Duelling Dungeons

“Well, that’s a problem,” I muttered as I quickly retreated towards the room's entrance. We may have been in my head, but to make my ruse as realistic as possible, I had to give Nor’Goth limited access to my psyche. Not a lot, just enough that he could fill in the details of our surroundings with things that I didn’t know. After he’d arrived at the ritual chamber and summoned the Dragon, I tried to seal that tiny crack in my defences and lock Nor’Goth in.

Unfortunately, as soon as the Old Ghoul realized what was going on, he managed to force that crack open and gain limited access to my mind. Not enough to take total control, but enough to turn part of the illusion against me. Now I was left with a choice: engage in a mental battle and try to keep Nor’Goth here longer, or release my hold on him and hope that I’d given Jenkins and the others enough time to progress.

Before I could decide, an earth-shaking roar shook the imaginary room. Looking up, I felt my eyes go wide, and I leapt to the side, taking cover behind a massive basalt pillar a moment before the dragon filled the room with waves of shadowy, rolling purple fire.

“Getting distracted in a battle of wits,” Nor’Goth tutted. “Not a smart move.”

“Touche,” I muttered, risking a glance around the column. The dragon rattled its scales and huffed in my direction, apparently content with the damage it had caused. Even though I knew Nor’Goth had said that to taunt me, he did have a point. Every time I concentrated on something other than the battle at hand, I was giving the psychic an opening, allowing him to gain more control over this part of my mind.

If I didn’t focus, he was either going to escape or crush me in my own mental realm.

“How do I deal with that dragon, and break Nor’Goth’s grip on my mind though?” I muttered to myself.

As I stared at the wyrm, I felt something brush against the back of my leg, causing me to let out a small yelp. I twisted around, bringing my glaive up defensively until I saw what it was.

“George, what are you doing here? You scared me!” I exclaimed, gently petting the spider. “I’m sorry, I can’t give you attention right now. I need to either wrest control of that dragon from Nor’Goth or remove it so I can regain full control of my mind.”

The spider cocked its head to the side, then skittered sideways to peer around the pillar. As soon as he did, he froze for a moment, then growled.

“Don’t even think about it,” I hissed. “We may be in my head, but to trick Nor’Goth I had to create an illusion with the same basic rules as the real world, and now that Nor’Goth has a foothold I can’t change things. That would only give Nor’Goth more openings to exploit. I know you hate that thing, but there’s no way you could take on a dragon.”

George wasn’t listening. Instead, he arched his back, hissed loudly at the dragon, and charged across the room.

“Is this your grand solution to my dragon? Send your little spider at it?” Nor’Goth laughed. “You must be desperate!”

I didn’t reply; I honestly didn’t know what to say as I watched George charge across the chamber. As the dragon slowly reared back, taking a deep breath in, I finally found my words. “George, stop! Get out of the way!” I shouted.

The big spider didn’t hesitate for a second; he rushed headfirst into the wave of fire the dragon exhaled. Even though the fire wasn’t directed directly at me, the heat was so intense that I had to duck behind the pillar again.

“So much for your friend, but it looks like he couldn’t stand the heat,” Nor’Goth chuckled. “It was a valiant, yet futile, final stand.” There was a brief pause in his monologue, followed by a confused, “Eh?”

When I heard that, I leaned out again, trying to figure out what was going on.

The fire had consumed pretty much everything in the room, and I had to raise a hand to shield my eyes from the heat. Yet despite the destructive power of the dragon’s breath, I could see something moving through the fire.

As it strode through the fire, the figure grew, and grew. Soon, I could make out eight legs and a thick black carapace. “George?” I muttered quietly, in surprise.

Even when he dwarfed the fire, the spider didn’t stop growing or stop charging. By the time he got to the dragon, George was just as tall as the wyrm, and twice as wide, and the room shook with his every step. The Umbral dragon roared before inhaling again, preparing to breathe fire again, but before it could, George slammed headfirst into the creature and smashed it into the wall.

“A Titanranchula?” Nor’Goth gasped. “No!”

