A Devil In The Dungeon: Rally Under Siege (Patreon)

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[Rally Under Siege]

Eventually, the shaking ground to a halt, leaving the entire group unbalanced and more than a little concerned. Licia and Rann looked around, as if trying to parse what had caused such an intense disturbance, while Tanya’s eyes raised towards the false sky above them, just in time to watch a dark shape appear behind the curtain of glassy crystal.

The sound of intolerable destruction rang through the entire floor as the shape hurtled through the ceiling, sending crystal and stone raining down upon the forest below. It was like a meteor, shooting through the sky almost faster than the eye could see, before coming to an abrupt halt as it impacted the ground somewhere to the east of the giant tree sprouting from the center of the Floor.

A resounding boom echoed, followed by a plume of dust and debris almost a mile tall, easily seen over the treetops surrounding them. A moment later, a roar echoed in their ears, and the sky turned black as pitch, casting the whole of the Eighteenth Floor in darkness. Tanya’s eyes strained against it, confusion and alarm warring for purchase in her mind as she cast her eyes about, her pulse hammering in her ears as the roar faded into a dreadful silence.

It lasted perhaps a few moments, before it was broken as distant cries and roars echoed through the forest, causing everyone to tense.

“Monsters?” Licia straightened in alarm, clutching the sword at her hip. Her eyes were wide as she turned to them, confusion written all over her face. “But this is a safe floor. There shouldn’t be any monsters here!”

Tanya nodded, but before she could voice her thoughts, Rann suddenly ripped his bow from his back, one arrow nocked and pointed at Licia before either of them could react. Licia flinched back in confusion. “Rann—!”

He let loose before she could finish uttering the syllable. The arrow whistled through the air, flying just over her head as it soared into the darkness behind her. It struck something solid and wet, a sickening thwack echoing just beyond the threshold of the woods. Tanya and Licia turned in unison, watching as the corpse of a Bad Bat, pinned to a tree, disintegrated into nothing.

More shapes detached themselves from the darkness above, several dark forms swooping down from the canopies above, barely visible apart from their red eyes, glowing with malice.

Rann nocked two more arrows in a breath, letting them loose towards the descending group. Both hit their mark, two of the creatures falling from the sky like stones.

By now, Tanya and Licia had drawn swords as well. Tanya’s knife glowed a bright green, the edge extending upwards and severing the wings of two more bats, alongside the rest of their bodies. Licia took care of the remaining monster with a quick thrust of her own sword, impaling it long before it could reach her.

As the monsters dissolved, Tanya straightened, scanning the darkness with a deep frown on her face. She didn’t know what was going on, but one thing was for certain.

“We can’t stay here,” Tanya said. She sheathed her knife and drew her sword instead as the others turned to her. “We need to regroup with the larger party and figure out what’s going on.”

“It has to have something to do with that power we felt earlier.” Licia’s face was pale, nervous sweat pooling on her neck. “It’s like the Dungeon itself is reacting to something that’s happening. This isn’t normal.”

Tanya was inclined to agree, though she didn’t say as much. As far as she knew, it should have been impossible for monsters to appear on a safe floor. For them to appear so soon after that light show earlier... they must have been connected.

There are unusual variables at play here. Tanya thought back to Hestia and Hermes. Gods were forbidden from entering the dungeon for a reason. Could they have been responsible for this?

A loud explosion boomed from somewhere to the east. A plume of debris rose into the black sky above the forest, visible even through the canopy. A heartbeat later, the shockwave reached them, rattling their bones and the leaves from the trees around them. Tanya braced herself, planting her feet and leaning into the pressure, while Licia and Rann stumbled against it.

A moment later, the wave passed. Tanya straightened, brushing debris from her shoulder and speaking past the ringing in her ears. “There’s no point in making theories right now.” She looked towards the direction of the camp, her jaw set as growls sounded around them. “More monsters are coming. We need to move.”

Tanya spooled a spell and stepped into the center of the clearing, her feet lifting off the ground as her spell dragged her into the air. She crested the canopy, the wind brushing her hair and cloak as she stared off into the direction of the camp.

What she saw was not good. Fires burned above the treetops, casting a glow all across that small swatch of forest. Monsters swooped down from on high and as she turned, she saw even more of them pouring from the forest. Most were heading in the direction of the commotion, while a few others darted through the woods with seemingly no rhyme or reason. They must have been searching for more prey.

Where did they all come from? The floor below, perhaps? Tanya wondered, watching an Orc lumber past a fallen tree.

“There’s a commotion at the camp,” Tanya said, descending back to the others. “They’re under attack. We should head there first and help out.”

From her position above, Tanya took point, keeping an eye out for anything dangerous while keeping an eye on Rann and Licia through the gaps in the trees below. They ran into some resistance, dispatching the few monsters that came between them and the camp with only minor difficulty. The darkness was disorienting, and the monsters seemed even more rabid than before. More dangerous, as well.

