“I thought cores were supposed to be crystals or something?” Graverra directed the whispered question to Capo, not the dungeon core in front of her. She certainly hadn’t gotten far along enough in her dungeon clearing career to be directly interfacing with any. Did they even talk?
A single, gigantic eye opened from an overlap of muscle; Blinking blearily before staring Graverra down. She supposed the iris at least looked crystalline; Bright blue like mana.
“We’re allowed to take on whatever for we please, within reason.” An unfamiliar voice filled the room. Still male, but after Capo’s gruffness, this sounded more like velvet. Soft. Warm.
“It’s… Kind of gross.”
The room rumbled in response. Separate from the heartbeat.
“No! No! I like it!” Graverra scrambled back to her feet in fear of finding out exactly what that rumbling meant. Zaehlenne hissed and rattled behind her as she skittered out of her necromancer’s way.
When whatever it threatened didn’t happen and the room stilled again, Graverra stood settle in front of the dungeon core again.
“It makes sense, I guess.” She nervously twirled a curl of her hair around her finger. “You’re like the heart of the dungeon.”
“Exactly. Thank you.”
“See!” Graverra had almost forgotten about the skull perched on her hat. “I knew you two were going to get along. Show him your cat.”
“My cat?” Graverra asked, while both she and the core blinked in unison. “Oh, my cat!”
Graverra rest her hand on the top of Zaehlenne’s skull, already certain the cat would be sat at her side. “This is Zaehlenne. She’s- She’s just a bone fiend. I mean, we can all summon them after level three, if we get the right skull and learn the ritual. Her’s is only brass plated, a little because I’m still just level seven, but it takes a lot more to gild stuff than you’d think.”
“Am I supposed to understand any of this?”
Suddenly, and without her say so, Graverra’s grimoire was summoned to float between the two of them and the page with her stats flipped open.
Graverra Greame
Human - Drethiaq, Necromancer
Level - 7 | EXP. - 33%
Health: 400/400 | Stamina: 275/400 | Mana: 700/700
Skills Slotted
Withering Blast | Death Shroud | Bone Fiend | Good Shepherd | [empty]
Equipment Slotted
Mage Robes (Necrotic) | Quickened Gloves (Mana) | Enduring Boots (Stamina) | Voren’s Mage Hat (Mana)
Strexhin Reaper’s Scythe (Necrotic)
“Hey!” Graverra rushed to shut the grimoire before anything else could be parsed. She guessed maybe that wasn’t exactly private information for a dungeon core, but it still felt like an invasion. He could have just asked nicely.
“If you had more mana, you could do more?” The core asked. It felt like an odd next question. Like something he should have already known.
“Well, I just kind of said,” Graverra hugged her grimoire to her chest rather than dismissing it. “I can make Zaehlenne stronger as we go. They sort of level up with you…”
The core hummed thoughtfully at the explanation, then, “I could level you.”
That was… certainly an offer. Graverra rubbed her thumb over the bumpy spine of her grimoire. Level seven wasn’t actually all that impressive and though she might have been able to talk a good game with the average adventurer… The dungeon core must have known better. “That’s really very nice of you to offer and I don’t mean any offense, but… I think if all I did was grind through your little rats, really, no offense, I’d die of boredom.”
“I wouldn’t want you for that.”
“Oh.” That caught Graverra off guard. Her brow furrowed as she tried to answer her own question before asking it. “What would you want me for?”
“Your fiend intrigues me. As do your other skills. And equipment, how does that work?”
Graverra’s scowl deepened. How did a dungeon core not know how equipment worked?
“It’s just buffs,” She shrugged. “I mean, they’re nice. Especially these,” She lifted a hand to show off her fingerless gloves. “For the mana. But… I still don’t really understand how that would help you…? Or my fiend. She’d still be mine. I couldn’t just leave her here.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Graverra supposed she could leave the gloves, if mana was what he was after, but with the absolute ordeal it had been just to get them and the fact she didn’t think dungeon cores could wear gloves, she really would rather not. And she still didn’t understand what a dungeon core would do with them.
“Unless she’s part of the dungeon, right boss?” Capo piped up.
“I can’t just be part of the dungeon.” Graverra scoffed. This was about setting her up with the dungeon core again, wasn’t it? And as little sense as it had made out in the hall, now that she had seen him, it definitely wouldn’t-
“You could.” The dungeon core said. “We could share everything; levels, mana, spells, defenders… You would be like a queen and my dungeon your domain.”
“Oh.” Something about the intensity of it all made Graverra want to blush into her grimoire. “Well, that’s… That’s probably the sweetest offer anyone has ever made me - I mean, you’ve seen my stats now, I can’t even get into a guild. I’m not exactly marriage pact material.”
That wasn’t it. The dungeon core had not just proposed to her, Graverra knew that, but… Levels, mana, spells, everything. If you weren’t just doing it out of love, those were the determining factors…
“Say yes, Graverra.” It didn’t sound like encouragement. It sounded like a command.
