-The Dungeon's Worst Little Mistake-
-Book II-
Destruction
-Prologue-
For Catherine Raingarden, third daughter of the Raingarden family and Noble by birthright, an unrestful sleep is generally an uncommon occurrence. How could someone of her status not rest well when she is wearing a silk nightgown and resting in a high-quality hotel, their beds being far superior to those found in common inns? Yes, they may not be the highest of quality, as Catherine is only just the third daughter and not even seventh in line to inherit her family’s estate, but she is still a Noble. Even a fresh hot bath had not been enough to help her sleep restfully this night. Nor the last, or the one before that for the past week now for that matter.
Lately, she hasn’t even been able to fully stomach her meals, only eating the bare minimum before her upset stomach would protest and threaten to expel its contents.
To put it simply, Catherine Raingarden is exhausted. What times she does manage to capture some sleep, her mind spends on torturing herself with nightmarish dreams and regrets. She dreams of her bodyguards, two of the most loved people in her life, dying again and again as she can do nothing to stop it from happening.
Shane, a young man and practiced archer. He was the son of one her father’s most trusted retainers and not but a year older than herself. Admittedly, Catherine had held a bit of a crush on the boy, and she had hoped that he felt the same way. She always suspected that her father intended to have them eventually become engaged, as a means of bringing his retainer’s family further into the fold and tighten bonds. Catherine wasn’t against the possibility. Shane was honestly rather cute, what with his curly hair and his easy personality. She rather enjoyed spending time with him and going shopping as he would escort her, playfully imagining that they are on a sort of date together like the common people get to do…
Catherine hadn’t even seen how he had died.
One moment he was there, protecting her back and fulfilling his role as ranged support, and the next, he was gone. Catherine had only looked away for but a moment, having turned away from their conversation to see where she is going and to make sure she wouldn’t trip on a rock and make a fool out of herself. When she turned to continue speaking with him, talking about unimportant things, he had already vanished and there was only that creature there in his place. Before she knew what was happening, the Gremlin was already on the attack, dodging under the panicked swing of her mace and stabbing a dagger into her stomach.
If it weren’t for the protection of her thick war-otter hide robes and her chainmail shirt, both respectfully gifts from her mother and eldest brother, then that dagger would have run her through and potentially killed her on the spot. Catherine can still remember the powerful blow from the little monster as it knocked the wind out of her, her lungs gasping for air as Lyose pulled her away and moved to protect her. The feeling of having a dagger rammed into her guts is one that her mind won’t allow her to forget, and sometimes, in her dreams, the blade actually manages to reach her flesh and pierce her. Her dream self is then left to lie on the floor as she bleeds out and made to watch as that little monster kills Lyose all over again…
Lyose, her most trusted bodyguard. The man who had been by her side ever since she could first walk. The man who she was more familiar with than she was her own father, whom she had met only a grand total of twenty-seven times, which does not even count the day of her birth.
Lyose was the father that she never really had. The man practically raised her and taught her to be an upstanding person. He taught her how to wield her mace. He was there when she learned to ride a horse. He held her hand as she went on her first excursion outside the family estate, keeping her safe and feeling like the world’s bravest little girl when she first met people living outside of her own family and their servants. How could she not feel safe and brave when he was right by her side? As far back as she can remember, Lyose had always been there for her. He was her guardian, her knight in shining armor, and someone that she loved very deeply…
And now he is gone, and every night, Catherine reexperiences his death over and over and over again as he is cruelly taken away from her all over again. Sometimes, the dreams run their course exactly as it had happened before, with her desperately trying to carry him to safety, only for him to succumb to the poison as she cries on his chest, feeling as his heart slowly stops beating in his large chest. Other times, the dream changes and he dies within the Dungeon, the monster hounding them the entire way to the exit as they fight to flee. Sometimes, her mind tortures herself by making her believe that they had made it out and that he will survive. The dream would have them fight back the hellish little creature and successfully escape the Dungeon, only for it all to suddenly twist and for Lyose to be killed right before her eyes.
