In the dark, without the eye stabbing light in the antechamber, the D.of Ov digested Brishaunna. She didn’t realize at first, until pieces started to drop off and then start growing back. Regeneration hurt and she couldn’t do anything about it. The stomach wasn’t roomy the way dragon stomachs were in the movies. She couldn’t stretch, or even move as powerful muscles and chitinous plates worked to pulp her body.
Then it occurred to her that this wasn’t a stomach at all, not like the acid sack that mammal stomachs tended to be, it was a gizzard. It ground and ground, then pushed. Then her flesh tingled as she got pushed back into the glandular part of the stomach. Back and forth her body slid, between the glandular stomach and the gizzard, pieces sloughing off, breaking off, dissolving and reforming, until finally even the process of being digested hurt as badly as the regeneration.
It didn’t help that she could feel pieces of herself being digested that were sloughed off her. After a while the gizzard filled up with pieces of Brishauna and she lay in a constant state of dissolving within the proventriculus.
Then the dragon heaved. Once, twice, the gigantic muscles of the dragon constricted around her. She slipped back up the esophagus. More gunk coated her, slimy stuff from the crop, and out she came. Her body in about seven pieces in various states of digestion smacked wetly against a bed of gold coins. The dragon licked its lips and heaved up about fifty other pieces, mostly duplicates, and a lot of white, slimy crop milk.
“Speak, dungeonmaster. Move so I can see which part of this mess is the part I can’t digest.”
“Here,” said Brishaunna, lifting her head as soon as her neck reformed. With only a ribcage, a spine and a head with minimal connective tissue, it was all she could manage. She lay back against the coins and stared at a very dead, melted duplicate of her head. Dragon claws smashed down on her body, crushing it. Then pieces of the cavern blurred past her vision before stopping abruptly as she made contact. Coated in sticky, she tumbled down, head over rapidly regenerating torso, and splatted against the one part of the cavern not coated in treasure. She lay there, moaning in pain, as the dragon scooped up befouled treasure and tipped it back into its maw. Then it focused its omega eye on her, a ray of light beaming from it.
“There you are. You are foul tasting. I forgot how terrible regenerating things are.”
“You. . .you ate me.”
“Of course I did. I am the Daemon of Ov.”
“You’re a daemon? A program? You mean you’re not alive?”
“No. I am a construct designed for mortal interface with the background processes of this dungeon. I precisely duplicate mortal form as long as photons do not disrupt my projection.”
“You’re not just a construct you’re a fucking hologram?”
“I am more than a hologram. I am a greater daemon—a Capital Daemon. When you speak of the lesser ones in Ov, the ‘d’ goes on the end of their name. But I require a capital ‘D’ at the beginning. Capital Daemons come with a user interface. Dragons made it to look like themselves, therefore I am draconic. I am the D. of Ov.”
“You didn’t have to eat me you fucking d-bag,” she said, examining he limbs as they reformed.
“Ingestion was required. The integration function requires user input. We do not have the customary years it normally takes to integrate a deathless creature native to Idron. Because you are an ethernaut, I could assimilate the package of information containing your being. To complete this task, I had to sample you. This task is complete. You are ready to be installed. I have a job for you.”
Brishauna stood, wobbled for a moment and stomped over to the dragon. It lowered its head to her, its great beaming eye in the center of its forehead trained on her. the space between its nares was at least as wide as she was tall, and its breath reeked of rot and poison. She poked it there with a clawed, bony finger.
“I had a job! I had a job you fucking great. . .stomach! I am a nurse. People could die because you dragged me here. I have a team of people back home depending on me to fucking clock in and I am the only nurse on the floor qualified to—”
“This is not your function any longer.”
“Bullshit it’s not. You can’t just drag a person out of her life!”
“You are not Brishaunna, nurse of Earth. You are Brishaunna, Dungeonmaster of Ov. I am not responsible for initiating transfer. You know this. Interworld initiated the transfer. Worldbookd has an Erisnet user agreement containing the pact with your soul. It was their right to use you. You were shown this recently.”
“You fucking kidnapped me for a job. That’s goddamn slavery.”
“No.”
“No what?” She asked.
