Rowan and I continue to explore the Empty Halls. I meticulously add every hallway to our map as we go, and we come upon several rooms like the one we found the fountain in that contain similar pedestals or simply open areas.
At the end of a twisty knot of corridors, a twisted vine hangs from a sort of stone trellis, heavily laden with bunches of fruit resembling magenta grapes.
“Oh, those look delicious.” Rowan reaches toward them but remembers himself and stops to look at me questioningly.
I put a hand on his arm. “Let me take a close look at them first and see what we’re dealing with.”
The odd plant bears many of the usual aspects one might expect of normal plants on the surface, though it bears no leaves. I can only assume it’s getting its energy from the dungeon itself. Within each fruit, I identify aspects of life, joy, and peace. It very much feels like the dungeon doesn’t want to hurt us, simply get us to stick around. I relay this information to Rowan.
“I should try it first,” Rowan says. “I’m supposed to be protecting you, after all.”
“I have a better chance of resisting mental effects, though,” I say.
“If anything happens to you, neither of us is getting out of here, though.”
“I’m fairly certain that the worst thing that will happen is that we won’t want to leave,” I say. “Which, under the circumstances, is probably not an issue.”
Putting [Fractal Consciousness] firmly in place to measure my body’s response, I pluck a weird magenta grape and put it in my mouth. The juices are sweet and a little tart, and absolutely amazing after a long day of scrabbling through tunnels without food or water. After determining a lack of unforeseen side effects, I give Rowan the go-ahead and we eat our fill.
“I’ve gained more skill levels in one day than I have in the entire past year,” Rowan says. “We should definitely stay here for a while and grind some skills where it’s safe.”
“We don’t really have much choice,” I say. “Either Slar will find us or he won’t. If he doesn’t, Corwen will send someone with tracking skills to come looking for us. We’ve got food, water, and shelter, so the best thing to do is to stay put and wait for rescue. I do, however, want to finish exploring the dungeon first. I want to see if I can find the core room.”
“If this dungeon has any defenses at all, they’ll be on the core room,” Rowan points out. “Though it’s weird that we haven’t encountered any monsters, traps, or puzzles at all.”
I yawn broadly. “First, though, I suppose we should rest up. We kept going to find food and water, and we’ve found that. It has been a long day and we should probably get some sleep if we can.”
We agree to take watches, but wind up both quickly falling asleep on the hard stone floor regardless.
----------------------------------------
It’s impossible to tell how much time has passed, but we eventually wake up again and eat another load of magenta grapes for breakfast. The vine has sprouted more grapes in the meantime and all the ones we’d eaten for dinner are already back.
“Let’s get back to exploring, and don’t let your guard down,” I say.
We set off to finish mapping the dungeon, much more rested now. So far as I can tell, the layout of the dungeon has not changed overnight (or whatever time of day it is) and I’m able to fill out my map in due order. There is, conspicuously, an empty area around the middle of the maze with no hallways leading to it.
I run my hands along a wall, frowning thoughtfully. “There’s definitely something in there. That’s where the aether is coming from.”
“How do we get in there, though?” Rowan wonders.
I pull out my hammer and start tapping on the wall. I continue on around the entire central area, tap-tap-tapping every ten centimeters, varying up and down to see if I can find anything different. I tap out “shave and a haircut.” I tap out every bit of Morse code I can remember (which is just “SOS”, really). I tap until I get tired of the word ‘tap.’
“Anything?” Rowan asks finally as we wind up back where we started.
“I’m all tapped out. You got any ideas?”
“Are you sure it’s here? I mean, what if there’s stairs somewhere and the core room can only be reached from the second floor?”
“Hmm,” I hmm. “Good point. Alright, in that case, let’s scour every centimeter of the floor, walls, and ceiling.”
Rowan sighs, looking down each featureless hallway. “I immediately regret suggesting this.”
“Well, it’s not like we have anything better to do while waiting for rescue.”
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“Let’s check the fountain and vine again first,” Rowan says. “Those are the most obvious features and I would feel very silly if I spent days poking every wall in this entire maze only to learn that we could have just dove into the fountain.”
We check the fountain and grapevine trellis and find nothing. No hidden switches or secret panels no matter how thoroughly we search.
“Guess we’ll just have to search the whole dungeon, then,” I say.
Rowan reluctantly agrees, and we get to work on carefully searching the entire dungeon for hidden stairs. I check the floors and lower walls, while he pokes the ceiling and upper walls with my staff. When we get hungry or thirsty, we return to the fountain or grapevine, then return to pick up where we left off. When we get tired, we rest. We can’t even be sure this is the best way to go about it, but we have no better ideas.
The walls, floor, and ceiling all have the same flat texture, and I’m not even sure what we’re looking for anymore. Anything different, really. Clairvoyance doesn’t even help much here. Aether and vis aren’t affected by solid objects. They flow steadily, in and out. Only essence is static.
