Chapter 90: 5.14 – What Lies Beneath

‘Khavren! Calm head, remember? We’re not here to fight!’ Robin shot an eye uneasily around at the mounds of treasure everywhere. They were surrounded by an unknown number of shapeshifters disguised as treasure, in the heart of a living dungeon’s power. This was neither the time nor the place to start a fight they weren’t prepared to end.

And Robin had better things to do right now than fight a dungeon! Especially once that seemed like it might also hail from Earth.

‘Speak for yourself, minstrel,’ the knight shot back.

Was that an insult? It sounded like an insult. Robin didn’t have the requisite local knowledge to know if it was one or not, and he wasn’t going to waste time being miffed right now.

He shot a glance at Savra. She’d been handling the knight well enough during this delve; what had happened this time to set him off? He couldn’t read anything from the seeress’s face, however. She was an inscrutable as she’d ever been.

The lack of irritation raised the hackles on the back of Robin’s neck.

‘Khavren!’ Jhess tried to put a hand out to stop him.

The knight flicked the flat of his blade at her, smacking her hand away. Jhess hissed in pain and fell back. Drev’s eyes sparked and blue-white sparks danced at his fingertips.

‘No no no!’ Robin shouted. ‘Don’t let the dungeon trick us into fighting one another!’

I’d take offence at that, but it is the sort of thing I would do. Though I swear to you I’m not doing anything of the sort. This time. That meathead just refuses to be reasonable.

Reasonable? What had Ruprecht asked of the knight? What had he been saying to each of the members of the party, come to think of it?

Robin filed the thoughts away. Not a now problem. Now’s problem was Khavren stalking toward the dungeon core with a bared blade and murder in his eyes.

Hissing coins rose up throughout the chamber—treasure-mimics revealing their locations in response to the threat posed by the knight. A spray of treasure, cold gold and sharply-faceted jewels, lanced toward the knight from several of the monsters.

Most of it clattered tho the ground, easily repelled by the armour the knight wore. One sapphire managed to draw a line of blood from his cheek, however. The knight spat.

‘Cowardly attacks! Hidden shapeshifting filth! This is unspeakable!’

Not that unspeakable if he can keep yammering on like that.

A shimmering shield appeared in mid-air, blocking Khavren’s way. Robin turned slightly to see Drev, hands outstretched, magical energies crawling across them, and the mage ran through a series of gestures.

‘Be reasonable, Khavren,’ Drev called. The mage’s voice was hard, however, and there was little patience or sympathy to be heard there. Not after Khavren had used his blade on Jhess. ‘This is a foolish course of action. Come back here and let’s get back to talking about what we and the dungeon can do to make sure everyone is satisfied.’

Ruprecht must have promised Drev some kind of arcane knowledge, Robin thought. He seemed rather too invested in the peaceful approach at the moment for anything else to have happened.

‘What are you up to, Ruprecht?’ Robin’s eyes danced about the cavern, noting the position of potential threats and measuring the distance between himself, Khavren, and Ruprecht’s core gem.

It was not adding up in Robin’s favour.

I’m merely administering a simple test to make sure your party is trustworthy. Though I have to say, at the moment, this one is bringing your overall average decidedly down.

Spikes of adrenaline stabbed Robin in the neck. Things were not going at all to plan. Not that there had been much of a plan. In retrospect, that might have been a bit of a failing.

‘I’d much prefer if we were graded individually,’ he quipped, trying to suss a way out of this. There were only so many tricks he could try, however. Tricks required holding a lot more information than Robin currently possessed, and it didn’t look like he’d have time to weasel it out of Ruprecht before Khavren bollocksed the whole thing up.

I will keep that in mind.

Ruprecht seemed very calm for an entity that couldn’t move independently, with a very angry adventurer bearing down on his position. Which meant he felt safe. Which meant there was probably a doozy of a defence mechanism that Khavren was about to trip.

‘Traps!’ Robin yelled to the knight. ‘Don’t forget traps! Sneaky shapeshifters and hidden doors, and that means there are definitely traps! You should come back here to the rest of us, where we know the ground is safe!’

Khavren slowed at Robin’s words but he did not stop. The knight continued to advance, prodding the way ahead of him with his sword as he went, knocking aside small jets of gold and gems from nearby treasure-mimics.

‘Anyone got any better ideas?’ Robin glanced around the aprty.

Wulfram shrugged. Unsurprising.

‘Got any spells that might help?’ Jhess asked Drev.

