Dungeon Masters Read online

  “Why?” the client repeated, as he was led away. “It was such a little thing … just a ring …”

  Trix sighed. She wandered over to the balcony overlooking the pit, leaned on the railing, looked down. She was thinking about the client’s mysterious visitor when she realised Elly was leaning on the railing beside her.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure,” Trix said. She decided not to mention that part of the encounter. At least for now. “I just get sick of pricks like him treating the dungeon as if it’s a game, you know?”

  “It is a game these days. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  Oh, she’d noticed. There was no way she couldn’t. And both she and Elly hated it. Hated the fact that, for a million-dollar buy-in, any bunch of amateurs could chance their arms in the levels they’d lost so many of their own trying to secure. They’d both been privates when the anomaly had appeared nine years earlier—Trix in the British Army, Elly, the US; worlds apart but that hardly mattered when dealing with a different world—and while they wouldn’t normally have been privy to the existence of such a discovery, the casualty rate had been so high that every grunt stationed in the eastern hemisphere had been drafted in. It was, as far as they both knew, the first time the Chinese military had asked for such help, and they’d needed it. The rift became an international operation, and a whole lot of people had died holding it. The hordes of hell had been disgorged into what had been then simply desert, and the sand and brush had been stained red before the monsters had been pushed back into the world from which they’d come. The mistake that had then been made was to go in after them, to eradicate the threat before it could return. Both Trix and Elly survived the slaughter that had followed, down on level three, but at a cost—for Elly, a week lost in the depths and the post-traumatic stress that would see her demoted to a surface role, and for Trix, the loss of her brother, serving on the same assault team, dragged screaming into the dark. After his loss—after that day—the entire strategy of exploring the anomaly changed—less frontal assault, more guarded exploration. Perimeter defences were established—sufficient to blow away anything that emerged—but the restrictions on functioning weaponry and inability to enter anywhere other than where the open section of the anomaly had appeared severely hampered any tactics other than measured, step-by-step ingress. It was a long, slow process. The third level was eventually cleared in a series of hit-and-run surgical strikes, then the fourth, and at last they reached the fifth, but the losses to life continued. During this time a number of probes pile-driven into the desert floor—utilising high-penetration, deep- microwave mapping—determined that the levels of the anomaly extended not only for miles laterally, but vertically, too. Estimates were that the number of levels was in excess of twenty-five. It was possible there were more. The deep mapping simply could not tell after that point, though the microwave sweeps continued to this day. Not so the involvement of the militaries, who began to run short on resources.

  It had been DragonCorp that had first mooted the possibility of taking over the exploration. The R&D giant was already investing heavily in the scientific side of things, so it had seemed a natural progression, especially as it had a ready-made workforce in the form of those being made redundant from various armies in those cash-strapped times. It found itself, in fact, in a position to be able to cherry-pick, and for some strange reason Trix was one of the cherries it chose. She’d been there during the construction of DOME, there as the existence of the anomaly was made public, initially as a guide for the various science teams that began to flood in from around the world and, as time passed, for the mercenary expeditions to whom DragonCorp began to grant licence of entry at that million a throw. All these years later, she remained, having forgotten how much blood she’d mopped up, how many body bags she’d helped seal, and how, just when she thought she’d seen it all, another day brought more.

  Speaking of.

  Trix checked her watch. Damn, almost time for her to take the party down. By the time she kitted up, there’d be no chance to get the ring up to research. Ah well, she’d just have to check it in when she got back.

  Elly accompanied her as she picked her way through the remains of the café. They reached the stairs to the pit and flashed their passes. Keepers’ lockers were positioned at its north end, under the Grimrock balcony, where Trix shrugged into body armour, refilled her potion belt, and slung a quarterstaff and crossbow across her back. Elly made sure they were slung comfortably.

  “How long’s the crawl?”

  “Four days.”

  “Want me to pop in and feed Puff?”

  “Nah. He ate the curtains this morning. He’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Drinks when you get back?”

  “Sure.”

