Edmund landed on his hands against rough hewn wood, the toughened skin of his palms resisting any damage as he skidded to a horizontal stop. Fighting off the urge to simply groan and catch his breath and release the tension in his arms to just lay there for a bit, he shoved himself back onto his knees.

He caught a flash of azure fur disappearing into the crowd just as a hand reached down to him.

“C’mon, son.” A gruff voice pulled him from his thoughts. “Let’s get you out of the way. Thrax knows when the next lot’ll be through.”

Edmund took the calloused hand with his left and grabbed his spear from the floor with his right, rising to his feet and stepping away from the entrance in a single motion. “The fox,” he breathed, “did you see where it went?”

The man, tall and slender and dressed only in basic cotton clothes flashed Edmund a bored expression. He patted him on the shoulder. “You’re safe now, son. Dungeon mobs can’t move between floors, and they aren’t allowed inside the ring.”

“But I just saw…” Edmund trailed off as a group of four emerged from the entrance and the man moved away to usher them through. He watched as a tall and well-equipped delver greeted the man like a friend while his three party members simply stared forward with sunken eyes. Edmund sighed. Whoever this man was, whoever’d hired him to keep the entrance clear, wasn’t going to be any help. With a shrug, Edmund moved on.

He found himself on a wooden deck constructed of mismatched beams of lumber, some rough and jagged like those he’d landed on and some polished smooth enough he might’ve thought it used for furniture in a previous life. The platform stretched some twenty feet in a circle around the entrance, through which adventurers arrived in sporadic intervals no more than a few minutes apart. Those that didn’t immediately move out of the way soon enough found a calloused hand ushering them forward lest they overcrowd the doorway.

Opposite the entrance sat three rows of benches, where a number of men and women waited with tense or bored faces, each glancing up with hope and fear whenever a new set of footsteps echoed across the deck. One of them leapt to her feet at the sight of the group behind Edmund, rushing over to engulf one of the harrowed delvers in a great hug. The man on the bench next to her broke down in tears.

Edmund didn’t linger to watch the experienced adventurer move over to comfort the crying man. He didn’t wait to hear what’d happened to the fallen delver. Loss was a constant presence in these lands, as much a fixture in the landscape around the Eternal Depths as the hills themselves. Edmund knew it as well as anyone. Better, even.

He swallowed back the knot in his throat, pushing aside rolling waves of rage and disgust he’d come to know, only to find something new lurking beneath the surface: disdain.

That kid who’d died had come into the dungeon with every advantage. If his party members were any indicator, he’d been armed and armored from the start. He’d have been trained, pushed to level five or even higher, guided by a delver who’d cleared the first five floors time and time again, and still he’d managed to fuck it up.

Edmund had made it through with none of that.

His stomach turned at the thought, his face going pale as bile rose up in the back of his throat.

He knew he’d been lucky to survive this long. He knew nobody, regardless of their background, should have had to experience the things Edmund had.

It wasn’t that dead kid’s fault he’d grown up in a city that idolized risking one’s life for money and power. It wasn’t his fault he’d been born to a father who’d run the Depths before him and placed that expectation upon him. It wasn’t his fault.

It was the dungeon’s.

Edmund couldn’t let himself forget that. He couldn’t allow his own success to somehow diminish the immense toll of human life the Depths claimed. It had to stop. It had to stop. It had to stop.

His motivations as ironclad as ever, Edmund stepped to the edge of the wooden landing, leaned against the uneven railing, and surveyed the fifth floor.

A cavernous space stretched out before him. To each side of the floor’s entrance, a line of flat stones inlaid in the ground arced out in the beginnings of a great circle, one Edmund couldn’t see the end of. At first glance they might’ve looked like a path of stepping stones, but for the ominous fact that verdant grass and daisies and dandelions sprouted from the far side while only bare dirt coated the ground within.

The usher had mentioned dungeon mobs not being allowed in the ring. Edmund wondered if that applied to plant life too.

The outside of the ring stretched far beyond what Edmund could see, the edges of the floor obscured by the rolling hills that surrounded the central area and the wooden landing. He’d have to explore their hidden dangers later.

Directly ahead stood a marketplace to rival dungeon square.

Several rows of stalls cordoned the crowd of delvers into distinct lanes, providing the merchants ample opportunity to shout the value of their wares at the relatively captive audience.

Artisans bought crafting materials from adventurers and gatherers alike. Tradesmen sold everything from creature comforts to enchanted gear to information. Auctioneers facilitated the trade of loot between parties, all for a fee. Each and every one of them set up shop behind a stone counter, fixtures of the dungeon provided to keep the space neat and orderly. Some merchants decorated with bright canopies or tablecloths or signs, anything to call attention to their particular stall. Others let their wares speak for themselves, a noble—if relatively unsuccessful—strategy.

The stench of tanning mingled with the musk of sweat spun circles around the delightful scent of roasting meat and warm pastries. Edmund took it all in, unable, if but for a moment, to keep the corners of his mouth from tilting up as he felt the kiss of wind against his skin for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

The flat and gray hue of a cloudy day cast shadowless light upon it all, its source a mystery as the ceiling above remained shrouded in darkness.

Edmund scanned the crowd for the azure fox.

