Dungeon Noble - Squire

“Well, this is different,” Jake said, looking around them with surprise.

The area they’d emerged in was roughly twenty feet wide and half again as long, with a low ceiling that ended a few feet before the waist-high wall that sat at the far end from them. The wall had a gap in the centre that suggested a way forward, but Jake was more interested in their immediate area for now.

Two torches were ensconced in the walls on either side towards the end, with two more bracketing the door they’d come through, but they were cold and dark.

What caught Jake’s eye was the small pedestal that sat at the centre of the area, and he cautiously moved closer.

“Is that an hourglass?” Rhew asked, coming up beside Jake and gesturing to a small object that sat on the top of the pedestal.

“I think so, yeah,” Jake said, leaning down to examine the hand-sized hourglass without touching it.

“You should come and see this,” Alan called out from next to one of the braziers at the far end, waving them over.

“What have you got?”

“I think this is where we’re meant to defend,” Alan said, moving over to the gap in the wall that sat between the two braziers. “Take a look.”

Jake looked out over the half-wall and let out a low whistle. The gap in the wall was the end of a ramp that stretched up to where they were, which was apparently the top of a cliff face that stood a good thirty feet tall.

The ramp was a straight line up from the base of the large cavern they were in, and though two standing torches illuminated the bottom of the ramp, everything else was hidden in darkness.

Staring out into the light-less cavern made Jake’s skin crawl, and he silently gave thanks for the illumination that they did have.

“Should we explore?” Alan asked, eyeing the silent darkness with a worried expression.

“I don’t know,” Jake said, unsure what this was about. “It feels off that we’d have all this up here to then just leave down the ramp.”

“Unless that’s the point, Ari said that Dungeons are more than we give them credit for. Maybe this is a psychological thing?”

“Gods, I hope not,” Jake said, shifting uneasily as he imagined what could be lurking out there.

“I think we’re meant to stay here, and they come to us,” Karl said, his words pulling Jake from his thoughts. “Ari said survival is a key theme, and the depiction showed people fighting from a fort.”

“I agree, and the hourglass probably starts it,” Jake said, nodding along to Karl’s logic. He’d forgotten the imagery on the door, which really put things into perspective.

“Well, no time like the present,” Rhew said, joining them and making a show of stretching out the arm she used for her wand. “Unless there are any preparations we could make?”

“Not that I can think of,” Jake said, glancing around them at the smooth stone and fixed sconces. The only thing that they could work with that Jake could see was the hourglass.

“Should I turn it?” Alan asked, taking a slight step towards the hourglass.

“No, I’ll do it; you might be able to get some early shots in with your bow that will make our life easier,” Jake said, waving Alan off and heading over to the pedestal himself. “Ready?”

Jake waited until the others were in position around the ramp before taking a deep breath and flipping over the hourglass.

As Jake let go of the hourglass and the sand within began to fall, nothing seemed to happen.

For a few heartbeats, Jake wondered if he’d done something wrong or if his assumptions had been incorrect. Then, a familiar droning sound came, one that they’d all learned to hate.

“Gods damn it,” Jake snarled, cursing himself as he raced back towards the ramp. He should have returned straight away, not dawdled there like an idiot.

“I don’t see them. Where are they?” Alan called out, his bow at the ready as he peered out into the darkness.

Karl inched forward and peered into the darkness, “Wait, there’s something down at the bottom of the ramp. I see movement at the edge of the light.”

“We’ll keep the ramp clear,” Jake said, hurrying to stand beside Karl. The Krok flies were steadily getting louder, though Jake had yet to see any of them.

“We’ll take care of the bugs then,” Alan said, stepping to one side to give Jake plenty of room as he continued to look for the enemy.

“Shit, here they come,” Karl said as a large group of rats came charging out of the darkness and onto the ramp. The charge was accompanied by a wave of aggravated chittering, some of which was deeper than the rest.

“Murk hound,” Jake said, sharing a look with Karl. They’d do their best to hold the tide of murk rats back, but the murk hound was another story.

A spray of icicles and a few arrows fell among the charging rats, killing or wounding a few of their number but leaving at least a dozen to make it into the darker middle section of the ramp.

“Flies on the left!” Alan turned and loosed an arrow at something, but Jake only had eyes for the murk hound that had just reached the bottom of the ramp and was bounding up towards them.

The ramp was wide enough for both of them to stand on but not to the point that the rats could easily get past them, giving Jake and Karl a chance to stem the attack and let Rhew and Alan focus on taking down the krok flies.

With the rats coming up at them from a low angle, Jake made sure to lower himself slightly, dropping his shield to cover more of his lower body while he stabbed out with his sword.

Jake’s world descended into a chaotic melee as he stabbed and slashed with one hand while using his shield to knock off rats with the other. He could hear Karl’s grunts of pain as he fought back and exclamations from Rhew and Alan, but it took all his attention not to let the rats knock him down or completely rip up his legs.

