Agony wracked my arm, jerking me from my short rest as a second line of red etched itself into my marriage mark. I felt sick as I stared from the mark to the woman sleeping soundly beside me, wondering what the fuck I’d been thinking. Getting up, I slid the remnants of my shirt back across my shoulders, sighed, and finished dressing, using my gambison to compensate for the tunic. I slipped silently from the tent, surprised to see the stars still shining in the dark of night.
Borgen still sat at the campfire, unstrung bow shaft leaning against his shoulder as he looked up at my approach. “Hey,” I said, standing there, now quite meeting his eyes.
“Hey,” he said sadly. “Have a seat.” He waved to the near half dozen empty chairs. I sat, anxiously kneading my marked wrist with a thumb. We both just sat there, staring into the flames until my unease became too much.
“Well?” I asked, the word coming out sharper than I’d meant it to.
“Well, what?”
“Well? Aren't you, like, disappointed or something? Isn’t this the part where you tell me off for being an idiot, for breaking my wife's heart and etcetera?”
The man snorted. “Hells no. It’s none of my business what you do. I might not like it, but that is for me to worry about, not you.”
“Oh,” I said, sagging in my chair slightly, looking miserably at the marriage mark.
“You want to talk about it?” He asked, stoking the flames with a simple iron poker, his gaze avoiding mine.
“I fucked up,” I said simply. “I mean, like, I fucked up last time, right? I mean, of course, she was upset about me not coming home and talking to her about it. I’m an idiot for thinking otherwise. At least that time I think she could have forgiven me eventually. But this. I don’t think she’ll ever forgive me for this.”
“So, you’re going to give up then?”
“No,” I said, then repeated it more firmly. “No. So long as I still have this mark I won’t give up on the two of us.”
“Admirable,” He said with a sad smile. “I hope it works out for you. The pair of you seemed like you had something good before all this.”
“We did,” I agreed with a miserable half grin as I remembered the times we shared. I never should have left her behind, I thought to myself, feeling my throat tighten with regret.
“You know,” Borgen said, interrupting my depressive spiral. “You did promise to tell me the real story of how you two met.”
“I guess I did,” I said, sniffling as I forced back the miserable cascade of emotions. “Well-” I began, but was cut off as a rotting hand burst from the ground like a baby bird breaking free of its egg.
Borgen became a blur, crushing the limb beneath his foot before I could so much as blink. An involuntary yelp forced its way free from my lips as I scrambled back from the gray necrotic limb, toppling over the back of my chair. I got to my feet in an instant, embarrassed by my own reaction. Thankfully Borgen was too busy to care.
“Monster!” He shouted as all around the camp undead crawled from the ground in a moaning, groaning horde. Most of the undead were monsters, borehounds, fregnicks, and the like, but a disturbing amount were humanoid. I remembered my father and hoped I wouldn’t find him shambling alongside them.
Nika and Goerge were the first to respond to Borgen’s call, Their canvas tent exploding in a mass of claws and steel. The usually flabby man wore the shape of a massive fregnick, more than twice the size of the ones we’d faced before, becoming an unstoppable force as he tore into the ever-growing swarm of corpses. Nika moved in perfect sync with the man, her morphing weapon shearing the monsters in two and defending her from their gnashing teeth and grasping hands at the same time.
Carlyn burst from her tent with an expression of death on her face, black flames flickering across her whole body. The moment she spotted me her expression softened somewhat, which only made my gut twist with further regret. The other woman sprang into action, hurling balls of black flame and bolts of lighting into the swarm. As Borgen and I moved to join her, Jones entered the fray, spears of black water rocketing from his wand alongside streams of water that bound the enemy and healed the party members.
Ready to get into the action, I left Borgen and leaped forward, corkscrewing through the air as I jumped over a legless corpse, my middle finger held out to taunt the nearby zombies. It worked well, my skill activating with a warm buzz as nearly two dozen corpses with red glowing eyes all rounded on me the instant my feet touched the ground.
“Shit,” I muttered as I brought my sword into a high guard and prepared to defend myself. All at once the monsters charged, letting out guttural half-shouts, half groans as their decomposing paws and feet scrabbled against the packed dirt. As the first of them entered the range of my blade I hissed out a breath and swung, the sword whistling through the air in a perfect arc.
