Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter Thirty

A Growing Party

“How did you even get captured in the first place with skills like that?” I asked whenever I’d gotten up the nerve.

Fortunately, a fire had been lit under the asses of our whole group. They’d all witnessed Jody’s magic, and it seemed like all of them wanted some for themselves. Even Carla, who looked just shy of another panic attack, seemed like she wanted some of whatever Jody had gotten his hand on.

As I took in the woman, her gaze lingering a little too long, I revised that opinion a little. Perhaps she just wanted Jody.

“Don’t know,” he said. “I’m usually a light sleeper, but I woke up in that cell. They must’ve drugged me, I guess.”

“That happened to me, too,” I replied. “They’ve got these shamans. Slightly bigger goblins with staves. One of them held the staff up to me and I passed out. Didn’t wake up until I was in the cell with you, Todd.”

“So… what, they just waved their magic staff, and you fell asleep?” Jody asked.

“Hey, I’m just as incredulous about all of this as you are,” I said. “Before today, I was a regular grad student. I got home and found the little bastards attacking my dog. The magic imp only put me to sleep after I got lucky and killed one of them while they were dragging me into their fucked up cave.”

“I was biking to work,” Todd spoke up. “One of them threw something at my bike tire. Locked it up, and I crashed. They had ropes around me before I even knew what was going on.”

“H-hello?” came a sudden voice from the door. One of the prisoners inside must’ve found a little courage at the sound of normal voices. “Is anyone… human out there?”

“We’re all witches out here,” Jody said with a grin. He was directing the imp skeleton to perform a rather impressive ballet.

“Knock it off,” I told him. “How many of you are in there?”

“S-seven? I think?” came the voice.

Shit. This whole place was a prison, and each room was another cell block. How did we get out of here?

I tried to open the door but found it locked. Right. We'd already tried that.

"Didn't someone have a key to this?" I asked.

“Here, let me try,” piped up the brown-haired girl from before. She’d kept the key that had unlocked all of our cells. Now that I saw it, I realized it was one of those old-timey keys from the Middle Ages. I didn’t think those could actually work, but this one seemed to. The door opened with a clank and the squeal of ungreased hinges.

I decided to stay outside with Jody while Cole, Todd, and Lara all went inside to help the prisoners however they could. Emily busied herself, grabbing the wall sconce. The torch had been merrily burning away the entire time we’d congregated outside this newest cell. I’d always wondered how those things worked because, as far as I knew, they were just burning wood. Yet somehow, they kept burning for as long as a candle in most of the movies.

That seemed to be the case for this one, and we needed every source of light we could get, so I wasn’t about to complain.

Carla hovered close to Jody. Witnessing the man killing an imp seemed to have endeared him to her.

Seven people were in the cell block, bringing our group total to eighteen: four women and three men.

“Who is the most confident with a dagger? Anyone used them before?” I asked the crowd once we’d gathered around our two light sources.

“I’ve… been in a few knife fights?” said a teenager who looked like he was telling the truth at first glance. There was a gash across his cheek from an old scar, but his hair was cut like he was from an early 2000s emo band. I thought he had a stud in his tongue and another in his nose, which actually made me less inclined to believe him.

“Yeah, no Hot Topic. Are there any adults out there willing to try to defend this group?” Jody asked, apparently agreeing with me.

The emo kid glared at Jody but didn’t say anything.

“What the fuck!?” screamed one of the new group as they noticed the skeleton for the first time.

When noticed, the skeleton began to tapdance. Jody grinned as the group shied back. The man had a sick sense of humor.

“Jody here, can raise the skeletons of dead imps. You get – I still can’t believe I’m saying this – you get magic powers if you kill one of the little bastards. I’m a rogue, which means I can lay magic traps. You’ve already seen what Jody can do.”

No one spoke for a moment, digesting that.

“I can fight,” said a girl who looked no older than Todd, but her eyes held a glint that inspired confidence. Again, Jody noticed the same thing as he held the knife out to her, hilt first. The emo kid cursed as he actually looked a little older than the girl did, but temperament counted for more than age in Jody’s eyes.

I didn’t protest. I got the feeling this girl wanted revenge.

“Alright. Let’s go,” I said, taking the lead. “Keep your ears peeled. Jody, have that… thing out front where we can keep an eye on it. If someone is going to take a hit, I want it to be that.”

Jody nodded.

“Fuck, how could they have kidnapped this many people without anyone noticing?” Emily murmured.

That question had been tugging on my mind as well.

“No idea,” I replied softly. “They aren’t exactly subtle, and Missouri people are bound to notice when their neighbors show up missing.”

Emily blinked. “You’re from Missouri?”

I cocked an eyebrow, confused. “You’re not?”

“I’m from Montana,” she said.

I blinked. “Mon…tana? The state?”

She nodded.

“Florida,” Jody said.

That couldn’t be possible unless they’d been down here for days. Or did they have some sort of underground train system I hadn’t seen?