The journey was thankfully short, however, and soon enough they arrived at their destination. Unfortunately, what they found on arrival was chaos.

The camp was in shambles. Tents had been torn down, their contents scattered and crates overturned, and several small fires burned where they shouldn’t have been. What Tanya had seen from on high hadn’t quite done it justice. The monsters had attacked hard and fast, and it was clear that the adventurers hadn’t been prepared.

No casualties had been suffered, thankfully, but injuries were abound. Small groups were locked in combat, defending themselves and their friends from the sudden horde.

Tanya’s eyes narrowed as she noticed something in the throng. She dropped from the air like a stone, her sword flashing green as she carved through a Hellhound mid-leap. The creature had been bearing down on the back of an unsuspecting adventurer, its jaws open and slavering. Her impossibly sharp blade cut through the monster from tail to tip. The adventurer stumbled forward as the force of the creature’s charge carried its dissolving remains past him.

He spun around with wide eyes to see Tanya gently touch down behind him. “What the—”

“Find someone to watch your back. Fighting alone in a situation like this is a death sentence,” Tanya ordered, moving past him. He sputtered something that she tuned out as she scanned the camp.

The Loki Familia was scattered in loose groups, each one engaged with clusters of monsters that had poured in from the surrounding forest. Despite the chaos, they seemed to be holding strong. They’d rallied quickly, falling back on old instincts that had probably served them well in their expeditions. The main force worked outward from the center, establishing a perimeter, while the injured were being pulled back to a position near the center of camp to be guarded and rendered aid.

Behind her, Licia and Rann burst from the treeline. The former wasted no time in joining the fray, cutting down a Kobold that had been lingering near her, before doing the same to its friend and moving forward, deeper into the camp. Rann, meanwhile, positioned himself atop a nearby wagon, crouching down to limit his already small profile even as he nocked an arrow and let loose, saving a nearby comrade from a bad encounter with an Orc.

It didn’t take them long to gain control of the situation.

Though they had been caught by surprise, the Loki Familia rallied quickly enough that they were able to push back the monster assault without much issue. The creatures came in waves, but each one was met with steel and spellfire, cut down and dissolved into dust before they could breach the perimeter the adventurers had established. It was messy and loud and utterly exhausting, but within twenty minutes of Tanya’s arrival, the flood had slowed to a trickle.

She stood amid the wreckage of the camp, her sword still drawn and her eyes scanning the tree line for any sign of further movement. The false darkness still hung heavy over the Floor, but the immediate threat had passed. Around her, adventurers tended to wounds, checked weapons, and pulled damaged supplies from overturned crates. The fires had been stamped out, leaving only scorched patches of earth and the acrid smell of smoke hanging in the air.

Tanya wiped her blade clean on a discarded cloth and sheathed it, taking stock of the situation. The injuries she’d seen were varied—cuts and bruises mostly, a few deeper gashes that would need proper attention, and one man being carried by his companions with what looked like a broken leg. But no dead. That was something.

A call went up from the center of camp, and Tanya followed the sound to find a loose circle of adventurers gathered around what remained of the camp’s central fire pit. Rann and Licia were already there and she settled beside them to face a grizzled man who seemed to be heading the group. With a beard and a glass eye surrounded by scar tissue, he clearly commanded some respect.

“Alright, listen up!” The man’s voice carried over the murmur of the crowd. “First thing’s first, I want everyone accounted for. Go around and do a head count; if anyone is missing that should be here, I want to know!”

Names were called out in succession. Tanya listened with half an ear as a murmur fell over the crowd, hearing several names and recognizing few.

After a moment, the lull died down. One man stepped forward from the pack to address the leader.

“Everyone’s here, Flint. It doesn’t look like we lost anyone.”

A ripple of relief passed through the gathered adventurers, and Flint let out a sigh, nodding sharply. “Good. That’s something. Now does anyone have any idea what in the hell just happened?”

“Alea was scouting when everything went down,” one man said. “She says that a Black Goliath crashed down near Rivira and started all of this!”

“A Black Goliath on the Eighteenth Floor? There’s no way. She must have been seeing things.” The man next to him scoffed, though there was a twinge of fear in his voice.

“I know what I saw!” A slight woman with close-cropped brown hair stepped forward with her jaw set stubbornly. Her name was Alea, apparently. “It dropped out of the roof and started screaming its head off. It’s—”

A deafening roar cut her off, followed by an explosion. In the distance, a plume of fire rose into the sky, followed by a shockwave heavy enough to shake the treetops. Several people braced themselves, while others just stared in slack-jawed horror as a black shape crested the nearby trees, roaring at the sky like the world itself had done it some injustice.

“Dear gods...” Someone whispered.

Tanya’s eyes locked onto the shape as it rose above the canopy. The creature was humanoid and utterly colossal, easily living up to the name that it had been christened with. It was covered in thick black skin stretched over sinewy muscles that looked as if they could lift and carry the tree shadowing them all with little to no effort. A mop of shaggy white hair covered the majority of its features, but what could be seen of its face was twisted in an expression of rage.