This night in particular is one of the bad ones. Much like the others, they had managed to escape, Lyose isn’t poisoned, the monster is dead and bleeding somewhere in the Dungeon, and just as she is about to hug him, to celebrate their escape, Lyose turns to say something to her, his voice lost in the weird foggy logic of dreams.
She can’t understand a single word, and she doesn’t care. She just wants to hug him one last time before the dream ends and she is forced to wake. But before she can, a little hand shows itself from Lyose’s back, creeping up and over his shoulder like a spider climbing out from hiding. More hands show themselves. Little clawed things like that of a child, their backs covered in matted fur and scale and dried blood, their claws dripping with poisons that smell of death and sends a shiver down one’s spine. More and more hands appear until they are covering him by the dozen, long thin arms leading back to whatever hellish abomination is on his back.
Catherine wants to scream and move forward to help him, but her body is frozen and unresponsive. Lyose himself doesn’t even move as well, his kind eyes never leaving her face as his skin becomes pale like a corpse, his veins pushing up to the surface and angrily pulsing with a sickening green of poison. With rot and death growing up his face, his flesh turning black and necrotic, skin peeling away and his eyes turning yellow and shrunken, his head is suddenly grabbed by one of the searching hands, a little figure clambering up his back to reveal the half skeletal face of the monster. Massive, bat-like wings with hands growing from the center extend from her back as she wraps up Lyose in her embrace, tentacles and other misshapen limbs moving to wrap him up until he is nearly fully captured in her embrace like an insect in a spider’s web.
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Unable to move, unable to scream, unable to even so much as cry, Catherine watches on in horror as the little monster pushes Lyose’s head to the side and unhinges her jaw, lines of needle-like teeth filling her mouth and dripping with drool. She can’t do anything as the thing sinks her teeth into his neck and drains him of all his blood, his tall and muscular body withering away even further as he collapses to his knees and then to his side, the monster feeding on him all the way down until he is left as nothing more than a desiccated corpse of dried and shriveled skin over bone.
Catherine wants for nothing more than for the dream to end already. She knows that she is in a dream. She knows that all of this isn’t real. But no matter what she tries or how desperately she wills herself to wake, the dream continues to run its course as her mind continues to torture her.
The monster finally dislodges itself from his corpse, its long teeth sliding and ripping out of dead flesh and leaving behind lines of bloody drool as the thing stands up, and up, and up, until it is nearly a whole head taller than her.
With a face of half that of a beautiful woman and half that of a skeleton, the thing smiles a smile so full of teeth that it seems impossible to even properly close its own mouth. Its body is a horrifying thing of too many limbs and far too many tentacles. Emeralds, green eyes like gems seem to sprout into existence all around them as eyelids open where the dreamscape used to be, brick walls and cobblestone walkways turning into open eyes and wrinkled flesh, each of varying size and scale, each more monstrous than the last, until the very floor and every wall and even the sky of the dream itself is being filled with the things. Each and every single eye is looking towards Catherine, unblinking as the monster looks down at her and its searching limbs and tendrils move to touch her body.
She wants to cringe and run away, to scream and cry for help, but her body still won’t move no matter how much she begs her mind to literally do anything! Hands grab her clothes and arms, ripping and pulling at her protective garments until it is tearing and falling from her body, leaving her exposed and defenseless. Tentacles move to wrap her up, their slimy, leathery surfaces, sliding over her exposed flesh and up her legs as the little suckers and teeth that grow along their lengths play over her sweat drenched skin and leave her dotted with little bloody wounds and hickeys.
The thing steps forward, its legs impossibly long by the logic of the dream and it is suddenly right before her, their two bodies nearly pressed against each other as Catherine is forced to look up and into its eyes and it looks down into hers.
With clawed hands and searching tentacles covering her body and wrapping her up more and more until she is impossibly covered, all she can do is look up and watch in horror as the thing ever so slowly uses one hand to gently move her head to the side. In a cruel twist, the action is almost done like that of a lover, one of the thing’s fingers gliding over the skin of her neck to carefully brush aside some misplaced hair, to gently pull down the collar of what remains of her torn clothes. It tickles, and is for the briefest and most sickening of moments, pleasurable. A shiver runs down her spine unbidden by her fear, but the moment is quick to pass as the thing slowly moves its head so as to speak into her ear like a friend sharing a secret.
