“Striga!” I yelled as she was mid-lunge. “Don’t eat the bats! I’m using those!” The owl was startled out of her attack, giving the bats a chance to flutter away into the further reaches of my spike-deathtrap cave. When she saw them fleeing, though, Striga flapped her wings as if to make another pass. “Don’t eat them!” I said again, angrily. “Stupid owl, I’ll- ughhhhh…” Another wave of nausea washed over me. “I’ll feed you later,” I finished weakly. Damn it, who knew how long it would take me to find more bats if she ate these ones. I supposed I’d need more anyway for a stable breeding population, but still.

I was dimly aware of Striga chittering something unhappily in response to me, but my awareness retracted once more to my core-body as I waited for the [Azoth Exhaustion] to pass. I don’t know how much time passed then, waves of dizziness leaving me feverish and chilled by turns. I hoped that Teekas and Nar-shesh would make it through the dungeon okay and find my core chamber, and that Chompy wouldn’t attack them again.

Eventually, I sensed the four of them drawing near. Pacifica let out a shocked gasp when she saw me, fear and revulsion evident in her eyes.

“Hey, we brought her,” Nar-shesh said. “What now?”

“Gimme a minute,” I grumbled. The waves of nausea were tapering off, but I still wasn’t feeling 100%. I waited a while longer, until the world was only wobbling slightly rather than full-on spinning, before cautiously expanding my awareness back out through my domain a few yards at a time. “...Where did you get a frying pan?” I asked Nar-shesh, confused.

“A what?” he asked, also confused. “This thing?” He held up the frying pan. “She was carrying it.”

“Oh, neat. That’ll expand our culinary options,” I said. “Okay. Striga?” The owl shifted nervously. “Do you want to explain to me why this human was chasing you?”

“No,” Striga said, guilelessly.

“Alright, that’s fair. I walked into that one. Let me rephrase. Striga, explain to me why this human was chasing you.”

“I dunno,” Striga mumbled sullenly, not making eye contact.

I sighed. “Striga, did you try to eat her again after I specifically told you not to?”

Striga preened her feathers and did not answer.

“Striga…” I tried to inject some maternal authority into my tone.

“...Maybe,” she finally admitted.

I sighed again. “Okay. Thank you for telling me the truth when I asked you. Since you did not listen to me when I told you that you weren’t allowed to eat her, I am going to punish you. From now on, you have to keep her alive. When she’s hungry, you feed her. When she’s thirsty, you get her water. If someone tries to hurt her, you kill them, until I tell you otherwise. Got it?”

“No!” she protested, spreading her wings angrily to make herself look bigger and scarier. “I don’t wanna! She’s my food!”

“Yeah, well, tough shit. Treat her like she’s your chick and she can’t fly yet. Do you understand?”

Striga rotated her head on her neck so that she was facing directly away from me, which was somewhat unsettling but also extremely funny, visually. I managed to stifle my laughter. “Striga…” I said, warningly. “I’m serious about this. I am making you responsible for her wellbeing. If she doesn’t have food, you don’t get to eat. If she breaks an arm, I break your wing. Nod if you understand me.” After a moment, and still with her head rotated to look away from me, Striga nodded. “Okay, good. You can go back upstairs now. Follow the lights, I’ll show you the way.” She couldn’t stomp, exactly, with the way her legs were set up, but she certainly left the chamber in a huff. “And don’t eat my bats!” I yelled after her.

“I feel like we gotta start, like, leaving food out for her, if you’re gonna be this picky about what she eats,” Nar-shesh said dryly.

“That’s not a terrible idea, actually,” I said. “I’ll put it on the list.” I looked at the human girl, who was still staring at me in wide-eyed terror. “Hm. I didn’t actually have a plan for what to do with the human once we captured her. Do any of you speak whatever language they speak around here?”

The goblins shook their heads. “Malik and Kizurra know a few words,” Teekas said. “But not enough to hold a conversation.”

I pulled up my skill list. I could have sworn I’d seen more language skills on here somewhere… ah, yep, there we go. “Okay, do you know what it’s called at least?”

“Human…ese?” Nar-shesh suggested, with a grimace that indicated he was not particularly impressed with his own idea.

“No, you don’t. Got it,” I said. “Alright, we’ll brute-force it. Pacifica Blackwater!” Calling her name got her attention. “Yeah, you,” I said. “Give a yell if you speak any of these languages.” I started reading down the list of languages that I could buy as skills. “Aboshe, Aquillium, Azag al-Thumm…”

This went on for some time. Eventually I got a response with a language called Ploetz. “Ja! Ja, iquit laag-Ploetz,” she exclaimed, visibly relieved to hear something she recognized.

I hated to spend a skill point on a language I could theoretically learn myself given time and effort, but there was no helping it. I comforted myself with the knowledge that real life didn’t have optimal build decisions, and bought [Ploetz]. Again, like when I'd learned Apophic, there was that sensation of a door opening in my mind onto a new room of knowledge, like it had always been there.