The dragon rumbled, annoyed. It reared its head up toward the ceiling of the treasure room. It fanned its wings, blowing bits of treasure all over the room, pelting her with broken glass and coins. It circled itself on the massive trove and curled up on it. All seven of its eyes narrowed and it scraped furrows with its claws.
“Your lack of understanding is woeful. I diverted your incarnation. I liberated you from becoming a tool of Eris upon Idron. Your incarnation upon Idron was inevitable from the point you stopped paying for Erisnet premium services but continued using the service.”
“I fucking knew it," said Brishaunna. She looked for a door, but realized that no exit existed. How did this thing get in and out of a room with no doors or windows? For that matter, how did this gold get inside such a place?
"Most people would be grateful for being rescued from slavery," said the dragon.
Ok, fine. I’m sorry. But you still commandeered me for a job. Does that mean it’s an actual job? Like if I wanted a vacation I could leave Ov? Like if I wanted a house I could have one and I wouldn’t have to live in the dungeon?”
“Correct. You have a choice of dwelling. You have a choice of exploration. Explore this world and bring your knowledge to Ov. It is your job to keep it updated and prepared for modern adventurers. If you feel unqualified for this job, you could quit the dungeon. It would be a complication, but I am not programmed to mourn your loss.”
“But I would still be deathless.”
“Correct. The cataclysm caused your condition. It is not a curse as the condition of undeath is, where a living soul must be bound by magic to inhabit corpses. It is a shocking of the mortal condition, in a metaphorical sense, that stone in a meteor crater is shocked. Every part of you is at once alive and dead, soul and body.”
“And undead?”
“Yes. Everything of you that made up your incarnation when the cataclysm came upon you has been shattered, shaken up, and pressed together into something that resembles a mortal form but cannot be mortal. The undead template applied to your form in the moments before the cataclysm is included in the substance of your current form.”
“And I would still be a dungeonmaster if I left Ov?”
“Correct. Dungeonmaster is a craft title.”
“So there are other dungeonmasters? And I could be a dungeonmaster of another dungeon?”
“Correct.”
“So where is Ov’s old dungeonmaster?”
“There have been many. Some were destroyed. Some left the position. This dungeon has been without a dungeonmaster for five hundred thousand years.”
“So did the last dungeonmaster quit or was it fired?”
“It is an eternal appointment. There is no involuntary termination but to be destroyed. Thuulca of Ov abandoned us or was destroyed while on leave. I only know that the status of occupation returned null five hundred thousand year ago. Shortly after that, the Aryn sands buried it for a time until Akel was built atop Ov and the undead discovered it again.”
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“How can a deathless thing be destroyed? Isn’t that death?”
“No. The deathless cannot be reincarnated, sent to an extraplanar place of non-incarnating souls, or be incarnated on another etherium connected world. A deathless cannot change or escape their physical form or attain incorporeality. To be destroyed as a deathless entity means you shall be rendered into chaos. The energy of you becomes the energy of the substance outside creation and nothing that makes Brishaunna shall exist in creation. Mortal death is a nonpermanent condition given enough time. Something of the previous incarnation persists. Destruction is final. Nothing persists.”
“This is all the afterlife I’m getting?”
“Correct.”
“And my body on Earth?”
“Destroyed. All ethernaut bodies are destroyed in their previous world when transfer is complete. The destruction of your body is required to power the full transfer. A soul incarnates upon a new world out of the substance of that new world. If it were not that way, transferring species would have to change their genetic structure to survive the way that the Xenolans did when they colonized this planet using space travel.”
“Oh. . .wow. So humans here are different from humans on Earth?”
“It is complicated. Yes and no. They are still human, fundamentally. But the materials they are made from are native materials. It is a greater spiral in the pattern. Dungeonmasters learn this pattern. A dungeon creature cannot inhabit any dungeon but that of its creation but all dungeons may have otherwise identical monsters. If you would like to know more about this aspect of dungeon crafting, accept my offer of employment.”
“If I left this position could I return to it?”
“Yes, if none other has taken it and the dungeon isn’t destroyed.”
“So why haven’t any returned?”
“It is beyond my programming to understand. I am the D. of Ov, not the D. of Idron.”
