For the third time in his death, Araxes found himself waking up.

Hopefully this wasn’t habit-forming.

Ever since he had met Tolliver, things had been going strange for him, and he knew at least some of the reasons why thanks to his talk with the boy and the understanding that his connection to the system had been severed by his encounter with Cora in her orboid form.

But this! By the seven hells–plus two on sunday when things got really heated–liches were supposed to be immune to sleep! It was one of the chief benefits of the bloody class! No more spending a third of the useable time in the day flat on one’s back waiting for the deucedly ineffecient organic components of one’s body to recharge.

And yet here he was, for the third time since he had met the boy, waking up from a sleep that should not have happened. It was enough to drive one to drink.

Well. It was enough to drive one who still had the ability to feel the effects of alcohol consumption to drink. Which, as he thought on it, was one of the chief detriments of the class.

But there was nothing for it. Asleep he had been and awake he now was. And as he woke, as his senses returned to him, he found the memories of the dream he had just experienced… lingering.

That terrible mad voice seemed to reverberate still in his ears, that insane laughter echoing inside of his skull. He remembered dreams from his time before death, remembered them perfectly in fact–another perk of the class–and he could say with perfect honesty that he had never in his life had a dream that had felt like that.

In fact, as he considered the dream, he realized it reminded him less of his sleep-induced nightmares of old and more of what he had once heard the chief priest of the temple of Owlizer in his hometown speak of when the man had gone and gotten a supposed vision from his god.

Which… Was rather disturbing, as he considered it. Ah well. Something to look into later, he supposed. After he had finished bloody well waking up.

Eventually, feeling return to his outer extremities. He curled his phalanges, making sure everything was still attached, and it seemed to be, which was a pleasant realization. Given the strangeness of the events leading up to his falling unconscious, he had half expected himself to be in bits and pieces and having to–hah–pull himself together.

He chose to keep his eye-lights dimmed for now, instead taking in the sound and feel of his surroundings without using his sight. And as he did so, he felt details start to flow into his senses. He felt gentle mattress under his back, the too fluffy pillow under his head, heard the quiet scraping of slippered feet against tiled floor… ah, he was in the infirmary.

Well, yes, that stood to reason, didn't it? after all, he was technically a casualty. Much as he loathed the realization. Some world-class intellect must have seen him faint away, and by all the gods and devils in creation, wasn't he just going to be hearing about that later? Probably from Pearl, unless he missed his guess. Likely the little fairy would come in with her insufferableness and tease him about it no end.

But what was done was done, and he would just have to endure. After all, it wasn't like he could go around ripping spines out for any simple slight any more, could he?

And, as he thought about it, he realized he might not want to anymore.

Well damn, he thought. It seemed as though Tolliver had been correct after all. He was making different choices. There was a time when suffering such humiliation in front of even his staunchest allies would have sent him on the proverbial warpath. At least until the last witness had been ritually disemboweled and fed to a dimensional lurker.

But now, now he could hardly muster the energy to care about it. How peculiar.

Well, nothing for it. He allowed himself to open his eyes and stare up at the mute-beige ceiling as he catalogued himself. They had even allowed him his dignity and not dressed him in one of those beastly hospital gowns–though as he considered it, probably it was more for their sake than his. No one had really desired to see him naked when he was alive, and he could only imagine that sentiment had increased rather sharply since his death.

It was during his examination–eyeflames still focused resolutely on the ceiling, that he discovered something had been removed from his person. He felt a pang of distinct loss at no longer feeling the sturdy straps and the telltale buzz of background mana from Tolliver’s harness.

Well damn. The closest he’d come to real power in months, and now it was no longer with him. Whoever had laid him out like a corpse at a wake must have taken that off of him and put it away somewhere. Possibly out of a misguided sense of mistrust.

Not that he could blame them, though. He’d given Tolliver his word, but he’d seen the looks on the wall as he had laid into the Golden Men and Hellhounds. They’d cheered when he felled the Iron Missive that had threatened to storm over the walls, but always the eyes had been on him. Waiting. Weighing. Watching for that moment when he would overstep.

It had not been… Pleasant. And despite his earlier proclamations that he found new experiences exhilerating after a fashion, he could have just as well done without this one.