“Alright,” I said, the syllables of Ploetz mushy and vowelfull on my tongue — figuratively speaking. I still had no actual tongue. Did you forget? Because I sure didn’t. I restrained myself from getting distracted by my ever-smoldering rage at my transformation, and continued the conversation. “Hi, Pacifica. My name is Persephone.”

“H-how do you know my name?” she asked, shivering. Oh, that might have been from cold, actually, rather than fear: I just noticed that her shoes were soaked from walking through my partially-flooded caverns. Hm. I should do something about that. With a thought, the ambient temperature in the heart-chamber began to climb. Or, I hoped that’s what it was doing, at least — I still couldn’t actually feel temperature the same way I’d been able to as a human.

“It’s on your status bar?” I said, answering her question with a question. “Why, should I not be able to?”

She shook her head. “N-no, that’s…I mean, I can’t see your name on yours.”

“Well, that’s another can of worms,” I said. “Just out of curiosity, are your parents named Temperance and James? Kinda tall? Mom throws fireballs?” Her pale face went even paler at that. She nodded without saying anything. “And, uh, how long would you estimate before they notice you’re gone?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shrinking in on herself.

Hm. Alright. My mind whirled as I considered all the angles of the situation. Taking her captive might not have been a good move, now that I had a moment to think about it. The ship had already sailed, as far as the local human populations being alerted to our presence — even if they didn’t know what was up, they knew something was up. Ironically, by bringing Pacifica down here to my core chamber I’d actually put myself in a worse position, because now she knew for sure what was going on. If I let her go, I would lose even the small advantage of my opponents’ uncertainty. But I definitely didn’t want to kill her to prevent her from talking: setting aside the cruelty of it, the advantage it would preserve would be small — and probably totally outweighed by the rage that would inspire in the humans. No, she was definitely more valuable to the dungeon alive. I could pump her for all the information I didn’t have on the world, for starters. Oooh, maybe I could even use her as a hostage. That could buy me at least some temporary peace. I should probably check if that was a remotely viable plan, though.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Hey, do your parents love you?” I asked, once again displaying my astonishingly robust tact and social grace.

“I don’t know,” she whimpered. She was practically imploding with how crumpled in on herself she was, tears dripping down her cheeks once again. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this was just the cumulative effects of a profoundly distressing situation, but I started to get a bad feeling in my gut that suggested there might be more going on. It had been there this whole time, of course, but I hadn’t really previously noticed the bruise on her cheek.

I sighed, and pulled up a pedestal of rock from the floor for her to sit on. “Okay. Hey, don’t cry. It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you.” I did my best approximation of patting her comfortingly on the head with my domain. It didn’t seem to help her much, but it made me feel better at least. “Did they give you that bruise?”

Sniffling, she nodded. “Dad was angry about the dog,” she said.

Well, that changed the calculus. Shit. I couldn’t keep her as a hostage now: the thing about hostages was that you had to give them back eventually, and there was no way in hell I was turning Pacifica back over to parents who beat her. But I couldn’t just let her go free, either, or she’d end up right back under their thumb and I’d have given up a sort-of-hostage for nothing. What was I supposed to do?

Oh, wait, hang on. I could just try open and honest communication. That might work.

“Okay, Pacifica, I’m gonna be super real with you for a second,” I said. “I ordered Nar-shesh to capture you because I freaked out and panicked that humans might discover I was here. I didn’t actually have a plan for what to do with you afterwards, and I don’t have any desire to hurt you. I’m just trying to keep myself and the people with me safe. Given that, I’ve got a deal I’d like to propose to you that I think will be mutually beneficial.”

She looked like she wanted to make some sort of snarky comeback to that, but swallowed it down and just nodded. She was clearly aware of the power imbalance in this situation: with parents like hers, it was no surprise she’d be wary and cynical. Oh well, nothing to do but earn her trust through action.

“So, here’s my idea. You stay here with me, not as a prisoner but as a guest. You’ve got the run of the place, you can leave whenever you want, we’ll feed and water you, et cetera. Same deal as my goblins get. Together, we will lie to the townsfolk and convince them that I am keeping you prisoner here, as a hostage. I need them to not send adventurers after me, so we’ll make them think that if they do, I’ll kill you. But, again, I won’t; we’re just making them think that I will. What I get out of this: hopefully self-explanatory. What you get out of this: you don’t have to live with your parents anymore. Thoughts?”

She seemed visibly surprised by my offer, before furrowing her eyebrows and chewing her lip as she thought it over. “So… I would still be a hostage, though, really,” she said. “I mean, you say I’d be free to leave, but I have no guarantee of that. You’re a monster. You’re a dungeon core, you’re like the monster. I can’t trust anything you say to me.”

“In fairness, I would really prefer that you not leave, since having you on hand would be kinda crucial to selling the whole hostage deception, but also I don’t really need to keep you here by force,” I said. “I mean, where are you gonna go? Back to your parents, who beat you? Back to the town that’s done nothing to stop them for however-many years? You’re a broke teenager with nothing but the clothes on her back. I’m offering shelter, hospitality, autonomy, dignity — in return for pretty much nothing. Working with me on this is the only rational decision.”

