The Vampire Queen danced. Lighter than air, it seemed, she twirled and pirouetted around the room, staying out of reach of poor Finnian’s party members. Finnian himself was clutched tight in her grasp as she feasted on his neck from behind. One of his arms was kept outstretched, in a strange parody of a dancing position. The pair whirled around, the hapless Crusader serving as a shield against Cedric’s flaming arrows.

Finnian was still struggling. Something in the vampire’s bite was affecting him, something more than just the blood loss. Healing himself with Return to the Fray was prolonging his life, but it did nothing for the powerful feeling of ecstatic languor that was slowly overtaking him. Healing himself this way was only giving the vampire more blood, something she seemed to appreciate from the way delighted peals of laughter escaped her every time she took a break from feeding from him.

Kaelan was stymied by the speed of the queen’s movement, and by the constantly changing illusions that covered the battlefield. For one moment, they were back in the throne room. Then, it all changed and they were outside in a carefully tended ornamental garden. Then, an underground cavern, and then…

It was only an illusion. The carefully placed obstacles remained where they were, even if Kaelan couldn’t see them. Watching him stumble around the room, tripping over small walls and stone pillars was quite amusing for Mel.

There was a fourth member of the team though. He took everyone by surprise as he suddenly appeared behind Cheryl and buried his daggers in her back.

Cheryl screamed and dropped Finnian. Turning into a swarm of bats, she escaped further attacks from the Shadowblade Ranger and regrouped at a distance.

“Your shadow knows where you are,” Draven spat. “And we brought lights.”

She hissed at him. Her newly reformed body didn’t show any sign of wounds, but she was quickly forced on the defensive by a hail of arrows from Cedric. Draven knelt by Finnian’s side.

“You okay?” He asked. Not waiting for an answer, he forced a potion between the priest’s lips.

“Urmble,” the priest said when he’d finished choking. “Islay… ninem…dumnt.”

“Yeah, that’s not making sense,” Draven said, giving the man a soft slap on the cheeks. “Snap out of it!”

“Fishle… manan…. louble.” was all Finnian managed to get out.

Draven cursed and stood up. He looked over at the Queen, fighting a desperate battle against his two companions. Then he spun and plunged one of his blades into the empty air.

“I told you, those tricks won’t work on me,” he yelled into the scream that erupted. The real queen appeared, bleeding from his strike. She slashed at him with the razor-sharp talons that graced the ends of her fingers. Dodging back from that meant he couldn’t follow up with his second dagger.

Across the hall, the vampire courtiers had reappeared. Some of them were real, some were illusions. Draven didn’t have time to let the others know which was which. His fighting style depended on movement, but he was stuck protecting his fallen friend. If he let the man out of his sight for a second, the Queen was sure to finish her meal.

“Come on then,” he snarled, brandishing his daggers. “We’ve both got teeth, but only one of us is bleeding!”

----------------------------------------

Draven pulled the tourniquet tight, wincing.

“You thought that vampires only went for the neck?” Kelsey asked. “Guess again.”

Cheryl had bitten into the leg with wild abandon, biting through bone and sinew. She preferred to take dainty sips from her victim’s neck, but when pushed, she could bite off a limb and gulp from the torrent that spurted out.

Kaelan dropped to the ground next to Draven.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Not your fault,” Draven said, eyeing his wound. “Those courtiers were bad news. If they hadn’t had their own stealth Trait, I might have noticed the one sneaking up on me.”

“If we’d been faster taking them out,” Kaelan said. “Then—”

“So what’s the plan?” Draven interrupted. “Potion to seal it up? We don’t have one that will give me the leg back, do we?”

Kaelan shook his head. “Potion won’t do that,” he said. “Finnian might have been able to attach it again, but… If we get his body back to the church, they should be grateful enough to regrow your leg.”

Draven froze. “Does that mean we’re giving up? We’re not going to cart Finnian’s body into the Sea, are we?”

“Won’t stop me from making a Revenant of him,” Kelsey told them. “But hey, that’s some prime biologicals there, you can’t just take him.”

“We’re going to push on into the Sea,” Kaelan said. “But we can’t risk the Queen spawning again behind us.”

Draven cursed some more. “You’re leaving me behind,” he said bitterly.

