Rupear Big Nose made his little muskin healer collapse healing him, not that it took much with her low levels. Then he called up a felikin Healer from another pen and exhausted his meager skills. Good healers were in high demand, and Rupear knew he was lucky to find two for the Pimarant guild.
Elollis was a problem that Rupear planned to dump in Evanshold. He had beaten the hireling unconscious — he did have ten levels on the guy, even If they were Merchant levels and not Brawler. It had been a bit too close for comfort, but done was done. If the man quit on the ship, Rupear could require he pay his fare and withhold the cash promised for transport guard work. Too bad the man was smart enough to know that. He could be on shit duty for the rest of the voyage, though, and Rupear would have to settle for that, at least while under that petty Hiralt dandy’s jurisdiction.
He would lead the next delve tomorrow, after his healers were back on their feet.
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Prime considered the size of her defenders and created some tunnels between the various rooms, making puzzle doors whose solution was matching the mana signature of her defenders. Aide knocked out the design for a quick illusion trap, using the light elemental stones, to hide the doorways. The tunnels were round with a one meter diameter. That was spacious for all by her giant and dire defenders. She endured the maths song’s complexity for the curves with more comfort than she had felt making the circular entrance room.
The core’s mana ran down while she was about halfway through, and as she scrounged for things to absorb to boost her mana back so she could finish the tunnels, the scholars’ party entered.
A’Ferun was kitted out more thoroughly than before, and the four sailors accompanying them had changed for swarthier, more mature men wielding hooked spears. Prime sent over half of her defenders into the tunnels she had made, leaving the dire kraits as the only new mobile defenders. A’Ferun had already seen them, after all, as well as the bonefish in the newly updated aquatic pit traps. Those couldn’t exactly leave.
They went through her floor slowly. The scholars meticulously noted every change, especially the differences in her loot and defenders. None of the bonefish were attached to rooms, so they all immediately dispersed back to mana on dying, dropping mostly petty mana stones, but one of them left a water stone and another some bone scales. The scholars immobilized the bonefish long enough to study them for a positive identification before letting the sailors kill them and collecting the loot drops.
Prime happily discovered that she could decouple defenders from rooms while intruders were on the floor. That let the room chests spawn normally. It also inspired her to try spawning a defender in one of the maintenance tunnels. The wharf rat formed normally, and Prime tried making a plum in the tunnel. When that worked, she went back to furnishing the second floor as the core’s mana recovered, providing resources for the freed slaves.
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Near the last room, one of the sailors announced, as A’Ferun had requested, “I leveled that fight, Lord.”
A’Ferun asked, “You were close before, yes?”
“I’m, er, I was a level behind, Lord. Not on the edge, but maybe two fingers shy of a full stein? Thereabouts.” The sailor glanced at his fellows.
Another said, “I can feel I’m closer to tenth level than before we started, but maybe three more times through before I level.” He looked at the first sailor as he spoke.
“Twice for me, I think,” a third sailor volunteered.
“I think I’m with Paulo on three more delves like this for the bell,” the last opined, addressing the first sailor.
That got a nod from A’Ferun as he ignored the way the sailors were avoiding directly addressing him. Some other Lusfalian nobles might have taken offense, but A’Ferun was well educated enough to recognize it for an attempt to limit the offense the sailor’s ignorance of noble customs might cause.
“Good. Let’s see if there’s only halls or a room next, “ A’Ferun said.
Tully, in his blue robes, moved up to solve the picture puzzle. Those had changed again, now becoming more iconic style representations of the various deities honored in Lusfal, from the Lord of Luck to the Lady of the Storms. This one turned into an illusion of Habinesh, The Beggar Lord, Patron of Slaves, sheltering beastkin under his rag cloak. Like stars in the night sky, beady glowing eyes stared out of the shadows around the iconic divinity, characteristic of the rat swarms he commanded.
A’Ferun contained his impatience while the scholars took their notes and made their speculations.
On the other side, both of the pit traps had been replaced with water traps, bonefish ready to drag prey down into their depths. The spears here proved quite useful. Even though the fish didn’t suffocate out of the water, their movements were vastly hampered by the terrain change.
The door at the end of the hall became an illusionary icon of Illune, the dark moon behind his throne as he sat in judgment, his stern, shadowed gaze looking out onto the party.
