Come morning, we made our way through the corridor of merchant stalls and booths and headed for the base of the great stone outcrop which marked the dungeon entrance. My stomach growled at me as we walked past the funnel-cake stand we had patronized the night before.
I could’ve done with a repeat visit. This morning’s breakfast had been a cold, smushed ration which tasted like a stale protein bar, and which had been just as satisfying as it sounds.
Our tent – along with our bedrolls and other sundries – were still somewhere in the forest, left behind at the campsite we’d been forced to abandon when Camilla and her gang abducted us. So we’d spent last night in a dingy rent-a-tent that we’d rented from a shady-looking merchant at the market outskirts.
The rental had come with its own little plot of dirt for the night, complete with a firepit and a bucket of cold water for washing up. Unfortunately it hadn't come with bedrolls, so the overall experience was the same as sleeping on the ground, except now we were also out of money.
“You don’t think we picked up any bedbugs from that flophouse, do you?” I asked Aeshma.
“Nah, probably not. Even cheap-o places like that can afford pest-repellent spells,” Aeshma said, cheerfully downing another stale ration as we walked. “Oooh, look! Golden brass knuckles!” Despite the early hour, most of the merchant booths had already opened for business. Aeshma stopped to browse the offerings at a novelty weapon shop, leaving me the lone target of all the surrounding shopkeepers hawking their wares.
“Last wills and testaments, son! Get yours up to date, or make one if you don’t got one already!” shouted a hairy, friendly-looking man who was practically hanging out of his booth. The storefront was emblazoned with the name Will’s Testaments, and beneath it the shop’s oddly cheerful slogan, Gonna die? Your Will’s got you covered! The eponymous Will shot me a wink. “C’mon, son, don’t leave your friends and/or family hangin’! Threshold’s a daaaaangerous place!”
At the booth next door, a sunkissed old woman was peddling puka shell necklaces. “Shells to fend off Dire Lobsters! New models, fresh enchantments! Shells to fend off Dire Lobsters!”
Aeshma walked away from the novelty weapon store empty-handed and wiped the last crumb of ration off her mouth. “Okay, I’m done window-shopping. Let’s blow this joint.”
“Aeshma, what’s this about Dire Lobsters? Are they something I’m gonna have to worry about in the Dungeon?”
She glanced at the leathery puka merchant and shook her head. “Nah, Dire Lobsters aren’t a thing until, like, Zone Three at a minimum.” As we watched, one of the other market-goers jogged up to the cart and excitedly pointed at one of the necklaces. He handed over some coins and the merchant gingerly placed it around his neck. A faint bluish aura shimmered around him.
I frowned. “Okay, because that guy seems to think there might be Dire Lobsters coming up.”
“A new sucker’s born every minute, Roland. Don’t even worry about it. Besides, the enchantment on that thing is probably bunk.”
I was starting to have my doubts about Aeshma’s level of preparedness for taking me through the Queen’s Threshold, but at this point there wasn’t much I could do about it. I gave Jie a reassuring pat on the pommel. He was tucked into my belt, totally motionless, in the familiar shape of a dagger.
Aeshma led me through the market thoroughfare all the way to the imposing stone cliff face, where the trail terminated at a set of heavy stone doors set into the rock. To one side of the doors was a signboard offering ‘low-danger’ expeditions into the dungeon. To the other side was a dirty-faced boy in a newsie cap, selling Dungeon maps.
I examined the doors. They had been deeply engraved at some point, but age had eroded the surface so badly it was hard to make out the imagery – a mass of tangled lines in one corner, maybe an animal with a toothy maw in another, all but lost to time. “So this is it, the entrance to the Queen’s Threshold?” I asked Aeshma nervously.
It wasn’t Aeshma, but rather the little map-seller boy who answered. “You betcha, mister! But the real challenge o’ the place isn’t finding the entrance, it’s gettin’ to the end, I reckon!” he said in an extremely Cockney accent.
