The Dungeoneers (The Dungeoneers, #1)

by Jeffery Russell

Farmer Radish: An onion farmer.

Dramatis Fae Serril: A wood elf who would like to apologize to linguists for his section title.

“Fruit from down in Akama. S'like a yeller boomeroo, kinda, except round and sometimes it's red or green.” Durham mentally fished through that sentence for a bit. “Boomeroo?” he decided on, response-wise.

Thud narrowed his eyes at him as if speculating on his intelligence.

The Athenaeum always managed to have a scribe on hand whenever anything interesting seemed like it might happen. Durham avoided scribes, figuring that “interesting” was not a word that was necessarily synonymous with “pleasant”.

“So…you're adventurers?” Thud snorted. “Hells, no. Can't abide adventure. 'Adventure' is a word people use to put a shine on lack of preparation and surviving through dumb luck. We're professionals and that means we leave the adventure out of it.”

Thud squinted at him for a bit, the question of Durham’s intelligence apparently still unresolved.

“We’re heading to the Crypt of Alaham to recover the Mace of Guffin. Figured you'd be more in the know, what with being the Vault Keeper and all...” he said. Durham's stomach fell as a few pieces clicked together in his head. “I'm...I'm not the Vault Keeper. That would be Dorham. We get mixed up on occasion. I'm just Durham the guard.” Thud let out a low, smoky whistle. Then he grinned. “Well, looks like you're in for a bit o' adventure then, eh?”

Apart from his kilt the dwarf wore only a leather harness, displaying a physique like an early draft from a sculptor that worked with meat and hair.

“I get to take me rest for a bit now,” Clink said as he climbed up and positioned himself on the wagon bench. “Advantage of having a two ale bladder, I s’pose. Up before everyone else so I got me work done early.” He gestured at the oxbears. “These are the ladies that’ll get us where we’re going. That’s Left Butt on the right and Right Butt on the left. I was standing in front of the wagon when I named ‘em so the names made a bit more sense at the time, even though I was looking at their heads.” Durham considered that. “You could switch them, maybe.” “That’d just confuse the poor dears. See, Right Butt don’t see so good out of her right eye. She hears Left Butt on that side and it spooks her just enough to keep her moving. When she’s nervous she flicks her tail back and forth. It gives Left Butt a tickle now and then and that spooks her just enough to keep her moving. If I swapped ‘em around we’d never get anywhere.” “I meant maybe you could switch their names.” “Last thing we needs is two oxbears having an identity crisis. They don’t mind if you call ‘em Arby and Elbe, though, if that makes peace with your propriety.” Durham nodded, as if this was somehow valuable information. “I’m surprised you didn’t call them Left Ass and Right Ass.” Clink shook his head. “Too obvious. I feel that the avoidance o’ the overt pun adds an element o’ mystery lending depth an’ obscurity to the name’s humor.” “Arby and Elbe it is, then,” said Durham.

We use the eggs to make more chickens,” Goin said. He paused thoughtfully. “Well, the chickens do, at least. I try to stay out of the particulars.”

It was thick, brown and lumpy and tasted good but Durham made a point of not asking what was in it for fear of finding out.

You stick with me like lichen on stone so I can keep an eye on ya. That way if any kind o’ destiny pops up might be I can at least steer it clear o’ me team.”

Thud clambered into view atop the front wagon and made a complicated series of hand gestures. Nibbly reached under his bench and pulled out a crossbow. “Is that what those hand gestures meant?” Durham asked. “I’ve no idear wot them hand gestures meant but typically they all boils down to ‘get yer crossbows out’,” Nibbly said.

the jakes.

“Ya pulls out all of its feathers, lops off the head and feet, then ya reaches up its bum and pulls out all the wriggly bits. Save them bits, though. Good fer soups and such.” “Reach up its bum?” Durham repeated, his brain having paused at that part. “Aye,” Goin said. “Think of it as a character building experience. If ye don't mind me sayin' so lad, you could use a bit more character. Yer a bit drab amidst this wondrous company o' fine dwarves. No better place to start lookin' than up a chicken's arse.”

a lot of thought into hiding and protecting their phylactery, as they calls it. We don’t know what it looks like but Ruby tells me that liches tend towards bein’ a bit full o’ themselves so it’s probably shiny.

“Part o’ the process is them sticking their heart in there while it’s still beating. So check fancy containers for anything that looks like a big, nasty thumping prune.” “Technically,” Ruby said, “any part of them that is still living will suffice. The heart is traditional but, as long as they do it quickly, they could conceivably perform the ritual with any body part.” “Valuable point,” Thud said. “So, check fancy containers for anything shrivelly.

Durham awakened to Thud’s bristly face looming over him. “Make with the vertical, lad!

ponce word

“You gotta make the choices exist in the first place to get the ones ya want. If you just grab the ones that wander by ya end up on the postern gate.”