  Trix pecked Elly on the cheek and moved off. She noticed she was starting with a limp not dissimilar to that of the ’trols who’d greeted her from the exonexus. Shen’s buffs were beginning to wear off, the damage she’d taken in the scrap asserting itself.

  Great. Bloody great.

  Nonetheless, she forced a smile for the clients awaiting her, buoying herself with that old dungeoneers’ mantra.

  You must gather your party before venturing forth.

  II

  Party

  The levels.

  Funny, really—first-timers invariably expected some appropriately ominous entrance. Through the jaws of a dragon’s skull, perhaps, between the fangs of a giant cobra’s head, or beneath the spikes of a portcullis rumbled open in belches of sparks and flame. But there was none of that. No Rodin’s Gates of Hell, no Dantean inscription warning Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. The reality was that the entrance to the levels was just a hole in a wall.

  It lay south of the lockers, a hundred-odd yards away. Amongst a stretch of stonework overgrown with strange lichen and violently coloured fungi, day-glo orange, green, and red. There were sections of buttress, coping stones, slabs like the first moves in a game of dominoes making up a partial floor. A torch sconce, long extinguished, was affixed crookedly to half a pillar whose other half was a dimension away. It looked like the exterior of some ancient ruin unearthed from the Chinese desert with archaeological care. But ancient ruins didn’t come skewed at forty-five degrees. Nor fizz and flicker with faint blue light like faulty neon. Most especially, they did not open at their midpoint onto a medieval-looking corridor stretching not only into the distance but into another world.

  A rupture of dimensional membranes, the boffins called it. A hernia in the guts of realities. Everything here was interior, not exterior, stonework, a cross section of an unimaginably larger structure, and what awaited along that corridor was born not of the past but of the present of another plane.

  Trix led her party of six boffins towards the anomaly, she in combat gear, they in hazmat suits with portable laboratories strapped to their backs, making them look like astronauts. They turned to glance warily up at the boom guns as they passed under them into their kill zone. DOME’s countermeasures, its first line of defence, ticked softly, tracking them as they moved. But they would fire only on anything that, without prior notification, came out of the rift, not anything going in. The boffins had nothing to worry about.

  Neither, Trix reflected, had she. The party she’d pulled for today’s gig was made up of botanists from a trio of universities who together had stumped up the expedition fees, and their interest lay in medicinal plant samples from levels two and three. They were going on a herb hunt, in other words, and though they’d be down for four days, the most dangerous thing they were likely to come across was an infectious spore or two. It was drudge work, but Trix didn’t mind that, because for every twenty-four hours she spent nursemaiding such parties, she earned twenty-four hours of free exploration for herself. Lately she’d been saving them and now had eight days which she planned to cash in soon—she was eager to take another look at that octopus idol down on five.

  They arrived at the section of wall that opened into the
corridor, making way for a party on its way out. Not civilians these, but a master team, one of DragonCorp’s dedicated search squads with an open remit and unlimited access. Four of their number carried between them an ornate wood and brass treasure chest, and struggled under its weight. The fact they’d hauled it home meant they had been unable to open it on site, and that in turn meant it was very likely trapped. Trapped chests meant better artefacts. Trix’s interest was piqued—as well as her usual annoyance that it was they, not she, who’d found the chest. She’d tried for promotion to master team herself but, for reasons best known to Dungeonmaster Garrison, had never been successful, despite her evaluations more than qualifying her for the job. Maybe it was because she just wasn’t enough of an arsehole, like Don Combo was, who was passing her now. The black-fatigued leader of the team wasn’t helping at all with the burden of the chest but was carrying the still dripping decapitated head of a gorgon which he held up to applause from spectators gathered on the Grimrock balcony. Trix knew full well the gorgon had been dead for more than a year, and even then not by Combo’s hand. He kept the thing in an icebox just through the other side of the rift, and it was essentially currency for free drinks later. Combo greeted her through the corner of his grinning mouth.

  “Hunter.”

  “Dickhead.”

  “Babysitting again? You got enough nappies in that backpack of yours?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “You know, there’s a creature down on level six that does just that.”

  “Yeah, I know—it showed me your baby pictures.”