I was already halfway through my next attack before the three zombies’ heads could make it off their corpses’ shoulders, stepping forward with a heavy stomp and bringing my weapon up in a brutal broad cut, bisecting another two in the middle before moving into the third strike. Rotating to face the opponents zeroing in behind me, I cut down, the slight adjustment to my edge alignment sending the last three nearest zombies’ heads flying in an arc of semi-solid gore.
The dozen or so remaining corpses all shambled closer on slow feet, paws, and bellies, making them pathetically easy to dispatch. I took off their heads one by one, leaving cold corpses in my wake as I moved to cut through the last few zombies standing around me.
A ball of black flame shot over my head, engulfing two of the three before a solid lance of shadowy ice streaked through the air and took the third through the left eye, launching it into the ground with enough force to shatter on impact.
I glanced back to find Carlyn advancing through the hordes of enemies with a frustrated look on her face, orbs of flame leaping from her hands like softballs from a pitching machine set to full auto while Jones continued his own barrage of spells from Borgen’s side.
A slight frown tugged at the corner of my mouth before I turned away and made a b-line for the healer-archer duo who were now surrounded and alone. I arrived just in time to shove Jones to the side and catch the raking slash of a zombie monster’s claws with the edge of my sword, removing the top half of the rotting beast’s front paws before spinning the blade back down and severing its head from its neck with a wet crunch.
“I suppose I should thank you for that,” Jones said as I got back to his feet. “Though, it’s not like that thing could actually pose a threat to me.
I rolled my eyes at the man, certain that he was probably right, but still annoyed by his apparent arrogance. “Sure, sure. Next time I’ll just let the zombie bite you then,” I said offhandedly, slicing off the hand of an overeager undead.
An exasperated sigh from Jones made us both stiffen on reflex. “Jones, it wouldn’t kill you to at least be polite about it,” The giant man said, crushing in another ghoul’s head.
At my side, Jones’ mouth worked soundlessly for a few seconds before he spoke. “I’ll have you know that I am the perfect picture of nobility. My manners are, without a doubt, perfect.”
“Quite flapping your lips you idiots,” George called out in a serpentine hiss as he and Nika slid past, destruction following in their wake just as Carlyn cast a wide attack that dropped black bolts of lightning from the heavens as if in divine judgment of the enemy, killing groups of undead in the dozens. Jones muttered something incoherent in reply behind me that vaguely sounded insulting while Borgen suddenly rolled back his shoulders and pulled a ring I hadn’t noticed before from his finger.
“Guess it’s finally time to cut loose. I can’t exactly have my little sister show me up,’ he said as his body began to groan like bending wood and he grew, body thickening, skin darkening into a deep dandelion green as scutes tore through his shirt, and his face elongated into a vaguely reptilian shape. When the transformation was finished I found myself gaping up at Borgen, who now more resembled his giant turtle-man ancestors.
He stood nearly twice as tall as he had before and was built like the thickest of bodybuilders whilst somehow affecting a lean form. He barely looked anything like the Borgen I knew. The strangest difference was the massive ovular shell on his back that covered from his neck to halfway down the back of his thighs. It alone was twice my size at least.
The half-agondlon sprung into action, the earth itself erupting beneath his feet as he moved, spinning his now proportionally massive bow shaft like a staff, turning zombie after zombie into little more than bloody mist and paste. I nearly forgot that I was still in the middle of a fight as I watched him move, a blur that left nothing but destruction behind it. A splash of cold from Jones' spell shook me from my reverent awe and I spluttered, scowling at the scrawny man.
“Get your head out of your ass if you don’t want to die, and be sure to stay out of his way,” Jones said, already sending more spells to aid the others. I shook myself. The man was obnoxious but right.
Shouting to get my blood pumping again, I charged back into the fray, slaying what few I could as the others battled on around me. A sea of black flame washed over the hordes as Carlyn threw out increasingly deadly spell after spell. Nika’s liquid weapon and George’s animal forms slaughtered in the hundreds, and Borgen proved himself a disaster. Even Jones managed to heal his allies and lay waste to his enemies at the same time. I was practically useless, I realized. A cute little weakling they dragged along because their leader had the hots for me. Damn it.
