Pocket Dungeon 4, page 18
“Which one do you think?” I asked Liva. “I think it’s the one on the right, but it’s hard to be sure. Neither hall is triggering my items like there’s something inherently wrong with it, but that doesn’t mean much given how this dungeon seems like it’s trying to trick us.”
“I too think it’s the hall on the right,” Liva said. “It seems the faces are meant to deter us, but the other looks like it would never end, and we would be trapped by the time we realized we were wrong.”
“The right it is, then,” I said and took the lead down our chosen hallway.
Our brief pause and conversation had only taken a few seconds, but with the clock bearing down on us, even that felt like a precious waste.
Liva’s frigid presence was right behind me as I barreled down through the center of the path marked between the massive, frightening carvings on the walls, and I couldn’t help but look into the dark, gaping holes where each carvings’ eyes should have been as we passed by.
The pauldrons weren’t sensing anything off about the carvings, and neither was I, other than the general, innate sense that they were creepy as fuck.
Each of the monstrous, demonic faces was marked with overexaggerated features, like huge fangs, bulging eye sockets, hollowed cheeks, and lolling tongues. It was impossible to even say what made them so disconcerting, aside from the fact they just were. There was a knowingness and intelligence in their blank eyes that made me feel like I was being watched from all angles.
I suppressed a shudder as we made it to the end of the hallway, where things finally began to curve off to the left, and I barely had time to rejoice that we seemingly hadn’t made a wrong decision when I nearly slammed into a heavy wooden door.
The door itself was bracketed by two more of the massive, demonic faces, though these were slightly smaller than the ones in the hallway behind us.
I quickly looked around for something that would signal how to open the door, but nothing was immediately apparent, and the only thing highlighted in blue was the door itself. I figured I should just try the fucking door at the very least, because I’d be an idiot if I didn’t try a simple approach as well as the more puzzle-focused option.
The handle of the door was made of a rusted metal, and when I grabbed it, it was hot to the touch, even through my heat and flame resistant gloves. The door itself didn’t seem to be locked, and when I pushed against it, I felt it move, ever so slightly.
This wasn’t like a door that required a puzzle, it seemed like this was a door that just wouldn’t open. Well, wasn’t that just a kick in the teeth. It was a curveball, which I think was probably part of it. Sometimes the dungeons liked to play tricks, and I had a feeling this was one of them.
“Shit,” I hissed, but tugged on it again to try and get it to budge.
“What is it?” Liva asked.
“The door’s jammed,” I said before slamming my shoulder into the wood to try and get the door to actually open.
Then I did it again with as much force as I could muster as I continued to grip the still rapidly heating handle.
My Flame Catcher Glove was beginning to smoke, and I knew if it weren’t for the fact I was specifically specced into fire and flame resistance, I would probably be screaming out in pain.
“Let me try,” Liva said before I could gear up to throw myself into the door for a third time.
It really felt like the ticking clock and ever-shrinking time was really starting to get to me.
“Please,” I said and stepped back so she could have a go.
As I did so, I started looking around the area for any sign of something that could help us open the door, not like a clue I’d missed, but literally something to help pry the damn thing open.
The door itself looked entirely normal, and a lot like all the other doors I’d seen in the dungeons, down to the pattern on the wood planks making up the door itself.
The only thing different about it was the rusted metal handle, and even then, that wasn’t highlighted in red to indicate there was something wrong with it.
Liva reached down with one small, blue hand and curled her fingers around the handle. A hissing, popping sound filled the air as her icy skin made contact with the heated metal. Steam billowed up around where her fingers curled instead of smoke this time, and the longer she held, the more intense the steam grew until finally, all the heat seemed to dissipate from the area.
I hadn’t even realized just how hot it was in this narrow entryway until the heat vanished in an instant.
There was another sharp cracking sound as Liva leaned further into the door and flapped her wings to give herself a little more force.
And then the door itself shattered.
I wasn’t sure if it was because the Eirthan woman had managed to freeze whatever internal mechanism was keeping it locked and caused it to shatter, or if it was just the brute force she’d executed in part due to her wings, but one way or another, I was glad she’d done it.
That was until I saw what waited for us in the room.
Chapter 12
The demon standing in the center of the room looked like he’d come straight from one of the faces carved in the hallway behind us, right down to its massive, bottomless, empty eyes.
They were nothing more than sockets bored into its head that stared in our direction with nothing behind them. It looked like I could have thrust my hand straight into one of them without any sort of resistance, and that thought alone set a shiver curling down my spine.
“Shit,” I hissed.
The text floating over the top of the demon’s head marked it as a Balgrom Demon: level twenty-three.
I had no idea what a Balgrom Demon was, but it didn’t seem that fucking pleasant.
Aside from looking like the carvings in the hallway had been based off this thing’s face, it was also a good two feet taller than me with the massive, hunched shoulders of a linebacker and gnarled, twisted skin in an off-putting shade of yellow.
