ASHE WAS DYING.
His teammate’s shouts sounded muffled and distant while his heartbeat seemed strangely loud as it rapidly pumped blood out of his body. He knew he should be fighting to stay alive but instead he was filled with a calm acceptance that this was the end.
ASHE WAS 10 YEARS OLD.
“Watch yourself” his father said gruffly as Ashe cautiously approached the trapped rabbit.
“I know dad” Ashe replied in an annoyed tone.
This was hardly the first rabbit he’d caught. Its hind foot was firmly ensnared but Ashe knew it would still bite and claw in desperation as it tried to get away. While he’d caught dozens of animals with his father, this was the first time his father had let him actually kill the animal himself. He lashed out quickly with his right hand pinning the rabbit’s head to the ground and rendering it helpless. His father pulled the knife from the sheath on his belt and placed the hilt in his son’s left hand. At a glance the knife didn’t look like much with its modest 3 inch iron blade, but on closer inspection you could see it was flecked with opal and it somehow seemed to have a weight to it, almost a presence that was hard to ignore once you became aware of it. His father had told him it was a family heirloom but not much else. This was the first time his father had ever let him touch it.
“Remember what I told you, try to feel the aura of the creature unravel and bring the power into yourself”
Ashe stared intently at the helpless creature but for the life of him he had no idea what “aura” he was supposed to be able to see. He drew the blade along the animal’s neck severing the artery and spilling its lifeblood into the dirt. He concentrated, trying to do as his father instructed. Was the dagger tingling in his hand? “Don’t get distracted” he admonished himself. He still had no idea how to feel an aura so he just concentrated on trying to feel the life force of the rabbit flowing into him. He gasped. It worked! He was sure he’d felt it. Somehow he knew that he’d only pulled in a small fraction of what was possible but he had pulled some of the rabbit’s energy into himself. As the creature finally breathed its last he drank in the essence. It felt…. good.
ASHE WAS 16 YEARS OLD.
“This is why everyone calls me crazy” he thought to himself as he propped his heavy spear against his chest to dry his sweating palms on his breeches. He was boar hunting with three other men from the village. While they ran around through the muddy woods getting exhausted and filthy Ashe sat calm and dry under a tree but they were all happy to let him have this job. While they were spooking the boars towards him he had one job, stare down a 300 pound beast while holding the spear at the perfect angle for the boar to impale himself.
While most of the hunters in the village primarily used arrows to down their prey, Ashe needed to be close at the time of death to pull in its life force. Holding the spear as it plunged into a boar’s chest was about as close as it got so Ashe always volunteered for spear duty. While it was obviously dangerous, he’d never found a better way to collect essence. Typically this duty fell to the bulkiest man on the team as strength was critical to holding the beast on the spear. Ashe excelled at the job. Even though he was a fairly wiry looking teenager he was easily as strong as the largest man in the village.
“Here we go” he muttered to himself. As the boar barrelled through the shallow ravine towards him, he calmly wedged the butt of the thick spear against the boulder and prepared for it’s arrival. The boar burst through the last of the underbrush and slammed into the spear taking it perfectly in the chest, piercing deeply into a lung while pinning the boar several feet in the air before both boar and spear fell to one side. It squealed in frustration, pain and rage. Ashe moved quickly around the spear and pulled his father’s knife from his sheath. With practiced efficiency he focused on the center of the boar and saw its aura flashing and flickering wildly. As he slid the short knife into the boar’s heart he imagined it slicing the aura causing it to lose its structure and flow into him. He shuddered with pleasure as the power flowed into him and suffused his body with energy. The men who’d been chasing the boar entered the clearing just as he was finishing and said nothing but gave him a wary look upon seeing how much pleasure he derived from killing. Unconsciously shaking themselves they brushed the feeling aside and focused on the boar. So what if Ashe seemed a little creepy, the three of them had just gotten enough meat to feed the village for a week.
Over the next two hours as the other men chatted while carrying the boar back to the village Ashe trailed behind them quietly focusing on his center carefully spinning and refining the energy there as his father had showed him. As he did, he felt the impurities in it that made the process feel kind of like stirring a stew. Some of the “chunks” in his inner stew, as he’d just started thinking of it, he seemed unable to do anything about but most of it, the type that felt somehow darker than the rest he could manipulate with ease. It wasn’t raw power, it had a feeling, almost a flavor to it. It was dark. It was absolute. It was amazing. His father had mentioned something about “infernal” energy once telling him never to use the word around others. He’d explained to Ashe that this type of energy wasn’t evil anymore than a wolf killing a rabbit is evil. It was a natural part of life but while energy such as celestial focused on the common good and faith in something greater than us, infernal energy was about personal power and growth at the expense of those weaker than you. As Ashe continued spinning the energy in his center he started pulling out this infernal energy and infusing it into his body. Not only did this allow his center to start flowing more quickly, the large chunk of boar on his back also seemed substantially lighter. Unnoticed by Ashe his skin darkened a shade.