After an indeterminate amount of time, we conclude that if there’s a secret passageway on either the floor or walls, we’ve failed to find it. As we approach the central missing area again, though, the staff in Rowan’s hands suddenly slips through the ceiling.
“Drake!” Rowan says, feeling around with the staff. “I found something. Part of the ceiling is fake. There’s a hole about a meter square.”
“Fantastic, good job!” I say. “Let me climb on your shoulders. I might be able to reach and get up in it.”
He crouches down and helps me up. “You steady up there?”
“If I slip, I have Enhanced Feet (Soft Landing),” I say.
“Does it still work if you land on your butt?”
Upon examining the ceiling with [Psychometry], I can clearly see the gap in essence Rowan found. My hands slip through and I feel around to find a ledge inside. With a heave, I pull myself up and clip through the false ceiling into a narrow crawlspace in the ceiling. Once I’m secure, I pull a length of rope from my bag of holding and use it to help Rowan up.
“How long have you had that rope in there?” Rowan wonders.
“Since immediately after I got it.”
“Couldn’t we have used that to climb out of the hole we fell down?”
“I don’t have a grappling hook,” I say. “Too heavy given everything else I’m carrying, though I’m going to seriously reconsider my weight distribution once we get home. Besides, I only have five meters of rope and we fell way more than that. If we didn’t have attribute enhancements, we’d have been pancakes.”
Fortunately, the crawlspace only goes in one direction and not off into a maze, and we drop down through a matching hole ten meters away.
You have discovered the core room of the Empty Halls. Skills increased: Clairvoyance (Aether Sense), Enhanced Feet (Mapping Step), Discipline (Patience), Athletics (Climbing), Enhanced Feet (Soft Landing)
A glowing yellow crystal sphere the size of a large marble sits on a plain stone pedestal in the middle of the room. The aether in this room is thinner than I have come to expect of core rooms, the few I’ve been in at least, and the light it gives off is definitely dimmer than Corwen.
No greeting appears in my third eye. If it sent Rowan a quest, he hasn’t said anything. If it tried to give me one, I can’t see. I approach and take a closer look at the tiny orb.
Category Aether Core Status Malnourished Aspect Peace Disposition Neutral Mood Anticipation
The dungeon was starving and couldn’t afford any real protection for its core room. No clever puzzles, just hiding it in a place few adventurers would think to look.
I reach out one finger and touch the core.
Core: Tiganna/Tempest/Hebron Title: “Empty Halls” What do you wish to do with this core? Claim a reward for conquering the dungeon. Subjugate this core. (Core’s current owner: none) Pledge yourself to this core. (Your current core: Corwen)
I select the option to subjugate the dungeon.
Core subjugated. Empty Halls is now a vassal of Corwen.
A screen full of options pops up in my third eye, but I dismiss it for now to attempt a more direct interface. I think a greeting toward the core.
[Hello,] a quiet voice like a timid boy speaks in my mind.
“Hello!” Rowan says aloud. “I haven’t been in many core rooms before…”
“Could you put a way out of the core room so we don’t have to climb through the ceiling again?” I ask.
The aether in the room gathers and coagulates, and a door identical to the one marking the dungeon entrance appears in one wall.
[This entrance will still remain hidden to outsiders. Only Corwens will be able to find and use it.]
“Great,” I say. “Alright, we got this far. Tell me your story. What went wrong that left you lost and starving?”
[I tried to be a peaceful, friendly dungeon. I put essence into designing those grapes that I should have spent on defending myself and my people. We were to have been the premium winemakers of Tempest. But the invaders didn’t want wine. Only blood. They could not find my core room, though, and so they buried me instead. No one ever thinks to check the ceiling. If I still had traps or monsters, you would not have had the chance to search so thoroughly.]
“Thank you for the food and water, regardless,” Rowan says. “How long has it been since anyone was here?”
[You are the first humans to find me in this Age. Goblins slip through occasionally, but I hold nothing of interest to them. Beings seeking peace rarely come to this layer and I offer no battles to bring them glory.]
“Who were these invaders?” I wonder.
[Orcs, mainly, and their tamed monsters. The orc Hearths in this area are not kind and it is fortunate you did not encounter any on your quest to find me.]
“We didn’t actually have a quest to find you,” I say. “I just followed the aether and avoided any living beings that might be hostile.”
[Then I am fortunate indeed. I can be a great boon to your Hearth as an outpost in your explorations of the second layer! Once I can build up more essence, I can offer protection, supplies, and other amenities. I apologize that I did not have the energy to give you proper beds.]
“We’ll need to work out an easier way to get here, but I’m sure my Hearthmates who are higher level than me can figure that out. Hopefully they will find us eventually.”