> Herbie. Keystone's dead according to a pair of delvers that showed up. I'm going to want confirmation. What happened? Where? When? Most importantly, if it's Kronos, how did they know what was going on when it has no way of sending something into my dungeon.
An elf and Ork that had only started taking the loop through my holdings came to Bonehead with the news. Laginn showed up with paper and inkwell. Statements were taken as I got Herbie's response.
> A pair of my bats have confirmed it is him judging by the gear he was wearing. No chance at revival unless they can cure having one's head removed with a shovel.
Now wasn't the time for jokes! Once statements had been taken, Bonehead had seen everyone off as far as I'd been able to send him with what spare mana I had to go past alliance borders. Which wasn't far, only to just past the gates to the Necropolis.
The whole way through he had a blank book with him and was taking details. Delvers had brought the body close enough that several skeletons had been able to take it to the western chapel. All activity in that room was barred, not that there had been any real delving, but I had guards posted inside and out as Bonehead made sketches of the body, the murder weapon, and while I wouldn't call it a proper autopsy, but it was the best I could do. I owed it to him, and judging by how they behaved? Bonehead and Laginn seemed to agree.
Laginn snapped to get my attention, then pointed at the report Bonehead wrote before jerking his thumb towards the dungeon entrance before waggling thumb and pinkie. Not sure where he learned that gesture but it was a textbook 'call' gesture to me.
> Assailant Unknown, but given the victim, we have to assume this wasn't run of the mill bandits. Paranoia would dictate somehow Kronos is involved as means to strike against us by way of our allies, but that raises its own questions. Do you know if anything of his was taken? Keystone said he was leaving to file a report. There was nothing on his body when Bonehead took him in for exampination.
>
> Unknown. My bats didn't care enough about crime scene details, and it is unlikely I could get anything out of them with word or threat.
I had to think. Logically if Kronos knew Keystone was going for help in a concerted raid he would be a priority target. Yet none of our discussion was made outside of my borders. I can't get any clear sensorum outside of alliance space unless I send minions, and even then it's only a very compact sphere of their senses.
> It is the same with me. Could Ishida have a sensory bubble great enough to hear details from her post?
I... don't think so? there's the guard post. the big thick door we'd put up to replace the false wall, stairs, then a big room between stairway and Kronos's territory. My heart sank. Was that why she had snuck into my territory proper? Not the joy of a good fight. Not wanting to show any sort of solidarity? Just ... Spying?
My thoughts were all over the place and it took several long minutes to reign them in. I would have used meditative techniques, but all of those require a body to provide sensation anchors. Instead I listened to the sounds of my dungeon, letting my awareness expand to the point detail was difficult.
> If it's any consolation. While I will remind you it was stupid. I would have done the same in your position if it were my friend. I've always had few. The chance at getting any of them back would be something I would risk much for.
Doesn't help my mood, but thank you Herbie. Was there any way for me to get a look around?
> Only if I transferred a bat to you and you centered your focus onto them, and even then with your mana stores as they are it would not tell you much.
I had Bonehead write a letter. No I was not sure that this was a good idea. In fact it may well get us all killed, but Keystone was my friend, and was probably killed to keep word from getting out. Herbie had used a bat to fly it to the nearest settlement along with a small bag of gemstones.
As I waited for a response, I had asked Herbie for every scrap of information he could give on what was past the Necropolis and, I was starting to grow concerned. We were in a graveyard, that was in a dead city. Not a city built for the dead. Literally ya city that had been razed to the ground and smashed. The regulars we had came from differing communities of salvagers that got money picking through the remains. the city itself had several dungeons, mostly hostile and mostly concerned with trying to carve out niches from each other's territory, which is the only reason any of the salvagers had been able to make any sort of progress. Had they worked together, no outsider could have come.
Then again if they worked together they could have rebuilt the place. Which explained the constant traffic here by newbies. If they could train up in relative safety then they'd have a better chance at surviving.
Jen came with Finnal. Only to find a notice. A banner stretched wide so any who entered would see. It was made of spider's silk and was direct and to the point.
'Keystone is Dead.' 'We have requested help investigating his murder.'
