Short Story – “The Dungeon Builder”
If Danny had to guess, she’d say the old codger sitting opposite her had about three weeks left to live. They’d only been travelling in the coach for two hours, but the ride seemed to have aged him by years. Somehow, he was paler, his wrinkles and blotches more perceptible, and he kept slipping in and out of consciousness at the whims of any given moment. It took all her effort for Danny not to wrinkle her nose in disgust. She had no heart for the dead, even less for the dying, and this man was close to passing from one to the other.
‘Are we almost there?’ he asked weakly, as the carriage rocked his frail body from side to side.
‘We are.’
The horses stopped. Danny quickly opened the carriage door and rushed out, if for nothing else but to get away from his miserable stink. Fresh air met her outside, followed swiftly by the sight of wild greenery, and a dense gathering of trees around them. Nearby, she could hear the sounds of construction. There’d be humans and half-orcs in the next clearing, working hard to carry the unused stone slabs they had needed to fill the underground lair.
When she turned back, two assistants — dressed in Tressa’s distinctive red and gold robes — were helping Lord Byrick out of the carriage. Although, helping was a bit of an understatement in her opinion. They practically lifted him out and placed him on the ground. She didn’t doubt that the old man would probably feel a little stronger without all those gold necklaces and talismans weighing down his neck.
‘Now,’ he said to her, summoning the strength to snatch his cane out of his assistant’s hand, ‘show me my dungeon, Miss DaCrow.’
She gave him a slight bow, perhaps a centimetre too short of being truly respectful, and gestured for him to follow. ‘Right this way, my lord.’
Danny had been in the business of making dungeons for the past decade, but her family had been doing it for centuries. As prominent members of both the wizarding community and the construction community, care of these operations usually landed on their shoulders. At one time, it was a thing of pride. They had built the infamously deep and twisted crypts beneath Tressa; constructed tombs and dungeons to house the great kings and queens of old; they had even created the underground lairs for some powerful and infamous dragons — at the dragons’ request. Now they had been reduced to simple servants in the service of petty lords who held steadfast to a belief that you could ‘take it all with you when you died.’
They crossed into a small clearing, quite a way off the road, and were greeted by a great number of men and women lifting, moving, marching, and doing general wrap-up on construction. On the far side was a ready supply of stone bricks and slabs for the interior, with a few workers getting ready to send them onto another project. On the other side was a cage covered in a large, thick blanket. Whenever someone strayed too close to it, the cage would come to life, rocking hard, as the thing inside of it tried desperately to escape. It would be the last thing to enter the dungeon, Danny knew.
‘This is looking good.’ Lord Byrick, unassisted, hobbled on his walking cane towards the centre of the clearing. That was where the staircase lay. It was visible now, but once they were finished, only those who knew where it already was would be able to find it. Well, Danny thought, those and people who stumbled upon it randomly in the next three centuries.
‘It’s fine work you’re doing here, Miss DaCrow,’ Lord Byrick said. ‘May I explore the inside?’
‘You may.’ Danny took a deep breath, leading the lord onwards and moving nimbly between the various workers.
Danny moved down the freshly laid stone stairs and into the darkness below in seconds while Lord Byrick followed slowly behind. As she waited for his assistants to get him to the base of the steps, she lit the torches on either side of the main door, wondering at why her workers hadn’t had the sense to do so themselves.
The great stone door was large and curved beneath an archway, with two large pillars to frame it. In a traditional fashion, a sizeable, intimidating devil face stood on the frame above it, seemingly staring down at the words and pictographs etched on the stone of the door itself.
‘What does it say?’ asked Lord Byrick through rasped breaths once he had reached her side.
Danny smiled. ‘As part of the service you paid for, my lord, I have personally seen to the casting of a magical ward on this door. At its opening, if the correct phrase isn’t spoken in time, the devious traps we’ve set into place within will activate. The words are a warning to would-be thieves, alerting them that this dungeon is trapped and that any who seek to take the treasure of Lord Byrick may only do so at the risk of their own lives.’
‘And would they?’ he said, upper lip bristling. ‘Could they take any of the gold I’m fated to be buried with?’
‘No. Even if they could find where you had been buried.’ Danny placed a hand on the stone door, taking a quick intake at the unexpected cold touch of the rock. ‘Ishmar esq torreln,’ she spoke confidently. The door instantly opened a crack. It didn’t take much strength for her to push it fully open, revealing a dimly lit hallway beyond.
