Robin’s mind flickered through the calculus of warning his party versus revealing he had heard the dungeon speak. There were advantages and disadvantages to each, but before he could make a decision, the whole question was rendered moot.
The dungeon made its move. One of the stalactites overhead shuddered and came free of the ceiling. It plummeted downward, sharp point first, to slam into the floor.
Fortunately no one was impaled. There were a few cuts from flying shards of stone, but nothing serious. Robin wrapped himself in illusion, just to be safe.
It was a good thing he did. Out of the hole in the ceiling where the stalactite had been came a shrieking, flapping horde of creatures. Each was about the size of Wulfram’s fist (which was at least twice the size of Robin’s) and the majority of their body was a single, massive eyeball. They had tiny clawed feet and leather wings with which they flew, and the slits of their pupils glowed purple in the shadows.
‘Ghaz-urs!’ Drev shouted. ‘Trying not to look any of them in the eye!’
Before the mage could say why, a small detachment of the beasties broke off from the larger swarm and shot toward him. Small beams of violet energy lanced out at Drev but he blocked them with a swiftly summoned shield.
It wasn’t his best work. It was clearly visible, a large floating distortion in front of him. The boundaries were likewise clear, and in moments, the ghaz-urs had adjusted their flight pattern to try and get around the obstacle.
‘Smoke bomb!’ he shouted to Jhess.
The rogue reacted instantly, her hand disappearing into a pouch at her waist and flinging a ceramic sphere at the ground between the party and the swiftly diving horde. White smoke immediately began to billow up from the spot.
Robin flexed his will and used [Visual Phantasm] to expand the smoke radius. This would both conceal the act from Khavren’s judgemental eye, and confuse the ghaz-urs, as some would be able to see through bits of the smoke and others would not. Plus it would ruin the targeting on their eye beams. With the added cover, he then began sniping the ghaz-urs that made it through the wall of smoke, using [Lesser Witchbolt] and [Cutting Words] as opportunity permitted.
Khavren slashed and skewered those ghaz-urs that came through the smoke within his reach. Savra had produced a glowing mace from somewhere and was dispatching any that came near her with a chilling precision, while Jhess and Drev provided ranged cover with spell and dagger.
Wulfram stood stoically, hammer in hand, crushing any of the little beasties that got too close to him. From the look on his face, he found the whole thing delightful, like some massive game of fantastical whack-a-mole, but in mid-air.
And still they kept flittering through the smoke!
What Robin wouldn’t give for a nice, solid fireball right now. Fighting a swarm was a nightmare. Too many targets!
They’re going to go through the swarm too quickly. Amaranthine, lead some of the latest batch of mimics through the service passages to herd these pests back the way they came.
This time Robin was ready. He flicked his fingers through the gestures of [Lesser Phantasm] and an illusory replica of Savra’s voice rang out.
‘Reinforcements are coming! Be ready!’
The seeress wouldn’t quibble with him about the usurpation of her voice when she was proved right.
He hoped.
The smoke was guarding them from the ghaz-urs, but it also blocked their vision in the opposite direction. Robin had no idea which direction the reinforcements were coming from. He strained his ears instead, hoping to catch a hint of stone on stone that would give him a clue as to where the next attack would come.
He was disappointed in that, but he did manage to hear something else. A new voice joined the mix, high and feminine and also speaking English, curiously enough. Though the accent was terrible, so it was likely she had learned the words laboriously over a long time rather than knowing them naturally somehow.
‘Computer, close access point beta-twelve.’
Hearing words in English was startling enough, but a reference to computers? What was going on?
Suddenly, Robin was seeing through Rerebos’s eyes. There was a hole in the floor, a tightly-wound spiral of stairs just visible through the opening. He managed to spot the figure of a small fairy or pixie before the hold—the access point, he supposed—sealed itself up again.
Robin made a quick note of the arrangement of stalagmites around it in case Rerebos had to flee his post, and sent a pulse of approval along their empathic bond. He felt Rerebos preen in response.
‘Traitor!’
Khavren’s bellow of outrage brought him forcibly back to his surroundings. The knight was slashing wildly with his sword at Drev. The mage was back-pedalling, another shield glowing between him and the raging knight.
What was going on?
‘Think you can blast a man in the back with foul sorcery when he isn’t looking, and get away with it?’ Khavren bellowed. ‘You will pay for that!’
‘I did no such thing!’ Drev protested.
‘He did not, truly,’ Savra added. ‘You are deceived, Khavren, but not by any of us! Look!’