ASHE WAS 18 YEARS OLD
No one in the village would hunt with him anymore. They never actually accused Ashe of doing anything wrong, they just started leaving without him and finding excuses whenever he tried to join them. Ashe knew why. When he killed, he drank in the power from the animal, savoring it as one would a fine wine. Because of this he liked to kill slowly to enjoy savoring it for as long as possible and ensure he drank in every scrap he could. The side effect of this slow death was that the process was painful for the creature he was killing. Once one of his friends had seen him take a full minute to kill a deer while grinning with pleasure. The rumors had started flying and nobody wanted to look him in the eyes anymore, let alone go out into the forest with him. Of course, the fact that his hair had changed from a sandy brown to a jet black over the last two years didn’t help.
Ashe had taken to longer and longer hunting trips so as to spend as little time in the village as possible. It was now common for him to be gone for days at a time. He didn’t mind being alone or spending days out in the elements. He didn’t need much sleep and the cold didn’t seem to touch him like it once had. A noise in the brush interrupted his self reflection. His sharp eyes easily picked out the rabbit nibbling on some grass. He’d found that by pulling his aura in tight around him he became much less noticeable. It was as if he was able to remove that feeling you get when somebody else was in the room with you. He wasn’t invisible. Anyone paying attention would see him easily enough but for those not paying attention, like this rabbit, he was just part of the background.
As he held his aura tight and watched the rabbits comparable tiny aura he was finally in a good position to try a plan he’d had half formed in his head for a while now. He bunched his aura even tighter for just a moment then sprung it at the rabbit like a puma pouncing. The animal never stood a chance. Stunned, it collapsed to the ground. Grinning with pleasure, Ashe crossed over to the rabbit and used his knife to finish the job as he drew in its power. Compared to some of the larger animals he hunted the energy of the rabbit was quite small, but every little bit helped.
ASHE WAS 23 YEARS OLD.
“Watch yourself” the bartender cautioned.
Ashe scoffed. After working as a mercenary for four years the village toughs looking to impress the local girls by picking a fight with an out of town stranger didn’t intimidate him in the slightest. While he was certain he could handle the lot, he knew it would make the entire town his enemy which was never a good plan. Instead he focused on infusing infernal essence into his aura and let it fill the room. Suddenly the farmhands who’d been looking to blow off some steam with a good brawl looked queasy and thought better of it. With a little more half-hearted bluster they moved away from his table and headed back for another round of beers.
He was used to being an outcast. That’s why he’d left his village. Even though he was the best hunter in the village nobody wanted him to stay. Finally he’d packed up as many furs as he could carry, which was considerable, and headed off to find his way in the world. With his intimidating aura, strength, and interest in killing, a life as a mercenary fit him well. He’d found killing men, not only easy but very rewarding. All except the first one that is.
It had been his first job. A moderately successful merchant had hired him as an apprentice of sorts to help out his usual guard Brand. The roads were far from safe from beasts or robbers and while Brand was experienced, he was getting old and wasn’t as effective as he used to be. Despite Ashe’s best efforts to remain vigilant after two full days on the road his mind was wandering. He’d been working on the energy in his center, trying to keep it as pure as possible. He found that the whirls swirling inside him could be strung almost impossibly thin. He’d been working on turning these whirls into braid with each braid made up of another smaller braid. It was time consuming and tedious but no more so than staring at trees while walking along a dirt road for two days.
A loud thunk shattered his concentration as an arrow suddenly sprouted from Brand’s chest straight through his heavy leather jerkin. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. Ashe dove under the wagon followed quickly by the merchant who’d been driving it. The wood of the wagon splintered as three more arrows followed trying to get an angle on them. Moving essence into his eyes, Ashe could see the aura of the archer perched about 10 feet up in a tree. He scanned the entire area intensely but it appeared the archer was alone. He scrambled to the far side of the wagon and cautiously reached in and grabbed Brand’s shield. The old guard had tired of carrying it around and had left it in the wagon until it was needed. With the heavy wooden shield strapped to his left arm and his short sword gripped firmly in his other hand he peeked around the side of the wagon and called out to the archer.
“I know you’re alone and have lost the element of surprise. There’s two of us and I’ve got a shield up now so leave your bow and move off.”
“Ho there, you’ve got this all wrong” the archer called back, “we’ve got you surrounded. Kindly leave all your money and be on your way, you can even keep the wagon.”
Ashe knew he was bluffing but he also knew that if this fellow was desperate enough to take on three men he wasn’t going to give up easily. He burst from behind wagon and ran towards the archer in a ragged zig zag. It worked. The archer tried to shoot him but four seconds later there were two arrows in the dirt and Ashe was safely behind a thick tree trunk just 10 feet from the archer. Using his essence vision he could see the archer’s aura right through the tree. He grabbed his own aura and cracked it like a whip at the archer. While not properly stunned, the archer was taken completely by surprise and fell off his perch landing heavily on the ground with the wind knocked out of him. Ashe wasted no time quickly pouncing on the fallen man. He dropped his short sword and pulled out his knife which he slid directly into the archer’s heart. Out of habit more than anything else he immediately began drawing in the man’s aura. So much power! It was almost too much. The power entered him his center and he shuddered as each braid in his center to seems to split into even finer braids seemingly going on forever. “It’s so beautiful” was the last thought to cross his mind as he fell into unconsciousness.