Despite the calamity the others wrought upon the undead hoarder, the fighting continued on for the rest of the night until the sun peeked over the horizon and bathed the grasslands in ominous light once more. In an instant, the majority of the undead dropped to the ground and began digging away, tunneling back into the earth. The few who either didn’t or couldn’t dig to safety simply caught fire and fell to the dirt writhing as whatever power animated the creature suddenly began to be drained away until they fell still.
I sagged heavily against my sword as the fighting finally stopped, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The others didn’t even look fazed, which only made me feel more like shit. I dropped the ground, opening my system to at least find something to be happy about, only to be disappointed.
==========
=Status=
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
-Name: Mairenn Crowe
-Blessing: Reverse Minstrel
-Level: 6
-Experience: 4,260/72,900
-Attribute points: 0
-Skill points: 0
-Ability Points: 0
-Health: 22/41
-Stamina: -12/41
-Mana: 0/7
=Attributes=
-Strength: 11
-Dexterity: 13
-Constitution: 16
-Intelligence: 10
-Wisdom: 8
-Charisma: 9
-Luck: 10
=Skills=
-Sword Dancer’s Proficiency
-The Minstrel’s Taunt
-Oration Casting
-Demotivating Call
-False Rest
-Countercharm
=Abilities=
-The Minstrel’s Luck - Rank II
-Utilized Proficiencies
==========
A few thousand experience points? I had to of killed hundreds of those fuckers. I fumed inside, unable to express my rage due to my overtaxed stamina. I flopped backward, unable to even sigh as I struggled to catch my breath. Gods, I felt as if I might die.
“Good fighting!” Borgen said, hoisting me up into his arms, already back in his more human-like form as my eyes began to close. I’d been forced to use my false rest near the end of the battle and the after-effects were catching up with me. Shit, I realized, could that kill me?
“That new sword of yours fits you nicely,” the big man said as he carried me to where Jones stood looking down at the ruins of his tent, frowning as he sipped on a mana potion, the grass sizzling around him. “Real fortunate you got that thing. If you’d had that dinky little rapier I’m pretty sure you’d have been squashed harder than a beetle under a falling tree.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said with tired sarcasm, the world begging to fade from my awareness.
“Don’t get me wrong, you’re very good at this now, not like when we first met you. If Carlyn hadn’t already brought you into the group I would probably be pushing the idea myself.”
I was quiet for a moment as a thought occurred to me. “I think I like you better drunk,” I said, darkness creeping into the corners of my vision.
“So do I,” the half-agondlon man said with a rumbling laugh, his slightly scaled skin scratching my exposed arm a bit more roughly than was comfortable, which was to say, not comfortable at all. A moment later he was gently laying me on the ground beside Jones. The healer took barely a second to mumble out something before an orb of healing water splashed over me in a cool wave of calming ease.
It couldn’t do much about fatigue, but I felt my muscles relax as countless aches and pains faded, leaving me sighing on the dirt as I closed my eyes.
“Not yet,” Jones’ voice said from some seeming distance as I fell into the blackness that was my ever-retreating mind. There was a vague sense of something cold being pressed against my lips. A wave of energy rushed through me and my eyes fluttered open again to find Jones stooping beside me, still slowly sipping his potion.
“What did you do?” I asked as I sat up, the exhaustion of before already fleeing like a half-forgotten memory of sensation. He just snorted and walked away, his usual derisive self.
“Just a stamina potion,” Borgen said from my side, making me jump slightly. I’d somehow forgotten about him in the haze of less-than-consciousness. He was sitting in the still smoldering remnants of the grass, arms casually propped up behind him, legs crossed at the ankle. “Careful though, skill backlash can be a bitch.”
I felt a laugh bubble out of me and I pushed myself up to a sitting position, crossing my legs and wincing as a lance of pain shot through my head. “Don’t have to tell me. I’d take a hangover from this any day.”
Borgen chuckled. “You’re a good one, little minstrel. Don’t let my sister take that from you,” he said, moving as if to get up, but I couldn’t help but frown.
“What do you mean by that, exactly?” I asked. He didn’t seem upset, but I’d always been bad at reading people.
“Well,” The big guy said with a sigh, settling back down. “My sis and I aren't exactly the kindest of folks, you understand?”
“You two seem plenty fine to me,” I lied. Borgen was fine, I thought, but Carlyn, well, even thinking about that made me feel sick still.
