This story is based on a game created in 1993 by a Calgarian named Peter Lok called Quenzar's Caverns. The story is called Quenzar's Caverns:
It was by the whispers of the old folks sitting by the fire that I first discovered the wizard Quenzar had dealings with the devil.
That day, I recall, I had been mending a mile of fence that the goats had chewed through. My older brother Wally had gone into the woods to go gather some of the straying animals. Having mended the fence to the best of my ability, I returned home. My mother, small sisters and baby brother had all been shaken in our absence by hideous cries from the north. By nightfall my brother hadn’t returned. Naturally, because of the day’s unsettling events, we were all justifiably terrified that my brother had been killed by something awful in the woods.
I knew he could have been at the Old Toad. Sometimes, when he failed a task or felt down, I would find him halfway into a stein of ale at the bar, cavorting with one of the innkeeper’s daughters and appearing to have forgotten what was troubling him. I wondered if perhaps he hadn’t found any of our stray goats and thought it less unpleasant to stop at the Old Toad than to come home.
I didn’t find him there, but I had walked a half hour in the stiff winter winds, and I had developed a thirst, and so stayed for a moment by the fire with a mug of hot mulled cider. Several other old villagers sat there too, many of them very quiet and grim. Eadbert, the old weaver, quivered as he pulled his steaming mug to his lips. He made a sound in his throat, “You hear those noises in the woods today?” I had been trying to forget, and began worrying all over again about Wally. Where was Wally?
“Wilfred, the hayward, he said he saw the devil in those woods. That wizard in the woods made a pact with Satan himself.”
Bertha the midwife ducked her head and her eyes darted here and there. “Something’s got to be done about him,” she told the rest of us. “Quenzar’s gaining strength, and I know he’s getting ready to come up above and overthrow our Christian lands. My boy Jep’s told me the strangest stories about those woods. He said he saw a skeleton walking like a man, coming after him with an axe!”
I didn’t like the stories I’d been hearing, and they were only worrying me further about my brother. It was quite late by this point, and I surmised that the old folks were still awake from a vigil of fear. I’d seen it in the other patrons, as well. There was something terrible afoot. I knew Quenzar was behind it.
I left my still-hot cider by the fireplace and raced back home, my rags flailing in the winter wind. I returned in exhaustion and panic, but with some quantity of joy when I found my brother, injured on his cot, with my mother and my family tending to him.
“Rolf, where have you been!” my mother said. “Wally is almost at death’s door!”
“Don’t scare him, mother,” said Wally. “It’s just a hurt leg.” “What happened?” I asked. “Wally returned only just after you went out looking for him,” my mother said. “There was blood and filth all over him, and he was limping terribly.”
“I went in the woods this afternoon to find those goats,” said Wally. “I heard the sad sound of bleating, but I could not find the goat itself, until I found a trap door in the ground, covered in dying leaves. The goat had fallen in, I thought, and the door had closed behind it.
“I opened the trapdoor, and saw a goat, but it was dead. Eaten.” I could see the horrible memory in his eyes. “Squatting above the carcass I saw something awful down there, what the Father Baldwin called a ‘minor demon’ in church. It wasn’t the devil, but it was from Hell, that’s for sure. I thought I would die there, when it came up from the underground at me, goat entrails still clasped in its jaws. And we fought for a long time there in the woods. It was slow, it’s fat, crooked body couldn’t quite destroy me, and I managed to gore it in the face with my hook.” He had dutifully brought the shepherds hook back with him, even despite his horror, as it lay, broken at the top, by the side of the cot. “The monster cried, chilling my bones even now, and bolted back into the trapdoor to finish its awful meal. I ran as far as I could with what it did to my foot, but passed out about halfway back to the house, on the ground.”
The tale was unbelievable, especially considering what I’d heard at the Old Toad. I told my frightened family that Eadbert spoke of Quenzar’s pact with the devil. “That was the entrance to Quenzar’s caverns all right. I have no doubt about that. We can’t keep on like this!” Wally said. “Tomorrow, I’m going back there, and I’ll enter the Dungeon of Doom and defeat Quenzar!”
“But Wally, you’re hurt!” I said. My baby brother started wiggling and whining. My mother stuffed her breast in his mouth.
“You sound just like your father!” my mother said. “He went to do that very thing, and he never returned! Who knows what could have happened to him? It keeps me up at night even now.”
“But father was old, feeble, whereas I am in the prime of my life. I can defeat him. And mother, think of the riches he must have acquired throughout the years. Think of what I could bring back from the caverns besides the wizard’s mangled corpse!”
“But you’re hurt!” I said. “Armies of strong men are afraid to tread in Quenzar’s caverns, and you are just one injured soul! If you could not defeat a minor demon even above ground, just think of the horrors eager to beset you below, you with a damaged leg and cuts all about you!”
“I could take father’s sword!” Our father had been conscripted to fight, in his younger days, for the Earl against the barbarians coming from the east. He had come back without his forefingers, but with a short sword, a dagger, and small shield.
After he died, my mother and Wally had fought all the time about whether or not to sell them away, especially in wintertime, when things were more grim than usual. We had always managed to squeak by despite my brother’s insistence that we could be rich if we sold them. Now he and my mother were in agreement, at least about the weapons. He wanted to use the weapons to be rich in another, much more dangerous way. But how rich we would be…
We all fell asleep soon after that. All of us, that is, but Wally. He woke me up, almost at sunrise. “What is it, Wally? I have to get up soon and fix the fence. Go back to sleep, you need your rest.”
“Shhh…!” he commanded in a whisper. “Come outside with me.” I quietly put on my boots, and my coat, and leapt over my little sister and followed my limping brother outside.
“We lost all of our goats. Quenzar stole them to feed his minions down there. We don’t have anything left. I would think this is the time we should sell father’s war-gear, because I cannot think of another way to keep ourselves through the winter now. But I was not so badly hurt by that monster in the woods. They don’t call them minor demons for nothing. I’m well enough to go, and if I come back, we’ll never have to think about goats again.”
“Wait until mother wakes up. We can talk about the goats in the morning,” I said quietly.
“Don’t you see the power we can wield? We’ll all be heroes after I defeat Quenzar!”
“You speak like you’ve already done so. But you haven’t. And father hasn’t. If you go in there, half-mauled, you’ll cause mother more years of heartbreak. She needs us here.”
“We’ll starve if I don’t go.” He was probably right. The sword and shield were not worth more than one goat, and we could not feed six people on that.
“I’ll go.”
“You?” Wally said incredulously. “You haven’t even got your beard!”
“But I have use of both feet.”
“I won’t let you.”
“I have the best chance,” I said, hardly knowing what I myself was saying. “I’m not injured, I’ve spent enough time with that sword and shield to know how to bring down a demon with it.”
Our mother was standing at the doorway. “I’m beginning to think I’ll be unable to stop one of you from taking off,” she said seriously. “I don’t want you to go, but if you’ll refuse me, let me at least show you father’s secret weapon.”
Wally and I returned back in with her. She pulled from under her straw mattress a wooden chest, and opened it. Inside were three odd-looking items. “Your father brought these back from the battles, and forbade me from showing you until the time was right. If Quenzar knew his enemies had such things out here, he would shake.” She brought two large vials of pink and red liquid stopped with a cork, and an egg-shaped metal contraption. “These are healing potions and restoration potions,” she said. “I was considering giving you the red restoration potion if your injuries proved fatal, but you appear to be on the mend, so I’ll give it to Rolf.”
“Rolf! He’s going!” Wally exclaimed. I was stunned myself.
My mother did not smile. “He’s not injured at all, and he has been quite studious when it comes to the blade. If one of you insists on going, I cannot stop you. But Rolf is better suited. I don’t know what could be there, but there is one thing I do know. If you find an insurmountable horror, you will be ready, Rolf, because your father brought back with him the holy hand grenade, a magical device which kills in an instant storm of divine judgment only such things as are displeasing to the eye of God.”
I took off from the cottage of my childhood soon afterwards. My mother sobbed into my brother’s shoulder. I setting the small shield on my forearm, the short sword readied in my hand, the dagger at my side, and the strange potions tucked in my belt. I was ready to see the demon that had hurt my brother as I entered the quiet woods a way across the hills.
In not much time I found the recently-disturbed trapdoor whence Wally had heard the strange bleating of a goat. I heard nothing, and opened the door. I saw nothing, and descended. The door immediately closed above me, and what appeared on the ceiling where I had been was the roughly hewn stone comprising the rest of the cavern. I was terrified. Where had the trapdoor gone? I knew there was no escape from the Dungeon of Doom, until I could defeat the sorceries Quenzar had already begun to work upon me.
