Anton was having a bad day. The worst, perhaps, in his relatively short life so far. Now he was injured and running for his life. Arguably, things were looking up.
If I can just make it to the cave, he thought desperately. He could faintly hear the sound of clashing blades ahead of him. With luck, the laughter and jeers from the men following him would prevent them from hearing the same.
He almost blacked out before reaching the threshold. His vision wasn’t working properly, and the cave opening wasn’t lit. He stumbled as he entered the first room.
Tall for a natural cave, the ceiling was about twenty feet high, dimly lit by a glow that came from the walls. Revealed by the light was a large smooth platform raised about two feet from the ground. Behind it was his goal, a dark entrance further into the dungeon.
On the platform were two animated skeletons fighting frenziedly with sword and shield. They did not react to his entrance, continuing their eternal fight. For his part, he ignored them as well, stumbling around the platform to get to the entrance. However, the rough ground betrayed him and he fell with a grunt.
Scrabbling at the ground trying to get up, he heard to his horror the sound of voices behind him.
“So ‘dis is where ya got ta,” sneered an unfamiliar voice in a thick accent. Anton managed to turn himself over. At least he’d see the ones who killed him.
The courl who had spoken was distracted though, looking at the skeletons. He said something to the others in their own language, and they laughed. The other two were human, with lighter skin than Anton’s own.
Is this a chance? Anton wondered. He might as well try. If he could get further into the dungeon, they might get caught in a trap that he could evade with his knowledge of the place. The skeletons were of no use, he knew. They were just level one, and decorations besides. They never left their platform or ceased their continuous combat.
The courl leapt up on the platform in a single bound, to the hoots and jeers of his fellows. Anton started crawling towards the exit, so he didn’t see what happened next, but he heard a strangled gurgle that made him turn to take a look.
Gurgle? He thought. Skeletons don’t gurgle.
Behind him, everything had frozen for a moment. The skeleton’s rusty blade was somehow stuck in the cat-man’s throat, and everyone’s eyes were on it. Then the skeleton stepped back and withdrew his weapon, allowing the corpse to fall to the ground.
Recovering from their surprise, the other two soldiers leapt to the attack. Anton was still frozen.
That couldn’t have happened! Those men are level twenty at least!
The rumour was that the Elitran Empire required its soldiers to have reached level twenty before they could join a raiding party, and there had been enough people with a long-range Identify skill to confirm it. And yet as Anton watched, the skeletons calmly dodged the wild swings of the humans and thrust their swords with unerring accuracy into the narrow gaps between the raider's partial plate mail.
Anton gaped at the sight for a moment more, frozen as the skeletons turned to him. Something about the smooth deliberateness of their movement made their fixed grins all the more terrifying.
Well, I guess I’ll die to the dungeon, after all, he thought, feeling consciousness slipping away from him. Better that than being killed by a raider, was his last thought as he slipped into the gentle darkness.
----------------------------------------
“Hey! Wake up, asshole!”
It was the incongruity of the voice that woke him, as much as anything else. Why was he hearing a woman’s voice? He pried his eyes open to see something else that defied explanation.
Standing over him was a beautiful young woman, dressed in a strange garment. Something like a silk doublet, but not. The material was shiny like silk, but Anton had never seen a doublet like that. Paired with the loose pants made of the same material, Anton’s first thought was that it was entirely inappropriate gear for being in a dungeon.
The girl herself had shockingly white skin and brilliant blue eyes, contrasting with her midnight black hair. She was short and looked quite frail, with a delicate face that looked like it might have been moulded out of porcelain. There was nothing delicate about her expression though, as she was sneering with disdain.
“Come on! You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here,” she said.
“What? Who?” He managed to croak out. Looking around he saw that the skeletons were still there, having taken a seat on the edge of the platform. Eyeless faces grinned down at him.
“I’m the landlord, that’s who!” the girl exclaimed. “I’m kicking you out!”
Anton shook his head and immediately regretted it. “You can’t own a dungeon, everyone knows that.”
“I am the dungeon, fool! Who else would I be?” Despite her disdainful words, Anton was getting the feeling that she was enjoying this.
“I think that you’re a very confused young woman,” he said firmly. “Dungeons can’t talk, and they aren’t cute girls.”
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At that, the girl smiled, and then she looked to the side into empty space. “No, I’m not going to kick him.” There was a pause, and then she continued. “I think I’m above petty violence.” Another pause. “Yes, but I have people to do that. Speaking of which.”
She glanced over at the skeletons. “Lazybones, get over here and show this guy who he’s talking to.”
With a shrug — A shrug? Anton thought in disbelief — the skeletons slid off the platform and stood behind the girl as she faced Anton. Flanking her to each side, they fell into an unusual pose, tilting their shoulders and raising their elbows high. Their hands — hand-bones — pointed at the girl from each side, as she crossed her arms and tilted her head.
“The name’s Kelsey, asshole. I’m the dungeon of these here parts.”
“Anton,” he replied automatically, before shaking his head again. “The dungeon can’t be called Kelsey.”
“Why not? You know a lot of dungeons?”
“Uh…” There was a name for this dungeon, but with only one local dungeon, they’d always just called it ‘the dungeon’. Anton racked his failing brain for the name but came up blank. Well, not entirely blank. “I think there’s a dungeon down south that’s called the Ravening Dark.”
The girl scowled. “Well you can call me the Hungering Abyss if you really want, but Kelsey rolls off the tongue a lot better, let me tell you.”
