Empire Builder 1: Breed, Populate, Conquer by Dante King (free e books to read online txt) 📕

Imogen shook her head. “I am strong, yes, but I would not dare to disturb the wards on the stone.”

“Those are wards?” Ben asked.

“They look very much like the wards my people carve on stone to keep intruders out,” Imogen replied.

Lulu spoke up. “If the entrance is closed, maybe Vinata didn’t come here.”

Imogen brightened up at that statement.

Melody shook her head again. “The dungeon would not leave its door open. It would still want other strangers to be enticed inside.”

Imogen’s shoulders slumped again.

Something Melody said stuck in Ben’s mind. “You’re saying the dungeon chooses whether to leave its door open or not?”

Melody nodded, looking puzzled.

“So, the dungeon is sentient?”

Melody nodded once more. “Some say that the Forgotten Ruler invested the dungeons with some of his essence when he first created them.”

Ben paused, his hand on his chin as he considered the matter.

Hell, he figured, it was worth a shot. At worst, he would look a bit silly if nothing happened. He stood up straight, squared his shoulders, and spoke at the stone. “Show me your entrance.”

At first, nothing. Ben right away felt silly for speaking so seriously to what appeared to be nothing more than a stone.

“You wish to see the entrance to my lair?” A hollow voice boomed out from the stone surface. Everyone jumped back a pace, and Nipper sprang into the air, his fur standing up. Ben held fast, his eyes opening slightly wider in surprise.

“I will open for you,” the voice in the stone continued. “While I will let you inside the depths, I cannot provide my treasures to you unless you pay the same price as those others who wished to possess them.”

“Whatever,” Ben waved a hand. “We don’t care about treasure right now. Just open. We’ve come to find Vinata.”

“The dryad woman? I’m afraid she is already lost.”

The women gasped, and Imogen put a hand to her mouth.

“She’s dead?” Ben asked, his stomach now knotted.

“Sir Gallant has her,” the dungeon replied. At least Ben assumed the voice was coming from the dungeon itself.

“Who the fuck is Sir Gallant?” he asked.

The dungeon said nothing.

Ben sighed. “Looks like we have to seek out this Sir Gallant.”

The stone slab creaked open. A worn set of stone steps led down into the depths, dimly lit by flickering torches. Nipper sniffed at the entrance suspiciously and hissed. Even with his boundless energy, he was held back by fear.

A musty smell emerged from the underground passageway—the sort of smell Ben had encountered in caves and old ruins on school excursions. But he had a feeling this wasn’t going to be like any school excursion he’d ever been on.

There was nothing for it but to go inside and hope he and his party were powerful enough to face the dangers below.

“Ready?” he asked the women.

The two nymphs nodded timidly and squared their shoulders.

Melody put a hand on Ben’s right arm. “Let’s go and rescue Vinata.”

He squeezed her hand with his left. Then, holding the scimitar with his right, he put his foot on the stone step and led the small party into the dungeon.

Chapter Nine

Darkness enveloped the small band as they descended the worn stone steps. Ben could make out the twinkle of torches somewhere in the passageway ahead of them, but their light was much dimmer than the daylight outside.

Ben led the way down the stairs, scimitar in hand. Trailing behind him were Melody, Lulu, and Imogen. Behind them followed Nipper, the cat-like monster child that had come from Ben’s union with Melody.

Ben’s boots scuffed on the deeply grooved stones beneath them. He wondered how many unfortunate adventurers had worn these stones with their excited feet before him, led on by the allure of hidden treasure.

It was an eerie feeling treading these ancient steps. These ruins were eons old already. It was the sort of feeling Ben imagined he might feel walking the streets of Athens or Rome. The difference was that this time he knew one of the ancients who had walked these ruins was himself. He shook his head, trying to wrap his head around the strangeness of this truth.

As the heads of the travelers dipped below ground level, Melody cast a worried glance at the stone above them.

“Do you think it will shut and trap us in here?” she asked.

The same question had occurred to Ben as well, but he didn’t have a solution. He’d seen enough movies where the door shut right behind the explorers, trapping them in a room full of monsters, to know he should expect just such a fate here.

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if it did shut us in,” he said, “but there’s not much we can do about it. We can’t leave Vinata in here—we have to go forward.”

Melody and the nymphs nodded assent, but Nipper didn’t seem so sure. He hung back and mewed, his tail swishing agitatedly.

Melody turned and knelt to face Nipper at eye level. “What’s wrong, little one?” she asked, her own tail swishing in time with his.

She glanced up at Ben. “There’s something really bothering Nipper. He doesn’t want to go into the passageway.”

Ben considered the matter. “I don’t know what he’s sensing right now, but it seems like he knows something that we don’t.” He thought back to cats and dogs on earth, how they always seemed to be aware of things that humans weren’t regarding potential danger. Nipper was half human, he understood, but he wondered if his son might have a sort of animal intuition. “Really, I don’t have such a good feeling about it myself. In fact, I’d bet anything that the dungeon is leading us into a trap.”

“We have to go in there though, don’t we?” Melody said.

Ben nodded. “I’m not going to leave Vinata to whatever fate the dungeon has for her, not right after we rescued her from the mountain ogres. And I wouldn’t trust Nipper to be safe up here by himself; he’s far too young to fend