As Tanya watched, it tilted its head down and opened its mouth, letting out a deafening roar. A column of pressure blasted the ground before it, blowing away whatever was in its path and sending debris flying. The shockwave reached them a moment later, carrying a scream.

That’s what burst through the ceiling, then, Tanya thought as she wiped dirt out of her eyes.

Flint stared in the direction of the Goliath, his jaw set tightly. The light of the flames flickering around them caught his glass eye which glared into Tanya’s own. “We need to fall back and regroup. There are still people scattered all over this floor. We gather them up, get everyone in one place, and figure out our next move. In the meantime,” he pointed to the cluster of injured near the center of camp, “someone needs to take the wounded and get them to the floor above. If the Goliath is down here, then the Seventeenth Floor should be relatively safe.”

Tanya was about to ask where exactly that assumption came from, when someone beat her to the punch.

“We can’t.” A man stepped out of the crowd. His armor was covered with debris and his head was bandaged. His words were slightly slurred as he said, “The paths to the upper floors are blocked. There’s too much debris; we’d have to dig through it all to make it through.”

Flint’s expression twitched, and Tanya stepped forward. “How much rubble is there? Could a small team clear it out?”

The man turned to her, eyes narrowing as if trying to place her. “I doubt it. There’s a lot. Even with four or five of us working at it, it’d take us at least an hour or two to clear it all away.”

Tanya frowned. “And in that time, the Goliath will finish with whoever it’s currently fighting and turn its attention toward the largest concentration of people on this Floor. Even if we set up some sort of defense against the other monsters crawling up from the lower floors, I can’t say I fancy our chances against that scream attack, or whatever that was.”

She pointed at the Goliath. “Our best bet would be to kill that thing before we’re overwhelmed. Even if the circumstances are unnatural, we should be more than capable of killing a single Floor Boss as long as we work together.”

Flint stared at Tanya before he turned back to the Goliath, watching as the creature rampaged through the distant trees, each step sending tremors through the ground beneath their feet. After a moment, his shoulders set and he turned to the greater group.

“Alright, listen up!” He called. “We’re not getting out of here without dealing with that thing, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do. But we’ve still got monsters crawling up from below and filtering in from the forest, and I’ll be damned if I let them pick us off while our backs are turned.”

A nervous murmur spread through the group, and Flint’s eyes hardened. “Hey! None of that! You act like we haven’t faced worse odds before. We’ll split up into three groups. Group one will fall back to a defensible position to protect the wounded. Group two, you’re on monster clearing duty. There’s too many of these bastards hanging around for my liking.” He spat. “Group three, you’re with me. We’re gonna take the fight to that bastard!”

Tanya knew where she’d serve best and so stepped to join Flint’s group. Just as she joined the crowd, she paused at a hand on her shoulder, and turned to find Licia gazing at her with concern.

“Yes?”

Licia bit her lip, glancing back towards the crowd. “Rann and I are going to help clear the floors. There are still people scattered out there, and someone needs to keep the monsters from eating them while they make their way back.”

Tanya nodded. “Sensible. Your skills would be much more useful against mob monsters than something that big.”

Licia flinched, and Tanya almost regretted the bluntness. Still there was a time for brutal honesty, and this was definitely it.

“That’s fair.” Licia took a deep breath. “It feels weird splitting up like this. I know we haven’t even been friends for that long but I’ve gotten kind of used to us watching each others’ backs. And after what happened to Artus, I can’t help… Be careful, okay?”

“I have no intention of dying here,” Tanya assured her.

Licia stared at her for a long moment, clearly deliberating something in her head. A beat passed, and Tanya prepared to ask her what it was she wanted, when Licia suddenly stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Tanya.

Tanya went rigid as Licia’s arms tightened around her shoulders, pulling her flush against her armor. She could feel the slight tremor running through the older girl’s frame, and that was probably the only reason she didn’t immediately push her away in surprise. Her subordinates would have never dared to do something like this. Not even Visha. But then, Licia wasn’t exactly a subordinate, was she?

Tanya stood with her arms trapped at her sides, staring awkwardly over her friend’s shoulders as the girl squeezed her tight. After about three seconds or so, the girl pulled back to place her hands on Tanya’s shoulders. Her face was stony, chin tilted in some kind of defiance, but her eyes shone with worry.

“Good, because you’re not allowed to die,” Licia said, her tone only slightly softer than her expression.

Tanya blinked once, then let a dry smirk cross her lips as Licia let her go. “Yes ma’am.”

Licia’s expression broke, the ghost of a smile crossing her face before it was washed away by a scream in the distance. She squeezed Tanya’s shoulder and said, “Good. And good luck, Tanya.”

She turned back to her own group, shoulders squared. Rann quickly found her side, and together, they marched out of the camp with the rest of their contingent.

Tanya watched them go, a small inkling of worry worming through her stomach. As they disappeared, she stared after them for a beat longer than she should have then turned and moved to join Flint’s group.