He gazed over lines of cots where delvers and merchants slumbered, glanced past a set of tables where groups dined together, and scowled at canvas tents that hid their contents from his wandering eyes. He grinned wistfully at the gentle creek that wound in and out of the ring, the stones that marked the border crossing the water like stepping stones.

It wasn’t until his eyes passed over the bathing delvers too impatient to wait in line for one of the curtained-off sections of the creek that a voice reached Edmund’s ear.

“You should stop there first.”

Edmund glanced sideways at where Liam stood to his left. “First I need to talk to people, while their memories are fresh.” He pushed away from the railing and stepped off the platform onto the loamy soil below, making his way into the bustling crowd.

Liam followed. “You really should take a bath. Most people don’t like talking to delvers straight out of their first floors. Beyond the fact as a lot they’re not good conversationalists—all jumpy and panicked and sullen—they gods-damned stink, and you, my friend, are the worst of the lot. None of them have been down here half as long as you.”

“Nobody’ll want to talk to me if I keep talking to hallucinations, either,” Edmund snapped. “They’ll think I’m crazy.”

“They already think you’re crazy.”

“And because I keep talking to you, now they’ll know I’m crazy.”

“To be entirely fair,” Liam argued, “you are crazy.”

Edmund ignored him. It didn’t evade him that Liam had neglected to even acknowledge his disappearance, nor the question the hallucination still owed. Edmund would have to grill him later, once they were away from prying eyes, and hopefully once they had a lead on the azure fox.

Still, Liam’s comment about the people thinking him crazy rang uncomfortably true as the crowd gave him as wide a berth as they could manage in the busy market. Whether they’d caught some part of his conversation with Liam, noticed his particularly determined yet disheveled appearance, or he truly did stink horrifically, the only looks Edmund received among the throng were of cautious curiosity at best and outright disgust at worst.

He took advantage of his apparent repulsiveness to make his way to the first stall without a line, that of a woman selling smokeless torches and campfire equipment. She stared at him as he approached.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a bright blue fox. I think it came this way. Did you see where it went?”

The shopkeep glared, a sharpness to her words. “Torches are three coppers. Campfire kits are nine.”

“No,” Edmund said. “I’m looking for—”

“Torches are three coppers,” the woman interrupted. “Campfire kits are nine.”

Edmund sighed. “Alright, fine.” He didn’t bother wondering whether she didn’t know or was withholding the information until he made a purchase. He had no money to spend either way.

As he wandered through the crowd, a strange sense of comfort washed over him, as if the hustle and bustle of the marketplace echoed those he’d seen in the city above so well as to remind him of his life before the dungeon. The sounds, the smells, the near-oppressive atmosphere of humanity all around, it all came together in a confluence of normalcy that seemed almost wrong in such an abnormal place. It felt good, soothing.

It wasn’t until he tried to evoke Madness to guide him and failed that Edmund realized The Recluse was to blame, at least in part. Shaking the thoughts from his head, he continued his search.

The leatherworker two stalls down hadn’t seen anything. The cartographer across from him refused to even look Edmund’s way. The more shrugs he received, the more scowls and rejections and disdainful head-shakes, the more Liam’s words drilled themselves into Edmund’s head. He was just about to give up and head to the creek for a bath when a voice caught his attention.

“I saw it!” a man called, his voice hard and roughed with age.

Edmund turned to find a barren counter, decorated with neither silks nor signs nor canopies, behind which a man sold kebabs. Nobody stood in line. No money changed hands.

Edmund approached. “The blue fox?”

“Aye,” the man nodded and met Edmund’s gaze. A scar ran up his wrinkled face, directly over his left eye—which Edmund realized to be made of glass—and up his scalp, forming a line along the top of his head where the snow white hair around it refused to grow. His clothes were brown and plain, obscured, mostly, by a canvas apron that was probably white somewhere beneath the smattering layer of stains.

Edmund leaned in. “Did you see where it went?”

“I did,” the man said, “and I’ll tell you if you give me something in return.”

Edmund exhaled. “I don’t have any money.”

“Not money. An answer. Seems fair.”

Edmund narrowed his gaze, but couldn’t fathom a reason to turn the man down. “Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” the kebab-seller said. Without turning his head, he shifted his gaze to Edmund’s right, his glass eye sitting eerily still as his real eye moved. With a toothy grin, he gazed directly at Liam. “I want to know what he’s doing here.”

Edmund froze. His breath, his heart, the blood within his veins all seemed to halt in that moment. He opened his mouth but no words came forth. No thoughts arose. No protests burst through. No thoughts ran through his mind beyond the sudden, stark realization.

He can see him too.

Either unaware or simply amused by Edmund’s state of shock, Liam let out a laugh and stepped up to the counter. “I could never fool that eye of yours, could I Bill?”

“It’s William,” the man grunted. “And judging by your friend’s face, he doesn’t know who you are. Should I enlighten him?”

“No, no,” Liam said. “I have the distinct impression we’ll be getting to that soon enough. In the meantime…” He shrugged. “A man can sightsee, can’t he?”

