A thief and a demon walk into a dungeon

After four long hours, I was almost done cracking the safe when a drunken demon entered the room. He didn’t notice me at first; after all, I was wearing a dark cloak and crouching. I didn’t dare move; even the idea of breathing filled me with fear. Robbing sacred relics four levels deep into a dungeon in Hell might not have been among my brightest ideas, but technically it is my actual job. My name is Thomas Foxgreen, and I am a Thief, Second Class, member of the Crimson Chapter in Her Majesty Hell Corps. Yeah, I serve in Hell.

Demons are just like people, only more honest. You can trust a demon to be cruel and care only for themselves. They can’t really stray too far from what their nature commands them to be. Just as you can trust a dog to wag its tail when happy, we can trust demons to behave like demons. This means that we can strategise around them. Planning and coordination are not among their strongest skills, even though now and then the bastards will surprise you and act with such strong team spirit you could believe they were being orchestrated like puppets by some unseen force. It doesn’t happen often, though. Back to the problem at hand: being deep in a dungeon, stealing relics while a drunken demon wanders about the room.

It was just an ordinary torturer bullBulls are the fourth most common class of demon encountered on this level of hell.. Strong, probably very mean, and not in charge of humans. Bulls are in charge of the demons who actually get their claws dirty. An overseer of sorts. Thick muscles and heavy brown fur with horns. I have never seen a real bull. I was born here.

It ravaged a cupboard, beakers and pots shattered on the walls. “Damn maggots! If find out any of you stole my bloodwine, I’ll eat your eyes!”, he said toward the open door. All very on-brand for a bull.

I came to this room through a small grate on the floor, just to the side of the cupboard that guy is emptying. No way to get back there before he grabs me. Going through the door didn’t seem like a good option either since he shouted at maggots, plural. I can’t handle even a single demon in a fight, let alone more than one.

Two tables, good enough for hiding under. Eight chairs, enough for partial coverage. Two large chests on the floor, too short to provide meaningful protection. No windows, we were four levels down, dumb-ass. I took a deep breath, slowed down, thought of daisies, had to be careful, demons can smell fear.

My hands were shaking. I needed something to focus on, something to distract me. Seven chairs left, the bull just threw one out of the room at a maggot. “Where is my bloodwine?!” Do not turn back, do not turn back. Click.

Shit, I just unlocked the safe. Cracking safes for years at the guild, we do it almost as an autonomic reflex these days. Let’s hope the latch sound was not too loud. Was it?

“What is this smell?” said the demon, sniffing the air.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit!

He opened the door, looked out, and shouted, “Did any of you idiots forgot to lock the cattle pen? I can smell them from here!”

“Master, I think the smell is coming from your room…” the maggot said.

Eeeek! The bull started to turn in my direction. Panicking, I opened the safe and threw myself inside it, pulling the door back. Click.

“Hmm, the smell is gone…”

“It was probably just a discharge from one of the dying down below, master.” Replied the unseen underling.

“It was delicious.”

“Master, talking about delicious stuff, we found your bloodwine in another room.”

And that is how I managed to be locked inside a safe with the reliquary of Saint Enzo, the prolificProlific because he wrote so much in his lifetime. Writing was his anxiety coping mechanism. Visions of Hell gave Saint Enzo a lot of anxiety., deep in the demon dungeon of Crucius. If I smell like someone who has been sitting on the remains of a saint for hours, it is because I have been sitting on the remains of a saint for hours. Unlocking a demon safe from the inside is not as simple as from the outside. One big difference is that it is pitch black. Another important difference is that Saint Enzo is distracting me. He could have used some more perfume during his funeral; he smells quite bad.

Click. Latch open. Freedom. I spent some minutes stretching outside the safe. I’m late. Should have been back five hours ago. I can’t be bothered to put the safe back together. The rules of engagement require us thieves to minimise the side-effects of our actions. Leave no trace, they say. Long time ago, the big brains in the war games lab figured out that demons naturally distrust each other. If we leave little evidence behind, they will suspect foul play by one of their peers. There is not enough time to fix this safe though, sorry.