Beyond that door, the knot of tunnels had expanded into a room five meters square. No monsters waited for them, and the secret doors were unmoved. As with the other elemental traps, a new crackle of thunder accompanied the firebomb of the last trap.
In the core room, nothing seemed to have changed — until a squeaking voice spoke from its hiding place behind the archway. “Well come. Peaz?”
The startled sailors jumped back, spears leveled. A’Ferun froze, so it was Kinser who ordered, “Hold!”
After a tense moment of stillness, the voice squeaked again, “Peaz?”
A’Ferun sucked in a deep breath before saying, “Peace.” To the sailors, he added the command, “Arms up.” He wasn’t quite ready to have them stow arms, but keeping their weapons brandished wasn’t very peaceful.
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The sailors gave him round-eyed looks, but did as ordered.
A rat head the size of a dire rat’s poked out from behind the arch at about belly height on a human. It lacked the bone plates or the enormous fangs of a dire rat, and its fur was black, not brown. “Peaz?” it asked a third time.
“Peace,” A’Ferun agreed.
“Ratling,” Ep’hram identified, his voice just loud enough to reach A’Ferun, his excitement a suppressed note in his tone.
Kinser asked, “Specials?”
“Archetypal classes,” Ep’hram shared.
So, not a simple monster, and capable of broadly anything the Specialized races could do.
The ratling pulled its head back only to quickly back out from behind the arch, dragging a cask piled up with plums half its size with it. It wore a rope belt supporting a canvas sheath, which held a long dagger, but no other attempt at clothing. The ratling spoke as it moved the cask. “Peaz! Traan good! Slaav— Slave bad. Talk. Peaz.”
Tully asked, “Do you speak for the dungeon?”
Ep’hram’s baton smacked the man’s calf, and when the man turned an annoyed look his way, the elf shot him a warning glare.
The ratling ignored the byplay and tipped its head to the side as if listening. “Maker give wuds. Wurds. Good wurds! Big wurds hurt. You wurds hurt?”
A’Ferun felt a smile twitch at the corners of his mouth, partly because he found the ratling cute, but mostly the joy of being better able to talk with his light. “Sometimes, yes,” he agreed.
The ratling finished dragging the open cask of plums to the middle of the room and retreated back to the arch. It used its wrist to wash over its ear, taking up an attentive posture, then said, “Maker say, big mah-gick make new life. Big, big. Gods mah-gick. Bad-no-peaz be hoo-maanz. Maker want see wurd. Wud? Rld? World! Maker … re-mem-sers be-fore maker. Re-mem-sers be-fore and be-fore. Maker happy sees Ah-fair-oun. ”
A’Ferun sucked in a breath. He rubbed at the sour feeling in his nose as he took in all the implications.
“The gods made you into a dungeon?” he asked.
The ratling listened, then said, “Big mah-gick. Gods give life. No mah-gick, no life. No for Maker. Maker … good time, good playz? Maker says big wurds, no hurt Rat-ty … no good wurds.”
“Why would the gods do this to you?” A’Ferun asked, anger blooming in his heart.
The ratling, head cocked to the side and eyes unfocused and glazed, said, “Peaz! Maker says, maanz chooz big good. No maanz chooz, big bad. Gods give life. Maanz chooz good and bad.”
“Dungeons are murder pits!” A’Ferun protested.
The ratling blinked in confusion and began washing its ears with both wrists, a subtle shiver wracking its body. After a moment, the shivering calmed down and it said, “Maker says, dun-jawns no smart. Dun-jawns traan, dez-tract. Maanz no fight maanz. Maker new dun-jawn. Baa-bee dun-jawn. Traan good, fight bad. Ah-fair-oun good. Slave bad.”
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Prime took pity on her poor ratling. Complicated concepts like reincarnation were terribly hard on the little one. Self determination, even as much as Prime had boiled it down, had shaken the ratling. The concept of gods had only squeaked through by mixing up the concept of a monster queen and a nebulous “bigger”. Queen monsters commanded all of their descendants at or below their own level of sapience, in contrast to king monsters who relied on their elan and moxie to control similar kinds of monsters. Queens often had king descendants, but few kings could command a mature queen. Sometimes male monster queens were mistaken for the advancement of monster kings known as emperors. Monster emperors were rare enough that Prime wasn’t sure her ratlings could understand them without seeing one, so, gods were “bigger queens”.