“...They’re still my parents,” she said after a moment. She pulled her legs up onto the pillar, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I can’t just abandon them.”

I mentally moved the ‘offer to kill her parents to win her trust’ plan back to the ‘maybe’ pile. “You’re not abandoning them,” I said instead. “You’re giving them an opportunity to re-evaluate how they treat you. This arrangement of ours will be, by its nature, temporary. Threatening the life of one village girl will buy me a few weeks of peace at most: after that, you can go back to your parents or do whatever else you want. Very low-commitment, really.”

“And how do I know this isn’t a trick? What guarantee do I have that I’d be safe here, that you aren’t just going to do something horrible to me once I agree to stay? Like eat me, or sacrifice me in some evil ritual?” Pacifica asked. I took that as a good sign: if she was asking questions, that meant she was considering my offer.

“What would I have to gain by tricking you that I couldn’t just take by force? If I wanted to kill you, I could drop a rock on you right now. If I wanted to stop you from escaping, I have two level 10 goblins right here, and you’re only level 2. How far would you get? My money’s on ‘not very.’ This isn’t a fairy tale, and I’m not a witch.” I’m not your parents, more importantly, I thought to myself but did not say. “You don’t need to be combing through my words looking for the trap. You’re already in a trap. I’m trying to do you a favor and get you out of it.”

She flinched at that, visibly conflicted. I gave her a minute to chew her over. “Alright,” she said eventually. “But if I decide to leave and you keep me here, the gods will damn you for an oathbreaker.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I guarantee you, that will be the least of the gods’ concerns,” I said, before switching back to Apophic to address Teekas and Nar-shesh, who’d been standing there awkwardly while I talked to Pacifica. “Alright, guys, this is Pacifica, she’s gonna be staying with us for the next little bit.” I then briefly explained the situation to them. “Any questions?”

“Yeah, how come you can speak Humanese now?” Nar-shesh said, raising his hand.

“Spent a skill point on it, and the name of the language is Ploetz. Teekas, what’s up?”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Teekas asked, eyeing the human dubiously.

“What, the whole hostage thing? No, but I figure it’s worth a shot.”

“Oh, no, I meant the ‘putting Striga in charge of taking care of her’ thing,” she said. “No offense, but she’s kind of…”

“I am going to need you all to be on call for when Striga inevitably drops the ball,” I conceded. “This is supposed to be a learning experience for her. There’s more to life than killing things and eating them: I’m trying to get her socialized, used to working as part of a team. Helping others, accepting help from others, following directions, communicating about needs. People shit, y’know?”

That explanation seemed to satisfy them, so I sent them back upstairs to get Pacifica settled in. The hostage ruse would be solid insurance against the torches-and-pitchforks-wielding mob I expected would arrive sometime this evening. Or, at least, I hoped it would be solid insurance. It would have to be: my azoth pool was still near-empty, so I couldn’t do any major remodels to fortify our position. I wanted to have as much azoth on hand as possible when the humans arrived, in case I needed to put [Fast Reshaping] to work.

I didn’t want to just sit and do nothing while I waited for more humans to show up, though. What could I do in the meantime that didn’t require any azoth but would still be helpful? Organizational stuff — social and bureaucratic tasks, rather than magical ones. Making a to-do list wouldn’t take up any azoth. That seemed like a good first step.

To Do

Language

* Teach Striga Apophic and/or Goblin and/or Ploetz

* Teach goblins Ploetz

* Teach Pacifica Apophic and/or Goblin

My minions needed to be able to talk to each other, not just to me, and being able to understand what human delvers were saying could be crucial to their survival. Therefore, language education would soon be a must. It occurred to me that [Walk and Talk]’s parallel-conversations ability could let me deliver classroom instruction to more people, more quickly, than a grad student on the verge of death from overwork. I’d never tried to teach someone to speak a language before: a moment’s introspection revealed that [Ploetz] and [Apophic Tongue] had not given me any sort of academic understanding of the languages’ grammar and rules, merely a practical familiarity with their use. Still, we’d have to make do until a proper revolutionary education apparatus was built.

Lore

* Consult with goblins about supply needs (food etc.)

* Mutate plants/animals accordingly

* Ask goblins about history/cosmology

* Ask Pacifica about history/cosmology

* Get everyone to teach me skills?? (potentially not viable due to skill taboo)

* Read hyperlinked lore entries in my character sheet

We were reaching the point in this isekai adventure where I needed some actual information about the world I would be revolutionizing. Asking questions was a lot easier than trying to teach people a new language: getting myself educated and situated seemed like a good way to spend the rest of my day while the goblins got the palisade up.

Personal

* Finish spending skill points (0/6)

Plus, thanks to [Walk and Talk], I could do all of that while figuring out how to spend some more of the skill points burning a hole in my submenu.

Upgrade montage, go!!