Jen hugged Bonehead tightly. "Look I get we're a community out in the sticks, but considering what used to live here it ain't going to take long for them to send somebody."
A nod from Bonehead.
"You could die." Finnal's voice cracked. "We could lose you."
Again. Bonehead nodded. Then, as he stroked Jen's hair, offered the rogue a hand. They shook, looking at each other before he let Jen go.
Time blurred. Delvers still came, but there was an air of worry about them.
Arin and Jjaro came.
As did other regulars.
It felt like I had announced I had stage four cancer, and everyone was showing up to say goodbye.
On the tenth day I understood why. An Inquisitor came. I wasn't sure what sort of response to expect, but an inquisitorial retinue was not high on that list of possibilities. He was a man that came with a retinue of knights, priests, and a few robed figures that I weren't quite sure what their jobs were. Elfin features. Grey hair. A thin golden staff of office that he used to push open my doors.
Bonehead knelt, an uncharacteristic show of submission. I had expected a stone faced wall of non-cooperation, or a deft avoidance, but no. He and his skeletal subordinates knelt as he offered up a leather bound book containing the notes from our investigations.
The robed elf took the offered book and gave a small bow to the skeleton. "Thank you" He would look to first my Bone-Captain, then to the skeletons all kneeling in formation in the center of the room. "Please Rise." There was an official tone to his voice.
His retinue looked amongst themselves, perhaps wishing to speak but staying silent. He would take the holy symbol that was the pendant of his necklace off and place it on Bonehead. "You are compelled by the Sight of the Raven, the Path of the Rider, and by the light of Alnus's Star to bare no false witness for the sake of this investigation. In return neither myself nor my retinue will through act or order willfully endanger yourself or those that pass freely within these halls until and unless our investigation shows that you are guilty of the murder of Dungeon Assessor Keystone, son of Block-Chain, son of Stone Cutter."
ACCEPT GEAS Y/N?
Part of me chafed at the notion. Of being Commanded and Compelled. Yet even if I had the mana to burn to resist, and it was just barely possible if I cannibalized Nyx, what would that accomplish? There were clear limits in place and there was no mention made of not raising to defend myself or those under my care.
The geas wrapped around my awareness. I could see the silvered thread of magic wrap around my minions. I pray to whatever is listening that this doesn't turn out to be some kind of corrupt church that purges with flame and sees heresy everywhere.
"I am Inquisitor Makyr." I couldn't get a read on the guy beyond 'Cop.' Stiff stance, very formal tone. Bonehead's book of notes was carefully handed over. "While I understand this is a hardship upon you, all Delver activity has ceased until we can ensure their safety. In return we will, as part of our investigations, explore and thus provide you with enough mana to continue as you are.
A stiff nod from Bonehead to the inquisitor. What choice did we have?
> GN. Herbie. Cooperate to the best of your abilities. I have been placed under a Geas to cooperate with them, though they have placed conditions upon themselves. Heartrate would be through the roof if I had one.
>
> Understood.
>
> Not happy, but not unexpected.
Part of me thought maybe Kronos's plan was going to backfire. Given Inquisitors were here, that implied they were fairly heavy hitters. Laginn was told to go see if Ishida had left the book I had slipped to her in the bone pile hiding spot she had used before.
"I will answer," Bonehead's voice was soft as he addressed one of the supporting priests in Maykr's retinue. He wasn't in pain, but there was a tension to him. "However I am unused to speech."
His hollow eye sockets looked down, not wanting to stare too intently at the priest's.
"I have read prior reports from Brother Elyas of your actions to preserve the lives of bystandards." The priest's voice was kindly as he addressed Bonehead. "You are undead, thus would be viewed as suspect, but given Delvers we had interviewed on the way here were," There was a pause, "Positively inclined towards you and yours, while showing no signs of corruption or manipulation."
Bonehead nodded.
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I left them to talk. Just because they were putting on a show of kindness didn't mean they wouldn't try to stake us, but it left me feeling my chances of survival were far greater than someone who came in screaming for flame and sword and let the God-Emperor sort it out. There wasn't much I could do anyway unless one of them could talk directly.
