Entering Dungeon - Dragon’s Den (1/5) . . .

The abrasive grip of rope, wound around my virtual wrists and heels and pulled tight.

“Let go! Let go of me!”

Dry laughter from my two captors. Darkness.

“Fucking let me go, I said!”

The occasional dripping of water from the ceiling—once onto the bag over my face, soaking the area between my wide-set eyes. Twice.

“Easy now, bigguy,” one captor says.

“‘s got some beast in’im!” says the other.

A fetid smell wafts from down the long tunnel fathomed by our reverberating voices, mixing with the funky smell of the liquid coating my face into a nauseating bouquet of filth. Even in Last Advent, it seems, players can retch.

“You’ll get used to it, rat!”

“Welcome to the sewers, rat!”

My panic crystallizes into a vivid recollection of my flight from the goblins yesterday, down the hillside, into that narrow tunnel, and then . . . into that dark, grumbling pile from which I had to pry myself. That instinct-

I writhe and writhe and writhe and writhe and flail my arms, loosening the ropes around my hands a bit to punch! one of my captors in the face

before a cold, serrated knife tickles my throat.

“Ah-ah-ah, you vermin. No funny business. Heart don’t reach down here.”

“Ow! Nipped m’nose!”

I slacken my limbs as the knife presses hard against my virtual skin near the point of breaking it, and it’s only released when I hang limply, making myself easier to drag along the swampy floor of this tunnel.

“Gotta tell the boss about this troublemaker!”

They drag me farther and farther in, and I feel myself brushing past offal and grime, my cloak sponging up the disgusting stuff. A real urge to vomit arises in me that I can’t satisfy while my Kaleidoscope is on, and I wonder if my quiescent real body will vomit in FeeFiFoFum’s stead. Better not to imagine it . . .

The fact that I’ve stumbled into a dungeon within Losthearth both puzzles and terrifies me, and my mind moves from questioning this sudden appearance of great danger, to a recollection of the sneaking figure on the rooftops last night, to the horde of monsters we faced on our march into Lost Hearth; all seem like pieces of one sinister scheme, and my head spins and my virtual heart races as I contemplate this seemingly fatal constellation.

And after much head-spinning, or my being dragged around many corners, or both, I’m thrown forward onto a dry stretch of stone or pavement, toward the source of a cacophony of bawdy, sneering and laughing and threatening carnivalesque voices that echo across this huge chamber.

“Farther, farther! T’the throne!” says one captor, wiping his wet nose.

“Not yet, you twit. Hafta wait for the other rats.”

I lie with my face against the pavement for some minutes, quietly and slowly attempting to wriggle out of my bonds, while we wait for these “rats,” presumably other players? The cacophony at the edge of the chamber doesn’t seem to pay us any mind for now, and based on what I can make out, their voices are variously hysterical, torpid, and sinister, and many of them murmur about a “King” or call out to this figure, eliciting no response. What the hell is this place?

So this is where I die?

After all of the past two days’ experiences and deliberations, the thought that my character might actually die—that I might soon die? That I might have to face the uncertainty that is death in Last Advent . . . this drives me into a state of silent despair.

I frantically search my IM for something of use. But I’m wearing or have equipped most of what I own, and when I (Place) the one item with the potential to assist me, taking advantage of this function that doesn’t require hands, my recently acquired Launch Week Loot Chest (Small) falls from a foot in the air onto the ground with a plunk-unk only to be quickly snatched up before I can (Open) it.

“Well, what’ve we here? More Loot for the hoard.”

I groan and then yell, “That’s all I have left!”

Both of my captors laugh. “That’s not all, ya lying rat!” one says, and seizes the hammer off of my back, heaving its head onto where it was formerly attached for

5 dmg.

They can do damage. This is real.

I lie motionless with only the expectation of my ensuing doom in mind. I fell for a trap, and I’m paying for it. Last Advent knows no mercy or forgiveness.

Sorry, Ad.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Let me go, you smelly sons o’ bitches! And ease up on the liquid ass in here! Can you craft air fresheners in this flopper? Hey!”

“Would you shut, the devil, up!? Mouth like a teary Fae!”

A raucous, bubbly, somewhat grating voice crackles from the chamber entrance as two more captors drag the incoming rat. The cadence is . . . Wait!

“Sniff sniiiiiff. Hoo-oooly shit. How’d they even recreate this depth of ass stench? Mimmisoft have to pay some ass-sniffing testers for this? Goddamn, I hope not—my buddie’s a tester.”

“I say we kill him.”

“Can’t without the King’s go-ahead. But yeah.”

“Woah-woah-woah! Hey, no killing, please! I’ll, uh, I’ll be quiet.” The player quiets but does not silent his voice, continuing to mumble and grumble unintelligibly.

“One more rat on the way,” one of these new captors says to mine. “Then we bring ‘em for’d.”