“Fine,” he sighed. “You’re Kelsey.” He glanced again at the skeletons, still in their pose. If she could really control them, didn’t she have to be the dungeon? Or a necromancer? He’d never heard of one outside of stories, but magic did exist…
“Great, pleased to meetcha. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, how about you get out.”
“I can’t even get up! And even if I could, if I go outside, I’m sure to get slaughtered.”
“Oh, yeah, I was going to ask you about that. No delvers for three days, and then you start killing each other on my doorstep? What’s up with that?”
Anton goggled at the woman before realising that if she was the dungeon, or even if she had just been squatting in it for a few days, she would have no idea of what was going on.
“It’s… it’s a raid,” he finally said. “Or an invasion. The Empire’s raided us before, but never with the sort of numbers that could breach our walls.”
“An invasion huh? All new management, same as the old lot? How does this Empire treat dungeons?”
“I don’t know?” he answered, but she wasn’t listening to him.
“Ugh, sounds gross. We should do something about it.” There was another pause.
“Um, who are you talking to?” he asked. Kelsey held up one finger.
“That’s Mel,” she said, after a pause. “She’s my dungeon fairy, so I guess only I can see or hear her.”
“What’s… a dungeon fairy?”
“Why shouldn’t I tell him?” Another pause. “Well, it’s not my sacred charge. I bet you could unlock something that would let him see you, and then you could tell him that yourself.”
Kelsey’s eyes tracked something invisible moving away. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She returned her gaze to Anton. “I don’t think she likes humans very much.”
“Why not?”
“If I had to guess, it's because humans killed all her friends?”
“We did?”
Kelsey shrugged. “When a dungeon dies, its fairy lives on, to guide the next dungeon to get created. She won’t say how long she’s been doing this, but I get the impression that she had a long list of dungeons that she helped before me.”
“Oh.” Anton had never thought of a dungeon as something that could be a friend, but now he was feeling bad on behalf of his race. No one he knew had killed a dungeon, but he knew that humans did destroy them when they were inconveniently placed or got too dangerous to be near human settlements. “I’m sorry.”
Kelsey snorted. “Apologise for your own crimes, worry about your own life. Speaking of which…”
She crouched down over him, looking directly down at his face. “You seem to be having a bit of a dying problem.”
“Yeah,” Anton admitted. He wasn’t sure how bad his wounds were, but now that he’d stopped moving, tiredness was crashing over him.
She winked and waved a bottle in front of his face. A healing potion. A potion that had just appeared out of nowhere. He tried to reach for it, but his arms were too weak.
“Uh uh, nothing in this world comes for free.”
“You’re not going to help out of common human decency?” he asked weakly.
“Not a human, remember?”
“What do you want then? It’s not like I’ve got gold to tempt a dungeon.”
“It’s pretty simple really. I want to go out and see what’s going on, maybe do something about it.”
“You’ll help us?” Even as he said it, his hope faded. She’d just said that she didn’t help for free.
“Helping is more of Mel’s thing,” Kelsey said, giving a little chuckle. “It’s never been one of my core competencies.”
Anton decided to save his strength and not respond. Kelsey frowned and started speaking more seriously.
“I need a guide,” she said. “So here’s my deal. You’ll take me where I want to go, advise me on what I need to know. And I’ll save you.”
“Not like I have much of a choice,” Anton sighed.
“One thing you should know, though. I count as an Otherworldly entity, like a demon or fae. So bargains made with me are enforced, on both sides of the deal.”
That made him pause. “You’re a demon?” He would have reacted more strongly at the revelation, but moving was far too difficult at the moment.
“No. No! We just share a few similarities. Just that one, as far as I’m aware.”
Anton sighed. “I still don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, kid.” The phrase sounded incongruous coming from that face, but for the first time, Anton started to think that she actually might be the dungeon that had stood outside of town for longer than he’d been alive. “If all the other choices suck, blame your life decisions, not me.”
“I guess. But I still agree. Do we shake hands or something?” Then he groaned, as something took hold of him, an immaterial force that bound his entire body for just a moment.
Kelsey snorted and started feeding him the potion. “You feel it that way too, huh? Yeah, the bargain is struck. Enjoy your recovery.”
She said it without laughing, but Anton was pretty sure it was a joke. He was aware of the pain that forced healing caused, but he’d never recovered from such grievous wounds before. He hissed between clenched teeth as the pain started to build.
“Well, no need for you to stay on the floor,” Kelsey said. Somehow pulling a stretcher out of nowhere, she called over to her minions. “Get this guy on the stretcher and take him down to the fifth level.”
Once again the eerily grinning skeletons approached. Anton would have flinched, but the pain was all-encompassing and it was all he could do to lie still as they manhandled him onto the canvas and started lugging him further back into the dungeon.
The really bad thing about potions was that they kept the patient fully alert and aware as part of the full healing process. Anton would have given anything to fall back into blissful unconsciousness, but it was denied to him by the same magic that was knitting his flesh back together.
“You’re not screaming,” Kelsey said, walking alongside him. “I appreciate that. There should be an hour's worth of healing in that. When you’re done, we’ll get some food into you and then you can get some rest. We’ll leave in the morning.”
Anton wanted to glare at her, but this really was helping him. An hour-long potion was as powerful as Anton had ever heard a potion of being. It should restore him completely, no matter how bad his injuries had been. Eventually.