He awoke completely disoriented, and HUNGRY. He was lying next to the now rotting corpse of the dead archer. How long had he been out? More importantly, what was that smell? He’d smelled dead animals before but this was something else entirely. He looked down at himself and saw he was covered in a black sludge that resembled something like lamp oil mixed with rancid fat and feces. He stripped off his putrid clothes and scrubbed himself with dirt and leaves. It helped a little but he was going to need to find a stream to bathe in as soon as possible. Searching the archer he found some jerky and a water skin. He hastily consumed them, then started stripping the clothes off the body. The corpse had released its bowels at some point so he left the pants and settled for the rough spun long tunic and the worn boots. The only other thing of value was a bow of good quality and a half full quiver of arrows. Ashe had never liked archery, it put him too far away from the kill, but these should hopefully net him enough money in the next town to at least get a fresh pair of decent clothes. He walked back to where he’d left the wagon to find the road completely empty. Apparently the merchant had moved on without him. Ashe couldn’t blame him. It’s not like they were mages immune to all disease. For common folk like them plague and disease was a very real concern and he was a man oozing black goo. He had no idea what had happened to him or what that black sludge was but he knew he didn’t feel sick. In fact, other than being extremely hungry and smelly he actually felt better than he’d ever felt in his life.
____
His reminiscing of days past was interrupted when Lara walked into the bar. She saw him and smiled. Damn she was beautiful. Ashe did something very rare for him. He smiled back.
ASHE WAS 27 YEARS OLD.
It had been almost 3 weeks. He hated being away from Lara so long. Ever since they’d run away together and started their life in a small village at the base of the Phantom mountains he’d never left her alone for so much as a full day, but things had changed. The forest was getting more dangerous and the typical prey animals had gotten more sparse. After the second hunter in as many weeks had never come home the villagers started hunting in small groups. There was something big and mean out there and Ashe had decided it was up to him to find it. Perhaps it was a beast escaped from the dungeon at the top of the mountain he’d heard about. He’d heard plenty of rumors about dungeons and adventurers. He’d even seen a guild office in one of the towns he worked as a mercenary but, Ashe thought you’d have to be an idiot to choose that life. He knew there was money and power aplenty to be found in that life but like so many things that sound too good to be true there was a hefty cost. From everything he’d heard the lifespan of most adventurers were measured in weeks or months, not years. Yes, of course there were the few who became fabulously wealthy and powerful but the vast majority never made it that far. He didn’t need it. A long healthy life with Lara was all he wanted, which was why he’d been out in the woods for so long.
With the attacks becoming more frequent and closer to the village he knew it was only a matter of time before his Lara was in real danger. Ashe was a killer, he was confident he could handle it but Lara would never stand a chance. He’d tracked the monster all the way back to its lair. It had been difficult, the creature left little sign to follow but Ashe had hunted his entire life. He was slow and meticulous and had gone down more false paths than he could count but now he was here. It was nothing elaborate, just an earthen cave dug out under the exposed roots of a massive fallen tree, a hollow maybe 20 feet in diameter. Ashe had watched it leave the lair several hours ago. This was no mere animal. It was a beast. Ashe was sure of it. He’d heard plenty of stories about them. A beast was a creature who’d lived long enough and killed enough prey to become something more. They were crafty, smart, and extremely dangerous. Ashe had decided he was better off catching it on the way back after it was tired from hunting and slow from a full belly rather than take it on when he first saw it leave it’s lair.
Finally, after hours of preparation and waiting he sensed the beast was approaching. It was a monstrous thing, looking like a forest cat mixed with a boar but grown to be eight feet in length and easily 1,000 pounds. Ashe had his aura drawn in tightly around him to avoid notice. As the boarcat approached he lashed out with his aura and slammed it into the beast. He knew he stood little chance of stunning such a powerful creature this way, if he got lucky he’d take it, but his realistic goal was to piss it off. He succeeded. A brief moment of disorientation crossed the beast’s eyes then it glared directly at Ashe with outrage that this puny thing dared to challenge HIM. It charged towards Ashe with incredible speed and once it got within 15 feet soared through the air in a mighty lunge, almost exactly as Ashe had expected.
