Dungeon Champions

While Skullie practiced the equivalent of necromancer yoga in his new body, I went over to check on Zuri and Merielle. They were looking through the bookshelves. Merielle had a thick book in her hands, and her eyes were wide as she scanned the page.

“I’m pretty sure these are research notes,” she said when I asked. “Experiments on…all of this. Combining different creatures. Creating…hybrids.”

“This isn’t exactly an artificial dungeon,” I said, thinking about the patchwork monsters we’d encountered, the flesh walls, and the cocoons full of people. “It’s a laboratory. They were trying to create new life forms, new monsters.”

“Before it got out of control,” Zuri added. “The thing they mentioned in that message—it must have taken over, started running its own experiments.”

I nodded grimly. “And now we’re stuck in the middle of it.”

A low rumble shook the room, dust falling from the ceiling. The cages rattled ominously.

“We need to find the core and shut this place down,” I said. “Hopefully before it decides to use us as its next test subjects.”

Zuri cleared her throat. “Speaking of…”

Internally, I winced. That…wasn’t good. “What’s going on?”

She pointed to one of the stone tables closer to her, on the far side of the room. One of the ones that was occupied. “I noticed them when you were helping Skullie.” There was a softness to her voice, something that felt almost mournful.

I walked over to see what she was pointing at.

There were two corpses here, fresh. One was a very tall wolf-man hybrid with a broken staff at his feet. The other was a half-naked elf woman.

“Whistle and Rurik?” I said, almost to myself.

“Either them or someone who looks a lot like them.” Zuri’s tone was dry, almost bitter. “We told them that splitting the party was a bad idea.”

I looked around for signs of the others—Senior Agent Kieran, Tallis, Brog, or Whistle’s little ferret. There weren’t any signs of them, which was both a relief and worrying. How had Whistle and Rurik ended up here? And were these even them?

Both of them had similar wounds—their skin was peppered with cuts, but they seemed to be superficial. Instead, they looked as if they’d been strangled. By long tentacles, if I had to guess.

Remember, adventuring Tablet Wielders calculate their hit points as a multiplier. Compared to regular people, we’re indestructible. Those tentacles might be annoying to us, but they’ll be overwhelming to common folk.

It was just another reminder of why the people in the Fae Wilds treated us differently.

“Is this really them? Where’s the ferret?” Merielle asked, pointing at Whistle’s body. “Didn’t she have a familiar?”

Nym answered, “Normal familiars are just complex magic spells with spirits bound to them. As soon as his owner died, Pickle vanished.”

Sadie made a loud sound of protest, eyes flashing.

“Yes, yes, dear, we know you’re extra special,” the catgirl said, stroking the feline under her chin.

Moving over to the fallen adventurers, I felt tendrils of ice slide through my chest. Whistle and Rurik’s lifeless eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, their faces locked in expressions of terror.

I felt a bit at fault. If I’d forced the issue, insisting that we all stay together, they might still be alive.

“We need to find the others,” I said. “Before they end up like this too.”

As if in response to my words, another tremor shook the room. This one was stronger, causing some of the implements to clatter off the wooden tables.

“I don’t think we have time,” Merielle said. Her voice was tight with tension. “Whatever’s controlling this place—if it’s a core or what—knows we’re here. We need to find it now.”

She was right. As much as I disliked the thought of leaving Kieran and the others to fend for themselves, our priority had to be shutting this nightmare down.

I looked around, searching for any other option. None stood out. “I hate it, but you’re right. Let’s find a way out of here and to the center. That’s where the core should be.”

We quickly searched the room, looking for any kind of exit besides the maintenance tunnel we’d come through. This time, as we went, I threw anything that looked remotely useful into my portable storage space. Worst case scenario, I end up with a bunch of crap to trash once we’re done.

Finally, Nym called out from behind one of the bookshelves.

“I think I found something!”

We hurried over to find her pointing at a section of wall. I examined it closer. It was barely noticeable, but there was a faint seam outlining what could be a hidden door.

“Good eye,” I told Nym, petting her between the ears. “Now we just need to figure out how to open it.”

We searched the area around the door for any kind of switch or mechanism. Even Skullie joined in, using both of his new arms and the pincer in the center of his chest with a surprising degree of dexterity.

While we went through things, I continued my impression of a vacuum cleaner: every book within my reach went into my storage space. Over a period of several minutes of searching, I’d cleared out dozens of the things.

Britney called, “Found something!” She pointed to an odd-looking tome on one of the nearby shelves. It was thicker than the others and seemed to be jutting out slightly.

“Worth a try,” I said with a shrug.

She pulled on the book. With a soft click, it tilted forward like a lever. The hidden door slid open with a hiss, revealing a dark passageway beyond.

“Nice work,” I told her.

Britney beamed at the praise. “Thank you, d—Jordan.” She flushed, looking away.

We peered down the corridor. Unlike the sterile lab we were leaving, or the maintenance tunnels we’d left behind before that, this passageway looked more organic. The walls were bathed with an eerie blue light. The tunnel sloped upward, leading us back into the dungeon.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Zuri muttered.

“Me too,” I agreed. “But it’s our only way forward. Stay alert everyone.”

We moved into the corridor, weapons at the ready. The floor squelched unpleasantly beneath our feet. While the floors weren’t still made of flesh, there were chunks of organic material left behind.

It wasn’t long before the passageway flattened out, opening up into a vast chamber.

The room was a mirror of the one we’d left below—a wide octagon, although this one was practically empty. Except, of course, for the walls. They were lined with what looked like giant glass tubes, each filled with a swirling, luminescent fluid. At the base of each was an elemental sphere. Floating within each tube were…things. Monsters. Grotesque amalgamations of different creatures, some of them half-formed and twitching.

“I don’t want to fight those things,” Britney said in a firm tone. “In fact I refuse.”

“I don’t want to fight them either,” I said, “but we might not have a choice.”

“Honestly, you might both be in luck,” Skullie said. “This looks like a place you’d find a Dungeon Boss. Perhaps you won’t have to deal with the extras.”

I groaned. “You know because you said that you made it a reality.”

“That’s not how anything works.”

“Except that’s exactly how everything works.”

A deep rumbling filled the chamber, distracting us. The floor beneath our feet began to vibrate, and cracks spread across the smooth surface.

“Everyone back!” I shouted, retreating toward the corridor we’d come from.

We barely made it to the edge of the room when the center of the floor exploded upwards. Chunks of debris rained down around us as a titanic form emerged.