Frozen Stars Over Wonderland - Chapter 21 (Patreon)

“I want to go on a dungeon raid,” Alfre announced. It’d been several weeks since they’d moved back to Spade. The guildhall was finally starting to feel like home, which meant Alfre was getting antsy. “We haven’t done one since the Briarwood Thorns.”

“Ah, that’s true,” Elias agreed. “You’re much stronger now than you were then. Maybe we could try something different.”

“How different?” Alfre asked. 

“A dungeon that’s not under Canus’ purview,” Spica suggested. “We could try the Gates of Death dungeon. I haven’t attempted that one in years.” 

“Gates of Death?!” Wallace shouted. “No, Miss Alfre, please don’t go down and fight him, you might never come back!”

The name and Wallace’s reaction intrigued her. “Gates of Death?”

“The lore is that you’re going down into the Wonderland version of hell to defeat the god of the dead,” Elias explained. “It’s a long and hard dungeon and the dungeon boss is literally the Wonderlander’s god of the underworld. No one under level fifty should even try it, but since you’re right at that level, it should be fun to try at least.”

“Might as well,” Alfre agreed, ignoring Wallace’s distressed cry. “Worst case scenario, we die and pop back up in the city square with a dock to our experience points and a few items missing. I haven’t died yet, though, and I’m not about to end that streak.” 

Wallace looked paler that usual, listening to the whole conversation as he scrubbed at the dishes. “Please be careful, Miss Alfre. I know you Fell are special and all, but don’t let him steal your soul.”

“No one’s stealing my soul, Wally,” she assured, reaching out to pat his arm. “It’s frozen stuck to me like a tongue to a cold lamp post.”

“A lovely image, darling,” Spica muttered, the sarcasm practically dripping from her words. 

“We’ll get packed up and leave tomorrow morning,” Elias suggested. “It’s a good few days travel to the dungeon itself. We’ll be going down below the mountains, so there will be no real place to rest once we get started.”

Wallace saw them off the next morning, looking close to tears as he stood just beyond the gate and waved at them until they were out of sight. They rode elk, just like they had when traveling to Sapfir. The Gates of Death were even farther from the city than Alessio’s kingdom had been, so they definitely wanted the mounts if they were to have any energy left for the raid when they got there. 

They were about three days’ journey through the Wilds when Canus appeared beside Alfre in his wolf form, scaring her mount. She shushed the great beast, rubbing soothingly at his neck as she glared down at Canus.

“If I’d fallen off it would have been all your fault,” she snipped at him. 

“Sorry, snowbird, but I caught your scent and wondered what you were doing all the way out here?” Canus said by way of apology. 

“We’re headed to the Gates of Death,” Alfre said. “I wanted to raid a dungeon and Spica suggested it.”

Canus ears folded back against his head. “Be careful, snowbird. Abital isn’t fond of you Fell storming his throne room.”

“Abital? Is that his name?”

“Yeah, I suppose you could call him my brother, though to my knowledge we share no blood,” he explained. “Orli likes us to play like family.”

“Orli?”

“The Wonderland goddess of light and life and the daytime and all that sort of stuff,” Elias called from his mount a few feet in front of her. “Abital’s opposite in every way. The Wonerlanders love her.”

“She’s alright,” Canus said with as much of a shrug as a wolf could pull off. “Bit up her own ass sometimes, but it’s not like she’s a bad person. Just lets the attention get to her.”

Alfre hummed in acknowledgement, unsure what to say to that. Canus stared up at her, nudging at her foot with his nose.

“Use my gift when you’re there,” he said, half an order and half a suggestion. “You haven’t yet. I want you to see the wolf I chose for you. Plus, it’ll show that prick that you’re under my watch.”

Alfre chuckled, leaning down to run her hands through his fur quickly. “I’ll do just that.”