“Oh… yeah? What–”
“Shhh, shut up!” Aeshma hissed at me. “Just ignore him. And don’t make eye contact either, he might have Salesman-Eyes.”
“I’d never resort to a dirty trick like that! No need, neither, these treasure maps are so good I can’t hardly keep ‘em in stock! Look at these maps and you’ll see for yourself! Sir, look over here! Sir!”
I ignored him as Aeshma shouldered into one of the heavy stone doors. When it didn’t budge, she grabbed the handle and pulled. The door opened with the grinding sound of rock on rock.
“Buy one get one free?” the boy-merchant called hopefully.
“C’mon Roland,” Aeshma said, and slipped through the entrance to the Queen’s Threshold. I followed her through the opening in the cliff-face. The stone door rasped shut behind me.
We found ourselves in a long, vaulted hallway. At some point the hallway must’ve been painstakingly excavated from the surrounding rock, because its walls and floors were made of the same pale, grayish stone as the cliff-face outside. I ran my hand along the wall next to me. It was perfectly smooth, almost frictionless, without any chiselmarks or even the natural, rough stone texture I would’ve expected.
Even stranger, despite the fact that there were no windows to the outside world, nor torches or any other light sources that I could see, the interior of the hallway was illuminated as brightly as if we were still outside.
The rib-like beams criss-crossing the ceiling gave me the impression that Aeshma and I were marching down a giant stone throat. It was a silly thing to think, and was probably my nerves talking… or maybe it was exactly the impression I was supposed to get before facing off against whatever horrible Monsters lurked inside.
I shouldn’t have been so uneasy, with how overleveled Aeshma was for this area. Still, I felt uneasy. I didn’t have any idea what to expect once we got past this hallway and into the Dungeon proper. When Aeshma had told me Dungeons were like ‘tunnels between zones’, I imagined a tunnel like the kind I’d drive through in my car, back home. But now that I was here, I was realizing that tunnel could mean a lot of different things. I was thinking of all the caving and spelunking accidents I’d ever read about.
“So how cramped is this place gonna be?” I asked. “Like… are we going to have to crawl through any passages? Because all that cave exploration stuff kind of freaks me out.”
“Dungeons aren’t like that at all,” Aeshma chuckled, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. She’d been in a good mood ever since slamming the door shut right in the newsie boy’s face. She gestured up at the vaulted ceiling, which extended at least two stories above us. “This is just the beginning. Once you get inside, it’s like, woah! You know? Like stories high and with all these gardens and everything.”
“When I think of a dungeon, I think of somewhere… dark and musty, I guess. Not somewhere you could grow plants.”
“Hmm. I guess the words mean different things where we’re from. I dunno, Dungeon, it’s not dark, it’s more like a… like a….” She gestured frustratedly around us. “Kinda like a tower, I guess? Or like a tall city, or maybe a long city? You’ll understand once we’re in it.”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
We approached a mosaic set in the wall. Many of its tiles were cracked or missing, but it still clearly depicted a forest scene. As we progressed even further, the hallway grew narrower and its ceiling grew lower. It winded sharply to the left, and the right, and the left again, leading us down a series of blind turns. The floor seemed slanted in some way I didn’t understand. I couldn’t tell whether we were walking up into the rocky outcropping, or descending deeper below it.
Once I was good and disoriented, the hallway opened up into the Dungeon proper. Aeshma hadn’t adequately prepared me for how huge this place was. Whoever had built it must have hollowed out the entire mountain; nothing else could explain the immensity of the stone city before us. We had emerged into a little courtyard, overgrown with scrubby, pale green grass. Ahead and to either side of us, the cavern was filled with towering stone buildings, all covered in ivy and climbing vines. Here and there I could make out tiny dots of pink and purple where flowers were blooming among the foliage. Moss-covered bridges spanned across the city and linked the stone towers to terraces, just like ours, which jutted from the cavern walls.
