Chapter 54 – Dungeon within a Dungeon (Patreon)

Luke didn’t know what to expect, but he certainly never expected to find himself in the middle of a hallway upon entering the Gordian. Tall windows showed impossible landscapes beyond.

Twisting pillars of dark stone stood stark sentinel against a sky bathed in prismatic cosmic radiation. Colored clouds boiled and scudded across the scintillating roof of the world.

Luke knew without a shadow of a doubt that if he went out there, he would be killed. And for some reason, he felt sure that it would be a toss-up between the inhospitable land he now found himself within, or the denizens that were adapted to its harsh conditions.

“Okay,” Luke said slowly, turning around to get his bearings. “I’m in a castle of some sort. There’s a… I want to say warp portal back there, but I’m guessing that’s my way back out.”

Behind him was a raised platform covered in etched runes, many of whose meanings he could only guess at. Four braziers at each corner carried blue and purple flames that cast a strong, bruised light down the corridor ahead.

Anybody without Luke’s eyes would have had a difficult time seeing. Blue lights don’t exactly illuminate very well at a distance and the corridor quickly became nothing more than shadowy suggestions.

But to Luke’s eyes, the corridor was brightly lit and stretched forward until it split off into a crossroads of halls.

Staying near the braziers, Luke checked his equipment, making sure nothing had disappeared or broken during the trip within the Gordian. Fortunately, his black cloak, scaled gloves, [Umbral Ring] and all his daggers and swords seemed to be fine.

Keeping an eye out for any traps, Luke eased the [Ratking’s Ire] from its scabbard in the small of his back and headed down the hall. He didn’t know what to expect, but he was ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

He hadn’t realized how much he missed this. The thrill of the unknown. Exploring a potentially deadly location with nothing but his wits to back him up if things went poorly.

This strange place was doubly curious as well, and a definite step up from those sewers.

While Luke thoroughly enjoyed runegraving, he realized that it wasn’t his calling. He was an explorer, a fighter. Runegraving gave him the means to do both better, but it was not his drive in this life.

The realization lifted something from his shoulders he hadn’t been aware he was carrying.

At the crossroads, the halls of stone spread out in four directions. Three if he discounted the place he came from.

To his right, the stone tiles on the floor changed to a pale blue-gray. Ahead, they were a faint red-brown like terracotta, and to his left they were overgrown with moss. The walls glistened with water trickling down the stone faces.

“Always go left,” he told the empty air.

While the castle wasn’t a maze–at least not yet–Luke always went left when given the choice. It might take longer to get out of a maze, but you were practically guaranteed to get out.

That was fine with Luke. Plus, it made it easier to know what passages and doors he had gone into.

It was easier to focus on danger and other things when he didn’t bog himself down with decision fatigue by trying to solve a maze at every single turn out of hundreds. Not that he had ample opportunity to practice the basic tactic earlier in life.

Luke turned to the mossy hallway and strode down it carefully, straining his ears and senses to the tiniest shift. Moss would be an excellent insulator if there were any pressure plates or sensors that he might trip.

Not only was it difficult to see what the stone was beneath the moss, the tops were soft and squishy with beads of dew that made them as slippery as an oil slick.

Keeping his wits about him proved to be invaluable as Luke sensed the shift in the tile beneath him but could neither feel nor hear it. He pulled back immediately, nearly slipped on the moss, and twisted around to drop to the ground at the same time as the walls to either side of him slammed shut with the sound of a lead coffin.

Nearly deafened, Luke lay on his back and tried to get his breathing under control. His reflexes wouldn’t have been able to save him from that. If he didn’t sense the tile shifting, he would have been crushed flat.

His shadow bloodline was far more advanced than before, and his Perception was dramatically higher than it used to be as well. Still, he didn’t think it was the Perception that saved him, but his bloodline senses.

The running water, Luke realized, hid the damage of the walls slamming into each other. There was no moss on them, nothing that would readily show them as anything dangerous. Perception wouldn’t have been much use there.

Now that he knew where the trigger was, Luke reached out and depressed the tile again, staying as far away as he could manage.

Hands over his ears, Luke felt the rush of air and the spray of water as the walls slammed shut again. But this time, he was paying close attention.

He wondered why the moss wasn’t scraped up, making the trap obvious. Now he knew why.

The sections that slammed shut to create Luke paste were nearly two feet above the ground, just around Luke’s knee.

“This is a bad idea,” he told himself as Luke lowered to his stomach. He depressed the trap once more and began to crawl forward beneath the new ceiling of stone just to make sure he’d fit.

Slithering forward as fast as he dared, keeping his body as low to the ground as he could, Luke felt the walls slamming above him in a constant procession of concussive noise.

Growing increasingly paranoid, Luke tapped his [Umbral Ring] and sent shadows flowing up ahead along the flooring. The lengthening darkness magnified his senses. He hoped that would point out any additional traps along the way.