The bull left all the chests open. I know I should get away; I shouldn’t look; I’m out of time. Still, this is a room of secrets. Demons consider rooms this deep to be safe from prying eyes. They store all kinds of neat stuff in here. The first chest I check is filled with mostly potions, ointments, and torture tools. Not that dissimilar to the dentist’s office back in our village if I’m being honest. The second chest has books. Books are treasure.

Cookbooks. Prayer books. Psalm books. Demon religion books. Ledgers. So far, just the ordinary stuff, nothing worth stealing. That’s when I notice the strange leather-bound book. What draws me to it is not the seal made of mice skulls that locks the book shut, although that is quite odd; what intrigues me is the fact that I can’t read the title at all.

Like everyone in Hell, I’m fluent in some basic demonic languages. I even have passable knowledge of some advanced demonic languages, just enough to recognise them, not to actually understand them. And yet, I do not know what this book is, so I bag it alongside Saint Enzo.

Just like a little mouse, I jump into the grate and start my way back to the surface.

Hiking back up is an act of cramming yourself between walls and narrow tunnels made by critters I’d rather not meet. Most dungeons have spaces between walls and floors that a thief like me can use to sneak around. I’ve always found these spaces to be quite strange; they serve no purpose at all. It is as if the dungeon has been built and rebuilt multiple times at the same location, and these are layers of previous work. It is only speculation, no one really knows how dungeon architecture is planned. No one has ever seen one of them being built or being repaired.

Walking through these tunnels is when I have some time for myself. I’m free to daydream and relax for a bit. Had I got more time, I’d make camp and cook some lunch, but my absence has probably already been noticed and I need to make haste. I’m hungry.

Two levels below ground now, the ruins give way to natural tunnels. I retrieved my large backpack from where I had hidden it. There are other creatures in Hell besides humans and demons, some of which live underground and are a danger to both of us. A trick they teach us in our first year at the guild is to never enter a tunnel if there is no moss on the wall. Burrowers will eat anything; they even enjoy eating a bit of moss before devouring the occasional demon or human. Lichen, moss, fungii, are all signs that the tunnel is unused. The thicker the vegetation, the better.

Once in my second year of fieldwork, I found a large chamber that had probably been the nest of a burrower but had been abandoned. The chamber had a little spring, and all kinds of strange mushrooms and plants growing inside it. It was my own private oasis. I told nobody about it. Spent a couple of years getting a ton of crates stashed there for emergencies. Unfortunately, management transferred my active area elsewhere, and now I can’t get to that chamber without drawing attention to my movement. I miss it dearly. My best tea set is hidden there. I have preserved mushroom jerky and dried fruit there.

It takes about one hour to traverse the tunnel all the way up. Like most of its kind, it ends in a large hole in the ground. Hellhounds patrol these exits. Though they’re mindless beasts, they are very good for tracking humans. Using one of these exits should be considered a last resource action. The hounds will get your scent at the exit, and it will taint the tunnel system. Demons will station their underlings near the entrance and into the tunnels for months if not years after spotting our presence.

After all these years, the shouts from my chapter master still echo in my head. It was during my first year of fieldwork. I was deep inside a tunnel and panicked after seeing the half-devoured corpse of a fellow thief. Marcus was tasked with retrieving the staff of the dracolich from a dungeon. That staff was classified as a theoretical relic. Clever people at the war games lab crafted some papers and equations that indicated that eons ago a dracolich governed this region from that dungeon, and that the chance of his staff of power still being there was high. No one actually knew if any of that was true, but they sent Marcus anyway.

After two days, they sent me to look for him. I found his body in a tunnel two levels below ground. Burrowers don’t leave crumbs. They eat all of you. They take their time, though; they’re not in a hurry. Seeing the half-eaten corpse, I knew the burrower would be back soon. So, I started running. I swear I heard noises behind me. I exited through the ground hole. That was three years ago. Those tunnels are still crawling with demons. We lost our only access route to that dungeon. My master spent more than one hour screaming at me. By the way, the war games brainiacs got their research wrong. The dracolich dungeon was miles away from that dungeon, and there was no staff there either.

