Argent arrived in the blockhouse with her escort just in time to see the unblooded Granite Mob recoil. Horrendous screams echoed through the vast empty hall, agony reverberating around the stone like the sound itself was attempting to escape. Stepping up onto a firing ledge she peered through the narrow embrasure. Acid gouted from the side of the stairs down to the fourth floor, a terrible fountain so forceful it near drowned its victims as much as it dissolved them. It spread across the floor, contained within a glass reservoir that presented the invaders with an impassable pool to cross.
Judging from the raw red flesh and pockmarked equipment, this was not their first exposure to the Thaumivore's bile.
Behind her Kelter and Uller were being carried below by two goblins of the Ochre Tiles, marked by the dull clay brown of their tunics. The Granite Mob soldiers around her were clad in dwarven mail and Dungeon helms, grey trousers marking their tribe. Already the Matrons played politics with rules and laws that poorly disguised the petty whims they were. Her own robes were dyed only with the stains of her sweat and ink at her cuffs, faint yellow cloth a brown-black from powdered stone and congealed blood. Bushels of bolts bracketed two marksgoblins who were already raising their weapons to fire on the rats stuck on the stairs, pouches of slingstones hung from iron nails hammered into the basalt fortification. Spears and shields were racked along the base of each wall, ready for when the fighting got close. Knives and hatchets rested on every belt, in case it got closer.
With a ringing clack of metal on wood, the first crossbow fired and was followed swiftly by the second. Both bolts sunk into the painted wooden shield of the vanguard to their left, the first high and the second plunging straight through the purple eye in bloody claw. The cohort responded by forming a testudo, shields layering over the formation like a skink's scales. In the shallow stairwell they could stand three abreast, just, with only the front two rows visible. More bolts slammed into shield, again. The third volley was met with a barked command and the shields began to shuffle, another pair awkwardly moving to the second row. A fourth volley cracked into the shields, now being rested awkwardly at the bottom step to cope with the weight and impacts. The reservoir was finally running dry but still the shield bases were pitted and scarred from splashes. Argent looked on grimly, now they would see the response.
Two more volleys hammered at the vanguard, the marksgoblins attempting to space their fire over the leading warriors and render their defence useless through weight or cumulative damage. A scar cut across the sloped surface of an overhead shield on the second row, a wayward shot having glanced from the slanted surface. That was where Argent spotted the movement, the shield raised awkwardly to cover a warrior who held no shield of their own. A strange pipe protruded from the ad hoc embrasure formed where the figure of eight dipped in at the middle. Copper wires threaded along the joint between a wooden haft and iron tube, and reflecting wickedly at the base a narrowed yellow eye lit by a cool blue glow from below. A heartbeat later lightning erupted, crackling and forking across acid and stone to blast fragments from the blockhouse. Another bolt tore forth, then a third. Four ratfolk returned fire, outnumbering the crossbows of the Granite Mob two to one.
Argent ducked below the slit with the rest, blinking purple-green spots from her eyes. Even closed she saw the forks, temporarily staining her retinas. Fingers glowing, she struck the sight from her eyes with a sliver of regeneration and stood to attend to the marksgoblins. Eyes squinting fiercely against the glare she saw they were opening their eyes only for a second to snap off a shot, then ducking to reload their weapons with eyes shut. Even with the disadvantage in number and method she soon saw they were holding their own. Their crossbows were slow, heavy weapons that didn't blind the enemy just by firing but their weight and force made them fiercely accurate. The strange lightning staffs began to lose cohesion after ten metres or so and seeming to get less accurate with every shot. By the time the lightning hit the blockhouse it was as a kaleidescope of thin branches that burned stone but couldn't seem to find the aperture that her fellow minions fired from. On the seventh exchange there came a scream, a watching goblin falling with blood pouring black as night from a ruptured and burn eyeball. By the time she had restored the maimed woman the ninth exchange had found their revenge, a quarrel darting through a shield gap to take a gunner in the throat.
A purple haze, shimmering like powdered amethyst, poured down the stairs and into the pond of bile. Magic thrummed in the air and Argent almost thought she saw runes and diagrams in the smoke, curled and flowing like water. Brackish and blackened it rose as a clungy soup of acid and melted stone, hanging in the air on a glowing purple cloud. It was like seeing a child playing with Sedurzefon's light - she shivered, so strange to know the Dungeon's Name - a crude imitation of that skill and power. It oozed in the air, balancing the caustic solution like a hundred hands trying to catch the water that spilled through their fingers. Then all at once it hurtled towards them, thrown by those ethereal hands.
