Dueling Dungeons (Rogue Dungeon 5) - Chapter Fourteen

Lessons in Leadership

Roark strode through the troops besieging the Vault. Metalwraiths, Stormbreakers, Corpse Defilers, Bonesnap Behemoths, and Fearstrike Reavers fought alongside untransmuted Harpies, Bloodleeches, Bêtes Ours-Loup, and Rock People. The ones who hadn’t been sent for Respawn in that first assault, in any case. Unfortunately, too many had been sent for respawn. Lowen and his forces were stronger, better trained, and held the most defensible high ground in all of Hearthworld. Even now, Heralds rained down magickal attacks alongside javelins, and swooped in like death on silent wings.

Thankfully, the special armor Roark had crafted what seemed like an age ago helped anchor the allied combatants in place on the ground.

All well and good if their goal was to hold here forever. Roark ground his teeth and balled his hands into tight fists. Holding simply wasn’t an option. They wouldn’t starve the Heralds out, according to Kaz, because food and drink respawned in dungeons every four to six hours, and even if it hadn’t, they certainly weren’t keeping the Heralds penned up inside the Vault. Whenever the winged menace wanted to leave, all they had to do was fly over the heads of the allied forces arrayed below.

This was, perhaps, the single worst siege in the history of sieges.

At first, Roark had sent contingents of flying mobs to chase down the Heralds who tried to flee, but it quickly became apparent that the level disparity between them and the Heralds was too great, even with the Mega-Evolutions. Roark had called that off before too many of their winged troops met grisly fates in the air and on the rocks below the Vault.

It was a bloody conundrum, but one Roark was developing an answer to. If he could just find Griff.

He worked his way through the crowds of assembled mobs, many clustered around cookfires tended by a legion of Kaz’s faithful apprentices, who had taken to calling themselves the Acolytes of SALT. Because of Kaz’s diligent recruits, the allied mobs surely ate better than any army Roark had ever seen or heard tales of—spiced stew and fortified meat skewers, flagons upon flagons of Kaz’s newly invented Silver-Mist Mead.

Those not eating milled about, talking in hushed tones and casting dubious glances at the Hive, or tending to the wounded. Sight of Roark quickly cut their mutterings short. Though he felt more than his fair share of doubt, he made sure to exude confidence as though it were a spell aura. These creatures needed to know with absolute certainty that Roark wasn’t afraid. It was one of the unspoken duties of a Dungeon Lord to look at all times as if he had the situation well in hand, regardless of what the truth may be.

Although he had served most of his adult life in the resistance, his father had trained him to lead men in battle—one of the many responsibilities of the nobility. The true strength of an army lay not in the sharpness of its blade, but in the resiliency of its morale. And that, Roark knew, was where a leader was most important. A leader could inspire confidence even in the most broken of men and monsters.

To this end, he also cast his new Necrotic Invigoration spell as he passed through the masses in his search for the Skill Trainer. Much like his Infernal Invigoration, it returned Health and banished lesser debuffs in an instant.

The mutters resumed, Roark knew, as he left behind one clump of grumblers for another, but they were always a touch more hopeful in the wake of his passing. A victory in and of itself.

After nearly half an hour of searching, Roark finally caught sight of the grizzled trainer on the back side of the Vault, teaching a small group of low-level mobs while they prepared for the next attack. Griff caught Roark’s eye and read the inquiry immediately. He slid home his notched short sword in the scabbard at his hip and hung his buckler over his shoulder.

“Practice amongst yourselves a bit,” the scar-crossed old man told his rapt students. “See if you can’t get those skills up to their next level, then we’ll work on introducing two-hand combos.”

While they paired off and began to drill, Griff headed over to join Roark.

“What’s on your mind, Griefer?” he asked in his gravelly drawl.

Roark offered him a flat stare. “Surely you’ve already pieced together that we’ll get nowhere like this,” he said, waving a hand toward the hive.

Griff turned his lone eye on the glowing dungeon above. “Aye, just between the two of us, I might’ve reckoned something of the sort. We’re not looking at an ideal situation for a traditional siege here.”

“No need to spare my feelings,” Roark said softly. “A bloody cesspool fire is what it is.”

Griff grinned and nodded his head in acknowledgement.

“What we need is an edge,” Roark said. “I’ve some ideas for siege engines—ballista, catapults, towers—but I need time to build them. While I work on that, however, someone’s got to marshal the troops… and I wouldn’t trust any of these Dungeon Lords as far as I can throw them. They’ve supported me so far, but this initial assault is liable to leave a sour taste in their mouths. It won’t surprise me in the least if half of them are gone come first light. Unless, of course, we can right the ship before then.”

Griff’s bushy brows raised a touch. “That may be true, but a few of them will stay. Ko seems resolute enough for the task. May be a mite hard to give up control of such a large army to someone nearing the same level of power, Griefer, but it’d certainly solidify your alliances and make them stronger. Perhaps a little trust will help rally them to the cause.”

“Unless they lay claim to the army for good,” Roark said, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice. He slashed a hand through the air. “Whether the Dungeon Lords can be trusted or not, they haven’t got any experience leading such a varied group of mobs. You’ve done it before in the fighting pits, and just recently in the Troll Nation training the Rumble Crew.”

“Griefer, I appreciate your confidence in me, but I’m a fighter, not a general. I can show a man how to gut another or tell him which end of the sword to hold, but I’ve not got a taste for logistics and war councils. If men follow me, it’d only be because you tell them to.”

That was a bloody crock, and Roark knew it just as well as Griff. Another thing Sir Erick von Graff had taught his son was that those who wanted power least would be most likely to wield it well and justly. Griff was a good man—one of the few whose opinion Roark respected—one who cared for the well-being of those in his charge, and whom others rallied to instinctively.

