Chapter Three Hundred and Twelve — Lay Them to Rest
Chapter Three Hundred and Twelve — Lay Them to Rest Lieutenant Petalwrought fought the toy knight with grace and skill. He reminded me of Bastion, though his stance was lower, and he struck with more force and slid back with less finesse. A different fighting style, but one that wasn’t too far away, then?The toy knight swung its wooden sword around with big, sweeping arcs that unbalanced it and sent it spinning. Even though it was clumsy, I still had the impression that it was dangerous. The toy’s arms were pretty long, and that wooden sword, even if it wasn’t very sharp, was still heavy-looking. The lieutenant and his two companions made sure never to be close to it, not even trying to block the blows with their shields.The blankifolds around us shifted closer. Like curious dogs chasing a scent.Lucille raised her wizard’s staff, then pointed the end of it to the nearest. “Permission to burn it out?” she asked.The nearest knight considered it for a moment. “Granted,” he said.A whooshing ball of fire raced out of the end of Lucille’s staff, hotter than anything I could produce by far. It splashed against the monster, then stuck to it, the fire almost acting like a liquid.The blankifold squirmed for a bit, but it was mostly made of fabric, and cloth wasn’t exactly the most fireproof of materials.Unfortunately, the floor was also made of fabric.“Oh, that’s annoying,” Lucille said. She waved her staff around, and I felt the air grow dry as the air shifted in her direction. A ball of water formed, and she fired it out ahead in a big wave that splashed over the burning blankifold and the quilted floor around it.Water hissed and smoke rose. When it cleared the fire was gone, and the blankifold was very much dead.Ding! Congratulations, you have burned out Quilted Blankifold, level 10!Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!“Huh,” I said.“Got experience for that?” Amaryllis guessed. I nodded and she continued. “It’s normal. Big parties like this are pretty terrible for levelling though. The experience isn’t much, and it’s split too many ways.”“That's why you need to make up for it by eliminating more targets,” Lucille said. “Though perhaps let’s not use fire.”“I’m not great with ranged options,” I said. “Not unless cloth-monsters are weak to Cleaning magic.”Bron chuckled, a deep, booming sound. “No, I’m afraid not.”“They’re coming this way,” Erin said. He pointed with the tip of his spear at the blankifolds, who were, indeed, coming our way.I squinted. No, they weren’t actually. They were all moving, but not all towards us. A lot of them were shifting carefully towards the middle of the room, towards the hill where the lieutenant was fighting.The toy knight was looking worse for wear. An arm had been clipped off at the elbow, and a whole leg was missing. Its sword was gone too, so all it could do was hop on one leg and try to kick the knights around it.Soon it would be replaced by another one of the toys on the mobile.“They’re surrounding the lieutenant,” Aria said. “Is that normal behaviour?”One of the knights guarding our group swore. “It happens,” he said. “We need to form a circle around the hill.”“Let’s do it right, then,” Bron said. “Everyone can fight here, but we should space out our best fighters to provide uniform protection. Captain Broccoli here’s the important one, too.”“Agreed,” the same knight said.They hatched a quick plan. Everyone would form a ring around the boss fight, far enough to be well out of range of the fighting atop the hill. The set-up was simple enough. I was going to be sandwiched between the two knights, which was a little annoying, then clockwise from there, it was Amaryllis, Bron, Aria, Lucille, Erin, Awen, and finally back around to the knight that was on my right.It took a bit for those on the far end to get to their spots, but the blankifolds were slow movers, and we had plenty of time to position ourselves. And plenty of room to move in, too.I swiped my scythe through the air a few times. Weedbane was going to be tricky to use. The angle on the blade was all wrong for slashing, and it was a bit top-heavy. The pole being crooked also made it hard to hang onto it.A blankifold started to undulate its way closer to me. One of the knights stepped out towards it.“Ah! Wait, can I get this one?” I asked. “This is a new weapon I still need to figure out, and I’d rather do that with something easy.”The knight paused, then glanced at the blankifold. It was only level ten, and he was right there. “As you wish, Captain,” he said. He stepped back a bit, but still kept his sword by his side.I grinned as I stepped up. The blankifold would be tricky to fight normally; they seemed to like staying low to the ground, with only the edges of their surface touching the quited ground.The blankifold must have seen me coming... even if it didn’t have eyes. It reared up, the cloth behind it bunching into a spring-like fold, then the entire creature shoved itself towards me.I swung Weedbane to meet up. The tip of the scythe poked into the middle of the cloth, then the blade moved through the blankifold as if it wasn’t even there.With a quick side-hop, I moved out of the blankifold’s path, letting it flop onto the ground where I’d been standing. It was cut, but not dead. I guessed that it didn’t really have internal organs, so I’d have to chop it up some more if I wanted to defeat it.Swinging the scythe around, I spun my entire body to put more strength into my next swipe. Weedbane sang as its blade cut the air, and just like that, the blankifold was split in half down the middle.