“That’s a question, not an answer,” William barked. “Why are you here? It’s obviously for the kid. What’s he to you? And I warn you, I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“I can’t lie,” Liam said. “You know that. As for the kid… he’s interesting. I found him on the first floor spawn-killing some giant rats. Spent a week there fighting them for no loot, and he’s only gotten more interesting since.”

“That’s not the whole story.”

“When have I ever told the whole story?”

William huffed. “Good point.”

Edmund’s mind raced as the conversation washed over him. He wondered if he should tell the kebab-seller that Liam had once called him a paragon, or about the wager they’d made. A part of him wanted to grill this William for all the information he could get. Another demanded he push this conversation to an end so he could speak with Liam in private. He could always question William later. There was no telling when Liam would disappear again.

“The fox,” he eventually managed. “Where is it?”

“It ran up the creek,” William answered. “Out the circle and past the hills.”

“Thanks,” Edmund said with a curt nod. “I’ll be back later with more questions, and answers with which to pay for them.”

William smiled, his glass eye pointed at Edmund and his real eye pointed at Liam. “I look forward to it.”

Edmund did his best to walk away calmly rather than storming off, but found the distinction remarkably difficult to recognize in the first person. At the moment, he didn’t give two shits what Liam thought, but he still wanted information from William. Leaving a bad impression would make that more difficult.

He walked along the side of the creek, boots sinking just noticeably into the soft yet firm soil. He weaved through the queues for the curtained-off private bathing areas, strode past the pool where others bathed in the open. He didn’t know where exactly he was going, other than that eventually he’d have to follow the waterside to find the fox. For now, he just wanted distance.

He stopped just short of the stepping stones that marked the boundary between the exposed earth of the ring and the grassy hillsides of the dungeon floor. A few bathers and passersby still lingered in the area, but the series of short waterfalls that delivered the creek from the hill to the ring helped mask Edmund’s voice.

Liam cared little for the boundary, stepping right across it to sit back on the grassy hillside.

“You’re no hallucination,” Edmund said plainly.

“You don’t know that,” Liam replied, the ever-present mischievous smile stretching across his face.

“That kebab-seller saw you.”

“Maybe he was a hallucination too.”

Edmund scowled. “No, no, that can’t be right. I was in a huge crowd of people. Thanks to The Recluse, that’s probably the sanest I’ve been in a while. There’s no way I came up with a brand new hallucination.”

“Maybe you did,” Liam offered. “Maybe you’re hallucinating The Recluse’s effects.”

Edmund paused, his eyes flitting back and forth as he pondered Liam’s statement. It could’ve been possible. Strictly speaking, once he’d admitted the possibility of imagining entire conversations with his dead friend, hallucinating new Aspects or other people logically followed. How much of it was real? Could he ever know? His mind spun as ran down the spiral of—

Liam let out a burst of laughter. “By Thrax, the look on your face! Gods, you are fun to mess with.” He smiled and shook his head. “No, I’m not a hallucination.”

“But you said—”

“I didn’t say anything. As I mentioned to dear William, I can’t lie. You assumed you were hallucinating when I first showed up, and I never bothered to correct you. Honestly, I’m impressed the charade lasted this long.”

Edmund furrowed his brow. “And why did you show up?”

“Just to be clear, you’re asking why I first came to you?”

Edmund paused, realizing the weight of Liam’s statement. “No,” he replied sharply. “That’s not the question you owe me, at least.”

Liam nodded. “And the question I owe you is…”

“Who are you?”

Liam grinned, his eyebrows popping up as he spoke. “Good choice.” He pushed himself to his feet, looking down on Edmund from his spot on the hillside. With a flair for the dramatic, he stretched his arms out to the sides with open palms and spoke the words.

“I’m the trees, the grass, the dirt beneath your feet. I’m the hills that texture the horizon and the torch that lights the way. I am greed. I am valor. I am hope. I am that which lurks within the shadows, and I am the shadows themselves. Most of all I am death. The death of weakness, the death of fear, the death of men. I am the Eternal Depths, and you, Edmund Montgomery Ahab, have sworn to destroy me.”

Edmund plunged his spear through his chest.

The action came unbidden, motivated beyond such paltry reasons as fear or rage or desperation. No thoughts crossed Edmund’s mind, no plans materialized. He simply acted.

The spiderleg spear passed straight through Liam, drawing no blood and facing no resistance, before planting itself firmly in the hillside behind him.

Liam laughed. “It’s gonna be a bit more difficult than that, but I give you points for trying.”

“Why should I believe a word you say?”

“You should believe every word I say, exactly as I say them. I can’t lie. We’ve been over this.”

“And why should I believe that?”

Liam shrugged. “It’s in that book of yours. You can check if you want.”

Edmund did.

Misdirections

The dungeon may not speak falsehoods by any means, including but not limited to through avatars, mobs, text of any kind, verbal or nonverbal declarations, and clearly-translatable imagery. See accords 817.1-819.5 for further details.

Edmund blinked. “What’s clearly-translatable imagery?”

“Think arrows pointing down the wrong path,” Liam explained. “That sort of thing.”

“Assuming you are actually the dungeon, and you haven’t found some way to get around this clause in the accords, and that everything in this book you gave me is actually accurate—”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Liam interrupted. “I absolutely have found ways to get around that clause; they just usually involve talking in a way that makes it sound like I’m saying something I’m not. I never said I was a hallucination, but I did a damn good job of implying it.” He stepped to the side, phasing through Edmund’s spear until he stood free from the weapon. “That’s better.”

