Chapter 9: Damsel in a Dungeon

The maze became more and more complicated with every turn and I sorely wished that I possessed chalk to mark my way back so I just took left turns and hoped I’d stumble across the person I was looking for by sheer luck.

Fortunately for me, I didn’t have long to wait, something brushed the back of my neck and I would have screamed if a gloved hand hadn’t clamped my mouth shut. The glove was soft, very well stitched and the person wearing it smelled of Lilac, sweat and some other flower I couldn’t recognise. unsurprisingly the wearer had a young, feminine whisper that sounded quite eloquent even while hissing as quietly as possible into my ear.

“Shhh, right there.”

A second hand reached in front of me, this one held a knife and used it to point to a flickering shadow ahead of us, a ghostly light slowly illuminating the tunnel as something came around the corner. More hissing into my ear, I remained still.

“They use sound, light doesn’t seem to matter to them. Can you get us out of here?”

The hand slowly released me and I turned to face a young woman with fine features dominated by piercing green eyes and accented by a rough scar that started at the left eyebrow and curved up almost an inch onto her forehead.

I nodded and pointed to the lantern on Luna’s hip, she lit it without question or complaint and then I gestured back the way I’d come, the two of us crouched and I led the way back to the chamber one right turn after another until we returned to the exit where Ruthax had been killed. The body wasn’t where I left it though, instead, it was being dragged away by one of the shimmering lizard-men. The creature wouldn’t have seen us if we had crept back into the tunnel we’d come from, it wouldn’t have heard us if Luna hadn’t sprung off of the floor, lunging at the creature with both knives drawn and burying both into its chest before it could drop Ruthax and arm itself.

Unfortunately, Luna did exactly that and to make matters worse the creature didn’t die. Instead, it dropped the body, kicked Luna into the wall, and drew a spear from its back. Luna would have sprung back into it but I shouted a warning and she instead dived and rolled athletically over to me as I unleashed a gout of flame that engulfed the creature’s arm and face, shimmering fluid was already dripping from its knife wounds and the flame made it pour out onto the floor instead as the creature melted like a block of ice before a flamethrower.

The blade-wielding young noble took this as her opportunity to spring back into the fray, twisting, knifing, slashing, and kicking away from the tomb guardian as I came in with the longsword, striking by the light of her lantern now that my candle was thoroughly burnt out.

Between us, we quickly hacked the creature to the ground until it stopped moving, we looked down at it and saw it slowly begin disintegrating just like the first one I’d seen. Light crept into the chamber from the direction of the maze and I heard a high-pitched hissing noise as more of the creatures homed in on our location.

I knelt, slipped my arms under the corpse of Ruthax and grabbed her up before Luna could. She shot me a look of reproach but kept going up the stairs. “You didn’t have to do that, I would have carried her.”

She was the daughter of nobility apparently, backwater nobility maybe but still a class of person who didn’t have to work if she didn’t want to. It was pretty obvious how she was choosing to rebel. “You did more than your fair share already miss.”

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Luna tried to hide a little twist of a smile, she didn’t have to try hard as her friend’s corpse had a certain sobering effect but I was pretty sure I’d said the right thing, I hadn’t treated her differently because she was a noblewoman or even just because she was a woman, after all, she had done her part. My swordsmanship was nothing compared to her skill with a dagger and that tarnished short sword of hers. If she hadn’t been there then the creature probably would have survived the flames and skewered me like the half-elf.

We raced up the stone steps into the forest above and both breathed sighs of relief as we forced the iron grille back in place behind us and sealed the tomb off for some other idiots to die in.

We talked between us as we prepared a funeral pyre, according to their intel the creatures never left the dungeon, so we didn’t have to go far, merely carrying the half-elf over to my wagon and working together to gather up firewood for a blazing sendoff.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier, I showed the old man how to get out but the Elf, Ruthax I assume. She was dead when I got down there.”

Luna wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We got split up, those things just started coming out of the walls, pouring like mist from the walls and taking form. At first we tried to fight but there were way too many. After that we tried to run but we just got split up and chased down.”

Luna’s eyes were very obviously troubled, vividly recalling the more gruesome details of death in the tunnels below.

“I heard Max die screaming, I tried to get to her but I couldn’t find my way through the labyrinth back then. After that I heard them find Raina. Then it was quiet for a while, at one point I found what was left of Scorpion Jim.” That memory was clearly a painful one and I nearly reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but her eyes flashed angrily and I didn’t try it, preferring instead to let her finish the story.

“I spoke to Balthazar through one of the thinner walls and he told me that I could use my lantern instead of feeling around in the dark. He’d realized that they couldn’t see the light and wanted to help me with that knowledge.”

I thought about that, the coward had risked himself at least one time then. Luna stopped talking again and although I still wanted to hug her I was very clearly aware that wasn’t my place so I nudged her with a guess instead.

“You had a lantern on you but you stayed in the dark. I’m guessing It was just easier to avoid the creatures if you could see the glow before they came around the corner, right?”

Luna nodded and I was struck by the strength of character she had, I would probably have been near tears in her situation, chased by monsters in the dark, hearing people I liked dying, knowing my comrades were being slaughtered like dogs.

And yet she was holding up. And it wasn’t because she was jaded to misery, she wasn’t immune to their deaths, I could clearly hear how affected she was by her voice alone. Stiff upper lip, trained into her no matter how much she wanted to rebel against her upbringing. There was really nothing else for it, It wasn’t a good time but I had to come clean about my intentions before any more time went by.

“In another couple minutes a demoness is going to show up and ask me how I did, she wants me to win your favour and use you to get political sway so she can get protection from demon hunters. The hunters are real assholes by the way so I don’t feel bad about helping her”

Luna blinked. “What?”

I shrugged and continued rambling an explanation. “I’m just levelling with you, hoping for some advice with it all honestly, I don’t know much about demons, I know almost nothing about this region either. I’m not from those parts, got portalled in from a long, weird way away.”

Luna furrowed her brow, the scar made her look a lot more serious than most women our age could manage. Sexy too, not that I should be thinking about that.

“You probably just saved my life so I won’t call you a liar but if you're trying to seem more interesting to me because of who my mother is then you’ll be sorely disappointed, my sister is the one you need to impress to get anywhere with her. I’m the reject daughter and that's the way I like it".

I smiled genuinely at that. This young lady had just gone through horror, saved me from a ghost-lizard and now she was accusing me of lying.