The seeress pointed. Through a gap in the thinning smoke, Robin could just make out a humanoid figure. It looked just like Drev!
These must be the shapeshifters the dungeon had sent with the fairy to drive them away. And they were smart enough to know Khavren was the weakest link when it came to trickery and resisting mental attacks. This could get even uglier, fast.
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The knight had paused, confused by the sight of two identical mages.
‘Just let Dee fight Dee!’ Robin shouted. ‘We can test if the winner is the real thing or not after!’
‘Oh thanks awfully,’ Drev shouted back at him.
‘You’d do the same for me!’ the bard jibed.
A dagger sailed through the haze and embedded itself into the Drev standing in the smoke. The figure keened, a strange, inhuman sound.
‘That one’s fake,’ Jhess said. ‘Everyone team up and wipe it out while we can still see it, before it can change again.’
The trick was likely to work only once, so Robin immediately followed Jhess’s attack with one of his own. A playing card, trailing blue flame, flicked out from his fingers and exploded in fake Drev’s face. It revealed his location, but it was worth it to distract the fake Drev. Especially considering what happened next.
Drev followed up Robin’s attack with a barrage of magical bolts of his own and the thing exploded into a fine red mist.
Looks like the mage took being impersonated rather personally.
Robin took careful note of that. Always good to know where the boundaries were.
Then he stepped out of the smoke and Robin found himself face-to-face with himself. Even expecting it would happen eventually, Robin found the experience a bit unnerving. It clearly distracted him and one of the remaining ghaz-urs took full advantage of the fact.
A bolt of purple energy exploded right before his eyes, dazzling him. Robin froze, mesmerised by the dancing lights exploding like tiny fireworks before his eyes. He was so entranced, he didn’t even feel it when his double stabbed him in the gut with a dagger.
He felt it when the doppelgänger yanked it out, though. The ghaz-ur effect didn’t last long. Robin hissed in pain, but turned the sound into a clear, pure [Healing Note].
‘Wow,’ he spat, ‘you’re a terrible copy of me. Not only did you get the nose wrong, but you can’t even manage to try and kill me with a bit of style? Like I’d ever stab someone in the guts with a dagger. Pathetic.’
The [Cutting Words] lashed out and not-Robin flinched before his cheeks coloured with fury.
The dagger lashed out again but this time Robin was ready for it. The bard was able to dodge and quick-quip, hitting his double with more psychic damage and further enraging him.
It?
He traded [Lesser Witchbolts] for dagger slashes, neither getting the upper hand on the other for a while. Twice, Robin used an illusion to escape a blow.
It’s really hard to hit something you can’t see clearly.
His double didn’t seem to have any of his abilities. It just looked like him.
His double was also clearly growing frustrated with its inability to skewer Robin once and for all. It didn’t speak, or issue any sound, but a few of the remaining ghaz-urs flitted over to it, forcing Robin to work harder to stay unharmed.
He dodged and ducked behind illusions, trying to avoid any more of the stunning purple blasts or blades to the gut. When he could, he weeded out the annoying little flappers with his cantrips and whittled away at his double’s health.
Robin was sweating and panting, his hands cramping by the time he finally managed to land a killing blow. His double lunged too far, over-extending itself. Robin slipped past and shoved the thing onto a nearby stalagmite, impaling it.
Hey, it was fair play to turn the lethal environment the dungeon had crafted against its creatures, right? I mean, what else was it there for if not to be exploited?
A bubble of purple ichor burst from the fake Robin’s lips as the thing writhed, trying to pull itself up off the stalagmite.
It didn’t make it. Not in time, anyway.
Robin watched himself die. Well, watched a thing that looked like him die. It was not a pleasant experience no matter how you described it.
He looked around. The rest of the party had cleaned up the remaining ghaz-urs and each of their respective doubles. They had won! The dungeon hadn’t driven them away.
That thought brought Robin’s attention back to the secret he’d uncovered with Rerebos’s help. There was a network of tunnels threaded throughout the dungeon, guarded by passcodes in English. If they could get access, they could skip all the nonsense of going room by room through this maze and cut straight to the heart of the place, where the treasure he was after was presumably being held.
Of course that didn’t mean there weren’t still problems to overcome with this approach.
They might have a direct pathway through to the inner sanctum of this dungeon, sure. And to get to it, all Robin had to do was reveal to both the sentient dungeon housing them and his party that he’d been hiding his ability to hear the dungeon this whole time.
What could possibly go wrong there?