Chapter 44. Principles

  Jeremiah emerged back into the oasis room to find Bruno touching a blank wall. “Bad news,” he said, “the holes Allison hacked open just closed up. Wall grew back over it like a damn scab.”

  “Worse news,” said Jeremiah, “Allison and Delilah are out of action for now. Maybe for…well, for now.” There didn’t seem any reason to panic Bruno about how sick Allison really was. Besides, he didn’t really understand it himself. “No bag either, Delilah says we need to keep it shut.”

  They were quiet for a moment. There was a surreal quality to the situation. Two adventurers down, they were at half strength. No fighter, no doctor. Jeremiah felt horribly exposed. “What now?”

  “We carry on,” said Bruno. “Through the wall?”

  Jeremiah shook his head. “That’s what got Allison sick. And I don’t think the dungeon liked it either, that’s why the bear was summoned.”

  Bruno nodded. “Want to take a guess why the bear this time, and not when we went through the last two walls?”

  Jeremiah thought for a minute. “It didn’t react until Allison hit the wall again. Summoning something so large must take a huge amount of energy. We’re close to something important, aren’t we?”

  “You’re learning quick. I think it tipped it’s hand with that one.”

  “So we press on?” asked Jeremiah. “Even though we’re down two people?”

  “To sound only the exact proper amount of cocky, we still have the most important person for this place,” said Bruno. “Let’s get what we came for.”

  They tried the door leading what should be further into the dungeon. The short hallway beyond was reminiscent of an undersea cave, with blue glowing crystals hanging from the ceiling and shells dotting the walls. There was no exit.

  “Ugh, tacky,” said Bruno.

  “Why would there be a dead end?” asked Jeremiah. “Space seems to be at such a premium here, it’s just a waste.”

  “Good point, what does that mean?”

  “That means…it’s not a dead end, is it? It also means it’d be weird for that last room to only exist as a nice place to rest.”

  As Bruno busied himself checking the new hallway for traps, Jeremiah contemplated the inconsistency. He pushed away the thoughts about Allison that kept bubbling up. Delilah was doing her job, and she was relying on him to do his.

  Bruno had already searched the oasis room more thoroughly than Jeremiah ever could, and he hadn’t spotted anything notable.

  “What’s with these theme-y rooms?” Jeremiah asked. “One big centerpiece to draw your attention—that’s got to have something to do with it, right?”

  “Isn’t it awful?” said Bruno. “Where's the subtlety? I'm expecting a basement with skeletons chained to the walls next.”

  Jeremiah contemplated the statue. It had been damaged during the battle with the dire bear, now the goddess looked up to arms that ended in stumps. Water still bubbled forth from them, flowing down to feed the twin rivulets in the floor.

  Rivulets that continued into the dead-end hallway before disappearing into the floor. “Huh,” said Jeremiah.

  The spray from the water was ice cold. When the statue had been whole, the water seeped gently from the palms. He would have had to raise his hands in a near-embrace of the statue to reach the outflow. In its broken state, water burbled up from the statue’s stumps, spilling onto Jeremiah’s shoes.

  “Oh, I get it!” Jeremiah pressed his palms into the smooth marble of the broken stumps, firmly enough to block the flow of water. After a moment, he heard a click, and the wall blocking the dead-end hallway slid away, revealing a new passage.

  “Not bad!” said Bruno. “Good reasoning. You should have let me check the water lines for traps, though.”

  “Thank you for the almost compliment,” said Jeremiah.

  “You almost earned it. Now step aside and let's get this hallway checked out.”

  Bruno kept Jeremiah close and began testing him. Asking him to pick out oddities that might signal a trap, feeling for aberrations in air flow and temperature that could mean a seam in a trigger.

  “Luckily, disarming most traps is just a matter of breaking them,” said Bruno. He snaked a metal hook under a pressure plate, gripped it, and yanked. Something snapped underneath the stone floor. “And breaking anything is easy. Oh sure, there's some that are set off by breaking them. But they’re less common, out of your expertise for now.”

  “Gotcha,” said Jeremiah.

  “Of course, there's traps that are so convoluted that you only think you're breaking them. Those are called Rats Nest designs. You'll learn that there are different designations of traps and triggers,” Bruno continued to ramble on, pressing a cork into a concealed hole in the wall.

  “Uh-huh,” said Jeremiah.