But no, it was my second year when I really sunk my chances.” “Made a mistake, did ye?” “No,” Durham said. “I solved a sheep murder.” Thud blew a smoke ring and took a pull on the flask, mulling that over. “Thinks ya might needs ta elaborate a bit on that, lad.”

First thing tomorrow morning I’m gonna starts fixing this,” you says to yerself,” Thud went on. “Next thing ya know twenty years o’ tomorrows has gone by and yer still watching the sheep gate.”

His lower regions informed him that the Dwarven spirits had arrived at their debarkation station and he took the opportunity to excuse himself and step outside.

“Damndest thing I ever saw,” he said. “Big skelly lugger comes runnin’ at ya and ya turns aboot and pees in its face.” Gong and Nibbly were doubled over and shaking. “Aye, ‘eres mud in yer eye, eh?” Gong said. “Spray and pray!” Nibbly shouted. “Might wanna tuck them fam’ly jools away ‘fore someone makes cufflinks out of ‘em,” Thud said. Durham struggled to tug his pants back up while Thud began kicking bones off of him. “Well, seems you may ‘ave solved the mystery of the haunted ruins,” he said. “That cow musta been wandering around out here for near six hunnerd years now. This’ll make a fine tale for ya in the future to follow up that sheep murder story with.” “Think ye may have just gotten yer earned name, lad,” Gong said. “Blamed if I can figger what it should be, though.” “Hmmm”, Thud said. “Incowtinent?” “No ring to that, is there?” Nibbly said. “Don’t exactly roll off the tongue.” “Peacock?” Gong offered. “Too vulgar sounding,” Thud said. Nibbly’s face broke into a grin. “Calf!” “Calf?” “Aye, cuz it’s a ‘wee cow’.”

“History's more wot gets writ rather than wot happened, eh?”

A smell so strong it was a flavor.

She stood on the ledge, studying the cave for a minute then began pointing “I can leap over there, grab on and shimmy round that ledge there, drop down and grab that lichen and then backflip over to that rock knob below. Then hand over hand around the side, jump across that bit there, slide right down to that dip then grapple across and drop right down on the top safe and sound.” “Yeh, well we’ll tie a rope around you just the same,” Nibbly said. He’d watched Thud perform the routine with Leery at least a dozen times. They attached the rope to the clip on her belt and tied the other around around a clamp, hammered securely into the wall. Leery edged herself out on the ledge and then leapt for her first handhold. She missed it completely, bounced face first off of the wall and dropped like a rock.

Nibbly had figured out long ago that Leery’s value to the team was her pathological lack of self-preservation accompanied by seeming indestructibility rather than her questionable acrobatic skill.

He took his pack off and dropped it down on the floor in front of him. Many different deadly things failed to happen to it.

Chickens are true creatures of zen-they live only and absolutely for the moment. Their actions one particular second will not necessarily have any influence or bearing on their actions in the next second, nor are they necessarily influenced by their actions of the prior second. Chicken thoughts arrive in their tiny mad little minds like flashes of a strobe light, each light being an action, each flashing with the brilliance of a not very brilliant thing. Each action utterly random. The complete randomness of chaos. Chickens are notorious escape artists, not due to their ability to devise cunning plans as they huddle together in their coop beneath a bare light bulb, scratching out complex diagrams in the dirt, but simply out of sheer unpredictability. They are the pachinko balls of the animal kingdom, effecting their escapes through the simple device of, say, turning left for no particular reason. Miss Cluck waddled out of the maze and into the cavern.

History wasn’t what had happened. History was what someone had written down about what happened.

Nibbly didn’t have much of a plan formed. He knew that the lost dwarves were down below him somewhere and his hope was that somewhere up ahead there would be a more conventional means down. If that failed then the time it took for it to do so would at least give him a chance to come up with a plan B. He hoped. Provided that plans of action arrived fully formed from the ether without requiring much pondering on his part.

ennui.

Rasp quickly tied the demon’s limp tentacles together in a complicated knot he’d learned from a yo-yo he’d kept in his pocket as a boy.

obtuse.

Charnel

Ginny was twenty feet below on top of a vertical spindle, cradling her arm and rotating slowly as the spindle turned. “Wotcha doin’ down there, lass?” “Thinking you was dead. Glad you ain’t. Wouldn’t happen to have a rope handy, would ya?” “Naw, lost me pack. I can climb down to ya though, maybe.” “Can’t say the spot has much to recommend it.”

mollified.

Alaham turned toward Durham, apparently not having been fooled by his attempt to hide behind the throne.

reticence

He swung the rib forward, feeling like the conductor of a bone-crack orchestra, thumping the third alongside his hood,

She’d felt at least three of her fingernails break off and suspected that the others had as well and just been more polite about it.

Sudden impending death often brings with it a moment of suspended time, one’s mind having decided that if this is its last moment that it might as well try and make it last. It is a moment of pure clarity, the mind burning everything it has to move at double speed, running through all of its options.

charnel