A’Ferun had more questions, and the scholars seemed very much interested in asking their own. Prime wasn’t sure how much she would answer, and while she considered that, she had her ratling show its palms in the universal “stop” gesture, and say, “Big wurds hurt Rat-ty. Rat-ty rest.” Then the ratling suited actions to words and curled up on top of the picture puzzle in the base of the portal archway.
Aide asked, «Gods gave us life, huh?»
«Ratlings barely understand death. They don’t understand incarnations. I’m making what we’ve got work as best I can,» Prime defended herself.
Aide teased some more. «And you’re happy to see Muscle-Head?»
To that, Prime sent the impression of a shrug down their bond. «This version of him isn’t so bad, and better him than most of the rest of N’kieran’s other suitors.»
Aide then very obviously poked the meta-mana around them, even to Prime’s less well attuned senses. Afterward, they declared, «Nope, still no Halo on us. I think you actually ~like~ him!»
That earned an eye roll and Prime tuning her partner out to watch the scholars poke around her core room.
So far, they had yet to figure out which of the stones was her core, nor were they built right to discover the trick to getting her core out of the wall. The Narratives required that there always had to be a path; they did not require the path to be obvious.
The peace offering of plums attracted the woman scholar. Prime had heard her called Della and Scholar Greenwild. That was probably a shortened form of Scholar of the Greenwild, one of the orders of the Scholar’s Guild. The Greenwilds were almost as famous as the Path Seekers, turning up in all sorts of out of the way locations. Those exploratory scholastic orders were the real drivers behind the size of the Scholar’s Guild.
The fellow in blue robes has only been called Tully where Prime could hear. There were several scholastic orders those robes could represent, from Wave Walkers and Sky Striders to Peace Brokers. However, given his focus on Prime’s dungeon, Tully probably wasn’t a Peace Broker. He followed after Della to inspect the plums.
The elf Ep’hram made for the portal archway at the earliest opportunity, though he kept a wary eye turned toward the resting ratling and stuck with examining the structure at an arm’s length remove. He wore no order’s robes and had only been called Ep’hram or Scholar where Prime heard, but was given a leader’s deference. He might be a Senior of the Scholar’s Guild or just the senior most scholar in this group.
Corbent the matu in his yellow outfit was sometimes called Scholar Corbent and sometimes Healer. With the association of healing with the solar goddess Imawl, all healing orders dressed in shades of yellow (white belonged to Illune’s aspect as the Spirit Lord of the full moon). Corbent’s attention seemed focused on the walls of the core room, but he kept an eye on the ratling and glanced over when the others made quick movements.
A’Ferun watched the scholars while he stewed on his thoughts, and Kinser took charge of the sailors.
The dinner bell was ringing on deck by the time the ratling felt recovered. It stretched and yawned, and washed at its face while it sat up.
“Are you rested?” A’Ferun asked.
“Some,” Prime had the ratling answer. “Maker say, talk hard. Dun-jawns no talk good. Odder— oth-er dun-jawns no talk none. Maker say, see world. Maker say, be-fore maker gone. Maker re-mem-sers—. Re-mem-bers before maker. Be-fore maker gone. Now, maker see world.”
A’Ferun asked, “What does ‘before maker gone’ mean?”
Aide warned, «He’s going to lose his mind if you say N’kieran died, you know that, right?»
«I’m not stupid! I’m just having a hard time getting the concept of making a new start through!» Prime answered, frustrated at the ratling’s limited language capacity.
The ratling, meanwhile, was sitting in an attentive pose. Without Prime prompting it, it said, “Maker be-fore hoo-maanz. Maker now dun-jawn. New dun-jawn, smart dun-jawn. Hoo-maanz hurt dun-jawns. Maker no want hurt. Maker want see world.
** Maker before [was] human. Maker now [is] dungeon. [A] new [kind of] dungeon, [a] smart dungeon. Humans hurt dungeons. Maker [doesn't] want [to be] hurt. Maker wants [to] see [the] world.
”
«What personality bits got incorporated into that one’s being that it’s got such a good grasp of the situation?» Prime mused.
Aide sighed. «Most of the personality bits gunking up around the ship core, before it became our core, came from the Specialized sapient race.»
«Later, I’m going to ask what that might mean for us and our creatures. Later.»