“But there’s really no going back, is there?”
“NO. This query is a duplicate. The answer cannot change even if you change the wording.”
“So what now?”
“Take up the position. If it helps, it is not a position without compensation. Do you think this hoard is for my amusement? It is your wage for as long as you keep this position. But you must accept this position to receive it.”
Brishaunna picked up a gold goin. she fingered it and considered the pile the dragon rested upon. All of it? All of it and the dungeon was hers? But what would she do with this treasure? It didn't matter. What did a deathless person need with gold in the middle of a desert?what did a dragon need with treasure for that matter?
“Well. . .you could have just asked. While I was alive, I mean.”
“Incorrect. Erisnet belongs to Eris. I entered Erisnet as a virus with a purpose to find a suitable candidate. I then needed to bring you to where Eris is not but bringing you here meant your deathlessness. If I had asked you across Erisnet, Eris would have intervened. If I had allowed you to conclude your mortal affairs, I might not have been able to bring you. This is truly the most efficient and most secure of choices.”
“Fuck me. Alright, fine. I’ll take the position.”
“Good. Hold still.”
“Huh? But I—”
The dungeon rumbled and a fissure opened in the floor, dropping Brishaunna into the abyss.
Brishaunna plummeted. With no bottom and a whole lot of cave stone blurring past her, she struggled to keep her body in the center of the shaft. If falling down an eternity of stairs resulted in massive injury, how bad would it be if she nicked the stone walls? She’d seen videos of phones being dropped down skyscraper stairwells. She didn’t want to be like that.
The player’s guide stressed that Idron was a hollow world. Just how far did this shaft go? Sometimes she could smell different air qualities, from sulfurous, to salty, to alkali to fresh. Once, the shaft opened into a great cavern filed with lava pools and crawling things. She imagined a few of them even looked up at her before she dropped into the next shaft.
How deep was the dungeon, anyway? Was the cavern a part of it? One thing was certain, there was more magic down in the depths for her to breathe. In fact, it made her giddy. Light finally appeared at the end of the tunnel. It amused her.
Then it impacted her.
If being in a dragon’s stomach represented the horror and torture of dissolving, this represented maybe the closest thing Brishauna had yet felt to destruction. In the stomach she could feel her parts being sloughed and reformed. This was her body and soul being taken apart on the cellular level. Every mote of it came away, and away, and away, the magic in the light seeking with primitive understanding, for the core of her being.
But being deathless, she had no core. So it kept searching, trying to find the bit of her that it needed to end her existence. It wanted to eat. It had to have something to show it how to live, how to exist. Babies cried in Brishaunna’s memory; a billion of them, all wailing at once. No, they were not babies, they were cats. Cats around her corpse, mewing and fighting bits of Brishaunna, eating them and then shaking their heads at the sting.
“NO! Bad kitty!” Brishaunna said. The magic recoiled. Beeps began echoing all around her, like the thousand pings, dings, and chirps of the machines she worked with in the hospital. She knew what those beeps meant. It meant attention, warning, help and emergency. She knew by the sound. That one went to the heart monitor. That one was a patient’s call button. This one was the door buzzer to the memory care unit doors. Another chimed the hour alarm to check a patient’s blood sugar.
“Hello?” called the light. “HeILo I NEeD; HeY coUld YoU JUsT; CaN I Get SoMe; JuST A mOmEnT; Can YoU TAkE a seC; HELP I nEEEEEEED—”
“I can’t help you! I can’t be everywhere at once!” she cried, and then realized that she was, exactly, everywhere at once.
“I AM THE D. OF OV,” said the dragon’s voice, vibrating in every atom belonging to the nebulous mass of light and magic that belonged to both the magic and Brishaunna. “Integration stalled at 78 percent. Consume as you are consumed, Brishaunna of Ov. This is the core of the dungeon. You are a being who eats and breathes magic. Why are you not eating?”
Oh. Oh! The idea never occurred to her. Eat what? The cats she imagined? The babies crying? The monitors that needed monitoring? The patients whining? She knew one thing, the chaos had to stop somehow. If that meant eating. . .
The next time a cat swallowed a mote of Brishaunna, Brishauna sucked. This was a concept of sucking, not an actual, no wait, it was like actual sucking. Magic flowed from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. It flowed into her from the ambient mass.