The mage shook his head.

‘He can walk around my shield spells easily enough, and I don’t want to waste my energies in case they’re needed later.’

He didn’t have to say for what. They’d faced enough traps down here that Drev’s magics had saved them from. There would likely be more.

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‘Eventually I’ll be able to conjure hands of ethereal force that can grab and grapple individuals, but that’s beyond my current mastery. And my magics aren’t the best at subduing targets.’

Sleep! Robin had a sleep spell. He could try that.

‘Maybe I’ve got something, though the bastard’s been resistant to it in the past. Might as well give it a try.’

Robin cast [Lesser Enchanted Slumber] at the knight. It was to no avail. The furious warrior shrugged off the effects.

‘Shall I try again? Or should I conserve my energies?’ Robin looked from one party member to the other. ‘I could try to command his attention but I think he’s too caught up in the spirit of combat for it to work. At least at my current power level.’

‘Don’t look at me,’ Jhess said, ‘unless you want him full of enough daggers to do a passable impression of a porcupine.’

Tempting.

‘Remember your oath,’ Savra called.

But the seeress spoke too softly. Even Robin could barely hear her, and he was much closer than Khavren was. The seeress cleared her throat.

‘Remember your oath,’ she said again, louder this time.

Those words finally seemed to reach the knight. Khavren paused, chest heaving with anger, eyes spitting sparks, but he paused. His gaze was locked on the dungeon core as he struggled with the two conflicting impulses within.

‘We should knock him out,’ Jhess muttered just loud enough to be heard by the rest of the party. ‘To be safe.’

‘He’s a knight,’ Robin said. ‘After everything he’s said about honour and the right way to do things, do you really think he can be baited by a dungeon into abandoning his principles?’

The dungeon rumbled. Robin’s blood went cold. Ruprecht had clearly said something.

‘You dare? You dare question my honour? I will wipe your foul existence from this world!’

Khavren began storming ahead once more. He was moving even faster now. Something about that progress bothered Robin, and it didn’t take long to figure out what it was.

It was the treasure-mimics! They weren’t charging toward Khavren trying to stop him, or even chucking coins at the knight to slow him down. They were scrambling to get as far away from the core plinth as they could. They clearly knew something the party didn’t.

Away from the plinth. That was it!

‘Khavren! No! The whole thing is a trap!’ Robin shouted, even as he spun on his heel and dashed back toward the perimeter of the cavern where the mimics were gathering.

There were fewer of them than he thought there would be, a calmly detached part of him noted. That same part also took in Drev grabbing Jhess and Savra, and raising a shield between them and the core at the centre of the cavern.

Time seemed to slow. Khavren, face twisted and purple with fury, charged the pillar, all memory of the oath he had sworn to do no harm clearly forgotten. His hair floated around him like an aurora and his sword flashed in the brilliant white magelight. It came down in a glittering arc and shattered the core.

Boom!

The gemstone exploded, the shockwave hurling treasure, razor-sharp shards, and Khavren backwards with terrific force. The edge of it caught Robin and slammed him into the wall. He bounced off and landed between two treasure-mimics, equally shaken and shedding gold coins in terror.

Poor things were almost cute when they weren’t trying to rip your face off.

Robin blinked away the stars as best he could and shook his head, though it did nothing to help the ringing in his ears. Through the dancing golden spots he could make out figures rushing toward the downed knight. Probably Savra. That would make sense. She was the healer after all.

He blinked again. Why did it feel like there was a mile of taffy stuffed into his brain? His thoughts were all thick and viscous.

Robin pulled himself to his feet, bracing himself against the wall. The mimics had gone. Where had they gone? They had disappeared. Or were they camouflaged back in amongst the treasure blasted into little drifts around the perimeter of the cavern?

Strange.

The bard tried to walk over to the rest of his party, but staggered. The floor of the cavern beneath him pitched and heaved like the deck of a ship in a storm. His stomach clenched, then rolled to the left.

Robin steadied himself—and his stomach—before trying again. This time the heaving had subsided enough that he was able to edge his way over to the rest of his party. They were gathered around the still form of Khavren.

He couldn’t see much of the knight from his vantage point. The bulk of Wulfram covered a lot, and the other bodies huddled around didn’t help much either, but Robin could make out a spreading pool of crimson on the floor beneath Khavren.

Savra glanced up at him as he neared. The seeress’s face was unreadable, which, in itself, told Robin she had either foreseen or expected this outcome.

‘He’s dead.’

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