  Combo kept his grin fixed firmly on his face and walked on, still displaying his ‘prize’. Trix turned to her boffins and ducked the first of them into the hole.

  “Mind your heads.”

  Some bumped them anyway. Some always did. These Trix made a mental note to keep an eye on. For the fact was, if they couldn’t be mindful of such a simple warning, they were already underestimating what lay ahead. In these cases it became necessary to remind them that where they were going wasn’t a jaunt and wasn’t a game—people died, and died quickly, horribly, and agonisingly, if they didn’t carefully consider and weigh their every move.

  It was awkward, admittedly. Not only was there the slight meniscus where the dimensional membranes overlapped, but a slight fish-eye effect, too, making what lay beyond look even more wildly out of skew than it was. Trix felt the usual sway as she followed the boffins in, negotiating a stile-like set of metal steps that were even on the outside but seemingly out of kilter with the stone floor beyond. It made for an oddly disorienting first impression. Odder still, once the steps were done and they were inside, the steps and corridor floor became even, and looking back towards the entrance, it was the pit and everything in it that was skewed.

  What they called the funhouse effect wasn’t the only cause of disorientation. There was a change in the atmosphere, too. Not just in the way it smelled—of fungal rot, gore, and turds—but in the way it felt. The boffins listened like a party of tourists inside a showcave as Trix dealt with each matter in turn.

  “Okay, listen up, people. If the place smells like it’s filled with orc shit, that’s because it is filled with orc shit, either because they’ve shit themselves seeing our ugly human mugs or just decided to take a dump in one of the corridors. They do that. I’ve seen it. I wish I hadn’t. The other aromas that may assail your nostrils as we progress are a mix of lurka sweat, zombie necrosis, ghoul halitosis, and mudpuddin farts, to name but a few. The air may stink like poison, but it’s an acceptable oxygen-nitrogen mix and you shouldn’t need your breathers. A barf bag, possibly, but not breathers. Just suck it up until you acclimatise.”

  A couple of the boffins sheepishly put away breathers, and Trix continued.

  “Some of you may be concerned as to why as your escort I’m armed only with knife, staff, and crossbow and not a big fuck-off machine gun. The answer is—guns kill. No, I’m not preaching gun control; what I’m telling you is that on the levels discharging a weapon is as likely to blow off your face or hand as take an enemy down. Who has a bit of a headache?”

  Trix waited while the boffins dutifully touched their temples and nodded.

  “What’s causing that headache is magic, ladies and gentlemen. Honest-to- goodness magic, none of that rabbit-out-of-a-hat shit. That change of pressure as you came through the rift that made your blood thud and heart pound and gave you that headache, that’s magic. It’s in the air all around, ready to be spent, and even when spent the stuff lingers, never really goes away. It changes the air, charges it, if you like, with the consequence that firing guns down here is a bit like using a flamethrower in a gas-filled room. Some of us learned that the hard way.”

  One of the boffins raised a hand.

  “Those men we passed on the way in—they had guns.”

  “They did. In truth, it’s a personal choice. One I’m making for you. You’re safer this way, believe me.”

  Another hand.

  “Is the magic dangerous?”

  “Dangerous, no. It has to be coaxed from the air, formed into spells, to become dangerous, and for that you need a magic wielder.” Trix smiled. “You’re not likely to meet any of those on this trip.” Nervous laughter. “A word of advice, though—if the headache worsens, it could be a sign you’re near a strong pocket of magic, and that could mean a magical trap. The route we’ll be taking is well travelled, but sometimes these things pop up. If you’re in any doubt, any doubt at all, stop dead and wait for my instructions. So,” she added, “is everybody ready?”

  The boffins each mumbled a yes.

  “Okay, just remember this isn’t Madame Tussaud’s or a role-playing dungeon in some castle in Kent. Everything here is real. It’s another world; their world. The smells can’t hurt you, but the owners of the arses they come from can. So keep your eyes and ears open and, should we encounter anything, stick with me, and I’ll make sure you don’t die a horrible death. Welcome to the dungeon.”