There was a very real possibility that there could be another wall trap that would crush the whole section with no gap beneath.

He sensed one trap further ahead, and then many more.

From what he could tell, the tiles were randomly placed, with varying weight sensors. Some depressed a little, but not enough to trigger anything, and others were set off by the slightest pressure that made Luke wonder why the trap wasn’t constantly going off.

Is it mana, or Dunamis based? Are these traps so sophisticated that they can essentially detect life to an extent? Luke asked himself. Without being able to examine the traps closely, he couldn’t tell for sure.

His earlier curiosity about what would happen if a person was caught in the trap was answered when he found a pair of old moldering boots with bony shins sticking up out of them.

In fact, his [Flux Sense] was what called his attention to them. On the surface they looked like any other pile of moss, but they glowed a silvery hue that told him they would offer up a treasure of flux if [Razed].

Luke reached out and wiped the moss off them, surprised to see that they were whole and intact. Despite the remains of skeletal feet inside, they were in decent condition. Not perfect, but far better than could be expected.

[Mossy Boots (Unusual)]

(Armor)

A set of plain, moss covered leather boots. Some of the previous owner’s Marks have seeped into these boots at the time of death, altering its enchantments and rarity.

Enchantments: Increases resistant against magical traps and water elemental magic. Repairs itself over time when in contact with liquid. Removes movement speed penalty while traveling on poor ground. +4 Fortitude, +4 Willpower.

Surprised to see how shockingly good the boots were, Luke resisted the urge to twist around and put them on immediately. He gingerly put them on their side and, using the shin bones of their previous occupants, dragged the boots after him down the moss covered hall.

Only once he crawled into another crossroads bereft of detectable traps did Luke get to his feet and removed the bones from the boots so he could put them on.

Anything was better than being barefoot, and these boots provided a surprisingly good traction enchantment, as well as some solid stats.

They immediately fit well, already beginning to warm his feet. Surprisingly, they weren’t damp on the inside, despite their age.

It was a little odd that the moss he brushed off earlier seemed to grow back on the exterior, but he didn’t feel anything on the inside, so he wasn’t worried about it.

That made 4 decent pieces of equipment so far. His cloak, gloves, belt–technically 2, but he counted them as one–and now his boots.

Once more, he was met with 3 choices. Forward, left, or right.

“Left again,” Luke muttered to himself.

He had to admit, for the first 5 minutes in a new dungeon, he avoided a trap and gained some surprisingly useful equipment. Clearly, it hadn’t helped its previous owner, but perhaps they could help him.

The next hall was covered in a thin, iridescent sheen. Luke stepped forward and found, much to his surprise, what exactly “poor ground” meant.

Instead of sliding like he was on black ice, Luke stepped easily and confidently into the hallway. Just 4 steps down the hallway, something shifted and the entire hall canted downward at a slight angle.

Slight enough that Luke felt uncomfortable walking down it, but not enough for him to slip and slide uncontrollably. He had the feeling that without the boots, he would be picking up speed toward whatever was at the end of the now-slanted hall.

A few dozen feet in and Luke saw the open pit ahead of him. Spikes glistened in the darkness down below. He could feel their deadly points from here, though he was sure it was just his imagination.

Putting one foot cautiously in front of the other, Luke made his way almost up to the pit and took a left into a nearly hidden passage. The stones here were firm and solid, but the space was cramped.

Luke wasn’t wide shouldered. He was as average as they came, so it was surprising to feel the sides of his arms scraping against the rough stone walls on either side.

Luckily, the hallway didn’t go on forever. It crooked to the side and let him out into a large open room with a pool at the center. A large, inverted pyramid was stationed above it, dripping electric-blue liquid into the pool below.

The walls were covered in pockmarked craters as if something heavy slammed into them repeatedly. Broken statues and various magical implements were scattered across the floor.

Luke only had eyes for the raised dais at the far end of the room. It looked to be the twin to the platform he had arrived on. With four braziers, two that were burning, and a series of runes etched onto the floor.

Even from here, he could tell that a few runes were missing. But that wasn’t what spiked his interest.

Floating above the platform of runes was a swirling vortex of darkness. Luke wasn’t sure what it was, but as he stepped into the room with his [Ratking’s Ire] ready to throw, he worked it out.

A wrist-thick tendril of darkness lashed out from the vortex and dove into the pool of blue liquid. The water churned and frothed, slopping over the stepped edges of the pool and flooding into the room.

Luke took a few steps back toward a shadowy corner and wrapped the shadows around himself, waiting and forcing himself to breathe slowly.

A long sinuous neck with a cluster of crystalline eyes around a circular lamprey-like maw emerged from the water. It craned its neck around, looking for intruders.

Luke held his breath as the creature looked his way, then let it out again as it looked away, still searching.