“And why me?”

“You’re interesting,” Liam said. “I believe previously I’ve used the words ‘remarkably entertaining.’ You’re not the first delver who’s wanted to destroy me, but you’re certainly the first to try at level one. Then when you finished the first floor, instead of continuing on your quest for vengeance, you stayed back and fought a bunch of rats for a week. I’d never seen anything like it.”

Edmund thought back to that day, realizing, in hindsight, that Liam hadn’t first appeared when he’d taken Madness as a hallucination might’ve. The dungeon’s first words to him had been to ask him why he was killing rats for no loot. “Why Liam?”

“To mess with you, originally. I generally like to appear to delvers in a form they’re familiar with, and since I know nothing about your family, it had to be someone from your party. Liam seemed like the most fun.”

Edmund paused, something about Liam’s words bothering him. “You know nothing about my family?”

Liam raised an eyebrow. “Should I?”

Edmund swallowed back the growing knot in his throat. Liam had said it outright. Unless his book of accords was false, the dungeon actually didn’t know. Edmund took a breath, heart racing as he found his first crack in Liam’s armor: something Edmund knew that the Eternal Depths didn’t.

Liam leaned in. “This wouldn’t happen to have something to do with why you hate me so much, would it?”

“We’re getting sidetracked,” Edmund said. “You called me a paragon, once. What does that mean?”

“That would be telling.” Liam grinned. “You know what? You’re right. We are getting sidetracked.” He made a show of shielding his eyes from a sun that didn’t shine and swiveling his head to each side in a pantomime of searching for something. “That fox of yours has gotta be around here somewhere.”

Edmund grunted, wanting little more than to bury his spear into Liam’s smug face. He knew it would accomplish nothing. He wanted to scream, to throttle him. He wanted the apparition to leave, to let him hunt in solitude. He’d figured he’d catch the dungeon’s attention eventually—Liam had practically said as much when he’d ended up on the phased-out second floor.

The worst part of it all was how valuable Liam had proven to be. Already the asshole had practically overflowed with useful information, and regardless of Edmund’s opinions, he recognized the optimal strategy would be to stay on Liam’s good side, at least for now. He’d have to be careful, but Edmund was always careful.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Biting back his pride and rage and thirst for vengeance, Edmund resolved to keep this particular enemy close.

“I want proof. Here of all places, you should be able to prove you are who you say you are.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Liam said. He snapped his fingers, and the grass around his feet shrank back to reveal an image, in full color, of Liam’s face smiling and winking at Edmund. “Feel free to ask around,” he said, jerking his thumb to a pair of men bathing in the creek, “those delvers’ll confirm they saw it too.”

Already Edmund’s mind reeled with the various ways Liam could’ve faked such a thing, from illusion magic to more hallucinations to simply paying off the various bystanders to lie about seeing whatever he asked them about. He realized in that moment that he had to trust, to some extent, the world as his senses depicted it. Mad or otherwise, if he started doubting everything he saw and heard, he’d know nothing and get nowhere.

“Fine,” he eventually growled, leaning across the boundary stones to yank his spear from the hillside. “What can I expect to face out there?”

“A few wild animals, some that roam the fields and some that live in the water. No traps. A few secrets, but you’d look for those regardless of what I said.” Liam paused. “Oh, you should know I’m only telling you this because this is the most scouted-out floor in the entire dungeon. All those people, you know? You could get all this info from asking one of them; I’m just saving you the effort.”

“Or you’re deliberately leaving out something one of the other delvers would tell me.”

Liam grinned. “Now you’re getting it. Putting aside the fact none of them will tell you fuck all until you take that bath I keep telling you to take, the only relevant thing I left out is that the floor changes. Not much, but anything out of sight of the safety ring moves around, reorganizes, that sort of thing. Gotta keep it from getting too solved.”

“Alright,” Edmund said, grasping the shaft of his spear tightly in his right hand. “Let’s do this.”

With the creek to guide the way, a whole new ecosystem to explore, and the one creature he hated more than anything at his side, Edmund stepped across the stones, out of the ring of safety, and back into the deadly embrace of the Eternal Depths.

Edmund half expected a dozen monsters to pop out of nowhere the moment he left the safe area behind, but the hillside left him in peace. It wasn’t until he reached the peak that realized what Liam had meant by wild animals.

A vast wilderness stretched out before him. A herd of some kind of hoofed beast with nine pointed horns grazed upon the plentiful grass. Birds flew overhead, stopping to bathe themselves in the creek or nesting in the cluster of trees on the other side. A group of herbalists picked flowers under the watchful eye of a woman in scuffed plate-mail. A pair of hunters cleaned the corpse of some animal mangled beyond recognition. Edmund could practically smell the blood.

“Nature sure is beautiful, isn’t it?” Liam asked, his hands on his hips as he surveyed the meadow from Edmund’s side.

“None of this is natural,” Edmund said. “It’s just something you made.”

Liam grinned. “That makes it better.” He pointed across the meadow to where a seven-legged cat prowled through the grass towards a herd of what looked like regular deer. “Those two species don’t even live on the same continent. This is the only place you can watch an el-cat hunt those deer.”

