gesturing to the group. “The best agents I could assemble on short notice.”

She introduced us briefly. There was Tallis, a wiry elf with quick eyes and quicker hands; Brog, a towering orc whose muscles seemed to have muscles; Whistle, a petite elf with an array of potions strapped to her belt; Whistle’s ferret named Pickle, who seemed to be having a hissing contest with Sadie; and Rurik, a mage with an intricate staff who seemed to be some sort of wolf-man hybrid. I introduced my party, and everyone shook hands or nodded at one another.

“We're venturing into the belly of the beast, people,” Kieran's voice dropped to a fierce whisper, her eyes scanning each face. “Eyes sharp, guard up, and for the love of whatever gods you pray to, keep your hands to yourselves unless I say otherwise. Clear?”

We all nodded our assent.

“Good. Let’s move out.”

We set off at a brisk pace, leaving the safety of Boulibar Bay behind us. The sky was just beginning to lighten as we made our way through the north gate and to the east. We passed farmland we’d only seen in the distance during the attack. Fields of wheat and corn swayed gently in the pre-dawn breeze.

After about an hour of walking, we came to a stop at the edge of the forest. The trees here were old and gnarled, their branches twisting together to form an almost impenetrable canopy above. I judged we’d circled around the clearing we’d found previously, moving maybe three or four miles further inland.

“This is it,” Kieran said, her voice low. “The suspected dungeon entrance should be ahead.”

We crept forward together cautiously, weapons at the ready. The forest seemed unnaturally quiet—no birds chirping, no small animals scurrying through the underbrush. It set my nerves on edge.

About a hundred yards in, we came to a small clearing. At its center stood a dilapidated old barn, its wood weathered and gray. Vines crept up its sides, as if nature was trying to reclaim it.

It looked abandoned. Empty and unused in that post apocalyptic way.

“That’s our target,” Kieran whispered. “Intel suggests the dungeon entrance is hidden inside.”

I nodded, eyeing the structure warily. It seemed too quiet, too easy. “Fast and hard?”

“Yes,” Kieran said. “Hit them before they know what’s happening.”

She signaled to her team, who spread out to surround the barn. My group followed suit, taking up positions around the perimeter.

Kieran held up three fingers, then two, then one…

With a crash, Brog kicked in the barn door. We rushed in, weapons drawn, ready for anything.

Except what we found.

The interior of the barn was empty save for a few rotting bales of hay and some rusted farm equipment. No dungeon entrance. No monsters. Nothing.

“What?” Kieran spun in a circle, as if expecting enemies to materialize from thin air.

I frowned, scanning the barn more closely.

Something felt off. The way it was off was on the tip of my tongue, a sensation I could almost feel.

My party seemed to notice, too. Zuri and Britney looked nervously at me. Nym sniffed at the air, and Sadie mimicked her. Only Merielle and Skullie seemed to stay quiet.

It was then I noticed it. The air inside the barn seemed to shimmer slightly, like heat rising off hot pavement.

“Wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “There’s something here. An illusion, maybe?”

Kieran’s eyes narrowed as she looked where I was pointing. “Rurik, check it out.”

The wolf-mage stepped forward, muttering an incantation under his breath. His eyes glowed briefly, and he nodded. “Jordan’s right. There’s a powerful glamor in place here.”

With a wave of his staff, Rurik dispelled the illusion. The rickety old barn melted away, revealing a sleek metal structure beneath. At its center was a circular platform surrounded by blinking consoles and strange machinery.

“What is this place?” Kieran asked, breathless.

Before anyone could answer, a loud hum filled the air. The circular platform began to glow, and suddenly a shimmering portal opened above it.

“Look out!” I shouted as creatures began pouring through the portal.

They were like the creatures that had attacked Boulibar Bay, but so much worse. Twisted amalgamations of various monsters poured out of the portal, looking as if someone had taken parts from different local beasts and stitched them together haphazardly. Some had the heads of wolves on the bodies of bears, while others sported multiple arms ending in razor-sharp claws.

“Defense!” Kieran shouted, drawing her weapon. “Form a perimeter!”

We quickly arranged ourselves in a circle, backs to each other, facing outward as the monstrosities poured from the portal. I called my Fast Sword of Bloodletting to hand.

The first wave hit us hard. A bear-wolf hybrid lunged at me, all gnashing teeth and slashing claws. I sidestepped its charge, bringing my sword down in a vicious arc that cleaved through its mismatched body.

Black ichor sprayed from the wound as the creature collapsed.

I dodged the attacks of another, and parried the claws of a third.

Kieran and her team fought with practiced precision. Tallis darted between monsters, his daggers flashing as he found weak points in their cobbled-together anatomies. Brog roared as he swung a massive war hammer, crushing skulls and shattering bones. Whistle’s potions flew through the air, exploding into clouds of acid or freezing mist.

But for every creature we cut down, two more seemed to take its place.

Sweat poured down my face as I hacked and slashed, my Fast Sword of Bloodletting leaving trails of blood and bodies behind it.

Merielle, who’d been busy defending the flank, screamed in rage. Swinging her hammer with far more skill than our previous encounter at Boulibar, she brought a trio of monsters down with a single swing as she defended Zuri.

