Blood Shaper

Book 3: Chapter 15

“Can’t go back,” Kay muttered.

“Is it even worth it to go forward, though?” Lauren asked from where she leaned on the wall a few feet away.

“Potential death is better than certain death.” Halloway shot back, “We can’t take on two tier seven Ancients and their tier five young. It just isn’t happening. With this Dungeon, we at least might have a chance.”

“We aren’t sending everyone in, either.” Kay gestured at the exhausted group. “We’re sending in a small group to see if we can make it, then we’ll come back for the rest if possible.”

Lauren pushed off from the wall with her shoulder and walked over to look at the door with them. “I actually think that this is our best bet, but someone needs to argue the opposite point, just in case.”

“Right, who’s staying behind?” Kay asked, looking at the three of them. Between Lauren, Halloway, and himself, they had the entire leadership of the expedition standing in front of the Dungeon’s entrance. They’d lost the one other person Kay would call a leader to the pterosaurs, along with one of their two tanks. “I think I have to go, so it’s one of the two of you.”

“As much as I hate to say it, you do have to go,” Lauren agreed, “I want to sit on you and keep you safe, but you’re the highest tier combatant we’ve got.”

“I should stay.” Halloway shook his head and stepped back from the door. “My Classes are good at tracking and hunting. Fighting in a closed area like a Dungeon isn’t something I’m good at. Lauren is more scout than hunter, and that’s useful in there.”

Kay turned to look at the group of people, some sleeping, others doing various tasks to take their minds off of their predicament. “Lauren, go get our tank and then grab a fourth that will compliment the three of us. I’d say Joseph should come, but we have to leave him to watch over the wounded.”

“I have an idea on who to bring.” She trotted over to a couple of people and started quietly talking.

“How did you know that those things were tier seven?” Kay asked while they waited.

“Skill from a Hunter Class. It’s a bit like Inspect, except it only tells me about animals and unintelligent monsters. I’ve got it leveled enough that it can tell me about creatures a lot more powerful than I am.” Halloway looked like he was going to spit, then visibly held himself back, “Never thought I’d actually use it on something three tiers above me; you don’t run into many things that powerful.”

“Why?” When Halloway looked at him, Kay shrugged, “I mean, I know they’re rare, but why don’t you hear about people seeing them more? They have to exist.”

“First, monsters don’t get that strong often, and when they do, it’s usually far away from people who would kill them for being a threat before they get that strong. Second, running into something that strong usually means you die. So no one comes back to warn others about it.”

“Yeah, well, we’re going to.” Kay firmed his resolve to bring his people home. “And then we’ll have to figure out how to kill them.”

“Put up a job with the Adventurer’s Guild,” Halloway recommended, “You’ve got enough gold to pay for it, I bet. The materials would more than pay back the cost too.”

“First, we have to make it back, although that is a great idea.” He straightened up from his slouch against the stonework as Lauren came over, leading two men. “Boss, Jadet is our tank, a tier two Defender.”

“I’m almost a tier three!” The heavy-set and armored orc volunteered.

“And this is Yven. We’ve worked together before. He’s not as quiet as I am, but he’s better with a bow.”

The pale blond human male nodded once.

“Ready to go on a Dungeon delve?” Kay asked them.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Double-check everything before we go.” He sidled over to Lauren. “Since when am I ‘Boss’?”

She gave him a look. “Since you founded the place we live and are in charge of all of us.”

“I meant the title.”

“Oh. It’s easier than ‘Mayor,’ and I decided to lean a little on your authority for now. Helps keep people centered.”

Kay grunted after thinking about that. “Good thinking. You go double-check your stuff do.”

“Already did, but a third time won’t hurt.”

Kay waited until she was far enough away, then whispered a question to Halloway. “How often do Dungeons have more than one entrance or exit?”