Torches were lit, and I could see around me. Any evidence of a dead goat had been washed since my brother was there. By whom, I didn’t want to think. I found myself in a square room. On each wall a hallway was dug, which I soon realized had been done to all the rooms in Quenzar’s caverns. I walked through the eastern hallway, and reached another room with a low ceiling. My footsteps echoed crisply as I walked. My blade-hand began to quiver in anticipation, or fear, of what could come next. The room I found continuing east was something stranger still. On the walls, grotesque murals had been painted, something to please the demonic eyes of Quenzar and his slaves. But here, too, I discovered nothing that sought my life, and I moved on, as I did not like the way the scratchings on the walls watched me so.
I found a room colored in a checkered pattern, and then a room with strange symbols on the walls. I could not decipher them, and didn’t think I’d like what they revealed if I could. Here I found a closet door partially open. Keeping my father’s short sword pointed directly forward, I threw open the closet, ready in a moment to see the laughing face of Quenzar ready to envelop me in flames. And I nearly died of fright when a large shield, a lot bigger than my father’s clattered to the ground. I thought for certain that the minions of the Wizard would come to destroy me, and waited there, but none came. I wondered where they all were. Quenzar’s caverns seemed barren of life. I felt strange leaving my father’s own shield in the closet, where I found this large one, belonging to some fiend who find it detrimental using so small a shield as mine. I left it there, however, and never saw it again.
In the next room, I smelled woodsmoke and thought back to the Old Toad. Here I found a blazing fireplace. By the fire there lay a dagger smeared with grease. An empty plate that looked to have held meat on it was nearby. Something had been dining before the fire. Quenzar’s caverns were cold, and I relished the heat of the fire before I moved another room east. Rubble covered the floor. A rat bigger than any I’d seen scurried to my feet, its mouth covered in foam. Before I knew it I had struck at its backbone with my father’s sword, and it died at once. Was the rat all Quenzar had for me?
I went on to the next room. Here there were patches of glowing fungi, foxfire underground. A chest was there, which I opened at once, eager to see what treasure was housed therein. A suit of padded armour awaited me, which I instantly took on. It was not plate, but there was certainly an added protection to the comfortable, warming suit. I went on to a room with many nooks and crannies. I looked within them, but found only bits of dust. I walked through a hallway of fitted stone, and into another room with a bed, and what looked like a tree. I approached the bed, where some evil sentinel must sleep, and the tree in the corner began to shiver. It spun around and began grasping at me with large, arm-like branches! I swung at it, removing some of the branches like a lumberjack, but swinging with still others it managed to knock me to the ground. I bashed my head against the cold floor and felt hot blood come from the pounding wound. Swinging again, I managed to carve a deep cut in the trapper plant before it could crush me in its arms. It moved backwards, and I advanced, pushing my blade again within the deep cut, sap flowing freely from it, and knocked the trapper plant over once and for all.
I remembered my mother’s potions, and sipped of the pink one. My head felt at once clear, and, feeling it, no blood dripped from the cut, though it had remained drying in my hair. I searched through the bed, and found a red potion, identical to the one I had. The caves were certainly full of treasures, and its creatures were as manageable as vermin and weeds.
I marched confidently to the next room to the east, my father’s blade still sticky with the sap of the trapper plant. The room had a low ceiling, and the squeal of a bat recharging my battle-spirit and my swinging arm. The bat came close and I aimed true, whacking it out of the air.
I went on, with the thrill of combat still thrumming in my chest, and came to the very same room I had begun in! I had walked east through ten rooms, and this eleventh was the first. Some strange sorcery of Quenzar no doubt. I walked south now. Here I found a room with a high, domed ceiling, and a circular fountain. Water poured high into the air, failing to dampen the ceiling by grace of its dome.
I felt a strange euphoria then. Walking around the edge of the fountain, I felt Quenzar was already mine. I spied a floating white bottle and fished it out of the fountain. It looked like milk inside. I was parched from my fight with the trapper plant, and so quaffed the drink. Instantly I felt more dexterous than before. It was some sort of dexterity potion. I relished the way with which I could swing my blade, a little better than I had before. With my new joy I loped into the next room south, swinging my weapon a little less cautiously than perhaps I should have.
My heart beat quickly, when I beheld a hideous giant in a corridor with twists and winds. A table was there. The giant must have been eight fell tall and four wide. He had an awful black beard and moaned disgustingly. The smell in the room was terrible. He held in one blistered hand a great club, and in his other a large shield similar to mine. At his belt he wore a jingling pouch. I had no terror, though perhaps I should have, and I approached with all my strength swinging the blade up at the hellion’s throat. He swung dumbly at me with his club, but my large shield intercepted his blow. I scurried around a wind, and he tottered after me. I went again at his throat, and cut it brutally. He growled and chucked, coming once more at me with his club. I must have been entranced by the wound I had given him, for he hit me square in the stomach, a wound I may not have recovered so quickly from if it hadn’t been for the padded armour. I lost my breath and fell on my seat from the blow, but as the giant approached with frenzy, I took the opportunity to cut at his trunklike feet. He collapsed, but not before bashing me once again with his club, this time in the sword arm. I cried out, delivering one pained stroke of my father’s blade to his brainpan.
The giant had treated me brutally, and I felt quite uncertain about my prospects there. The creatures seemed to know I had arrived. I knew I had no choice but to quaff my restoration potion. If I were to travel to any further rooms I would certainly be easy prey for whatever evil lurked beyond. Drinking the red liquid, I felt clearer of head. My euphoria that had sent me perhaps too hastily into the room and transformed into a fearsome anxiety reverted to a gentle hopefulness. I felt as well as I ever had, and found in the giant’s no-longer jingling pouch three gold pieces, a paltry sum for many, but something more I could bring home if I could find a way to escape. I walked hence to the table that had nearly been smashed to bits by the giant’s club several times during our fight. Here I discovered an iron ring, certainly worth something when I returned. It glew a strange light, and I knew it was no ordinary ring. I put it on my finger, and had the feeling of armour upon my frame, but I had only put on a simple ring. It was a ring of protection, enchanted with the safeguarding properties of armour, without any loss to my dexterity. The giant’s gore began to stink, and so I traveled south once more.
I came to a room with many mirrors. I nearly jumped when I saw ten revolting ghouls squatting over a goat, one of ours, I can bet. Soon I realized that there was only one ghoul–– that being quite enough–– reflected by the mirrors. The ghoul’s eyes were as unto those of a cat, and its teeth grated with goat gore. It had a robe, a hood over its balding, mangy head. I could not bear the many sights of the ghoul, and readied my shield. It bounded to me, but I pushed it to its seat with the shield. It recovered, biting my padded armour until it nearly took some of it in its mouth. I chopped at its emaciated neck, and it fell back at once, dead. Quenzar, I realized, did not only keep his infernal court filled with those who could fight, simply with those who wanted to kill.
There was an ornate altar in that room of mirrors, seemingly of gold or brass, which in my fear of the ghoul I had not noticed until it lay dead below me. I approached cautiously. I noticed a spike trap, several pits in the ground before the altar with thin metal stakes ready to whip out and wound me if I were to simply bob over to the altar with no precautions. I attempted to disarm it, kicking the skinny body of the ghoul to the thin pits escaped. But I failed to disarm the trap totally. The spikes burst from their pits more quickly than I had ever seen them, propelled by some sorcery, and one of them ran across my leg. The ghoul’s corpse, of course, was quite mangled, being run through a dozen times. I watched blood seep slowly from the wound in my leg, slowly only thanks to the ring of protection, but realized I had no potions left. I walked around the room, looking at the wound in the mirrors, and making certain I didn’t have a limp. I felt fine enough for the moment, and returned to the altar. Searching it, I found the top, which was decorated by a strange golden orb with red wings, was a removable marble slab. Opening it carefully, I discovered inside nothing more enormous than an unassuming yellow amulet. It seemed to look like a necklace. It too glew strangely like the ring, and I put it around my neck, eager to see what mighty advantage it would work upon me.
I saw inscribed on the amulet the word LIFE appear once I put it about my neck. I didn’t feel any more protected, nor more dexterous but somehow it gave me a vague, reassuring feeling. The ghoul had certainly been little challenge, but nevertheless put quite a shock into my heart. The amulet, especially that word, LIFE, let me believe there was good being worked in Quenzar’s caverns.
