Vlad's Pad

The building was, surprisingly, actually relatively well put together on the inside; from the sheer number of obviously recently added internal supports and the freshness of the paint on the wall, it was clear the rundown exterior was a thin facade. I could tell from the variety of little knickknacks, artful scratches, and bits of graffiti on the walls that the place was well lived in, but the general lack of rotting garbage lying around showed greater discipline than I would expect from a band of mostly unobserved thugs. Evidently, Vlad took some pride in his station and managed to keep his men in line despite their distance from the home base.

I could admit, I found that somewhat admirable.

With every window densely covered over by vines, the place was rather dim even during the day; while such light levels didn't affect my vision, I did take note of them nonetheless. The only light came from a large number of different smelling candles, the combined scents swirling together in the mostly stagnant air and forming a nearly dizzying concoction. My nose twitched repeatedly at the overwhelming smells dancing through the air, drawing an instinctive killing of my own scent from me even if it ultimately didn’t really affect the air around me at all.

Vlad seemed unbothered by the cacophony of olfactory overstimulation, walking on without comment. Most of my fellow stealth operatives fared notably worse, many breathing through their mouths or stuffing bits of scented cotton in their noses; only the more experienced amongst them seemed not to mind the swirling scents, walking on with remarkable aplomb. Roin was amongst those few that seemed utterly unaffected, glancing around with the sort of bored interest of one who’s been somewhere before but hadn’t seen recent changes as we walked, and contributing his cigarette smoke to the maelstrom of smells.

It didn’t take us long to reach Vlad’s destination, a moderately sized living room replete with plush chairs, a bar against one wall, and even what seemed to be a local variant of a pool table. I found the later feature somewhat notable, as it told me at least a little bit about the culture around here; a billiards table present inside like this told me that the world wasn’t a pure survivalist hellscape, the mere fact people had both invented and refined a recreational game like this told me there were enough people living in enough relative safety for the basics of survival to no longer occupy their minds completely and allow room for recreational pursuits. Not really surprising, given the very clear evidence cities exist all around me, but what it really tells me is that the whole world isn’t all like this lawless hell pit; there are people with the free time to desire to play games, and there are people with the safety to dedicate time and effort to creating specialized gear for those games.

Dedicated leisure equipment can only exist in a place with the time and safety for leisure activities to advance beyond daydreaming and basic play; that’s a good sign for the wider world being livable. To be fair, given my understanding of human nature, people would find ways to play all sorts of games even without much in the way of freetime. Even so, only a society with the stability to create a demand for such luxuries could actually have even a small scale industry form around it.

Vlad, completely ignoring my mental wanderings, proceeded to a little bookshelf tucked into one corner and retrieved a large, leather bound tome. He set the book down on a coffee table surrounded by armchairs and a coach, taking a seat at a particularly well worn and very large chair and gesturing at the remaining seats. While some of my compatriots hesitated, I didn't waste a moment to settle into a seat with a decent view of Vlad's large book.

My decision was vindicated the moment I got a glance at the crudely stitched on title; “Crackden Dungeon Records.” While the name was somewhat crude and simplistic, it did effectively get the point across. Vlad tapped the cover twice, drawing the attention of anyone so foolish as to let theirs wander down to it, “Alright, Rokharth may have wanted you lot to go in blind, but I’m in charge of this damn dungeon and I’m not letting you in until you’re up to date; at least then, your ghosts won’t be able to blame me for the stupid ways you’ll inevitably get yourselves killed..”

His words immediately sent my thoughts into a whirlwind of questions about the very likely existence of ghosts and the implications of their probable presence, before I shook it off; after learning demons and souls exist, extrapolating to ghosts wasn't that big of a stretch. One might think knowing for sure there was an afterlife might be comforting to some extent, but I also knew that souls can be destroyed; if the soul is not eternal, the afterlife is just a continuation of life, danger included. I quietly added researching ways of strengthening the soul, and necromancy, to my list of things to research if I ever have the opportunity; avoiding death is my preferred option, but having a plan for failure can be the difference between a bad day and oblivion.

Of course, my troubles with magic in general still applied, likely even more so for such… ethically questionable subjects; though, with demon worship so open here, I wouldn't be surprised if necromancy was just a normal field of study.

Without so much as glancing around to confirm everyone was paying attention, Vlad cracked open his massive tome to a rather well drawn sketch of what appeared to be fairly standard looking (if exceptionally pale and emaciated) meth head, save for the small red crystals bursting out at random points across their skin, the angry red flesh around them evidence for just how healthy they weren’t. It was the eyes and mouth that really showed off their inhumanity (though, if I saw one on the street I may have just assumed them to be a particularly unusual humanoid); their pupil was solid red and slightly raised, with jagged red cracks spreading out across the iris and sclera, and sharp shards of red crystal seemed to have pushed their teeth out until they overcrowded their mouth with uneven red spikes. Their fingers were also an unpleasant sight, their fingernails splayed back with jagged crystals erupting from the soft flesh beneath and bending them out of the way, the sharp looking crystals seeming to form crude claws.