Ah well. Nothing for it. Time would reveal his true intentions–to himself alongside those around him, he dared say.

He stretched out, allowing himself to come full awake and for his dimmed senses to return to their full capacity. Another perk of being a lich–where the living could only partially block out their senses, he had perfect control over his own. Though it required a negligible amount of time for them to return to their full use.

He allowed himself the pleasure of a deep, lung filling breath, and enjoyed the sensation of a soft breeze as it passed over his dessicated flesh. He held the breath for a moment, then let it out in a long sigh, and enjoyed again a slow breeze wafted in from the opposite direction…

He paused.

I am deep in the bowels of a mountain. Surely there are ventilation ducts and the like to allow air to flow down here, but what the devil is it doing flowing from two directions at once?

Frowning, he inhaled again. And once again he felt the breeze waft over his body. Oh now that was patently absurd. He would have to have the lung capacity of a blaze ox or a minor forge walker to produce such a volume of wind as what he was feeling. He snorted at the absurd thought–

And froze as a gust of wind blasted through the infirmary, sending linens fluttering and unsecured papers scattering across the floor. The elven nurse at the end of the corridor ‘eep’d as her hair blew forward to fall loose in front of her eyes.

Araxes’ eyes widened.

What… The hell… Was that?

He threw open all of his senses wide, bringing himself fully to consciousness in a single instant. His intention had been to try and discern if he had been cursed or otherwise enspelled somehow by whatever had sent him to the land of Nod in the first place. And if he had, he would then bend all of his not-inconsiderable intellect to determining how he had been so cursed and what could be done to remedy that.

That had been his intention. And like so many other cobblestones on the proverbial road to hell, it lasted all of a half-second before it was hurled aside by unrelenting reality.

Pure information surged into his mind as though from a burst dam. He heard himself cry out as torrents of data and meaning blasted into his mind, overwhelming him and dragging him under the surface. He struck out with mind and body, flailing, scrabbling desperately for some kind of purchase. Any kind of purchase. As he was buffeted and blasted by the pure rush of knowledge.

The rumbling crack that rolled through the infirmary was what broke through the swirls and eddies and forced him back up into the real world. His eyeflames blazed, banishing the darkness of raw information, and he saw a massive rupture in the beige ceiling above him. Small stones and pebbles clattered to the ground, and he became aware of screams and wails of fear all around him. His bed was shaking–and not because of any tremblings of his own form.

Earthquake! his mind reported. He had to escape, to get out before the gods damned mountain fell on him again–

Stop.

He who had once been and might one day again be Lich King Araxesendenak grabbed his rising panic with all the strength of his not inconsiderable mind and wrenched it free of himself, stuffing it into some mental box somewhere to be taken out whenever he might have need for it. He would not panic. Not here, and not now. If this was an earthquake, and if it did in fact crush him, he would just reappear next to Cora–wherever the hell she was right now–none the worse for wear.

Information still pounded against his skull, but he rose up to meet it with all the powers undeath had conveyed on him. A fleshly mind might have melted under the deluge, but his was a will of pure steel and undead energies. It met the torrent, seeking not to stem but to direct. Information parsed and parted under his will like flesh under a surgeon’s knife, and he began to shunt what he was receiving into separate areas of his consciousness.

He could no more have explained the process to a mortal than a fish could have explained the complexities of the ocean currents to an ant. But while the torrent did not lessen, his mind finally began to rise above it, to take what he was receiving and make sense of it. And as the cold logic flowed down into his limbs, he felt the earthquake soften and still, until all that remained of it was the swinging of a few mana lights from the ceiling and the fast breathing of the elven nurse from under her desk.

His consciousness expanded, his mind grew as if filling out into the cracks and crevices of everything around him. He felt the dungeon, pulsing with life and energy. He heard the footsteps of the orderlies 20 feet away. He heard muttered susurrations of men and women, mobs and townsfolk alike throughout the hall outside.

And more. And more.

