“Hughe’s mostly hot air,” Colt was saying as he woke up.
“Maybe,” Lacey mumbled, using Colt to clamber up to the top bunk. She was tired.
“How did your night go?” Colt asked, pulling on boots and running a hand through his short, spiky hair. He was completely unmoved by Lacey using his shoulders to boost herself onto the top bunk.
“Traps are more lucrative than adventurers,” Lacey told him, unlacing her own boots and tossing them off the end of the bed.
“That’s good,” Colt brushed off his shoulders and reached for his leather jerkin. “I mean it’s something, right?”
“I guess, but it’s like any new business,” Lacey flopped back on the bed. “I had to spend most of what we made for parts for more traps. Springs are expensive and I didn’t have enough water for that mechanism I really wanted.”
Selling the traps was more lucrative than anything that the adventurers had given them. While Lacey might have been better at the less lethal kind of traps that they could use in the escape rooms, she knew them all from their dungeon building days back when they’d been trying to make extra money selling pre-made dungeons for DMs.
“How many levels are trapped?” Colt asked.
“Seven,” Lacey groaned out and Colt whistled in appreciation. “And that’s with me selling every other trap for parts. I’ve got a trap team of worker goblins making more. There should be another five levels done by morning. And I found your still.”
“Lace,” Colt turned to give her a warning glare to go with that growl.
“Don’t 'Lace' me,” Lacey rolled over to face the wall. “There’s no way those goblins figured out a copper still out of a couple of cooking pots, and you had to buy that copper piping. I found it when I was searching for coils and fishing wire. Imagine my surprise to find that you had opened up a bundle of whiskey-making supplies.”
“I only used credits I’d made from cleaning bat dung out of the caves,” Colt complained. “And I was looking to make a French press coffee pot, if you want to know. And I got…”
“Bat dung?” Lacey perked up, rolling back over. “Wait, can’t you use bat dung to make gunpowder?”
“Yeah, but we’re missing sulfur,” Colt answered too quickly.
“That’s why you were scooping bat dung,” Lacey nodded her head.
“Well, yeah, but honestly, I didn’t deep dive into the explosives after Dougie threatened to show Mom my search history,” Colt admitted. “But if you feed the glowing worms to the bats, the bat poop makes a longer lasting light source than just the moss.”
“Of course,” Lacey threw her head back on her pillow and put a palm under it. “That’s how the beetles ended up with glowing shells.”
“I was going to try it today,” Colt admitted. “But yeah, probably. Feed the worms the moss, then feed the worms to the bats and beetles and we get glowing stuff.”
“You think it’ll satisfy Hughe long enough for us to get stronger?” Lacey asked, having trouble sleeping even though her eyes were burning from fatigue.
“Sure,” Colt told her, but she didn’t believe him. “And if not, I’m sure your traps will keep him and his friends out of the deeper levels.”
Lacey fell to sleep despite herself. She dreamed of Hughe eating pizza in the pub and washing it down with a pale ale because he was a lightweight. She dreamt of trying to soak glowing bat poop out of her hair and she dreamed of the Foo bird, an old joke her mom had told her when she was young. The Foo bird had poop so stinky that it drove everyone away from you, but if you washed it out, you died. It was an old shaggy dog story that her mom had been really good at telling. The key to a good shaggy dog story was to drag out the story of it until you had your audience sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for the punchline, which was always a moral of the story that was a messed up old adage that made people groan. At least that was how her mom told it. Lacey was on the edge of her dreamy seat and her mom was just saying the first words of the punch line when Colt shook her awake.
“Lace, we got trouble,” Colt hit the side of the bunk bed and dashed back to the pedestal. “Get up!”
“Hughe wasn’t patient, was he?” Lacey groaned rolling over.
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“It’s not Hughe,” Colt wasn’t smiling, and he wasn’t his normal chill self with the positive attitude, and that jolted Lacey awake faster than anything.
“What’s going on?” Lacey hopped down to the bottom bunk to put on her boots.
“Hughe came back while you were asleep and I tossed out a few of the old glowing beetle shells to stall him,” Colt was trying to explain faster than his mouth could form words. “He took them and said he’d be back for more the next day. I tried to tell him that we knew how to make them now, but he was stupid and still ranting about…”
“Colt!” Lacey derailed Colt’s story, the red lights of the dungeon making her worried about the end of the story more than the beginning.
“Anyway,” Colt fast-forwarded. “He took them and said he’d wait a day, and then a few hours later, we got new people in the dungeon.”
“The traps should keep them on the top floors,” Lacey took the time to tightly lace her leather armor bottoms that were little more than leather patches held together on parts of her body that were most likely to get hit.
“These guys aren’t lower level like Hughe,” Colt shook his head and tapped the pedestal.
