Thisby Thestoop and the Wretched Scrattle Read online

  In the weeks since her appointment, Marl had been desperate to find ways in which to revitalize the flagging dungeon. When she’d first been appointed Overseer, the dungeon had seemed an impossible mess: monsters governing themselves, a Master who’d handed over power to his subordinates, and a severe drought of adventurers had all combined to bring the dungeon close to the brink of obsolescence. But in only a few short weeks, Marl had managed to reestablish a sense of order that worked from the top down—with her at the top, naturally. She’d even begun a promotional campaign aimed at attracting young people from all over the kingdom to the dungeon by bringing the newest, most exciting, most dangerous monsters to the Black Mountain. After all, who really wanted to fight a troll for the zillionth time? But this latest idea, the idea that had the Overseer pacing back and forth in her office, laughing to herself and writing feverishly on a scrap of paper, was going to make all her other ideas look uninspired by comparison.

  The door to the Overseer’s office swung open without so much as a single knock to reveal a rather scruffy-looking Master. He was wearing purple silk pajamas that barely contained his belly, which had grown rather prodigiously in the last year, and his beard was bound with several small rubber bands. An obedient ghoul, stationed in the hallway, closed the chamber door behind him.

  “Marl,” he said.

  “Please, please, sit down,” said Marl.

  “Do you know what time it is?” asked the Master. “Sending for me in the middle of the night! You ruined an incredible dream, I’ll have you know.”

  “Can I get you some tea?” asked Marl.

  She was already pouring herself a cup of some sort of steaming, violently red liquid. It looked a bit thick for tea.

  “Uh, no, that’s okay,” mumbled the Master. “What kind of tea is that anyway?”

  “You know, I’m not sure. I’ve only started drinking it since I’ve been here, but it’s fantastic. My assistants bring it to me. Twice a day. Morning and night. You sure I can’t get you some?” Her voice was trembling with anticipation.

  “Is it . . . caffeinated?”

  Marl paused, but not to consider his question. She set down her tea and gathered herself. It took all her focus to quell the storm of excitement raging within her chest, desperate to get out. She knew now was not the time to be bouncing around like an excitable child. This was serious business. Her mind skittered back to his question. Perhaps the tea was caffeinated.

  Marl turned her back to the Master and composed herself. She folded her hands behind her back and took two deep breaths. Then she turned slowly, with purpose.

  “Have you heard of the Wretched Scrattle?” she asked dryly.

  The candles that lit the darkened office cast a dancing glow across Marl’s face, adding an eerie punctuation to the question. Despite being annoyed, the Master had to admit he liked the effect. This whole presentation of whatever it was the Overseer was getting at was quite nice. Pulling him from sleep in the middle of the night, asking cryptic questions by candlelight. It was all very dramatic. He made a mental note to hold more of his own meetings in the middle of the night by candlelight.

  The Master tugged thoughtfully on his rubber-banded beard and scanned his memory. He’d never heard of any “Wretched Scrattle,” and history had always been his strong suit.

  “It sounds familiar, but I’m afraid I can’t remember it exactly,” he lied.

  Marl smiled. It was obvious that she was hoping to have a chance to explain it.

  “In the five-hundred-and-fifty-second year of the dungeon, its Master at the time, Celes the Clever, faced the worst downturn of adventurer activity in the history of the Black Mountain. The Black Mountain was on the verge of bankruptcy. The kingdom of Nth was still young then and had, for the first time, fully recovered from the hardships of the war from which it had been born. The people of Nth were fat and rich and lazy from the spoils of their victory over the fledgling kingdom of Umberfall. There was no drive for adventure, no thirst for fame, no desperation for money. It was a time of peace and prosperity and also one in which the Black Mountain nearly ceased to exist.”

  Marl took a sip of the tea and smiled at the Master through ruby-red lips.

  “The thing that people like you and I understand but that the people of Nth will never get is that the Black Mountain is a business, first and foremost. Adventurers come here seeking their fortunes, imagining the treasures they’ll acquire, but what else do they come with? They come with their pockets heavy, jingling with gold. They come with their backpacks laden with goods. They come with their brand-new armor and swords strapped across their backs. But they never leave, do they? And with the money we collect from their remains, we arrange deals, we buy provisions, we trade with the King of Nth himself. Everybody wins.”

  The Master gave a conspiratorial nod, the kind that wizards often made to each other, much to the annoyance of those around them. Marl was a wizard of a very different breed than the Master. She was an Arcanist, while the Master was more of a . . . something else. Still, they both spoke the language of secret nods and winks that all wizards shared.

  “During the downturn, Celes wasn’t discouraged, however,” Marl continued. “Instead she put her formidable intellect to good use and came up with an idea that not only saved the dungeon but went on to ignite what was perhaps the most successful period in its history. She created the Wretched Scrattle.”

  Marl moved over to the window and gazed out thoughtfully before turning back to the Master. She took a long pause to let her words hang in the air. The Master sighed. Marl’s flair for theatrics was growing tired now, as was he.