Just before the surface, there is a section of the tunnel that is not made by burrowers. It is made of bricks. Clearly, whoever built the dungeon had at a time used this section as a walkway. A bricked-over archway is proof that they abandoned this area. I worked for a whole day on that section to make the brick wall into a secret door. Installed hinges on the tunnel side. Cut away the cement connecting the bricks to make them slide on top of each other. It is a passable door with a very simple latching system. Not my best work if I’m being honest, but serviceable. My guild master will be glad; they love when we do this kind of infrastructure work. It makes future incursions a lot easier. Can’t be too clever with these doors though, they need to be something that looks like it was made by a sneaky demon. There are very few situations when we’re allowed to go full crazy into locksmithing and trap laying inside a dungeon. We do it only when setting up safe rooms or covert operation bases deep inside enemy territory. It was not the case here, so a crude secret-ish door is enough.

That door leads to an abandoned storage room. Why this area of the dungeon is not in use anymore is beyond my understanding. It is quite a large room. Feels like this was a warehouse of sorts. All the brick walls either contain shelves or arches leading elsewhere inside the dungeon. There are no chests or leftovers here. Whatever used to be stored in this place was moved or stolen long ago. Wish I could rest here for a bit. I pick up a strip of mushroom jerky from a pocket and eat while walking. Hate eating on the go like this. I’d rather sit down and have some proper lunch like a normal human being. Eating while hiking feels barbaric, to be honest, but one does as one must.

A couple of stairs and trapdoors later and I’m climbing down the dungeon wall after exiting through a cracked window. It is always safer to exit the dungeon from one of the higher levels. The higher you go before trying to exfil, the safer you are. This cracked window is the only window on this side of the dungeon wall. There are no gates, access holes, or anything else. Just a good tall red brick wall with a single broken small window. I land inside a small cave with a narrow path that leads to open space.

Hell is a very large cavern systemMuch like the soap bubbles that form inside a cup when it is being washed, Hell is a series of interconnected caves, which are inside other caves, and may contain even more caves. Humans find it very confusing. Demons don’t think about it too hard.. Our village is in a very large area. One can’t even see the ceiling, and the main walls are so far away that they are theoretical at this point. Some caves are so large that they have their own ecosystems and geographic features such as hills, rivers, and mountains, each sporting its own tunnels and caverns. It is a strange place. Humans are but insects invading this space. Everything seems to be built on a different scale, much larger than what we’re used to.

Finally reached the main cavern, the one that is so large you can’t see the walls or ceiling. We know that there is a ceiling because rocks fall from it now and then. We know there should be walls somewhere because that ceiling needs support; it can’t just float. No one has seen either of them, though. I bet the demons haven’t seen them either because they never tried to invade our town from above.

They say there is a cycle of day and night on Earth. I’d love to see it someday. Here, it is always perpetual dusk. Giant balls of fire very far away from us provide all the light we have. There is only one recorded case of one of those balls going off, but I was not alive back when it happened. From our base, we can see five of them. It is the closest thing I have to a star. Once you can see them, it is easy to orient yourself towards home.

I’m walking on an arid wasteland, mostly compacted dirt and dry mud. Every couple of miles I pass a devil tree. Their bark is grey, and they spend most of their life with no leaves. There are a lot of very sharp thorns. Even though they look like dead fixtures on the landscape, they are alive, and you can pierce them for water. The water tastes funny; it is probably sulphur or something.

After walking for about three hours, I can see Old Billy. It is my first checkpoint. A devil tree so large and old that we don’t have enough people in my guild to make a circle around it while holding hands.

“You’re very late, and you smell like you were shagging undead sheep all night.” Sam, my contact, said with a smirk.

“Sorry, there were complications.” I reply, unstrapping my rucksack. “Here, meet Saint Enzo, the prolific.”

“Well, at least you completed the mission.”

“Not only that, but I have found something else, something very strange.”

“What?”

I can see the curiosity in his eyes.

“It is not safe here. Let’s get back to the chapter house.”

A single riverThis river has many names: Styx, Lethe, Acheron, and more. At least a dozen tributaries that lead to Earth have been mapped. Crews mapping other tributaries never returned. Where those lead, no one knows. separates Earth from Hell. Sail up that river until it branches, follow one of its tributaries up, and you end up somewhere on Earth depending on the tributary used. It was early in the 19th century that The Royal Navy did the same route backwards and invaded Hell. The British were big on the colonisation mindset way back when. Hell just became another colony. A secret colony.