The next room made me a little queasy, not because of any hideousness within, but because of its shape. I had found a strangely shaped room of weird dimensions. I couldn’t be certain which way was up, or whether the square shape of the room was truly square, or if the right angles I had become accustomed to were at 90O. I couldn’t take it, so I went south. At least I think it was south. I passed through a room with a polished marble floor and pillars, and a cavern with glimmering minerals in the walls.
I went further south. Here was a room full of cobwebs and dust. It was calm, no one there but me and an old bookshelf. By the looks of it I had been the room’s only visitor in a long time. The dust was thick enough that I made footprints in it as I walked along. The bookshelf held many mouldering books in languages I could scarce imagine. There was, however, a scroll, its sides worn away by time, but in a language I could understand. Would that I could have read it better, or remembered its magic words, but I do remember that once I had completed my reading, I realized my wound from the spike trap, and the pain it was causing me, had disappeared. Crumbling into dust through my hands, I had read a scroll of healing.
I went one room further south, and once again found myself in the room with the high-domed ceiling and the circular fountain in which I’d found the white potion of dexterity. I inferred that the caverns were a square themselves, and that there were one hundred rooms. If I were to go through ten rooms in any direction, I would find myself at the first one. So I started mapping my coordinates so that I would not be confounded by my surroundings. The first ten rooms through which I had gone east I considered Row 0, and the ten rooms through which I had gone south were to be Column 9. So now I returned to the previous room with the pool and then headed west, across what was Row 9, in an attempted to have gone through the outermost ring of the rooms, after which I would go through the next set of rows and columns within.
In the first room west I entered, C8R9 a cavern with many stalactites and stalagmites, I heard a worrisome, raspy slithering noise in an adjacent room. The echoes of the strange noise were quite troublesome, and I could not discern exactly from which room adjacent to this one the slithering was coming from.
I went west once more, to C7R9 through a room with a smooth stone floor and walls, and one with elaborate wooden paneling, and then one with an inlaid pattern on the floor. There was also a pool of water, which had accumulated from a crack in the ceiling. Rivulets climbed down and fed into this puddle on the ground. A glistening in the pool caught my eye, and I found it to be another ring. This one was gold, and it glimmered magically as well. I found out too soon that it was cursed. I had been tricked and tempted by the treasures of Quenzar, and I had put on a ring of weakness. I felt a little more tired, my gear felt a little heavier in my hands, and even my will was taken. Of course, I tried to remove the terrible ring, but it had stuck fast to my finger, as though a part of my body. It parasitized my strength, and kept me just a little bit weaker than before.
In C6R9, a room with many stone pillars the slithering noise continued. When I went west once more and reached C5R9, still hearing the infernal raspy slithering noise, I believed that I was being followed. The room was a corridor of twists and winds similar to that of the giant which had beset me. I scurried further along, trying to escape the eternal raspy slithering which echoed with every move. C4R9 was a place of blasphemy. Squatting upon the smooth stone floors, there stood a black stone altar. A krater of purple flame cast eerie light upon the smooth stone walls. The frontispiece of the altar was a blue relief of a bat, its wings outstretched and its eyes shining with purple jewels. Blue candles on the altar shed a more natural colored flame. The entire room seemed to be for satanic black masses, rituals the wizard Quenzar assuredly was acquainted with. I searched the stone altar, discovering, to my great surprise, a holy hand grenade, one identical to that which my father had brought back and which now lay securely at my side. I had two, and I didn’t wait long to try them out.
For in room C3R9 under a lifesize statue of a man with shield and javelin, there had lain in wait a Goblin Guard. He had a strange horned helmet atom his crown, and he had wrinkled, dry green skin. His eyes glew red, and on his lips sat a sardonic grin. He wore leather armour, and carried a long sword and a shield. I was not matched, being equipped with my short sword and padded armour. I held firm with my large shield, knowing at that time it would be my only advantage. He spoke to me. “You’ve come a long way, weakling,” he said in a voice as dry as his skin. “I’m afraid I cannot let you pass. The chief says you’ll have to be killed right here, under the statue of the unknown ancient warrior.”
“You take orders, then, from your ‘chief,’ Quenzar, do you?” I said.
“Quenzar!” his sardonic grin only grew in its sardonicness. “I speak of the Goblin chief! I only take orders from him. He talks to the wizard, but what do I care? As long as my gold-hoard grows, Quenzar can do what he likes!”
“You’ll not defeat me,” said I. “You are not an executioner, you are a foe!”
“I can let you pass,” the Goblin guard said sneakily. “we won’t have to come to blows. That is, if you give me your gold pieces as tribute. One of our men found what you’d done with the troll. I’ll let you pass if you give me the troll-gold.”
“Nay, fiend,” I growled, brandishing the blade. “To the contest!” The goblin guard growled back, unsheathing his long sword in one movement and swinging it about his head. The heavy blade came crashing down upon my shield, and I could feel the pull of it as he removed it from the dent. I parried and dashed across the other side of the lifesize statue. The goblin’s reached at me with his long blade but hit nothing but the cold hard stone of the statue’s legs. Bright flame like sparks shot from the statue, blinding us for a moment. I knew what was to occur to me if I attempted direct combat with the vicious goblin guard. I thought of my mother, enduring the pain of losing bother her husband and her son. I removed my father’s holy hand grenade from my belt and whipped it at the goblin guard. Compared with the holy white flash which erupted in the room, the sparks upon the statue were pure black. The goblin was there no more, his long sword, shield, and leather armour remaining. A fine green dust rolled from the armour as I picked it up. I removed the padded armour and equipped the leather, which was of better protective quality, though my dexterity suffered somewhat more than in the freedom of the padding. The goblin had also dropped two piece of gold, which I gathered up happily. After a moment of silence, I could hear that raspy slithering. Something was no doubt following my every move.
I went on in haste to C2R9, where I beheld more of that species of glowing fungi which had colonized some of the rooms. An oak desk was there. In one of the drawers, there was a glowing silver ring. I looked down upon my cursed gold ring, which I feared I would never be able to take off and would bring me to my grave here. I had faith, and I slipped the silver ring upon my finger. I felt wiser, knew more. I had put on a ring of wisdom, which came in most handy soon after. I passed through the caverns of C1 and C0 R9, but found nothing but stalagmites in the one and glimmering minerals in the other. And so I started north.
In C0R8, beneath its many stone pillars, there was a trap door, which I hastily opened, setting off a burning oil trap. I was damaged somewhat, but with my new silver ring, I found myself capable of realizing what I had done almost in time, and moving out of the way of the hot splash before I was more horribly burned. My eyes particularly took the hardest hit, the hot gas from the oil burning them a little. The trapdoor was fruitful, however, and there lay a lone pink healing potion, which I quaffed.
Would that I had never found the bone-chilling sight in C0R7, a hallway of roughly hewn stone. There lay a giant golden sarcophagus. Already I was something frightened of death, but here, the ornate coffin seemed for me. I knew that within there could be ancient treasure to help me on my quest, and so I opened it. Staring into me with its wide, red eyes, a vampire of legend slowly removed itself from the coffin. Hideous white fangs protruded from its gray face, and combat quickly began. He tried to drain me of my blood with its repugnant vampiric touch, tearing at my leather armor. I cut at him, giving him a superficial wound across his chest, but he did not bleed. “You must feed me, mortal,” it muttered through its crispy lips, and it pushed me to the floor, bit me and drained me of about as much strength as the gold ring had. Only the gold ring was–– at least I hoped–– able to be removed by the correct utterance. The vampire’s attack left me permanently without my strength. I knew I was in severe trouble, and so with little thought produced the second holy hand grenade, holding it in my hand as it detonated. I was on my back, not injured exactly, but weakened in a vague way. The vampire had disintegrated above me, leaving me covered in gray dust, but I was alive, something which I wondered about when I decided to detonate the weapon while it was so close to my breast. But the holy hand grenade only destroys abominations unto god, and the vampire was certainly among them. The creature, too, was proof of some of Quenzar’s dabblings in necromancy. I only imagined what other horrors he may have studied in his dread laboratory.
I returned to the sarcophagus, to seek what may be there, and discovered a blue potion, as unto clear, refined water. Drinking it, I became weaker still, having quaffed a potion of weakness. I left the room; weaker, but living.
C0R6 was a room of cobwebs and dust as well as that one long before with its bookshelf of healing. In this room, I discovered a wardrobe, and perhaps the treasure which saved my life later. In the wardrobe I discovered a full suit of magic plate armour. I removed my leather armour which the vampire had abominated with its evil gray dust, and suited myself to the plate. It was most heavy, draining me of a great deal of dexterity, but not so much as one would expect. I imagine that was where the sorcery had been, in making the plate armour somehow lighter than mundane varieties. I felt a great deal of protection, much more than any other armour could have afforded me.
