Pocket Dungeon, page 35
“Let’s just be glad you weren’t the one who gave their blood to the door,” I joked.
The two of us continued down the hallway with obvious hesitance. The last thing I wanted was to get caught unaware by something because I was relying too heavily on the armor that was supposed to make things easy.
I still didn’t feel like I had gotten a strong enough grasp of what exactly I could trust in the dungeons. So far on the list of things that I couldn’t trust in the dungeons, it included: floors, walls, doors, and now my own blood. It wasn’t exactly a reassuring list, so I kept on high alert as we turned around the long, curving corner to continue down through the dungeon.
We came upon another door, and already I prepared for the worst. Unlike the last door we’d had to fight our way through, this door looked normal. Well, it looked as normal as possible given the circumstances. It was just a plain wooden door with metal brackets, hung in a frame embedded in the wall.
It glowed with the same faint yellow light as the previous door, which I was beginning to understand indicated that it was something that needed to be interacted with in some way, shape, or form.
“Here’s hoping we don’t have to solve another riddle,” I muttered to myself as I stepped toward the door.
The handle was a simple metal ring hanging from the wood, and it didn’t seem too threatening.
I angled my body so if something was waiting to jump out at us from the other side of the door, it wasn’t going to have an easy time, and then I reached out to grab the handle. I sucked in a deep breath to steel myself before I gave it a hard shove and sent the door slamming open with what was definitely more force than strictly necessary.
Yasha flinched as the door slammed into the opposite wall inside the room with a resounding thud. The two of us exchanged a look over my shoulder, and I gave her a sheepish grin.
“Better safe than sorry,” I said.
“Better safe than sorry,” she repeated the words slowly, like she wasn’t familiar with the phrasing but was growing fond of it. “I like that. It is how you approach things.”
“Well, I’m glad you think so,” I laughed. “I try. Now, come on, let’s go. I don’t know what other shit is waiting for us in here, but I know that I don’t want to waste any time at all.”
Yasha nodded her understanding as I stepped out of the way and toward the opening into the next room. I kept Doomslayer out in front of me as a precaution and stepped through the doorway.
The room was larger than I had expected, with a strange tile mosaic on the ground. It reminded me of the first dungeon I’d been in with the spider mosaic, but this time, I really had no idea what the shape of the tiles formed on the floor. The design was made up of rich, vibrant colors in various shades of red, blue, purple, and green, but they didn’t seem to make any sort of pattern at all.
I frowned and tilted my head from one side to the other as I tried to piece together something in the shapes. It was like trying to see pictures in the clouds. It definitely was more of an art than a science, and that wasn’t my particular wheelhouse.
After a few fruitless seconds of trying and failing to figure out what exactly I was looking at, I finally glanced around the rest of the room.
The room itself was probably the size of my entire apartment and would take at least a couple of minutes to walk the entire perimeter of. The walls were bare aside from the torches mounted onto the walls the same as in the hallway. They glowed with the same dim blue aura I was getting used to seeing off of most things, too.
A door was mounted to the wall opposite the door we’d come through, and like the first door, it was also haloed in yellow. But it wasn’t the only thing that was haloed. There were three large urn-like vases in the center of the room. They looked to be made out of some sort of plain terracotta, or some other undecorated, reddish clay material. They were nearly as tall as me, and as I walked over toward them, I saw that they stood up to approximately my chest in height.
“Did you find anything?” I asked Yasha over my shoulder as I studied the giant jars up close.
They were seamless and looked as if they had never even been touched. There wasn’t so much as a cobweb or a speck of dust on any of them.
“Just a bone,” Yasha called out. “I think it is from a leg, or maybe a very large arm.”
I looked back over my shoulder to see Yasha brandishing what was definitely a gigantic fucking femur bone like it was a prize.
I blanched.
“Just that one bone?” I cast a wary glance toward the urns and took a step away from them for good measure. “Are you sure there wasn’t an entire skeleton or something?”
Yasha frowned and looked back over her shoulder where she had presumably found the bone.
“I do not think I would have missed an entire skeleton,” she remarked. “It was just the bone.”
She gave the bone a little waggle in my direction as if to prove her point.
This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.
“Something had to have left that bone behind,” I said slowly.
“Do you think someone dropped it as they walked through?” she asked.
Her question forced me to pause because it was just so absurd. I almost had to laugh at how plainly she asked it. It was yet another thing that reminded me that the two of us came from very different worlds. Maybe it was just normal for people on Arcadio to carry around bones with them wherever they went.
“I don’t think so…” I said the words carefully and took another hesitant step away from the urns behind me. “I think that whatever left the bone behind probably didn’t do it willingly, and I think the reason why is probably in one of those jars.”
Yasha frowned and finally set the femur bone back down on the ground.
“Should we prepare to fight whatever is inside?” she asked.
I quickly shook my head. “No, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think we should just steer as clear from the jars as possible for now and try the door itself. If it doesn’t open, then we try the jars. For all we know, we’ll be rewarded for simply not stupidly opening the very large and suspicious jars…”
“That is a good idea,” Yasha agreed. “Let us try the door.”
