CHAPTER 18

The red-haired girl I saw isn’t hanging from the wooden walkway anymore. Though I didn’t notice it before, the room where I found her – in fact, not so much a room as a widening of the corridor – has a couple wooden doors leading out of it. The vaulted ceiling is quite tall, and the wooden walkway allows passage between two archways a floor above. The girl must have gone down one of them.

I wish her good luck.

Counting two wooden doors below, two arched passages above, and the corridor, there are six ways out of this room. I can’t see any obvious way up. However it was the girl managed to scamper up the sheer stone walls and up to the platform, the climb is beyond me and my mangled hand, which forces me to exclude those two passages. That leaves me with the corridor and the two doors, each on one side of the room.

On the way here, I devised a theory about the design of this dungeon. Since two people and a monster running through it didn’t manage to activate any traps, I am inclined to believe there exist none in this large, connecting corridor. The wooden doors, therefore, hide both traps and loot, making the danger optional.

I’m sick and tired of danger. I think I’ll stick to the main corridor, which, from its slight curve, has me convinced it’s shaped like a ring, and watch out for other wandering monsters.

Noise travels down the passage to meet me. There are lights moving past the bend. Voices. Rue’s buzz intensifies.

Cursing, I pick one of the doors at random, pulling it wide open with a smart step sideways. I allow myself to waste that second so that any overeager traps have time to activate, but though the room is dark and stuffy, it looks reasonably safe. I step inside, being very careful to stay close to the door.

Someone runs down the corridor and makes it a few feet past my door before, with a grunt and the painful smack of a body falling onto solid stone, they come to a rest, breathing heavily. Several people approach at a trot, shouting indistinctly, until the area beyond my door is filled with mutterings. There is a peal of mean laughter that is immediately shushed.

In the silence, I can hear panting.

“Hand it over,” says a harsh voice.

The panting pauses.

“I told you, I don’t have it,” says another voice from floor level. A hesitating voice. Filled with fear, trying to appear brave.

“Don’t lie,” says the first voice.

There is a chorus of agreement. I can’t tell how many voices, but definitely more a few. A larger party? Did some of them manage to band together, like Rev was planning?

“Search him,” the forceful voice orders.

A string of smacks, yelps, and cursing follows.

Am I going to stand behind a door again while someone gets murdered on the other side?

Is it a risk I want to take?

I find that I can’t help myself. I push the door open a fingerwidth in order to peek out.

I see a confusion of bodies and movement around a shape on the floor. The people moving about are in Black Sword uniform and almost all are armed with weapons ranging from the utilitarian knife and hammer similar to the ones I found to actual weapons of war. I see one boy with an overlarge battleaxe. Another with a sort of broad, curved sword. Many of them have soot-blackened skin and their uniforms have burned away in some places.

Finally, with a moan from the figure being ganged-up on, a hand shoots up from the mess of searchers, holding something I can’t quite make out. Bright gold, shining yellow under the torchlight.

“Don’t have it, do you?”

It’s the forceful voice again. The speaker turns out to be a girl, tall and willowy, hair short and pulled back, face all hard lines. She’s kept her hands crossed over the pommel of a proper sword, long and straight, not moving a muscle for the whole of the affair.

The bundle on the floor uncoils a little. I blink in surprise. A dwarf. His beard is luxurious, parted into several braids, each more adorned than the last. What is he doing here?

“It doesn’t belong to you,” the dwarf says stubbornly, blood dripping from his mouth. “It shouldn’t be in this stupid game at all. It’s dwarven.”

“I hate lies,” tall girl says, as if there had been no interruption. “Especially when they put lives at risk. You would let us die for a bowl?”

“Essa,” another voice says. Muffled. I can’t see who’s speaking. “Lower. You’ll call a monster on us. We have the bowl, let’s keep moving.”

Essa’s eyes dart to the side of the room that’s blocked to me by the door. She holds them there a second.

“You think she should get away with putting us all in danger?” she asks.

The first voice doesn’t answer. After a moment, Essa looks back down to the dwarf – apparently a lady dwarf – and nods.

“I suppose whatever happens to you in this dungeon will be punishment enough. Let’s go.”

