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  [colpse]Chapter One Hundred and y - Deadweight

  We huddled together a little as we walked down the dark tunnel leading into the dungeon. I had ing magic glowing in my hand, and Amaryllis cast a light spell that followed over her shoulder. Even the buns had some magic to light their path, ahe darkness swallowed it all.

  “Imagine a nine-poiar,” Peter said. He, like the other buns, didn’t seem bothered by the dark at all.

  “Oh, okay,” Awen said.

  “Right, this fortress, the ruins behind us, used to be shaped like a squarish star. Four points around a square,” he tinued.

  “That’s just a square with more edge,” Amaryllis muttered.

  “This dungeon was inally the same. Four areas. Then five, six, and now nine.”

  The path ahead lightened up a little, and soon we were crossing uhe tooth-like bars of a giant portcullis. We were in a city. An old medieval city, like Needleford, or Fort Sylphrot, only uhose, there was no life here. The sky was a near-monotone grey, only deeper shadows hinting at the fact that there were clouds above.

  The buildings around us were in ruins, with broken windows and smashed walls. A few had signs of fire damage, and everywhere I looked, huge roots poked out of the ground and tore into the houses. They looked normal though, not terribly evil.

  I shivered as a soft, cold wind tickled the bay neck.

  “First floor used to be nothing but ghosts. Low level o that,” Peter said. “Now the walls between this floor and the have broken.” He looked around, wary. “There are more roots now.”

  “So, there’s ral path through this dungeon?” Amaryllis asked.

  Carrot was the oo answer. “Yup, there is. If you imagihis pce looking like a wheel, with each floor being a spoke, then the middle is the safe zone. Every time you finish a floor, you access the floor through the wall, but there’s also a door to the middle that opens. So you go there to leave the dungeon, or reay other floor that you’d already cleared.” She snapped her fingers. “Clearing a floor means opening the gate to the floor, not killing everything. Sometimes mohat you didn’t kill earlier will move through the safe zone from a previous level.”

  I hat meant we had to watch our backs. It was a good thing the buns were s and cool or else this pce would be really dangerous.

  The chill in the air grew a lot worse, and even though the false sky above was a brilliant blue, and it felt warm on my skin, I still felt as though my skin was rippling with goosebumps.

  I saw Buster’s owitch. “Left,” he said.

  I looked over to the left, then gulped.

  The first ghosts were those bleeding out of the walls, first a few, then dozens more. They moved through the air slowly aly, so many white forms packed so close together that I might have mistaken them for a rolling wall of fog.

  “Insight,” I said as I looked to one of them.

  Spirit of Fotten Pain, Level 8.

  Not to, but there had to be well over a hundred.

  “Hmph,” Buster said as he moved over and pnted his shield into the ground with a dull thump. “Orders?” he asked.

  Momma tilted her head to the side, ears flopping a little. “Let’s move to the gate to the sed floor,” she said. “Peter, take care of the ghosts.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Peter said.

  Buster huffed again as he lifted his shield. “Very well.”

  “We’re just leavier here?” I asked.

  Momma nodded. “Don’t worry, he’ll get all of them. Ghosts like that are best attacked using wide-area abilities. We don’t want to be around in case we get caught in that.” She took off, heading towards the right and around an interse in the middle of the road. I jogged after her along with my friends, but I couldn’t help but gnce over my shoulder.

  Peter was stretg before the wall of ghosts, leaning one way until his little white bun tail wiggled, then all the way to the other side.

  Just as I was about to turn around to try and help, the bun disappeared.

  Two dozen ghosts ed as lines were cut into and through them.

  Peter reappeared some ways dowreet, casually reeling in a long wire with a kied to the end.

  I decided that maybe he could handle himself, and ran to catch up to my buddies.

  “First wall,” Buster said.

  Out ahead of us was, in fact, a big wall. It was in rough shape, with roots breaking through the careful stonework and parts of it falling down. The top was a mess of spikes and bdes, like a really deadly pincushion.

  “Carrot, what was the solution to this gate?” Momma asked.

  Carrot poio an archway set at the end of the street. “There’s a bell pull to the side. When you pull on it, it summons all the ghosts to the wall.”

  “Rather easy,” Momma said. “Well, let’s see what we do.”

  There was a little gatehouse o the archway, with a big wheel with spokes stig out of it in its middle. We moved towards that, and past the portcullis leading to the floor. I could see more of the city oher side, with homes and, off to one side, what looked like a graveyard.

  There were skeletons ambling around there.

  “Will the monsters from that side be alerted?” Momma asked.

  “Yup,” Carrot said.

  “Then could you please take care of them? Buster, could you raise the gate enough for Carrot to pass? I’ll keep an eye on the children.”

  Buster grunted, set his shield against the wall, and ducked into the gatehouse. He gripped the wheel in both hands and began to turn it. The s running out behind the wheel jangled as they tightehen, with a rusty grunt, the portcullis started to rise.

  “You’re sending Carrot in alone?” I asked.

  Momma nodded. “That way I watch over all of you.”

  “What if she gets hurt?” I asked.

  Carrot giggled and bounced a bit closer. She patted the top of my hat. “Thanks, capt’n, but I wasn’t borerday.”