Edmund watched as the el-cat pounced, only to come to a sudden halt midair. It yowled in surprise as it hung there for a moment, before some invisible force launched it across the meadow. It landed with a crunch.

“Oh, by the way, avoid the deer. They’re telekinetic.”

Edmund opened his mouth to reply, but stopped short when an agonizing shriek rang out in the distance. He jerked his head to follow the noise, only to find a team of delvers in the process of dispatching another of the seven-legged el-cats. The beast stood atop the torso of a man in herbalist robes. Said torso’s head, arms, and left leg lay scattered some distance away.

“Nature sure is beautiful, isn’t it?” Liam repeated, matching his previous tone and posture flawlessly.

Nodding his head in a moment’s silence for the fallen herbalist, Edmund tightened his grasp on his spear and set off. He knew no boon could justify that man’s death, but as with every other awful thing he found in the Depths, he’d take everything he could from it—in this case a grim reminder that death lurked in every shadow.

“This blue fox of yours is certainly interesting,” Liam said as they walked. “Did you know you’re the first one to actually save it?”

Edmund scowled. “That can’t be right.”

“Oh, it is. See, it’s there as a mechanism, a way to make that level easier,” Liam explained. “If you kill the fox, the shadows stop moving. Makes getting around a lot easier.”

Edmund blinked. “Is that what people do?”

“Most, yes.” Liam nodded. “Some just kick it or knock it over or cut it off—slow it down somehow. If you help the shadows catch the fox while it’s still alive, you get a piece of bonus loot.”

“And in both cases the shadows stop,” Edmund reasoned, “making the level easier, and making it possible to claim the floor-loot at the end without getting caught.”

“Basically,” Liam replied, speaking up to out-volume the noise of the nearby creek rushing around a pointed stone. “It’s meant to be impossible to claim the floor’s loot if you just run through without hunting the fox—think of it like an easy mode. You, though…”

“I cleared the floor on hard mode,” Edmund said.

Liam jogged in front of Edmund and turned around to speak face to face. “Except there wasn’t supposed to be a hard mode. Dungeon mobs shouldn’t be able to move between floors at all, and that fox of yours is a dungeon mob.”

Edmund stopped in his tracks and took a deep breath. “And what does that mean?”

“It means something’s changed.”

“You mean you changed something,” Edmund said plainly.

“No, no, I mean something’s changed.” Liam waved his hands wildly in front of him to illustrate the concept of some dubious something. “Contrary to common practice amongst dungeons, I like to leave things a bit more organic. Fewer scripted scenes, more… sets of circumstances that are allowed to play out. Generally the same things end up happening over and over again, but sometimes somebody does something new. Right now, that means I’ve got a dungeon mob on a floor it isn’t supposed to be on, and the distinct impression there’s more to come.”

“Can’t you just… look at it and know what it’s doing? You made it.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” Liam grinned. “In my line of work, you eventually find that knowing everything gets real boring real quick. I’d rather…” He trailed off. “Oh, dear. Looks like someone’s trying to get your attention.”

Edmund turned, following Liam’s gaze to find a woman out in the meadow jumping and waving her arms back and forth. He strained his ears to listen, but could only catch some of her words over the noise of the creek.

“—away from the—it’s not—”

Edmund blinked and rounded on Liam. “You said there were no traps. What about ambushes?”

Liam simply smiled.

Edmund grabbed his spear with both hands and pivoted to face the creek, surveying the smooth and calm flow of the water with narrow eyes. No threats revealed themselves. He scowled. “Where’s the rock?”

Liam didn’t answer.

“There was a rock there,” Edmund insisted. “Where did it go?”

The newly calmed river cleared the air enough for the distant gatherer’s shout to reach Edmund’s ears.

“Get away from the water! It’s not safe!”

A cheshire grin and a glint of mischief colored Liam’s face as he spoke the words, “Might be a bit late for that.”

The creek exploded.

Edmund squinted against the shower of water, refusing the instinct to shut his eyes or recoil from frigid droplets. Under such conditions, he only saw the thing coming for him as a dark blur darting up the bank.

But he did see it.

The thing didn’t even try to dodge his spear.

Edmund felt more than saw the beast impale itself, tightening the muscles of his arms and hands to hold the spear in place as it drove itself down the monster’s throat. With a grunt, he shifted his right hand back to the handle at the base of his spear. With a twist and a tug, the hydraulic segments went to work, bending the tip up into a brutal hook.

The beast twitched once, then twice, then stilled.

It was over before the water fell from the air.

Edmund pushed back the handle on his spear, straightening it so he could pull it free of the dead beast. The thing itself stood as tall as he did, through most of that height was the fake river rock atop its back.

Below water, it’d stood on four short legs each coated in scales the same dull gray as river rock. Its mouth opened horizontally, its relatively short snout ready to clamp its two rows of razor sharp teeth around the leg of an unwary passerby. As Edmund gazed down upon its back, he found four holes had opened in the fake rock—two for eyes and two he figured were for air.

As he wiped his spear on the grass, he snarled at Liam. “Visible and non-lethal, huh? That’s what the accords say?”

