Pale beams of moonlight slipped through the gaps in the canopy, illuminating a faint trail. Dark figures appeared in the distance, closing in on the pathway. These forms were short in stature and eventually emerged under the beams of moonlight. The brief illuminations revealed creatures with pale green, purple, and yellow skin. Each of them wore loincloths and carried a variety of crude weapons and armor. Some bore humanoid corpses on makeshift stretchers. The goblins passed through the light, heading to a place that would someday be known as "The Town of Silence."
A dark silhouette with blood-red eyes, mixed with a sheen of white and silver, looked like the personification of shadow. It stood among the sea of bodies, its limbs outstretched, feeling the cool night air against its dark skin. It licked its lips, savoring the remnants of an earlier meal, the taste lingering like fermented, roasted meat—a delicacy to some, though the flesh it had tasted was fresh off the bone.
The figure flicked a finger this way and that, and the goblins followed its will, moving in different directions through the sea of trees. The only exceptions were those carrying the corpses of two humans and the dark silhouette itself. As they stepped into the town, not a word was spoken. The drone-like humans stopped their tasks to watch as the figure moved through the village. No one stopped or greeted it as it passed; they simply returned to their duties as if the creature had never been there.
Mort clicked his tongue and blew air through his teeth, creating a "thiisk" sound. The willow tree branches parted as swaths of essence opened the path before him. He felt as if essence obeyed his whims, even when he did not direct it to perform an action. Was everything they knew about essence wrong? Mort wondered.
As he approached the cave mouth, the door creaked open, and Mort glanced at the two people on the stretchers, Lyn and Drake. Mort clenched his teeth, the rows of serrated teeth making an audible scraping sound. He was furious. It had been too late—too late for his real body, but for these two? He glanced at the building constructed to be an inn, and the two groups of goblins began wordlessly heading that way.
Mort entered the cave, stepping through the darkness. For him, it was as bright as a summer day inside the lightless cave. The faint trickling of water dripped from the ceiling, crashing into the resting rocks below. The smell here wasn't the worst; it smelled like wet rock and soil, but mostly like mildew. The red essence parted like a sea before him, making way to the source of such pungent energy. Mort stood before the source, the thing that, if it died, could very well spell his own end. In a way, it was Mort's new heart. The goblins, humans, wolves, bats, and rats—he considered all of them to be extensions of his limbs, not individuals but tools. Even when he gave them no orders, the people he had brought into his network of "limbs," as he called them, never showed signs of their own sense of self or will. A few humans had even nearly starved to death without occasional instruction to the drone inside them.
He strode forward, his arms outstretched in a T-pose. His eyes closed as his focus shifted to the source. A loud snapping sound echoed through the room, followed by a splash. A tendril of silver had broken the still waters, speeding through the air at an alarming rate. Snatching the form, the tendril coiled around its arm as many others joined it, inspecting every bit of the creature it had added to the network.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Could that work? Mort wondered after inspecting the physicality of the creature. One of the tendrils dove down its throat, searching for information on its digestive system. A shrill screech escaped the silver pool as it ripped the tendril out of its mouth; small black creatures were biting into the silver tendril. "How interesting!" Was its stomach another ecosystem? He pulled the little black creatures closer to the silver pool. A large maw of silver clamped down over the tendril.
"Ah, how strange!" Mort thought. This creature was far more interesting than he expected. The small black creatures that he had just eaten seemed to have a type of essical connection between themselves and the original body. Mort considered the connection similar to how he himself manipulated his various networks of drones. However, this was also concerning. If he was able to analyze such a thing himself, could someone block the effect of such an essical connection? The term "essical" was mostly used to depict an almost unexplainable phenomenon where essence from the same body reacted to one another at great distances; it was something many scholars were baffled by. Learning about it during his college years was one of his favorite studies.
"If I go to college again, I can steal all their knowledge and compile it myself!" The idea was beyond enticing. Perhaps he would! His thoughts trailed back to the flesh doll in his tendrils. He plucked the words of power it sought from the doll in its silver ‘hands’. From the hive's maw, it spoke the words.
The flesh of his new toy began to draw the silver in. Every particle flew through the air toward the black creature. Gallons of silver pooled toward the creature's open mouth, slipping through the small holes of its tear ducts, ears, mouth, and nose, until not a single drop of silver was left in the dark room. The task took several minutes to complete. Finally, the flesh of the creature rippled, a thin sheen of silver liquid oozing from its pores, covering the exterior of its skin. Eventually, its body began to take a new shape.
----------------------------------------
Standing just outside the cave mouth was the bare-skinned form of a familiar man. He breathed in the fresh air—a new sensation—and glanced at his hands. He could see hundreds of times better than before and could manipulate his visual acuity at will. In one instance, the forest at least a day away in the distance appeared just as it was, but in the next instant, it felt as though Mort was standing right in front of the tree line, the view so clear and close.
He looked at his own hand, seeing the skin bubble up, revealing the black flesh beneath. Not only had it worked, but it was even better than he imagined. Not only could he see essence without the tool left on his corpse, but his body was also radiating a dense mist of red essence. "Ah, that is what you are," Mort said aloud, finally coming to a conclusion. He opened his mouth, showing normal human teeth—it was working quite well. "So, this is what I am now," he said mostly to himself. The cold breeze made him quite chilly.
Mort had come to the conclusion that he was now a rare monster found in dungeons called Dungeon Kings. They were a species of monsters with no consistency in strength, form, or ability. The main trait they shared was the ability to manipulate the dungeon as if it were a ghost limb.
----------------------------------------
Mort was given clothes by one of the townsfolk. They understood his needs but not the style he was used to. Mort frowned. "No! My guild card!" He planted a palm over his face. How could he forget such an important item on his corpse? Shaking his head, he walked into the tavern and entered the room where both Lyn and Drake were unconscious. Mort moved to Lyn's side, lifting part of the cover and sliding under it. He encircled her in his arms before soon falling asleep himself. It had been a long night.