And it was quite in time, because in C0R5, I nearly lost my life. For when I entered the room with the low ceiling, cloaked in darkness, the hideous, iron skinned Slithering Horror was upon me! It had followed me from room to room, only now crossing my path as quickly as I had escaped each room! I was nearly caught off guard, the Slithering Horror’s strange shadow consumed all but its hideous and giant red eyes. I hardly knew where to strike, but I did, and missed. It was somewhat difficult to maneuver in the new and inflexible plate armour, but due to its sorcery I was yet capable of moving out of the way. I struck at the nebulous Horror again, hitting something material, and I watched as the red eyes glew redder. It lashed out at me greedily, its hunger being obvious, and struck me hard, perhaps fatally were it not for my armour. It struck several more times in quick succession, but I kept up my shield such that the horror could not quite rasp at me. I felt the shield beginning to splinter. After a multitude of enemies having grasped and whacked at the thing, it was finally succumbing to the power of the Slithering Horror.
I held my ground with it, and cut once more and once again when I sensed the horror had tired somewhat. I made contact each time, knowing for certain now that by cutting at its eyes I was harming it most, and by making a strike anywhere else I ran the risk of striking only shadow. I struck once more and it seemed to falter, so I approached closer and I put my father’s blade deep into the shadows of the Slithering Horror. But I was too confident, and in its frenzy, the being snapped the blade, the Giant-slayer, ghoul-cutter, in several pieces. I grew scared yet, and removed my father’s dagger from its sheath, desperate, but willing. I had to move in closer to the vague countenance of my otherworldly foe to reach it with my paltry dagger, thinking for a moment that this creature must be the result of Quenzar’s dealings with evil beings from other planes of existence. I stabbed at it heavily, though the difference in weight between my creaking large shield and my miniscule dagger was quite difficult to balance. The Horror was lessening in strength, but gaining in frenzy. It smacked me dearly against the low ceiling and then the wall. I wished crazily for a red restoration potion, or even a simple pink potion of minor healing, but had none, and knew death was a sure possibility. The monster sent its form closer to where it had thrown me, and I could only manage to set my shield ahead of me, allowing it to take the most of the punishment. It was close to me, only on the other side of the shield. Using one moment of perhaps stupid confidence upon my breast, brought on by my magic plate armour, I removed the shield barrier and made several last slashes and cuts with my father’s dagger at the red eyes of the Slithering Horror. Its grasps did damage me, but, as I had thought, the mystical armour was quite effective in staving off a grievous wound. My plan had worked, that was the last the beast could take, and the body of the Slithering horror dissolved away after its death! In surprise, I found the being had left four gold pieces upon the ground.
Only after I had retrieved the gold did I realize what awful shape I was in. Closer to death’s door than ever I had been in my life. The Horror had made marks on me I hadn’t discovered until the quiet of its death allowed me to realize my own state.
I crawled thence, accidentally moving east in my delirium, to room C1R5. Were it not for this mistake, I surely would have found a pitiful demise in the depths of Quenzar’s abyss. C1R5 was replete with stone pillars, though most barren. This part of the caverns were defined by such sterility, housing fiend nor trap nor treasure. I crawled through to C2R5, watching the inlaid pattern on the floor close up, as my wounds chafed beneath my magic plate armour, my dagger’s hilt finding purchase in my still-clenched fist, my splintering large shield a burden upon my weight. I had nothing else but the gold I had gathered before realizing my injuries and from the beasts I had felled before even then. I remind you, the plate armour was magically enhanced to be somehow lighter, though this is not to suggest the suit was not utterly burdensome to my heaving shoulders, especially in the state which the Slithering Horror had left me as it dissolved away hideously. I trembled that another fiend would discover me, putting a damper on my life with the flick of a wrist. I crawled on, finding still nothing in C3R5 but an ease with which to crawl as I slid along the polished marble floors.
I crawled through C4R5, a corridor with twists and winds. There I found a near unnoticeable closet, the likes of which all man has seen a million times. I felt myself weakening ever the more, but I was drawn to the closet. There was something... in it. I wrenched my hand to the knob to pull the already ajar door further askew. Toppling upon me was a backpack, normal in all respects except a strange blue light thereon. I applied the pack to my back with all the pain of my injuries throbbing through my rattled body, and as I wore it, I suddenly felt the magic of the pack: what I could hold, the capacity of what I was physically capable of carrying, magically increased. I could not understand how the pack made it so. <>I feared I would die if I fell asleep, and so crawled on to certain death or possible salvation. I thought I had been beset in my fatigue in C5R5 by hideous creatures, but I had simply mistaken the grotesque murals on the walls for their living counterparts. Here I found a singular oak desk, which I searched, propping myself up onto the chair. I looked through the drawers, and discovered a shining copper ring. As I put it on, I realized it had fitted itself most of the way, refusing to be removed like the gold ring which still burned upon my finger. I did not feel weak upon putting it on, but found it more difficult to move still, having hastily put on my finger a ring of clumsiness. Sighing, I moved onto the next room.
C6R5 was a room with a dismal garbage pit. In desperation for some sort of potion I could quaff perhaps to enjoy the return of my health, I approached. Here however a rat removed itself from some of the bits of food which had been discarded and began for me. It was a giant rat, but I slashed at it still with my dagger. However, my newly found clumsiness missed the rat and the dagger, too shattered upon the edge of the garbage pit which I peered over. The rat missed me with its bite, but came again. I had no weapon but my hands. I smacked at the rat, crushing its ribs in a blow I surprised myself with. The rat expired, and I waded with one hand through the pit.
My strange premonition had been correct, and I discovered to my weary delight a smudged bottle of beautiful blood scarlet liquid. A restoration potion, at last! I was weaponless, but with the potion I would at least be a force to reckon with, and not simply a slab of moving meat searching for a point to run it through.
I quaffed the potion in only two gulps. But the potion burned, and I felt worse. My health must have dropped to the very brink of death, and to my horror I realized I’d drunk a poison potion!
My vision began to fade in and out, and at this point I do recall deciding that I would continue on in the search to be killed by some horror as swiftly as possible. I didn’t think of my mother, or my father, or Quenzar himself. I merely thought of my surroundings, the garbage pit, the dead rat, the cursed rings on my fingers, and the poison potion which I had allowed to rot my guts.
The next room, C7R5, was the room in which I had found my life again. Crawling through, hoping I’d see something desirous of my death, I found myself in a room with a misty haze in it. A blazing fireplace was there, giving me what I thought was a last moment of comfort and happiness, reminding me of the world above where I lived happily with my family. I watched something in a sky-blue robe descend to the fireplace, and stir a cauldron within. Crawling on, my armour scraping against the ground, the creature turned around. I didn’t know if it was the fire then or some divine light, but the being shone like a deity as it approached. I waited there, wondering what the thing would do, its staff in its right hand, a beard on its face.
“What has happened, mighty traveler?” the being asked calmly, crouching down to hear me speak. By the gentle whirling of its blue robes I knew it was not material like me. It did not seem to desire my death. Whether I found joy or despair in this truth at that time I cannot now recall.
“I was beset,” I whispered, “By the Slithering Horror. It devoured my father’s short sword. I wandered on from there, and drank what I thought would be the potion of my salvation, of red restoration, but I instead found it to be a horrible potion of poison.”
“I am the good healing spirit,” it said during our commune. “I have been magically imprisoned here, as a slave to heal the hideous beasts which are injured by battle. Are you here to defeat Quenzar, or to pledge allegiance to him?”
“Kill…” I muttered.
“This I can see, for you were at battle with the Slithering Horror. All who come here are left alone by the Horror unless it is directed by Quenzar to kill them. Quenzar promised, though I cannot say he is not lying, that I could buy my freedom back to my home dimension if I were to gain enough gold pieces. I will heal you for an equal amount of gold.”
I immediately resented the Good Healing Spirits attempts to part me from my treasure, but at once I knew it was simply trying to return to its family in another dimension, and it was as desperate as I was. “I will do this thing.” I gave the Spirit all my seven gold pieces, and in return it healed me an equal part, casting its strange golden staff about my head. The pain and weary I had felt burned away as though through the chimney behind the fireplace. I was not fully healed, but well enough to walk, and to hold up my heavy armour, and to carry my shield.
