Chapter Three Hundred and Thirteen - Knightlight

The room beyond the end of the floor was the same room that we found at the entrance of the dungeon. There was even the dungeon’s exit at one end, just casually waiting for us.

There were a few small changes though. The bedroom’s wallpaper now had a small pattern along the bottom that looked like entwined roots. The bed in the corner was undone and messy, and there were more toys scattered across the floor.

Otherwise, it was pretty much the same as the room we had entered through. Which was of course impossible unless the dungeon was doing some very silly things with physics.

Lieutenant Petalwrought pulled out a small box from a pocket tucked on the inside of his armour. It clinked, glass tapping against glass within the small wooden box.

“You’re each going to want to drink one of these,” he said as he undid the clasp holding the box in place and opened it.

Within were twin rows of glass vials with cork stoppers. He plucked one out, and turned around to show it to us.

“These will keep you awake in the next part of the dungeon. We don't usually allow the use of these, since staying awake through your own will is a good test of a knight’s resolve, but we are not here to test that.”

I used Insight on the vial he was holding, just out of curiosity.

Potion of Wakefulness, new

“May I?” Lucille asked. She pinched the bottle the lieutenant held, brought it close to her eyes, then opened and sniffed near the neck of it. “It should be safe,” she said. “Unless the person who made it is far better at poison-making than I am at detecting them. What are the side-effects, lieutenant?”

“Occasionally the potion will work too well,” he said. “You might have a difficult time sleeping tonight. That’s not too unusual. The potion will keep you awake, but it won’t sharpen your senses. You might have an unpleasant evening. Otherwise, I would suggest a more fibrous diet tomorrow.”

We each took a vial, then downed them one at a time. There were lots of grimaces going around, and a few grossed-out coughs.

“It also tastes exceptionally vile,” Petalwrought remarked as he took his own.

I shuddered at the taste. It was like the worst sort of cough medicine, but somehow a hundred times more bitter, and it was sticky on the way down, clinging to my throat and burning a bit. Once it hit my tummy, I felt a wave of wiggly energy sweep through me. I wasn’t sure if I felt more awake or not.

Lieutenant Petalwrought closed up his box, still with a couple of vials left, then tucked it away while he spoke. “This next floor is a maze. It isn’t an overly difficult one, most of the time. The path out will be illuminated by small lights affixed near the floor. They are usually spaced apart in such a way that you can always see the next one. It’s the spaces between the lights that is dangerous.”

“Can we make our own light?” Amaryllis asked.

“Some of this floor's adversaries shy away from light, while others are attracted to it. On the average I would recommend we light our way. There are two monsters in the room. One has never been seen; they attack with long, multi-jointed limbs that are relatively fragile. You can break them easily, but they have a lot of pulling power. They will ambush you in the dark, trying to grab you and drag you away. Their main body will never approach the lights, however.”

“Creepy,” I said.

“Indeed,” he said. “The other enemy are large... large teddy bears. Wearing a knight’s armour and raiment. They will attack you more honestly and are attracted to any lights within the maze.”

“Cute,” I added.

The lieutenant chose not to comment. “We’ll be going in with a three-two formation. I’ll be at the head with two knights, our guests in the centre, and the other two knights will take care of the rear. We will be staying very close to each other. Do not stray.”

We nodded, then Lucille raised a hand. At the lieutenant’s nod, she asked her question. “Any types of magic or abilities we should avoid?”

“Not really, no, though you don’t want to use any abilities that will hamper the other’s visibility too much, or slow the group down,” he said.

Bron grunted. “What about them arms in the dark? Any way of knowing they’ll be coming at us?”

“They are quiet, though you might hear a scuff or shift before they appear. Generally, the arms will go for members that are separated from the group, or who are on the edges. Any other questions?”

“I have one,” Aria said. “Have the roots changed anything? Especially with this floor of the dungeon?”

“Good question. I hadn’t thought to mention it, but we’ve noticed some... corruption on the teddy bear knights. As well as roots entwined around the joints of the arms. They behave mostly the same. Perhaps a little more aggressively than before.”

“Thank you,” Aria said with a nod. She jotted that down in her book, then stuffed it away.

“Any more questions?” he asked.

“Ah, um, how long is the maze?” Awen asked.

Petalwrought shook his head. “Hard to tell. It’s never the same length twice. We tend to measure them by the number of lights we cross. Usually somewhere between five and twelve.”

There didn’t seem to be any other questions after that, so we organised ourselves into the formation we’d be diving into the second floor in. Lieutenant and knights at the front, more at the rear, and my friends and the researchers and others bunched up in the middle.

It was pretty cramped, so I folded in Weedbane’s blade, just in case. I could still use it to bonk stuff with the blade folded; it was still a heavy stick with a metal bar in it, after all.