Soldiers, farmers, scientists, and priests were shipped here. After many years of exploring, they found the source of that river and built a fortified village around it. People on Earth probably look back at all the texts and accounts from the past and think people were superstitious and crazy. They were not. We locked the path out of hell with a good old fort. No more demons causing mayhem on Earth. They are all here, locked in with us.

Our little village is called Stratford-upon-Hell. It is a quaint little place with a huge medieval-looking wall complex. There is no need to encircle the whole town with walls because we built our home at the mouth of a really large cave. The mouth of that cavern is the beginning of the path that leads to the river and finally to Earthside. Two walls shaped like horseshoes protect our town. Between those walls is the farmland where we grow our cropsIt is not a good idea to attempt to raise livestock in hell. They always come out wrong. Believe me, they tried. We farm using terraces that take advantage of the steep inclination at the cave entrance. It is modelled after the ones used by ancient civilisations of South America. In front of the first wall, way below our town and farms, is a trench system that spans many miles.

The codename used for our home in official documentation is coffeepotThat is actually how most inhabitants refer to the city anyway.. That is because parts of its operation resemble how a coffeemaker works. In front of the trenches, there is an array of relic weapons. Part of my job of stealing relics is to provide them to the engineers who build that stuff. Those artefacts weaken the demons that pass near them. That defence section is codenamed: the boiler. They call the trenches, the percolator. The trench walls are lined with sacred artefacts as well. It requires a lot of determination and power for demons to resist the pressure damage from the boiler and the percolator. The last line of defence is the terraces themselves, also known as the grouphead. That is where the firing batteries are installed. The town is simply called the carafe. If demons reach the carafe, it is over.

No demon has ever survived long enough to cross the percolator. The worst case was a hundred and fifty years ago when a dracolich got as far as the last mile of the percolator by cheating and flying over the trenches. The angry undead flying lizard was shot down using the batteries in the grouphead. Our special firing doctrine can be summarised as “fire all weapons non-stop until the thing is truly dead.” It is extremely effective.

I wave to some people I know as I cross the percolator and climb up through the grouphead. It is a steep road to go all the way to town and our chapter house. At least three people told me to get a shower, ha ha hilarious, jarheads.

When I arrived at our chapter house, I attempted to go directly into debriefing. The guild master ordered me to take a bath instead and mentioned undead sheep as well. This joke is getting old really fast. To be honest, after a bath and a quick lunch, I’m feeling much better. It is these brief moments of companionship, like eating and drinking among friends, that keep me sane after a dungeoneering expedition. Guess we need that to feel human. Maybe my master knows more about psychology than he lets on. Maybe ordering me to clean up and have lunch was more about taking care of myself than actually getting rid of the undead sheep smell.

His office is at the top of the chapter house. By the time I arrive there, he is waiting for me with the quartermaster and Sam. My rucksack is on the floor, and the relics are spread on the large wooden table in the centre of the room. Saint Enzo remains lie ignored to the side as everyone has their eyes fixed on the strange book.

“Glad you could join us. Now, what the hell is this book?” The quartermaster said.

“Jim, if we don’t know, the boy will not know either…” says our master. “A better question is, where did you find it?”

“In my grid, on the second dungeon, the one with a 67% chance of having the remains of Saint Enzo inside it. We can let the geeks from war games know that 67% is the new 100%. The remains were on the fourth level.”

“What the hell were you doing on the fourth level? That is too deep for your skills. You’re not cleared for this kind of mission!” Screamed Jim, our quartermaster.

“I didn’t want to leave empty-handed…”

“You could have died!”

“Let him continue, Jim. Please go on.”

“In summary, a bull entered the room while I was cracking the relic safe. I opened it before the bull noticed me, panicked, entered the safe and locked myself inside it. After a while, the bull left, and I spent a couple of hours unlocking the safe from inside.”

“I do not know how you’re still alive, my friend.” Says Jim with his signature smirk.

“The bull left some chests open when he left. I found this book in one of them alongside other books. It was a kind of library chest. The other books were the usual demon religion and cookbook stuff. Picked this one because I couldn’t read the cover.”