With surprising speed Ashe ducked out of the way, revealing the large boar spear Ashe had wedged into the earth behind him. The boarcat tried to twist mid-air but it was too late. The spear slammed through its soft underbelly, passed through its intestines and could be seen pushing up the skin on its back without piercing it. Though severely wounded and hampered by the spear protruding from its belly the boarcat whipped its head back and forth trying to find Ashe, clearly still ready to fight. Ashe had buried himself deep in the bushes and withdrawn his aura once again. The boarcat started to roam the clearing looking for him but yowled in pain every time the spear jostled within him. Finally it laid on its side, curled in on itself and grabbed the spear with its huge mouth. With a sickening slurping sound it wrenched the spear out of itself. While this regained some mobility it was bleeding profusely through the gaping wound and several feet of intestines were hanging out of him. Ashe guessed the boarcat had maybe a minute at most before it bled out enough to lose consciousness. Blood was pooling under the boarcat turning the immediate area into a mess of slippery mud.
This was going better than Ashe had dared hope and he enabled his essence vision to view the creature’s aura as he hungrily examined the powerful aura he hoped to consume. The catboar’s eyes instantly snapped towards Ashe as it started scrambling in his direction. With a curse Ashe turned and ran the fastest he’d ever run in his life. He dodged around trees and ducked under branches narrowly avoiding jaws and claws. He finally stopped and turned around when he heard a terrible wail of anguish from behind him. In the chase the boarcat’s intestines had caught on a small stump and ripped out most of its organs. It only had moments of life left. Ashe quickly crawled up behind it as it lay on its side panting short breaths. He focused on the boarcats aura and starting pulling in the energy. He pulled and pulled until he finally passed out.
After recovering from the ecstasy of drinking in all that power from the boarcat Ashe set to work butchering the animal. He didn’t bother with the meat as predators rarely tasted good and instead focused on the skin and teeth. The pelt was the sturdiest he’d ever seen and the teeth seemed to be made of iron, a fairly rare commodity in their small village. The feet weren’t cat claws but rather boars hoofs that didn’t look worth taking. He also found a gem embedded in the base of it’s skull that glowed with an enticing light and seemed to radiate power. After packing up everything he could easily carry he headed back to town. While it had taken him over two weeks of meticulous stalking to make it out this far the journey back at a brisk walking pace was over in a day and a half. Of course, the fact that he missed Lara, a real bed and a proper meal meant that he set a pace that few could have kept up with.
Ashe called out a greeting to Lara as he approached their small cabin. Something was wrong. The door had been ripped off the hinges and entire house looked like a pub brawl had taken place inside. There were no bodies and only a little blood. No reason to assume the worst. The weirdest thing was that the infernal energy that he usually only detected when taking a life seemed to be everywhere. It was nowhere near as intense, but it seemed to cover everything in a light dust. He rushed from their home on the outskirts of the village to center square to find clues as to what happened. The entire town was a wreck. He found a few bodies that seemed to have been utterly savaged, he couldn’t even tell who it had been. Based on the hair color and remains of the clothes he was nearly certain none of them were Lara.
Aside from the few that died it seemed the entire village had just… left. He hadn’t just missed them, they’d been gone for at least a week. They hadn’t been subtle about leaving either. There was a clear trail where everyone had tromped off towards the mountain. He followed it and within 20 minutes saw where it met up with a huge swatch of devastation. It was as if hundreds, if not thousands of creatures had crashed straight through the forest heading up towards the mountain. There had definitely been people, he saw scraps of clothes and a shoe as he followed along but there had also been creatures of all sorts. He saw feathers, fur and scales. Huge trees had been knocked over as if it was somehow less trouble to knock over a 100 foot tall oak than to simply walk around it. There were claw marks in solid rock. His mind reeled. What could have possibly done this?
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While he had no idea what was going or what he could possibly do if he caught up to this massive horde he nevertheless followed along the path. If Lara was alive he had to find her, no matter what the danger. A day and a half of arduous hiking up the steep mountain path and he finally reached a settlement. It was a peculiar mix of tents and stone buildings. It looked like it had been through a war. Signs of destruction were everywhere. Near the entrance to the town was a sad looking sign that looked like it had only recently been pulled back out of the mud after being badly trampled and propped up against the shattered remnants of a stone wall. The sign read “Welcome to Mountaindale”
ASHE WAS 28 YEARS OLD.
His first days in Mountaindale had been rough. Shortly after arriving in the town he’d been set upon by a cleric who raised an alarm and had been ready to attack Ashe. Fortunately a fellow named Craig had been attracted by the commotion and stepped in. He’d explained to everyone, but mostly the cleric, that all were welcome in Mountaindale as long as they didn’t cause trouble. After the cleric had finally been convinced there was no immediate danger and that if he attacked he’d likely be ordered off the mountain permanently he finally stomped away muttering something about “Father Richard hearing about this”.