Vlad tapped a thick finger on the picture, “The standard spawns are mostly the same as always, they’ve displayed a slightly greater aptitude for ambush tactics than last year but nothing outside expected dungeon advancements. They look mostly like any random late stage crackhead, and are similarly utterly lacking in sanity, but they have a few tricks real bloodstone addicts usually can’t pull off.” He turned the page, showing an illustration of the spiky man from before hunched forward with its mouth spread unnaturally wide, a spray of red crystals and pink saliva jetting from their throat. “Fortunately for all our sakes, the crystals growing out of them aren’t half as infectious and fast growing as the real thing, thank the Lords, but they will still take root in your veins if you don’t get them out fast enough.”

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That was the basic spawn?! My heart was already thundering in my chest, the flies within me buzzing in agitation; if this is the bottom of the barrel the dungeon had to offer, I have no idea why anyone thinks we even need to guard this damn place! The prospect of facing down what seemed to be infectious, body jacking crystals would keep anyone with two brain cells to rub together well away from here!

Then again, how many of these things could someone like Rokharth carve through without issue? In a world with the kind of versatile and powerful abilities I've already seen, these things may very well qualify as a low threat. More importantly, with violence directly leading to power, overconfident young morons may very well think they can challenge both the Burnpikes’ authority and the dungeon's lethality just by escalating fast enough; most likely that reckless courage would only earn them a miserable death, but I couldn't outright call it impossible for someone to get lucky.

I couldn’t call anything impossible, thinking that way leaves you vulnerable to threats you dismissed or didn't consider; far too often things have been called impossible that simply have never been done, not that can't be done.

Vlad flipped the page once more with a grunt, “Fortunately, the dungeon is young enough -and we've kept a good enough guard- for it to not have developed any notable variants on the first level.” Here he raised his head to glare each of us directly in the eye, “And you lot couldn't possibly be rockfuck stupid enough to go deeper than the surface, right?” The page he had flipped to displayed a much larger, more threatening version of the previous thug; their muscles bulged unevenly under skin so perforated they looked as if they had at least three thin red spikes jutting out from every pour. Even just from a coloured pencil sketch, I could feel the mad blood thirst pouring out from its eyes around the forest of tiny red needles jutting out of the organs.

I tore my eyes away from the page to meet the hulking man's gaze, nodding alongside my compatriots. His bright blue eyes didn't linger on mine any more than anyone else, and I didn't have any desire to argue; while I may be ever so slightly tempted by the call of power a genuine dungeon could offer, the danger that comes with it is more than sufficient to keep my head clear. I have no desire to learn what it feels like to have jagged crystals growing through my body, the tunnels my flies dug out are bad enough already.

Power is necessary to ensure continued survival, losing your life to get it utterly defeats the point.

Vlad, seeing acceptance on what was visible of everyone’s face, flipped several pages in one go, “Seeing as none of you are dumb enough to challenge the dungeon’s depths, we can skip over most of the monsters and get to the traps; just look out for spiky rats as well, some of the little bastards have been making their way up.” He briefly stopped on a picture of one such creature, showing a rather normal looking rodent save for the thin spikes weaved through its hair and replacing its teeth, two very thin ones protruding from the center of its pupil, and a small bushel of spikes on the tip of its tail. The image, while only briefly displayed before for Vlad’s thick fingers turned the page once more, unsettled me greatly; it was like looking at a potential bad turn my life could have taken, and it exemplified the danger I was very soon going to be in.

I couldn’t get the image of those spikes piercing that lesser rat’s eyes from my head, the image of those same spikes piercing the brain and taking root, seizing control of the host body and destroying their mind swimming through my thoughts. I could easily see that happening to me, a tiny sliver of crystal would be all it would take to lose more than your life in this fucking pit. Facing death is already horrendous enough, risking losing my very mind, my bodily autonomy, was the kind of horror that made my skin want to crawl right off.

Damn you Rokharth, it may not be soon but I will make my displeasure known someday.

The next few minutes were spent going over the various traps and ambush scenarios that were apparently common, everything from break-away floorboards concealing punji spikes, to snares (targeted at the legs or neck), to collapsing ceilings, to exploding lights, to spontaneous lethal gas leaks, all tainted with the same red crystals that permeated the monsters. It was exactly the sort of stuff my paranoid thoughts always told me could be there, but now I had documented vindication for my fears and I was far from pleased. I would prefer to be overly cautious in a safe situation, over finding my precautions were actually necessary under fire any day; at least my Paranoia would help me locate any traps, hopefully.

I hadn’t even stepped foot inside and I already fucking hated this damn dungeon.