Chapter One Hundred - No Strings Attached

Delver Team Two, that is, Eli, Percy and Boots, worked together like a well-oiled machine.

It had become obvious the first time we were ambushed by Manweaver spiders in the hedges and they formed a quick triangle to lay down some literal fire on the beasties. It became impossible to miss when we entered the second floor.

Calling a dozen long corridors lined with empty rooms and a ceiling so far above that none of our lights could reach it a floor was a little strange, but that was the nomenclature the delvers used, so we stuck to it.

“Knights ahead,” Eli said.

Boots ran up a few steps, his heavy plate boots clunking on the wooden floor until he was half a dozen steps ahead and held his axe at the ready before him. Percy stepped back and Eli moved behind Boots and to the side, his staff pointing ahead towards the end of the corridor.

We... didn’t move so fluidly. I skipped ahead to be next to Boots, Amaryllis stepped up behind me with her magic sparking at the air around us, and Awen stumbled to a stop a little ways behind her.

“What can you tell us?” Amaryllis asked as she peered ahead.

There was a deep thumping noise coming from around a bend in the corridor, one that was growing louder.

“Knights. Big bastards. Level seven. Toughest mob in the dungeon after the boss,” Eli said. "If you can aim for the strings above them and cut them off, they’re finished, but anything less and they’ll just keep coming.”

“That sounds annoying,” I said.

“If you make enough noise, the first knight will attract the second and third. It’s usually best to tackle them one at a time,” Eli said.

And then three knights walked around the corner.

I felt my neck craning back as I took them in. Each of the knights was ten feet tall, a skeletally thin body stretching up in a way that looked more grotesque than lanky. They wore thick plate armour all across their body, and two of them carried shields and swords. The third, who hung back a little, had a sword that was longer than I was tall gripped in its spiked gauntlets.

Their pitch-black armour made their details hard to pick out in the darkened corridor. I pushed some mana into my runelight to fix that and immediately regretted it.

Bloody rags were sticking out of their armour and their helmets, which only covered half their faces, revealed rotting jaws and empty eye-sockets. “Oh, nasty,” I said. “Insight.”

A Black Marionight, level seven.

“Damn,” Eli said. “We should retreat.”

I stared. Amaryllis stared. Even Awen stared at him.

“What?” he asked. “We didn’t come down here to die. We only fight when things are weighed in our favour.”

“But there are seven of us and three of them,” I said. “And we’re better levelled. Can’t we at least try?”

“That’s the spirit!” Boots cheered. “C’mon Eli, we’ve taken two at once before.”

“Only in a pinch,” Eli said.

“You said focus the string, right?” I asked. “I can probably get to them if they’re above the knights.”

Amaryllis sighed. “They’re moving closer,” she said. “Close your eyes for a bit.”

I slapped my hands over my ears and saw Awen doing the same a moment before the corridor filled with light and noise.

When I opened my eyes again it was to see the three knights stumbling forwards, little electric currents buzzing across their armour. “I’m on them!” I said.

A burst of stamina to my legs and I was off, soaring up and high above the knights before gravity did its thing and I started to fall towards the forward-most knight. I spotted the cords Eli had talked about just as I landed onto the knight’s pauldron.

The reaction was instantaneous. He immediately started stabbing upwards with his big sword, and the knight at the back did the same, lunging up at me with his big two-hander.

For all that they were fast, I was faster. It was child’s play to duck one sword and step onto the other so that I could use it as a pad to bounce onto the first knight’s head. The cords holding him up were thin, near translucent things. I chopped at one with the sharp edge of my spade and all it did was reverberate like a guitar string.

“Annoying,” I said.

“Magic it first!” Amaryllis said.

I shrugged and turned on my cleaning magic aura. It was a weird sort of spell, one that made the world around me more... mine, and also more clean. I saw the rust flaking off the knight’s armour and the flesh left on its bones turned to dust and was swept away. The lines hanging in the air glowed a little.

My next swing of my spade snapped through half a dozen wires. The knight started to collapse.

I hopped off just as the other wires gave out under the knight’s weight and it came crashing down as a pile of armour and bones.

I felt Mister Menu congratulating me for the kill, but dismissed it for the moment.

The second knight charged at me, shield held before it and sword already mid-swing to try and take my head off. I still had plenty of time to jump out of the way, but it turned out that wasn’t needed.

A foot-long bolt appeared in the knight’s knee. Its leg crumpled, but it still raised its arm for a stab.