Once the cleric was gone Craig took Ashe to a secluded area and had a very long conversation. He explained to Ashe that infernally aligned cultivators were generally treated with anger, fear and distrust since the Necromatic War so Ashe would need to step very lightly and generally try not to attract attention. Craig was delighted to hear that Ashe had no knowledge or interest in raising demons or the dead and told him that would help his popularity quite a bit likely moving him from “hated” to “tolerated”. He was surprised to hear that Ashe was almost entirely self taught, and was downright shocked when he saw the neatly spinning and twisting braids in Ashe’s center saying that it looked as efficient if not more so than the more typical ki spirals that most cultivators use. Ashe learned that he was a D rank 3 cultivator and while that put him firmly above the “fishies” he had a very long way to go compared to many of the more powerful cultivators out there. Craig had also told him he had a “relatively clean” center. It seemed that while Ashe could easily move the infernal essence to empower his body the trace amounts of other elements were stuck entwined in his braids. With that level of corruption he would likely never make it into the B ranks but with his unique cultivation method and method of maintaining his ki Craig had little advice to give about what he could do about it. They talked for over an hour with both of them learning a great deal from the intense discussion.
Once the cultivation topic was mined out Ashe steered the conversation towards his purpose for being here. He explained what he’d found in his village and about his missing wife. Craig looked at him with great sorrow and explained that there had been a terrible plague caused by the dungeon. The plague had started in Spottertown when an infected body from the dungeon had been brought there for examination. All those infected had been drawn back to the dungeon leaving destruction and death in their wake. Barely a week ago there had been a mighty battle in and around the dungeon where all the infected had been wiped out. It was a near certainty that his wife Lara was dead. While Ashe had strongly suspected his wife was already dead he was surprised how much it hurt to have his last remnants of hope utterly crushed. He numbly thanked Craig for the information and parted ways with Craig pointing him to a small cluster of tents on the outskirts of the town where the few other infernal cultivators in the camp had set themselves up.
He had a mission now. This dungeon had caused a pestilence and taken away the only thing in his life he’d ever truly loved. He would fight, he would train, and when he was strong enough he would destroy the dungeon.
He found the small cluster of tents and approached tentatively, understanding that they’d all likely been harrassed if not outright attacked during their time here and would probably not be very receptive to strangers approaching them unannounced. As expected they eyed him warily at first but once they understood that he was an infernal cultivator and that he was not trying to recruit them into any cults or causes they visibly relaxed and introduced themselves.
Lenny was an F rank 9 cultivator. He had dual affinities for water and infernal which was quite rare. As a child he’d always wanted to be an adventurer. At age 16 he’d applied to the guild but after seeing his affinities he’d been rejected almost immediately. Shortly after that he’d learned of this dungeon where anyone could cultivate and had made the journey. He’d actually been one of the earliest people to join the town. He’d managed to find an instructor in the town to teach him some basics of cultivating for an exorbitant price, a debt he was still paying off, and had been entering the dungeon daily to fight and cultivate. His teacher had been a water cultivator and a healer. He’d shown Lenny some water based healing techniques which Lenny had adapted to use both water and infernal. It worked well and Lenny was very adept at healing, though people tended to complain that his healing felt like snakes were slithering through their bodies while he did it.
Shila was the highest level of the group at C rank 1. Her parents had been marginally successful cultivators and when they’d found out their daughter was infernally aligned they found a special boarding school they sent her to that had ended up being a cult. After spending the better part of a decade with them learning how to cultivate and use her gifts she finally broke through to the C ranks and was trusted enough to be told the school’s true intention was not to help infernal cultivators outcast from society but rather to build an army of demons and undead to take over the world. She smiled and nodded during their ranting speech while internally thinking that this actually explained quite a lot of the things she’d been finding odd about the “school”. In Shila’s opinion the lot of them were completely insane. Within a week she’d managed to escape and made her way to Mountaindale.
Gary was an F rank 4 cultivator. He was here with his wife Anne who loved Gary deeply but had no interest in being an adventurer herself. She worked as an assistant in one of the shops while Gary made his daily trips into the dungeon. Their village had been utterly destroyed in one of the many squabbles between Lion and Phoenix kingdoms. After living as refugees for months and being unable to find reliable work Gary had decided he was tired of being marginalized and was going to become an adventurer. He’d come to Mountaindale not knowing a thing about cultivating. After finding out he was infernally aligned he’d found his way to this motley group who’d taught him some basics and had been helping him survive in the dungeon.
Together they weren’t the most balanced or effective team out there but they were almost universally shunned by others so they were all they had to work with and going into the dungeon as a group was far safer than going alone. They were very receptive to having a fourth member to the group, especially one in the D ranks. While Ashe was used to being a loner he understood the value of being in a team and if the dungeon was as dangerous as he’d heard then he’d need every advantage he could get. Feeling no need to share with the group his long term goal of destroying the dungeon, he agreed to join them in the dungeon first thing in the morning tomorrow. He then set out towards the shops to sell the boarcat parts he was still carrying with him and buy some supplies. The pelt and teeth sold for much more than he’d expected. The core he kept. The gleam in the shopkeeper’s eyes when he saw it told him it was valuable so when the shopkeeper offered him a single gold for it Ashe felt like he was being taken advantage of and decided he should just hang onto it until he could figure out it’s true worth. At the end of his shopping excursion he had a lamellar wood shield, a 5 foot spear with a high grade steel tip, a full set of second hand but well made leather armor, a tent, a small backpack with general supplies like rations and rope and a grand total of 20 silver left over.