To my relief, the group begins to move out without murdering anyone, filtering out down the way I came. They ignore the wooden doors, both the one I’m hiding behind and the one opposite, which seems to confirm my suspicions about where traps are to be found.

I hesitate on the edge of stepping out of my hiding place and joining them. These people have the right idea: the best way to survive is to band together. More people can cover more ground, and…

I frown. Everyone has now left the room, abandoning the dwarf to her fate. Everyone, that is, but Essa. The dwarf is breathing hard on the floor, her face covered with bruises. The tall girl walks around her, looking down as if curious. Then she raises her sword up.

I don’t even have the time to react before the blade comes down. The dwarf cries out, but Essa presses her hand against her mouth, drowning the sound.

“This is just punishment,” she whispers. I can barely make out the words. “In your sacrifice, you’ll atone for your sins. If there’s a monster here, hopefully the blood will attract him to you. Don’t worry. Your cowardice won’t hold you back any longer.”

When she pulls out the sword, the dwarf can only whimper and cover the wound with her hands. With a little pat down to compose herself, Essa leaves the room.

The only sound beyond the retreating steps are the mutterings of the dwarf sprawled on the ground. She’s too weak to call out. Any thought of joining these people has been wiped from my mind.

After making sure there is no one waiting in ambush, I push the door open and venture out, kneeling next to the dwarf on the cold flagstones. She makes a feeble attempt to push me away, but is too weak for even that.

The blade slashed her on the side. That girl Essa really wasn’t going for the immediate kill, it seems, but blood is draining fast. I keep my ears perked. If she was right and there are more monsters ambling about, then this can be seriously dangerous.

Rue buzzes up when I clumsily begin taking out the healing herbs from their pocket.

“Malco, what if they come back?” he says.

“I don’t know. Hush, I need to focus.”

“We should go.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re the only ones here,” I say, trying to open the little waxed packets without straining my hand too much.

“Yes. Free to walk away.”

I ignore him. I put the thought of wasting herbs that I may need to use on Katha or Rev from my mind, mix them with a little water and rub the paste on the wound. The dwarf winces and mutters to herself, but doesn’t fight me.

“At least save some for your hand,” Rue buzzes insistently.

“These only work on flesh wounds,” I say. “They stop bleedings and help the flesh put itself back together. They’re useless for this." I wave the hand in front of my face. With all the bumping and scraping I’ve been doing all day, it’s no wonder the state it’s in. An angry red, painfully swollen. The range of motion on my fingers is less than what it would take to hold a cup. I imagine what Dala would say to a patient sporting this sort of damage. Then, instead of following her imagined advicem I remove the sling from around my neck and use it to help staunch the dwarf’s bleeding.

A different sort of pain builds up when I think of accompanying Dala on her healer’s rounds, but I push that down as well, force myself to focus on the tasks ahead. I tell myself it’s normal to miss the things you’re used to. Even if what you’re used to are traitors and liars.

The dwarf’s mutterings have dwindled to an incessant stream of nonsense. I shake myself alert. She’ll need food soon. Fast healing is a great blessing, but it does build up an appetite.

But first, shelter.

*

My instincts seem to be correct. The wooden doors mark trapped rooms, while the main corridors are, so far, free of that. If I judged Essa’s group activity right, the corridors are where monsters wander, and they are apparently preferable to the uncertainty of traps.

I was lucky that the room I hid in was supposed to seem like a nonthreatening supply area, with boxes piled against the far wall and a threadbare rug in the center to cushion anyone in need of rest. Very lucky that I didn’t venture far into the room, in fact.

The boxes don’t contain supplies. After careful investigation, I determined that each holds some sort of small, slithering, hissing, scaly monstrosity with fat little bodies and dangerous heads on long necks able to bite and snap through the gaps in the crates. I wonder if the only challenge of this trap is to know when not to try your luck.

And if you were desperate for any sort of gear or medicine and rushed for the boxes, you may never even get the chance to feel the bitter pain of disappointment, because the rug hides – or hid, before I removed it – another pit. This one doesn’t even have stakes, just a long, long drop. Shining my torch inside only reveals more darkness.

When I sit down – on the solid edges of the room, as far away from the boxes as possible – with the dwarf resting next to me, her breathing finally level, I’m assaulted by the facts of my situation. When I close my eyes, reality begins to arrange itself in my mind, drawing into the shape of a tall, menacing, and likely impassable wall.

