Harald awoke at Sixth Bell and rolled out of bed. He felt refreshed and vigorous. He dressed in the pre-dawn gloom, cinching on his newly acquired studded leather armor, paid for out of the crew fund. It was well oiled, supple, but with a few strategically placed iron plates sewn over vulnerable areas. Not too heavy, not too bulky, and an improvement over his ruined set of armor for sure.
He buckled his new arming sword, took up his bulky kite shield, and grabbed the iron cap they’d all be wearing. A final check of his room, and then he closed the bedroom door behind him and descended to the entrance hall.
Everybody was gathered there, eyes puffy with sleep, Vic frowning at the hour and cracking the occasional yawn. Kársek had risen early to brew strong coffee, and once Nessa descended with her pack they set forth into the gray morning.
They’d decided to walk so as to warm themselves up and did so without any conversation. Flutic was coming to life, transitioning from the night city to the day, and the rumble of carriages and wagons slowly grew louder as the crowds thickened.
They reached the Dungeon Plaza just before Seventh Bell as planned, and Sam waved and pushed off the scale-lantern post she’d been leaning against to jog over. She wore her new armor, all chainmail and leather, arming sword scabbarded at her hip but without the kite shield.
With her Artifact and Ability, she’d no need of a mundane one.
They all murmured their greetings and moved to get in line. Vic was still yawning, so against Nessa’s advice he purchased a second cup of coffee from a street vendor. There wasn’t much of a line before the Copper Gate, and soon enough they stepped up to the guard who processed them without much interest, giving the usual disclaimers and warnings.
They stepped up to the taxation desk, declared their scales and stats, and Harald was taken aback by how much Sam had brought: ten Zeniths, two of which went to each crew member for healing purposes.
Vic tossed his empty cup aside and led the way up to the platform. More perfunctory warnings, and then Nessa held aloft twelve Copper Moons.
Was this becoming rote? Harald glanced around the deck and the guards, the huge revolving Dungeon Portal, the Petitioner’s line. On some level it was. This marked his… sixth delve? He shook out his shoulders, activated his scale-lantern, clipped it to his belt, then swung his kite shield around and drew his arming sword.
“Ready, Harald?” Kársek stood beside him, having acquired a sunflower yellow surcoat that he wore over his traveling gear.
“Ready. You?”
Kársek rolled his tousled head about his shoulders, causing his neck to pop, and winked up at him.
The portal ceased revolving. Nessa glanced back to make sure they were all prepared, then led the way.
One by one they climbed the sky to enter the carnivorous portal, Harald going third, and even after so many entrances the way it seemed to expand to consume him gave him the shivers.
He emerged into a light and airy tunnel, the ceiling a good thirty feet up, the width just as broad. The walls were of porous white chalk, striated to intimate the passage of eons, while the roof was rough and stained, irregular and hinting at a vaulted style simply from the way it sloped down to the walls or the huge columns that supported it.
Four other huge tunnels intersected with it, large enough for carriages to comfortably be driven through, horses and all. White light radiated smoothly from these side tunnels or up ahead where the main tunnel curved out of sight.
The ground was of crushed white sand and pebbles. The air was dry, cool, and tasted, predictably, of chalk.
Silence. An expectant hush.
The 12th Level.
His father’s old favorite.
“You see, Harry,” his father had held forth one night after Harald had dared ask, “The 12th is where you’re put to the test. It goes on forever, it’s said, those blasted white tunnels. The deeper you go, the more dangerous it gets. It’s said there’s a Celestial Prismwing hidden at its very end, can you imagine? Just hovering there, glittering, precious as all of Flutic, awaiting the man bold enough to seize it.”
His father’s passion had ignited his own, so Harald had immediately set to learning all that he could about the 12th. It turned out to be a simple level: huge tunnels that wound ever on, always the same, sloping gradually down.
And the danger? Stone golems. At first small and slow, easy to destroy, but the deeper you went the larger and faster they got.
Everybody eventually ran into their match. Even Gold-ranked raiders would occasionally attempt the 12th to see how deep they could go.
