Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter Twenty-Six

Demonic Jail

Rio

“What is our goal?” I said sharply.

“Killing the guard!” Emily said from the next cell over. Something about the discussion had managed to lower the general level of fear as more and more people listened in. Emily was a blonde girl with a thick New England drawl. I’d only known her for a few minutes and she’d already confirmed that she had fewer brain cells than a rabbit.

“No, it's getting all of us out of here. We kill the guard, we get the key, we’re free! Then what?” I said annoyed. “The explosive trap would kill the guard but it would alert everyone else out there!”

“This whole discussion is ridiculous,” said an old man a few cells over. “Have they cracked?”

“You think I don’t know that?” I shouted at him. “But what is more ridiculous? Demons dragging us all to a jail in hell, or this?”

“Dios Mio. We are in Hell. We have died, and we did not live righteously. This is our punishment…” wept a woman in the corner.

“We were physically dragged down here. Every one of us. That’s not any definition of Hell I’ve seen. Stop bawling. If you can’t, then at least cry quietly,” I hissed. The woman had been doom-mongering for almost half an hour and she kept interrupting my discussion with Todd, and I supposed, Emily.

Chastised, the woman hunched further into her cell, content to whimper quietly.

“We eliminated the daggers, passives, bows, and poisons tabs,” Todd said. “Except maybe the Mystic Dagger skill.”

Considering how vehemently he’d opposed dungeons and dragons, he seemed to be the most reliable source of rationality here.

“It has to be one of the traps,” he continued. “From the descriptions they had, it looks like you can just make them from nothing. Still, Emily, I’m not sure the explosive trap would even work. They’re… well. They look like fucking demons. They might just walk right through fire. Even explosions. I’d go with ice, bolt, or blades.”

“That makes sense,” Emily said. “At… least as much as any of this does.”

I was pretty sure all of them thought I was just trying to soothe them. They thought I was making up a pleasant fantasy. I didn’t blame them. The old man had the right of it. Maybe I had cracked, and these buttons and menus were all just hallucinations.

I… didn’t think so though. Something in my gut told me they were real.

For practicality's sake, I was leaning toward the Blade Trap. Blades were a tangible thing. I had a block of them in my kitchen. They were tangible. I could picture a trap that used them existing in reality. A trap that threw bolts of lightning or fireballs? Right. And I was supergirl.

The only thing making me hesitate was that the Blade Trap skill had no description. I’d only inferred what it did from the descriptions of the other traps. A lot of the abilities had problems like that.

Ice Trap didn’t though.

Skill: Ice Trap

Ice Trap creates bolts of ice that fire toward an enemy when it comes into range.

Mana Cost: Low

Skill Level: 0

Mana was always some sort of energy that wizards used for magic, right? Did Gandalf have mana? Dumbledore? I didn’t think they did. If I’d been more interested in any of those stories, would I be better prepared for this now?

“Ice,” I said, leaning further into Todd’s reasoning. “Since they’re demons… isn’t it likely that ice would hurt them more than fire?”

“Yeah. Okay, but do we want ice or the frostbite one? You said there were two types of traps for each element?” he asked.

“The only difference we have is that the Frostbite Trap has a ‘High’ mana cost. It has no description,” I said.

The door latch suddenly jingled. I didn’t have any more time to choose. Either this worked or another one of us would die.

Terrified, Todd murmured, “I-Ice.”

I nodded and mentally chose the skill.

Nothing happened. No miraculous ideas. No changes that I could immediately notice. The only thing that changed was that I no longer had a skill point, and the box beside the Ice Trap symbol showed that it was level one.

I closed the screen. The red box on the right was still there, but I didn’t have time to worry about it yet as the door opened.

We all breathed a minute sigh of relief when we didn’t see the demon beast. The only thing we saw was the jailer. The mass of muscle looked like he could crush a bowling ball between his bare hands and that wasn’t even mentioning the vicious blade strapped to his waist.

My breath quickened as he shut the door.

‘Okay… I’m ready for my burst of knowledge! Isn’t that how this works? Come on stupid skill thing!’ I thought, frantically.