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She reacted without thinking, fingers splayed as she threw her arm out and barked a word that split her tongue and cracked her lips to bleed a heavy smoke. Reality rippled, reorganising its law to her will and the concoction slowed almost to a stop and fell, accelerating back towards the ratfolk. Before them, an amendment invoked by stricken flesh and asserted by bones that buzzed and thrummed that changed a law just enough.
The laws of Gravity were untouched for it was a single word Argent redefined - Down. The enemy's stairwell was down.
The purple haze caught the bile again, a physical impact that echoed a wetly around the empty chamber. Acid hissed against stone where it slid around the warlock's grasp, inexorably creeping around his hold with the relentless force of gravity. The liquid roiled and spiked where the enemy tried to push back against it, shivering and oscillating in the air. Argent's skin and muscle twisted, tearing and rupturing. Fingers spread beyond the natural, splitting the flesh of her hand. Black blood wept from her wounds as dark fumes, her fingerbones vibrating so fast they blurred a white clean of gore. The pain would have been agonising if she hadn't already severed the connections that communicated pain to her brain, the advantage of having rebuilt herself three times in her two days of life, her anatomy Dungeon taught. With her free hand, she began repairing her smoking lips and tongue.
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"Wake up Kelter."
In the hospital, Kelter was roused by a bucket of water to the face. Matron Striker towered over him, armoured in tailored mail that actually fit her slender frame - where had the Craftwinds found the time? - and sheer outrage. "Dungeon's been trying to wake you for almost a minute, on your feet soldier!" Striker barked, brandishing the bucket like a club.
Scrambling to his feet and hissing at the pain in his bad leg, he bit out, "Yes boss?"
Striker's eyes flared at the informality, raising her bucket but was cut off by the voice of the Dungeon. "Get your bill. I require your malice."
Kelter chewed his tongue for a moment, cocking his head to stare at the ceiling for a moment before drawling, "Aye, reckon I can spare it."
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Quarrels and slings rained into the bile, seeking every brief hole created by the witch's efforts. When that failed, spears and even a boot were hurled. Scarcely a meter from the blockhouse they were caught by the gravity prism and through sheer bulk fell through the caustic soup to bludgeon the cohort and spatter acid across them. All tried to avoid looking at their own witch, black smoke pouring to the floor from her left arm. White bone shone past the elbow, giblets of flesh and skin quavering to the floor and dissolving into translucent motes. Beside her head, conjured continuously in a swirl of green light was a waterfall of rich black blood, bright and oxygenated by the Dungeon's will and guided and shaped by the Castellan into a funnel that poured into an incision she had carved in her own neck. From the black smoke quavered a white blur that spat fingernails and bone, vibrating faster than the eye could track.
Most spells cost simply mana. Argent spent her very life. How very fortunate that life came so easily to a Dungeon. She spat a tooth, exhaling black smoke. It was practically free.
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"So," Kelter breathed the words. "Sounds to me that you don't need to steal anything per se." He shimmied further along the narrow tunnel, leather tunic rasping softly against the stone. Uller followed, both goblins on their backs and holding the bill above them. The Dungeon spelled its response on the ceiling in front him, too close for comfort. Squinting he breathed back "No no, I understand that boss. You just don't necessarily need to steal it. If you can kill him first," He paused, shuffling around a latch, "If you can kill him first it's not theft, it's looting. Totally different."
The Dungeon's reply glowed and he grinned. "Naturally. Uller, grab my feet."
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Argent's wristbones cracked, marrow boiling away like steam from a kettle. Her smeared, shimmering hand now spun in a full circle, somewhat shorter now without thumb or fingers. Matron Striker had joined her clansmen, put an end to the throwing of their limited supply of spears. Instead Craftwind miners hauled stones and still cooling metal lumps to the front, thick leather gloves smouldering. The makeshift ammunition rained on the rats, spattering them with splashes of acid and bludgeoning shields and limbs. Through one such gap Argent spotted a brass snout forcing its way to the front, a brass staff pointed directly at her over the heads of his lackeys. Her face hardened, snarling smoke and teeth then froze. Jezzails raised to take aim as Kelter's fall was arrested, dangling haphazardly in the air above the ratman wizard. A looted bill slide through his hands and he whipped it back behind his head and swung with the flat of the blade.
Steel rang on brass and the orb was sent sailing from the crackling electricity that suspended it, bouncing from shield, wall and ceiling back up to the third level and the acid crashed at last upon the walls and cohort to a chorus of screams.
Shocked, her working ended and Argent collapsed to the floor amongst her own bones and bloodsmoke. Reeling from the magnitude the voice of her Dungeon barely registered.
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"MY TURN, RAT."