Chapter Two Hundred - Stronghold Stranglehold

The seventh floor was another city section. Or maybe calling it a ruin section would have been more accurate.

The streets were riddled with bumps, stems poking out from between the cobbles—the homes had huge roots climbing up and through them, some as big around as I was.

We had to climb up the rubble of one building that had just collapsed under the weight from all the vines grasping onto it. “This place looks worse than the earlier floors,” I noted as I felt around for a place to set my feet to climb a bit higher.

Amaryllis nodded. “It definitely is. These roots, they’re destroying the entire dungeon.”

I looked ahead to where Momma and the others were climbing down the mountain of rubble and back onto the street. Momma still seemed confident that she could do something about the roots. I hoped she was right.

This expedition into the dungeon was fun, but... well, I was starting to miss home. The Beaver, that was. It had been a while since I’d talked to Steve and Gordon and Clive. There was still so much to learn about them! And the Scallywags, Joe and Oda and Sally... were they out having fun with the buns in Hopsalot?

“Broc?” I looked up and found Awen looking at me, a bit concerned. “Are you okay?”

“Huh? Yeah, I’m fine. Just a bit tired, I guess. It’s been a bit of a long day already.”

“It’s night now,” Amaryllis said.

I blinked and looked to the sky, which was still bright and blue. As bright and blue as when we’d entered. “Oh, right. It’s hard to keep track of the weird rules of a place like this,” I said.

“This one isn’t so bad,” Amaryllis said. “There’s one dungeon near Farseeing where gravity is only half as strong as it is everywhere else.”

Bastion hummed. “There’s one in Sylphfree that’s the opposite. Everything weighs twice as much within it. Did some training there once. It was bizarre, but great for training up your musculature.”

“Neat,” I said. “The always-day thing is throwing me off, I guess. Does anyone have a clock?”

I was surprised to see Awen reach into a pocket and pull out a timepiece. “It’s nine and a bit,” she said.

That explained it. I was always more of an early-to-bed-early-to-rise kind of girl. “Oh well. Three more floors!”

The buns ahead slowed down a bit, and soon we’d caught up with them. Peter pointed down a road where I could hear a faint clop-clopping noise. “A dead knight,” he said.

I squinted in that direction and was soon able to make out something large moving out of the dark. It was a man atop a horse, both of them skeletal and thin. The man was obviously some sort of undead, with some plate armour and a long lance by his side. A long tassel hung by the end of the spear, a bright piece of red cloth that stood out against the otherwise grey cityscape. The horse, also a skeleton, had some thick barding on over its remaining skin.

I’d never fought something like that before. “How do we take it down?” I asked.

“Usually they’d be running around all over,” Carrot said. “But the streets aren’t in any shape for that anymore. We wait for it to get close, someone distracts it on one side, then we take it out. Easy as warm pie.”

Peter and Carrot showed us how things were done, Carrot bouncing ahead and calling out mean things to the dead knight until it spurred its horse and tried to pin her with his lance. When it was distracted, Peter jumped onto the back of the horse and smacked the knight’s head off its shoulder.

The horse went down when Carrot approached and smacked it in the forehead.

“See!” she called back. “Easy!”

“Hmph,” Amaryllis huffed. “Easy, but that thing was level fourteen.”

“It seems to favour mobility over anything else,” Bastion said. “They’re right, in this landscape we have quite the advantage. Fighting these should be fairly easy. Just like taking out a smaller cervid but with an extra head, I suppose.”

I blinked. Right, the sylph were right next to the cervid. I supposed it was normal that Bastion had trained to fight them. “Do the sylph ride horses?” I asked.

“We can fly,” was his reply. “Not very well, admittedly. Though I wouldn’t tell that to just any sylph. We’re no birds, but we can stay aloft and move with some speed in the air.” He hopped up and beat his wings, which kept him hovering above us for a moment before he started to dip back down. “I don’t think we have any horses. We do have flying mounts.”

“Oh, that sounds cool,” I said.

He chuckled. “When we arrive, I’ll see if some of the air-guard are willing to take you for a ride. You might be a bit heavy for it though.”

I blinked. I wasn’t exactly chubby or anything. Eating hardtack and walking and fighting as much as we did for the past couple of weeks had done a number on any love handles I might have had. “Darn,” I said. “Well, whatever, let’s keep going?”

We soon got to fight our first dead knight all on our own. Momma insisted that we try to take it out as a team, since it would be a good learning experience. Bastion held back, so it was up to Awen and Amaryllis and I to take the undead out.

It was a bit tricky. The knight’s lance was always moving and poking at whomever came too close, creating a sort of wall that made it hard to approach. The horse was able to move fast too, especially if we were caught ahead of it. I could see why it was such a high-leveled opponent as I rolled out of its path.

