Chapter 19: The Creepy House Dungeon

Thomas walked into what was probably the creepiest old house in existence, which did not help his mood at all. The floors and walls were gray and rotten-looking, with furniture scattered everywhere. Half of it was covered in old, moth-eaten sheets, and all of it was coated in what looked like an inch of dust. The air was stale and smelled of rot.

On the plus side, unlike the chipmunk forest fire dungeon, nothing immediately came hurtling toward his face. So Thomas considered that a minor win.

Zach stepped in a moment behind him, and the entrance door creaked shut. The moment it clicked closed, absolute darkness swallowed the room. Thomas couldn’t see anything, not even his hand in front of his face.

“Nope,” he muttered. “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.”

He took one step backward, then another, reaching for the door they had just come through. It wasn’t there. Flailing an arm back and forth, he turned, then turned again. The darkness was so complete that he felt unmoored. The only thing he was completely certain of was that his feet were still on the floor.

Or were they?

His stomach lurched sideways, and for one horrible second, he thought he might actually be falling without realizing it.

“Hold on, dude,” Zach said.

Then there was a flash of light.

Thomas blinked as a piece of paper turned to ash in Zach’s fingers. Zach caught the spark, and it became a living ribbon of flame that he easily bounced from hand to hand. The light illuminated maybe four feet in every direction before darkness swallowed the rest. It was as if the dark was eating the light as fast as Zach could create it, but at least they were seeing something.

Thomas finally breathed again.

“You can conjure your own flame now?”he asked. Zach hadn’t been able to do that in the last dungeon.

“No. Just flash paper. It’s an old magician’s trick,” Zach answered absently while he scanned the room. “It’s what I use to start my juggling act. I just need a spark, but I can’t keep this up forever.” He glanced around again. “We should probably figure out what we’re doing.”

“Good idea. Where’s the door?” Thomas demanded.

Zach turned, took a step to the right, then held out his arms. Just at the edge of the light, the door appeared. “There it is.”

Thomas didn’t think he had moved that far, but somehow he’d gotten so turned around that he completely lost track of where he was.

“Okay,” he breathed out. “I don’t see any dungeon monsters, but… I think it might be a good idea to regroup. We need to see. A flashlight probably won’t work thanks to dungeon limitations on technology, but if we can find something to burn, a real torch would likely help.”

“Yeah,” Zach said quickly. His voice had lost some of its easy surfer-bro cadence. He actually sounded a little shaken by being plunged into the dark. “Yeah, that’s smart. Let’s—”

He moved toward the door, and as he did, Thomas saw a ghostly afterimage on the surface of the door itself. Blue-white lines split apart into rows of fangs that chomped down.

Thomas grabbed Zach’s shirt and yanked him sideways while raising his axe in pure, graceless instinct, just as jagged teeth unfolded from the door.

The axe struck, and Thomas wrenched the blade sideways, carving through the flesh disguised as wood. He must have hit something vital because the thing suddenly collapsed inward and melted into a puddle of dark goo that steamed faintly on the floor.

Behind it was… the door.

Thomas stared at it. “I hope that’s the real door,” he said. “What the hell was that thing?”

“Mimic,” Zach breathed. “Oh shit, dude. That was an actual mimic. They take the shapes of other things.”

“Like in D&D?”

“Yeah, basically.” His voice climbed an octave. “Man, those are supposed to be some really high-level dungeon monsters. No way they’re in a level one dungeon—but the entrance here was definitely level one-sized. I don’t get it.”

Thomas looked at the door he now deeply distrusted, then his gaze swung to the room full of furniture: the chairs, tables, the hatstand in the corner, and all the sheet-covered lumps that might be monsters.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s why.”

That cut through Zach’s rambling. “Huh?”

Thomas turned to him. “That’s why no one they sent came back through the entrance door. This first room’s a trap. The instant darkness scares the living daylights out of people, like my grandma would’ve said. Then, like us, they decide it’s better to go back and report this, or maybe they just panic and stumble into the door or something else…” He trailed off meaningfully.