He heard the labored breathing of Quentin out in the courtyard, hundreds of yards away. He heard young Nathaniel speaking to someone else in the upper tunnels. He felt the strike of booted feet upon the dungeon floors. He felt the passage of bodies through his tunnels, felt the hum of essence and energy flowing through his rooms and halls. A trio of goblins were hard at work in the Mechanic Forge on floor three, and he could feel their excitement refracting off a portion of his mind like little fireworks in the night sky.

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More and more and more. He shut off his eyeflames and dove into the deluge of information. He felt the pulse of unspent essence, waiting to be used. He saw without seeing the faces of Tolliver’s parents as they clung to one another in a side passage, their naked fear let loose for what they thought was themselves only. He felt the bubbling of terror humming just below the surface of the entire dungeon, felt the rising anger borne of fear in the town outside, because it too was part of the dungeon now whether they knew it or not.

Sensations and understanding and information threatened to tear his skull from his shoulders. He felt himself dwindling inside his own mind, his own thoughts in danger of being utterly snuffed out under the rising cacophony of voices and sensations. But Lich King Araxesendenak had spent 300 years in the accumulation of power and understanding the flood of information, and Araxes still remembered the lessons those years had taught him. And even as he felt his concept of self twist and writhe under the deluge, something from the bedrock of his soul rose up against it.

No.

He had once been Lich King Araxesendenak. He was the scourge of the Thousand Valleys. He had defeated the Chromium Dragon in its lair, with nothing but a toothpick and a bowl of after-dinner mints. He had sundered the gates of the Abyss when they’d dared default on his loan. He had drawn up the foundations of Phyrexes from the very molten core of the earth and sheathed it in the bones of his enemies. He had won 400 chess games in a row against the mighty gnomish Calculating Machine! His mind was a fortress. More than that, it was an undead fortress. A living mind might have shattered, but not his.And so as the deluge of information continued, he drew himself together, his mind becoming a hardened diamond against the flow.

The waters of information smashed against that wall and flowed around it and into it. And as the deluge continued, Araxes drew it to himself, embraced it and rose with it. Slowly, gradually, the pounding faded and the torrent eased. Slowly, he grew accustomed to the input. And finally, as his eyeflames brightened again, he allowed himself to take a single deep breath.

New menus gleamed in his vision, menus the like of which he had never seen nor even heard of before. Half of his vision was obscured by a minimap of the dungeon and its surrounding areas–but it was so detailed a map it was as if he were looking at a birds-eye view of the actual landscape. Curious, he reached out with his mind and discovered he could zoom in, and in, until he was no longer a bird circling above the dungeon, he was within the dungeon and staring in his map screen into the eyes of a goblin guard outside the very infirmary in which he rested.

The guard stared straight ahead, not acknowledging Araxes in any way. The lich could only conclude that the goblin was utterly unaware of Araxes’ voyuerism.

And there was more. So much more. The menus gleamed golden in his vision. Information was presented to him, and options on ways to act on that information. He saw buttons labeled things like ‘spawn mobs’ and ‘delete room’. There were a dozen options for shunting mana and re-directing essence in some way. A smaller pulsing menu told him of new upgrades to the dungeon, and the ability he had now to access any of them he wished.

Bloody hell, was his first coherent thought in he knew not how many minutes. I’ve become the Dungeon, haven’t I?

It was the only explanation that made sense. Somehow, someway, he seemed to have, usurped the power traditionally held by Cora.

How the devil?

It made no sense, and yet, objectively, here it was. What other explanation could there be for his newfound abilities? Unless of course there was some new obscure class powers that came about only through narcolepsy.

But no. Now that his mind was awake and functioning, his memories returned to him. He remembered the power washing over him, through him, into him even as he watched Cora writhe and twist in agony. He remembered the pain that came with the power, and remembered how it had suffused his being for just long enough to drag him down into impossible unconsciousness.

And he remembered the screams of Cora and of Sally as blackness descended upon him.

Something had happened to them. Something had happened to him. And now Araxes was the dungeon, and the dungeon was Araxes?

This was going to make going to the mess hall for a cup of coffee decidedly inconvenient, if he caused dirty great earthquakes every time he moved.

Oh that is patently absurd. That orboid strumpet had no difficulties moving through the dungeon in any of her forms, so there must be a bloody method to engage in locomotion without bringing down the house, as it were.

