Chapter 19: Dead Ends

I didn’t stop retreating until I was back in the third leg’s final chamber. I flung myself to the ground and exhaled a pent-up breath as my rapid pulse finally begin to subside.

“What the hell were those things?” I asked.

“Trolls,” Gnat replied succinctly.

“Trolls?” I repeated. “And they eat people?”

Gnat shifted uncomfortably. “Trolls eat anything. Even undead.”

My face twisted in disgust. “Really? Whatever for?” Gnat opened his mouth to reply, but I waved him off. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.” I rubbed my face. “What I do want to know,” I murmured rhetorically while I considered the matter, “is how I can go about killing them.”

“You can’t,” my familiar said.

I snorted. “Anything can be killed, Gnat. Granted it won’t be easy. Given how many candidates those monsters killed, taking them down must be tough. But I only have to—”

Gnat shook his head. “No. I mean you can’t.”

I paused. “What do you mean by that?”

“Trolls can only be killed by magic,” Gnat said.

I blinked. Alright, this could be a problem. “So, I can’t even hurt them?”

Gnat shrugged. “You could. You could even incapacitate them—assuming you are able to inflict damage fast enough—but trolls possess superior regenerative properties with which they can heal themselves of almost every type of damage. The only wounds that a troll cannot recover from are those inflicted by magical flames.”

I bit my lip as I considered that. “How strong do you think those trolls are?”

“Trolls are rank two creatures,” Gnat replied. Seeing my blank look, he explained further. “That means that even the lowliest and weakest troll is level twenty.”

I whistled soundlessly. “Well, damn,” I muttered. I had spied an exit at the far end of the mushroom cavern and had been hoping that once I dealt with the trolls I would be free to explore an as-yet-untouched region of the dungeon. That possibility had been ruled out now, though.

As brightly lit as the cavern had been, there was no way I could sneak passed the trolls, and considering the creatures’ levels, I doubted even my poison darts would do much more then irritate the trolls.

I let my gaze drift to the other two tunnels leading away from the chamber. I sighed and clambered to my feet. “I guess its time to explore another tunnel,” I said and slipped down the middle exit.

~~~

The second tunnel snaked up and down, far more so than the first one. Maintaining a careful pace, I followed the passage’s tortuous twist and turns. After only a few hundred yards though, a niggling worry began to worm is way through my thoughts as I noticed that the darkness around me was growing.

The farther I ventured into the tunnel, the more barren it became. Even the rare patches of luminous crystals and glowing mushrooms had grown less frequent, making it harder for me to see. I frowned in concern. If the light kept deteriorating, I would be soon forced to retreat and find a light source before continuing. My worry about the worsening light so preoccupied me that I almost failed to see the trap until too late.

But whether through luck, or as a result of my three ranks in Perception, when my gaze passed over a distinctly darker patch of ground, I knew there was something odd about it and I crashed to a halt.

Staring at the ground at my feet, I realized I was standing at the lip of a ditch. A very deep ditch. Carefully, I dropped to my knees and felt out the empty void of space where the ground should be. My reaching fingers found nothing but air.

I gulped. If I had fallen into the ditch I would have been seriously injured. If not worse. How deep is the hole? I wondered.

Lying flat on the ground, I stretched my hands into the void as far as I could reach and still couldn’t find the ground beneath. Sidling along the lip of the ditch, I tested its depths at regular intervals, but at no point could I find solid ground.

Frowning, I rose back to my feet and stared down the tunnel and tried to measure the length of the ditch, but my eyes failed to penetrate the darkness.

“Gnat, fly along the floor,” I said, “and tell me how far this ditch extends.”

The skeletal bat scowled at me. “I cannot fly if I can’t see.”

I blinked. “Aren’t you a bat? Don’t bats fly in the dark?”

“I’m an undead bat,” he groused.

What difference did that make? I sighed. He really was no help.

Why did the Master give me such a worthless familiar? I wondered despondently. But no, that’s unfair. As little use as Gnat had been in exploring, he had been a font of information on the Game itself, for which I was more than grateful.

“Alright,” I said, another idea occurring to me. “Let’s head back.”

~~~

I made my way back to the nearest patch of glowing mushroom and wrenched them all out. With my precious cargo in hand, I hurried back to the ditch. Panting slightly from my exertions, I drew to a stop at its edge.

Knowing that I had less than a minute before the light from the mushrooms died, I threw a handful into the ditch, then waited in anxious anticipation. The mushrooms fell a long way before coming to a rest. And when they did, the scene they revealed caused the blood to drain from my face.

The bottom of the ditch was a long way away.

More properly speaking, the hole in front of me was a trench—a twelve foot deep one riddled with wooden stakes that had been sharpened to lethal points and angled upwards to catch any falling body.

A tumble into the trench would have been fatal.

Indeed, from the bodies already in the trench, I saw that it had already claimed more than its fair share of victims.

“Good thing you spotted that trap before you fell in,” Gnat said.

I nodded wordlessly. Good thing.

Gnat’s words recalled me to the other mushrooms in my hands. I knew how deep and deadly the trench was now, but I still didn’t know how far it extended. Winding my arm back, I began flinging more mushrooms into the hole, sending each one farther away, until one of my flung projectiles did not tumble downwards, but rolled to a stop on ground roughly on the same level I stood on.

Squinting, I measured the distance in the already-fading light of the mushrooms. Six yards. The trench was too wide to try jumping across.

Another dead-end, I thought as the tunnel was once more plunged into darkness.

~~~

I spent a good five-minutes sitting at the edge of the deadly trench pondering a way to cross it. And though I managed to come up with a few half-decent plans, they were all fraught with peril.

While the wooden stakes riddling the bottom of the trench were plentiful, they were not so abundant that I could not pick a careful path between them. Assuming of course, I could get secure enough light to see by, and reach the bottom of the trench safely.

My half-caught glimpse of the trench’s far wall also led me to believe I would be able to climb out once I got there. There had appeared to be enough handholds for a nimble person, but again, I had caught only a single glimpse and couldn’t be sure there was a viable way out.

It’s too risky, I decided. With a sigh, I rose to my rose to my feet. I knew what I had to do: explore the third tunnel. If it too proved a dead-end, I would return and try crossing the trapped trench.

Who knows, maybe I will find something as handy a rope. I didn’t hold out much hope of that, though.