Chapter 28: Fortifications

Thursday, March 30th, 5:13 PM

Dungeon Ciara

“I can’t believe she actually tried to hunt Sven.” Siobhán wiped her eyes, grinning as she stepped outside, followed by the others.

[Nino would freak out if she knew how big Sven actually is.]

[Bird-lizard.] [Not big,] Nino said blandly, with a touch of annoyance.

“Shall I show myself again? It seems you’re ready to attract visitors.” Sven pointed to my lighthouse.

“Would you like my help?” Sven grinned as he floated beside my human residents. His lips curled higher than usual, revealing the full length of his crystalline fangs.

“I’m actually curious,” said Michael.

“Me too.” Rihelah nodded.

“I wanna see!” Siobhán clapped a few times.

Joy shrugged.

Ugh. They’re feeding his ego.

[Fine, Scaly. While you’re at it, maybe you can scare the hell out of the whole county again with your voice.]

When I saw Sven’s wide smile and heard his laugh, I knew I’d messed up. He had the look of a gleeful, obnoxious schoolboy who’d just discovered the most effective way to annoy someone who had no way to fight back.

Sven’s titanic body appeared above the beach, standing on four muscular legs that straddled the entire sandy expanse. His tail reached the end of Black’s Beach to the east, and his massive wings stretched out once before folding atop his back. Sven’s neck and head curved around until he faced everyone in front of the houses.

Nino’s fur stood on end as she flattened herself against the parking lot pavement, her eyes as wide as dinner plates while she cowered beneath Sven’s tremendous ethereal bulk.

All my human residents stood gaping up at the drake. It was obvious none of them had anticipated the scale of his transformation.

When Sven whispered, the sand vibrated. “Ah, it’s wonderful to stretch these old bones. I suggest that you all cover your ears.”

Michael and Joy brought their hands up to shield their hearing, with Siobhán and Rihelah reacting a split-second later.

[Oh, no. Sunny! Sandy! Cover your ears, girls! Sven, what are you—]

The Infernal Drake curled his head downward, his neck arched while I spoke, and then he roared.

The sound shattered the air, like the growl of some great, world-ending beast as it ground a thousand speeding freight trains to dust, with their engines running full throttle.

Hanzo leaped off the top of the Crow’s Nest, still trying to run mid-air until he hit the beach and kicked up gouts of sand, seeking refuge inside my Dungeon. Nino flailed in place, then dashed for the Dungeon entrance as fast as she could, leaving behind lumps of her terror and shame.

Seagulls and smaller birds flew to the ground or the water’s surface in a panic.

Rather than simply flattening the sand as his speech had, Sven’s roar made the entire beach dance with each pressure wave.

Viewed from where the humans crouched with eyes squeezed shut, mouths open and hands clamped over their ears, circular pulses traveled outward as they disturbed the surface at the speed of sound. The same occurred across the water, where thousands of fish and dozens of sharks floated, motionless, to the surface.

Even my Nemesis crabs were stunned, and they hunkered down to ride out the impact of Sven’s roar.

When it was over and the last echoes from the mountains had passed, the whole world seemed deathly quiet.

Sven popped back to his tiny form, floating with a disgustingly-satisfied grin and scratching his scaly stomach next to my human residents, who seemed loathe to uncover their ears.

[Was that truly necessary?]

“I made certain not to go all-out, so it shouldn’t have killed anything important. Besides, that was merely the physical component of my roar. Its magical and spiritual effects are limited to use by my true body.” Sven wore an innocent face, but amusement shone in his eyes.

[Remind me never to tempt you again if we meet in-person.]

“I do not kill sapient beings for pleasure, Dungeon.” Sven seemed offended.

[You could have fooled me. Look at all the fish!]

“They are hardly sapient, and should recover momentarily.” Sven waved a clawed hand dismissively.

[Huh?]

“I have lived longer than you can likely comprehend, Ciara. I know the effects of my roar better than you know your own mind.”

[Oh? How long have you lived?]

“A touch over 80,085 Gaian millennia—the equivalent of 84,912 Earth millennia.”

[Almost eighty-five million years? You’re full of shit.] I scoffed.

Sven wagged a clawed index finger at me. “Greater than you know, Dungeon. There is much more to the Universe than you realize. You will understand the true nature of shit, in time.”