“Fighter, level 14.”
“What?” Lacey darted to the pedestal to watch as Colt hit another person on the screen.
“Rogue, level 16. Cleric, level 15.”
“That rogue is the problem,” Colt waved his hand as Lacey watched the problem rogue disarm a trap on what had to be level 4.
“They’re at level 4 already?” Lacey goggled.
“There’s no way the goblins can take those guys,” Colt clenched his fist. “We’re looking at another dungeon wipe and there’s nothing we can do about it!”
With the pedestal locked during every incursion, Lacey could only watch and wring her hands next to Colt. They weren’t prepared for something like this. They’d only had a few days to even try to get it together on a system that had mostly locked them out. The unfairness of it whacked Lacey upside the head like a hammer. Lacey watched the rogue laugh after the cleric said something and she could imagine what they were saying like they had turned off the sound on an old Japanese ninja movie.
“What a joke of a dungeon,” she imagined the cleric had said.
“We could trip all these traps and still be okay,” the rogue would reply.
“Yeah, but then I’d have to use some of my precious mana,” the cleric would reply as the fighter, bored half to death, gave a half-snort of a laugh.
Lacey shook herself out of it. Once those guys got through her traps, they were on their way here to take out the dungeon masters so that they could take over. It wasn’t that Lacey thought that her puny little dungeon had a chance against them, but it was her dungeon, good or bad, and she needed to fight for it. She darted a gaze around her for something she could fight with. She sucked at the sword, not that they stood a chance again guys more than ten levels above them.
“Lace,” Colt’s voice penetrated Lacey’s panic.
“What!” Lacey stared at him with wide eyes.
“Wake up, Lace,” Colt shook her shoulder, his head even with hers.
“Huh!” Lacey jerked up, nearly smacking Colt as she thrashed.
“I’d have let you sleep,” Colt ducked her swing easily, “but you were having a nightmare.”
“What?” Lacey rolled over, surprised to see herself still in bed, the covers warm and soothing, the lights of the dungeon’s pedestal a cool, calm blue.
“A nightmare,” Colt gave a nervous chuckle. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Lacey lied, shaking her head and taking a stupid leap out of bed, the covers still tangled around her feet.
“Relax,” Colt caught her in that same old practiced move he had of grabbing her by the waist whenever she whooshed past him. “I got you. That must have been some dream.”
“Yeah,” Lacey let him put her on the ground, her bare feet barely making any sound as they gently touched the floor.
“I’d give you coffee, but unless you want to drink stewed bat guano, I’m all out,” Colt tried to joke with Lacey and only relaxed when he saw the panic of her dream recede. She hadn’t had dreams like that since she’d broken it off with the slimeball. That’s all they ever called him.
“Uh, no thanks,” Lacey curled a lip at him and shook her head to clear it.
“Good choice,” Colt nodded, letting her go back to the table and sit down. “I’ll admit I tried it.”
“What?” Lacey gawked at him, sitting on the lower bunk and taking her time to rub sleep out of her eyes before she reached for the boots that Ginger offered her. How did big red beady eyes look compassionate?
“I heard about that bat guano coffee and decided to give it a shot,” Colt’s face scrunched up in a face Lacey hadn’t seen him make since his sister Maggie got him to take a bite of something that looked like a Payday but wasn’t. “I do not suggest it at all.”
“Noted,” Lacey nodded, tugging on boots that felt a little small on her swollen feet. All her walking and working had worked muscles she hadn’t known she had and even her feet were overworked. “Hughe?”
“I talked to him,” Colt held up a hand. “I gave him and his party each a shiny shell and promised that if he could give us a few more days, we’d have a few levels of the glowing beetle shells that he and his friends could farm.”
“And he agreed?” Lacey was having trouble reconciling her dream with reality. Were there some level 14-16 folks out there that could barge in any second? Probably, but even knowing about it didn’t help Lacey figure out what to do.
“Yep,” Colt replied, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on another one. He was obviously pleased with himself. “They won’t be back for a week, but they warned me that they’d probably be a higher level by then. I’m leaving them a few extra shells outside so that they’ll respect the ‘Dungeon Closed for Repairs’ sign I made.”
Lacey didn’t think they’d be in the teens level-wise by the end of the week, but her dream had felt more realistic than it should have. Could it have been a premonition? Lacey grunted as she laced on her leather pants, giving Ginger an appreciative nod. Her clothes and armor were all clean every day even after she’d caked them in the mud of dozens of pit traps, soot from fire traps, and worm remains. If they had another dungeon wipe, at least they’d be able to resurrect Ginger. They would if they had the funds, funds that were running thin with all the innovation that Lacey was trying to instill in her dungeon and why? So that Hughe could farm them?