With a voice like nails on a blackboard, but yet also somehow like that of a songstress, the monster whispers.
“You couldn’t save them. You won’t be able to save anyone. I’ll take everything and destroy everything until there is nothing left. Your words will fall on deaf ears and all those you tell to flee will disregard you. You are nothing more than a failure that couldn’t even kill a single little Gremlin. And now, because of you, because you couldn’t stop one, little, monster, now, this city will die. You will watch on as the very earth collapses inward and swallows up everything, as death and plague are both set free and allowed to spread into the world. All of this will be your fault because you weren’t good enough! You were never good enough~” The thing whispers into her ear, trailing off as it leaves a gentle kiss on her cheek. By some twist of dream logic, it is not those long needle-like teeth that touch her skin, but instead a pair of soft lips like roses, hot and wet with blood and leaving a clear mark behind like lipstick.
Tears are finally able to fall from Catherine’s eyes as she is made to look past the monster’s shoulder and past the landscape of eyes that are still watching the two unblinkingly from every direction. Off in the distance, she can see the proud port city of Silest. Smoke rises from its walls and its structures tumble and fall into the earth as a massive sinkhole spreads from its center, consuming everything as if the earth itself had opened its mouth wide. She can see as Silest’s grand bell tower topples and falls, letting out one last 'dong' as its bell hits the streets where countless people are screaming and running for their lives. Spores and poisonous gases leak out from ever crack in the ground, people choking on their own vomit as they claw at their throats and cry tears of blood. The Undead, hellish things of bone and rot and covered in mushrooms, they pull themselves out of the ground and chase fleeing people like rabid animals, pulling them to the ground and tearing them apart as they scream out pleas for anyone to save them.
No one is saved.
The city dies as she is forced to watch. Forced to watch until every living soul within those walls is mercilessly snuffed out by the cruel hands of Death itself.
Her eyes return to the monster, and it merely gives her a blood-filled smile, the red sticky liquids running between its teeth and over its lips like drool.
Catherine, finally able to speak, can only manage a single word.
“Why?”
The thing gives her a cute little giggle that has no business coming from its hellish form, and then respond simply.
“You should have just given me a cookie.”
“Wha-?”
Before Catherine can even process that absurd response, the thing moves forward and bites into her neck, teeth piercing though and leaving her choking on her own blood as she screams for no one to hear.
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“AhhhhhhhHHHHhhhhhAAAhhhhhA!!!!”
Screaming, soaked in sweat and tears running down her face, Catherine violently awakes in the middle of the night, her hands desperately grabbing at her neck and wholly expecting her fingers to come away wet with her own blood.
Her fingers are dry of blood, only wet from the tears which are running down her cheeks and wetting her neck along with her sweat-soaked hair that sticks to her skin.
Breathing heavily, she sits up and just holds herself, eyes wide and frightened as her mind frantically repeats the contents of the slowly fading dream before her.
What, what was that? The dreams never ended like that before. What…?
Shortly, not even a few seconds after waking, her maid calls and comes rushing into the room.
“Milady, is everything alright!? I heard a scream!”
Catherine can hardly pay her any attention as she keeps going over the dream again and again, the sight of the city collapsing becoming seared into her mind until it is almost impossible to not recall. Unbidden, her mind goes back to those adventures that had entered the Dungeon not but a couple days ago, right as the Dungeon had opened. The ones sent to hunt down and kill the Necromancer, her monster. Each and every one of them is far more skilled than most of the people in this city, but before she can stop herself, the thought is already coming to her mind. It escapes her trembling lips and is spoken as the maid frets over her shaken mistress.
“They’re going to fail…”
“What was that, Milady?”
“They’re going to fail, and it’s all my fault…”
…
Catherine doesn’t manage to return to sleep that night, she can’t. Instead, she chooses to get dressed and moves down to the hotel’s parlor for some hot tea and to wait for the sun to rise. Her maid tries to keep her company, but the young woman, a short notice replacement for her guards, sent by her family, is hardly a replacement for Shane and Lyose's presence.