  Trix moved to an old-fashioned Bakelite phone that ordnance had secured to the wall. She wound a handle to charge the line to the surface.

  “Ops, this is Trix Hunter. Confirming my party of six is go.”

  “Understood, Keeper 7. Be careful down there.”

  “Will do, Ops. See you in four days.”

  Trix led the group in. Their way along the corridor was lit by storm lamps strung from the ceiling and powered by thick cables drooping from its vaulted arches like black vines. The effect was vaguely reminiscent of a wine cellar. The storm lamps flickered intermittently, their electrical current disturbed even with the thick insulation, and Trix wondered as she always did why they didn’t just ‘go native’ and light the torches in the many sconces lining the corridor walls. The answer, stupidly, was Health & Safety—here on the entry level, which was occasionally toured by VIPs, DragonCorp reckoned lit torches pumped too many pollutants into the air. That made Trix smile. She’d seen a good number of people drop as goblins pumped arrows into them but never yet from pollutants in the air.

  The storm lamps served, however. Enough to light, as they neared a junction, the many directional signs mounted on the walls—HALL OF STATUES, WELL CHAMBER, DARK CHAPEL, and the like. They gave the corridors the feel of First World War trenches, where thoroughfares were named after streets back home, but there was a difference—in the real trenches the war had been fought above; here, it was always in the trenches themselves. And it was never fully won. Much like the sudden manifestation of magical traps, you couldn’t guarantee even a cleared level was clear—if DragonCorp could, it would send the boffins down alone—and sometimes a level swept countless times vomited a creature that bore down on you from nowhere. Evidence of such a happening presented itself as Trix led the boffins towards level 2. One of them lost his footing on a floor not yet cleaned and slick with the happening’s aftermath. His green hazmat suit rapidly became daubed with crimson stains as he slithered around trying to regain his f
ooting, unsuccessfully until Trix gave a hand. He tried to wipe away some of the worst of the staining, and only then realised what was coating his palms—monsters or men, for the most part their innards were much the same. A string of intestine still dangling from his wrist, the man spun and vomited into the shadows. Trix sighed. It wasn’t the best of starts.

  Thankfully, the boffins were more interested in their surroundings than the fate of their fellow. Trix had been at this so long she sometimes forgot the sense of wonder a first visit to the levels could engender. She gave them leeway as their palms traced the thick slabbed stone walls, fingered sculpted niches and strange carvings, explored the cobwebbed spaces behind iron bars. They even lingered over things as mundane as the sconces themselves. They spent some time peering down corridors which were not on their itinerary, then paused as a rotary elevator disgorged a running keeper from somewhere below. It was here, as they peered over the edge from which he’d appeared, that most gasps were drawn. For the elevator hadn’t been installed in a specially dug shaft but one that was part of the dungeon itself, and it afforded a distant overhead view of a drop to a corridor on level 3. There was an altercation going on down there, a group not unlike their own backing up in fear as two keepers at their front fired assault rifles at something approaching but as yet unseen. Trix couldn’t have asked for a better example of her argument of why guns were a bad idea as one exploded in the grip of its keeper, separating his arms from his body with a crack and a bloody splash. Something slug-like and green moved onto the splash and began to suck it up. There was a bright sizzle of energy and a scream that made the boffins stagger back. Their sense of wonder was replaced by one of distinct unease.

  “Told you,” Trix said.

  Trix moved them on, following the signs for level 2, and they reached the first plug. The security perimeter was standard between levels, those that had been secured, that was, and named thus for a reason—a lengthy, thick titanium cylinder, when manoeuvred hydraulically into a corresponding collar, literally plugged access onto or off the linking stairwells. Particularly for what might come up them. For now, though, it was open, and Trix stood her boffins aside once more to let other parties through. Two, this time—one coming up, botanical researchers like themselves, though from the giant mushrooms being gleefully carried, with a fungal bent; the other she knew to be a mapping expedition bound for a recently discovered spider temple on level 4. Like the occasional appearances of creatures or traps, you could never be sure a level was fully explored. The greying head of the latter party gave a Vulcan salute.