“Enough that I don’t think this is a fool’s errand.” He gestured at the door, “It’s almost always bigger and older ones that do, but one with a door instead of just an open hole probably has a decent chance of having one.” He frowned, “At least, that’s what I’ve heard from people like Meten who’ve actually been in any.”

“Good enough for me.” His temporary team gathered around him, and Kay finished checking all of his gear and supplies. Not that he had much in comparison since he made most of his gear out of blood now, but he still checked everything else. “I wish we had some way of communicating with you guys while we’re in there.”

“Doesn’t work in and out of Dungeons, but it would be nice to call home and let them know what’s happening,” Lauren agreed.

“We sent an order for something that would let us send messages,” Kay remembered, “But they didn’t show up in time for this trip. Nothing to do about it. Let’s get to work.” Kay stepped up to the door, and it silently swung open, the red-brown stone moving with ease. The slight suction feeling that native Torotians called Dungeon Pressure pulled at him from just inside the frame. Kay took a step through.

The thin hallway beyond the door forced them to go one at a time after the first few feet. They had a quick discussion about who should go first, and they ended up sending Lauren in first with her higher stealth abilities, with Jadet, then Kay, then Yven at the rear. The hallway stretched on for ten minutes or so before an opening with brighter light coming through it appeared around the only bend in the tunnel.

Cautiously, they stepped through into the new room one at a time.

Kay blinked away the bright lights as he stepped through the opening. It took him a moment to get used to the new level of brightness, like when he had to cover his eyes when turning on the bathroom lights late at night. When his vision finally recovered, he looked around. The new room was made of bright white stone bricks with similar-looking construction to the room just outside the Dungeon, if in a different color. The bright light covering the room seemed to be sourceless as if it came from everywhere. Kay only cast a dim shadow that seemed to stretch strangely in the room.

Kay turned to check on his team, but the room was empty. He spun around, searching for the other three people, but there was just a featureless room with six walls, a flat floor, and a similarly flat ceiling. Even the passageway they’d walked down was gone.

“Dammit,” Kay cursed, “The Dungeon split us up.”

Spinning in another circle to scan the room, Kay stopped in place when he noticed an archway that hadn’t been there before. It was rectangular, like the others before this, but instead of being open or having a stone door in it, this one had a fine-looking bright blue cloth hanging down and blocking the view into the next room.

Cautiously, Kay checked around himself again and found two more openings with hangings. They were on three opposite sides of the hexagon, so none of them were next to each other. Each one had a symbol carved into the stone above the door frame. One looked like a thing triangle with the point upwards, the next like a stylized animal’s mouth with fanged teeth, and the third and final one looked like a circular eye peering forwards.

“I’m not really liking this Dungeon. I obviously have to pick a direction, but I don’t know what the symbols mean.” Glancing from one to the next, Kay realized he could be smart about it. He opened one of his canteens and sent a thin line of blood into each of the rooms, trying to scout them out.

As each line passed through the curtain and into the next area, Kay’s ability to sense the blood just stopped. It was like nothing was there. Pulling it back, the blood was still there, and nothing seemed wrong with it. “Alright, can’t cheat that way.” He inspected each doorway again, looking for some clue. He found nothing new.

“Alright, then…” He made his blood into a six-sided die. “One or two is the spike, three or four is the eye, five or six is the mouth.” He tossed the die into the air, purposefully removing his control and senses from it to keep the decision fair.

It landed on the floor, bounced around a few times, then stopped. Kay peered down at it, “Three. Eye door it is.” He gathered the blood up and walked in front of the curtain. He took a deep breath then stepped through.

The curtain dragged across his body as he made his way past it, holding out his hands and spreading it to the side, didn’t seem to hope. It was like there was infinitely more curtain than he could actually deal with. Then, suddenly it flipped over his head, and he was through. The next room looked the same, hexagonal with white walls and light coming from nowhere, but it also had a table.