Laginn was where my awareness went as he skittered downstairs, stopping just shy of Kronos's entrance. right as a figure walked up the steps and out of the darkness.
Ishida was there.
Uchiumi stood behind, her features wreathed in shadow.
Her eyes were pure black. A crude black iron knife was at Ishida's throat. Her lips moved. Kronos's voice came out. There was a flickering of emotions along Ishida's face, surprise, betrayal, hurt, then finally the indignation drained from her leaving only resignation. Uchiumi spoke as she stared unblinking at me, but what came was Kronos's voice. "Kill them, or I will kill her."
My awareness contracted to a pinprick. "You would kill a part of yourself to spite me?"
Ishida's head shook, drawing a bead of blood from the stone of her neck. Lips moved but no sound to her speech. Two words, both short.
Uchiumi's blackened eyes looked to me. Again I heard Kronos.
NO TRICKS. KILL THEM.
> Kronos is threatening Ishida. I don't know if she can permeability die, but.... I don't think Kronos is bluffing.
>
> What does it want?
>
> Me to kill the inquisitors.
NO TRICKS! NO STALLING!
Ishida looked to me. A seething fury in her eyes. I knew her well enough to know that this was the nightmare she'd always dreaded, not being in control, depending on someone else to bail her out. to be helpless.
That the thing holding her captive wore the face of her literal soulmate? That was an insult on top of injury. "You forget something." Her head slammed back, shattering Uchiumi's nose, causing the golem to drop the knife. "I'm the better fighter between us Ami."
Ami? Why did I know that name?
Shouts from upstairs. Bonehead had barely cleared the stairwell when he loosed an arrow. Inquisitor Maykr was a half-step behind. Holy magics cast on the arrow, allowing it to pierce the golem's stone skin, splitting its head.
A flicker of recognition coupled with deduction. Like me, she had a life before here and was spun out here. Yet this wasn't the same. Ami and Ishida were differing people within the same incarnation. Not like Bonehead having the memories and personality of my old life. Ami... Ami. I knew that name. Could picture her. Short-cropped blue hair. Mousey build. Probably in the top hundred smartest on the planet. Utterly corrupt, seeing normal people as either assets to spend or liabilities to remove.
"Time to stop waffling about!" Bonehead's voice brought me back to the here and now. knocked another arrow. Loosing it into the darkness of the stairwell as Ishida knelt by the now inanimate golem that was Uchiumi. "You can try splitting me open some other time Ishida." My Guard Captain spared her a look. For all he knew he had shot her lover and literal soul-mate, someone I had known had found her across several lifetimes. "We've got more immediate problems."
Stone eyes were wide as she looked from the scythe that Kronos had given her to wield, and the sword that was her partner's Those same eyes looked at the ruined stone body that had once been Uchiumi, or at least a fair approximation. The scythe fell as she sunk to her knees, hand reaching for the ruined face of her other half. That hand motioned as if closing now ruined eyes before reaching down to the blade at Uchiumi's hip and taking it as her own. Her voice disbelieving as she tried gathering her wits about her. "She tried to kill me."
The Inquisitor watched. A hand raised, only to lower it on seeing Bonehead standing between Ishida and other stone creatures emerging. The jeweled blade also looked proper. As right on her as the coat and armor looked on Bonehead.
"Ami, Why?" She looked to what had, until that moment, been her allies and friends.
These were all people I knew. People that shared the same life as Ishida and I. My mind tried processing this in the confusion. Were these creatures memorials to lost friends, or trapped souls? They were human. All female. All statuesque in their grace. All faces I knew were carved from the same stone Ishida and Uchiumi had been.
Two were missing. Ishida, and...
"Wait wouldn't that be like ... you're trying to kill yourself?" Bonehead put a voice to my confusion. An arrow readied.
"No," Ishida's voice soft. "I was wrong earlier. I'm not Kronos's past life. I'm... something else. Someone else." Her voice held confusion as she looked to her once-allies, backing towards Bonehead, sword raised in a defensive posture. Then she fell, legs refusing to work, body slumping as if a marionette with her strings cut.
