Dungeon Champions

Chapter 9: Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong

I left Nym, Sadie, and Merielle to get settled while I dove back into the dungeon again. The next marker on Corey’s map was further than I’d gone before.

There were plenty of packs of trash mobs in my way, choking up the corridors. Cutting them down was easy, but I found myself questioning why they were there.

If someone came this way, wouldn’t this route be clear already?

My inherited memories instantly told me the answer: since Dungeon Cores couldn’t command dungeon monsters, it was unable to make them stay in place. It meant monsters could just wander. Some claimed particular territory, while others scavenged for materials or food, either by targeting lower-level monsters, or by cleaning up the scraps left behind.

Despite the constant threat of danger—no matter how small it was—I found myself settling into a rhythm. My mind and body were adapting to the challenges of my situation. It was as if I had been born for this.

The marker on my map led me to a small, nondescript room. It was unremarkable, except for the fact that it was so run-of-the-mill and in the middle of a dungeon. The room was about 9-by-9 if I had to guess, and had white walls and a wooden slat floor.

At first, it seemed empty, and I almost left, but Skullie jerked his head, eye sockets aligning with a spot on the floor. “There’s something hidden there. A trap door, I think.”

Moving cautiously, I slid my hand across the point where the lich was looking. The air quivered as a steel hatch appeared. With it came the furious, screaming sounds of someone below.

“Good job, bud.”

“I did a good job!” Skullie crowed, pleased with himself.

I moved closer to investigate. The trapdoor was closed, but I could hear the sounds of a struggle coming from beneath it. Without hesitation, I grabbed the handle and yanked it open, revealing a dark, cavernous space.

In the dim light, I could make out a small platform surrounded by a writhing mass of black slime. Atop the ledge, maybe forty feet below me, stood a beautiful angel. She was blinding white—from her blonde hair to her gorgeous high-waisted white dress—and she had a pair of small white feathered wings behind her shoulders. Those wings fluttered in panic as she stomped on the tendrils of ooze reaching for her legs.

“Gross! Get away!” she screamed, her spiked high heels skewering the slime creature. “I hate this! BETSY! Where are you? I’m done! Whatever you’ve got going on with our training, I’m done. I want out.”

There was desperation clear in her gold eyes as she looked around, hoping for some sign of rescue. Like all adventurers, her inability to look up meant she didn’t see me peering in.

When the cave-like room and rivers of black slime remained unchanged, the woman’s anger flared.

“Why does everything bad have to happen to me? I do everything right and this always happens!” She crossed her arms beneath her full breasts.

“Do we need to save this one?” Skullie asked in a whispered tone, his vertebrae making a crackling sound that reminded me of laughter. “She seems like she’s more trouble than she’s worth.”

More tendrils of slime surged up the platform, their sticky pseudopods gripping the smooth stone as they advanced toward the woman. She rushed to meet them, stomping furiously, but it was clear she was fighting a losing battle.

“I’m not leaving her behind if I can help it,” I said, mostly to myself. Throwing my pack down, I fetched a length of rope. There wasn’t a really good anchor point, so I grabbed one of the magical pitons from my adventuring supplies and created my own. The metal spike embedded itself securely into the wooden floor, and I looped the rope through it. My borrowed memories told me exactly how to tie a secure knot.

When that was done, I pulled Skullie out of my armor and propped him up on my pack, next to the piton. “Keep an eye on the rope, would you?”

The lich said nothing, but I secured the rope to myself, creating a makeshift harness. Then I stepped up to the edge of the trapdoor and started lowering myself down.

The lady with the angel wings was too focused on her fight to notice my arrival. She continued to vent her frustrations aloud as she stomped on the encroaching slime.

“I could be home with Father, doing something important instead of this. Just who does that two-faced half-breed think she is? Sending me away when he needs me most. Ugh! Get away!”

A particularly large blob of ooze flopped onto the platform, its bony structures writhing into a nightmarish shape. The woman howled in indignation, slamming her feet down until it retreated.