“Well - Well hang on.” She couldn’t just agree to that, could she? It felt like the sort of thing Valerae would have given her a hard time for. Branamir would hate the idea, but that didn’t matter to Graverra half so much, Branamir hated everything she did on principle. Neither of them had ever been half so impressed by her skills or her gear… They certainly didn’t like Zaehlenne.
“To what?” The dungeon core asked, earnest as ever.
“No, I just mean…” Graverra took another moment to gather her thoughts. This had certainly taken a turn from asking to be let out… “I wouldn’t be able to leave, would I?”
The core blinked. “Why would you ever need to? Why would you ever want to?”
“Well, it’s a big world…” Seeing it all had never been part of her plan, but not being stuck in one place most definitely had.
“We could make a world just for you.”
That was tempting. “Could- Could I think about it?”
“I suppose if you feel you have to.” The core sounded oddly calm for the disappointment Graverra was certain she’d just caused, but even as she waited, there was no offer to let her back out. No other door summoned.
“So, you’ll just let me out now and I’ll come back in - I don’t know, what’s fair? A day or two? I so plan to come back either way, I promise.”
“Oh…” Then the dungeon core sounded appropriately disappointed. “No, I can’t let you leave.”
“So what happens if I decide to say no?” Graverra dismissed her grimoire with the funny feeling she might be about to need something else. Like her scythe. Zaehlenne too had stopped sitting idly by and was back on her feet, tail lashing. If she had hackles, Graverra felt they would have been raised. So she wasn’t the only one feeling something was off. Good.
“I’ll have to kill you.”
“What?!”
“If you leave now, I think it may read as you clearing the dungeon. The dungeon hasn’t even been placed yet and I don’t have the resources to reward someone such as yourself properly. It will be seen as a failure on my part, and I can’t have that.”
“Well, that’s very unfortunate then that I fell in here, but - that wasn’t my fault.” She wished they could have paused there to discuss why she fell in the first place, but it seemed that time had passed.
“I can’t let you walk out of here alive,” the core said again. “I’m sorry.”
“So, what? I’m supposed to sit here until you can?”
“I can’t allow you to do that either. Your presence has made certain aspects of building my dungeon very difficult. I’ll have to be rid of you either way.”
“Personally,” Capo chimed in, as if this was still a pleasant conversation. “I’d still go with the first offer.”
“Because the other choice is to die!” Graverra snapped at the skull. Had he known that this whole time? Had this been planned? And she’d felt sorry for him.
“I really would rather I didn’t have to kill you. I think we could work well together.”
“You- You can’t even summon something big enough to try.” Graverra looked between Zaehlenne and the dungeon core as she began to put some things together. He’d been impressed by her, which, obviously, but he was a dungeon core… All he’d been able to show her was a weird rat and a wise-cracking skull. Even if it had been a finished dungeon, she would have out-leveled it. They all started at zero too, didn’t they?
“No?” The floor beneath her became unstable as it transformed into a fleshy tentacle, slithering up and around her, tightening until she could hear bones crack.
“On second thought, you would drop an awful lot of mana for a lowly little core like me…” The room rumbled in a truly dangerous tone. If he could have crushed her outright though, Graverra felt certain he would have, but as the tentacle coiled around her she realized the plan may very well be just to slowly suffocate her to death.
Even with her mouth covered, Graverra screamed, beginning to cast Withering Blast as fast as she could. There couldn’t be a point to killing her if she had no mana left to drop. She hoped.
Zaehlenne pounced. Graverra felt the tentacle rock with the force of it. Good kitty. Her panther’s claws and teeth tore to free her, keeping the tentacle’s attention as Graverra wriggled herself the rest of the way loose.
The entire room shrieked as Graverra fell back to the spongy floor. She scrambled back to her feet just in time to see the tentacle flatten Zaehlenne and send her bones scattering. If the entire room wasn’t red already, then Graverra was certain she would have been seeing it then.
“Was that really necessary?” Capo asked not at all at the volume Graverra would have used if she could string together a coherent thought outside of rage.
The dungeon core stared at her with his singular, mana-blue eye, as if she were meant to answer that.
“Yes!” Graverra cried. “Yes it was necessary! What- What was I supposed to do? He just tried to kill me! He killed my cat!”
“You should have said yes.” The dungeon core stated. It sounded like a command again.
Graverra sputtered. How was she supposed to argue with that? What happened now, she just said no and died? As if. “You- You should have asked better!”
The dungeon core blinked.
“Yeah,” Graverra nodded in agreement with herself. This was his fault. Especially if he didn’t actually want to kill her. “I shouldn’t have to impress you. I already did! Clearly! You- You should be the one impressing me. Why should I want to stay in some gross, wet, flesh room with you for the rest of forever?”
The dungeon core blinked again. Then the room rumbled.
“Get out.”
“Boss-” Graverra doubted very much that Capo could do anything to smooth this over, even if he had gotten the chance to try.
“Out!”
The tentacle reemerged from the floor, lashing and snapping at Graverra, chasing her backwards. She put out a hand behind her while she back pedaled, searching for the door she had come through in the first place. Instead, she found herself tipping backwards into nothing for the second time that day.