But not today.
The 12th might test their skill and staying power, but the foes were as mindless as any other on the first dozen levels.
Nessa waited till Sam came through last, then led them forward. The goal was to find a well leading to the 13th, as the next Portal entrance was only to the 16th. That made the 13th, 14th, and 15th Level some of the least visited levels in all of the common floors; most raiders simply defaulted to the 16th instead of finding their way down from the 12th.
But Nessa insisted they tackle this from the top.
They jogged forward, boots crunching on the crushed chalk, not talking so as to not alert any of the closest golems, but even so when they reached the first intersecting tunnel a golem slouched into view.
It was humanoid, four feet tall, but appeared to be all shoulders and arms, its huge fists almost as large as its chest. Formed from the same white rock as the walls, it still somehow conveyed a sense of death; the chest was cadaverous, ribs prominent, and gaps opened up the length of its forearms between stone sinews. Its face was a deaths head, hinting at skull without nose, its eyes deeply recessed beneath a prominent brow, its scalp bald and uneven. It stalked forward lethargically on all fours, knuckles pressed to the ground, the weight of its shoulders over its arms. Its small bandy legs seemed an afterthought.
Harald froze.
The golem lifted its skull-like visage and focused on him, mouth pulling open wide in a silent snarl, stone warping like flesh, and Harald saw that each of its eyes was a single Crescent Copper scale.
There was one thing that Nessa and Vic had insisted on: if they ran into a golem, they had to put it down fast. Their roar would attract ever more of their number.
But before Harald could react Vic raised the Point and caused it to extend, driving its gleaming tip straight into the golem’s brow just as Nessa burst forward, crossing the distance far quicker than Harald thought possible to lop off the top of the small monster’s head.
The golem simply collapsed into a small pile of rubble.
Nessa checked her blade’s edge for nicks, then led them into the golem’s tunnel. The trick to descending to the 13th without getting swamped by the foes on the 12th was to pursue a spiraling path, always trying to stay as close as possible to your point of origin.
They slew three more small golems, Sam collecting the Crescent Moons they left behind, when they found a well at last descending to the 13th.
“Perfect,” whispered Nessa. She’d said it wouldn’t take long to find one, and she’d been right. Wells were common when it came to reaching levels without Dungeon Portal access.
“All right,” she said. “We won’t have long before we attract attention below. Follow my lead, remember our training, and stay close. This shouldn’t be a problem as long as we stay focused. And remember.” At this point she glared at Harald. “Listen for my commands, and if you hear them? Obey.”
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“Yes, Delve Captain,” said Harald, chagrined.
She raked their group one last time, as if taking a mental tally of their resources, ensuring everybody was ready, then nodded, sat on the edge of the simple well, swung her legs over and in, then dropped and was gone.
Damn, thought Harald as he watched Vic go next. Nessa really was like a different woman down here. No, that wasn’t quite right. No different, but… reduced. As if she flensed all the extraneous parts of her personality away, leaving nothing but the iron core.
Harald was slated to go next. He sat on the broad lip of the well. The stone was cold. He swung his legs over.
“Luck!” whispered Sam.
He flashed a nervous grin and glanced down. The heart of the well was swirling black energies. With a breath as if falling into water, he pushed forward and fell.
The abyss welcomed him. He felt himself traduced, translated across space, and then he found himself standing in a new environment.
He didn’t fall to his feet, simply found himself already standing, shield raised on his left arm, arming sword held at the ready on his right.
The portal back home now burned at his back, dragged down here by his descent.
The 13th Level was a dismal and macabre place. The air was hazy, the sky a vague press of slowly roiling fog without depth, the details of anything farther than a dozen yards growing indistinct. They stood in a small square of badly laid stone tiles, many shattered or missing altogether to reveal dirt. From where they stood a labyrinth of walkways, squares, and short staircases extended in all directions, most of them bound by low retaining walls at either knee or waist height. Great gaps yawned open on all sides, and from many of these rose dead trees with grasping bare branches, their bark wizened, their trunks tortured. Mist swirled thickly in the depths, hiding the ground floor on which the goblins scuttled.