The entrance to the dungeon lived up to its name. It gaped at them like a maw, stalactites hanging down precariously from the ceiling as cold wind howled about the opening, making it sound like the mountain itself was moaning. They could see nothing beyond the first few feet, darkness consuming the cave. The elk bleated and fussed, pulling at their reigns. 

“What the hell are we going to do with them?” Alfre asked. “We can’t take them into the dungeon, can we?”

“Not like they’d go even if we wanted them to,” Spica muttered.

“We’ll tie them to one of those stalagmites at the entrance, get them out of the wind,” Elias decided. “Hopefully they’ll still be here when we come back.”

They left the elk at the entrance of the cave, which was about as far as they could drag them in anyway. They were out of the wind, at least. Alfre dumped some feed out for them before they walked off, because she had no idea how long this would take them, and she couldn’t stand the idea of the poor things going hungry. 

They ran into bats first, lots of them. They were small at first, speedy and a pain to get rid of. The farther in they went, the larger they became, slower but with more hit points. Alfre didn’t know which ones she found more annoying. Spica, being a vampire, was ignored by the things, which Elias protested was entirely unfair. Alfre felt a good deal of sympathy for him, considering the bats seemed to really like his ears.

Next came the skeletons. Alfre hated skeletons. Her rapier was a thrusting weapon, and there was nothing to thrust into with skeletons. With no circulatory system to carry her poisons, Spica was similarly useless. Elias had to simply blow them to bits with the few attack spells he had.

Farther in were ghouls. Alfre could handle the ghouls. They were slow, with just enough meat on them that she could sink her rapier in and do some real damage. She especially liked planting a small seed of ice that a few seconds later would explode like a grenade, expanding and shooting out of the ghoul’s body in crystalline spikes. Minimum effort, maximum results. 

Finally, there were the hellhounds. Nasty, two headed beasts with eyes and mouths the glowed red and fangs too big for their jaws. They reminded her of Canus’ direwolves in a way. They were smaller, though, and meaner. She was tempted to summon her companion with the Direwolf Pipe, but she held off. She wasn’t sure if there was a time limit, or if the wolf would run off if ran out of hit points. No, they were going to need all the help they could get with the dungeon boss; she’d wait until then. 

She growled at the hellhound that snapped at her with its two heads. She kicked at it, her foot landing right in the gap between the hound’s two necks. It whimpered as it flew back and rolled across the cold cave floor and for a moment Alfre felt bad. But then it got up and shot a dark, purplish-red fireball at her and she felt better about kicking the damn thing. Spica melted out of the shadows and slashed at the hound with a dagger that Alfre didn’t remember her having. 

“What, no poison needles?” Alfre asked, a joking lit to her tone. “And here I thought you were a ninja.”

“Poisons don’t work great on the undead, darling,” the assassin corrected gently. “Better to save my supply for the big bad at the end of the cave then waste it here where they’ll have minimal effect.”

Alfre shrugged, ducking under a swipe of the hellhound’s paw. “Fair enough.” 

They had to stop after the wave of hellhounds, ducking into a small alcove in the cave where low and behold, they found a small chest. Inside was a fairly large bag of gold and a new dagger for Spica. 

“This one has plus ten percent chance of a crit against the undead,” Elias pointed out.

“How convenient, give us a thing we need when we’re more than halfway through the damn dungeon,” Spica grumbled.

“What can I say, game developers are dicks sometimes.”

They rested, drinking down health potions that tasted like watered down, sugarless tea. Alfre missed Izo and his healing spells. She also missed Traveler and her seemingly endless supply of weapons she could use in any situation. Mostly she missed Traveler’s guns. Those were convenient. Especially that elemental sniper rifle she was so fond of using. At least Spica and Elias had stuck around. She didn’t want to think about adventuring without them. 

With their breaths caught and their bodies aching less, they continued on. There were more hellhounds waiting for them, until there weren’t. The last few meters of the cave were eerily quiet and devoid of any mobs. It got warmer as they went as well. They downed another round of health potions.