I rolled my eyes.

Fish had started flapping their bodies once more, with most disappearing beneath the water’s surface within a few seconds.

“That was the loudest damned thing I’ve ever heard. Glad you warned us, but it was still painful, even with my ears covered.” Michael yelled, while shaking his head with an incredulous expression.

“Dragonkin take pride in our voices. It will be heard quite clearly, as far away as two hundred of your kilometers, in all directions.” Sven smiled.

[That’s far enough away to be heard in Sacramento and Fresno. Sven, you might have advertised my location a little too well…]

Sven appeared next to my core and stared straight at me.

“Your world has less time than you think, Ciara. If you dally or hesitate, you will all be crushed as soon as you are discovered. Finish your preparations on the surface and get that second floor started.

“Remember, humans and other sapient species can build their own dwellings near your entrance. You mustn’t coddle them, or they will be too weak to assist when the time comes.”

With a raised eyebrow, Sven disappeared.

I understand what you’re saying, lizard, but I’m not going to let innocent people die if I can protect them. Neither will I shy away from eating those who deserve it.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

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With protecting people in mind, I continued going over necessities with my humans. If I wanted people to live here, they’d need a place to get started properly so the city could be rebuilt.

It turned out that, because the focus was on toilets and cleanliness, we’d all forgotten a rather important detail—those houses needed beds.

I shaped a proper bed frame, then tried different materials I’d gathered—mostly from the bottom of the harbor.

My inventory had the useful effect of providing only the material I wanted. That meant all the grime, water, and scum were removed, and I’d purged the detritus that riddled the bedding from sunken boats.

None of the mattresses I’d collected fit the first frame, so I adjusted it to queen size. After creating walls for privacy and selecting properly-sized sheets and pillows from among the hundreds I’d salvaged, I moved around between the open spaces in the large houses I’d made, adding beds and bedrooms.

I could mostly keep ninety-seven salvaged bed sets as they were, which saved a lot of time.

Unfortunately, I ended up short seven blankets.

While not as fantastic as having ready-made mattresses and sheets to fall back on, I found I could create makeshift blankets by applying my limited knowledge of knitting to the loose and damaged fabrics I had. They weren’t exactly what I’d call top quality, but as long as they kept people warm, that would be good enough.

With all the basics handled for the houses, I took up one more challenge to keep the area safe.

A wall.

Between my four human residents and me, we designed a proper gate across the far end of the harbor bridge. With massive hinges of salvaged steel and thirty-centimeter-thick doors of hardened stone, the gate I created stood five meters tall and six meters wide.

I also ran a massive network of additional minion tunnels, to claim the area I wanted to enclose. One more human-sized passage ran from the fruit orchard, below my main Dungeon, to a point near the ruins of Simpkin Family Swim Center on the far side of the Schwan Lagoon. It received a sturdy hardened-stone access door that I could lock and unlock at will.

When that was done, I worked on the easy part, extruding a stone wall to the same height as the harbor gate to prevent hostiles from gaining easy access to the land I’d claimed, where humans could rebuild a healthy community.

When finished after two hours of work, the wall ran from my side of the harbor bridge to just north of the railroad tracks and then followed those east to enclose everything out to 17th Avenue and south along the east edge of that road to the east side of the beach at Sunny Cove.

I extended the wall into the ocean using hardened and compressed glass eight inches thick, and raised that five meters above the water’s surface, out to a hundred meters from the shore, toward the southeast.

It had the unintended consequence of funneling more wave energy to Sunny Cove just to the east, but that was a potential issue that I could address later.

While I hadn’t walled-off the area on the opposite side of the harbor, a large part of my first floor lay below, so I claimed a huge portion of the surface above it with numerous minion exits.

East of the harbor, from Seabright Beach in the south to just north of the railroad tracks, out to the railway bridge and south along the San Lorenzo River, I swept away the ashes and wreckage from foundations from that entire area.

Along the harbor’s edge, just beyond the parking lots, I planted trees where some others had been before the fires.

We planned and acted together until late evening, with Rihelah and Michael, and Siobhán and Joy working in pairs to help point out ideas and concerns.

It was helpful that, once I claimed an area of the surface, my residents could see the land clearly, even in darkness.

