Page 65 of The Dungeon Book

“A thief.” Nithscalpa lifted his head and belched a bright tongue of flame.

For a moment, the whole of the lair was revealed, the dark banished, treasure piles like endless desert dunes, the ransoms of kings lost in the crannies of the cave floor. Offa boggled at the sight of the unimaginable fortune, but Bait noticed something else entirely. In a recess at the back of the cave, bloody-gold light illuminated a pile of hide and horn slumped against the cavern wall. Kobold-forged manacles bound him, dozens of thin chains snaking through hair like bright streams over the forested slopes of some shambling mountain. His head was bowed, but she recognised his curved horns.

He was so still she thought he must be dead. In that instant, Bait drew her knife and made to stab the dragon as her mother did, but the Squinter’s spell caught her again.

“Eye see you,” whispered Balor, buzzing gleefully around her head like a swollen bluebottle. “Eye see you.”

She struggled against the paralytic gaze. It held her like despair; her limbs were lead, all action hopeless. “I came back,” she said, or tried to say. The darkness swallowed her call, and the minotaur did not respond. He gave no sign that he had heard Bait, or that he understood her words. There was nothing human left in that massive frame.

“You came back indeed,” hissed Nithscalpa, and suddenly his fiery eye was right in front of Bait, pinning her with burning hate, “to a place that is not for you, never for you. You defied me! You questioned my right as Master. For that I will devour you before the rest of them at the Levelling. I will anoint myself with your blood, and throw the scraps of you to my minions.” Hot spittle hissed on the stone. “But first! First, let us test the mettle of your protector.” Nithscalpa narrowed his eye, and the shadows closed in around Offa. “You came seeking treasure, little worm, and you have seen it. You stand surrounded by my hoard. Tell me, is it not glorious? Do you covet it?”

Offa nodded, almost against his own will. He licked his lips. “I’ve never dreamed the like.”

“You have come all this way down into the Dungeon. You should not leave empty-handed.”

“Get in and get out,” whispered Offa.

“I am a generous master. As recompense for bringing this meat to me, you may take a double handful of treasure, and leave with my blessing.”

“Truly?”

“You have my word,” smirked Nithscalpa. The thin beam of light from his remaining eye tracked across the hoard like foxfire, glimmering here and there, picking out treasures. “A crown? A sceptre? Rubies and emeralds? Relics of the Elder Empire? Take whatever you like and go back the surface, and tell your kind of the magnificence of Nithscalpa, Master of the Dungeon.”

Offa was – well, I must point out that I never knew the boy in life, but based on all I knew of him, I would not have hesitated to call him a bully. His first thought was always of himself, and his first inclination was towards violence. It’s always easier for such men to steal instead of making, to hurt others instead of enduring any discomfort on their own part. And when a bully meets a greater bully – and Nithscalpa was most certainly that – what usually happens is that the lesser crumbles. They take, once again, the easier path and become craven sycophants, and that was certainly Offa’s instinct in the moment.

But in the dark of the Dungeon, far from home, Offa realised three things.

The first was that there was no treasure in the dragon’s hoard he valued more than the smell of fresh-baked bread in the ovens in the morning, when the keep was waking up around him, and he wished he could be home again.

The second was an understanding of his relationship to the dragon. He’d thought of the dragon as a savage beast to be put down, a wolf to be culled. Having lived all his life in human lands, he’d thought of humanity as the apex of the natural order, that human instincts and human ways were paramount. A human bully might have let him go. But he had crossed the Dungeon threshold. The rules were different down here.

The third was that there was no way out. He’d take his double handful of treasure, and turn, and the dragon would kill him. The darkness that surrounded him would never lift; never again would he see daylight.

All that was left was to choose what he did in those last moments.

He swung his sword.

The blade sliced through one of Balor’s ghastly eyeballs. The Squinter squinted no longer. Instead, every one of his three dozen eyes opened wide with sudden shock and terror. He was like a firework crossed with a rapidly deflating balloon. Three dozen eyes blasted out magical rays in every direction as he careered wildly through the air.

The dragon, taking up as he did half the cavern, took the brunt of this arcane incontinence. Balor had eyes of flame and frost, eyes that could disintegrate stone with a glance, evil eyes crawling with curses, and they all struck Nithscalpa square in the face.

He did not enjoy it.

He twisted in pain, tripping over his own wings.

Poor Offa’s last act was to step in front of Bait. Or one of his last acts, at any rate – I suppose technically his last act as a living man was to get struck by Nithscalpa’s lashing tail, and his first act as a dead one was to hit the far wall and burst like a ripe grape. But he died better than some I’ve known, including myself.

Bait ran.

The dragon thundered after her, more than half-blind with one eye long gone and the other dazzled by Balor’s agonies. He chased her by smell, by the taste of her in the air, frustratingly elusive, always just out of reach of his teeth. He crashed onwards, a scramble of limbs, long neck whipping forward, stretching to its limit. Nearly! Nearly! Snap! Snap!

Very close now, the smell of human suddenly thick in the air!

Humans. The smell of burning torches and sweat and fear and metal.

It’s been a long time since I had a working nose, but from what I recall, spears don’t have a smell.

“Hold!” ordered Sir Rudyard.