The demon stepped forward slowly, but he shut the door, returning us to near-total darkness once more. All I could see was his huge shape, dimly illuminated by the red glow from the cracks under the door. I could practically feel his grin. He liked to play with his food.

He suddenly banged his fist on one of the bars, making all of us jump. The crying girl didn’t seem to be able to help herself as she began a sort of soft wail.

It just pissed me off though.

Okay. If I’m supposed to use these things to fight demons, they should be intuitive. Easy. I pictured a bear trap in my mind and then threw the imaginary construct through the bars and out into the hall.

To my shock, a physical clang echoed off the stone floor. I felt a slight pull, a drain of some sort inside me, but that was nothing next to the sudden blue light that illuminated the room. A strange pulsing light came from a blue orb seated in a tiny little contraption that I never could’ve made by hand.

The demon looked wary as the room lit up. Then the orb brightened.

A bolt, like a miniature blue comet suddenly hurtled toward the demon. He bellowed as the bolt struck him in the face, but it didn’t have much time to get its bearings before another bolt came flying, this one knocking him off his feet.

It… it worked. It freaking worked!

I didn’t have time to celebrate though. While the trap was clearly hurting the demon, it wasn’t going to kill it. I threw a second trap right beside the first one, feeling that same minuscule drain. The second trap lit up the same as the first.

I could see the terror on the demon’s face as it slowly got back to its feet. I grinned as I began throwing trap after trap into the hallway.

The demon, smarter than it looked, turned and began to flee for the door. Luckily, at least one of my prison mates was thinking as he reached out of the bars and grabbed the demon, all while my little icebolt traps pummelled him.

The man screamed as his arm was yanked forward, but other prisoners soon realized that this was our chance. More hands reached out from the cells on both sides, grabbing and holding the demon while the traps slowly murdered it.

It wailed, much louder than I would’ve preferred, but I didn’t think it was any louder than the screams we all had made when the creature’s beast had eaten one of us.

The first trap fizzled as if a fuze inside it had burnt out. The light went dim and then the device simply vanished.

Before the second one could follow its brother, the stream of icebolts pelting the demon abruptly ceased. Again the gong rang in my mind just as I saw the Demon gasp its last frozen breath.

My hands were shaking. We’d done it. A small, quiet cheer rose among the prisoners as a few of them kept hitting the dead body as best they could through their bars.

“Does… does he have a key?” I asked weakly. The blue glow from my traps was fading one by one. I felt drained. Weak. I didn’t know if I’d be able to make many more of those traps, and if that demon didn’t have a key this whole thing might’ve been for nothing.

I couldn’t really see anyone that far away, but I heard a scrabbling as the prisoners by the door maneuvered the huge body.

One of them on the other side of the hall shouted in excitement, “I got it, I think!”

I could hear a clanking, followed by the sound of one of the cell doors opening and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“A-are we sure it's dead?” someone asked.

“The traps stopped,” I replied, hoping that actually meant they no longer sensed any enemies worth firing at.

I watched one of the freed prisoners approach it and tap it with its foot, but the frozen demon didn’t move. The man then stomped on the creature's arm and it snapped off like an icicle.

‘Holy crap!’ I thought as I stared at the unassuming Ice Traps. Another one fizzled and winked out of existence. They didn’t seem to last all that long, but they’d certainly done the trick.

“It was real…” the old man murmured before turning to me. “All that gibberish. It was real?”

“Okay. Okay we’re safe for now, it looks like. If anyone had heard this, they probably would’ve come running by now. Does anyone know what’s out there?” I asked, ignoring the fanatic gleam in the old man’s eyes.

“I… could see out the door every time they opened it,” answered someone far closer to the front. It was unsettling to receive answers from the far side of the room. How many people were in here? “Just more hallways though.”

“The whole place looks like some type of ancient monastery. A ruin. It looks gothic. Nothing like it should even exist on this continent, let alone underground,” Emily said from the next cell over. “I got to see a lot of the place when… wh-when they dragged me in.”