Petalwrought opened the door we’d use to enter the room. This time, it led into a poorly lit corridor. “If you have magical lights, now’s the time to use them,” he said.

Two of the knights summoned little wispy balls of light, then Lucille cast a spell that made her staff glow. Not hard enough that it was difficult to look at, but still bright. She leaned it up onto her shoulder, and it cast a circle of soft light around us.

I summoned my own little light ball and held it up next to me while a few of the others did the same.

We were a well-lit group as we moved through the narrow corridor, then finally through a wide door at the end of it.

The first I saw of the maze was a passageway whose proportions were all off. The ceiling was too high up and the walls too far apart. Wallpaper covered everything but the floor, with dancing teddy bears and knights and fantastical creatures. They were all really big though.

The maze stretched out before us, with a few side-passages just barely visible in what little light reached them, and way off in the distance was a circle of light with a glowing device in its middle.

“That’s a nightlight,” I said.

“Hmm,” was Petalwrought’s reply.

The nightlight was shaped like an elephant, and I suspected it was made of something like glass, with an incandescent bulb within. Were those kinds of lights more common than I thought on Dirt?

By unspoken agreement, none of us rushed ahead to the nightlight. We walked with careful steps, the only sound filling the dark our footfalls, the clink of the knight’s armours, and our breathing.

Slowly, quietly, we crossed the distance with every eye scouring the darkness for motion and danger. My big ears swivelled this way and that as I tried to spot anything before it came at us, but I couldn’t hear anything.

And so we arrived at the first nightlight.

The knights moved past the light and formed a cordon within the lit area. “Everyone accounted for?” Lieutenant Petalwrought asked. He made a point of counting every head. “Good. Where’s the next light?”

“Sir, that way,” one of the knights said. They pointed into the dark. I squinted that way, and could make out a faint light in the distance, it was clearly just some light illuminated a wall, not the nightlight itself. That had to be around a corner, but I couldn’t see where the corridor turned.

“Same formation,” the lieutenant said. He shifted things around so that he was back at the front of the formation with two knights by his sides.

More darkness, though this time we weren’t moving parallel to the pattern in the carpet. I hadn’t even noticed that it had a design of interlocking squares until we weren’t moving along it.

Our lights illuminated corner walls and when we finally arrived at the light the knight had pointed out, it was obvious that it was just an intersection. The nightlight itself was further down.

I glanced back at the last light. It was far away from us, and flickering.

Was it getting darker?

There’d be no retracing our steps if we had to.

“This is spooky,” Awen muttered.

I nodded. “Yeah,” I whispered back. This didn’t feel like the kind of place made for loud voices and laughter.

We started towards the nightlight, then stopped when the lieutenant raised a fist.

I aimed my ears at the dark. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as something shifted. The sound was an echo, distant... maybe. Or maybe it was coming from just around the corner and we had no way to know that a corner was even there.

“Onwards,” the lieutenant said.

We reached the next light with a collective sigh.

Safe. For now.

The light flickered, barely noticeable with all the lights we held, but still there.

“We’re perhaps moving a little too slow,” the lieutenant said. “Next light?”

“I see it,” Bron said. “Left a ways, and forwards. Something’s near it, I think. Can’t rightly tell.”

The next light was down a long, narrow corridor. The lieutenant went ahead, and since he couldn’t walk with his knights by his sides, they were split up so that they’d be mixed in with the rest of us.

The hallway was so narrow I could touch both walls without having to stretch my arms out far. It made the lights we were collecting feel too bright, especially as the wallpaper had a slight reflective quality here.

The images were all of plush animals, some of them being held by long hands with too many fingers and joints. Roots clung to some of them, like nooses around their necks.

We crossed a few openings as we pushed forward. Long passages into the dark that our lights couldn’t illuminate the whole of.

We were nearly at the next nightlight when something crossed before it.

There was no missing that the light had dimmed for a moment. It brought all of our attention up and forwards, and onto the large form waddling past the light.

The corridor widened, which was probably for the best.

The creature pacing next to the nightlight saw us coming with its giant beady eyes. It was a teddy bear, like the lieutenant had said. Bands of iron encircled its big belly, and it had an open helmet squeezed onto its plush head.

A long sword was held by its side in a plush hand. It looked as sharp as any sword I’d seen.

“Two of us will take it on,” the lieutenant said. “The rest of you pay close attention to the dark. It wouldn’t be beyond a grasper to use the distraction to grab someone.”

The lieutenant and one of the knights stepped up.

That left the rest of us just outside of the safety of the nightlight’s glow, in the near-dark that seemed harder and harder to ward off.

That’s when I started to hear a shuffling, a shuffling that was growing louder by fits and starts.

***