The next morning they were up at dawn, quickly downed some porridge Anne had prepared for them and headed off for the dungeon. There was already a line but it was short. Ashe was annoyed to see another party got to skip the line and go in the dungeon first but when Shila explained that the leader of their group was the owner of the entire mountain Ashe let it go. By the time the sun was a hand over the horizon they were in the dungeon and ready to fight. They were slow and careful for a variety of reasons. They had a brand new member of unknown skill, two of their group were still only F rank and most importantly of all the dungeon had been weird lately. Both loot and the strength of the mobs seemed to fluctuate from day to day. You might kill a basher and get a gold coin or find a coil cat on the first floor that dropped nothing. With the dungeon like this there was no such thing as too much caution.
They took their time watching for traps and fighting through the rooms not coming up against anything they couldn’t handle with relative ease. Happy to spend more time fighting together before attempting the boss they went down every side tunnel they came across scouring every last room in the first floor. They’d yet to come across a room with more than three bashers in it so far so when they turned the corner into a room at the end of a long dusty hallway they were shocked at what they found. There were eight bashers in this room. 6 were normal looking but two of them looked very different. One had black front paws that were mutated to almost twice their normal size and bore nasty looking black claws almost an inch long. The other was the same but the black paws were on the hind feet. Falling into position Ashe singled out the one with black back paws as the biggest threat and called it out to the team. He knew the front legs of rabbits were relatively weak but if the one with the black hind legs managed to get in a good position on one of them those claws would be the end of them. For their part, the bashers looked shocked at the entrance of the party. Apparently this obvious dead end of a path didn’t get many visitors. After a moment of surprise they quickly moved to attack but that was plenty of time for Ashe to get in front of the group with his shield in place while Lenny stood behind him ready to unleash his mace on anything that got by Ashe before it was able to reach the casters.
The moment they’d entered the room Shila had started chanting. By the time the first bashers started throwing themselves at Ashe’s shield her spell unleashed towards one of the normal bashers. It collapsed on the floor twitching and spasming for several seconds before getting back on its feet as a zombie. With a shout she commanded it to attack its living brethren as she started to focus casting a dark bolt of energy through her obsidian staff at another of the bashers. Shila had explained to the group that while she knew how to raise the undead and even summon lesser demons she knew how unpopular that would be in town so she did it very sparingly in the dungeon and never around other adventurers. Ashe certainly agreed with her decision in this case that the challenge presented required her pulling out her more taboo abilities.
While Ashe had his hands full blocking the bashers bashing into his shield, Gary was able to get a good swing in from the side and crushed one of the oversized rabbits. The basher with the black hind claws leapt at Ashe but unlike the others that went in head first this one leapt with the intention of landing on his hind claws for maximum damage, which meant his soft underbelly was completely exposed. Recognizing the opportunity immediately Ashe got his spear in position and skewered the mutated basher quickly ending its life.
Seeing its partner drop the mutated basher with the black front let out a terrible scream and slammed into Ashe from the side knocking him to the ground. He managed to wrestle and twist around to hold it in a bear hug with the claws thankfully pointing away from him, but he was stuck. He couldn’t do anything while holding this vicious squirming mass. His party also had their hands full, he had to do something. In desperation he pushed his aura onto the mutated basher trying to overwhelm it’s aura. The basher resisted and fought against him. He pushed harder.
“NO! That’s mine!” a voice screamed in his mind.
There was an intense pressure on his mind similar to being deep underwater but much more intense. His aura was being smothered. He screamed and pushed back with his mind as hard as he could. The braids of essence in his center started unravelling and turning into a spiral. His aura, his identity was being re-written. In desperation his called out for Lenny to heal him, not understanding what was happening but hoping that somehow a healer might help. Suddenly the pressure stopped.
“Dani! Dani? Where? Where are you Dani?
As suddenly as it had come it was gone. Ashe’s center bucked back into its normal flowing braid but it wasn’t quite the same. Something of that massive oppressive presence was left behind. With the overwhelming danger of the presence behind him, Ashe re-focused on the giant rabbit he was still holding that still very much wanted to rip him to shreds. Still not having a better plan, Ashe pushed again with his aura trying to completely overwhelm the basher. It was different from before. He had, not a connection, but a similarity with the basher that wasn’t there before. The basher’s mental defenses were still there but Ashe seemed to be able to circumvent them. Rather than trying to snuff out the basher’s aura he instead pulled its center into his own shaping it into his braided pattern then fed it back into the basher. In what simultaneously felt like an instant and an eternity he finished and released his hold on the basher.
It didn’t move for a few moments, then it rolled away from him and sat calmly staring at him. Ashe could feel him sitting there in much the same way he felt his own hands. With a thought he willed the basher to move a few paces to the side and it immediately complied. He had somehow overwritten the basher’s very identity and turned it into an extension of himself.