“Thank you, Good Spirit,” I said, standing. We sat by the fireplace, warming ourselves. The spirit had been cooking pea soup, and I ate of it something. Would that I could have stayed in that room for all time, but I went on, with greater zeal, to search for a weapon destined to bite into Quenzar’s magic flesh. The Healing Spirit bid me goodbye and good fortune, and I went east again, to C8R5.
Here was a room which immediately threw me back into the hideous inhospitability of the Dungeon of Doom. For again, within the room’s checkered pattern, and before a blasphemous stone altar, whose bat bas-relief stared back at me with its shining purple eyes, there waited a minor demon, its red, curving back and clopping devil’s feet instantly went after me. It was my brother’s foe, I knew. I did not have a weapon, but I had a large shield, though likely to fall apart, and a set of armour my brother could only dream of. The minor demon’s pointed tail nauseated me.
We battled, the demon lashing at me. I punched it square in the jaw, and it scratched at my shield fearsomely. I knocked it away and punched again. It jumped upon me, knocking me down, and tried to claw at my armour. The demon was stupid, and I put my hands about its neck, choking it though still weak from my vampire bite and the golden ring which shone hideously on one of the fingers I used to choke the beast. It’s awful red face, its eyes too, turned purple as I crunched closed its demonic windpipe. Finally, it stopped struggling, died there on the floor. I stood up again, looked through the altar triumphantly, returning with the holy hand grenade I was discovering those strange stone altars housed. The blasphemy of the altars, I thought, must keep at bay the holiness of Quenzar’s magical collection of these things. I wondered if the Wizard intended to make the grenades unholy for his army, and thus be unstoppable. I was happy to use the weapons now for good. Gazing downward at my dead choked enemy, my brother’s wounder, I said, “I wish I could kill you with this baby,” and held the holy hand grenade tight in my grasp.
I knew I had already traversed column 9, and so went north of C8R5 to survey the top half of column 8. In C8R4, to my delight, I discovered a weapons rack in a cavern with a light breeze blowing. Here I found a spear, much to my liking. With my delight in finding so handy a rack, however, I set off a falling rock trap, which dropped a few rocks upon my head and body, hurting me some. I was wary that my health didn’t drop too far, as I had no gold yet, and felt not desirous to force the Good Healing Spirit of C7R5 to heal me at point of spear, which the hideous denizens of Quenzar’s dungeon would do to it day in, and day outwards. I found it difficult to wield the spear in only one of the hands which strangled the minor demon, and so I dropped the burdensomely splintering large shield from my grasp, and with a wildness I had not felt, grasped the spear with both my hands, the demon-stranglers. Now they were to become demon-impalers.
I fancied myself a hunter of evil, and with this in mind I slunk into C8R3. This was a room with rubble covering the floor, as though part of the bedrock above caved in. Waiting there was one of the hideous goblin guards, who held in his hands a small shield and a morningstar. He wore around his frame a chainmail suit.
We did not exchange words. We fought at once. I nearly lost my footing over the rubbled floor, but held my ground and used the long spear as a balance. My dexterity had increased as a result of the shedding of the large shield, and so I had an advantage over the awful goblin guard. His morning star crashed to the earth once, and my spear’s single tooth did not find goblin meat to chew. His attack renewed and his morningstar clattered against my magic plate armour, damaging me something. I missed his flesh, my spear meeting only his tiny shield, which he moved to block my parries with odd relish. I had to tug at the spear as its sharpness dug deeply into his shield, but immediately thrust once more. The tip entered through the chain links of his armour right between the ribs and he groaned. Green blood poured from the wound when I removed the spear tip from his flesh. I had dealt the goblin guard a critical hit, that much was without question. I had pierced his goblin’s heart. While I gloated, the monster’s frenzy had grown and his morningstar flailed, its chain clacking high in the air, and the spiky ball dug deep into my arm which once was protected by a large shield. I had not, it appeared gotten used to the difference yet. I began to become nervous, and jabbed at the guard once more, who faltered with his wound over the rubble on the ground, tripping and clambering without intent to the floor, where I stuck him gruesome deeply with my spear, and he expired filthily.
I wondered at the spear, at least twice as powerful as my father’s blade, little though I wished to admit it. watching the dead goblin guard still twitching, I decided my weapon was great enough that I did not desire his, as I would have to give mine up, the spear needing two hands to wield fearsomely enough. I did not think it worthwhile to take up his small shield which he held so meddlesomely while yet he lived. Neither morningstar nor small shield had done him well. I shed a tear as I stood above my green-bleeding goblin-foe for my dead father, who lost his life somewhere in this labyrinth. He lost his life, and I lost his blades in Quenzar’s Caverns. I did not venture these soft thoughts long, and on I trekked northwards to room C8R2.
A cloudlike blood wisp hanging with its tendrils was the only ambassador to greet me! I instantly attempted to impale it against the wall with my spear before it could work its hideous magic upon me. I had heard tales of the hoary blood wisps with their blood-red eyelike mouths, but only from the less believable geezers at the Old Toad. Here was one, though, in the flesh, as it were. The cloudy tendrils poured out at me, and I could hardly manage to hit the hellion whatever. I felt my health itself draining from my body, the cloud tendrils sucking my strength away from me, and putting them into the gaseous body of the blood wisp! While I still retained the strength of action, I jabbed again at the wisp, who had become redder and stronger with my own health at my expense, but the creature simply zapped me with electrical damage. I knew what I had to do, and removed the recently taken holy hand grenade, and the familiar brightness of the divine damage threw the room into a sublime white blindness. When the light faded, the blood wisp had disappeared, its hideous blood-strength gone with it. Two gold pieces it had in its keeping, however, remained for me to scoop up.
I had not had enough time before the wisp had attempted its parasitization of my to look about the room, a sort of corridor with a narrow width and a low roof. A mystical ornate altar, with golden orb and red wings, was housed in the narrow corridor as well. I carefully approached, wishing not to be destroyed by a spike trap once more, and noticed darts ready to be sprung from holes in the walls, all too late, as I had been searching for spikes on the ground. Several darts flew about the room in a brief flurry, and three of them hit me. One went right through my hand, one in a notch at the elbow of my armor, and one in my shoulder. I cried out, the pain was immense, but I had not been badly wounded. I feared infection if I could not have them healed quickly. Looking through the great gold-colored altar, I discovered a second amulet, which I strung about my neck as well. I saw on it the word SHIELDING, and a protective aura surrounded me at once. I felt my protection, as unto armour or shield or iron ring, to have increased something.
I walked on with renewed vigor to C8R1, where the short-lived enterprise of the amulet of SHIELDING finished! To my utter surprise, the moment I entered the room, the amulet of SHIELDING flared brilliantly, then vanished after absorbing the deadly energies of the magic shock trap!
I was nearly scared from my wits, the brilliant flash around my neck nearly vanished, but I was as healthy as I had been before I entered. The room itself, not simply the furniture, had somehow been abominated to be trapped as I entered with a magic shock. I didn’t know at that time whether I would have died, but I remained joyous then that I would not need to find out. Quenzar’s traps, I saw, were becoming harder to ignore. I wished I had been able to keep the amulet of SHIELDING for a little long, to do battle with evil while yet its protective aura surrounded my frame. But it was not to be, and it sacrificed its own existence that I might remain.
The room the magic shock trap had been set was one of cobwebs and dust, similar to that room which housed the bookcase of the scroll of healing. It did not surprise me that no being, save patches of glowing fungi, had entered the room for some time. This room was home to an equally dusty wardrobe door, with clothing and similar items within. Most intriguingly was a mirrored helmet, however, in which I could see my battleworn face as I peered. It looked quite well enough to protect my head, and so I placed it there. It was, indeed, the helm of reflection, which befuddled and confounded the enemy of the wearer with their own reflection. I was now harder to hit.
I cautiously left the room of magic shock trap, now heading westwards once again as I had already surveyed column 0, and moved on to room C7R1, a cavern with a light breeze blowing, to C6R1, a bone-chilling room with grotesque murals on the wall, and C5R1, a room with elaborate wood paneling. Here I discovered the stairs downward. They were without a doubt the stairs to Quenzar’s sanctum itself. Eager to use my helm of reflection to befuddle the wizard, I raced to the bottom of the stairs. Unfortunately, a massive bronze door blocked the entrance to Quenzar’s sanctum. It was locked. I needed, I knew, the key to the chambers. And for this, I would have to search.