Zach nodded and closed his eyes, visibly gathering himself. “Retreating now won’t clear the dungeon. Killing one mimic won’t stop it from overflowing.” He opened his eyes. Now that the initial shock had faded, he looked steadier. “I want to try something.”

Then he turned to what looked like a chaise lounge draped with a sheet and tossed his flame at it.

The sheet instantly ignited with a giant whoosh, and something underneath gave a high, whistling scream.

Nice, Thomas thought for a moment before thick black smoke poured upward in quantities that made absolutely no sense. It instantly began to fill the small room. Not nice.

“Oh crap!” he yelled. “Put it out!”

“Working on it!” Zach shoved both hands downward, trying to control the flames, but the motion was interrupted as he started coughing halfway through.

The smoke billowed even worse and began to swallow their scant light.

Thomas moved to help and saw, clear as day through his Forewarning, the ghostly outline of a nearby table leg sprout claws and slash toward his calf.

Instead, Thomas whipped around and slammed his axe blade sideways. The table shrieked and recoiled, scampering backward on all four legs.

Thomas hit it again with an overhand chop that split the tabletop, and it immediately started dissolving into goo.

The smoke was still billowing, and the world once again went black.

Straightening, Thomas coughed violently and tried to find his way back. He heard Zach yell something, but it was as if he were a football field away, not just a few feet. Thomas couldn’t even reliably tell where the sound had come from. Whatever was eating the light was messing with the sound, too.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And now Thomas was blind and choking on smoke in a room full of furniture that might all be mimics. He had to get out of there.

The door, he thought.

But he wasn’t entirely certain where it had gone in this darkness either.

He opened his mouth to call out and immediately doubled over again, coughing.

He’d never felt so useless. Zach, at least, had his fire, even though the smoke was trying to kill them both. All Thomas could do was hit things with an axe and get lost. Anyone could do that.

No, stop. He had to find Zach and get them both out of here, or else they would die.

Then… he wasn’t sure how he did what he did next. Suddenly, he became aware of something roughly ten feet away, at about two o’clock from where he stood.

It felt like… a glow? A warmth without heat? Like hearing blood move through veins without hearing the sound, or feeling a heartbeat without the thrum. None of it made sense but his core suddenly sang inside him.

He felt life.

Thomas stepped toward it, praying to every god involved in the System that he wasn’t sensing the life of a mimic.

But after only a few steps, the world resolved into dim light again, and he spotted Zach finally smothering the last of the furniture fire while doggedly holding onto his own flame. He’d taken too long, though, and there was too much smoke in the air.

“We have to—” Thomas hacked through a cough. “We have to get out of here.” His lungs ached, and his throat felt like it had somehow caught fire.

Zach must have agreed because he was nodding through his wracking coughs. Stepping back, he pointed to a nearby door.

It wasn’t the entrance door, but it was an exit, and they both desperately needed clean air.

They rushed for it. If it was another mimic, they were dead. Fortunately, it wasn’t.

They stumbled into clean, shockingly cool air. Thomas slammed the door shut behind them, leaned against it, and breathed.

Zach dropped to his knees and coughed like he was trying to expel his own lungs. His fire went out, but with Thomas’s back pressed against the door, it somehow didn’t feel as oppressive.

It still took several minutes before either of them could speak.

“Okay,” Thomas managed, his voice steadier than he felt. “How much flash paper do you have left?”

“Probably… four or five more sheets.” Zach paused to hack something gross up and spit. “But I’m not gonna be able to sustain the fire with my usual tricks.” He sounded frustrated. “The darkness is eating the fire almost as fast as I can put it out, and it just… shouldn’t be able to do that.”

Another flash lit the area in a small circle around them as he used another piece of paper to ignite a fresh flame.

“We can make a torch out of something,” Thomas said. “Assuming we can find anything in here that isn’t trying to kill us…”