Awen’s crossbow reloaded with a heavy ‘crunch-crank.’ A second bolt punched into the knight’s elbow, locking it in place.

It would have fallen all the way, but its strings held it up from behind, like someone tugging at a girl’s hair. It didn’t look all that comfortable.

“Hah! These girls have spunk!” Boots said as he raced ahead. His axe glowed a moment before he swept it through the strings holding the knight up. It fell with a heavy clunk.

And then there was one.

The final knight stood tall and proud, its sword spinning by its side with heavy whooshes of displaced air.

That’s why when I jumped I aimed for his other side. Another burst of magic and a few quick strikes of my spade and the knight came crashing down just like its comrades bringing me down with it.

I cheered as I landed in a roll then bounced to my feet. “That was easy!”

Congratulations! You have snipped Marionight, level 7’s life thread. Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!

***

Eli grumbled a little as he led us to the next floor. Still, he and his friends were out ahead, which meant I could talk to Amaryllis and Awen in peace. “It is just me, or is this dungeon really easy so far?”

“It’s a very young dungeon,” Amaryllis said. “Give it a few years to find some tricks and maybe grow a few more floors and its difficulty will ramp up.”

“Yeah, but... what levels are the delvers at?”

Amaryllis peered ahead, then shrugged. “Between twelve and fourteen for their main classes.”

“And they don’t feel as... strong as us,” I said. “Or maybe not strong, but... uh.”

“They’re cautious. They take their time, they plan things out, and they don’t take undue risks. In short, they’re smart. In five or so years, after switching dungeons a few times, they’ll hit their next evolution. That’s how most people do things.”

“Ah, but we don’t.”

“You don’t. Because you’re a headstrong moron that runs into trouble around every corner and who somehow managed to not get herself killed yet.” Amaryllis sighed. “People like you either die tragically, or become like Abraham.”

“Broccoli will be like uncle?” Awen asked. “Awa.”

Amaryllis huffed. “Most die. Which is why you really ought to learn to stop jumping ahead so much,” Amaryllis said.

“Here we are,” Eli said before I had time to really think about what Amaryllis said. I filed it in the back of my mind for later. It was worth thinking over, especially if my dying made my friends sad. “Welcome to floor three.”

He pushed a pair of large double-doors aside to reveal a ball room. Pillars lined the edges of the room, intricate windows behind them letting red moonlight pour into the room to splash off of mirror-polished marble floors.

A staircase took up most of the far wall, leading up to a balcony on the second floor with a huge gilded door before it.

“The dolls will be arriving soon,” Eli said. “Just let them burn.”

“I hate this part,” Percy said.

We stepped into the room and let the doors pull themselves shut behind us. The boys didn’t seem nervous, so I decided that it was probably okay.

The dolls Eli had been talking about appeared as the large door a floor above opened. They glided down the steps, ten beautifully crafted porcelain dolls with ball gowns that swept around them and that seemed to float just barely above the ground.

They were all about a head shorter than me, with delicate hands folded together over their tummies, and beautiful lacey frills all across their skirts.

“Pretty,” I said. “Insight?”

A Dancing Doll, level five.

“Do you wish to dance?” the doll in the lead asked. It tilted its head to the side.

Eli turned to us. “If you dance with them, you get to pass to the bossroom. That is, if you’re an alright dancer. But we don’t want that. Don’t get stabbed.” Eli raised a hand, and before I could object a gout of almost liquid fire lanced out towards the lead doll.

The doll screeched and batted at its burning skirts before it went up in flames and fell to the ground, quite dead.

“Why?” I asked.

The only answer I received was to have an angry doll rush towards me. Two long blades, mounted on mechanical limbs, folded out of the sides of its dress and started to stab at me.

I ducked the first, batted the second aside with my spade, then stepped up to the doll before the first could come back around to hit me. The doll stepped back, flowing with me in what was obviously a dancing step.

That ended when I hopped to the air and kicked the doll’s head off.

“Awa!” Awen said as she blocked a blade with her crossbow, then skipped back to avoid a second. One doll was already dead by her feet, a bolt lodged in its head.

I bounced over to Awen and tackled the doll harassing her out of the way. Amaryllis, for her part, was standing over a pile of dolls torn apart by cracking whips of electricity.

One last shot from Awen’s crossbow into the doll’s head, and the room went quiet.

Ten dolls died in twice as many seconds.

Congratulations! You have danced Dancing Doll, level 5, off the mortal coil. Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!

“What the heck?” I asked.

