Pocket Dungeon 4, page 5
Finally, the Atlantean woman came to a halt near the place she’d started to begin with, and she took one last, final, deliberate step to the right.
Something cracked in my ankle, and I really hoped it wasn’t my bone. My knees were practically to my chest by now, and Yasha and I had firmly sandwiched Elaene between us as the walls closed in.
We had only a few seconds before the three of us were pressed into a disgusting, bloody paste, but then…
The pressure let up, and suddenly, I could breathe again.
The walls receded back so quickly, I fell flat on my ass on the wooden floor with a loud thunk. The only thing that had saved Yasha from the same fate was the fact that she fucking landed on me.
In the corner of the room, where only seconds ago, two walls had joined and nothing more, sat a large wooden door that was caddy-corner to the rest of the room.
I had no fucking idea how it had gotten there logistically, but also, I really, really did not care. I wanted to get out of this death chamber before I breathed wrong and made the walls start caving in all over again. No fucking thanks.
But before I could insist we get the hell out of that godforsaken room, like, yesterday, there was a soft popping sound that filled the air.
I glanced over my shoulder in surprise to see a large chest about the size of a ninety-gallon plastic storage tote sitting in the middle of the room.
“Huh,” I said. “That’s new.”
“How strange,” Yasha said in agreement. “The dungeon does not give out chests for puzzles.”
“Apparently, it does now,” I said as I rose up to my feet and made my way over to the chest. “Maybe it’s a triple-crystal dungeon thing. I mean, there’s a reason people want more crystals, and it’s not just because they’ve got death wishes.”
I grabbed the corner of the chest and easily slipped it into my pocket. It was one of those things that if I thought too hard about it, it would make my head feel like I was going to explode, but ‘when in a dungeon, have magical pockets.’ Or however that saying went.
Once the chest was dealt with, I snatched up Phantom Doomslayer, and the three of us didn’t waste any time before getting the hell out of this god-forsaken room to see what else the dungeon had in store for us.
I threw open the heavy wooden door and stepped through the opening with what I deemed the proper amount of caution.
We faced a long, narrow hallway that was only just wide enough for the three of us to walk in a single file line. If my shoulders had been any broader, I probably would have had to turn sideways to even get through at all.
Swinging lanterns hung from the ceiling just like they had in the room before. They were placed every two yards and cast the entire narrow hall in ominous, shadow-filled light.
The walls were made of the same slatted boards as the floor, but thankfully, they were now devoid of any blood-painted markings.
The hallway looked like it extended on and on forever without any clear end. I didn’t even see any sort of turn-off or curves that marked a change in the path.
Nothing was illuminated in red or blue, but I didn’t trust that entirely.
The dungeons obviously played by their own rules half the time, so I still intended to be incredibly, reasonably cautious as we made our way through.
The last room had cost us eighteen minutes, which meant we only had forty-two minutes left to find Trog and get the hell out of here, so hopefully the rest of the dungeon took it a little easier on us, though I had my doubts.
“Stick close,” I said as I took the first step into the narrow hallway.
The walls weren’t caging in around us, but I immediately felt a wave of claustrophobia wash over me as I moved down the hall. Each step I took was slow and deliberate, and the further I got from the room we just left, the more aware I was of how little space we had.
I could tell without looking over my shoulder that it was Elaene who’d shuffled after me next, with Yasha taking up the rear.
The Atlantean woman’s steps were nearly silent, but she always smelled fresh like the ocean, which made it more than a little apparent who was behind me.
I kept my head on a swivel as I scanned over each of the slatted wooden walls as we crept forward at a snail’s pace. And I’m glad I did, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have seen the indented panel in the wall to the left that had been invisible from a few yards away.
The panel was pressed into the wall a few inches, and it was highlighted entirely in red.
That was the only thing I had a chance to register before the panel dropped away and… something came out.
The creature looked like a bat, if someone had taken a bat, pumped it up with steroids until it was the size of a Great Dane, and then also given it really big-ass talons at the end of its wings.
The deformed monster bat screeched and gave one flap of its leathery wings to send it straight toward my face at a dizzying speed.
There was nowhere to run in the hallway, so all I could do was tap Aegis to expand the shield and duck to avoid a claw straight to the face.
“What is that!” Elaene screamed as she dropped down next to me under the protection of the magical shield.
“A big-ass bat bastard,” I said. “Here.”
I unlatched the shield from my wrist and passed it over to the Atlantean woman. I waited for just a second before I popped back up to my feet with Phantom Doomslayer drawn.
The monster bat, which according to its health bar was a Bat Creature: level twenty-two, had flown up into one of the swinging lanterns a yard away and looked as if it was about to rip it straight out of the ceiling.
The creature gave another shrill scream as it saw my head reemerge, and without any further warning, it swooped down at me faster than I could have ever anticipated.
But thankfully, I was already prepared for the attack.
I swung straight at the bat’s head, and thanks to the fact that it didn’t have much space to navigate in the tiny hall, it was a clean hit.
