Marked Ones: Advent of the Demon Prince

"How goes it?"

"Morning, milord!"

"Glad to see you up and at 'em so early, sir!"

A dozen or so guards in full plate armor bearing the crest of the Kingdom of Arcadios patrolled a medium sized village that sat next to a massive cave. The cave itself was not set into the wall of a mountain or anything, like one would expect of a cave with an entrance as large as this to be.

Instead, the opening was a perfectly symmetrical rectangle that looked as though it had been carved into a large hill.

Starting at the cave mouth there was a massive set of stone stairs that spanned the entire width and led down several dozen feet to a set of bronze-looking doors. They were engraved with various unknown symbols and depictions of different monsters that would be found behind those very doors. Each one also had a massive ring that one would use to pull the doors closed.

This was assuming, of course, that someone would even be strong enough to do so. Each door easily weighed several tons due to their size, thickness, and the density of the strange metal they were made of.

An elderly man gingerly ran his fingers across the doorway, appearing as though he was gleaning unknown knowledge from the carvings on it. Yet he pulled away completely dissatisfied. Whatever it was he was looking for, the door seemed to refuse to give him an answer.

Wally Carmichael was the foremost expert on marks and by extension demonic language and culture. The construct before him was the infamous dungeon, the Demon's Stomach. A few days ago the doors began to refuse opening to allow access to any of the adventurers that wanted to fight through its floors.

The dungeon was a major attraction to adventurers, scholars, mages, and warriors from all over and to lose access to the resources held within that those individuals would bring back to the surface was a massive loss for the kingdom. King Aleksander himself requested that Wally personally investigate the dungeon and see if he can find a cause.

If he can, then he was to try and fix it or at least confirm when it would open again.

Thanks to the stairs in the rectangular cave being made of the same, strange stone that made up the ruins of demon cities, the door itself had demonic runes and strange markings on it that indicated it too was constructed by them. What was not known was whether or not the dungeon was somehow created by the demons or if it was found and modified by them.

"Lord Carmichael, how go your investigations today?" one of the guard captains asked him.

There were a contingent of soldiers under the kingdoms employ that lived in the sizable village outside the dungeon entrance. Their entire job was to monitor those who challenged the dungeon and what they retrieved.

Once everything was categorized, the adventurers would take the equipment into town and exchange or register it at the guild with a small percentage taken off the top as a tax to the kingdom. There were also several resources that appeared in the dungeon that were required to be sold to the kingdom no matter what.

Occasionally there would be extremely valuable pieces that the Adventurer's Guild and the Kingdom would 'persuade' the challengers to part with for large sums of money.

While not perfect, the system did provide the nation with a fair amount of income and valuable pieces of equipment that was provided to valuable soldiers and nobles, or sold at auction to make many times more money than they purchased it for.

With Wally's experience studying marks, he was rather attune to the strange power the demons possessed that flowed through Marked Ones when using their special abilities. This same power also flowed through a dungeon at varying concentrations. It was as though this power was part of the core functionality of the entire construct, though no one knew how it functioned.

"Lord Carmichael?" the guard prompted a second time.

"Hmm?" Wally said, finally noticing the man. "Oh yes, sorry Captain. Well, from what I can tell, the power that runs through the dungeon seems to be… fluctuating for some reason. It is as though the dungeon itself has become unstable.

"We have some records of instability in the past that caused the doors to close, but they all opened again within a few weeks. I am thinking this is similar. Though, the last recorded incident was well over a hundred years ago…"

The guard captain sighed, "Well, the Guild Master in the village is going to have an aneurism over this… he hates when things affect the guild's bottom line."

"Well, he can take it up with the demons, I can't do a thing about it." Wally said with a sigh. "I had to come all the way out here only to learn a fat lot of nothing. That whelp Aleksander needs to sit down and apologize to me properly when I get home… making an old man like me venture out to the sticks…"

"Sir? Are you sure you should talk about his majesty like that?" The guard captain flitted his eyes around nervously to make sure no one overheard what Wally had just said.

Technically his statement was a crime, to talk ill of the king. However, Wally was a very strong mage and the guard captain had no inclination to try and arrest him.

"Bah! I taught the boy and his father how to use magic. If I have the mind of it, I can put him over my knee." Wally said. "You know, I'm about half way to Pelith right? Maybe I should go give Richard a piece of my mind about giving my grandson a hard time…"

Wally stomped off leaving a bewildered country guard to stare at his back. It was likely the man was questioning everything he ever knew to be true about nobility for such a crass old man to behave in such away. Even as a member of nobility himself, Wally was not excused from behaving appropriately.

The other guards above quickly moved out of his way. Even they could tell that the old man was annoyed at his inability to figure out a solution to the dungeon situation. It just so happened that being unable to solve this problem led him to be angry at other things.

Without much word to anyone else other than sending a child to tell the Guild Master what he found out, Wally got into a carriage and ordered the driver to head directly to Pelith and to do so without stopping.

"I think its time I give that redheaded prick a piece of my mind…" Wally grumbled.