In the flickering light of the flaming torches, three figures spoke, unaware they were being watched from the shadows by a young thief.

“Don’t think he even saw it coming, boss. One clean cut to the throat. Not a terrible way to go. I mean, I had my guts cut out during a battle. Took me hours to die.” The skeletal figure stood up from the body, blood at his boots. “Doesn’t look like he finished fixing the trap. My guess is, whoever did this snuck up on him while he was working and killed him quicklike. Might have even broken the trap just to get someone down here alone.”

A hoof scraped against the ground. “Bastard,” spat the tall, muscled centaur, his voice deep and gravelly. He sighed deeply. “Send a message to his family and find us a new tinkerer. I want these traps up and running before the next band of adventurers makes its way here.”

He took out a rectangular, metal case and removed a cigar. He held it between two fingers and lowered his hand. A succubus, her chiropteresque wings folded up behind her, stood up on her toes and kissed the tip of his cigar, igniting it, as her hair and eyes flared luminescent orange. He placed it into his mouth and inhaled. “I tell ya, I really want to find this guy and make him pay what he owes me for this. This bullshit right here, this ain’t professional.”

“We’ll find him, Master,” the succubus cooed with a reverberating combination of voices. “He can’t hide forever. We’ve got the front doors barred and soon we’ll have the underground passage out of the morgue blocked up, too. It’ll reek for a while, but he’ll be trapped.”

The centaur hmphed. “Good. Bring some herbs to my office and find this guy before we lose anyone else.” He walked off, his hoofsteps thundering ominously, the succubus close behind. The undead grognard hefted the corpse over his shoulder and headed down another path, muttering all the while.

When I could no longer hear any of them, I emerged from my hiding place behind the wall. My full bag clinked. It wasn’t as though I had wanted to get rid of that goblin, but he had been in my way, and I couldn’t risk him crying for help. It didn’t hurt that the impressive tools he had been carrying would be worth quite a lot to the right engineer. I didn’t even know the names of most of them.

I took out the map of the dungeon I had been making and added a few notes. I hadn’t come across anything resembling a morgue yet, but where else could that undead fellow have been bringing the body? If I followed that path on my map, there was a hallway I hadn’t explored yet. And it was nowhere near the dining hall or the entrance, so the odds were pretty good. It was certainly worth a shot. Wading through bodies wouldn’t be fun, but it would certainly be preferable to getting caught by that cataphractic centaur. I had never seen one so large, nor so well-armored. Even if I snuck up on him, I doubted I could take him down before he’d tramble me to death or kick a hole through my ribcage. I rolled up the map, put it away, and crept down the hallway.

Soon enough, I found the morgue. Well, I smelled it long before I found it. Rusted, metal pipes extended down through the ceiling, providing an outlet for the noxious air. Even so, I had to stifle the urge to vomit even before I had even entered the room. I didn’t even want to think about what sort of miasma I was inhaling. At the far end, a tunnel vanished into darkness. If I could just get there, I’d be out of this stinking dungeon and on my way to making a fortune. With the haul I had gotten today, combined with my savings at the bank, I might even finally be able to start up my own inn and get out of dungeon crawling.

I crept into the empty room, doing my best to avoid any bodies that looked recently deceased. It was difficult. Rotting flesh clung to corpses. Bugs boldly traversed the floor in swarms, looking for uneaten morsels. Flies filled the disgustingly humid air. Just a few more steps and I’d be half-way through, I told myself, and then a bit more and I’d be three-fifths through, and then a bit more and-

A cold, bony hand gripped my leg. I shrieked. “Got ‘im! Now!” came a yell from beneath me. All around me, undead arose and shambled towards me. In an instant, my dagger was in my hand, slicing and hacking away, but it did little against solid bone devoid of veins and organs. I managed to break apart a bone or two, disconnect some fingers from their palms, but it wasn’t enough. They overwhelmed me, holding me down, burying me in a mountain of bones until I couldn’t move, could barely breathe, pinned by their combined weight. I strained as hard as I could, but I couldn’t even budge their bleached bones off of me. I was trapped. I stopped struggling and closed my eyes. I’d need my strength for later, and I couldn’t do anything now. Better to just wait and prepare myself for whatever came next.

I waited like that for longer than I thought I’d be able to stand. A thundering, ponderous series of footsteps came closer. A cold, hard hand reached into the pile and wrapped around my leg, pulling me upside down. I tightened my grip on my dagger, and as soon as I saw light, I slashed! The dagger clinked against stone and the shock made me lose my grip. My blade fell harmlessly to the floor. I looked into the face of the beast that held me. “Fuck.” A troll. Their rocky hides were impenetrable to anything short of a hammer and chisel and a good fifteen minutes of uninterrupted work. I kicked at his hand, more out of pique than anything else. If the massive beast felt it, it didn’t react, but merely lumbered off, holding me just barely high enough to keep my skull from dragging against the ground. Mostly. “Ow, fuck! Can you at least carry me right-side up?” I asked. It looked at me, said nothing, and returned its gaze forward.

The succubus I had seen earlier walked up beside us. “For future reference, don’t take advice from your enemies, little elf. Not that I expect you to have many future chances to make use of that tip,” she smirked. Or so I assumed. Upside down and near the floor, my view of her face was blocked by her oversized breasts. But the tone was 100% pure smirk.

“I’ll return what I stole. I’ll steal more for you. I’ll train you on how to catch other thieves like me. What do you want? Name your price,” I offered.

The succubus tapped the troll’s side and I stopped swaying back and forth for a moment. The succubus leaned down near my face, her red hair floating ethereally, two large horns coming out of her skull. “Sorry, but Eurytos wants to deal with you personally. No deals. I just want you to know, you really don’t deserve this.”

I paused a moment. “Thank you.”

The cunt spat on my face. I hissed and groaned as it burned my skin, sizzling. “That wasn’t pity,” she curtly corrected. “Not that you’ll enjoy it.” She stood up and slapped the troll’s flank again, and my skull bumped against the floor before I was mercifully raised a few inches higher.

I felt disoriented, barely able to think. Was there any way out of this? I had lost my weapon, bargaining hadn’t worked, what else did I have? Was I going to die here? It felt unreal. Like I should be able to turn back a few pages in a book and read a different ending to my life, instead. There was so much I had never done. Cities I had never visited. Emotions I had never felt. Meals I had never tried. All of it, lost forever, because I hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to steal from the dungeon infamous for its defenses.

“Oof!” I was roughly slammed onto a hard, wooden table, knocking the wind out of me and adding yet another ache to my sore body. My chest burned and I couldn’t even resist. I could barely breathe as my hands were locked in manacles bolted to the desk and my feet to a pair on the floor, spreading my legs uncomfortably wide. Monsters surrounded me: undead, orcs, lizardmen, that succubitch ... But the most imposing figure was right in front of me. I looked up into the intense eyes of the centaur.

“Here you are, thief. I’ve been expecting you. Eagerly, I admit.” Eurytos stood up, slowly rising to his full height of eight and a half feet. He would have towered over me even had I been standing. His eyes smoldered at me as he began to circle around me, and his thick beard and mustache did nothing to hide his scowl. I shuddered at every metallic clonk of his hooves. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. Of course, I’d be fully justified in doing so. I’m not even going to cut off those talented, little hands of yours that caused me so much trouble. No thieves, no demand for guards. That’s bad for business.