The table was made of the same stone as the walls and was longer than Kay was tall, with its longest edges being completely flat. The two shorter ends of the rectangle-like table were rounded, almost like ovals with a third of their area cut off. There were strange shapes etched into the table; some were simple squares or rectangles, while others were strange shapes with both straight and curved edges. All of them were colored in, with dozens of different colors represented across the table. On each side, filling up the part oval edges were game pieces of a dozen different sizes and shapes. Some looked like soldiers, others were monsters, and a few looked like buildings. There was also a dragon piece, carved out of the same crystalline material the rest of the pieces were, in intricate detail.

Kay took a moment to consciously miss Murunel, who still hadn’t made it back to Avalon. He missed her all the time, but he tried not to dwell on it too much.

Floating in the air above the side of the table whose pieces were a light translucent green, in contrast to the deep blue color of the other side, was a small white card. Kay reached out and grabbed it. There was a single sentence printed on it, in a language Kay had never seen. A brief moment of looking at it later, it shifted into English, courtesy of the weird translation effect he carried with him.

“Destroy the enemy’s flag bearer to win.”

Kay read the card again, then looked up at the game board. “I don’t know how to play this!”

There was no response.

Kay stared at the table, then started hunting around it, hoping to find a set of instructions or something. The room was empty besides the board and the pieces on it. Eventually, Kay stopped on “his” side of the board and stared at “his” pieces. “I really hope it doesn’t kill me for failing because I don’t have a single clue.” At a loss for what else to do, he picked up a piece that looked like a simple soldier, of which there were many, and placed it on a space next to his semi-ovular area basically at random.

As soon as he let go, the piece floated up into the air and made its way back to Kay’s area, where it set down onto the table.

Across the board, a piece rose into the air and set down on one of the shapes that made up the playing board. Kay stared at it for a moment, but nothing else happened.

“So if you make an illegal move, you lose your turn, I guess?” Kay stepped over and looked at the piece. It resembled a small, flat building. Back on his side of the table, Kay found that he had three of those. He tried placing one in a similar-looking shape, and it stayed.

A piece that looked like a horseman floated up and was placed next to the building on the blue side, in the same space as the building.

Kay tried to copy that move, but his horseman got ejected back to his waiting area. “Awesome!” He cheered fakely.

The “game,” if it could be called that, continued in the same way, with the “opponent” making moves and Kay doing his best to copy them or do something similar as he tried to learn the game. At one point, some kind of probing attack of three enemy troops was sent across the board, attacking one of his buildings. A magical field of some sort popped up, cast by a random piece he’d managed to play at one point, and destroyed all three of the pieces that had tried attacking him.

“Yay?”

The three pieces that were lost floated back to the “enemy” side of the table, where they promptly reassembled themselves from the broken pieces they’d become and set down gently in the waiting area.

Play continued until the blue side placed a single piece on the field that looked like a lightly armored soldier carrying a flag. Kay glanced through the pieces of each side and found that there was only one of that piece for each player. “I guess that’s the flag bearer I need to destroy.” As he said that, he paused, his face making a moue of interest and thoughtfulness as he stared at the blue flag bearer piece. “The note only said I’d need to destroy it…” Eventually, he shrugged, “It’s worth a shot since I literally have no idea if I’m doing well or not.” He reached out, coating his hand in a thick layer of blood that he hardened. He wrapped his fingers around the blue flag bearer and squeezed, shattering the crystal piece into fragments.

The board seemed to shimmer, and then his hand was empty. All of the pieces were back in their respective waiting areas, and the pattern on the board had changed.

There was a rustling noise. Kay looked up to see two doors facing each other, perpendicular to the ends of the table. They were similar to the ones he’d chosen from to make it to this room, but both had bright red curtains covering the openings, and there were different symbols above them.

“I guess that worked.” He walked over to the closer of the two and inspected them. The symbol above that one was a circle. Checking the other one, he found a V shape with a small square inside the gap.

“Well, it worked the first time.” Kay made a small six-sided die out of blood once more. “If it ain’t broke and all that…”

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