The hound reached them a few moments later, slamming into Karl with a heavy impact that sent them both sliding across the stone as the giant rat ripped into Jake’s friend.

“Bugs are done!” Alan shouted, an arrow whistling in to kill the last of the normal murk rats, freeing Jake to focus on the murk hound.

“Get to Rhew!” Jake shouted towards Alan, keeping his eyes on the hound as he moved to put himself between it and Rhew, who was already firing blasts of energy at it from her wand.

The murk hound shook off the attack as it rose from Karl’s body, blood dripping from its mouth as it turned to face them. A spray of ice made the creature dodge to one side, but Jake saw it favouring its left leg.

The enormous rat gnashed its teeth as it dodged Rhew’s attacks, keeping moving as it circled to try and get behind Jake, its attention focused solely on Rhew.

Alan opened fire as soon as he joined them, timing his shots to be between Rhew’s, giving the hound no time to think between attacks.

Mistiming a dodge with its wounded leg, the murk hound was struck across the chest by a tight cluster of ice. The Wyrd-infused attack ripping into its flesh and drawing fresh blood.

“I can’t keep this up for much longer,” Rhew said in a strained voice, a fresh blast of energy flying past Jake.

“We’re whittling it down. Just keep going!” Jake hurriedly moved over as the hound darted to one side. Right now, the creature was skittish and reluctant to commit to an attack, but that would only last so long.

“Here, try this,” Alan called out as he tossed Rhew a pair of Wyrdgeld that he’d pulled from two of the fallen rats.

Rhew swallowed both coins and straightened, eyes wide as her cheeks flushed and a smile spread across her face. “Oh, that’s good.”

Her Wyrd reserves partially restored, Rhew started using her skill more, firing wide bursts of icicles that made it more likely for some of them to hit the hound, even if it dodged.

The renewed assault seemed to be the final straw for the murk hound.

Despite its slight limp, the hound was still fast enough that Jake barely had time to think between it starting to attack and when it was in his face and lunging at him.

Wood splintered, and flesh tore as the hound slammed into Jake, sending them both down to the ground as it shattered his shield and tore deep into his chest.

The hound’s jaws opened, and its oversized incisors came down towards Jake, even as he desperately tried to fight it off, his awkward position making it impossible to get the leverage on his sword to break through its skin.

A flash of cold was followed by the feeling of a dozen needles being jammed into the right side of his face and a stabbing pain in his eye as a burst of icicles struck both Jake and the hound.

Blood poured down the side of Jake’s face, and he gasped for breath as the hound pushed off him, its claws tearing into his flesh in the process.

Jake managed to get a potion from his belt and poured it over his wounds, gasping at the stinging pain of the potion getting to work.

The potion stung at his wounds but dulled the pain, letting Jake get unsteadily to his feet as he reached up and pulled the melting remnants of an icicle from his right eye.

Jake could only see blurs from his right eye, but his left was fine, and the potion had stopped the bleeding, so he was as good as he was going to be.

Even Jake’s damaged vision was enough to show that Rhew was dead, her head twisted to a strange angle, and Alan was dying as the creature ripped into him.

Jake gritted his teeth as he realised he couldn’t stop it. Still, he had one last idea, even if it was a stupid one. Fumbling his last potion up, Jake drank it and cast the bottle aside.

Grabbing Rhew’s wand from where it lay on the ground, Jake turned to the creature as it feasted on his friend and channelled as much Wyrd into the wand as he could. “Fuck you!”

Cold energy manifested at the end of the wand and shot out, striking true on the murk hound and grabbing its attention as he began to infuse his Wyrd into his blade.

The rat had abandoned Alan’s body and was surging towards him, slowed only by the constant barrage of cold energy that Jake was striking it with.

The rat was mere feet away when it pounced, and Jake was already bringing both his sword and the wand up high.

Every time he’d seen one of these hounds pounce, they’d gone high, biting into shoulders and necks, and this time was no different.

The heavy murk hound slammed into him, the Wyrd on Jake’s blade helping it pierce deep into the creature’s body. At the same time, he jammed his left arm into its mouth as it went to bite him, firing his wand directly into its throat as he did.

The hound reared back and bit down instinctively, its sharp teeth digging deep into Jake’s arm as he fired the wand a second time, the healing potion numbing the sensation of the hound’s bite and how its claws were digging into him.

The second ice blast to the back of its throat was enough to knock the giant rat off of Jake with a convulsive bite that crunched through the bones in his arm, ripping everything from his forearm down away as it fell back.

Driven only by bloody-minded stubbornness, Jake clung to his sword as it moved, sliding the blade free before he began stabbing it again and again until it finally stopped moving.

Jake was barely able to support his weight and collapsed with a groan; his lips twisted into a rictus grin as he stared at the dead murk hound.

He’d done it.