Shila’s zombie rabbit had long since been pummelled into rabbit paste but the distraction had been sufficient for the rest of the group to finish off the four remaining normal bashers. Seeing no other imminent danger Gary moved toward Ashe’s basher to help him finish it off. Ashe quickly jumped between his new creature and the rest of the group.
“Hold on everyone. This one is special.” Ashe explained
“What do you mean? The black paws? That’s not so special, all sorts of crazy mutations have been happening in the dungeon lately” Gary responded.
“No, watch” Ashe replied and had his basher dance a small jig. That was his intention at least. It was as if it the entire basher was a new limb he could control like his arms or legs but he’d never had a rabbit shaped limb before so he rather understandably wasn’t very good at it. The resulting movement was more of an awkward shuffle but it got the point across.
“You’re controlling it?” Lenny asked. “ Is it alive? Is it some sort of charm? How long will it last?”
“It’s not a zombie” Shila contributed with certainty.
“I’m not sure exactly what it is” Ashe admitted. “But I’m pretty sure it’s permanent. I think this basher is somehow part of me now.”
“Well that’s cool I guess, are you gonna name it?” Lenny inquired.
“No” Ashe replied, “it feels like it’s part of me and naming it would be like naming my leg or my foot. It would just be weird”
“I’ve named one of my parts” Gary offered only to have Shila smack him in the shoulder while demonstrating a truly impressive eye-roll.
Knowing that rooms which hadn't been cleared in a long time tended to have more loot the group stopped paying Ashe’s new pet any mind and instead started looking for a chest. They found it easily enough and scanned it for magical traps with their essence vision. Not finding any and not having anyone in their party skilled at finding physical traps they went with the next best thing. Ashe lifted the lid using the tip of his spear while standing as far away from the chest as possible and holding the shield in front of his face. They’d asked Shila about raising a zombie basher for the purposes of opening chest but she’d complained that it was a huge waste of essence for a relatively small risk. When nothing happened after lifting the lid Ashe slowly approached with his shield up. Five darts exploded out of tiny holes in the wall above the chest and slammed into his shield. With a tense chuckle Ashe continued forward and found the chest was absolutely stuffed, with left shoes. He’d heard stories about the dungeon doing things like this before. What was the deal with this dungeon and left shoes? Unfortunately none of the shoes were inscribed but they did look well made and should be good for a few silver each. None of them were anything remotely approaching wealthy so nobody questioned when he started dividing up the boots for everyone to carry with them.
As they pushed on through the remainder of the floor Ashe tried at some opportune times to repeat the trick and see if he could capture some more bashers. As it was too difficult for him to try to use his basher while still fighting effectively he figured if he could build up a small army of them he could sit back and focus on directing them as some sort of beastmaster instead of being in the thick of things himself. It wasn’t working at all. In fact, all it was accomplishing was keeping him distracted during battle. After many attempts, he finally decided this was only going to work if they captured one so he could focus on it without having to worry about getting pummeled by other creatures at the same time. He explained this to his group and decided it was worth a shot so after killing three of the four bashers in the next room they all made a point of giving Ashe some room to make is attempt on the one remaining. Ashe dropped his spear and charged towards the basher. It leapt towards him but he blocked it easily on his shield and continued his momentum forward to pin it between his shield and the stone wall of the dungeon. With the basher held firmly in place he reached out to the basher’s aura. It held for a moment, then with the suddenness of the ice on a lake breaking beneath one’s feet it broke and Ashe plunged past the basher’s aura into its center. This time instead of pulling the basher’s center into himself then feeding it back out he just forced the basher’s center to match his own intricate braided pattern. Success! This result was quite different. Instead of the creature moving through his direct will like another limb this basher still operated as an independent creature, just one that followed his direction implicitly. Ashe smiled, things had gotten very interesting.
Continuing on they cleared the entire first floor and half way through the second floor. By the end of their run Ashe’s personal bunny army had grown to include four additional bashers. It had started making the rooms fairly trivial even on the second floor. Though this floor had much stronger elemental bashers they seemed confused upon seeing Ashe’s basher squad and focused on the human exclusively only to get completely blindsided. Ironically it was his first basher that proved the least useful. It required much more skill and concentration to use effectively and their link was so strong that Ashe felt everything it felt in battle which made him very hesitant to throw it into the thick of combat. They’d considered trying to capture one of the more elemental bashers but Ashe knew his little project was already taking up a ton of the group’s time and didn’t want to push things too far on their first day fighting together. After all, the more powerful the creature the more difficult and dangerous it was to capture.