Eli had the good grace to rub at the back of his neck. “Heh, sorry about that. I should have explained a little better. The dolls get impatient though.”

“Two dresses this time,” Percy said as he bent over double and pulled a white gown off the floor as if it was a pile of rags instead of a beautiful lacy dress. He stuffed it in a satchel and wandered off to pick up a second dress from a fading doll.

“Right, come along girls. The boss room is right this way. You’ll get to meet the puppet king!”

I frowned at Eli’s back as he and Boots began to climb the stairs at the far end of the room. “Didn’t like that, did you?” Amaryllis asked.

“No, no I didn’t,” I said.

She patted me on the shoulder. “That’s how delvers do things. Profits first, safety second, adventure never.”

I nodded. I was glad I was an explorer then.

***

The hall we entered, the last floor of the dungeon according to the boys, was a vast room. Longer than it was wide, the hall was illuminated by crystal chandeliers held up by chains hooked to the sides and little sconces mounted to the twenty or so floor-to-ceiling pillars that lined the sides of the room all the way up to the dias at the end.

A throne waited in the distance, a thin man slumped onto it, one leg over an arm and his body slouched to the side like someone watching TV on a saturday morning. He, because the cut of his richly decorated clothes said ‘boy’ was wearing a too-big crown that was tipped so far forwards that it masked his eyes.

“Is that the boss?” I asked.

“Sorta,” Eli said. “That’s the boss puppet.”

I fired an Insight at the man on the throne instead of trying to pry answers from Eli.

The Puppet King.

No level or anything. Weird.

“Where’s the actual boss, then?” Amaryllis asked.

Eli gestured to an empty spot near the ceiling above. “You can’t see it yet. Once the king starts to fight you’ll catch glimpses of it. The idea is you knock the king down, and it’ll swoop down to help it up. That’s when you hit it. It’s a pretty easy, if intense fight.”

“The king is fast,” Boots warned. “And his arms have swords in them. Bunch of nasty tricks to him.”

“Interesting,” Amaryllis said. She cracked her head from side to side. “Well, I’m ready.”

I bounced on the balls of my feet a few times as I took in the room. There were a bunch of pillars all around, so I had lots of room to maneuver. “Yeah, me too,” I said.

“Awa, me, me too!” Awen said as she hugged her crossbow close. “Um. I don’t have too much ammo left.”

“Right, let’s start this thing,” Eli said as he stomped ahead.

When our little group was about halfway down the room, the doors to the throne room clunked shut behind us and the puppet on the throne shifted. Its head rolled until it was looking down at us from below the lip of its crown. Its mouth, which was made of two pieces of delicately carved wood shaped like lips, snapped up into a smile.

“Get ready,” Eli said as he brought his staff up before him.

The delvers shifted into a sort of triangular defence, eyes locked with the king.

I had a question on the tip of my tongue when, with the suddenness of a mouse trap going off, the king sprung out of his seat.

My eyes widened. I raised my spade just in time to block a spinning kick aimed right at my face.

The king bounced off, cartwheeled twice, then landed in a crouch. I saw his placid marble eyes look at me for just a moment before they shifted over to Awen who was behind and to my right.

I intercepted him mid-jump with a shoulder-tackle. It was barely enough to get him to move out of his path.

The king bounced once off the ground, then his arms shot out, extending with twin ‘clacks’ of wood on wood. Two blades, like tiny scythes, tore out of his wrists and skittered across the marble floor until he came to a stop.

Awen’s crossbow twanged, a bolt slicing through the air so fast it was hard to see.

The king’s entire body twisted back and the bolt flew past to lodge into the far wall.

The fight hadn’t lasted more than three seconds and I was already nervous.

“Keep your eyes on him!” Eli shouted.

Boots shifted out of their formation, axe spinning in one hand. “Come on, cinnamon girl, let’s show that noble who the real kings are, yeah?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

Boots’ reply was to roar with laughter as he charged ahead, his axe rising into the air above only to come crashing down so hard and fast that when it hit the ground, the floor cratered.

The king, of course, was having none of that.

The puppet spun around, arms moving as if they had far too many joints and leaving after-images in the air. Boots smacked one blow aside, then parried another with his axe.

The king twisted around and to the side to dip under Boots’ guard. One of his sickle-like blades sliced across Boot’s exposed ribs. The big man winced and stepped back, but the king didn’t let up.

I shot ahead, spade stabbing forwards like a spear only for it to be tapped aside by the king’s raised foot.