“To guard Finnian,” Kaelan confirmed. “The dungeon will take him if you don’t.”

“By all the gods,” Draven swore. “You need me down there! I won’t even need the leg in the water.”

“We’ll be fine,” Kaelan insisted. “We’ve still got the potions we saved. Free movment, air-breathing and darkvision.”

“I hope the gods take your balls,” Draven swore, “And leave you forever unable to satisfy a woman.”

“You’ll do it, then?” Kaelan asked.

“I don’t want to leave Finnian down here either,” Draven admitted.

----------------------------------------

“How are they talking underwater?” Mel asked. “I thought humans couldn’t do that.”

Kelsey gave her a long look. “They’re not,” she said. She looked back at the humans. She didn’t need to, she already knew every detail about what they were and what they were doing, but she did tend to get into the performance of having a body. Mel thought it helped.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Do you mean,” Kelsey said slowly, “The hand gestures they’re making?”

“Do I?” Mel asked. She looked closely at the two men. “Oh! They are moving their hands strangely!”

“How can you know what they mean, and not tell that they’re doing it?” Kelsey marvelled.

“I don’t know,” Mel said meekly. “I just hear the meaning, the same as always. I was also wondering why their speech got so simple.”

Kelsey shook her head, laughing. Mel was glad she’d cheered Kelsey up. The thirteenth floor was proving disappointing.

The monsters— different varieties of giant undead fish— were dangerous enough. They were higher in level than the vampires, and they didn’t have to waste points on Charisma or Willpower. In a competition of pure Strength and Speed, though, the humans still had the edge.

It would have been different if the humans hadn’t cheated. The main dangers of this floor were the crushing depths, the darkness and the lack of air. With potions to negate all of that, the invaders ran rings around the poor undead fishies.

It took them a while to find their way. The Silent Sea was large, and more than just one open area. There were nooks and crannies that needed to be explored. Small choke points that looked like areas for ambush… that mostly weren’t.

Eventually, they found the pyramid sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor. About thirty feet high, there was a metal door, inset to be vertical, about the right size for a human.

They examined it for traps and found none. They were well aware, though, that this was Draven’s specialty. Cedric had high Perception, but his sense for mana was rudimentary, and his understanding of mechanisms was poor.

It did seem, though, that the puzzle attached to the door would unlock it when solved. Mel translated the conversation that followed.

“The lock might only stay open for a limited time. Get ready to pull when I solve it.”

“No leverage in this alcove. Attach rope to the handles?”

“Fine. Just one door. If you double up the rope it should be strong enough.”

“Are the gestures really that expressive?” Kelsey asked as they watched the invader’s preparations.

“Mnnn, I don’t know?” Mel said. “I get the meaning that they’re trying to say, I dunno how it’s understood.”

“Crazy,” Kelsey said, but Mel knew she meant that it was good.

This was the only actual puzzle that Kelsey had placed in the dungeon. Mel had tried to convince her that the most stylish dungeons had puzzles, but Kelsey had countered that her style was ‘rock’, not puzzles. Mel understood that Kelsey was talking about music, not granite, but she didn’t really know what to do with that understanding.

Kelsey had broken from her pattern here because, as she had said at the time, “I want them to think that I don’t want them to open the door.”

From Kelsey’s intent expression, Mel knew that Kelsey wanted them to open the door very much. As much as Mel did. If she had a seat, she would be on the edge of it.

The puzzle looked complex, but once you saw the trick it was easy to solve. The idea, Kelsey had said was to give the puzzle solver a feeling of accomplishment. Mel supposed that was a nice thing to do, all things considered.

Cedric was the one solving the puzzle. There was a faint click as the last piece slid into place. Mel could hear it because she was sharing Kelsey’s perceptions. She didn’t know if the invaders could, but she didn’t have time to find out. The click was followed by a clunk, and then a thunk.

Mel didn’t really understand it, but the different mechanisms were necessary to scale up the forces involved. If the door could be unlocked by a simple click, then the lock wouldn’t stand up to the immense weight of the water. The invaders had thought that there was water behind the door. They’d been resigned to the thought that there wasn’t, that they’d have to pull the door open against the weight of the water.

The handles were one of Kelsey’s tricks. The door opened on its own, and it opened inward.