“Appearances can be deceiving. Just watch yourself. It’d be a shame to lose a recruit as promising as you before all this is over.”
Perhaps it was simply a side effect of the stamina potion, but I narrowed my eyes at Borgen’s words as some wheels began to turn in my head, and questions that I should have long since asked came to me. “What are you all doing here anyway?” For the first time since I’d met the agondlon, he seemed uncomfortable. More gears turned and suddenly it all seemed clear to me and I continued on in a whisper. “Are you here to do something to the dungeon? Are you the people who’ve been sabotaging the dungeons in the empires?”
Borgen just gave me a strained smile, eyes flicking to Jones who hadn’t seemed to hear my question. “Not my place to say, but, If it were, I’d likely tell you to stop with the questions. No use in getting yourself hurt, after all.”
I locked gazes with the man and felt a chill run up my spine before tearing my eyes from his. For the first time, I realized that I only really knew these people on a surface level. I began to wonder if I’d run from my problems on the outside just to find myself tangled up in worse things here.
Once the re-deadified corpses were looted for a paltry sum of iron coins and scraps of poorly aged materials, we moved camp a bit further from the alpha’s den and took turns sleeping in shifts of two. Once Nika and Geroge returned from their rest Carlyn gave me her signature predatory grin, but I acted like I hadn’t noticed, urging Borgen to take a rest while Jones and I took the next watch. The big man wanted me to take a rest, but I argued that since I’d had a stamina potion I didn’t need to rest yet, to which the agondlon man agreed and went to bed.
To my relief, Carlyn didn’t argue, just gave me a frown that said, “we’ll talk later.” I sighed, turning the tip of my sword down in the dirt and resting my chin atop my hands where they covered the pommel.
“That’ll damage the blade, you know,” Jones offered from beside me, idly paging through his spellbook.
I eyed him for a second, then asked the first thing that came to my mind. “What do you know about dungeon cores?”
The healer glanced over at me and frowned. Evidently, he hadn’t heard the exchange between Borgen, else I thought he’d probably not have reacted so well.
The moment passed and he closed his book with a snap, folding his arms across his chest as he prepared to educate me. “I know many things about dungeons,” he began with a fittingly arrogant air about him. “Is there something more specific that you’re curious about, or are you wanting a full lecture? Because that would take far more time than we have.”
I chewed on my lip in thought for a moment. “How are dungeon cores made?” I asked, hoping that wouldn’t give my intentions away.
That quirked eyebrow of his rose higher and for a moment the man actually seemed surprised, as if somehow I’d asked an interesting question. “Interesting,” he said, then crossed his legs and sat in front of me, one hand thoughtfully stroking his pointed chin. “A good question really. Concise, not too broad, not too specific, just the right amount curious and insightful.” He kept stroking his chin as if in thought for several uncomfortable moments of silence.
I ended up politely clearing my throat before asking,” and? The answer?”
Jones jumped slightly as if starting, then coughed awkwardly into one hand. “Apologies. I just did not believe you were capable of such a question. It’s always quite wonderful to be proven wrong, don’t you agree?”
“I guess?” I said slowly in confusion, uncertain of whether or not I should be insulted.
“As for your question,” Jones continued as if nothing had happened. “The simple answer is, we do not know. The real answer, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated. You see, nobody has ever been able to witness or record the creation of one, at least not without dying first and that is a condition quite unsuited for note-taking.” He chuckled at his own joke then hurried on. I just rolled my eyes.
“You see, the process of creating a dungeon core is on the scale of divine action. It can take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to complete. We know that cores created by the arcana usually involve a willing sacrifice, so it is believed that sentience or consciousness has something to do with the process, but in naturally occurring dungeons the cores can seemingly appear as if from nothing. Some scholars posit that the matter making up the core is simply so compressed and complex in its patterns that the core eventually gains a will of its own, but that idea is rarely ever spoken of anymore.”
“Do you have your own theory?” I asked as he drew back into silence again.