I still had tricks up my sleeves though, and I fired a burst of stamina that had me shooting off to one side for only as long as it took for my foot to touch the ground again before I shot back towards the king from a different angle.

The king dodged again, but he looked to be off balance, his leg stretched out at an awkward angle.

Then he fell onto his bum as I swiped the air where he had been.

I blinked, looked down, and only just managed to hop out of the way of his rising foot. A foot with a three-inch blade sticking out of it.

I was in midair when the king’s smile turned into a frown. His jaw unhinged, revealing a pipe sticking out of his mouth.

“Poison!” Eli shouted.

The king spat out thick off-white fog from his mouth. It met a wall of cleaning magic that made it evaporate out of the air.

The king’s jaw snapped shut. He did not look pleased.

Before he could do anything about that, a dozen small, fist-sized fireballs raced past where he was, and the king was soon busy dancing out of their way like someone dancing the robot to speedmetal.

Awen fired her crossbow.

The king snatched the bolt out of the air, and with a spin flung the bolt towards Amaryllis.

My bird friend side-stepped it. “Yeah, no. Enough of this,” she said.

I slapped my hands over my ears.

The room filled with light, growing warm even as a deep electric hum resonated in my bones and the air began to smell like ozone.

“Can’t dodge that, can you?” Amaryllis asked. She was wearing a smug grin.

It was probably deserved. The puppet king had a foot-wide hole blown through his chest and his wooden arms and head were all smoking. Even his royal clothes had taken a beating, some of it smouldering away.

The puppet crashed to the floors, its strings cut.

“Was that all?” Amaryllis asked.

“Dammit,” Eli shouted. “You’re not supposed to kill the puppet!”

“Huh?” I asked.

My attention was drawn up by a flash of motion above. There, hovering by the ceiling, was a large cross. Two wooden planks as wide around as I was, each end covered in little hands pinching at torn ropes, and in the joint in the centre, two dozen mis-matched chameleon-like eyes that were twitching every which way.

“Insight,’ I said.

The Puppet Master of the Palace of Strings, level 8.

“It’s above!” I said.

It was too late.

Thin cords whipped down and snaked around Boots’ arms and legs and neck. The man’s eyes went wide a moment before he started running towards his friends. “I can’t move!” he said as he swung his axe around to try and decapitate Percy.

The healer ducked under the swing, turned tail, and started running while screaming a whole host of impolite things. Boots never let up, occasionally swinging his axe as he went.

Amaryllis aimed her arm up. Some of the eyes twitched her way. The arc of lightning that snapped out of her shot through the spot the monster had been in only seconds before.

Boots yelped as he was dragged to the side by the trailing strings.

Amaryllis growled and fired off three more blasts of lightning, but the boss monster was quick and agile, spinning out of their way each time, even when Eli joined in and started flinging fireballs up at the ceiling.

Then one of Awen’s bolts thudded into the centre of the cross and the entire thing went nuts, bouncing off walls and butting up against the ceiling. When it came down and tried to buzz over our heads, I jumped up and landed on its back.

My weight made it veer down, and the entire thing crashed into the floor for a moment before it started to lift.

“Oh no,” I admonished the boss before smacking it with the sharp edge of my spade. It took a bloody gouge into the wood.

Boots, who had recovered from his little ordeal, rushed over and smacked the boss back down with a dull thud of his axe. Then Awen came, her crossbow set aside so that she could wield her hammer in both hands. “Raa!” she roared with the ferocity of a yawning puppy.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Congratulations, you have defeated Dungeon Boss: The Puppet Master of the Palace of Strings, level 8! For defeating a Dungeon boss, bonus exp is gained! Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!

“It’s done!” I cheered.

Dungeon Cleared!
All adversaries with The Palace of Strings Defeated.
All Bosses Defeated
Broccoli Bunch, Cinnamon bun, level 9 is awarded the Puppeteer class.
All class slots filled.
Replace current class with Puppeteer?
Replacing your current class will reset your level 0.

“No thanks!” I told mister menu. “Amaryllis, you got your class!” I said.

“Indeed,” Amaryllis siad. She looked extra smug as she stared off into space. Then she blinked a few times and the smug was replaced by a more normal smile. “Thanks, by the way. I think I’ll be having a lot of fun with this one.”

I was about to reply when a new prompt filled my vision.

Bing Bong! Congratulations, your Cinnamon Bun class has reached level 10!
Health + 5
Stamina +10
Mana +5
Resilience +10
Flexibility +10
Magic +5
You have gained: One Class Point
You are now eligible for Class Evolution!

“Oooh!”

***