But the whole of the ambient mass recoiled. Screams of agony issued from the mouths of every patient she had ever seen in her years as an emergency room nurse. Mothers screamed in labor. Doctors demanded explanation of her for other nurses’ errors. It wasn't in her head. She didn't have a head at the moment. These images came from the light and blasted into her perception, but not into the concept of the mind she was working with. It wasn't inside.
The mass of light, this core, it pulsed with life, life that Brishaunna craved but could not access. Soldiers screamed now, human soldiers dressed like roman centurions. Her hands sticky with blood she ate them alive, kicking and screaming under her.
“No!” that was wrong. She was a nurse goddamnit! Why was she eating? This wasn't a memory of hers. But it was about her. It jogged her memory of the event, buried within the days that Interworld messed with her brain. She went in the prison just to treat their injuries. After that. . .
Resist. Never again.
Always. Again. A monster.
It cried for help. That was what all this noise meant. It meant help. But the light consumed her even as it cried out. What did D. of Ov say this core was? An awakening goddess?
One that needed to go back to its deathlike sleep.
There were other ways than to knock someone out by injury. In fact, as she sorted through the mist of being that she had become, the chemical signatures for a few anesthetics floated around. Those were remnants of the chemicals involved in dying for the faryn.
Another memory hidden by the transition bubbled up. They took her into the chamber of a living elf. He wasn’t yet completely starved, but his eyes were already sunken with starvation and chilblains decorated his knuckles. He sat in lotus position while the undead offered him drinks to ingest. He cast a spell against emesis, downed them, and returned to his meditation. He soon slumped into a drugged stupor.
These were poisons to numb the body. They were designed to preserve the tissues while the person still lived, while the cells of the body could take in the chemicals and magic. She remembered something like it on Earth, something to do with Buddhist monks in Japan. But that didn’t matter. Her incarnation came with the chemical signatures of those drinks.
The patient wailed and she gave it more morphine, one of the chemicals lodged in the cells of her body for all time. It sighed and passed out.
She checked the monitors. She soothed the babies. She reassured the patients, explained things to their loved ones, made them sit down and shut up. Kill them with kindness. She worked with the doctors, submitted paperwork, replayed every memory of her life as a nurse for this thing. She could do it. She could be everywhere at once just in this singular moment.
With every successful soothing, the light dimmed but no horror and pain, no recoiling in fear and anger, just bliss, acceptance, and sleep.
Something that she knew, in every particle of herself, that she would never experience.
“I am sorry I ate part of you,” she said to it, and fed the cats.
“I am the D. of Ov,” the dragon’s voice finally called out again. This time, the voice barely registered above a whisper. “Integration at 100%.”
Fully formed, Brishaunna opened her eyes.
“Daemon?” she called out. The room measured no more than the size of a compact car. The hole above her exhaled a mineral laden breeze. No exit she could walk through appeared in the walls. This was an oubliette.
She had time to think.
“I am D. of Ov. Initiating internal user interface.”
“Wait what?”
An HUD exploded into her field of vision. A tiny holographic dragon floated in front of her. She reached out to it, but her hand passed through.
“I am d. of Ov. Capital program shutting down. Welcome, dungeonmaster.”
Its tiny voice sounded exactly like a tiny being should sound, but it was an exact duplicate of the gargantuan thing upstairs. She grabbed for it again.
“I am visible only in your field of vision.”
“How is this possible? You can’t access my mind.”
“No. I exist between the spaces of your atoms. None but you can see or hear this interface. I am the interface between you and the core and the dungeon. Congratulations on lulling it back to sleep. You are the first of my dungeonmasters to consider other methods of pacifying it than to consume it until it could no longer maintain sentience. I cannot predict the consequences of this method, but it will be logged in my memory as a viable alternative.”
“So what is this?”
“I am d. of Ov. The capital program is now shut down. I am a subordinate daemon redundant to it. The difference between d. and D. is that I am not autonomous. Many processes and tasks are now manual and are your responsibility as long as you are within the confines of the dungeon. But the difference is, I can be remote to the dungeon. I will always be with you.”