Page 68 of The Dungeon Book

“Human enough,” agreed the ghast.

I have, perhaps, undue sympathy for those who are stabbed in the back. I must admit I feel a twinge of sorrow when I imagine Nithscalpa in that moment. The dragon has endured terrible wounds; he’s been blasted by errant eye-beams, skewered and chopped and speared and taken a manticore straight to the face, and yet he’s triumphed over them all. He’s proven himself the mightiest creature in the Dungeon, the most terrible of calamities.

But then, before he can catch his breath, before he can spit flame, he smells a foulness in the air, and then the ghast is upon him. All those countless wounds fester, all at once. He feels the clammy hand of death snuff out his fires. He knows, in that moment, that he is doomed.

Only a twinge of sorrow, mind you. He deserved the fetid claws that tore him, the deathly touch that claimed him.

The dragon stumbled.

I was not there, so I can tell you only what I heard from my perch. I heard a roar like thunder, echoing up from the deep, then a rattle of chains, and then a sound like the end of the world.

I know, afterwards, the smoke and steam from the dragon’s pyre rose up from the crevasse like a miasma, staining the sky a bloody red. I know that the battle was so hideous that no one dared take so much as a coin from the dragon’s hoard that day, for blood-bought gold lost its lustre.

I know that, afterwards, certain subtle instruments in the far-off halls of the Royal Antiquarian Survey registered that the world had changed.

The dragon fell.

The ghast smiled a thin smile through those awful lips, and bowed, offering the kill to Bait.

Now it was Bait who tore the broken spear from the dragon’s breast, who waded through the hot blood to the monster’s head.

“I had a champion,” she said through her tears, “to match your teeth. I had spearmen to match your claws, cunning to match your cruelty. Tell me I belong!”

“Not here . . .” wheezed the dragon, “and not there. Not above nor below. No home for you. Better I had eaten—”

She drove the spear through his other eye, and ended him.

The dragon was not the only one who died that day. So had a great many kobolds and trolls – and goblins. Pinshriek and Grimegable, Shirkhose and Knobmeddler, never would they return to the Trapsmiths’ Arcade.

Only-Sister lived on, but barely. Even before her battle with the dragon she’d been badly hurt; now she clung to life by her broken teeth. Unable to hunt, she depended on the charity of Bait and the other Denizens for meat.

The ghast sank back to the deeper levels.

Among the humans, there were few survivors. Sir Rudyard was among them, so shaken by his experiences in the Dungeon that for months afterwards he could only say “sausages”. When his servants offered to cook some, the sight of open flames and sizzling grease brought back memories of the dragon that drove him deeper into terror, leading to more screaming of “sausages”, leading to more proffering of cooked meats. I am told this spiral was broken only when they ran out of pigs.

Neb, too, avoided an untimely death. Indeed, he was acclaimed as dragon-slayer in the aftermath of the battle. The other survivors found him standing all alone, one hand on the haft of the spear embedded in the dragon’s eye.

“You led us in here,” they said to him, “pray God lead us out.” So he did. They turned their back on the dragon’s hoard and sought the sunlit lands. Back through the tunnels, back up the Chasm Hall, back down the western stair, back through the wraith-temples – deserted now – and over the Buried River.

They emerged into a land greatly changed. The death of the dragon had broken the unnaturally prolonged heat, and now late autumn was making up for lost time. A miserable rainstorm greeted them on the surface, and the path to the Wychwood Door was a ghastly morass. But, oh! the rain was sweet on their faces, somewhere beyond those grey clouds was the sun, and they were alive! Alive! They stumbled down the hillside towards that they had saved, towards the village and the castle and the wide kingdom and all the human lands.

Only Neb looked back to see the door shut behind them.

There’s a coda to this part of the tale that I’ll mention here, although it falls outside my policy of only reporting on attested material.

It’s said that on the night the dragon died a cold wind blew from the mountain. The people of the village were much afraid, fearing that Sir Rudyard’s expedition had succeeded only in rousing the wyrm once more, and wind heralded the coming of the dragon. They cowered in their huts, heads bowed, waiting for the end. They did not expect to be spared; fire and famine had taken half of the villagers already, so why should the rest see the dawn?

Only one – Neb’s father Gyul rose from his sickbed and looked out into the night. He says that shadows crept down the hillside in a solemn procession, ghostly feet treading a ghostly road long buried. As they drew closer, darkness resolved into spectral sceptres, into moonlight robes and ghostly mitres. For the dead of the Dungeon were priests in ancient days, and the living of the village were – many, many generations removed and all traditions forgotten – the kinsfolk of the faithful. On that night, the wraiths came down to the village burial ground, crowded with fresh-dug graves and scatterings of ash, and welcomed their newly dead kin.

Gyul says he saw fresh ghosts rise from the scorched earth, called up by ancient words that are remembered only in the dark below. The old wraiths whispered to the new, and I think they must have brought news of the dragon’s death, for the new wraiths cheered in silence, their ghostly voices all raised in unison no louder than a breath of wind. Then they too joined the cavalcade as it streamed back up the hill, back to the City of Wonders.

Only one looked back, Gyul says, and then she too was gone.

But I do not consider Gyul a reliable witness, and so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this tale.

After all, I’m dead. The wraiths never offered comfort to me.

She found me a few hours after her victory.