The torchlight in the room was red, just like everywhere else, and it cast the Balgrom in sickly, menacing shadows as it snarled from the middle of the room.
Its knuckles dragged the ground, and its massive claws were as deadly and curved as the Talon Blade hooked into my belt. In one of its hands was a sword the length of its leg with a razor-thin blade.
The sword managed to look as mean as the demon holding it as the monster snarled at us.
Liva and I only had seconds to react before the monster lunged.
It threw itself at the two of us, and we both launched ourselves to opposite sides of the room to avoid the monster’s vicious attack.
The demon was faster than it looked, and it moved with skilled precision as it flung its blade in my direction.
The room we’d entered was only about fifteen feet by fifteen feet, so we didn’t have very many places we could go if we wanted to avoid the demon and its four-foot blade.
Heated steam and smoke hissed out from vents about halfway up the stone walls at random intervals and made the entire room feel like a sauna.
Sweat beaded on my forehead and dripped down the back of my neck after only seconds in the room, and I had no idea how Liva was feeling, given the fact she was practically made of ice. Considering the fact that I was mostly heat resistant, and I was feeling the unbearable weight of the warmth already, I took a wild guess that the Eirthan woman wasn’t feeling too great about it all.
The Balgrom demon swerved and spun to face me as I steadied myself on my feet and pulled out Phantom Doomslayer from its place on my belt.
The pale blade was menacing in the red torchlight, and as soon as the sword was unsheathed, the flames flickered in the direction of the magical blade like it called to them.
The Balgrom lunged at me once again, and this time, I didn’t run away.
I threw my sword out in a defensive stance just in time to catch the edge of the demon’s own blade against my own.
The swords crashed together with a violent, metallic clang, and Phantom Doomslayer sizzled as they made contact.
The Balgrom pushed forward with nearly twice my own strength, and I felt my feet begin to skid back on the stone tiles of the floor as I tried to brace myself against it and its attacks.
I moved with more speed than I could have ever done in the real world as I swung another attack at the massive demon looming over me. I aimed for its torso, but it was prepared for the attack, and it blocked the swing with another vicious lunge that pushed me straight back up against the wall.
As soon as my back collided with the stone, one of the slitted vents in the walls expelled yet another wave of heat and steam that should have left me with some sort of third-degree burns had my armor not been buffed to protect me.
Despite that, however, I still shouted out in pain as the steam scalded at my bare skin.
Apparently, the armor and buffs would keep me from getting hurt, but that didn’t mean it stopped the pain entirely.
Good to fucking know.
The torchlight bobbed and bowed toward my blade as I grunted and pushed back against the demon pinning me to the wall.
Up close, the Balgrom was even fouler than it had been from afar.
Its mouth hung open and dripped viscous black spit from between large, misshapen fangs protruding from its oversized jaw. The pits where its eyes were supposed to be emitted a rank, rotting smell that hit me like a ton of bricks as I continued to struggle.
I gripped the hilt of my sword with both hands and used all my strength as I tried to bear back against its overwhelming attack before another burst of steam could scald my skin.
The razor-sharp blade skittered against my own and sent sparks up into the air as the metal ground together.
My muscles strained, and my teeth clenched in my jaw as I forced the demon back one step, and then another, and then another as I pushed with all my might.
Suddenly, all the pressure that had been holding me in place released as the Balgrom reared back with a feral cry.
The sound was one of the worst things I’d ever heard and as it filled the small space, it was like nails down a chalkboard times ten.
My eardrums felt like they were about to split at any moment as the scream stretched out to last an entire lifetime.
I took advantage of the monster’s pause and pain before I even knew what for certain had caused it, and I swung at the beast’s bent knees.
This time, my blade found no resistance from the Balgrom as it slammed straight into the meaty joint where its legs bent.
The blow knocked the demon’s health bar down by only five percent, but it was a fucking start. Seconds after my own attack made its health lower, I saw the bar creep down another five percent.
Liva.
It was only after I rolled out of the way from a swipe of the Balgrom’s talons that I saw what the Eirthan woman had done.
Her deadly ice blades protruded from each of her palms, and she wore a feral look on her delicate face. Her pale eyes were blindingly bright as she bared her teeth in a snarl at the demon’s back.
One of her blades dripped with a mucus-like blood from where she’d clearly stabbed it straight into the demon’s back to get it off of me.
Her skin was slick with a thin sheen of ice, and the only way I could even think to describe it is that the blue woman was trying to constantly refreeze herself so she didn’t melt.
It was a weird sight, but I wasn’t about to comment on it, not while we had a demon to kill, or while she looked so downright bloodlusted. Her rage seemed to radiate off her into a physical haze in the room, and with a flutter of her wings, she lunged straight at the demon again.
The Balgrom whirled to face her with its razor-thin sword aloft in the air, but its reaction time was seconds too slow.
The Eirthan woman was on it in a blink of an eye with another deadly slash of her ice blades, straight along the line of its meaty forearm. She ducked and whirled as it slashed out at her with a claw before swinging its sword again, but she was so small compared to the demon, it was like watching a lumbering giant try to take on an ant.