“We need to shut that thing down!” I shouted over the din of battle.

Kieran nodded grimly, dispatching another monster with a vicious thrust of her sword. “How?”

I scanned the room, searching for anything that might control the portal. There wasn’t a whole lot that was obvious. The portal wasn’t attached to a framework, and while the blinking machinery might have had something to do with it, I had no idea where to start.

As I frantically looked for a control mechanism, Skullie’s voice cut through the chaos.

“It’s like watching a minotaur try to play the guitar… You're all missing it! The floor, you dungeon-addled simpletons—those runes are the portal's lifeblood!”

My gaze snapped downward, and suddenly I saw it—intricate patterns carved into the metal floor, pulsing with an otherworldly blue glow. The runes formed a perfect circle around the portal, their rhythm syncing ominously with each wave of monstrosities that poured forth. How had we missed something so glaringly obvious?

“We need to disrupt the rune circle!” I shouted. “Rurik—can you overload it with magic?”

The celestial, catgirl, and wolf-mage nodded, immediately moving to the sides of the circle. Part of me was fairly sure Rurik could have handled it alone, but I wanted the other two to gain experience in working with those outside our party. I expected chanting or some sort of weird light show, but nothing happened.

They also didn’t seem disappointed, so I assumed something was happening.

“Cover them!” Kieran ordered, as she cleaved through another twisted beast.

The rest of us formed a protective ring around Britney, Nym, and Rurik, fighting to keep the monsters at bay while they worked their magic.

It felt good to have Zuri and Merielle at my back, even if the former wasn’t able to do much in battle, lest she risked turning Agent Kieran’s men to stone, and the latter was just being a bulwark.

I swung my Fast Sword of Bloodletting in wide arcs, its enchanted blade slicing through flesh and bone with ease.

But we were being overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

It wasn’t that the creatures were too much to handle; there were just so many of them. Merielle and I worked back-to-back, disposing of hybrid monsters as quickly as we could.

“Too much,” Merielle warned as she slammed her hammer home into the center of a bear’s skull before parrying another with the other end. “If this keeps up, we’ll need Nym’s magic.”

I didn’t want to do that. Not only was Nym busy, but if we went into a dungeon, we’d likely need every drop of mana available to us.

The monsters still pouring through the portal began to warp and twist, as if the unstable energy was tearing them apart. Some emerged only partially formed, collapsing into writhing masses of flesh and bone.

With a deafening crack, the portal imploded. A shockwave of energy knocked us all off our feet.

For a moment, everything was so silent the air seemed to ring.

I looked around at the carnage. The floor was littered with the bodies of the twisted monsters, black ichor pooling beneath them. A stench was starting to roll off them—something putrid but not like the cloying smell of rotten meat. It was sweet, almost alluring.

Kieran got to her feet and started barking orders. “Secure the perimeter! Make sure there are no stragglers!”

As her team moved to sweep the area, I checked on my team. Immediately, that meant Merielle. The elf was kneeling, panting with the efforts of the fight. I patted her on the shoulder. “You did good.”

“But I need to get better,” she said, looking up at me with a frown. “Those were weak and they still nearly overwhelmed me.”

“Battles of attrition are always going to be more difficult; ten weaker enemies can be worse than one stronger.”

She dismissed her hammer and I helped her to her feet. “Yes, but that doesn’t excuse not doing everything I can to be better.”

Honestly, I was impressed with how she held up, but I wasn’t about to tell her so. Ambition was good to have when every fight could be your last. And if she was able to protect the party, be the bulwark we both knew she could be, I wasn’t going to argue.

Instead, I just patted her on the shoulder again and turned to the rest of my party. Zuri was watching me and Merielle with a warm smile. When she caught my eye she raised her eyebrows in my direction, and I shook my head.

“I appreciate your restraint.”

“Wouldn’t do us any good to harm our allies,” Zuri said, keeping her volume down.

Before I could respond, Nym came bounding up, her ears alert and her tail twitching excitedly. “We actually did it!”

“We did,” I said. “But where’s the entrance? The monsters are gone, but is this really a dungeon entrance?”

“Good question,” Kieran said, frowning as she surveyed the room. She pointed at the mechanics. “This stuff is unlike anything I’ve seen before. It’s almost as if…”

She trailed off, her eyes widening as she looked at something behind me.

I spun around, following her gaze.

Where the portal had been, a shimmering doorway was now visible. The surface rippled, made of silver light, but it wasn’t quite the same as the portal. For one, it was very clearly a door with a curved metal handle and visible hinges. But it still floated in the air and distorted everything behind it.

“Well,” I said, “I guess we found our entrance.”

Kieran nodded grimly. “Looks like it. All right, standard dungeon protocol from here on out. We don’t know what to expect, so stay alert and stick together.”

I exchanged glances with my team. We’d been through a dungeon before, but not as a cohesive group. And the artificial nature of this one had me on edge.

We approached the shimmering doorway cautiously. Up close, I could feel a slight vibration in the air, like static electricity.

“Let’s go,” Kieran said.

We stepped through the doorway together.

The world twisted and warped. For a moment, I felt like I was being pulled in every direction at once. Then, with a sudden lurch, we were inside.