“You can’t tell me that rock wasn’t extremely visible,” Liam countered. “And its first strike was non-lethal. Last I checked, a splash of water to blind you isn’t deadly.”

“I shouldn’t have listened to you,” Edmund growled. “If I’d stopped to ask one of the gatherers or escorts for advice, they’d have told me about these things.”

“They’d have told you nothing because you still haven’t taken that bath,” Liam argued. “At best they would’ve told you to stay away from the water, something you had no intention of doing either way.”

“Instead you gave me half-truths. I would’ve been safer if you hadn’t told me anything at all. At least then I would’ve been on the lookout for traps and ambushes.”

“Lesson number one.” A hardness appeared in Liam’s voice, a certain derisive intensity that hadn’t been there before. “I always tell the truth. I never tell the whole truth. That’s on you to find out.”

“Assuming I don’t get killed before I do,” Edmund snapped. He pushed himself to his feet, taking one last glance at the dead beast.

River Rockjaw

These ambush predators disguise themselves as rocks. Once prey gets in range, they blind and surprise their target with a spray of water before darting in and clamping down on the target’s leg. Once a rockjaw closes its jaws around its prey, only the death of said prey will open them again.

“Nasty things, those,” Liam said. “Once it’s got its teeth in you, it doesn’t let go until you’re dead, and that includes if you kill it. I don’t think there’s a healer on this floor that hasn’t had to amputate somebody’s leg ‘cause they pulled up with a dead rockjaw clamped to it.”

“And if I hadn’t been ready for it, that’d be me.”

“Or you’d be dead,” Liam chimed. “I don’t think I need to share the survival rates for rockjaw bites. The good news is, they’re easy to spot when you know what to look for.”

“And what do I look for?”

Liam grinned. “You’ll figure it out.”

With a sigh, Edmund turned to face the herbalist in the distance who’d warned him. He held up his hand in a wave that said at once both ‘thanks’ and ‘I can handle myself.’ The herbalist gave a thumbs up and returned to her work.

“Alright,” Edmund said, holding his spear at the ready for another fight. “Let’s keep moving.”

He barely made it a hundred yards before he saw it. Sticking out of the creek up ahead, water rushing by it, was a pointed stone. More curious still were the ways it matched—every corner, every angle, from moss on the leeward side to the chips in the stone itself.

Edmund blinked. “It’s the same rock.”

Liam tapped him on the side of the arm. “Told you they’re easy to spot.”

With a grunt Edmund approached, keeping his spear leveled at the hidden rockjaw as he walked straight into its ambush. This time, he watched the rock quietly slip beneath the surface, spotted the ripples in the creek that marked its approach.

When the water exploded into a shower of droplets and the thing burst out, Edmund was ready.

He didn’t need to hook his spear and mangle its insides for a kill this time. He got it right through the eye.

Liam was slow-clapping when the water fell from the air. “You’re improving.”

“Practice makes perfect,” Edmund said, not stopping to examine the corpse before the dungeon reclaimed it. Before Liam reclaimed it, he realized, forcing through the realization that they were one and the same. He grit his teeth and kept moving.

He encountered two more of the rockjaws as he followed the winding creek, neither of which posed a challenge. It seemed the wild animals, while dangerous predators, were not particularly bright. They had no instinct programmed into their brains for what to do when the prey bit back, so one by one they fell to Edmund’s spear.

Having figured the creek out to some extent, Edmund spared additional attention towards watching the meadow on his left. Nothing had yet attacked him from that direction, but he’d seen what the el-cat had done to that herbalist. He didn’t find any lurking, but he did come across a party of leatherworkers skinning one.

“How come they get to skin it?” Edmund asked once he’d passed. “Everything I kill dissolves.”

Liam shrugged. “They have skinner’s marks. Same reason those herbalists can pick flowers and not have them dissolve the moment they put ‘em down.”

Edmund blinked, realizing his opportunity to claim otherwise wasted resources. “How do I get those marks?”

“You don’t want one.”

“Of course I do,” Edmund snapped. “I need resources.”

Liam sighed. “Gatherers’ marks are mutually exclusive with delvers’ marks. If you intend to go any further than the twentieth floor without buying passage on an expedition, you don’t want a gatherers’ mark.”

“What do the delvers’ marks do?”

“All sorts of things,” Liam chimed. Before Edmund could ask any more, Liam elucidated. “All sorts of things that you’ll find out later. Delvers’ marks unlock on the tenth floor. You don’t need to worry about them now.”

Edmund nodded, for once agreeing with the cryptic dungeon. He could ask questions and plan for the future when he wasn’t in hostile territory—not that he ever left hostile territory. Until he felt confident an el-cat wasn’t going to pounce at any minute, then.

His journey along the creek came to an end at a waterfall. While a path up a hillside could’ve led him to the top of falls, Edmund didn’t care to explore.

There, on a wide flat rock just below the falls, sunning itself in a narrow beam of light that shone in a circle around it, sat the azure fox.

Edmund stared up at the yellow glow which seemed to appear from nowhere in the dark ceiling. “Is… is that sunlight?”

“Indirect, of course,” Liam said. “Brought down here through a series of mirrors, actually, but yes. That’s sunlight.”