The two of us gave the three urn-like jars a wide berth as we made our way around to the door on the other side of the room. I didn’t waste any time before reaching out and giving the handle a tug, but to my dismay it didn’t so much as budge.
This was exactly what I was afraid of.
“Great,” I sighed. “We have to try the very large and suspicious jars.”
Yasha’s ears flicked as she studied the three large jars. “I think I have an idea.”
“You do?” I raised my eyebrows. “What is it?”
“You want to stay far away from the jars, yes?” she asked.
“That’s the hope,” I said. “I have no idea what’s inside of them, and I have a feeling that whatever is inside is probably the reason for that stray bone. It’s just a gut feeling that we probably aren’t going to want to make friends with whatever is lurking inside.”
Yasha nodded. “That is what I thought. What if I use the whip to shatter the jars from here. It gives us more distance between us and the jars?”
It was a pretty good idea. When I’d studied the jars up close, they’d looked identical, and there hadn’t been anything that had tipped me off to some sort of obvious issues in her plan. It gave us the tactical advantage of distance and surprise. If there was something inside any of the jars that could sense us if we got close, we’d be able to effectively sneak up on it like this.
“That’s a great plan,” I told her. “We can stand behind my shield, too, that way we’re covered in case something launches out.”
As I spoke, I repositioned myself so I was partially in front of Yasha. I tapped Golen’s Shield to re-expand the piece of weaponry. At its full size, Golen’s Shield was large enough to cover both of our torsos if we squeezed closely together.
Yasha adjusted herself behind the shield so she was still able to snap the whip out from the protective barrier without issue.
“Ready?” Her voice was low in my ear as she asked the question.
I adjusted my arm. “Ready.”
Yasha wound back her arm and snapped the whip forward with a terrifying precision. The vase on the left shattered with a thundering crack in response to the blow. It practically exploded, and the pieces scattered across the mosaic tiles on the floor and left a small cloud of clay dust suspended in the air.
As soon as the dust cleared, I squinted and studied the remains of the jar.
Nothing.
There wasn’t anything where the jar had been, aside from a giant pile of broken pottery and dust.
“Try the next one,” I told Yasha.
The fox-woman clearly didn’t need to be told twice as she snapped her whip out again. This time, it connected with the vase in the center of the group.
Just like the first vase, the next one also exploded into a pile of clay chunks. The sound of the crack was all but deafening. Once the dust settled, I was able to see that there wasn’t anything left of the jar, and it hadn’t been holding anything at all, either.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose up as I stared at the third and final jar. There had to be something in it, there just had to be. The pauldrons weren’t indicating that there was anything else of importance in the room itself, and they hadn’t been wrong so far.
“Are you ready?” Yasha asked me. She was already braced and ready to snap the whip forward, and I could practically see the strength of her muscles as they pulled tautly under her skin.
I shifted next to her and readjusted my sword and shield just in case whatever came out of the final vessel wasn’t happy.
“Let’s do this,” I said to her.
Yasha pulled her arm back and snapped the whip out toward the final remaining vase with jaw-dropping accuracy that would have put Indiana Jones to shame.
We were definitely watching those movies soon.
The end of the whip smacked against the jar, and the piece of pottery shattered with a piercing crack. I held my breath as I waited for something to make an immediate attack on the two of us, but nothing did.
The cloud of pottery dust and clay chunks still swirled in the air as Yasha and I exchanged a confused look.
“Are you sure we were supposed to break the vases?” she asked. There wasn’t anything accusatory in her question, it was clear she was just confused.
I was confused, too. Nothing else in the room was illuminated in yellow. It seemed obvious that we had to do something with the vases to get through the next door.
Before I could voice any of that out loud, however, the dust settled, and I saw just what had left the bone lying around on the floor of the room.
“Shit,” I managed.
The biggest snake I had ever seen slithered out from the pile of rubble, and it was coming straight at us.
Chapter 24
“Oh, that is not good.” Yasha’s voice was small, and she stared at the massive snake as it lazily began to slither out of the mess we’d just made of its home.
I realized after a moment that the snake was the same colors as the mosaic tiles on the floor. I guess the strange lack of pattern made sense now. It wasn’t trying to form a picture because it was forming the pattern of the snake’s scales.
“I think we found the bone culprit,” I agreed.
The snake was highlighted in a red aura, just like my evil twin had been, but there was another, smaller yellow aura in the area as well. I squinted and saw that in the mix of rubble from the destroyed pottery was what definitely looked like a key.
The massive snake didn’t seem all that concerned with me or with Yasha as we continued to stare at it in horror. In fact, it didn’t seem to want to go very far from the key at all, which was the exact opposite of what we wanted the creature to do.
“Do you think you could dart up and get the key if I distract the snake?” I suggested. “I think even with your ankle not being fully healed, you’re still faster than I am.”