Finally deciding to call it a day and they headed out of the dungeon. Before exiting Ashe tied a length of rope around the bashers’ necks to keep up appearances that they were captured creature. The clerk who collected the commision on their loot from the dungeon frowned at the bashers for only a moment before reminding the group that when they sold the captured creatures they were still required to pay a commission on it. Captured dungeon creatures were a fairly common commodity in the town whether to be used for research, parts, or food but most people who captured them used something a lot more involved than a simple length of rope tied around the neck. The ambivalence was attributed to the fact that at the end of the day they were really just overgrown bunnies so even if they got loose it wasn’t much of a concern in a town full of adventurers.
Having a few hours until he needed to get to sleep Ashe left his bashers tied to a stake in his tent then headed to the market. Munching on some basher kabobs he purchased from a street vendor he went about selling the various loot he’d gotten from the day of adventuring to the relevant vendors. He then went to the leatherworker’s shop to commision a rush job. Back at his tent he fed his bashers an armful of tall grass he’d collected from the outskirts of town and managed to spend an hour practicing with his bashers before finally collapsing into his cot in exhaustion. He woke up an hour before dawn while the streets were empty and took his entire squad of six bashers to the leatherworker. An hour later, when the party awoke and stumbled out of their tents into the chilled morning air, they saw before them Ashe’s squad of bashers all wearing tiny little leather armor and lined up in a perfect phalanx.
“That is absolutely adorable!” Lenny burst out in laughter.
Ashe frowned. “It’s meant to protect them as well as help us identify them from the other bashers in the dungeon.”
By this time his entire party was doubled over in laughter and Ashe felt his face turning red with embarrassment.
“It’s fine Ashe” Gary comforted him wiping tears from his eyes. “It was a solid plan, but you have to admit the sight of them all lined up with armor on seems straight out of a children’s tale.”
His embarrassment finally melting Ashe gave in and had a chuckle with his party while they ate breakfast and prepared for their day in the dungeon. Ashe again tied leashes around his basher squad as they headed towards the dungeon to make it clear to those passing by that the situation was under control and nothing was escaping the dungeon. They made their way to the line to enter the dungeon with the other parties alternately either shaking their heads at the basher squad or asking it if was OK to pet them or if they did any tricks. Ashe was starting to think he could make a living putting on shows with the bunnies if he wanted to, but of course he had more important things to worry about. He was still committed to ending the dungeon’s existence and he personally found the idea of using the dungeon’s own creatures against him to be delicious. When it was finally their turn to enter the dungeon the clerk looked at them in confusion. He’d never seen anyone wanting to take dungeon creatures back into the dungeon before. Technically there was no rule against it so he shrugged, had them sign the typical agreement to pay a cut of their earnings on exiting and waved them through.
Several hours later they were standing outside the boss room on the second floor. They knew Raile was a serious opponent and with half their party in the F ranks this fight would be extremely challenging for them. During the course of their fighting Ashe had captured two more bashers but he’d found that he struggled controlling that many and it actually made him less effective overall so he’d been purposefully reckless with them and sacrificed them to protect the group when they’d come across a coil cat on the second floor. Shila had raised the coil cat as a zombie so between the six bashers, four adventurers and the zombie coil cat they were ready to move into the room with a small army.
They swept into the room and instead of finding a large stone covered rabbit charging towards them they found a squad of three elemental rabbits. They wasted no time getting into position. Ashe sent his basher squad against the earth elemental smasher knowing that his spear would be nearly useless against its stony exterior. He’d need to rely on their blunt bashing to take down the creature. Shila sent her zombie coil cat against the air elemental oppressor while Ashe and Gary faced off against the infernal impaler. The smasher managed to take out two of Ashe’s bashers but sheer numbers won out and the rest of them had soon pummeled the mob into a lumpy paste. The zombie coil cat had one leg hanging limply and had some nasty looking gashes on its side but it also had a dead oppressor clamped in its jaw. Ashe and Gary hadn’t managed to do more than annoy the impaler yet but at this point the battle was all but decided. A smile flashed across Ashe’s face at the easy of their victory just as Raile came bursting out of a tunnel that had opened up above the door they’d entered and slammed in his back. Ashe slammed face first into the floor and everything went black for a moment. He regained consciousness after only a moment, just in time to feel Raile launch off his back to tear into his remaining bashers, crushing his internal organs in the process. The impaler had used the distraction perfectly and Lenny was now kneeling beside Gary desperately trying to keep him alive despite the hole going clean through his chest.
Ashe was dying.
His teammate’s shouts sounded muffled and distant while his heartbeat seemed strangely loud as it rapidly pumped blood out of his body. He knew he should be fighting to stay alive but instead he was filled with a calm acceptance that this was the end.
ASHE WAS DEAD.
The light had faded from his eyes and a final lungful of air rasped out of his corpse. His goals, his ambitions... dust. His lifetime of fighting and growing stronger… irrelevant. Ashe had thought he was special. He thought he could beat the dungeon. But like so many before him, he was wrong. He was just one more victim of the dungeon.
As his body started being absorbed by the dungeon, a basher with black paws squirmed out of its leather cuirass, it turned and scurried away into one of the many small tunnels.