“And that rock the fox is sitting on…”

“Is just a rock.”

Edmund nodded.

“Those other rocks though…”

Edmund blinked, and sure enough, hidden in the whitewater below the waterfall, stood no fewer than two dozen of the same pointed rock he’d seen four times already. “Thrax,” he cursed. “I can’t fight that many.”

“If that’s the case,” Liam said, “I would suggest not fighting them.”

“Then how do I get to the fox? I can’t swim—for obvious reasons, and that drop from the top of the waterfall is too high to survive.”

Liam shrugged.

Edmund let out a breath. “Useful, as always.”

His spear in hand, he stepped away from the riverbank to follow the hillside, keeping his distance from the rockjaws as he made his ascent. The top of the waterfall showed little promise.

He’d hoped to find… he wasn’t sure. If not a hidden path then at least a good place to secure his rope and rappel down. The trouble was, if he wanted to rappel to the fox, he’d do it with the entire waterfall pounding down on him the whole way. There was no way he’d be able to manage a controlled descent like that.

That left him with only one option.

Edmund stopped at the creekside just next to the top of the waterfall and pulled his Strethian lash from his shoulder. With a gentle toss, he allowed one end to burrow into the bank. With a few tugs to confirm its security, he climbed back down the hillside, uncoiling the rope of roots as he went.

He wrapped it twice around his wrist before taking a running start.

With a great leap, he pulled himself up the rope as he swung over the infested creek. Two of the stones sank into the water as he passed, but none made a move on him.

Edmund slammed into the edge of the fox’s perch, his stomach catching the corner of the flat rock at the worst possible angle. With his free left hand he scrambled for something to take hold of, managing to jam his fingers into a crack in the stone. The tension in the rope pulled his right wrist up and back, pulling Edmund towards the creek and the rockjaws within.

Clenching the knuckles in his left hand as hard as he could, Edmund swung his right arm around in two circles, unwrapping the rope around it. As his lash swung away from him, he pressed his newly-free hand into the stone and pushed himself up.

He rolled onto the platform, coming to stop face to face with the azure fox. Apparently his arrival had disturbed its slumber.

It pawed over to him, tilting its head in curiosity as it approached. Edmund stared with wide eyes as it brought its face to his, its nose twitching as it sniffed him. Then, in a single motion, its tongue burst from its mouth to lick Edmund’s forehead. Before the action even registered, the fox darted away, running across the platform and into the waterfall. By the time Edmund made it to his feet, the creature had vanished.

“Now that is interesting,” Liam said, his eyes fixed not on Edmund but on the waterfall. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a recurring objective.”

Edmund rubbed at his forehead where the fox had licked him. “A what?”

“Check your constellation.”

Edmund obeyed, shutting his eyes and imagining the clear night’s sky that so defined him. Sure enough, right next to his Trailblazer’s Sigil of the Rootmother stood another image, this one of a baby blue fox.

Trailblazer’s Sigil of the Azure Pup

The first step on the Path of the Azure Fox. Increases agility.

Trailblazer bonus: Sharpens hearing.

Edmund closed his constellation. “What’s the Path of the Azure Fox?”

“Hells if I know,” Liam said. “Sounds exciting.”

Edmund sighed and pushed himself to his feet. “Alright, let’s see where it went.” Holding his hand to his face to shield it from the deluge, he stepped up to the waterfall, took a deep breath, and stepped through.

The chime rang out before he even opened his eyes.

He found himself in a small hollow lit both by a single torch on the wall and what light passed through the waterfall. The room’s only contents were an iron chest on the ground and door that swung open to reveal a curtain of darkness.

Liam stepped through the waterfall, coming out completely dry. He laughed. “A secret behind a waterfall, classic!”

Edmund blinked. “What is this?”

“A hidden exit,” Liam said. “They come with better loot, or loot at all in this case. The main exit to the sixth floor is inside the safety ring. You don’t get loot for finding that one.”

Edmund stared at the darkness through the doorway. “And the fox is on the next floor.”

“Thrax knows where that fox went,” Liam said. “But I’d keep an eye out for it if I were you. I’m sure you’ll have a chance to find it again.”

“Yeah,” Edmund grumbled, “of course I will.” Absolutely one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he stepped carefully up to the loot chest, swinging it open with one hand while his other clasped his spear.

Inside he found two of the familiar sharp stones, each miniaturized to be smaller than his head.

Rockjaw Pauldrons

Provides protection against piercing and water damage. Vulnerable to ice damage and blunt-force damage.

Edmund didn’t hesitate to grab the pauldrons and wriggle his arms through their leather straps. They fit perfectly, as every piece of loot did. As Edmund adjusted them to make sure they’d stay put in the heat of battle, Liam spoke up.

“There’s one more thing, since you’ve been complaining about it.”

With a scowl, Edmund leaned back over the iron chest to find a small pile of silver coins where the pauldrons had been sitting. “Do these chests normally have money?”

“A bit,” Liam said. “More the further down you go. I tend to give it to groups when I don’t want them fighting over loot—it’s easy to split.”

Edmund scowled. “Why wouldn’t you want them fighting over loot?”

“Oh, I do,” Liam said. “But if they’re forced to come up with a fair way of dealing with loot division early on, I can’t make it a problem for them later. Knowing when to drive a wedge between party members is just as important as knowing how.”