  “Now, there's also Shark Fin structures, and those date back-”

  “You trying not to worry about Allison?” Interrupted Jeremiah.

  “Yes, please don't disrupt my cope,” said Bruno, “anyways, a Shark Fin is an anti-tool component-”

  Jeremiah just let Bruno talk, listening was proving to be an effective coping tool as well.

  Eventually they reached the end of the underwater themed hallway. The aquamarine stones became odd chaotic grey bricks, stacked haphazardly along either side of them like a long abandoned tunnel. It reminded Jeremiah of the first dungeon he had entered with his friends, some sort of long abandoned cellar to a great castle. Glowing crystals became oily torches, and the hall descended down stone stairs into darkness below.

  “I hate this guy,” said Bruno. “And I hate stairs.”

  “You’re not that old yet,” said Jeremiah.

  “Not because I can’t climb them, you ass,” said Bruno, “It’s because traps are a lot easier to hide on stairs. They’re also harder to access safely, especially when going down them. Harder to dodge without jumping down and risking more traps, and a lot easier to get tagged by something and knocked down the stairs onto more traps.”

  “That’s exactly what’s going to happen,” said Jeremiah suddenly.

  “What? How do you know?” asked Bruno.

  “Think about it. What was the whole point of that Tunnel Ooze? Allison said it wasn’t a difficult fight, but it forced you into setting off traps. The door with a message written in halfling? What’s the point of the warning? This Cassidy guy wants you to set off his traps,” said Jeremiah.

  “Of course he does, that’s the point of traps,” said Bruno.

  “No, it's more than that,” said Jeremiah, turning Bruno to look him hard in the eyes, “These rooms have ridiculous themes. For who? The traps are convoluted and weird. Why? The Dungeon Core and the Furnace Curse gas stops you from getting through walls. Hell, even the guards outside are paid to stop people from getting into the house in a way that isn’t right.”

  Bruno smiled at Jeremiah, shaking his head in disbelief, “It’s pride. Cassidy is damn proud of his little house of traps. He wants to show it to us. He wants us to see the traps, the decor, all of it.”

  Jeremiah slapped him on the shoulder, “Exactly! He may have thought he was building a test for thieves, but what he was really doing was-”

  “Building a shrine to his own sense of pride,” finished Bruno, “look at how clever I am. Look at my impeccable taste, learn my important lessons, admire my deadly traps, but most especially don’t avoid them…which is why something is going to force us down the stairs faster than we want.”

  “So we can set off more traps,” said Jeremiah.

  “But why do that if the admirers are going to be killed?” Bruno asked.

  “Does it matter?” answered Jeremiah with a shrug.

  “Hah! You weren’t born for this kind of work Jay, but you’re certainly a talented amateur. That being said, I’m going to need you to acid splash the ceiling. I’ve got a hunch.”

  Taking careful aim, Jeremiah fired several balls of acid against the gray stone ceiling where Bruno had indicated. The acid hissed, and as it dripped away, a distinct rectangular outline appeared— a large trap door, nearly the width of the passageway.

  “Allow me.” Bruno leapt onto the wall, clinging to the smooth stone with one of the magic handles, and pried into the gap with a throwing sword. After a few stiff jabs and a wrenching motion, the trap door sprung open. A massive round boulder fell onto the stairs and began rolling down with the deafening sound of stone-on-stone. As it went, darts, spears, and swinging blades stabbed at its wake. They heard it roll around and around the spiral stairs before settling somewhere far below.

  “Giant rolling boulder,” said Bruno, “figures.”

  They descended the stairs together, navigating the discarded trap elements. The boulder had done a better job than they ever could have.

  “Boulder chases you down the steps into the other awaiting traps,” said Bruno.

  “Just like the tunnel ooze,” said Jeremiah. He picked up one of the spears that had thrust down from the ceiling. It was solid, but horribly balanced. Purely industrial.

  “A rushed trap is a dangerous trap,” said Bruno.

  Click

  “What was that? What did you step on?” asked Bruno. He crouched, preparing to leap to safety.

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  “Nothing, I didn’t step on any—”

  There was a thunderous boom, and a familiar sound began above them. A rumbling angry growl that grew louder and louder. A second boulder.

  “Oh you gotta be kidding me!” shouted Bruno.

  Bruno shoved Jeremiah to the outside of the staircase and yanked him to the ground. The edge of the stone flagons bit into Jeremiah's back and shoulders as Bruno yanked his arms out over his head, stretching him out long and thin as possible in the corner where the stairs met the wall.