The room above Quenzar’s stairs, with the elaborate wooden paneling, housed a carved fountain, with water spouting out at an angle which fell upon my skin which was exposed in light misty beads. The water escaped from what looked like a large stone lobster’s claw, and into a pool surrounded by a fluorescent green stone. I searched through the carved fountain, discovering a scythe trap, with several wheat threshers’ tools, the owners of which certainly must have been tortured to death in the dungeon somewhere, attached in a villainous manner to several springs by the fountain. Being on my toes immediately after coming face to face with the door to Quenzar’s Sanctum itself, I was alert, and quickly sprung the scythe trap, undamaged by its villainy. The carved fountain had floating in it a blue bottle, which I thought to be water, but surprised me joyously when I discovered myself to be of slightly stronger condition after having quaffed it. Indeed, it was a blue potion of strength, which cancelled out the dread and permanent damage done me by the vampire from the hideous sarcophagus. My strength was still of weak condition somewhat, however, as the grotesque gold ring of weakness still bit to my ring finger as though intending to swallow it whole. I noted that the evil copper ring of clumsiness upon my finger as well cancelled out the dexterity I had gained by quaffing the white potion of dexterity in the room with the circular fountain. But lucky for me I did not have one extra detriment to my dexterity but the thick magic metal armour still somehow lighter than its mundane variety.
I went along, happy with my partially regained strength, to C4R1. Here I found a room with a high, domed ceiling similar to that which hung above the circular fountain so far back in my travels in Quenzar’s Caverns. Below the dome, however, was nothing more grand than a simple bookshelf, which I searched. Most of the books thereon were of blasphemous subject, and I did not wish to look upon what repulsive secrets they might have bestowed upon me, and no doubt bestowed upon the demonic Wizard, to whom I had come so close in room C5R1, where the secret entrance to his lair of devilry had stood before me, mockingly locked. There was a singular scroll, however, which I noted to be magic of a goodly sort, and so I read it out loud. As I read the strange words of a strange language, the burning burden on my fingers, which were being devoured by no greater an evil than a ring of weakness and one of clumsiness, loosen and become less painful. I had, I found, read from a remove-curse scroll, and the rings, which still took from me portions of my dexterity and strength, seemed almost eager to drop off. Setting my spear down beside the bookshelf, the evil rings of gold and copper simply slid off of my fingers and clattered to the ground, where I left them, and where I imagine they remain even to this day, in the dusty ruins of Quenzar’s caverns, in the crumbling forgotten labyrinth of the Dungeon of Doom.
At once I felt my dexterity and my strength regain. The rings, which ever as I thought of them I believed would remain upon my fingers as unto their very nails, had not stolen my attributes as the vampire’s sting had, but simply kept them hostage until such time as their curses could be undone and their forms removed.
There was naught else in the room, and so I moved west one room more, and found myself in the horrible C3R1, a room from which I nearly never returned.
The room contained many stone pillars, as unto the hypostyle, and was home to no less a thing than a pool of water which dripped from the ceiling, as it was not watertight. But a massive blob of slime, stinking like decay, had been growing there, living off of the disgusting detritus the water brought forth into the cave. The blob blubbed after me, extending a slimy pseudopod to strike at me, hitting me gruesomely. Its cytoplasm burned what skin was exposed from beneath the magically lightened plate armour which I wore around my frame and which saved my life on countless occasions at that point. The green, translucent blob of slime was slow and ponderous, but it struck hard and brutally, like an ox with anger. My helm of reflection assisted me little, as the blob was without eyes to be befuddled, but only with a hideous red nucleic nugget within which created those factors with which it could sense its surroundings, quite different from my own way of living. The blob came close, its stink without equal, and I made a jab at the hideousness. My long spear entered the blob on one end and exited the blob on the other, causing it only slight harm. It took some muscle to remove the spear from the sticky cytoplasm making up the blob totally, but managing this, I realized the head-sized nucleus of the evil cell which was actively attempting to digest me with its awful pseudopods, and thought the only way to destroy the thing once and for all would be to impale its precious red nucleus. Disgusting blue gelatinations on the blob’s surface somehow made it difficult for me to stab with my spear the nucleus of the blob, as it refracted the light as water to air. I tried to adjust for the evil refractive qualities of the blob of slime’s surface, but, sinking my spear too far into its green, soft cytoplasm, it sucked the spear so far inwards I could not removed it. I watched as the spear it broke within its own body in several parts.
I was quite desperate this time, and so I plunged my hands within the thing, feeling the burning as the blob of slime began the repugnant process of digesting my arm. I felt with my hands towards the giant nucleus, and, squeezing it like the neck of the minor demon, managed to burst the head-sized bulb within the monster. It shrunk away, sinking into a chunk of stink in the corner of the room. Burning cytoplasm still stuck to my arm, and so I dashed to the pool of water which had allowed the blob to be of such giantness, and washed the disgusting ooze from my arms.
As I washed, I discovered a bottle of white liquid as unto milk. It was identical to the white potion of dexterity I had quaffed in the room of the circular fountain, and so I quaffed this with equal, though unwise, haste. Instantly I felt less dexterous, more clumsy, and realized I had quaffed a potion of awkwardness. I had made a terrible mistake, as I could not reclaim my stolen dexterity from the potion as I could from the ring. I remained without the dexterity until I could find some variety of ring or a potion of true dexterity which could reverse the hideous stealing away the white potion of awkwardness had cursed me with. So eager to find such a potion or a ring, I went west again, to room C2R1, where my luck didn’t yet turn around.
Here, in a room of weird dimensions, I was nevertheless sure I had found another ornate altar with some great artifact within. I approached carefully, making sure right angles were really right angles, and removed the slab on the top, to find a third golden amulet. Hopeful as to what it could be, whether shielding me from some magic trap in my future, as the now vanished amulet of SHIELDING had, or giving me a vague, reassuring feeling as the amulet of LIFE continued to provide, I hastily dropped it around my neck. I felt a hideous stinging throughout my whole body for a moment. I’d worn an amulet of life drain, as I found, looking upon it before in vanished into thin air, when it had written upon it in evil magical characters, LIFE DRAIN.
I felt weak. Being as well again weaponless, I was terrified by my situation. When I entered C1R1, the eerie room of twists and winds did nothing to assuage my already uneasy state. For here was a gold-colored sarcophagus, much as unto that which housed the sleeping vampire who stole from me my strength with its dead bite. I had naught save my own hands, which, I admit, were not so faulty weapons as I had thought earlier. With them I burst the nucleus of the great blob of slime and wildly strangled the neck of my brother Wally’s foe. I was prepared to choke or burst another enemy as I pulled open the creaking door of the vile sarcophagus, but to my delight I found naught save a shield of medium size, likely stored and forgotten by on of the hideous creatures lurking in Quenzar’s caverns. I took it up, having left my larger shield long before in favor of the spear for which I needed two hands. This medium shield was larger than my father’s which I hoped, if I were not killed by something within the caverns, I could retrieve from the closer whence I found the large shield which saved me from so many a foe. I took up the shield, having no weapon however, and tightened my fist to remind myself what I could do with it. I had a shield now, and though a trapped third amulet had drained my life, I was eager to destroy what evil came my way.
I got a chance, though not quite as grandly as I had imagined, in C0R1, a cavern of many stalactites and stalagmites. Here was a giant spider, though not so giant that I could not make quick work of it with my hands. I attempted to bite me, its fangs dripping with hideous venom, but missed me and hit the stone walls of the cave. I lent it my fist, smashing it against the basalt rock, and moved on, laughing to myself.
I continued to the south again, as I recalled that going west at column 0 would through Quenzar’s sorcery send me to the easternmost column 9. So I found myself in C0R2, a room with walls and floors of fitted stone. Here I found a lifesize statue most similar in my memory to that under which I battled with the despicable goblin guard. I searched the statue, and to my delight, discovered that the statue held a mace which could indeed be used to do battle, and not simply as decoration. I held the mace, a short, heavy thing about twice as vicious as a club, and held it close. I knew I could kill with my hands, but with a mace I felt I would not be sinning by filthying my hands with death.
Trekking southwards to C0R3, a room with strange symbols of certainly unwholesome origin etched onto the walls by a weapons no doubt forged in the infernal pit itself, I found myself beset by a black hound. This was no dog, I knew at once, but a magical being summoned from another plane to do a sorcerer’s bidding. Quenzar was his name, and the black hound was his slavering thrall. The foaming hound bit at my leg, biting as unto the wild wolves of the earth. The dog took a goodly bite from me, its teeth burned like flames. I fell to the ground, as I felt its hideous scratchings upon my shield. My mace was not immediately at hand, and so as I fumbled for it, the creature breathed a hideous breath of fire upon my shield, which became at once hot to the touch. Immediately retrieving the terrible mace which had clattered to the ground as I had fallen, I let it fall upon the head of the black hound, harming it some but causing it frenzy as well. It bit at me again, and as it did, I bashed down again upon its back, and again there, as it bit upon my flesh and breath a burn upon it. I could smell my leg crisping, and I bashed the monster a fourth time upon the head, cracking it’s skull and sending it thence to the disgusting pit of its origin.