Kársek appeared beside him a moment later, the dwarf’s eyes wide, his grip on his hammer white knuckled.
The dwarf’s appearance jolted Harald into action; he stepped into position, behind and to Nessa’s left, Vic already taking the rear. Both more experienced raiders had their kite shields up, weapons at the ready.
Sam appeared a second later, her eyes widening as she took in the dull brown environs, the broken masonry, the barren trees.
“Moving,” said Nessa, leading them across the plaza toward the first shallow set of steps.
Everything looked on the verge of collapse. The short wall that framed what looked like a burial plot just to the left of the steps undulated as if drunken and about to fall in. The paving was uneven, the stones irregular and poorly fitted together.
Movement.
Harald focused on free standing archway that rose in the next square over, searched the edge of their own square, seeking the source of that distraction, then saw a cunning little face peeking at him from behind a broken column that marked the start of a walkway that stretched out to the next plaza.
It was a dusty green, the nose impressively long and angular like the head of a pick-ax, the brow beetling, the mouth impossibly wide and pulled into a wicked sneer. The goblin was just as small as described, three feet tall, its eyes a jaundiced yellow, its manner sly and yet somehow impossibly amused.
For a moment they made eye contact, and then it jerked its head back and was gone.
Harald felt his heart pounding. There had been real life in those yellow eyes, a fierce cunning, a savage cruelty. The Crypt Keepers, the Gloom Maws, the ashen walkers, all of them had been monstrous but bestial, or mindless. Even the scarecrows had been too alien to register as ‘alive’.
But that goblin had been another living creature, something wicked and mean spirited perhaps, its grin sadistic, but alive.
And it was hunting them.
But they were still moving.
“Goblin hiding behind western column,” he called out, remembering his instructions. There were no real cardinal directions down here, but to keep things simple each member of the group had their own assigned direction: everything to Harald’s side became ‘west’, even if they rotated and were returning to the well.
“Three goblins watching from the south,” called Vic.
“Keep a steady pace,” said Nessa, leading them up the steps. “Kársek, prepare for a South One on my mark.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the dwarf gruffly. “Plenty of Earthblood here.”
“Incoming!” barked Sam, and a shock ran through their small group like a sharp wind over wheat. A second later Harald heard a thok as a javelin hit Sam’s shield. It took all his discipline to not turn and see what had happened.
Nessa had made that clear: you minded your own business unless someone called for help.
They made their way up the steps and stepped out onto a walkway. It was some four yards broad, swaybacked and rough, the retaining wall knocked out and gone in great patches. Beyond swirled the mist that hid the floor below, while the occasional tree rose into view as they prowled toward the next square.
Which weren’t even squares, necessarily, but broader expanses of jumbled paving stones, sometimes adorned with broken archways or columns, all of it stained brownish yellow as if by endless years of exposure to corrupting miasma.
“The three to my south are now six,” called Vic, tone sharp. “They’re pressing in.”
“Kársek, South One,” called Nessa. “Everyone turn and head south!”
Kársek gestured; Harald reversed direction so that they returned swiftly to their original plaza. A four-foot-high dun-colored wall burst up from the broken tiles at the head of the steps, and he caught sight of a handful of goblins drawing back their javelins just before they were hidden from view.
They hurried to the wall just as the goblins came scrambling over the top.
Vic had put away the Point, wanting to level his Rapier Regent class, and now he led the controlled charge at the surprised goblins.
Three landed before the wall before registering how much closer the raiders were, and cried out as they swarmed to the sides, intent on leaping down into the mist. Vic cut down one, the other two hurling themselves into the void, then swept his blade across the top of the wall just as two more pulled themselves up.
Both had their faces split open as they screamed and fell away.
Vic swiped the Silver Starbursts that appeared in the air where they’d fallen.
“Well done,” said Nessa. “Resume heading north.”
Again they changed direction.