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.Ding! Congratulations, you have chopped up Quilted blankifold, level 10!Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!“Oh, that’s sharp,” I murmured as I stopped my spin.It seemed as though I’d have to fight in quite a different way if I wanted to use Weedbane. My spade just needed me to bonk things with the flat end, or chop them with the sharp bits. Weedbane could only scythe through things along a very close arc. Anything farther away and it was more like a long pickaxe.“Interesting weapon,” the knight said.“Thanks, I think,” I said. “It’s a bit weird.”“Weird isn’t bad,” he said. “Experienced fighters probably won’t know what to think of someone carrying that around.”“They’ll probably just think I’m weird,” I said. I turned as I heard a clanking behind me. The mobile was turning, dragging up the body of the toy knight which was very much broken. The elephant slid into place, then it trumpeted loud and clear from its felt nose.“Watch your footing!” Lieutenant Petalwrought shouted.The elephant reared up, then brought down its plush forepaws with a thundering boom. The quilted land rippled out in a wave from the elephant, staggering some of the others, but I was able to hop up and hug my knees to my chest, letting it pass under me.I landed with a bounce, the plush terrain still wobbling a bit.Glancing back, I saw the lieutenant dart in and chop the elephant apart, foamy clouds of white stuffing flying all over as the elephant’s stitching was chopped up.The mobile creaked again even as the lieutenant backed away.The shooting star descended, and immediately I felt a warmth hit me even as the room grew brighter.The star started to fly in widening circles, faster and faster. That lasted as long as it took for the lieutenant to slap the shooting star out of the air.I didn’t even get to see how it fought, which was a little disappointing.What was next? The sheep?The mobile shifted and a fluffy sheep landed on the ground.I noticed a few of the others fighting off blankifolds, so the perimeter was holding. Lieutenant Petalwrought would have plenty of time to deal with the sheep.I yawned and lowered Weedbane’s pole, leaning against it.“Stay awake, everyone!” Lucille shouted from across the arena. “There’s a sleep-inducing effect at work!”“Really?” I asked. Then I stifled another yawn. It was a strong yawn, the sort that brought tears to your eyes. “Oh, yeah, I guess so.”The sheep was harder for the lieutenant to hit. His two knight companions ended up helping him. Mostly it just hopped around a lot, and when they struck it, any blows against its fluff just bounced right off, with a noise like someone smacking a pillow.Speaking of pillows, I felt like I could really use one.I smacked my cheek a few times, then shook my head until my ears hurt from wiggling around too much. I had to stay awake!Eventually the lieutenant skewered the sheep with a swift strike, and I felt a warmth leaving me. It was as if someone had just gently removed a blanket I was snuggling with. It didn’t snap me back awake, but it did remove that sleepy influence.The mobile moved, stuttered, then jerked down.The last one to defeat, the wizard.That one was scary. It was a magic-user, and the toy wizard was wrapped up in thin, viney tendrils.It raised both of its arms, and I felt mana shifting in the air around it. A spell?Then the Lieutenant stepped up to it and casually lopped its head off, then both arms, then the legs, then he cut the mobile's strings and chopped the body in half before it could hit the ground.Parts of the wizard flopped to the ground.Ding! Congratulations, you have put The Sleeper’s Mobile, level 12, to sleep!Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!“That was easy,” Amaryllis said.Lieutenant Petalwrough nodded, then began to check his sword for nicks. “The wizard’s the most dangerous of them all, but the easiest to defeat. It doesn’t move and it’s relatively weak. Its spells take a long time to cast as well, but they are deadly. It’s a good lesson for recruits to learn.” He sheathed his sword with a click. “The floor’s done. Is everyone well?”No one was injured. The others had taken out a few blankifolds here and there, but there weren’t that many of them in the room, not compared to the size of our group. I dismissed the exp notifications, and joined the others near the centre. “Where to next?” Aria asked.“That way. The door should be unlocked for us to return to the starting room,” the lieutenant said.Aria nodded, then dropped to one knee next to the wizard. “This one had some roots on it.”“And I noticed that the mobile was functioning a little worse than usual,” the lieutenant said. “The sheep is usually more of a challenge, and the mechanism jammed before the wizard came down.”“I noticed that too,” Aria said. She took a few notes, then fished a small vial from her pack into which she placed a length of the root with some tongs. “That’ll do for now.”As a group, we started towards the far end of the arena. I bounced a bit. Now that the area was safe, I could participate in some good, wholesome bed-jumping. My friends rolled their eyes or giggled (Amaryllis and Awen respectively) but the others in the group didn’t seem to mind at all.Maybe it was because I was a bun? Buns were bouncy. It was just the way they were.“What’s the next floor like?” Aria asked.“We’ll go over it in a moment,” the lieutenant said. “Suffice to say, it won’t be as easy as this one.”