I slowly lowered my hand as I watched the two titanic creatures battle. The dragon fought in a berserk frenzy, biting at George, slashing at him with its claws, and bathing the spider in flame. In exchange, George threw his superior bulk at the dragon, smashing it into the walls and floors and biting it with his fangs.

Nor’Goth had to jump from his throne to avoid being crushed as the two behemoths threw each other around, smashing the summoning dais and surrounding pillars into dust.

“How could you have encountered a Titanranchula, seen one close enough to manifest one here?” Nor’Goth asked.

“I haven’t,” I replied blankly. “That’s just George.”

“Are you saying your pet spider joined us in your mental realm then, through force of will, transformed itself into one of the underway’s apex predators?” the ghoul scoffed. “Are you mad? How would it even connect to your mental realm?”

I stared at the once-regal ghoul as he scrambled around on all fours, dishevelled and covered in dust, and shrugged. “I don’t know. I stopped trying to figure out that spider years ago.”

Nor’Goth froze for a moment, then scoffed. “Either I’ve overestimated you, and you're a complete fool, or you’re very good at keeping secrets.” The psychic slowly picked himself up and dusted himself off. “So which is it?”

“That’s for me to know, and you to wonder about,” I replied, giving him a small, sweet smile.

“Well, now what? It appears that we’re fairly evenly matched mentally, and our battle will be going on for a while,” Nor’Goth said, gesturing to the battling titans. “Do you intend to keep me trapped here until the end of the match? You do realize that won’t stop the ritual from completing, right?”

“Oh, I know. However, it was never my plan to keep you trapped here forever, only to give my team enough time to overwhelm your defenders and destroy your body. That’ll prevent it from activating, won’t it?”

His withered eyes narrowed. “It will. Did you know that before the match started, or did you discover that after you trapped me in here?” he asked.

“I suspected that it was tied to your life, rather than any ritual before the match began, but I didn’t have confirmation until today,” I admitted.

The ghoul nodded slightly. “Then you are a lot smarter than I gave you credit for.”

He raised a hand, and the dragon wriggled out of George’s grasp and rushed across the floor, maw first. I thought that Nor’Goth had set the creature on me, so I raised my glaive and braced myself, but just before it slammed into me, it turned, grabbed the ghoul and ran straight into the nearest wall.

Instead of bouncing off it, as it had while fighting George, the dragon smashed through the wall, shattering it like glass.

I felt an intense pain in my head as the mental realm collapsed, and I jolted awake back in the dungeon.

“Whoa, Talia, take it easy. Are you okay?” Jenkins asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied, holding my head. “I made a mistake though. Lost my focus, and let Nor’Goth get away. Please tell me you were able to break through his staff and get a shot on him.”

Jenkins shook her head. “As soon as he locked up,p the scientists evacuated him, and just as we got to the end, Jyssa came in to replace him. We lost all the vampires, and most of my squad, she reported. It was a good thing that you asked us to move you back to the portal before you collapsed; otherwise she probably would have got you too.”

“So trapping Nor’Goth didn’t actually get us anywhere,” I muttered. “In fact, it worked against us.”

“Don’t say that! It was a good plan. It probably would have worked if the scientists had stood and fought, instead of retreating,” Jenkins said, before glancing back over her shoulder. “We really should get going. I managed to outrun Jyssa, but she’ll be here soon. You weren’t responding when I got here, so I had to slap you to wakeyou up.”

I raised a hand to my face and felt my cheek stinging. “That was you? I thought that was Nor’Goth escaping,” I said.

“I’ll apologize later,” she replied, pulling me to my feet.

George came sprinting out of the lab, skittering up the walls and ceiling before screeching to a halt next to us. He bounced back and forth excitedly before shoving his face into my hand. I looked at him suspiciously as I gave him a quick scritch. I had no idea what had happened in my mental realm, but the happy-go-lucky spider didn’t seem any different from usual. I really wanted to know what happened back there, but it wasn’t the time or the place to find out.

After a minute, I withdrew my hand and stepped back. There was a lot of noise coming from deeper in the floor, a lot of movement. Someone was coming.

I turned back towards the portal and looked over my shoulder at George and Jenkins. “Come on, this might have been our loss, but this match isn’t over. Let's get out of here.”