Yasha pursed her lips as she clearly mulled over my plan before she nodded.
“Yes. I think I can do that,” she said.
“Good. Get ready.” I didn’t say anything else before I darted forward toward the snake despite every bone in my body telling me to run in the other direction.
I didn’t have a problem with snakes.
Well. I usually didn’t have a problem with snakes, but then again, the snakes weren’t usually the size of the anaconda from Anaconda.
The creature looked up at me with its dark, beady eyes as I drew closer. Its nostrils flared, and it stuck its tongue out toward me to taste the air.
I fought a shiver as it rolled down my spine. I was definitely going to have a mild and reasonable fear of snakes after this.
The creature had massive, sharp-looking fangs that protruded from its mouth and dripped what definitely appeared to be some sort of venom.
That did not bode well for me.
I had to get it away from the key, though. Right now, it was still partially curled around our only way out of the room.
This might not have been any species of snake that came from Earth, but I had a feeling it would still abide by the same general snake principals, so to say. Which meant it was most likely going to move fucking fast.
I braced Golen’s Shield out in front of me and ran toward the creature with Doomslayer extended. Then I used the tip of the long blade to jab at the snake, and just like I’d hoped, the giant creature hissed in annoyance and snapped at the blade.
It caused it to unfurl its giant body and start to slither toward me.
I jabbed at it again.
It started to feel like the two of us were engaged in some sort of dance, where I would jab at the snake with the sword, it would hiss and lunge toward me. But slowly and surely, I was luring the most dangerous part of the snake away from the key and toward the door we’d come in through.
Yasha met my eyes as I looked at her over the snake and nodded. She got the hint, and quietly, the fox-woman began to creep forward to grab the key. While I definitely would have preferred if she had put the pedal to the metal, so to speak, I understood why she was moving slowly. The last thing she wanted to do was draw the snake’s attention again and ruin all of the hard work I’d just done to lure it away from the key.
The creature seemed to grow more and more agitated the longer I toyed with it, and I had the sinking feeling I wasn’t going to be able to hold it off for much longer, but I had to try.
I cut my eyes back over to Yasha and saw that the fox-woman had made it over to the debris from the final clay pot she’d shattered with her whip.
The snake’s tail was the only thing left in the area, and she carefully stepped over it to grab the large skeleton key from the pile of rubble. Then she leapt back over the snake’s tail without touching it and started to dart over to the door, but the snake’s head twitched.
It had seen her.
The creature moved faster than anything I had ever seen before as it snapped its head toward Yasha with killer dexterity.
“Shit!” I shouted as I launched toward the creature with my sword raised in the air. I slammed the blade down onto the snake’s neck with as much force as I could muster, but instead of severing the head from the body like I had expected, my sword harmlessly pinged off.
My heart began to pound in fear as the snake whipped its head back around toward me this time. It flicked its tongue out of its mouth and sent a chill down my spine.
Why hadn’t I been able to pierce its skin?
I studied the snake’s scales a little closer as I stared at it.
Of course. Not only was it the biggest goddamn snake in the world, but its scales weren’t made out of keratin like other snakes. Instead, the snake’s scales glinted lowly in the torchlight of the large room, just like the patterned tiles in the mosaic underneath our feet. Whatever the scales were made out of– glass, gemstones, some other strange, foreign substance– they were pretty fucking indestructible.
“Come on!” Yasha shouted over to me and drew the snake’s attention once again. She was cowering against the next door we needed to pass through as she fumbled to slip the key into the lock.
It was as if the snake knew exactly what she was doing, and it wasn’t happy about it one bit. The creature snapped its neck around toward Yasha as she tried to unlock the door. Its entire body went tense all the way from its head down to the tip of its tail, and it was clear that it was ready to spring forward once again.
I sucked in a deep breath and bolted in front of the snake with Golen’s Shield extended. I managed it just in time, too, because the snake slammed into my shield with the force of a fucking Mack truck. If I hadn’t jumped in the way, it would have gotten to Yasha, and it probably would have tried to bite her head off in one go.
The snake let out a displeased hissing sound as it bounced harmlessly off my shield and slithered back a few feet to recuperate. Meanwhile, my arm felt like it was made of gelatin and like I might have just broken every bone in it.
“Son of a bitch,” I growled.
I gave the limb a shake to try and get the blood flowing again as I readied myself for the snake’s next attack.
“A little faster with that key?” I called over my shoulder to Yasha, but I tried to keep the strain out of my voice so the pressure of needing to go faster didn’t make her inadvertently slow down.
“I am trying!” Yasha exclaimed. “But the key will not fit!”
I risked a quick look over my shoulder at Yasha as she tried to shove the key in the lock. And sure enough, it was plain to see that the lock and the tip of the key weren’t meant to go together at all.
What the fuck? The key had been illuminated in yellow. How else were we supposed to get out of the room?
I gave the room another quick scan of the area and made sure I hadn’t somehow missed any trap doors, but it was clear that there was only one way into the room and one way out. So where was the right key?