She moved with all the speed and grace of a hummingbird as she flitted around the massive creature with her deadly blades. Her moves weren’t calculated well in advance in the same way Yasha’s were when she fought, and watching the winged woman fight was night and day compared to how the fox-woman acted in battle.
Yasha was a trained warrior from birth, but Liva was different.
It was the difference between being raised in an honorable warrior culture, versus one where you simply had to fight like a maniac to survive. In other words, Liva fought fast and dirty, and it was impossible not to watch in awe.
Heavy ice crystals dropped from her like beads of sweat as she moved and crashed against the overheated tiles of the floor as her ice blades melted and restructured themselves with each swipe at the Balgrom.
While she had the demon distracted, I reached into my pocket and quickly pulled out the Frost Orb. If I wanted to help her, the best way to do it would be to make sure she had peak conditions.
I tapped the orb, and in only a second, the room plummeted into freezing temperatures. The space was small enough that there wasn’t anywhere the demon could go to escape the chill that whipped through the air and frosted itself over its yellow body.
The sudden blast of cold managed to stop the jet of steam from a nearby vent before it could slam straight into my back, and a thick layer of ice already started to cover the floor.
It wasn’t the most pleasant thing in the world on my bare heel, but hey, in the time it had taken me to slide the Frost Orb back into my pocket, Liva looked like she’d slept a good eight hours.
Her face had brightened, and even the ice protruding from her hands looked clearer and sharper than it had only seconds before.
The Balgrom screamed out in agony as Liva flew around it in blisteringly quick circles before she slammed both of her palms down against its shoulders and sank both of her blades into its flesh, all the way up to her hands.
Her frenetic attacks knocked the beast down to nearly two-thirds of its health, but it was clear it wasn’t done fighting just yet.
Its jaw snapped, and its massive teeth gnashed, and before I could shout out a warning, it swung its razor-bladed sword up over its head in an attempt to hit Liva square on the head.
I threw myself forward faster than I thought I could even move and just seconds before the blade connected with the top of her head as she tried to free her palms from its flesh, I whipped Phantom Doomslayer out and caught the attack.
The force of the blow radiated up from the end of my sword and straight into my hands, and I nearly dropped my blade.
Nearly, but not quite.
I towered over Liva as she finally managed to free her hands.
“Thank you,” she said, and before I could even respond, she’d darted down through the Balgrom’s legs and swiped another cut along the line of its meaty, thick thigh.
The Balgrom screeched and swung its sword forward where the blue woman had been seconds before, but she moved so quickly, the demon simply embedded its sword in the ground.
I was surprised the blade didn’t shatter with the force of how hard the demon had swung.
While it was distracted trying to free its blade with one hand and swiping at Liva with a second, I drove the tip of Phantom Doomslayer straight into its back.
The heat radiating off the monster’s body was enough to make me sweat bullets, even with the thick layer of ice now covering the room.
Unfortunately, due to proximity to me, the Frost Orb’s effects were nullified on the beast for the time being, which made the overwhelming heat unpleasant, though not deadly, as I twisted the sword with a sickening crunch.
The Balgrom screamed and screamed, and it was the sort of sound that might have haunted my nightmares had I not known what it was coming from.
My blade cut clean through the demon and sank all the way to the hilt inside its gnarled skin, but when I went to pull it free, I was met with more resistance than should have been possible.
And it was about that moment that I realized the Balgrom had grabbed hold of the end of the blade with both of its massive, clawed hands and was pulling in the opposite direction.
Holy fucking shit.
This thing was trying to pull the sword straight through its chest.
I didn’t let go of the hilt, and as the demon flung itself forward and over its knees, I was thrown up into the air and onto its back like the world’s most fucked-up piggyback ride.
If I let go of my sword, I knew there was no chance in hell I would be getting it back.
I tried to keep twisting the blade inside the demon’s guts to do more damage, but the Balgrom was stagnant at about thirty percent health.
The demon bastard was like a bucking mechanical bull as it held tightly onto the blade inside its gut. Its hands were slick with its own blood as it continued to pull and pull. I had to brace my feet against its haunches and hold on with all of my strength, but even then, I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on and try to do damage to the demon.
It threw itself to the side and slammed straight into the wall, and the force of the blow left my brain feeling like it was ricocheting around the inside of my skull. I bit my tongue so hard that I tasted blood.
I was downright delirious from the overwhelming heat radiating off the monster, and it felt like my insides were being boiled inside my armor, while I simultaneously thought my limbs were going to fall off from the cold in the room around me.
“Wes!” Liva shouted my name and broke me from my concentrated haze as I tried to hang on to the demon’s back. “Let go!”
I only had a second to process her command and do as she said before the blue woman was on the demon.
I dropped to the ground and expanded Aegis at the last possible second to soften my fall against the iced-over stones, and I slammed my heels into the wall to send myself skittering across the ground and out of the way in one smooth motion.
And then Liva took center stage.