“This is huge.” Michael shook his head.

[What is?]

Michael gestured around himself. “Night vision. It’s a massive tactical advantage wherever your Dungeon exists. Even outside, apparently.”

With that in mind, I extended my influence with more minion tunnels to two hundred meters north of the railroad tracks, from the San Lorenzo River to two hundred meters east of 17th Avenue and south to the shore.

I also claimed a sizable area to the west. The traitors holed up at the Boardwalk ruins had pissed me off, and I wanted to have an eye on them.

They were living in absolute squalor, and I turned away from the numerous mounds of feces they’d made inside an enclosed building.

Are they trying to kill themselves? That’s so unsanitary!

Since I’d gone that far, and making minion tunnels was fast and easy, I kept going until I could see along the coast, to beyond Natural Bridges State Beach.

I extended the small passages from the river east of the Boardwalk, through town to the state beach. Hundreds of exits now dotted the landscape, meaning my Devilflies and other minions had a stealthy way to arrive wherever I needed them in that area.

After some thought, I also made numerous exits submerged in the ocean, out to around a hundred meters from shore. Since my Dungeon cleaned pollutants and encouraged life to grow and thrive, it made sense to claim as much area as I could.

I overheard my humans talking heatedly about something and focused on them.

“Everyone’s going to be safe, Michael. Once they arrive, things will get better!” Siobhán half-smiled. It seemed she wanted to believe her words.

“We haven’t heard from my Dad, Uncle Joe, or any of the others. They were supposed to visit today.” Michael frowned.

“Professor…” Rihelah had that tone of voice—the one that meant she was going to win an argument even if she was wrong.

“Yes, Ryebean. I’ll check in on them.”

I shaped another series of tunnels from Natural Bridges up to UCSC’s Genomics satellite campus on Delaware Avenue, with exits as close as I could make them to the building, and what I discovered was bad.

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Joe lay exhausted on his horrible excuse for a bed. Around him, many others were moaning, trembling, or short of breath—including Mike.

This is fucked. Joe frowned. He heard rain outside and felt a light wind, blowing through the gaping holes where windows used to be.

“I don’t—get it. I was supposed to be able to—heal people. So why can’t—I cure this sickness?” Joe panted.

“Looks like we found the limits of your ability.” Mike laughed carefully but he vomited. Again.

Joe touched Mike and healed him for the fifth time, feeling the power in his abdomen diminish to almost nothing. It took a long time for Joe’s energy to return, unless he killed something. Hunting replenished it fast enough, but Joe was in no condition to go anywhere.

Mike sat up next to him. “Thanks, Schimpf. But save your strength, damn it. We’ll get through this.”

“I don’t know. After that damned roar scared everyone half to death, a lot of people are getting… worse.” Joe shut his eyes, feeling sleepy.

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Mike shook his head at his exhausted friend.

Damn your stubborn ass, Schimpf. You can’t help anyone if you use yourself up.

Bella whined from where she lay beside little Abbie. The poor kid had it almost as bad as some of the adults.

Feeling a pit of worry in his stomach, Mike stood and walked around the room. They’d cleaned the place to a satisfactory condition before, but now the reek of diarrhea and vomit filled the air. He couldn’t see much of anything in the darkness, so he stepped carefully as he headed outside for fresh air.

Schimpf can heal our bodies, but his magic doesn’t get rid of whatever it is we’ve caught. Might be Salmonella. The symptoms match up well, and you can catch that from eating contaminated meats.

At least nobody’s died from it—yet.

That thought and the slight cramp returning in Mike’s stomach made him frown.

It’s messed-up how quickly this shit brings you down.

The fever and stomach pains were terrible.

Not looking forward to another bout with it.

A light shone abruptly from the south, followed by dozens more, and Mike squinted.

“What the hell?” he whispered.

More sources of illumination kept appearing until the outline of a structure became apparent through the rain.

Where the wreckage of the Natural Bridges Visitor Center had been, a sizable stone building now stood. It looked somewhat like the original Visitor Center, similar to how the Crow’s Nest had been remade, but this one seemed much larger.

Mike blinked a few times in disbelief.

You’ve gotta be shitting me. Dungeon?

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Minions: 100/100

Residents: 10/10

Denizens: 31125

Traps: 1/5