Most strikingly, the far wall of the cave consisted mostly of an enormous stained glass window depicting a variety of grizzly scenes: a hairy, fanged Monster eating a Human, a scaly quadruped Monster eating a Human, and other variations on that same theme. Besides its gory subject matter, the window was actually a pretty nice piece of art. It was inset with lots of little ornamental flowers and leaves which conferred a woodsy, relaxing vibe, and the light streaming through it bathed the whole cavern in a pale gold light.
The cavern stretched far, far below us, so far that I couldn’t see the bottom. There was one of those moss-covered bridges maybe fifteen feet below us, a clear path towards the nearest stone tower… but there was no ladder, no stairs, and no other obvious way to get down to it from our terrace. Besides just jumping, I guess.
Even with the technology I was used to, building this place would’ve been a colossal undertaking. “I’ve never seen a building this big before,” I said. “It’s kinda… beautiful.”
“Yeah… yeah, it is.” There was something wistful in Aeshma’s tone. It must have been hard for her to leave something like this behind and to abandon her post as Dungeon Boss.
“You okay, Aeshma?” I asked.
She didn’t reply, but for a while longer just gazed off across the city. I looked with her, really feeling the weight of the moment as we stared together into the foggy city and all its abandoned dreams.
When Aeshma started tracing out routes along the bridges with her outstretched finger, though, I realized she wasn’t having an emotional moment like I thought. She was just figuring out the best way through the Dungeon. After a minute she let her finger drop and turned to me with a satisfied grin.
“Alright Roland! We got lucky and there’s a nice, easy path today. We basically just have to make a couple simple jumps. After that we’ll have a long, peaceful stroll all the way to the exit. Seriously, dude, this is like the easiest layout I’ve ever heard of. Just follow me and we’ll be outta here quick.”
Aeshma clapped me on the back and, without further warning, leapt off the terrace and onto the bridge below us. It took some coaxing – more like taunting, the way Aeshma did it – but I eventually worked up the courage to jump down after her. I was ready for my ankles to explode when I landed, but fortunately the soft, pale green moss which covered the bridge’s surface cushioned my fall. It was even more overgrown than the terrace had been. Tufts of grass and tiny, woody shrubs had sprouted up along the bridge as well, taking purchase in whatever seams they could find.
Here and there mottled, gray-brown roots punctured the bridge’s surface, which was weird, because there weren’t any trees nearby, or bushes large enough to–
“BEHOLD!”
A woman’s voice pierced through my thoughts. Aeshma scrunched up her face, so I assumed she was able to hear it, too.
“The Queen’s Threshold lies before you, foolish adventurers! Gaze upon its majesty and weep!” the voice continued in a condescending, uppity sneer.
“Oh crap,” Aeshma said with a pained expression.
“Will you run headfirst to your doom? Or will you flee, tucked-tail, and live?”
“Uhh, Aeshma? What’s–?” I said, before Aeshma clapped her hand over my mouth. “Uhm, waths bowin’ on, bal?” I asked through her hand. I must’ve been getting used to her Succubus charms, because other than a bit of wooziness I wasn't overly affected by the contact.
“Between you and your goal lie innumerable traps, tricks, and mind-bending puzzles sure to drive you to… wait, did I hear someone say Aeshma?”
“Aethsma? Who’th that dalking do us?” I hissed through her fingers.
“Oh ho ho! So that really is Aeshma!” called the sneering voice, “Someone wants her Dungeon back, hm?”
Aeshma groaned dramatically and pulled her hand away from my mouth. “Uggh! Of all the assholes to take over the Threshold, it just had to be you, didn’t it, Tatzel?”
“Language! I see your time among the Humans hasn't made you any less of a brute. And… oh hold on, let me turn the PA down to a more polite volume.” There was a faint, feedback-y screech. “There we go. Is that better? Now tell me, what’s that creature that was mumbling beside you? I’ve got audio coming through, but you haven’t walked in front of a seer statue yet, so no visuals. Did you pick up another pet, Aeshma?”