Edmund spat.

Liam laughed. “More things you don’t need to worry about.”

Edmund gathered up the coins and shoved them into his pocket. He’d have to get a pack of some sort, sooner or later. He wondered if it’d be worthwhile to return to the market and buy one with his newly acquired coins before the realization struck.

He looked up at Liam. “Are these meant to tempt me to go back to the market?”

“You need a bath.” Liam dodged the question. “And I get the distinct impression you won’t be taking one outside the safety ring.”

“And how do you propose I get back to the ring? My rope is dangling in the middle of a rockjaw nest.”

Liam paused, furrowing his brow. “Good point. Follow me.” With a wave of his hand the waterfall split open, making way for Liam and Edmund to pass through. Once back on the sunny rock, Liam snapped his fingers, and the rockjaws rearranged. Three of them separated from the others, moving slowly and deliberately through the water, until they sat in a line between Edmund and the bank.

“You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“I usually am,” Liam said.

“No,” Edmund put plainly.

“What? Whatever happened to that young delver who wrung everything he could out of a floor before moving on?”

“I’m thorough, not suicidal,” Edmund said. “I’ve got my loot, I’ve got an Aspect to unlock, I’ve got a new sigil. I’m not going to run along the mossy, slippery, angled, moving backs of a bunch of predators for the chance to go shopping.”

“What about the chance to reclaim your rope?”

Edmund paused, looking up at the place his Strethian lash still hung from the riverbank atop the waterfall, beyond the reach of even his spear. He sighed. “The lash was always a limited resource. How valuable do you think this ‘recurring objective’ is gonna be?”

“Extremely.”

“Then it was worth it.” Edmund didn’t wait for a reply before turning back to the waterfall, shielding his eyes from the deluge as he passed where Liam’s opening had shut. He didn’t stop to open his constellation until he’d made it to the exit.

The obvious choice would’ve been to combine Solitude and Perseverance to form his last tier 2 confluence, at least, that’s what most delvers did before looking towards tier 3 or a fourth base Aspect. Edmund wasn’t most delvers.

Neither Perseverance nor Solitude glowed with anything close to the resonance of his other Aspects. While none of his current Aspects could combine with Madness, both Obsession and The Recluse had options. Combining with one of them would offer more immediate strength, while delaying his next confluence with Madness by a floor. If he combined Solitude and Perseverance immediately, he’d be weaker for the sixth floor, but able to combine the result with Madness by the seventh.

In the end, Edmund let conventional wisdom guide him, if for the wrong reasons. While others might’ve combined their base Aspects first in the hope of finding where their resonance would be, Edmund combined them because he already knew.

He’d chosen Madness long ago, and he’d commit to walking its path.

With a slight nod and a simple exertion of his will, Edmund selected Solitude and Perseverance and accepted their confluence into his soul.

Tier 2 Aspect: The Island - Gray Resonance

  Level 1 - Grants resistance to over-time effects while alone.

Edmund scowled at the ability description. “That’s suitably vague,” he muttered. As The Island solidified with the same gray glow as Perseverance, missing the dull red of Solitude, Edmund scanned through his other Aspects for any changes. Solitude remained the same, but the newly level 3 Perseverance had swapped the word ‘limited’ from the description of its health regeneration for the word ‘minor.’ Edmund, of course, had no way to quantify the difference between limited health regen and minor health regen, but he knew it was a good thing.

He sighed as he reopened his eyes, disappointed in the somewhat narrow effect of his newest Aspect. He hoped it would still prove useful through the next floor, at least long enough for him to combine it with Madness to make something a bit more powerful.

In the meantime, Edmund had a few more things to check on.

Liam was gone, presumably bored with the realization that Edmund had no intent of returning to town. Edmund took the quiet moment to analyze every inch of the chamber behind the waterfall. Given that the space itself was a secret, he didn’t truly expect to find anything, but if that one outcropping was the only place he could explore without fighting off a whole nest of rockjaws, he’d at least explore it to its fullest.

Only once he’d searched every corner of the available space, tried and failed at throwing rocks at his dangling rope to get it to swing into reach, and otherwise exhausted his every idea of finding ways to better equip himself without facing the rockjaws did Edmund finally gather up his gear, retighten the various straps on his armor, look to the secret exit the fox had led him to, and step into the darkness.

----------------------------------------

Edmund Montgomery Ahab

Aspects Unlocked: 6

Tier 1 Aspect: Solitude - Red Resonance

  Level 3- Gain increased constitution while fighting alone.

Tier 1 Aspect: Perseverance - Gray Resonance

  Level 3 - Gain minor health regeneration.

Tier 1 Aspect: Madness - Prismatic Resonance

  Level 3 - See beyond reality.

Tier 2 Aspect: Obsession - Gold Resonance

  Level 1 - Gain strength and agility for each consecutive day spent pursuing your obsession.

Tier 2 Aspect: The Recluse - Gold Resonance

  Level 1 - Empower the effects of Madness while alone. Lessen the effects of Madness while accompanied.

Tier 2 Aspect: The Island - Gray Resonance

  Level 1 - Grants resistance to over-time effects while alone.