‘What did you say?’ asked Lord Byrick.
‘It was elven for speak to open, my lord.’
‘Why was it not written in the land’s common?’ he inquired, briskly.
‘Well,’ Danny said with a wink. ‘We don’t want to make it easy for intruders do we?’
The next hour was spent accompanying the shambling lord around the dungeon, showing him the various features that would protect his treasure. The spiked traps beneath the floor. The swinging guillotines. The rooms that required particular phrases and codes to be spoken, or else they would flood with poison or acid and devour whatever creature had dared venture inside. She even showed him the skeletons that, with the assistance of her magic, would come to life after the lord had been placed inside his crypt and patrol the dungeon indefinitely.
It was all standard for a dungeon of this design, but not one bit had been spared the professional standard of her trade. Not even in the murals or stonework that told the story of Lord Byrick’s life — as dull as that may be. It was a waste, really, all this effort for a pathetic lord that had been born into power.
Some of the jewels had been set into the walls already, as well as the weapons and so forth placed in other additional rooms about the dungeon. The lord had put half his fortune into creating his final resting place — in sheer defiance of sharing it with his family. Some part of Danny respected that.
Finally, they came to the end of the dungeon, to the lord’s final resting place. The room was filled with chests of his treasure. Trinkets on the shelves, paintings leaning against the walls, and a stone coffin carved in his likeness. Well, rather, the likeness of Lord Byrick perhaps fifty years ago.
‘Yes,’ he coughed, caressing the stonework of the coffin. ‘This will make a remarkable resting place for—’
The ground shuddered with a moan. Dust drifted down from the ceiling. A sudden look of panic crossed the faces of the assistants. It was followed shortly by a roar and, what sounded like, the jarring of metal. Distantly, Danny could hear screams, and she felt the sudden rush of footsteps meeting their level.
‘Stay here,’ she warned.
From seemingly nowhere, she pulled a black quarterstaff from her sleeve and moved swiftly outside of the final room. There she met a dark hallway. Proceeding cautiously, Danny raised her staff pointedly, like an archer raising a crossbow, and continued with trepidation. She could hear the rumblings of something moving in the dungeon, bashing against the walls, shattering the doors, and turning the rooms upside down.
Moving stealthily through the corridors, she only stopped when she was sure she would see the creature around the next corner. With a quick word, holding her staff close, she cast Olden’s spell of invisibility on herself. At the other end of her words, she became as transparent as the air around her. Peering out, she could see it now, precisely as she had seen it on the day Danny had managed to catch it.
The creature was roughly the size and build of an average bear, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Instead of fur, it was covered head to toe in stone. A dragon’s head sat between its massive shoulders, and she knew within that stone maw was a breath more than capable of burning anything in its path. It wore a long-barbed tail with pride, which the creature swung around like a mighty mace, and its claws were about the same size as swords. Different cultures had different names for this kind of creature, but where Danny came from, it was called a Grindon. A fierce, almost unstoppable creature that killed for no other reason than to see something ripped apart.
‘Managed to escape already, then?‘ she whispered.
It hadn’t noticed her, and that was good. It tore its way into one of the rooms, literally ripping the door off its hinges. No doubt on the trail for more things to slice apart. As it did so, Danny managed to slip past it. Easy enough when you were invisible and it was distracted. It wasn’t long before its roars and groans became distant once again. The wizard moved through the corridors that she knew by heart and was at the entrance in a moment’s notice.
‘It escaped, Miss DaCrow.’
Danny closed the door shut behind her, repeating the magic words. Once finished, she turned to the gnome, clearly a gnome from the short stature and sharp features, standing on the steps with her arms crossed. ‘I gathered,’ replied Danny with a sigh. ‘We really should invest in some better cages for these things.’
‘Should we go in after it?’ asked the gnome with a click of her tongue.
Danny thought on that for a moment. ‘Tell me, has Lord Byrick paid up for the dungeon?’
‘The last payment came with his arrival an hour ago,’ replied the gnome. ‘He’s all paid up now.’
‘Is the dungeon finished?’
The gnome nodded.
‘Well then,’ Danny said, giving her a sly grin. ‘I say we let him enjoy his investment early. I’m sure he won’t be disappointed in all the security features we’ve implemented to make sure his gold is safe.’
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