  The boulder shook the stairs like an earthquake. All that kept Jeremiah from sprinting down the stairs was the trust he had in Bruno. Bruno threw his swords as fast as a bird's wings beat, the magic blades biting deep into the stairs above them and wedging there.

  The sight of the boulder rolling towards them caused Jeremiah to shrink even further back into his corner. The boulder struck Bruno’s blades, altering its course by the slightest amounts away from Jeremiah and towards the inner wall.

  Bruno leapt with an acrobat's grace, springing off the wall diving through the narrow gap between boulder and ceiling.

  Jeremiah remembered seeing Bruno jump, and the distinct texture of the surface of the boulder. Then he was looking up at his friend’s concerned face.

  “Jay? Jay, can you hear me?” Bruno leaned close, putting his ear to Jeremiah's mouth. “I can feel you breathing, so you're not—”

  Darkness.

  “Wake up, Jay, come on!” Bruno was doing something to Jeremiah that made his body jerk and his chest hurt.

  Jeremiah's lungs screamed for air. He obliged them and something awful shifted in his chest.

  “There he is!” cried Bruno.

  “Am I okay?” said Jeremiah.

  “You're alive,” said Bruno. “But you’re hurt. Your nose is messed up, and uh…your foot is uh…b-broken.” He swallowed hard.

  Jeremiah pushed himself up and waited for the agony. It never came. He looked at his foot. It was crumpled strangely—his toes and the front half pointed straight up, as though someone had tried to roll his foot up. It didn’t hurt.

  He touched it. Still nothing. He grabbed the injured part with both hands.

  “Oh no, please don't!” Bruno said.

  Jeremiah unrolled his foot with a long sinewy crunch. It didn’t hurt. Bruno puked with enthusiasm. Jeremiah felt his nose and found it flattened against his face.

  “We weren’t going to outrun that boulder, were we?” asked Jeremiah. His voice sounded nasally and unfamiliar.

  “No,” gagged Bruno.

  “Thanks, then,” said Jeremiah. “Get your swords, let’s get off the stairs before another one of those things shows up.”

  The stair opened to a massive underground room. Jeremiah half expected it to be stacked high with bodies, like the crypt King Growler had prepared for him. Instead, this one was stylized like a gigantic dungeon cell, complete with skeletons in the final stage of decay shackled to the wall.

  The pair of boulders nestled at a holding space at the bottom of the staircase. Jeremiah eyed them as he limped past, half expecting them to leap up somehow to finish the job. He was able to walk if he was careful about placing his weight on the heel of his foot, but an ache was starting to grow.

  “There won’t be any traps in this room, I reckon,” said Bruno. “Cassidy wouldn’t want to distract from his grand finale.” He crossed the room with confidence to inspect a great vault door on the far side. It was monolothic, and depicted a host of angels in dramatic poses cavorting and playing trumpets and harps. They clustered tighter and tighter as they approached the center of the door, but at its center was a large devils head with curled horns and a wide open mouth. The angels kept a respectable distance from the face that looked outward with a look of mild surprise.

  Bruno had traveled the room unmolested, but as Jeremiah moved to follow, the ache in his foot flared and blossomed. He grasped, trying not to scream, and then gave up and screamed as loud as he could. The pain spread from his foot to his hips and ribs, his smashed up face, building like a house fire until it became a raging inferno consuming everything in its path.

  Then it was as bad as it was going to get. Jeremiah’s screams faded to whimpers, then he was panting. The inferno still burned through him, but he could handle it, could master it and set it aside. At least enough to continue.

  Bruno had been following Jeremiah’s progress patiently, letting Jeremiah scream himself out. “Caught up with you, huh?”

  “Yes, yes it did,” Jeremiah growled. “What's up with the door?”

  Bruno looked at the masterpiece of metal and sighed, “Cassidy and I wouldn't have gotten along based on taste alone. Sad. I need to take my time here, wait further back for me. I don't want you anywhere near this thing.”

  Leaning on his short spear as a crutch, Jeremiah took his distance and let Bruno work.

  “This room reminds me of the dungeon in Nosirin. Remember that?” asked Jeremiah.

  “With the bodies?” asked Bruno, prodding at the eyes of an angel.

  “Yeah, hundreds of them,” said Jeremiah. His memory stacked them up again, piles and piles in neat rows.