I searched about the room. Knowing my time could certainly be up, I limped to the chest in the corner of the room and looked at my leg. On it were the black bite marks left by the fiery breath of the black hound. Praying against infection I opened the chest, and discovered to my dismay that I had set off a pit trap, taking added damage to my wounded leg. Climbing forth from the pit into which I had dropped, I searched the chest. Within, I discovered the treasure which no doubt saved my life from the jaws of evil: a potion of restoration. Of course, I had no way to know what it was, and knew the unidentified red potion could easily have been the potion of poison which had earlier sent me to the brink of death. I knew that here I was in the liminal state between life and death: were I to quaff it and be restored, I would be more powerful than I could know, but were the potion one of evil poison, I would have committed suicide, thus sent with justified haste to the pit of subterranean fire. As I put the potion to my lips, I prayed I would not taste the burning syrup which was the hallmark of the dreadful poison potion. Indeed, I felt as I quaffed the potion only the nourishing sweet liquor which told me I was not to be sent on my way to hell, but to remain on my quest to rid the land of the evil scourge of Quenzar. I walked to and fro, and joyed to discover my limp, as well as the hideous dark wound bestowed upon me by the black hound, to be totally disappeared, to whatever dark place the hound’s limp carcass had dissolved after I had beat upon its head to softness. As I readied myself to enter the next room, the next pain or death, I lamented that I was unable to discover a surplus of potions which I would not need to quaff as instantly as I discovered them.
And on southward to C0R4, a room with a smooth stone floor and walls. Here as well lurked a Goblin Chief, who wore horns on a strange helmet, and a chainmail suit around his bony, hideous frame. This Goblin was he from whom all the other Goblin Guards took orders, and to whom the Wizard Quenzar himself gave orders directly. He held in his hands a vicious battle axe, at least a one and one half as powerful as my paltry mace, with stinking black hound head-meat still caked on, head-meat which did not disappear from the head of the mace as the rest of the monster dissolved to its dark place of origin. “Your money or your life!” the goblin chief growled, his shield as big as mine. “You have gone too far. But I will let you pass, with your head, that is, if you give me the gold you have acquired through the destruction of my minions.”
“The fiends that crawl through this pit are not your minions!” I cried. “They are, as you, minions of the devil Quenzar! I will not bribe you, Goblin scum,” I said. “I will kill you!”
“Then to the contest, ruffian!” The Goblin Chief grumbled. Our equally-sized shields bashed into each other as I looked into my disgusting foe’s red eyeballs. His fangs protruded from the top of his mouth like that of the revolting vampire from whose sarcophagus I had roused him. I smelt his hideous breath, and made a strike against his face to show him what I thought of it.
Repulsed for the nonce, the greedy Goblin Chief cried blood-curdlingly, and reading his battle axe to cleave in twain my brainpan. I heaved my shield to feel the bite of his axe, and splinters of wood shot from the shield to my face. As he attempted to remove the axe from my shield, I bashed again at his wounded face, but his own shield repulsed the heavy ball of my mace. I heaved again once his battle axe had been shook from my shield, bashing his face in. Desperately bleeding hideous green blood from his nose, mouth, and red, red eyeballs, the Goblin Chief flailed his battle axe in the air and it came down upon my magic plate armour. I felt the bite even through this barrier, and had it not been upon my should I certainly would have lost my arm that day. I know I had been injured, though, the sting of pain traveling to all parts of my arm, and with one final bash, I mashed the goblin guard down to the ground, where he failed to rise.
Searching his hot corpse, I discovered only two gold pieces, an unexpectedly paltry sum for so vehement a leader of a bunch of thieves. I left him the mace with which I ended his brutish life, and took from him his superior battle axe, moving on to the next room with green blood still staining my armour.
I again found myself with the necessity to move east, as I had already surveyed the rooms of column 0 by going north. With a shudder I remembered why I had not completed my circuit of the outermost ring of rooms until that moment, for in the room south of this, C0R5, I had met, and almost lost my life, and certainly lost my way, to the Slithering Horror, a memory which even now causes me nearly to lose control of my digestion.
So instead I moved eastwards, to C1R4, a room of little save for a singular checkered pattern it was colored in. Here I also found an item of great interest, a gold key. I found a picked up the Gold Key to Quenzar’s Sanctum, a heavy, old, and ornate key for a lock which I had only seen in such nightmares as I would sooner forget. I stashed it away as a strange feeling erupted within me. Until I truly found the key to Quenzar’s sanctum I had not realized the reality of my fight. Not even as I approached the hideous large bronze door to the Sanctum itself did I feel such. But now, with the complete capability to enter and have real audience with Quenzar himself, I knew the seriousness and the far-reaching consequences of what I had undertaken. Quenzar was real, and that one of our deaths would come soon was as sure as night follows day.
I moved from the room eastward to C2R4, ready to let the Goblin Chief’s axe slake its thirst for hot blood, the only potable fit for the edge to drink, I was immediately took upon by a singular shock, as unto a lightning bolt digging directly into my body. I was hurt something, slightly frazzled the more, and checked myself that I had not undergone damage from which I would be unable to recover. The magic plate armour’s sorcery was certainly great, somehow lightening the heavy metal’s load upon my shoulders, yet its charms only traveled thus in that direction, relieving me none of its ability and craving to suck in electricity, or the “shock.” Would that I had received two amulets of magic SHIELDING, that I could have absorbed the pain and terror which enveloped me the moment I had entered the satanic room designated C2R4. I underwent some damage, but I was not dead. Close, however. And still, I was, in this room, to increase my power, for in this trapped cavern, lit by the glimmering minerals housed within the natural walls, I discovered a singular and most out-of-place oaken desk, whose drawers I searched greedily until I found a golden ring. Knowing that putting the ring round my finger meant risking strength or weakness, I did so, and became strong. If only, I thought then, I could somehow judge the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of a ring, or a potion, before wearing or quaffing thusly. Some magical item with which I could discover the identity of a thing without its precedent use. But this thing, at that time, was simply a pipe dream, and I pleased myself with the glad fact that I had lucked out with the gold ring, despite having been nearly killed, once more, by the evil of the magic shock trap unfiltered by an amulet of SHIELDING.
I moved on, nearly wincing as I crossed through the frightening hallway between this last room and C3R4. Happily I found a “medusa” which my battle axe quivered as it thought of the blood of the monster. Her hideous visage and awful snakes quivered along side my weapon, and we engaged.
I speak of the encounter as happy since the pagan devil monster failed to wound me in the slightest fashion before I splattered her filth upon the inlaid pattern on the floor. Indeed, she attempted at me, attempting to petrify me, perhaps thusly to be made a lifesize statue as I had seen in rooms previous. But the axe of the Goblin Chief was a powerful weapon, which I quickly discovered when with one stroke I removed the awful Grecian nightmare from her snaking head. For a moment I wondered whether the head of the nauseating carcass would dangle from my shield with ghoulish delight. I failed to continue on this thought, being instead entranced by the three gold pieces she had left for me.
While the beast of C3R4 did not harm me at all, I can only guess as to what would have happened had she done so. I would certainly have been killed, my throbbing wounds from the evil shock trap having not been healed. And so I returned to the Good Healing Spirit, who was close at hand, I quickly realized, and who had saved my life after my poisoning and my pyhrric defeat over the shudder-provoking Slithering Horror! And so I moved southwards one room and eastwards four to that familiar room with the misty haze and warm fire, C7R5.
I spoke to the Good Healing Spirit, asking it to heal me as much as it decided that my gold was worth. It healed me greatly, a warm aura surrounding me for a moment as my gold seemed to disappear, and I felt nearly restored, and yet more powerful than ever I had since I began in that bare room C0R0. I told the Good Healing Spirit of my travels, but it seemed to get bored quickly, and so I bid it goodbye, backtracking to room C4R4, which had been the next on my journey.
Here in a corridor of narrow width and low roof, again as before, I was beset by the fourth magic shock trap, again piercing me something in the heart of my soul. I held aloft the axe of the goblin chief and I was zapped badly, but still the magic of the good healing spirit refreshed still my soul, and I was not grievously injured. Here, the terrible rattle of hideous snake took upon my legs, and wrapped me in its length! I wrenched at it with my free hand hacking at its rattlings with my axe. It did not take a great flurry to remove its life from our world, and I passed on, no treasure to be found there but the dead carcass of a snake.