  “Strange that something so successful would be so easily forgotten,” sneered the Master.

  Marl brushed her green hair away from her eyes.

  “Oh, but it was no accident! You see, Celes the Clever was replaced by Gambol the Gutless. Gambol was by all accounts a relentlessly arrogant man. It’s likely that he not only buried Celes but her legacy as well, wishing to take credit for saving the dungeon himself. During his reign, all mentions of the Wretched Scrattle were removed from the history books.”

  “Yet somehow, you know all about it.”

  “Well, I did my research,” Marl lied.

  It didn’t seem prudent to mention that the mysterious voices Marl had been hearing had pointed her to a long-hidden volume containing the secret history of the Wretched Scrattle. The relationship between Marl and the Master was a carefully constructed house of cards, and revealing her access to ethereal voices could be enough to topple the whole thing. The Master had been eager to have Marl here at first, and the comeuppance of Grunda had been a treat for him, but over the past few weeks the Master had begun to wonder if he’d possibly gone from bad to worse.

  “Well, don’t keep me in suspense! It’s far too late for that. Out with it! What is the Wretched Scrattle?”

  Marl grinned, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth there, which were rarer around Nth than the opals they resembled.

  “There was a proclamation made throughout all of Nth that a tournament would be held in the Black Mountain. That it was open to the public. So adventurers from all across the country could come and test their luck against the dungeon and see if they could escape with however much treasure they could carry.”

  Marl paused, and the Master took the bait.

  “That’s it? That’s your brilliant idea? Sending out invitations?”

  “There’s more,” Marl cooed. “Celes the Clever’s real idea.”

  The Master shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Marl was practically salivating.

  “Every entrant in the tournament was charged to compete. Celes charged three gold a head, but I’m asking twenty-five. We win twice. Once when they enter and again when they die. By the end of it all, we’ll be wealthier and more powerful than the King himself.”

  “Twenty-five gold is more than most Nthians make in a year! No one will come!” the Master scoffed.

  “They wi
ll once they discover . . . the grand prize.”

  Marl walked over to the bookshelves that lined the walls of her office and ran her thin, pale fingers over a row of leather-bound volumes. The Master clenched his teeth to prevent himself from asking the inevitable question but only managed to hold out for a few seconds before blurting it out almost involuntarily.

  “And what is the grand prize?”

  Marl turned slowly away from the shelves and eyed the small, frail man in the chair.

  “The first one to make it to the top of Castle Grimstone would become the new Master of the Black Mountain.”

  Chapter 7

  Thisby stood on the edge of the Darkwell for only the second time since last year’s battle. The other visit had been to inspect the work that Grunda and the other goblins had done on repairing the gate, and once Thisby had given it her unofficial stamp of approval, she was off, as quick as humanly possible.

  It wasn’t that she was afraid of the Deep Down. Not anymore. Not like she used to be, at least. She knew the Eyes in the Dark was still down there, waiting for its opportunity to strike again—which was terrifying in its own way—but once she’d been to the other side of the gate, something within her had changed. It was no longer fear that she felt when she thought of the Deep Down beneath the mountain and the Deep Dwellers who lived there, it was something else entirely. Something even more unpleasant.

  When the dust had settled after the battle over the Darkwell and the Deep Dwellers were driven back below again, Thisby couldn’t help but think that none of it really seemed fair. The Deep Dwellers were pawns. They’d been used and tossed aside by the Eyes in the Dark, by Roquat, by Ingo. Their only sin was their anger over being stuck down in that horrible place for all those years. Spending millennia in the darkness with a force of pure evil warping them, coercing them, infecting their minds with its awful thoughts . . . Who could blame them for wanting to escape? And yet, Thisby herself had been party to driving them back below the mountain. She’d sent them back to the eternal darkness, back below the gate at the bottom of the world. Up until that point, Thisby had seen the Darkwell as a fence to keep the bad creatures out, but since that day, she’d seen it more as it really was . . . a prison to hold them in.

  As she stood at the edge of here and there, Thisby was happy to have Mingus with her, especially since he’d relaxed his previous stance on hiding in her backpack during their trips to the Darkwell. It seemed that after all they’d been through, he’d gotten braver as well, and as a result, his presence was all the more comforting. His soft sea-foam-green light and the gentle sway of his jar steadied her nerves.

  Thisby had instructed Jono to take the afternoon to continue training the rest of her team. As her apprentice, Jono was far exceeding Thisby’s expectations. For someone who had no memory of his prior life, Jono’s short-term memory could be quite impressive. It was certainly better than Thisby’s had ever been. Her inability to recall recent goings-on was more or less why she’d started using notebooks to begin with. Jono seemingly had no use for them. He could recall with great detail whatever Thisby taught him, and what she didn’t, he acquired for himself by staying up all night and reading through her old notebooks. She supposed it helped that he didn’t need to sleep. Since he’d been accelerating so quickly through Thisby’s lessons, she’d appointed him to the task of training the ghouls who’d been placed in her care, and in that, it seemed that Jono had found his true calling. He loved to teach, and Thisby was glad because she had nowhere near his patience for it.