I came down into this dungeon without any preparation. I wasn’t sure if the actual Challengers got any pointers, but whatever else they had, they’d managed to make fast alliances, whereas I had only managed to almost die a few times. After a few hours down here didn’t feel I was any closer to getting out. I’d come to help Katha and Rev and I hadn’t even managed to find them.

Yet.

“We need a plan,” I say out loud.

“Plans are good,” Rue buzzes. He’s somewhere among the boxes. Occasionally I can hear one of the beasties hiss at him. “I thought we had one. Isn’t the plan to get out of here?”

“It is,” I concede. “But that’s everyone else’s plan as well. What do we know? There are several levels to this place. The corridors have monsters, the rooms have traps and sometimes supplies. And then there’s the Black Door.”

Rue doesn’t respond. I close my eyes and lean back against the wall, feet dangling in the pit.

“Not the only Door.”

I nearly jump out of my skin, raising the club between me and the dwarf. But she’s barely stirred. The only difference is that her steel-grey eyes are open and staring at the ceiling. I follow her gaze and see there’s an opening on the ceiling as well. The pit starts farther up than I thought.

“What did you say?”

“There’s also the Golden Door,” the dwarf says through clenched teeth. She touches her belly with care.

“Where?” I ask.

“Down in the sand level. Guarded by a monster.”

She parts her beard to take a better look at the new pink flesh. She then pats her belly and furrows her brow.

“Maybe you should kill that monster too, Malco,” Rue hums from among the hissing creatures. “Or make friends with it.” I can detect a note of sarcasm in his humming.

The dwarf props herself up on her elbow. Her fingers sinking deeper into her side, palping the place where the blade pierced her skin. There’s almost nothing there. She looks up at me, then looks around the room, searching for something she doesn’t find. She’s somewhat stunned still.

“Did you save my life?” she asks suspiciously.

“I did. Seems like your group wasn’t too happy with you.”

She bites her lip at the mention, shaking the rings in her beard, but ignores the obvious bait. Very slowly, she comes up to a seating position.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” I say. “What’s your name?”

“Hilde,” says the dwarf. “Short for Hildegarde.”

“Nice to meet you, Hilde. I’m Malco.” I motion to the door. “Care to explain what that was? With the beating?”

Hilde’s eyes are fixed on the pile of dried meat I left next to her.

“Help yourself,” I say.

“I think…” she says, with concentrated, deadly seriousness. “I think I need to throw up.”

With a jolt, Hilde scrambles to a corner of the room, ignoring the convenient possibly bottomless pit right to the side. I avert my eyes and try not to mind the sounds of dry heaving and retching.

When she’s done, Hilde walks back and sits down, primly dabbing at the corners of her mouth. She managed to keep all of it from her beard.

Focusing back on the strips of meat, she looks up at me with eager, but polite, pleading. I nod. As expected, Hilde is starving. She gobbles up a few strips in silence before stilling, eyes closed, in serene enjoyment.

“Too salty,” she mutters.

And then resumes eating.

A good moment passes before Hilde is ready to speak.

“That,” she says slowly. “Was a disagreement over the proper use of historical dwarven artifacts. You see, I am a member of the Holy Order of Dwarven Affirmation.”

She stops dramatically, searching for something my blank stare apparently can’t provide. Her face falls a little when I fail to provide.

“You’ve also never heard of it?”

“Can’t say I have.”

Hilde deflates and sinks her head in her hands for a long moment. Her shoulders shake once, a little painful sob. I reach an awkward hand to her, but she stops me.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have morale issues, no matter what Exquisitor Magruk says, it’s just… Everything is so different here, you know? I thought we would find civilization in the sunside, but all we found was disrespect and – and torches underground! Who uses torches underground, magic or not, may I ask? And everything is…” her hands dart through the air, encompassing our surroundings, possibly the entire world, and accusing it all of nonsense.

“Malco!” Rue buzzes. “There’s a passage behind the boxes! I found a passage behind the boxes!”

He managed to slither all the way behind me without my noticing. I only roll my eyes at the interruption, but Hilde positively jumps.

“What’s that?”

“Well, that’s rude.”