My broadsword slid straight through the bat’s body like it was cutting through jelly, and the bat dropped down onto the ground in a very dead, very gross heap.
“That felt a little too easy…” I murmured, and sure enough, the words had only just left my mouth when I heard the now familiar sound of a panel sliding out of place just a yard ahead of us.
And then another, and another.
Soon the hallway was filled with monstrous bats of all different shapes and sizes but with one goal in mind. They wanted to kill us, and they were going to do their damndest to manage it.
The entire ceiling of the hallway was obscured now by the flapping of monstrous wings, and they successfully blotted out all of the light. The only reason I could see much of anything at all was because of Phantom Doomslayer’s soft, illuminating glow, and the Pauldrons of Wisdom, but even then, the bats blended into a mass of glowing red so seamlessly, it was like it was what they had been designed to do.
I mean, they were monsters, so it probably was.
Behind me, I heard Elaene tap Aegis and shrink the shield back down to the size of a watch. I peered over my shoulder at her while trying to keep my movements slow and subtle enough that the bats overhead didn’t notice.
“What are you doing?” I mouthed the words more than I actually spoke them.
Behind the Atlantean woman, I had to squint to see Yasha, but the fox-woman had pulled the Braided Sphinx Hair Whip from her belt, and it looked like she had wrapped the end of the whip around the hilt of the Talon Blade.
Oh, I had a bad feeling about this plan.
But then again.
“We cannot leave you to fight these monsters alone,” Elaene whispered back. “I can bring the second Opal Twin up into the air to fight, and Yasha plans on using her whip. We will pick off any stragglers as you make a charge for the exit to clear the way. Does this plan work?”
I couldn’t stop the grin that pulled across my face as I gave a very small nod. Hell yeah the plan worked.
I loved seeing Elaene come alive in this new element, and I had a feeling Black had no idea what he was messing with when he’d taken the Atlantean woman and trapped her into captivity. She was a clever fighter, and as someone else who tended to think first and get violent later, I could appreciate it.
Her presence made a nice buffer to Yasha’s intense fighting ability, and together, I had a feeling the three of us would make a great team for many dungeons to come.
But right now wasn’t the time to be wistful. We had a bunch of freaky bat things to kill.
“I’ll get as much of their attention as I can and pull them off so you two can pick off the rest,” I said. “Grab the chests that drop as it happens so we don’t have to backtrack, and be careful.”
Elaene nodded, which I was only able to see thanks to a bat flapping its wings and offering a quick flash of light that disappeared just as soon as it had arrived.
And then I started to run.
The sudden movement was all it took for the bats to remember we were here, and soon an entire army of the terrifying, gigantic monster bats flapped their wings and were on me.
There were at least a dozen in the hallway, and I had no idea how so many had managed to fill the space without us noticing. But maybe they’d been there the whole time? I mean, the ceilings were pretty high up.
It wasn’t a thought that offered much comfort, especially considering how long the hallway was, but it was better to think about that than the fact that I might die and become bat chow.
I swung Phantom Doomslayer up over my head in a sharp, clean arc and managed to scrape the tip of the blade along the belly of one of the smaller monster bats.
The creature shrieked out a deafening cry as gelatinous black blood dripped from the slit in its stomach. Its leathery wings flapped even harder as it launched itself straight at me.
I only had a split second to react and throw my blade up in front of my face as the bat flew straight at it. One of its sharpened talons attached to its wings like freaky fingers caught the side of my cheek as it tried to attack around my blade, but I pressed closer and closer.
I had to take advantage of the limited space rather than letting it hinder me. If I didn’t have much room to move around, neither did the bats.
With the hilt of my sword and my gloved fist, I reached up and slammed the bat backward into the nearest slatted wall with a loud crack, and I sliced straight down its center to reveal even more of the boneless ooze.
I had no time to celebrate, however, because three more bats were on me, and unlike the last one, these seemed to be a little smarter.
They circled around my head as best as they could, like cartoon birds in an old, animated show, and each time they flapped their wings, their razor-sharp talons sheared the air around them. I couldn’t feel the damage they were undoubtedly doing to me and my armor, but I could hear it all the same.
Each scrape of the talons against metal was like nails on a chalkboard.
The first of the three bats came at my face as the next slammed into the back of my head.
Everything around me was suddenly nothing but writhing darkness and the stench of mildew and rot.
Pain shot through my cheek as I felt a talon cut straight across the soft skin, and blood immediately began to seep from the wound and drip down into the collar of my chestplate.
“Shit!” I shouted as I threw my arms up to try and fight the bats off.
They were unrelenting, but so was I.
In the blink of an eye, I sheathed my sword and pulled out my own Talon Blade. Yasha had the right idea. It was too narrow in here to properly fight with a sword anyway, and this would give me far more room to navigate.
The bats didn’t stand a chance as soon as I threw my arm up and swiped out with vicious accuracy, but I wasn’t the only one they had to look out for.
When I downed the first bat, I was finally able to see past the wings and black, oozing bodies to get a look at how Yasha and Elaene were handling themselves.