The plethora of new menus and icons swimming around in his vision seemed to be a likely starting point. Tentatively, not moving his body for obvious reasons, he began flicking through the new menus available to him. His eyes widened and widened as he paged through menus named things like “Spawn Options” and “Supply Distribution”, but also through much more interesting looking ones like “Essence Dissemination” and “Dungeon Defense”. He noticed also that there were several menus related much more towards the offensive angle of things than defensive–including one that looked very much like the ability to declare war upon nearby elements.

Sally. The thought came to him as he paged through the offensive menues. She was the offensive portion of the being that had comprised a unitfication of who is now Sally, Cora, and Persephone. Had he inherited her powers as well? And if so, were they now expaned now that they had returned to a single being?

“Twelve gods and their fishes,” he breathed out. “I’m going to have to devote time to this, aren’t I?”

“Sir?” It was one of the Elven orderlies, practically scurrying over to his bedside. “Did you say something?”

“Merely talking to myself,” Araxes said with as much false casualness as he could muster.

“But you’re awake! That’s wonderful! When you fell unconscious, everyone feared… Well, we didn’t know what to fear.”

Araxes turned his eyeflames on her, and blinked as another wash of information speared into his head. And an instant later a new menu overlay popped up over his vision, detailing the stats and class of one Victoria Hair-Like-Grass. She was a dungeon mob, one of those ‘free mobs’ Tolliver had unwittingly let loose what seemed like years ago now. But the fact that he could see quite literally everything about her without the use of high level spells was enough to get the full attention of Araxes.

“Are you feeling well sir?” Victoria said hesitantly, her blue eyes looking at him with worry. “Only…”

“I am well enough,” Araxes said, still without moving. “But I believe I will need a moment or two more to recuperate fully. May I ask your indulgence, my dear, and request a bit of privacy?”

“Oh! Yes, of course!” the elf curtseyed–bloody well curtsied–and retreated from his bedside back to her station.

So. It seemed there was some form of power to be had in this new situation. Could he read everyone like that? Everyone connected to the dungeon, likely enough. Which was… Interesting, if not immediately useful.

It took another fifteen solid minutes of research before he discovered the ability to move his corporeal form without causing massive disruptions of the dungeon around him. A switch labeled “Full Feedback” in a menu called Dungeon Interactions was set to the ‘on’ position, and a quick mental flick turned it off and allowed Araxes to finally sit up in bed.

“Now really,” he muttered as he stretched, “what possible use could tying my bloody movements to the physical nature of the dungeon itself have?”

But while being able to stretch without collapsing the entire bloody mountain on his head was indeed a goal worth achieving, it was not what preoccupied his thoughts now. He had received power… In many ways, he now was the dungeon? It bore exploring, and for the next several minutes that is precisely what he did.

He pored over the new menus and powers suddenly available to him, surfed the information that still poured into him, drew in the new sensations and forced hiumself to become accustomed to them. And as he became accustomed, he began trying out the new functions available to him. He sent the minimap view winging through the dungeon, and found that with just a little bit of mana expended he could transfer his consciousness into that view for a period of time.

He spent a little time playing with that, swinging ‘himself’ through the dungeon, down the halls and into rooms, and even–after he discovered purely by accident that he could–through the walls themselves. He wondered idly if Cora had ever engaged in this kind of behavior, or if she even had been able to do so while split apart as she had been. Many pf the systems he was looking at seemed designed to interact with both the offensive and defensive side of things… So perhaps her abilities had been stunted somehow?

He brought his consciousness up to the goblins standing guard outside of his door again, ‘looking’ them over with his minds’ eyes. They were both in the slash-meister class, both were veterans of the assault of Melloram and had chosen upgrades to their base classes that had turned them into the wielders of the whirling death machines they both now bore. Their miniature rotary saws hung at their sides, revving at idle, ready to be employed against the first enemy that dared show its face.

The presence that was Araxes considered them both, then reached out tentatively, not wishing to harm them. Which, he reflected, was itself a rather new development, all things considered. A fragment of his consciousness brushed against the goblin, and while the mob himself made no indication that anything had happened, his information flowed into Araxes’ head just like it had with the Elven maid.