  Thisby crept closer to the edge of the Darkwell, and some loose gravel slid beneath her feet, causing her to nearly lose her balance. She regained it only to realize how fast her heart had started beating.

  “Maybe he’s not home,” she said.

  She hadn’t seen Catface since last year, and it was yet another ball of guilt that sat heavily in Thisby’s stomach. Grunda had taken over bringing Catface his reports from the castle after she’d sensed Thisby’s deep reluctance to return to the gate of the Darkwell. But now, with Grunda gone, there was nobody else to do the job. Thisby considered sending Blinky, the one-eyed ghoul who was the most competent of her current underlings (aside from Jono), but the truth was that Thisby had grown quite fond of her and was afraid that Blinky wouldn’t survive the trip.

  “We should just go,” said Thisby.

  “Thisbyyyyy . . . ,” said Mingus, letting the y sound drag on in a sort of gentle reprimand.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Thisby walked slowly down the remainder of the incline toward the Darkwell, taking care not to slip. Once she reached the bottom, she went the long way around the gate instead of walking over it. She knew Grunda had done a thorough job with her repairs, but once she’d seen the Darkwell flung wide open with Deep Dwellers crawling out of it, it was hard to imagine willingly setting foot on it again unless it was absolutely necessary.

  Something stirred in the darkness, and Thisby froze in place, holding her breath.

  Over the past week, she’d been tracking the mysterious new monster who’d been responsible for the attack on the rock golem. She’d dedicated a notebook to the creature, but so far, aside from the trail of carnage left in its wake, there wasn’t much to go on. And every day more and more monsters turned up dead—from tiny imps, to banshees, to a full-grown wyvern. Most frustratingly of all, there was no discernible pattern to the attacks. This creature, whatever it was, was moving through the dungeon at an alarming rate, killing monsters seemingly at random.

  And now, despite knowing full well that it was just her mind playing tricks on her, it was easy to imagine that it was here with her in the dark.

  “Little Mouse,” a familiar voice purred. “It’s been a while.”

  Catface, the Sentinel of the Darkwell, emerged from the pool of inky black shadows that lay beyond Mingus’s glow, the darkness practically dripping from his fur as he stalked toward her. Thisby exhaled, feeling something that she’d never felt before upon seeing the gigantic cat . . . relief. He hadn’t changed much over the past year, with the exception of perhaps a few more gray spots around his muzzle.

  “Sentinel,” she said with a verbal curtsy.

  “Ugh! How formal! Please, it doesn’t suit you!”

  Thisby laughed, “Right. Catface then.”

  “Catface is much better, I think.” He grinned.

  Unlike her, Catface had no problem strolling out onto the edge of the Darkwell as if he owned the place, which in a sense, he did. At least as much as anyone could claim to.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, sitting down.

  Thisby considered making small talk, figuring she owed the cat at least that much courtesy, but nothing came to mind. After dismissing several potential conversation starters like, “Has it been cold down here?” and “Any good hairballs lately?” Thisby decided to get straight to the point.

  “Something in the dungeon has been killing at random. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Probably a new addition of Overseer Marl’s.”

  “Tss!” Catface hissed at the mention of her name. “‘Overseer,’ hah! Marl can barely see over the end of her nose!”

  Thisby laughed. Most of the goblins who worked in the dungeon didn’t dare complain about Marl, not after a lifetime of fear and obedience had been drilled into them the hard way by Roquat and the Master. It was nice to hear from someone who wouldn’t be bullied by any so-called authority in the Black Mountain.

  “Well, I don’t suspect she released something this terrible on purpose,” Thisby added, a bit surprised to hear herself defending the Overseer.

  Catface scowled. “I could be wrong, but it seemed to me as if things were running just fine before the Overseer arrived.”

  Thisby couldn’t argue with that. She almost spoke, but it was obvious that Catface wasn’t done yet.

  “The King of Nth has no business interfering in the day-to-day operation of the dungeon!” he snarled. “There’s always been an un
derstanding between the Black Mountain and the royal family. Why do you think the Royal Inspection was created in the first place? The kingdom never cared about the operation of the dungeon; they only wanted to make sure we weren’t building an army. Make no mistake about it. The capital has always been afraid of the power we wield, as they should be, but the appointment of an Overseer? This is a bad omen, Little Mouse.”

  Catface paused and looked at the diminutive gamekeeper standing before him. Next to him, she was indeed the size of a mouse, and a little one at that. His face softened, allowing his whiskers to droop.

  “Excuse my rambling. I’ve been at this job for too long. I’ve seen too many Masters, too many gamekeepers come and go.”

  In years past, that line would have sounded like a threat. This time, however, there was a barely concealed hint of sadness to it that Thisby found perhaps even more unsettling.

  “So, you haven’t . . .”

  “Seen your monster? No. I have not.”

  There was a long pause before he added, “Is that all, Little Mouse?”

  Thisby nodded and watched him slink away, his powerful shoulder blades rising and falling, and he receded silently back into the darkness.