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Chapter Three Hundred and Thirteen — Knightlight
Chapter Three Hundred and Thirteen — Knightlight The room beyond the end of the floor was the same room that we found at the entrance of the dungeon. There was even the dungeon’s exit at one end, just casually waiting for us.There were a few small changes though. The bedroom’s wallpaper now had a small pattern along the bottom that looked like entwined roots. The bed in the corner was undone and messy, and there were more toys scattered across the floor.Otherwise, it was pretty much the same as the room we had entered through. Which was of course impossible unless the dungeon was doing some very silly things with physics.Lieutenant Petalwrought pulled out a small box from a pocket tucked on the inside of his armour. It clinked, glass tapping against glass within the small wooden box.“You’re each going to want to drink one of these,” he said as he undid the clasp holding the box in place and opened it.Within were twin rows of glass vials with cork stoppers. He plucked one out, and turned around to show it to us.“These will keep you awake in the next part of the dungeon. We don't usually allow the use of these, since staying awake through your own will is a good test of a knight’s resolve, but we are not here to test that.”I used Insight on the vial he was holding, just out of curiosity.Potion of Wakefulness, new“May I?” Lucille asked. She pinched the bottle the lieutenant held, brought it close to her eyes, then opened and sniffed near the neck of it. “It should be safe,” she said. “Unless the person who made it is far better at poison-making than I am at detecting them. What are the side-effects, lieutenant?”“Occasionally the potion will work too well,” he said. “You might have a difficult time sleeping tonight. That’s not too unusual. The potion will keep you awake, but it won’t sharpen your senses. You might have an unpleasant evening. Otherwise, I would suggest a more fibrous diet tomorrow.”We each took a vial, then downed them one at a time. There were lots of grimaces going around, and a few grossed-out coughs.“It also tastes exceptionally vile,” Petalwrought remarked as he took his own.I shuddered at the taste. It was like the worst sort of cough medicine, but somehow a hundred times more bitter, and it was sticky on the way down, clinging to my throat and burning a bit. Once it hit my tummy, I felt a wave of wiggly energy sweep through me. I wasn’t sure if I felt more awake or not.Lieutenant Petalwrought closed up his box, still with a couple of vials left, then tucked it away while he spoke. “This next floor is a maze. It isn’t an overly difficult one, most of the time. The path out will be illuminated by small lights affixed near the floor. They are usually spaced apart in such a way that you can always see the next one. It’s the spaces between the lights that is dangerous.”“Can we make our own light?” Amaryllis asked.“Some of this floor's adversaries shy away from light, while others are attracted to it. On the average I would recommend we light our way. There are two monsters in the room. One has never been seen; they attack with long, multi-jointed limbs that are relatively fragile. You can break them easily, but they have a lot of pulling power. They will ambush you in the dark, trying to grab you and drag you away. Their main body will never approach the lights, however.”“Creepy,” I said.“Indeed,” he said. “The other enemy are large... large teddy bears. Wearing a knight’s armour and raiment. They will attack you more honestly and are attracted to any lights within the maze.”“Cute,” I added.The lieutenant chose not to comment. “We’ll be going in with a three-two formation. I’ll be at the head with two knights, our guests in the centre, and the other two knights will take care of the rear. We will be staying very close to each other. Do not stray.”We nodded, then Lucille raised a hand. At the lieutenant’s nod, she asked her question. “Any types of magic or abilities we should avoid?”“Not really, no, though you don’t want to use any abilities that will hamper the other’s visibility too much, or slow the group down,” he said.Bron grunted. “What about them arms in the dark? Any way of knowing they’ll be coming at us?”“They are quiet, though you might hear a scuff or shift before they appear. Generally, the arms will go for members that are separated from the group, or who are on the edges. Any other questions?”“I have one,” Aria said. “Have the roots changed anything? Especially with this floor of the dungeon?”“Good question. I hadn’t thought to mention it, but we’ve noticed some... corruption on the teddy bear knights. As well as roots entwined around the joints of the arms. They behave mostly the same. Perhaps a little more aggressively than before.”“Thank you,” Aria said with a nod. She jotted that down in her book, then stuffed it away.“Any more questions?” he asked.“Ah, um, how long is the maze?” Awen asked.Petalwrought shook his head. “Hard to tell. It’s never the same length twice. We tend to measure them by the number of lights we cross. Usually somewhere between five and twelve.”There didn’t seem to be any other questions after that, so we organised ourselves into the formation we’d be diving into the second floor in. Lieutenant and knights at the front, more at the rear, and my friends and the researchers and others bunched up in the middle.It was pretty cramped, so I folded in Weedbane’s blade, just in case. I could still use it to bonk stuff with the blade folded; it was still a heavy stick with a metal bar in it, after all.