He took some time examining that new menu. He had, apparently, selected this goblin merely by focusing on him. His name, Cheshire, was placed above a full stat screen. And on another menu he found himself presented with a series of quick buttons, such as give, label, with tooltips such as give orders, move unit, disband unit, although that one was grayed out, and probablyfor the best, as he thought about it.

Curious, he selected the move unit button, just to see what might happen. And what happened was a giant four-fingered caricature of a hand appeared above the goblin–although from the mob’s utter lack of reaction, Araxes could only assume that he was the only one who could see it.

The goblin most certainly noticed, however, when the hand came down and plucked him off the ground by the scruff of his neck.

“Hey!” the goblin squawked and immediately started thrashing around, dropping his heavy rotating saw in surprise. “What the hell!”

“Ches!” The other goblin jerked in surprise, then whirled and revved the engine on his own saw, peering both ways down the corridor, searching for an adversary. Quickly, Araxes deselected the command, and the goblin dropped unceremoniously back to the floor.

Araxes the presence retreated back to the infirmary in haste. He would have to speak to the goblins quickly in order to assuage their fears, and possibly apologize for the coronary he must have given them. With a little bit of experimentation he managed to press himself back into his body and withdraw from the dungeon as a whole, at least to an extent. But even as he felt the sensations fade from his immediate consciousness he could still feel them, lingering at the edges of his perception, ready to spring back to him in an instant.

He slowly rotated his body and planted his feet on the floor beside his bed, four hundred years of accumulated profane vocabulary making itself useful at last as he swore inside his own mind. Here was power again. True power, thrumming within his corporeal self and not granted him by items or outside influence. What kind of power, and what its uses might be he knew not. Clearly he was going to have to run a truly staggering number of experiments.

But it was still power. And it was his.

He felt as though a weight he had never fully acknowledged pressing down on him had suddenly been lifted. True, he was still level one. True, he was still utterly bog-useless in a fight, at least until he delved deeper into whatever offensive capabilities the dungeon might afford him. And true, he was still Araxes, no more the Lich King Araxesendenak, Lord of Phyrexes and Xeladre.

But now, it seemed, he was also something decidedly more.

Well now, he thought to himself. Well now indeed.

The older Araxes might have chosen to just take power unilaterally at that point, to appoint himself lord of the dungeon and to enact his will upon all who were inside it. Lich King Araxesendenak surely would have done so. And if he were honest with himself, he could feel the temptation to do just that rising within him. Restore himself to a semblance of what he had once believed to be his own rightful rule and become a kind of ruler within the dungeon.

But he remembered his conversation with Tolliver a bear two nights ago. He remembered the boy telling him that he had choice now. He remembered his conversation with Sheshek, and the words of wisdom the Kobold holy man had spoken to him.

And as tempting as the idea was, he had given Tolliver a promise. And while Lich King Araxesendenak had been many things during his death, and Araxes had been even more… They had both, regardless of circumstance, been undead abominations of their word.

And so he chose… differently.

Everyone felt it when the change hit.

The walls of the dungeon seemed to tremble while also suddenly growing more solid. The mobs around them shuddered and stopped, then stood up straighter and stared around as if someone had called their names from a distance. Nat blinked and looked around, and saw the exact same thing happening to everyone that had been spawned by the dungeon.

It was kinda creepy.

“What’s going on?” he started to ask, but only got as far as the “What” before a new and very familiar voice came over the dungeon message system.

{Dungeon} Araxes: Could I perhaps convince the Tollivers and their various representatives and lieutenants to meet me in my infirmary chamber?

{Dungeon} Jack: We’re kind of in the middle of something Araxes.

{Dungeon}: Annie: Yes, in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a damn crisis on our hands. My son’s gone, and now the dungeon’s lost two out of the three people it needed to function. Unless you have something useful to say–

The next message did not come from the message channels. It rose up from the ground beneath them as if the earth itself had decided to rise up and speak its mind.

“Yes,” the dungeon spoke with the voice of Araxes, and Nat felt his eyes go wide. “That’s rather the topic of conversation I had in mind.”