The two inhuman women made a surprisingly perfect team as they fought off the remaining bats that hadn’t swarmed to me as I moved down the hallway.
Elaene dropped low to the ground just as Yasha swung her makeshift weapon up into the air with an insane amount of precision and hooked the ever so slightly curved edge of the Talon Blade into one of the bat’s wings.
She dragged the creature down to the ground a foot in front of Elaene, and the Atlantean woman used one of the Opal Twins to bisect the beast in one fell swoop. At the same time, the second Opal Twin levitated in the air and matched her motions against another one of the vile bats so she was able to kill two of the creatures at once.
As much as I wanted to just stand there and watch the two badass warrior women be badass warrior women, I also wanted to get these goddamned bats off of my fucking head.
I swung out with my own Talon Blade again and again to a chorus of horrific, high-pitched screams from the bats, but I showed no mercy as I continued down the hallway and dealt out death like it was my fucking job.
My arm ached, and my face was sore, but I wasn’t about to give in, and I certainly wasn’t going to stop now that we were finally getting somewhere.
After what felt like a never-ending eternity of cutting and walking, I finally reached the end of the impossibly long hallway. The walls had grown even narrower by the end of the hallway, so I really hoped the two women had been grabbing the chests that spawned, because there was no way I could comfortably turn around fully in here now.
“We are with you,” Elaene said before I could even shout back to make sure the two women had caught up to me.
She sounded breathless but a little giddy, and the sound of her voice alone was enough to make heat curl through my stomach.
Easy there, Wes, fucking in an equipment room was one thing, but in an actual dungeon was a whole separate level of stupid.
“Good,” I said. “Got the chests?”
“Yes!” Yasha shouted. “I did not care for those putrid bats.”
“Me, neither,” I agreed as I reached out to turn the knob of the door just in front of me. “But let’s keep going, we only have twenty minutes left, and I really hope we can find Trog before we need to get out of here.”
The door swung open, and I realized I had spoken only seconds too soon, because just inside the next room was Trog, and he looked like he was about to die.
Fuck.
Chapter 4
“Trog!” I shouted. “Shit! We’re coming!”
The room we emerged into was approximately the size of a small stadium, and unlike the hallway and the first room we’d been in, this one had stone floors that looked much more like the floors in the equipment room.
It was also, and probably more importantly, filled within a giant, labyrinthine maze. It looked like something straight out of Greek mythology.
The only reason we were even able to see the maze at all was the fact that the doorway opened up above a four yard drop into the room to give us an alarming, nearly bird’s-eye view of the giant monster that had my friend, Trog’thukaz, trapped in the very center of the maze.
Trog was a nine-foot-tall demonic-looking guy with chitinous skin that appeared to be made of dark black stone with magma moving just beneath the surface of it. He also had some terrifying tusks. All of these things combined to make it nearly impossible not to see him as he struggled in the center of the maze.
The walls themselves were only about ten feet tall, which probably would have been more of an issue if Trog wasn’t also gigantic.
He was wrapped in something I couldn’t quite make out from our distance, not even with my improved eyesight and ability to see the tricks dungeons tried to pull thanks to the Pauldrons of Wisdom. It looked almost like a net, or maybe it was some sort of ropes or chains?
One thing was for sure though, it looked like he was going to be choked to death at any moment.
There was no time to lose.
I glanced down at the steep drop that led to the floor of the maze room, and I swallowed back all of my concern and panic. It would be fine. The drop wasn’t that bad if I lowered myself down, and then I could get to Trog and get him out of there.
But that presented another issue entirely.
I would have to navigate the entire maze.
Then an idea struck me.
“Yasha,” I said. “You stay up here and help tell me where to go in the maze to get to Trog. You’ve got the best eyesight, and if you stay up here, you should be able to see the pathways that I need to go down.”
“That is a wise idea,” Yasha said. “Go, I will guide you.”
I immediately lowered myself down onto the ledge and then dropped down into the maze below. I landed straight in the first pathway of the wooden maze.
I took a step back only so I could help Elaene hop down. And then the two of us were off like a shot.
The walls seemed a whole hell of a lot taller on this level than they had a few yards up in the air, and it seemed almost impossible to know where I was going.
How the hell had Trog even managed to get to the center of the maze?
In front of us, the path split off into four separate directions, and none of them looked any less promising than the next. I skidded to a halt in front of the diverging path, but before I even had to shout up to Yasha, the fox-woman was on it.
“The first path, by Elaene!” she shouted to make sure her voice was heard.
I grabbed Elaene’s hand to pull her along behind me as I ran faster than I thought I’d ever run.
Thankfully, it seemed like Trog had already taken care of most of the monsters and other nasty tricks in the maze, if the littered dead bodies on the ground were any indication as to what he’d been up to before getting trapped somehow.
My heart hammered in my chest and threatened to burst out from my ribs entirely as I continued to run.
Yasha was a surprisingly good guide, and before I even had to think to ask her which direction to go, the fox-woman was calling out orders like a drill sergeant that echoed over the entire space.
