Dungeons Just Want to Have Fun

Tyla knew what she had to do. They all did. It had been explained, they had gone over every step. For most of the steps, they had practised, exactly, what they had to do.

It was hard, though, to remember anything when al-Kadir started heading their way. He was too far away for his aura to work, but when his eyes had swept over them, Tyla had felt the fear that a small animal feels when a hunter has marked them as their prey.

It was worse for Soraya, of course. Aris and Tyla had been noted, but the hunter’s attention had merely brushed over them. They had been dismissed. Soraya was this courl’s prey.

She froze, but Tyla was expecting that. Kelsey had predicted it.

“She’s not a fighter,” Kelsey had said. “When the fight starts, she’s going to freeze up, try to work out what’s going on before she makes a move. Aris might too, she’s used to combat happening at a distance.”

Tyla knew that combat didn’t happen at a distance. If you didn’t move, the raiders took you. If you didn’t fight they held you down and…

Tyla moved. She grabbed Soraya and pulled her down from where she’d been standing. She’d been making herself visible, but now they had been seen, and they needed to move.

Aris was moving on her own, which was good. Soraya made some noises, some protest, but she quickly realised what was happening. They ran. Not for the exit. They ran up.

The walls of the Arena rose two man-heights over the highest level of the stands. Then a roof rose further, angling inward to provide some shade. Exiting the stadium over the roof was not impossible. Anton or Zaphar could do it, clinging to the wall like a spider and climbing out.

Or Tyla could cast a spell.

True flight was beyond her, much to her dissatisfaction. She could slow someone’s fall, or cause them to rise gently into the air. She cast the spell on Aris first. She was a higher level than Soraya, better suited for catching the roof and climbing over. She didn’t wait for Aris to start rising, but immediately cast the spell on Soraya.

al-Kadir was running across the arena sands. He was coming.

Even as Soraya rose into the air, Tyla cast the spell on herself and jumped. They didn’t have much time. Even as they clambered up and over, Tyla was acutely aware that this obstacle wouldn’t slow al-Kadir at all. They weren’t sure how his blink step worked, exactly. It might be that he would have to blink up to the roof and follow them. Or he might be able to blink straight through the wall. A fall of fifty feet or so would not bother him.

It would bother them, though, so Tyla couldn’t simply cancel her spell. Instead, she cancelled it for her and grabbed on to the other two. Her weight dragged them down and prevented them from drifting off, while their lift kept her from falling. They drifted down, far slower than Tyla would have liked, but when the ground came up to meet them, Tyla realised it was faster than was safe.

She knew how to roll with a fall. She cancelled the spells on the others just before she let go. Soraya had the breath knocked out of her, but Aris was there, helping Tyla get Soraya moving again. They didn’t have much time. They needed to get to the alleyway before al-Kadir made it out of the arena.

Get to the alleyway, but don’t get in it.

“Al-Kadir is a gladiator,” Kelsey had said. “He doesn’t have tracking traits, he’s never had to hunt someone down across anything other than ten yards of sand. If you get out of sight, he’s screwed.”

She’d made a face at that. “If he loses you too soon, he’ll come back to get answers out of me, and he might be able to fight through the gas. So you need to keep him on the hook.”

They reached the alleyway and Tyla held back. She held Soraya back too. Soraya makes a soft complaining sound, very much like a cat would. She didn’t want to wait, but she didn’t struggle. She knew they had to stay in sight.

Al-Kadir might not remember Tyla, but he would recognise Soraya. They didn't have to wait long. Al-Kadir appeared on the roof of the Arena.

So he can’t teleport through walls, Tyla thought. That is important information.

It didn’t take long for him to notice them. As soon as he started moving, Tyla released Soraya and they ran.

The chase was on. They rounded the first corner, and Tyla cast her next spell.

Alleyways have trash. Not enough of it for Kelsey’s purposes, they had to bring some in, stacking it in precariously piled heaps. Now, as they ran, Tyla tugged at the piles as she passed, bringing them down in a crashing, clattering tumble.

Ostensibly, this was to delay pursuit. Anyone would be slowed by having to pick their way over and through the scattered garbage. Not al-Kadir, though. He was too fast and too strong to be meaningfully impeded. The reason Tyla was scattering trash behind her was to leave a trail. They have other ways to slow al-Kadir down.

A crash of metal into stone and an angry snarl was the sound of al-Kadir running into her earlier spell.

It was strange, but the kind of mana that Tyla knew as Water was used for many other things than just that. It covered most liquids. Not all liquids, Kesley had pointed out with irritation. Blood was covered by Human or Animal mana despite, as Kelsey put it, being practically the same thing. Molten earth and metal were still covered by Earth. But Tyla was able to create wine, water and vinegar with a spell. And oil. It didn’t last for very long, disappearing into thin air when the mana was used up. But it lasted for long enough to make the flagstones treacherously slippery on the first turn.