  I was still ed when she ducked down and rolled uhe rising gate. I don’t know what I was expeg the eiger bun to do, but it wasn’t seeing her bounce closer to the skeletons, then wave her arms at them. “e on, skeleboys and skelegirls, Carrot’s got some pounding to do!”

  The skeletons weren’t all bony white monsters. Some had the distended limbs and malformed bones of the corrupt ones we’d seen on the surface. Even more were covered in vines ging to their ribs and joints.

  They turowards Carrot, and as if on an unseen signal, started rag towards the lone bun.

  “Oh no!” I gasped as the first one reached her.

  Carrot dipped under a wild swing, moved up before the skeleton. She stepped to the side, under another punch from the skeleton, then spun around with a hop and delivered a rabbit punch to the back of it’s head.

  The skull went flying in a straight lihat ended with a loud crack with it smag another skeleton in the face.

  Carrot cheered and stomped a foot down so hard that I could feel it from the other side of the gate. Bits of rock flew into the air where she struck them with spinning kicks and tight jabs. Those same rocks zipped through the air and crashed into the advang army of skeleton warriors.

  Then Carrot decided to get serious.

  She bounced up off the ground, used one skeleton as a spring-board, then kicked another so hard that it sent it--and her--flying. That only helped her nd a spinning kito another skeleton.

  “She’s not even toug the ground,” Amaryllis muttered as she watched Carrot pinballing across the street, then the graveyard, skeletons exploding into dust and bone shrapnel behind her.

  Carrot flipped over, and did a superhero nding in the middle of a group of skeletons. The earth around her ed, huge spikes shooting out of the cracked pavement to stab into the undead around her.

  “She’s really strong,” I said.

  “She’s one of the buns that keeps Hopsalot safe,” Momma said. “That means that we need her strength in order to protect what’s important.”

  I was beginning to feel that maybe my friends and I were a little bit mispced in a dungeon like this one.

  Carrot tio clear the floor, slowing down as the number of skeletons p out towards her fell to a trickle. Some were armed, with swords and shields and spread, but that didn't seem to slow her down at all.

  “We’re done.”

  I jumped and spun around to see Peter casually walking over. He was rubbing a rag over a long knife. “Well done,” Momma said. “Buster, the gate please?”

  Buster hen grunted as he started to spin the wheel again. The portcullis rose, and soon we were moving past and into the dungeon’s sed floor.

  “Any trouble?” Momma asked Peter.

  “Not really,” he said. “I chipped the edge of one of my favourite knives with a bad swing. I o practice a bit more it seems.”

  “You’ll never be done practig,” Momma said. “That’s how things work.”

  Peter hummed as he tucked his knife away and moved past up.

  “Awa, these buns are kind of scary,” Awen whispered o me.

  I nodded. “I didn’t know buns could be scary. They look so fluffy.”

  “Aren’t you the very image of someone who doesn’t look terrifying, but is?” Amaryllis asked.

  I snorted. “What are you talking about? I’m not scary. I’m friendly.”

  My harpy friend rolled her eyes and moved on past us. Bastion waited by the gate for us to pass, then stayed right behind us as we moved into the sed floor. “I don’t think I’ve ever crossed a duhis quickly before,” he said.

  “This is just the sed floor,” I said. “Is it weird that it’s called a floor even though it’s all on the same level? The st dungeons we were in all had distinct ses, but this one feels kinda... same-y.”

  Amaryllis shrugged. “It’s irely unusual. This seems to be a very straightforward dungeon. Dangerous, but in a simple way.”

  Carrot hopped over troup, then stretched her arms out wide. “That was fun!” she said. “Don’t ofteo just stomp out a bunch of weak monsters like that.”

  “You’re very strong,” I said.

  “Aww, thanks capt’n,” she said. “I remember when I first came here. My tail was shaking as if it was caught in a storm. It’s kinda fun to return here after so long.”

  “Haven’t you escorted a few little ones here for training?” Momma asked.

  Carrot ran her hands through her hair and brushed her ears back. “Ah, yeah but that doesn’t t. Babysitting duty’s not the same.”

  “Y the little buns here?” I asked.

  “Just those that are a bit older,” Momma said. “It’s good to make sure that every bun knows how to defend themselves, no matter what they want to do when they’re older. Some find a love for it, some e to appreciate the difficulty those keeping the forest safe have to face, and a rare few decide to bee the geion of defenders."

  “Isn’t that dangerous for the little ohough?”

  “Awa, I think... maybe not doing it is more dangerous?” Awen fiddled with the string of her crossbow. “I lived in a big safe city, eople to protect us, but out here there’s none of that. Um, a monster could sneak into Hopsalot at any time?”

  “We wouldn’t let that happen,” Carrot said. “But... yeah, it could. You’re a clever little human, aren’t you?”

  “Awa?” Awen asked. “No, it’s just logical, I guess.”

  I tapped my . “Insmouth doesn’t approach it the same way, I don’t think.”

  “We are not Insmouth,” Momma said. “We’re just a little vilge of buns that wants to live in peace.”

  I nodded along. I couldn’t argue against that.

  “The wall’s ing up,” Buster said. Out ahead of us, right up against the edge of the graveyard, was another wall like the st. This one in even worse shape, with rge ses entirely missing and revealing the one huge building oher side. “Get ready. The first boss is ing up.”

  ***

  RavensDagger

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