"You wish to stand against me." One of the stone puppets spoke. Soon followed by another. "But without me, you cannot stand at all." Whichever one spoke, their eyes went a solid dead black. Soon it turned into each speaking syllables at a time, lending this aura that the lot were a diorama display, a monument rather than a mob. "I hold Eternity in my hand and offer it freely, yet you spurn my gifts. However I am not cruel, if you do not wish to be at my side, You shall be in my way. Goodbye Ishida."
Ishida looked from the chorus of voices that somehow personified Kronos at the moment
ACCEPT TRANSFER Y/N?
By everything holy in this world YES.
ERROR: INSUFFICIANT MANA.
A notification. Mana reserves dropping. Bonehead looked to Ishida. "I won't lose you. Not again." His sword out. two of the constructs rushed forward. There was a strange familiarity to this. He would attack, only to pull away. Feint, then dive. He was always in motion. Yet he was overwhelmed. He wouldn't be able to take them all on. Not seven of these things.
The chests? Axe 'em. There is no treasure if I fall. Ditto the spawners. The specialty rooms. The whole west chapel, western, and eastern crypts. Carve all of that away. None of it held any value if tomorrow never came if she fell.
TRANSFER REQUEST Y/N
Ishida rose, her legs shaking. I couldn't sustain her long, but she was up, sword raising to hack away at a series of brown and blackened plant-like vines that threatened to wrap around her.
More came from the stairwell below. these were shadowed phantoms. Mist and dream swirled, billowing up. Engulfing the entire floor.
Maykr's staff flared, causing a bubble of clarity in the dark.
"This shall not continue!" Nyx's voice was as ice splintering. Her staff struck the mist, pulling it away from the others. Dragging these beings, unwillingly, into the staff's gem. Her hood tilted to show she looked at Ishida before looking at the scythe she had cast aside. I could feel Laginn and Charlotte somewhere in her robes. She had the best chance of getting them past this bottleneck, and they had the best chance at getting to Kronos's core.
Maykr frowned, looking at Ishida. His staff glowing bright as he swung to her. then stopped a hair's breadth from her and went dark. He blinked, as did she. Inwardly I laughed. The Geas cuts both ways. Ishida was free to walk my halls. She was under my protection.
Bonehead clarified. "She is under my protection, and in case you haven't noticed, we have bigger problems." As if to emphasize the point he got knocked flat to the floor just before one of the golems attempted to stomp his head in.
"Indeed." The Inquisitor noted dryly as his stance changed and his staff raised, blocking a whip of light and magic from another of the golem.
> Imps digging to open second and third fronts now.
>
> Local delver parties have shown up to assist. Keep them contained on your side.
Ishida, sword in hand, joined Bonehead, driving her fist into the now-flaming golem, covering him as Bonehead got to his feet. There was no valiant glory-filled charge. Only two warriors fighting back to back to hold off an assault coming from all sides. The Inquisitor's staff pulsed. I could feel mana welling up. Normally what would be a massive winfall barely keeping pace as the rest of the Bone Guard joined their captain against Kronos.
My awareness shot through the floor to join Nyx as she pulled something from her robes and threw it. I grinned as I spotted Laginn sail over the crush of monsters and embedded defenses in this first room. Go, buddy! Go! Find the core.
I could hear Kronos now, a tangible physical thing rather than a mere projection. "Stubborn as always. You ruined what was supposed to be perfection. Why must you always stand in my way?"
Magic welled up. Nyx flew high. Her hands spread wide, staff now glowing as it flew before her, raining ice onto the defenders even as she was struck with a violently whirling contraption of gears and blades. Her robes shredded and then fell. Briefly, her enemies paused before being attacked by disembodied hands. Her eyes glowed on either side of her staff's gem as it flew, spearing a large stone beast, and causing it to explode.
As Laginn and Charlotte sprinted I could feel it. A low thrumming in the stones of this place as Laginn skittered under then behind, then-
There was the sound of picks breaking through the stone. Goblinoid screams echoed as separate fronts opened up. Where was her core? I needed to end this.