  “Yup, just for you,” said Bruno absently.

  Jeremiah remembered with a jolt that they’d executed prisoners in preparation for his arrival. People had been ordered to death because a necromancer was coming to help, and he'd need material to work with. He’d never made that connection before.

  How far a cry Nosirin had been from where he was now, he realized. From blindly commanding hundreds of undead to manipulating a single rat with unimaginable precision. Even casting magic through it—that was a sign of mastery he’d never known was possible. He felt a swell of pride at the achievement.

  “Tell me of your achievements,” said Allison.

  His pride snuffed out as suddenly as an extinguished candle. The Tragedy had only happened because of his achievement. His supposed mastery had led to pain and death and suffering on an unprecedented scale.

  “ It wasn't my fault,” thought Jeremiah, “Pete said-”

  “What did Pete say?” said Allison, “What was it Pete said that forced you to obey him?”

  If Jeremiah had only failed or even refused, thousands of shattered lives would still be whole.

  He saw it now, clearer than he’d ever allowed himself before. If he’d kept his promise to quit necromancy, none of that day would have happened. If he’d stuck to his word, maybe Pete would have been angry, but the city would have been spared.

  “There will always be a reason,” said Allison.

  “Always,” said Flusoh.

  “Alright I got the gist of it,” said Bruno, “This head here is a countdown mechanism. Let me show you.” He twisted the head of one of the angels, one with a more menacing disposition and holding a subtle knife behind it's back. As the head turned away from the devil face, an aperture in the center opened to reveal a deep fist-sized hole in the devil's mouth.

  Bruno released the angel. Jeremiah heard a faint ticking sound as the head gradually rotated back towards its original position.

  “Obviously, this hole in the middle is the mechanism to open it, which you access by activating the timer. It’s a classic timed lock picking challenge, with just one wrinkle.”

  At Bruno’s words, the timer ran down and the aperture slammed shut. “Ah,” said Jeremiah. “Failure means dismemberment, huh?”

  “So it would seem,” said Bruno. “I’ve had a poke around inside with the tools, but its too deep for just the tools. Ill need to get in there manually, which I am very loath to do.”

  Bruno wiggled his fingers. “Fortunately, Cassidy’s cheesy design sensibility has left plenty of spares around. Jay, if you would?” He gestured to the nearest skeleton shackled to the wall.

  “I can’t.” Jeremiah was almost as surprised as Bruno to hear the words leave his lips.

  “Can't? You okay?” Bruno looked Jeremiah up and down.

  Jeremiah licked his lips. “I won’t. I won’t raise the dead anymore. I keep hurting people. People ask me to do necromancy, and when I do terrible things happen. So, I’m not going to be that person anymore. Really, this time.”

  Bruno nodded along until Jeremiah finished. “Okay, okay. But consider the following—what the fuck are you talking about? We’re in a dungeon. Our lives and our friends’ lives— you didn’t forget about them did you?—are at stake here. The person you want to be is alive, right? So quit philosophizing and get the damn job done.”

  “No.” It was scary to say with Bruno scowling at him, but Jeremiah was resolute. “We do it the old fashioned way.”

  “‘We,’ he says,” muttered Bruno, turning back to the lock. “Bet your tune would be different if you were the one sticking your hand in here.”

  “It wouldn’t,” said Jeremiah.

  “Shut up!” Bruno barked, “Let me concentrate.”

  Bruno reset the timer and prodded the mechanism inside the angels neck with his tools. The angel's gaze now frozen, the aperture permanently revealed.

  Finally, flexing his fingers and taking a breath, Bruno plunged his hand into the hole. The timer only sporadically twitched as he worked, face screwed up in concentration.

  Jeremiah watched confidently. Bruno could handle this lock, just like the countless others Jeremiah had watched him conquer with ease. So why was something tickling the back of his mind?

  This was the end of the dungeon, the final task of Cassidy’s monument. The culmination of his life’s work, to be passed on to the right person. What would he plan for this moment, right when you’re about to best his dungeon and usurp his crown?

  “Juuuust about there,” said Bruno.

  “ I want to be remembered ,” said Cassidy.

  Jeremiah understood. “Bruno, wait!” he shouted.

  But it was too late. “Got it!” Bruno announced with triumph. There was a loud bang from inside the door, Bruno's face contorted in a wordless scream, and the head of every angel turned to stare down at him.