I could see the toll the fight was taking on her. Sweat soaked her clothing, and her hands shook as she cast a spell on herself. From the way the white spell effect seemed to reduce her exhaustion, I assumed it was a Minor Healing Touch spell. But it was clear she was running out of mana.

The woman stomped her foot, angry little fists balled up at her sides. “I am a celestial! I am above you! Get… Get away from me, or my holy light will burn you to a crisp!”

The ooze seemed unimpressed.

Three lashing tendrils slapped the stone, each from a different angle. The celestial shrieked—in a high-pitched tone that should have been a weapon of its own—and started beating the ooze with her shoes again.

She has to realize that’s doing nothing, I thought to myself. Surely, she can see she’s just wearing herself out?

She took a step back, breathing heavy. “I… I should have listened to Father about exercising. This is ridiculous.”

Lowering myself into the room safely was taking ridiculously long. I had to secure additional pitons into the wall to create anchor points. The pitons attached to my rope with a simple hook, acting like a carabiner. If the room above had a better tether point, I maybe could have freeballed it into the chamber. But I was worried about us getting back out safely.

“She just wanted my inheritance,” the celestial said to no one, stomping a foot. “That’s why she sent me away. She wanted to claim what was rightfully mine.” She howled in frustration. “I can’t believe her! What a wicked woman! With… With a Tablet, I’d be able to…”

A soft squishing noise seemed to interrupt her. I watched as a creature crawled up the edge of the platform and started to make its way to her. It was a horrifying, nightmarish cross between a spider and a human, with ooze covering the bones and creating a grotesque approximation of muscle.

The sight seemed to break the girl.

A single, faintly glowing tear leaked down her cheek. It was followed by another, both of them sliding off the curve of her chin, before being followed by more. “Daddy?” she cried out, her trembling voice echoing over the liquid sounds below. “Daddy! Help me! Please!

“I’m so sorry, Daddy. I… Why did you abandon me? Why did you let this happen?” She sobbed, a wet and heavy thing. “If… If you were a proper parent, you’d be here with me. You’d stop this.”

She was so close. I could almost reach out and touch her. I slammed another piston into place, stretching to get it as low as I could. When the rope attached, I lowered myself and looked over my shoulder.

The nightmarish creature had risen to its feet. Multiple legs of different lengths—likely cobbled together from the bones of its previous victims—lifted the body above the ground. Its torso was a macabre puzzle, none of it making biological sense. The ooze had also formed two arms, although one was notably longer than the other, likely due to the femur logged firmly in its forearm.

Most notable, however, was its distinct lack of a head. There was no skull, no neck, and no spine.

The celestial whimpered and curled up on herself, accepting her fate.

I reached down, stretching at the end of my rope, until I could reach the very tip of her wings.

She shrieked, flailing her arms above her head. Her hand got caught in the slack rope between me and the last piton. “Ahh, no! Monster! Help me! Please!”

I snarled and smacked away her wrist. “Stop it. I am trying to help you. Give me your hand.”

The sound of my voice caused the celestial to stop flailing. She looked over her shoulder, all wide eyes and parted lips.

For a moment, I thought she was going to scream. Or back up into the oncoming ooze.

“I’m friends with Merielle and Nym,” I said, trying to hurry her along. “Come with me if you want to live.”

Intelligence slammed into place in her eyes, and she reached out to grip my outstretched hand.

“Hold on tight,” I ordered as I hoisted her up between me and the rope.

The ooze below us shrieked at the loss of its meal. It started to stretch, disassembling its body and stacking bones like blocks to reach up and catch us. My Gauntlets of Grappling meaning the sticky viscous liquid of its form wasn’t able to hold on to us and I kicked it away. The monster howled as it fell, crashing and splattering to the platform.

I pulled us up the rope, hand over hand, removing my pitons as I did. The woman clinging to my chest barely slowed me down, even though she did absolutely nothing to help me.

When we reached the trap door, I hoisted her up and through it as easily as if she were a child. The woman scrambled away, not taking the time to even ask if I needed any help.