“Faster!” she called out to Soraya ahead of her. The courl was already running out of breath. Tyla was not. She couldn't run as fast as al-Kadir, but she could keep this pace up for an hour at least. She needed to.

Ahead, Aris took a right. They needed to turn left, and Soraya did it as they practised. Splitting up was one way to evade pursuit, but they were pretty sure that al-Kadir was only interested in Soraya. That gave Aris an opportunity.

After the left, a right, and then they were out of sight. Tyla pulled down another pile of garbage to let him know where they went. She didn’t bother oiling the corner, he wouldn’t be fooled a second time that way.

A loud crack from behind them told Tyla that al-Kadir had rounded the corner and Aris had taken her shot. Tyla didn’t stop running, but she listened. There weren’t any further shots by the time they reached what Kelsey chose to call the danger house.

The number of shots was a signal. They had thought that Aris would only have time to get one shot off before al-Kadir was out of sight. It would have been more if she was firing pistols, but putting distance between them was important. If al-Kadir had turned on Aris, she would have fired as many times as she could get off. If she fired a second shot, it was a signal that al-Kadir had dodged the first.

“I don’t think he’s got a danger sense,” Kelsey had said. “In all his fights, he’s been facing the other guy, and he’s known his opponent is trying to kill him. I’m not sure there’s anything that danger sense would have done for him that basic situational awareness wouldn’t do.”

There was little hope that Aris would be able to kill him, even with a rifle shot to the back. Kelsey had described how her shots were deflected, just slightly, turning a lethal wound into a flesh one.

If he’d had a danger sense he would have dodged, and Aris would have fired a second shot to let them know that. That meant the danger house was going to work. Probably.

They hadn’t been able to put any traps in the alleyways. Kelsey had wanted to but had been convinced that regular townsfolk setting off the traps would have been detrimental to their chances. Even if it would have been funny.

So they had rented a house. Not a nice house. It was large, with ten rooms and two stories, but it had fallen into disrepair. The walls were still strong, but all the furnishings, doors and windows were rotting. The floor of the upper story was ready to give way at any moment. The merchant who’d rented it to them had barely been able to conceal his glee at getting some money for the barely habitable building. Tyla wondered if he would still be so pleased once the week was up.

Kelsey had drilled them, again and again about lifting their feet as they went over the threshold. She’d made them do it blindfolded. Soraya had been the most vocal complainer at the time, but it was all worth it now, as she stumbled up to the building. Exhausted, she still managed to not trigger the bomb.

Tyla was right behind her. She didn’t dare look back to see how close al-Kadir was behind her. There were no lights in the building, and all the other doors and windows had been boarded up. Tyla could see perfectly well in the dim light, though, and both of them had been drilled on the path they had to take through the maze of debris-ridden rooms.

They were halfway to their destination when the bomb went off. Kelsey had suspected that he would be on the lookout for the large boxes of explosives that she’d used before. This bomb was much smaller. Kelsey had promised that it would turn any normal person into ‘stew’. Against the supernaturally tough gladiator, she was less certain.

From the howl of pain and rage that resulted, Tyla gathered that some damage had been done, but al-Kadir was very far from finished. Tyla could hear crashing sounds from the front that suggested their hunter was still active. But they were here.

Soraya stumbled forward, towards the pit. She knew where she was going, but she was tired enough to make mistakes. Tyla caught her before she could fall, and directed her to the ladder. Under almost any other circumstance, the young courl would have balked at climbing down in the darkness, but she moved without protest.

Al-Kadir was still stumbling around in the outer parts of the building. Tyla got on the ladder and grabbed at the rope for the trapdoor. Kelsey’s skeletons, disturbing as they were, did good work. They had drilled and dug through to the sewer network, installed this ladder and the concealed trapdoor that Tyla now pulled over herself. Debris had been stuck to the other side, to make it look like it was just part of the ruined floor. It wouldn’t fool determined scrutiny, but in the dark of the interior it would last long enough.

At the bottom of the ladder, Soraya pulled out a lightstone. Relief and disgust warred for supremacy on her face.

“We’re not safe yet,” Tyla said. “This way.”

They didn’t have to wade through human refuse, there was a walkway. The smell was bad enough as it was, but they didn’t have much choice. After a minute’s brisk walk, they came to the plunger. Kelsey had just left it sitting on the floor, the wires fixed to the wall and ceiling, leading back the way they had come.

“You do it,” Soraya said. “I’m too tired.”

Tyla nodded. It took some strength to push the plunger down. You had to do it quickly or it wouldn’t work. She put her full weight behind it.

The explosion was separated from them by both a layer of earth and an entire floor of the condemned building. Putting the explosives on the second floor meant that al-Kadir would never get a chance to see them before they went off. So all they heard was a muffled, but still loud, boom. Closer to them, there was the clatter of some rocks falling down the shaft they had come in from.

Tyla got some experience, but not nearly enough.

“We stopped him,” she said. “But I don’t think we killed him.”

Soraya nodded glumly, and they headed off to the rendevous point.