In C5R4, a room of many nooks and crannies, and a trapdoor, I found the stinking hulk of a troll! Wherein he tried to wrap me in his furred, warty arms, and bash me against his club, I whacked at his knobby bulk and watch his gore and his fur mingle. He let out a drooling bellow at the pain, and I went again for his hulk. I was powerful, and he hit me once upon my helmeted head, but the sorcery of the mirrored helm dispelled his blow and reflected it upon his own frame, thus ending his sorry life.
Again I missed my magic Amulet of SHIELDING in C6 and C7R4, both of which, appearing confoundingly identical, were empty but for their grotesque murals which were all too common, and their terrible shock traps.
For when I went north, approaching now C7R3, and what a holy room I approached in, that only I wished I would have enjoyed the item I found therein long earlier. For standing alone within a cavern with a light breeze blowing, was a golden and red altar, ornate and magnificent. I said my prayer and opened the tabernacle, wherein I found a singular glass lens. Whereon I put the lens upon my eye, knowing of a sudden it to be the lens of identity of legend. I could see now, what spells, terrible or wonderful, the magic items in this hideous dungeon I now had to hack my way out of were before I used them, before they could cause me injury.
I was glad to have gotten the lens at that time, for in C7R2, I discovered under the stalactites and stalagmites a carved fountain with a blue bottle, immediately recognizable through the lens of identity as a potion of dexterity. At once I quaffed it, confident, and afterwards somehow more lithe than before, and went on, into the seventh magic shock trap of C6R2.
With my new dexterity I now was able to parry out of the way of the trap, quite pleased with myself, until I saw under the many strange symbols on the wall a malevolent imp. Hideous, all shades of red, with a fleshy, but pointed tail, and quivering like a she-spider about to spray her eggs in the corner of the ceiling, the imp cackled and swept down, clicking with its terrible talons at my helm of reflection.
My great axe of the goblin chief was far too great a weapon to smash at so limber a foe. And I thought I was lithe. But my axe struck floor, ground and ceiling. I knew only a blow or two would end the pitiful devil's hideous life, but nary could I manage to scratch it with my heavy blade. I knew that if I were to drop the blade by Quenzar's sorcery it would be lost forever, perhaps returning to the next goblin chief to be crowned to attempt at my life, I did so, seeing in the corner of the room under strange symbols I knew meant DEATH, a weapons rack. With my bare hands, I grabbed the imp's leg as it flew about my head, and dashed it upon the ground with heavy hatred for its Satanism. I picked up its limp body, twitching from the terrible mash I gave it, and it opened its mouth, trying to bite me, though certain death was soon to follow so hideous a smash I unleashed against it. And lo, I dashed it upon the gravelly ground over and over again, and it squealed like a terrible devil, and expired, whence I tossed it to the corner.
I studied the weapons rack of C6R2, finding there a mighty halberd forged, no doubt, below. I trekked on, ready for the worst, which indeed, had yet to come.
For I headed west, to C5R2, where I met the likes of a giant! In this, nothing more than a hallway with an inlaid pattern on the floor, the giant carried a large shield and a short sword, just long enough to reach my gut. I swept at him with my halberd, devilish in its ornate design, but met only with a torch, knocking it over to head the inlaid, but totally non-flammable, pattern on the floor. I tried to trounce the giant devil, only to miss again. He hit me upon my head, hitting the helm of reflection, managing to suffer no pain against him. He struck at me again, mashing my arm so deeply that I could see lumps of fat rise to the surface of the wound, and my living bone. I shrieked, nearly dropped my halberd, and swung at him, catching him at an unpleasant angle upon his eye. He bellowed most unwholesomely and fell to the floor, clutching his eye pathetically. I hated the giant for what he had done, and I hated Quenzar for what he had done, and my hatred for all things brought my halberd down upon the giant, poking through him as though he were only one morsel on a shish-kebab.
I searched through the room, noting a chest of drawers standing alone in the hallway. I opened each drawer, finding nothing in the first, nothing in the second. I was beginning to become dizzy, and lose hope of ever finding my way around in so bizarre a maze as Quenzar's. But I found a greater potion of mighty restoration in the very last drawer, closest to that inlaid pattern on the floor. I knew, because of my lens of identity that it was not a poisonous potion set out to destroy my guts. I could somehow see its restorative properties even before I had quaffed the magic bottle of red, crimson, scarlet liquid.
Reinvigorated with the strength of the potion, I moved west, to the terrible room I dubbed C4R2. Here, revolting rubble covered the floor, and I stepped through it at great risk. I clutched by halberd, slick with the gore of the motionless giant who moldered in the room just east of me. Then onto C3R3, a corridor of twists and winds, where a weapons rack stood. As I approached the rack, but a pit trap swallowed me, stealing many points from my cache of health. I moved to my feet, weaker, but with greater hate for Quenzar than ever before, and took up a magic sword from the trap. It glew in my hand, and I knew that it would serve me well.
I refused to go on searching the last stinking corner of Quenzar's caverns, the pit trap was the final straw. For I had the nightmarish key to Quenzar's lair. With my new magic blade I whizzed past the rooms to C5R1, where the stairs down to the grotesque grotto of evil where squatted the machinations of he who I cannot name.
I plugged the nightmarish key into the terrible bronze door that hid Quenzar from me, imagining, and chuckling, that the key were my blade, and the bronze door were Quenzar's flesh. I opened the door to Quenzar’s sanctum and carefully entered.
After I stepped through the doorway, the massive bronze door slammed shut behind me and locked. Taunting laughter came out of nowhere. I realized there was no turning back.
I found myself in an ornate antechamber. A mirror of darkness was there. What horror, to see the disgusting pit where Quenzar performed his scrying. Yuck.
But before I could vomit, I witnessed Quenzar's hideous guard! An automaton dressed in the knight's armor, clanking and clanking like a maddening pile of pots! Wearing a suit of magic plate armour and threatening me with a magic glaive, I nearly pissed my pants. How could I kill something, I thought, that did everything but live?
Before I could answer the question, I raised my blade to beat back the force of the terrible automaton's weapon. I managed to swipe at the automaton, wherein sparks shot from its bloodless wound. My anger grew: this was not the Quenzar whose head I besought to remove. The unholy skull on the automaton's shield angered me. Quenzar and his closest slaves were ruled by death. I thought of my brother as I brought the weapons down upon the head of the evil robot. I dented its mask, and it began to steam. I'm defeating Quenzar's final guard. He will be terrified of my visage. My thoughts gave me strength, and I raised my weapon again, this time short-circuiting the automaton's soul. It fell to the ground. I was unsatisfied as oil oozed from its wounds. My blade was thirsty for gore, and wished to quench upon Quenzar's meat.
I had slain Quenzar’s personal guardian. A second door then mysteriously opened, beckoning me to enter another room. I realized I had no other option. I entered Quenzar’s Sanctum, a lavishly furnished magical laboratory and living area. The wealth of kings was in there. I saw the gold robed form of Quenzar standing in the middle of the room. An inlaid pentagram was there on the floor.
Quenzar snarled "You have come far enough. Prepare to die, fool!" Gesturing with his hands, he cast his one ready spell. Quenzar enveloped me in a consuming firestorm. The pain I could not bear. "Uh," I grunted. What awful pain it was. But I had survived Quenzar’s spell to his surprise. Quenzar the drew a glowing sword to duel me. It was the Dark Sword of demonologists' nightmares. And I was he who had to crash my blade against it. Quenzar wore magic chain mail, as if the sword weren't bad enough.
My blade bit into the Dark Sword. "You are a fool to battle me," Quenzar said. "How did you get in?" I answered not, but slew at him. For an old, horrible man, he had the strength of hate.
Suddenly I felt a pain that to describe would be insufficient. In my guts Quenzar had launched the Dark Sword. I was dead, this was the end. I wept for my brother, for my world, for Quenzar had won. My final thoughts were of home.
But as suddenly as I had been impaled by the Dark Sword that Satan had given Quenzar as a present, I awoke, resurrected by the amulet of LIFE, which glew around my neck before it disappeared. I knew this was my last chance. I slew at Quenzar with the strength consumed after one delights in the miraculous, and broke open the bad Wizard's big dumb head. The devil's star on the floor was awash with the brains of Quenzar.
I have slain the evil wizard Quenzar. The bards assure me that they will sing of my exploits through the ages. There was a grand celebration of my great victory. Quoth the king: "Let us raise our goblets and toast our hero!"