“Alright. That’s good. We’ve got to pool our knowledge. They kidnapped us all for reasons we don’t know. I somehow have abilities that I got from killing one of the smaller ones. If… we want to survive, we need everyone to kill one of those imps. The little ones. They seem a lot less dangerous than this guy.”

“With what?” asked a child. The voice couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

“I… the demon’s sword. Can anyone lift it? Maybe we can find some weapons outside the prison?” I thought.

“So… we find some weapons, hope we only run into the little imps, kill them for their bullshit magic skills, and make our way back up to the surface? What if we run into more of those things!?” Emily asked, pointing to the dead jailer. “What if there’s worse?”

I frowned. “When you put it that way, it barely sounds like a plan at all, but can you think of anything better?”

‘Dammit Theo, I swear to god if there is a dragon in this dungeon…’ I thought.

Emily balked at that. “I… nah. I guess.”

We settled into an uncomfortable silence after that. Emily seemed to be wracking her brain for solutions, while Todd just looked thoughtful. No other demons came to check on us as we were all let out but none of us dared to open the outer chamber door.

When I was finally freed, I strode to the demon’s corpse and was surprised to find a wooden staff lying beside his body. It glowed with a hazy orange hue, which had actually been giving off some light to see by even after the traps all disappeared.

Ignoring the staff for now, I decided to take stock. There were eleven people in all. The youngest was a boy named Sebastien at fifteen, while the old man was called Jody. He kept staring at me like I was a witch or something. Sebastien stared at me like I was a witch too, but his gaze was more Harry Potter, less Salem.

“Okay. It… dropped a glowing staff. That could help us. It's pretty dark down here. Also… I have another skill point. It seems like every monster I kill gives me a new ability. I can put another one into the ice trap making it stronger or I can get something else,” I said to the group. “Either way, I don’t think we should stay here. Who knows if anyone heard that, and I don’t like our chances against one of those demon gorillas.”

“How… many of those traps can you make?” Todd asked suddenly. “It might be worth it to wait here. We have a perfect ambush zone. We let one monster in, close the door, and kill it. Get all of us magic abilities, and we’ll be much more likely to make it back to the surface.”

I shook my head. “No. I can’t make that many more. It’s like there’s a drain on me. I’ve got… maybe three more right now?”

“Right. Mana cost was low, but it's not like you’d have much if you’re level one,” Todd said speculatively. “Do you… have stat points to assign?”

“I… have another menu. I haven’t had time to look at it yet,” I said.

“If it is a stat page, you should assign your stats to intelligence. That should allow you to make more traps. Probably.”

I glanced sideways at him. Not a nerd, my ass.

He didn’t even seem to notice as he continued thinking aloud. “The Passives skills. One of them… uh. Greed’s Reward?”

I blinked, before opening up the menu again. It opened as soon as I thought about it, straight to the relevant tab.

Skill: Greed’s Reward

Passive

Greed’s Reward allows the rogue to regain a small portion of their mana upon picking up gold.

Skill Level: 0

“Uhm. Yes. It lets me restore my mana when I find money. Why is that relevant?” I asked.

He pointed to the ground just behind the demon. I walked a few paces forward in the cramped little hall and sure enough, saw a small pile of gold. There must’ve been twenty coins just lying in a pile beside the body.

“It… drops gold? Is that like, real gold?” I said, amazed.

“Beats me,” Todd replied. “But if all of the demons drop it, you might be able to spam those Ice Traps, and I like the idea of having more of those around.

I liked the idea, too. I decided that while I had the time I’d keep going over my options but I turned to the kid eyeing him skeptically. “Are you sure you don’t play Dungeons and Dragons?”

He flushed like I’d accused him of something embarrassing before murmuring, “I played a little Baldur’s Gate. It’s not like D&D. I’m not a fucking geek. I’m going to state in September for football, okay!?”

I blinked at the surprising vehemence in the boy’s voice. That was a whole can of worms I didn’t think I wanted to touch right now.

“Kid, at this point, I would be bragging about the other thing,” I said. “It might save our lives.”

“Just… whatever,” he said.