“There’s no question you’re the man for the job,” Roark said evenly, pinning the man in place with a harsh glare. “The real question is will you do it?”

Griff tipped his head back to look down his scarred nose. “Are you asking or telling?”

“Asking. As a favor from a friend.”

Griff grunted. “Aye, then, as a favor to a friend I can see my way clear to do it. And it’s only temporary, of course.” He scratched his whiskery jaw. “I suppose, if your Dungeon Lords can accept the leadership of a weak old man, I’ll do what I can.”

“I’ll make certain they do,” Roark promised, clasping Griff’s scar-crossed forearm in thanks.

A scrap of parchment suddenly filled his vision.

[You have Delegated vital tasks to one of your Greater Vassals! Congratulations! You have leveled up your Troll Leadership Skill to level 8! Chimera from dungeons across Hearthworld recognize your authority even second hand and will take reasonable orders from your Vassals!]

“But I suspect it’s not going to be a problem,” he finished, blinking the message away.

“We’ll see,” Griff hedged. “Speaking of friends and favors, don’t supposed you’ve had a chance to talk to Kaz and Zyra yet?”

Roark hesitated. “I asked Kaz about respawning food in the Hearthworld Dungeons, but I haven’t seen Zyra since…” He faltered. “Earlier.”

Griff nodded over Roark’s shoulder. “Well, you’re about to.”

Heart speeding up a tempo, Roark turned to find the lower level mobs scuttling out of the way of the Orbweaver Ravager. Because of the veil obscuring her face, he couldn’t read Zyra’s expression, but she strode forward on her new spider limbs in sharp, angry motions while her legs glided over the trampled grass without touching.

“Apologies go a long way,” Griff hinted in a low voice.

“I’m not sorry,” Roark insisted. “There’s no other way.”

“I don’t think I’d start the conversation with that.” Griff patted him good-naturedly on the arm. “But it’s your respawn.”

Zyra and the Nocturnus came to a stop before him, but before Roark could say a word, she cut him off.

“We’re not here to exchange pleasantries,” she said in an icy voice. “We’ve got a plan for dealing with—” She gestured a sparkling midnight hand at a flash of gold streaking away from the Vault high above. “—that.”

“We?” Roark asked.

“Indeed, Dungeon Lord.” Ick stepped out from behind Zyra, mandibles clicking with barely contained excitement. “We have been searching for you.”

“What’s this about a plan?”

“We’ve come up with an answer to dealing with troublesome flies,” Zyra said, pulling out a net of spidersilk.

“Or rather,” Ick said, taking an end of the net and helping Zyra stretch it wide, “Nature herself came up with it. The web.”

“Nature may have invented it, but we poisoned it,” Zyra said, using her free set of arms to produce a vial of swirling obsidian and gold toxin. “Distilled from the venom of the Black Fire Scorplings. It won’t eat through glass or organic material.”

She grabbed Roark’s hand and poured a drop in his bare palm.

Nothing happened. It didn’t even tingle.

“So, what does it do?” he asked.

Zyra produced an ingot of gold that looked as if it had come straight from the smithy, then smeared Roark’s palm across it. Immediately, the gold in contact with the toxin began to bubble, a black rot boring into it and spreading spidery tendrils across the slick surface. With a crackling sound, the layers of metal began to bubble up and flake away.

“Devastating to sun metals,” she said, recorking the vial. “We spread it on our webs, then cover the Vault with them. It will catch the Heralds the moment they try to take to the sky.”

“They’ll just cut their way free,” he said. He knew from experience that Zyra’s spidersilk was strong—they’d tested it more than once when they were getting along—but it was as weak to a blade as any rope.

Ick raised one serene hand. “Apologies, Dungeon Lord, but the web is not constructed to hold an enemy forever. It serves simply to entangle and delay them long enough for the spider to come along.”

“We’ll post webcrawlers,” Zyra said. “There are no exits or entrances at the very top of the Vault, so they’ll be hidden from view from the Heralds inside until they’ve tangled themselves up. The Poison of the Rotting Sun will start the process of softening them up, then the crawlers will drop down and finish them off.”

“There’s one last piece of the puzzle missing,” Roark said, mind racing. “A final dagger in the kidneys of the Heralds’ Divine Magicks—Discordant Inversion and Deflection. If they can’t use their spells without inflicting damage upon themselves, they’ll be at the mercy of the webcrawlers.”

Zyra tilted her head thoughtfully, white ringlets hanging in her veil-obscured face.

“I can cast the Night Magick spell on them as they’re entangled,” she said, “but I doubt I’ll be fast enough to get all of them. We could ask more of Ick’s students from the school to join us.” She looked questioningly at the Nocturnus.

Before they could go too far afield, Roark stopped them.

“Not multiple casts,” he said. “I can Hex the webbing with the cast. It’ll have to be recast every 20 feet, but that should be more than enough to give the Heralds pause about using their Divine spells while they’re trapped.”

Ick’s mandibles clicked. “It is a clever idea.”

Zyra crossed her lower set of arms and cupped her chin with one of her upper hands as if she were appraising Roark.

“Clever scheming always does become a Dungeon Lord,” she said. “Personally, I’m just happy to know you have room under those horns for something besides recklessness and impulsivity. I’ll get spinning immediately.”

Roark grinned, unable to suppress the rush of warmth in his chest at her sudden softening.

“As soon as it’s ready, I’ll begin hexing,” he said. Then he turned to Ick. “In the meantime, I’m glad you found me, Ick. I needed to talk to you about reopening the supply lines with the Troll Nation as fast as possible. I need every Smith and apprentice from the allied Dungeons here along with as much iron, wood, rope, and stone as they can muster, loot, or buy. We’ve got a siege train to construct.”