Skullie looked at me with knowing eyes and I shook my head. Instead, I lifted myself up, pulling the last two pitons and recoiling the rope.

As soon as we were both out of the trap door, it slammed shut before it blended with the floor below like a crocodile waiting in the swampy water.

“There… Where’s the treasure chest?”

“What treasure chest?” I asked as I secured the rope to my pack and put it back on. I looped Skullie back through my armor.

“There was…a treasure chest.” She said it, mutely, almost as if she didn’t believe herself. The woman then blinked and gasped in revulsion. “Necromancer! Stay away from me!” The tiny wings on her back flapped with anger and fear.

“Oh. They aren’t vestigial, huh?” I grinned at her. “If you can flap them, why wouldn’t you use them to fly away? You could have saved me some effort.”

The woman hissed in anger, her eyes darting around the room for an escape route. I held up my hands in a placating gesture.

“Hey, look. I’m here to rescue you. And no, I’m not a necromancer.” I patted Skullie’s, er, skull. “This is Skullie. He’s my lich. You should be grateful. He helped me find you.”

Skullie’s jaws lolled open. “Skullie is Jordan’s friend!”

The woman shuddered in disgust. “A lich!? Those immortal abominations are the worst, pure evil incarnate. Do you have any idea how they are made?”

I nodded. “Sure do. It’s an elaborate ritual in which the person binds their soul to a phylactery. Ordinarily, liches are people who have been suckered into thinking they’re being given immortality by way of a longer mortal life. Whoever recruits them usually doesn’t include all the details about flesh rotting and what-not.”

Skullie looked up at me, his jaw clicking. “You know about the recruitment program?”

I shrugged. “A little.”

The celestial blinked in surprise. “Recruitment…program? Are you suggesting not all liches are objectively evil?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “Skullie here was intent on killing me when we met. Plus, he was animating skeletons from corpse piles. I’m pretty sure he’s quite evil.”

“But I got better!”

The woman wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Why do you have it with you, then? It’s dirty and disgusting. Ugh, it probably smells bad, too. Better to throw it away or smash it into pieces. That’s what we do to evil things, Jimmy. We kill them.”

“Jordan,” I corrected. Then I cleared my throat, hooking my hands at the collar of my breastplate. “Look. I’m a man who values things based on their usefulness. As long as Skullie here keeps working with me, it’s worth my time to keep him around. After that? Well…” I made a gentle slapping motion.

Skullie’s jaw chattered. “I shall work for you forever!”

Ignoring the lich’s bootlicking, I turned back to the celestial. “Speaking of usefulness, are you ever going to explain your wings and why you didn’t just fly away?”

She sniffed, tilting her head back. “One does not discuss such things with lesser beings.”

Oh. She was one of those. I should have known.

I shrugged and smiled a thin, emotionless smile. “Suit yourself.”

With that, I turned and walked away, heading for the door.

She hesitated. A woman so sure of her own self-importance, I figured she was waiting for me to turn around and apologize. But when I didn’t, she grumbled in irritation and hurried after me.

Her heels clicked loudly on the stone floor.

She caught up, grabbing my arm and yanking at me. Or trying to, at least. Pulling on my arm was like trying to uproot a tree with her bare hands.

I turned and looked down at her, giving her a patient look.

“Just who do you think you are,” she asked, her voice close to a shout. “And how dare you walk away from me?”

I waited until she was done, then crossed my arms, staring down at her with a slight frown.

She took a step back, seemingly caught off guard by my demeanor.

“I’m the man who just saved your life,” I said evenly. “Not only that, I also saved the lives of two of your friends. Your Sisters. After I get you out of here, there’s still one more person I need to get. I just hope the time I spent here saving you didn’t cost her life.”

The celestial girl ground her teeth, a flicker of guilt crossing her face. “I, uh… I’m sorry?” she stammered, clearly unused to being spoken to in such a manner. She winced at her apology, but at least didn’t try to take it back.

I turned and continued down the corridor. Whimpering, the celestial ran a few steps to catch up and walk next to me, her earlier protests forgotten.