The final sound that Cedric heard was a crash, as the lock released the doors. They flew open, and the water he was floating in dragged him forward with an irresistible pull.

They were both under the influence of the Free Movement potion, but that had limits. It let them move as easily through water as air, but this water was moving far faster than any storm or hurricane. Cedric slammed into what proved to be a shaft, descending into the depths. Kaelan, desperately hanging on to the rope, was only a moment behind him.

Both men were too busy to notice, but Kelsey and Mel observed the second part of the mechanism activate. After a brief delay, the massive weight in the centre of the pyramid descended, shutting off the torrent of water, and leaving the invaders cut off from above.

Far away, Mel knew, there was the hum of a motor as Kelsey used her electrics to open the secondary entrance. Mana pressure would build up on the fourteenth level if there wasn’t somewhere for it to leak from, and it would take Kelsey a while to reset her pyramid trap.

The secondary mechanism had cut off Kaelan’s rope. The rope had slowed him enough, though, that he fell after the deluge, and not with it. Cedric had fallen on the spikes below without even realising what had happened to him, but Kaelan was able to control his fall. A bit.

“Tch,” Kelsey said. “He’s still alive?”

The pair of them watched him closely as the water drained away into the small tunnels designed for it. It took a long time before Kaelan moved. The first thing he did was crawl over to Cedric.

“You poor bastard,” he whispered on seeing the spike that had punched through his friend’s chest.

“Yes, it’s very sad,” Kelsey said. “But are you going to make us wait all day before you go off to get killed?”

Mel giggled. “What did you put down here?”

The fourteenth floor wasn’t normally kept populated, aside from the worker skeletons. But Kelsey had a whole army of armed skeletons that could finish off the invader.

“Nothing,” Kelsey said. “It’s not necessary.”

Mel looked at Kelsey in confusion. “This is the last level,” she said. “There needs to be monsters.”

“Nah,” Kelsey said. She pointed. With a hum of electrics, a large door opened up on one side of the chamber. Light, bright electric light, spilled in.

The invitation was obvious, and Kaelan didn’t have any other prospects. Gathering himself, he limped over to the door.

Beyond was a corridor, of a type that Kelsey had many miles of. Smooth stone floor, smooth stone walls, painted white. It was lined with identical doors, but one of them had a red flashing light over it. As he entered the corridor, it clicked open.

Kaelan ignored it, and tried the first door he came to. It was locked, but it wasn’t proof against his strength. He sighed when he saw what was inside.

“Congratulations, adventurer, you’ve found a cleaning closet,” Kelsey said.

Shaking his head, Kaelan returned to the corridor. He took a look at the lit door but decided to try one more random one. This one led to a room full of skeletons. They were all wearing white coats. Kaelan waited for them to rush him, but he was ignored.

“Well, how about that, the programming held!” Kelsey said. “Just move along, would you?”

Kaelan stood in the doorway, trying to understand what he was seeing. The skeletons seemed to be operating some kind of device set into the walls. There were dials and buttons and… Kaelan didn’t know what.

“Is this how the dungeon is controlled?” he whispered. “I thought it was magic!”

“It is magic, you doofus!” Mel yelled at his unheeding ears. “This is… I don’t know what this is.”

“I tried explaining it to you,” Kelsey said. “We settled on: it’s electric.”

“Yeah!” Mel exclaimed, remembering. “It’s electric.”

Choosing not to attack the skeletons, Kaelan moved on to the red-lit room. This one was larger than the last. He entered onto a raised platform that overlooked a pool, glowing with blue light. Just like the last room, skeletons in white coats were wandering around, tending to the controls.

“Is this the core?” he wondered aloud, “It glows like a core,”

“No, stupid,” Mel said. “This isn’t the core. It’s electric.”

“That’s right,” Kelsey said. A loud klaxon sounded, and something started rising out of the pool. It had been suspended in there and was now being pulled out.

Kelsey watched with satisfaction as Kaelan moved closer.

“That’s… not any core I’ve seen,” he said. “Why… I don’t feel well,”

He raised his hands to look at them.

“When did I get… burned?” he asked the room. No one answered him. None of the skeletons responded when he fell. It was twenty-three minutes before he finally died and Kelsey could access the floor again.