Harald fought the temptation once more to peer ahead, and instead studied the closest walkways and squares on the far side of the swirling gap the ran parallel to their walkway.
Three javelins came flying out of the haze as distant goblins ran into view and hurled them, little more than shadows at this remove.
“Three incoming!” Harald barked, raising his shield.
Sam’s Shield of Valor sprang into existence just above and to the side, and then the first javelin hit his shield with surprising strength. The iron tip failed to punch through, however, and the javelin bounced off.
“Relax, everyone,” called Nessa. “Breathe easy. Let’s move quicker.”
They picked up the pace and reached the next square. This one was ringed by higher, more solid walls. A huge, wizened tree grew in the north-east corner, bulging red fruit hanging from the dead branches. Most of the flagstones were gone, revealing instead clayish, hard-packed soil.
“Three east,” barked Sam.
“Two north,” said Nessa.
The thick wall on his side turned into a causeway that speared out into the haze, and down its length came running a pocket of four goblins, javelins already pulled back to throw.
“Four incoming!” he called, and then the javelins were flying, hurled with all the little monsters’ strength.
“Kársek, East Three!”
A detonation sounded, but Harald hunched behind his shield and took the javelins. Frustration began to mount within him. He wanted to break formation and charge the goblins who were even now retreating into the gloom. He wanted to close and cut them down. Moving like this felt ridiculous, as if all they were doing was inviting endless ranged attacks.
But he bit down on that impatience and followed Nessa’s commands as they quit this square and continued north. Nobody had been hurt yet, and Nessa admonished them time and again to control their breathing, to calm down, to stay in formation.
They traversed another walkway, entered a brief maze of shoulder-high walls that forced them to work back and forth as they sought to keep going north, goblins racing and giggling along the wall-tops just out of reach.
One clapped its hands to catch Harald’s attention, emerging from the haze some ten yards away, then turned and pulled down its pants, baring its green buttocks which it set to slapping as it cackled with laughter.
Harald grinned. “Come do that over here!”
The goblin turned, made a rude gesture, and ran off into the gloom.
“Up ahead,” said Nessa. “Looks like we’ve found a target.”
Harald hazarded a glance. A decrepit hill of a building loomed up out of the cancerous fog. It was a pile of masonry, on the verge of collapse, massive and unlit from within. Most of the windows had been boarded up, but their walkway led to a broad archway before which stood a nervous group of goblins, javelins and curved blades held at the ready.
Within, no doubt, was one of their leaders and a loot chest.
“Get ready for some heat,” called Nessa. The goblins would seek to dissuade them from reaching the doorway by throwing everything they had at them. “Kársek, South One”
A wall rose shudderingly up to block off the goblins approach, but many more clambered up from below, hiking their wiry bodies into view as they appeared on broken columns, rotten walls, or even up the length of trees.
Javelins started to fall. Harald grimaced and kept his kite shield up, which shuddered again and again as it took blows. One javelin sliced in from behind and hit his shoulder, sinking deep into the muscle that connected to his neck.
Harald felt no pain, but the weight of the embedded javelin and the sudden weakness in his sword arm were warning enough; he quickly sheathed his blade, pulled the javelin free, then absorbed an Aurora Veil that hung about his neck.
He hefted the javelin, spotted a target, and took two steps forward to hurl.
The javelin flew from his hand, missing the goblin by a foot. It stared at him, eyes bulging, and hopped off its perch to fall into the mist.
“Charge north!” barked Nessa, and Harald barely had time to draw his blade as they broke into a run as one.
The huge building was right there, and the pack of goblins had grown to about a dozen. They chittered and screeched their fear and hate, weapons raised, then broke and ran into the archway as Harald and Vic activated their Aura of the Aching Depths and Aura of Cruelty.
“Stay tight!” yelled Nessa as they plunged into the dark tunnel. It was just broad enough for them to run two abreast.
There were no lights up ahead. Goblins could see in the darkness.
But Harald knew what awaited them.
The goblin boss and his small army.
Finally, he thought. It was time to really fight.