“I have played at hypothesizing a time or two,” the man said as if admitting to something mildly embarrassing. “My best guess follows the theory put forward by the grand magus of Yuk three years ago. While the arcana are limited in their magic by the nature of their faceted aspects, creation itself is not. Whereas the gods must use matter and beings from our realm to construct their creations, nature dungeons may, likewise, not be so mundanely restricted, as they are born of creation itself. There have been cases of travelers from other realms in our lands scattered throughout the annals of history, so such places do exist. Would it truly be so strange if natural dungeons used the wills of those from other realms to accomplish what our mortal gods do with the wills of those from our own world? Perhaps it is as simple a thing for creation to pluck a soul from the stream of space and time between universes as it is for a farmer to pluck an apple from a tree.”
I blinked several times in confusion at the man's words, grasping at the fading sentences in my mind, struggling to take in everything he was saying. “Pause a minute,” I said, holding up one hand. “You’re telling me that dungeons are alive?”
“In their own way, I suppose,” Jones said. “Perhaps in the way that a spirit possessing an object or person might be considered alive, anyway. You see, the essence of their beings is all stored in a small delicate gemstone within the core, the core itself being more of a shell or programmable casing. From there they spread thin crystalline threads of themselves throughout their surroundings, taking in all the matter they can until they accumulate enough power to seal themselves within an extra-dimensional space, only then are they considered true dungeons. That process, however, is why studying their creation has proven difficult. It is in the juvenile stage that they are their most aggressive and least intelligent. It's not uncommon for a group to stumble upon a fledgling dungeon only to be broken down to their most basic atomic matter and consumed. Grisly process to watch, that.”
It was taking everything I had not to roll my eyes at the man’s lengthy explanations. I guess this is why nobody ever lets him talk, I idly thought to myself. “Well,” I began slowly, as if thinking hard, but I already knew what I wanted to ask next.“If that's true, dungeons being people and all, has there ever been a case where a dungeon spoke to somebody?”
“Oh yes,” Jones replied quickly. “It is not as rare an occurrence as you might believe. You see, dungeons, like all sentients, are curious by nature. It's not unheard of for a dungeon to lend its voice to those it finds intriguing to aid them in their journey through itself. Sometimes the dungeon even saves people from certain death by the dungeon’s doing.”
I thought of the few times that strange voice had spoken in my mind, saving me from some less-than-pleasant ends on multiple occasions. Was that the dungeon, I wondered? If so, why had it turned its gaze toward me?
“You said that the ‘essence’ of the dungeon was only a small gemstone inside the core, right? What happens if it gets removed from there?” I asked, moving on to the most important topic for me. I felt my heart race as I feared he’d catch onto what I was doing.
“Well, that’s rather simple,” Jones began, completely oblivious to my intent. “Without that gem, the dungeon would be effectively dead.”
“What does that mean though? What does it look like for something as big as all this, something not alive like you or me, to die?”
The man shrugged. “It looks like death. Just as the various parts of our bodies cease to function upon our deaths, the various parts of a dungeon stop working. Monsters no longer appear, paths don’t maintain themselves, and the walls of the dimensional space slowly break down until they finally split open and everything inside the dungeon explodes out, not unlike the washed-up bodies of whales occasionally do, or so I am told. There are records of entire cities being destroyed in an instant when that happens. To think a gemstone no larger than the dimensional stones on our rings could hold so much potential for destruction.”
I was glad my sword was so sturdy, else I don’t think I would have been able to stay standing. Had that been Carlyn’s real intention this whole time? To use the dungeon as some sort of bomb to destroy Gaulbren? I felt sick just thinking about it. “How long does that usually take?” I asked, doing my best to maintain an air of nonchalance.
Either Jones was too enthralled by the opportunity to teach, or he was stupid because the man just kept talking. “Anywhere from a few hours to a few days depending on the size and stability of the dungeon. The living things are usually the first to go, appearing around the dungeon’s dimensional shell and rampaging through the local area. The strangest are always the plants, just piling up around masses of monsters. Honestly, you’ll be surprised by the number of mushrooms dungeons have. I had no idea there were that many varieties until I witnessed my first dungeon death. Nothing else like it in the world.”
“Sounds like it,” I said, unable to help the half panicked half frightened chuckle that left my lips. Later, when it was our turn to take a rest, I found myself unable to so much as close my eyes. Unfortunately, I didn’t need to sleep for nightmarish imaginings to flash through my mind as I stared up at the ceiling of my tent.
“What should I do,” I asked the dungeon, half expecting to get a response, but all I heard was the rustling of grass as the wind continued to rush in a half-whispered howl.