“I’m not a pet!” I yelled indignantly into the empty air. “We’re a party! A party of equals!” I looked at Aeshma, hoping that she’d back me up. She just stood there rubbing the bridge of her nose and mumbling curses to herself.
“No, of course you’re not, how silly of me. You’re probably… hm, a snack,” said the voice named Tatzel.
‘Snack’ wasn’t much of a promotion from ‘pet’. And the longer I thought about it, the more concerning it was to have been described as another of Aeshma’s pets. But instead of stepping forward with an explanation, Aeshma just said, “You finally got put in as Boss, eh Tatz? How many Monsters did they run through before they got to you? If I remember right, you didn’t do so great at the cross-Camp competition. Pretty close to last place, actually, weren’t you?”
“Oh pah!” Tatzel spat. “Screw Camp, and screw that competition, too. I’ll have you know, I worked my way up to my current role entirely on my own merit, not on the basis of some childish contest. And by the way, if Camp hadn’t put such an emphasis on raw strength, I would’ve been at the top of the pile. They simply didn’t appreciate my talents there.”
“She sounds kinda bitter,” I whispered. “Anyway, should we keep moving? You said it was a really easy dungeon layout, right? Maybe we can walk and talk?”
“Oh, yes, Roland, she is bitter about Camp! You hear that, Tatzel? My Human says you sound like a little twerp!” Aeshma yelled, her eyes bugging out. She was so fixated on her argument with Tatzel that she didn’t even register the second part of my statement. “We all called her Tattle-Tatzel, because of all the sucking up she did to the counselors. Remember that, Tatz? Tattle-Tat–”
“Do NOT call me that!”
Tatzel shrieked over the Phantasmal Announcer. Then she cleared her throat sheepishly and regained her former condescending tone. “I’m sorry you had to hear that, Human. Such an outburst is unbecoming of a Monster of my… considerable rank.”
“Pff,” Aeshma spat and rolled her eyes. It seemed like they were both pretty good at needling each other.
“Yeah, no problem. It was a little loud, though,” I said. “I’m Roland, by the way, nice to meet you. And–”
“I really don’t care,” Tatzel interrupted.
“Maybe you should get caring, missy!” Aeshma screamed. “Because let me tell you, Roland and I are about to kick your scaly ass six ways to sunset. And once we do, I’m gonna have your hide made into a tacky, stupid-looking coat for Roland to wear! And you’ll get all tattered and dirty because you suck, and then we’ll throw you in the garbage!”
“Wow, okay Aeshma, can you calm down a bit?” I said to the wild-eyed Succubus. Her hands were clenched tight into fists, and she was so mad she was even breathing heavily. I wasn’t worried that she would fly into a rage and attack me or anything… well, maybe a little. But mostly I was worried she would charge off to try to find Tatzel, leaving me alone and undefended in a dangerous Dungeon.
“Ahhhh! Tatzel is just so… she’s just so… so… arrgghhh!” Aeshma groaned, before deflating with a sigh.
“Maybe we can take all this energy and save it for when we’re fighting her?” I suggested.“But first we have to get to wherever she is. She said there were puzzles and traps on the way, right?”
“Oh yes Aeshma, focus. My puzzles were designed to test both bravery and intellect,” Tatzel said. “So if you can just find someone with those qualities…”
A wicked grin stretched across Aeshma’s face. “Oh, we’ll solve your stupid puzzles, Tatz, don’t worry about that. Tell you what… we’re speedrunning this shit.”
Aeshma gestured for me to follow before taking off down the bridge, running at a pace that I could barely manage at a sprint. “Trust me on this Roland. We’ll be killing Tatz in no time,” she yelled. She was already a good thirty yards ahead of me.
I cursed and tightened Jie’s straps around my arm as I ran after her.
Puka Shell Necklace of ‘Dire Lobster’ Repulsion
—------------------------------------------------------------------
Item Level 1
Usage tags: worn
Effect: Repels Level 1 crustaceans of medium size or less
Shape: 5 foot radius