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.Petalwrought opened the door we’d use to enter the room. This time, it led into a poorly lit corridor. “If you have magical lights, now’s the time to use them,” he said.Two of the knights summoned little wispy balls of light, then Lucille cast a spell that made her staff glow. Not hard enough that it was difficult to look at, but still bright. She leaned it up onto her shoulder, and it cast a circle of soft light around us.I summoned my own little light ball and held it up next to me while a few of the others did the same.We were a well-lit group as we moved through the narrow corridor, then finally through a wide door at the end of it.The first I saw of the maze was a passageway whose proportions were all off. The ceiling was too high up and the walls too far apart. Wallpaper covered everything but the floor, with dancing teddy bears and knights and fantastical creatures. They were all really big though.The maze stretched out before us, with a few side-passages just barely visible in what little light reached them, and way off in the distance was a circle of light with a glowing device in its middle.“That’s a nightlight,” I said.“Hmm,” was Petalwrought’s reply.The nightlight was shaped like an elephant, and I suspected it was made of something like glass, with an incandescent bulb within. Were those kinds of lights more common than I thought on Dirt?By unspoken agreement, none of us rushed ahead to the nightlight. We walked with careful steps, the only sound filling the dark our footfalls, the clink of the knight’s armours, and our breathing.Slowly, quietly, we crossed the distance with every eye scouring the darkness for motion and danger. My big ears swivelled this way and that as I tried to spot anything before it came at us, but I couldn’t hear anything.And so we arrived at the first nightlight.The knights moved past the light and formed a cordon within the lit area. “Everyone accounted for?” Lieutenant Petalwrought asked. He made a point of counting every head. “Good. Where’s the next light?”“Sir, that way,” one of the knights said. They pointed into the dark. I squinted that way, and could make out a faint light in the distance, it was clearly just some light illuminated a wall, not the nightlight itself. That had to be around a corner, but I couldn’t see where the corridor turned.“Same formation,” the lieutenant said. He shifted things around so that he was back at the front of the formation with two knights by his sides.More darkness, though this time we weren’t moving parallel to the pattern in the carpet. I hadn’t even noticed that it had a design of interlocking squares until we weren’t moving along it.Our lights illuminated corner walls and when we finally arrived at the light the knight had pointed out, it was obvious that it was just an intersection. The nightlight itself was further down.I glanced back at the last light. It was far away from us, and flickering.Was it getting darker?There’d be no retracing our steps if we had to.“This is spooky,” Awen muttered.I nodded. “Yeah,” I whispered back. This didn’t feel like the kind of place made for loud voices and laughter.We started towards the nightlight, then stopped when the lieutenant raised a fist.I aimed my ears at the dark. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as something shifted. The sound was an echo, distant... maybe. Or maybe it was coming from just around the corner and we had no way to know that a corner was even there.“Onwards,” the lieutenant said.We reached the next light with a collective sigh.Safe. For now.The light flickered, barely noticeable with all the lights we held, but still there.“We’re perhaps moving a little too slow,” the lieutenant said. “Next light?”“I see it,” Bron said. “Left a ways, and forwards. Something’s near it, I think. Can’t rightly tell.”The next light was down a long, narrow corridor. The lieutenant went ahead, and since he couldn’t walk with his knights by his sides, they were split up so that they’d be mixed in with the rest of us.The hallway was so narrow I could touch both walls without having to stretch my arms out far. It made the lights we were collecting feel too bright, especially as the wallpaper had a slight reflective quality here.The images were all of plush animals, some of them being held by long hands with too many fingers and joints. Roots clung to some of them, like nooses around their necks.We crossed a few openings as we pushed forward. Long passages into the dark that our lights couldn’t illuminate the whole of.We were nearly at the next nightlight when something crossed before it.There was no missing that the light had dimmed for a moment. It brought all of our attention up and forwards, and onto the large form waddling past the light.The corridor widened, which was probably for the best.The creature pacing next to the nightlight saw us coming with its giant beady eyes. It was a teddy bear, like the lieutenant had said. Bands of iron encircled its big belly, and it had an open helmet squeezed onto its plush head.A long sword was held by its side in a plush hand. It looked as sharp as any sword I’d seen.“Two of us will take it on,” the lieutenant said. “The rest of you pay close attention to the dark. It wouldn’t be beyond a grasper to use the distraction to grab someone.”The lieutenant and one of the knights stepped up.That left the rest of us just outside of the safety of the nightlight’s glow, in the near-dark that seemed harder and harder to ward off.That’s when I started to hear a shuffling, a shuffling that was growing louder by fits and starts.
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