“How…? How long have you all been down here?” I asked.

“Not more than a day,” Emily replied.

“I was only in that cell for a few hours after I woke up,” Jody replied. “Don’t know how long I slept though.”

“I’m from Montana, too,” said someone whose name I didn’t know, and I saw a few other nods.

“Well… I’m from Missouri, same as you, I think, Mrs. Tande,” Todd said. “Boyerton.”

“I live quite a long way outside it, but yes, I’m from Boyerton as well,” I replied. “So… what is happening here?”

“I was awake the whole time when they dragged me down here,” said the emo kid. “I’m from Florida, too, and it's been almost a whole day. No airplanes or transportation, though. We can’t be too far from the lake.”

“That’s impossible,” I said. I refused to believe I had been unconscious long enough to be transported all the way to Florida.

“S-soy de Honduras,” Carla said. "You are all from the States?"

My Spanish was a bit rusty since I hadn’t taken it since high school, but I thought she just said she was from Honduras.

“This doesn’t matter,” Jody cut in. “We aren’t going to figure it out standing here. We get out of this fucked up dungeon, and then we figure out how we’re all from different states. Sorry. Countries. For that, we need more people with powers. The little miss’s traps and my Bonesy here aren’t going to be enough alone. Next time we see one of those–!”

Jody was cut off by a sudden scraping sound. It was coming from behind us, back where our cellblock was. We all tensed, and I rushed through the group of people, ready to drop a trap the moment I saw a threat.

“Speak of the devil,” Jody said.

Jody left his pet up front, but he followed me to the back of the large group as well. The scraping sound grew louder as a figure materialized out of the gloom.

I cursed as I recognized another one of those huge muscle demons. This one had its sword ready, dragging it along the stone floor, its edge making sparks in the dim light.

I didn’t waste any time and immediately threw out three traps. The demon paused as the blue lights appeared above my strange contraptions, and he didn’t advance.

“C’mon. C’mon ya coward,” Jody called suddenly as he dashed a little further in front of my traps. “Big scary demon like you about to tuck your tail and run?”

The demon didn’t seem to be much smarter than its imp cousins as it roared at us. I thought it was about to charge but Jody was forced to leap to the left as a gout of flames seemed to flow out of the demon’s mouth.

An inferno of fire jetted toward us as if the creature’s mouth were a flamethrower. Screams erupted from the crowd, as a few of them weren’t fast enough to get out of the way unscathed, but the stream didn’t stop until the demon ran out of breath. I growled and rushed forward, irritated that I’d wasted the traps. I threw out another one, much closer to the fire-breathing demon, and was happy to see it immediately start spewing icebolts.

Jody didn’t remain idle as his minion came sprinting through the hole the jet of fire had left in the crowd. The small skeleton barreled towards the demon like a suicide bomber, clacking with a strange silence. Even the demon seemed surprised as it desperately tried to dodge the icebolts from my trap.

I heard a scream from behind me as the crowd suddenly surged toward the fight, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. I darted a few strides closer to the demon, warily watching its mouth for any sign that it was about to spew that inferno breath again before laying out another trap.

I finally began to feel the strain as my batteries began to run low, but the traps proved effective as they both began to pelt the demon, forcing it further back down the hall.

“No dammit! Knife girl needs to get the kill!” Jody exclaimed as his skeleton leaped up onto the massive demon. A swift swing of the demon’s huge sword caught it in mid-air. Rather than cut the spine, the entire mess of bones toppled like a puppet with its strings cut.

I spared a glance at the crowd and was surprised to find a group of five or six imps dodging attacks from the other three traps I’d thought I'd wasted too far from the demon. Had this been an ambush!?

The people weren’t idle either. Most cowered between the five traps, but the girl with the knife and the emo kid both jumped out to engage the imps. The girl was fast and vicious, while the boy looked in over his head immediately, but at least he jumped in. Maybe I'd misjudged him.

“Nevermind!” Jody called as he ran back towards the imps. “Kill this fucker! I’ll help them!”

“Got it!” I said, laying yet another trap as soon as I saw that the demon had moved out of the first trap’s radius.

Did these things really count as traps? They were more like fucking turrets.

The demon roared again, but I was ready this time, and I hopped a few steps back before the flame engulfed my newest trap, destroying it.

The demon was suddenly there, its oversized sword swinging down to cut me in two. It had disguised its approach with the gout of flame, and I only had a moment to dodge. I failed and screamed as the blade cut clean through my…

My…

I stared in abject horror at the stump of my arm, shocked, before a scream erupted from my throat. Blood poured down the wound but I was more shocked by the lack of pain than the presence of it. I knew that would only last a moment, though.

Through my scream, I managed to lay out one more trap, knowing that we’d need every one of them to survive. Fortunately, my two remaining traps were already smothering the demon in ice, preventing it from taking my head as well.

Then the pain set in.