Everyone was silent after I finished my explanation. From the position of what appeared to be the title and the spine of the book, we inferred that the language was written right-to-left. The book was a small folio with a leather cover. A bone structure protected the spine and also locked the book shut. In the centre of the cover there was a rat skull. Like many things in hell, the book smelled of old leather. It looked ancient.

“Before I became a quartermaster here, I trained as an analyst in the war games. I specialised in demon linguistics.” Jim says, “Yeah, don’t look at me like that. I was once one of those war games geeks. That is in the past, so forget about it. What I’m saying is that I know more about languages in the demonic spectrum than most people, and I don’t know what the book is or have ever seen any language like it.”

“What are we going to do?” Asks Sam.

The master shrugs. “The only thing we can. You’re going to give it to war games.”

I pack the book into an evidence bag and fill the little form with the details I have.

The master turns to Sam and says, “Go with him, please, don’t let him get into trouble there.”

We exit our chapter house and start walking to the ivory towers of war games labs. War games do not run this place, but to the surprise of everyone that arrives here, they run the army. The good old chaps in charge when we first arrived in Hell were quick to understand that the doctrines and structures they brought from Earthside were less than optimal here. After many deaths and a ton of poor management, they finally started listening to the few analysts present in the first wave. Luck started turning around, and fate appeared to be favouring our team.

It was decided then that the best way to establish and maintain a presence in Hell was to treat it as a permanent warzone with an unknowable enemy. Ask any military person on Earthside how do you fight such an enemy and all the answers will be wrong. They have no clue. What saved us, and it pains me to say that, was the calculations from those analysts. They established a new doctrine, a new way to approach war. For a simple thief like me, it makes no sense. They talk about probabilities, logical gates, trope baiting, whatever that means. What matters is that they get more stuff right than wrong, and that is why they run the place. Thought when they get things wrong, my friends die. Margin of error, my ass.

We take a longer path towards their headquarters, mostly because it is morning and we both could use some coffee. There are three roasters here in Stratford-upon-Hell. It used to be a single large roaster, but the two daughters fought with their father and with each other. Like many things in hell, what was once one is now three. The earthly smell of recently roasted coffee hits us like a truck. There are many batches of coffee beans resting on sieves in the gardens in front of the roaster. This is my favourite place in all the caraffe.

“A flat white, please.” I ask the sleepy barista.

“It is already on the counter, you moron.” she replies.

“What–”

“I saw both of your asses playing with the sieves. There are two flat whites on the counter already. For a thief, you’re not very perceptive, innit?”

“Ivy, my coffee godmother, my caffeine fairy, thank you.” Sam Says.

“Cut the smirk and silliness, Sam. I like you more when you’re silent.” Says Ivy with a smile and an extra biscuit for Sam.

“What, no biscuit for me?”

“If you were a good thief, I wouldn’t need to give you one, would I?”

One day, I’ll grab that jar just to annoy her. Our chapter house has free coffee. It is actually the same coffee we have here, even if prepared by less skilled hands. What we have here that we don’t get there is privacy.

“Tom, you could have been killed.”

“We’re in hell. Everyone can be killed.”

“Chances are higher when you try your luck like that.”

“Luck is a muscle; it requires training like any other body part.”

We’re interrupted by Ivy literally throwing a tray of mushroom rolls onto our table.

“Baked a bad batch. It is on the house.”

It was delicious, of course. Ivy never bakes anything wrong. She grew up inside this shop. Once I saw her bake a four-tier wedding cake whilst being completely drunk. It was terrifying.

“Now, about that book. You know it is trouble, right?” Says Sam.

“I couldn’t help myself. I had to grab it. It didn’t look cursed. Well, it looks a bit cursed, but it doesn’t feel cursed. Cursed books are not so easy to grab, are they?”

“I don’t think it is cursed. I think it is worse. Have you considered that it might be a book from some level below ours?”

“You mean a deeper circle?”

“Yes, and that means that whoever rules that dungeon might be in communion with some nastier shit than the usual crap we usually meet in here.”

“Shit.”

“Shit indeed.”

“I wish it were cursed!”