Amaryllis’ lightning didn’t do too much to it. It didn’t have nerves to fry or anything, and it seemed to be somewhat magically resistant when I flung a Clean-ball at it.

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In the end, it was Awen that took it out with a lucky shot to the neck.

We traded high-fives once the undead turned to dust, and Momma patted our heads before we moved on.

“We need to collect these,” Peter said as he tugged a piece of deep purple cloth from the ground. It was the tassel that had been on the end of the knight’s lance. “You need seven of these to open the door at the end.”

“So, five more fights like that?” Amaryllis asked.

“No,” Peter said. “The colours repeat. You might end up with ten reds and only one blue tassel.”

I grimaced. “RNG mechanics,” I said.

“What’s that?” Awen asked.

I shook my head. “Something nasty,” I said. “Should we get to the door, then we can head out in teams or alone for those of us that are strong enough? Like we did in that forest, maybe?”

Momma considered it, then agreed. “That’s not a terrible idea. We’ll see once we get to the next barrier."

As it turned out, it didn’t matter how good the idea was.

“Um,” Carrot said. She tilted her head to the side, ears drooping down. “Whelp, so much for that.”

Ahead of us, the wall leading into the next floor was... not gone. It was still quite obviously there. The problem was that a bus-sized root had rammed its way through the wall and plunged down into the ground. More roots, these more reasonably-sized, though still huge, were dug poking out from around that and heading into the ruins of the city behind us.

All of these roots had combined to completely destabilize the wall, and a great mass of stonework had slumped to the ground, leaving a broad gap in the wall.

“Should we move on?” Buster asked.

There would be more than enough room for all of us to pass.

The gate to the side had a weird mechanism next to it, with coloured bars with attachment points and loops on them arranged into the brickwork to the side. Obviously, that was the floor puzzle, but... well, the way was open already.

“I suppose speed is our priority,” Momma said. “Peter, scout out ahead, please?”

Peter nodded once and dove over to the other side. We waited with growing tension until the bun stuck his head back around the wall. “It’s clear,” he said. “Nearly impassable, but clear.”

With the buns in the lead, we funneled into the next floor.

I almost gasped when I took it in.

If the seventh floor was a city in ruins, then this floor looked like one that had been at war, and lost. Most of the homes were crumbling heaps, with some walls still standing here and there, but few more than a meter or so tall. The streets were barely visible under displaced rubble, and the air stank of dust and mold and rot.

There were roots everywhere. That huge one, the one that burst through the wall, was crossing the entire floor. A wall of moldy green that sent out shoots in every direction, most of those crushing the homes around them.

Little off-shot roots, no bigger than an arm, were crawling up over everything, like fingers grasping for the last crumbs in the bottom of a cookie jar.

Carrot pressed her hand flat on her forehead and squinted ahead. “We can see the castle from here,” she said. “Looks like it’s in a rough state too.”

I followed her gaze across the ruins and towards the walls at the far end. Or what remained of the walls. There were even more roots there. Beyond that, and towering above, was a castle. Not a pretty, movie-worthy castle, but a big square blocky firtress with palisades and a flat roof. It was a very bunker-like building. Slitted windows and spikes on the roof gave the impression of something that wasn’t supposed to be messed with.

“That’s the last floor?” I asked.

“Yup. The boss is in there,” Carrot said.

“So is the dungeon’s core,” Momma said. “It looks like it’s barely standing.”

She was right. Roots and branches were poking out from the thin windows, and it looked as though there were cracks in the stonework, big enough that I could see them from where we stood.

“Should we move in?” Carrot asked.

Momma agreed, but had us all get ready for a fight first. The buns seemed to take the warning seriously, so I made sure I had my spade in hand and that my ears were ready to twitch towards any noise.

We moved into the ruins, our group staying close together. It didn’t take long to find a dread knight.

The horse-riding undead was covered from hoof to head in heavy plate, all black and rusty and menacing with spikes. Both the rider and horse’s eyes glowed red from within armoured helmets, and they looked quite formidable.

They would have been scary to fight if they weren’t covered in roots, some of them slipping into their armour and locking them in place.

“These roots are ruining the dungeon,” Peter said.

“You’re just noticing that now?” Carrot asked.

“I meant in the sense that the dungeon can’t fight back against them. It’s crippled.”

Momma raised her head and sniffed. “The mana is... disquieting.”

I shifted my shoulder and tried to sense what she did, but I couldn’t feel anything. A glance to Amaryllis revealed that she was just as befuddled as I was.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean that whatever that Evil Root is doing, it’s changing the quality of the mana in the air. Dungeons have always nurtured the world around them. They are Dirt’s way of venting life-giving energy to feed us all. This place, it’s still doing that, but poorly.” Momma frowned. “This is growing increasingly worrisome.”

With those words uttered, we continued our trek towards the final floor, and where we were meant to find the final boss, and maybe the source of all these Evil Roots.

***