I’m eager to call out to the other player, whose nameplate I can’t yet see, but I hold myself back since I know he’ll start talking again at the slightest provocation.

“Into the Den you go, now, yella-bellied rat.”

“He's a damned mouse, he is!”

Another player, silent except for repressed whimpers, is flung beside me, on the floor between myself and the boisterous one.

From the populous edge of the chamber, a low, rumbling sound rises into an aggressive clearing of the throat. When this fails to totally silence the boisterous crowd, it flares into a voice:

“Huuushhhhhh.”

As if spellbound, the crowd's talk catches in their throats.

And something slithers slowly toward us.

It scrapes and oozes against the pavement, winding and inching its way forward.

Sccrrrrrr . . .

“Now,” the raspy, commanding voice like the hum of an engine continues, “frisk them.”

Scrrrrrrrrrr . . .

“Idon’twannadieIdon’twannadieIdon’twanna-” the player beside me mumbles.

“Rats don’t wear armor,” one of my captors teases.

Survivor’s Gear forcibly removed

Goblinskin (2) stolen from inventory

Torches (4) stolen from inventory

Survivor’s Tunic stolen from inventory

5g stolen from inventory

Everything . . .

“I need that shit for another quest you handsy fucks!” says the farther, boisterous player. There’s a sound like a boot stomping on his back before he yelps and falls silent.

Scrrrrruuuuuuushh . . .

I wince and attempt to withdraw my big limbs into my cloak like a turtle hiding in its shell, but I’m unable to move, I’m flanked on all sides, I’m helpless against this

forked tongue that flicks against the bag over my face as a heavy, moist serpentine form weaves around me, continuing around the other players. When it’s wound its way between the three of us in tight loops, the humanoid goons bear us onto its hard, scaly back, fixing our bonds to blunt spines on the creature.

It slithers back toward the edge of the room, and toward that voice, which teases,

“Adventurersss! Looking for lost items, hmmmm?” There’s a peculiarly mellifluous quality alongside the raspiness of the voice, and it enunciates with a slight foreign drawl. And a lisp? “But now you’re lost! Sso ssad.”

“Sad! Haha, tragic!”

“Womp womp! Poor ol’ ‘venturers!”

“Boohoohooo . . . wahhhh!”

“Gotcher item right here, hehe!”

The bag over my head is torn off, scraping my face like a rush of wet sand, to reveal something like a wide, torch-lit encampment within this dark underground chamber. My bonds are also cut with the same knife earlier pressed to my throat. Besides the torches tied atop black metal poles, sputtering gas lamps scattered throughout the scene illuminate a precarious cache of huge wooden crates, chests, pallets, carts, and sacks, all brimming with glittering or glossy goods, some spilling out onto the muddy ground where elvish, fae, halfling, and human bandits fidget with trinkets, count coins, deal cards, spar with tarnished rapiers and swords or box with bucklers, drink deep draughts of homebrewed alcohol, and . . . snort small shards of glittering amber off of daggers, giving them raucous bursts of energy with which they continue in their play.

Central to the scene is a shadowy figure seated atop the yellowed skull of something like a mammoth that is itself set upon a mountain of graduated crates and chests that may act as stairs to the throne. An ornate rug is laid on the crown of the mammoth skull, and pointy black boots tooled with fiery designs rest on the twisty tusks. They slide off and fall onto large dark chest wrought of iron with a resounding clang before the figure takes step, after step, after step, patiently down to walk before us, at which point the serpent that bore us forth slithers quickly out from under to coil its great body around the feet of the figure and up the boxy stairs and stretching back out into the air so that its muscley, dark-violet draconic mug hovers over the structured shoulder of the figure’s storm-weathered leather duster. It flicks its tongue and hissssses at us, and steam fumes from its nostrils. I shiver involuntarily.

Glowing, acid-green eyes peer down at us from beneath the broad, sagging brim of a black tricorn hat. A mane of matted black hair spills out from its sides, and from the pursed lips of the neat-bearded, smoky tan face of the hat’s wearer, a long and coiling plume of smoke issues with one slow, raspy exhale.

Doroveiro, King of Thieves - lvl 12

Violet Basilisk - lvl 10

I have to run!

I’m unbound, though still prone; but I can’t bring myself to move. Fear has me frozen. I swivel my head to see, shivering beside me,

SageOfStorms - lvl 2

and next to him,

my best friend, the Necromancer of Lothian,

Conrad - lvl 3.

“If you want your items back,” Doroveiro says, extending his arms to gesture at his vast hoard of stolen goods,

“then let’s make a deal, hmmmm?”

Quest Failed!

Carabella’s Coin Purse

You followed the bee right into the beehive!

Quest Received!

The Deal

Await Doroveiro’s intructions, and—survive them.

Reward: your equipment, your life (+?)