More power. I could feel it building. Where was it coming from? Find that, I would find her.
"Not this time." Kronos's voice hissed. "You have no body. Your allies are pinned. your mana draining dry."
I could do nothing more. there were no more rooms I could safely cannibalize without possibly losing my creatures. I was hemorrhaging Mana maintaining Ishida. How the hell had this dungeon done it? How had she made all these creatures this strong without an inflow from delvers?
"Well," Kronos's voice shifted, almost taking a lecturing tone. "If you stop to consider that this was all one large dungeon and what that means for the sake of scrying, delving, and divination suddenly many options open up."
A town-sized dungeon. All under a single banner. Even when split, the locations still share a metaphysical connection.
"Just so."
My vision blurred. Bonehead fell to a pair of golem. His respawn ticked, but the bar filled far too slowly. I knew the two who those constructs were based on. I had hopes they could grow up together. Have family. A life. Yet here they were, enslaved in effigy to a mad woman. The part of me that could remember this wept.
The Bone guard swarmed in response to their captain falling. They flanked Ishida as she cut both golem down. yet more monsters came, mostly those screaming shadow-things. My bone-guard gave themselves bit by bit to buy her moments of relative safety.
"Every victory. It doesn't matter by whom. Every instance where mana was created. I was able to siphon off a tiny bit." Surely she wasn't falling for the villain monologue trope. Why was she telling me this? She can't think I'll be too dead to use it.
"That's the best part." Kronos giggled. "I don't want you dead. In fact." Another pulse and another wave of dizziness. "I want you to think. If I can draw mana through the whole of Damala's old holdings-"
That's why Herbie and Good Neighbor could afford what they had when I could only manage so very little. She can reach all of it. All of Us, and that was a ranging shot, to see how far she could reach without being noticed.
She managed to worm her way in, and I hadn't noticed.
"That reach includes your core." A sickening sweetness to her voice. My awareness drifted, trying to climb to my own territories. All to the sound of Kronos's sickening laughter.
> She can reach the whole thing! She can reach our cores! We have to end this!
BLINK.
Bonehead had, by this point, respawned and was running to join the others. Why was he running?
> Negative. We're being stonewalled.
Why couldn't I focus? What was going on?
BLINK.
Ishida was there fighting. It felt important to help her. The kids I'd gotten involved with were in over their heads. Even this holier-than-thou muckamuck with the bright flashy show was faltering. Down to me and her. I nocked an arrow, firing into the stone look-alikes. Worst part? They probably cooked better than the real thing. I giggled, remembering the time they'd somehow made monsters out of a botched batch of muffins.
Man those pain pills had to be doing a number on me if I was drifting that badly. My sword was wrapped by a bright magic-infused whip, but it was something I'd expected; pulling hard, keeping the line taught as Ishida's own blade severed the weapon, rendering the stone-impostor useless as my scabbard raised to block a thrown ring from another.
"Y'keep telling me I'm in over my head." My breathing was labored. I'd prided myself on keeping in shape, especially after I'd fancied myself able to keep up with these people.
"Starting to regret your life choices boy?" there was a playfulness there in her banter even though we were both still hip-deep in trouble.
I ducked, driving my blade into the impostor's heavy hitter. "You act like I wouldn't regret leaving you guys out to dry even if it costs me drownding."
BLINK.
For a moment my eyes swam. I was outside of myself. except I was a skeleton, and Ishida was made of stone. We were being drug somewhere, but the details were hard to focus on.
Then I blinked. I was sore as hell, but damage was minamum. My van hadn't gotten trashed this time. I barked a laugh. "You and Uchiumi still want me to do catering later?" Were these two idiots going to finally make it official? They were practically already hitched. I knew it. Ami knew it. Everyone knew it. So why the tapdancing?
A hand wrapped around my waist. Ishida's voice in my ear. "Why can't we just head over to my place and-"
NO!
My vision swam. Again blurred vision of stone-ishida and Skeleton me in some kind of stone building.
Ami's voice. Kronos? No. Ami's voice. Exasperated. "Even in your dreams, you don't take her. Just how pathetic are you?"
BLINK.