The polyp fell through the atmosphere of shattered Earth with the grace of a maggot falling from a hanged corpse. Several stories tall, pale as bone, it burned as the atmosphere rejected its presence.

White flesh burned. The layer of armored fat bubbled. A nimbus of cornflower fire erupted as the polyp sizzled its way through the sky.

Inside the mass of undiluted flesh, a spark awoke. Two gods flashed past, one a slink of shadows, and the other a ghost of blood. They were familiar, but the polyp barely noticed them as it fell.

Fast, so fast.

Too fast.

…

[Slow]

Motion arrested, the pill-shaped entity drifted down the last few thousand feet toward its destination with the grace of a butterfly. The island beneath grew as it approached. A floating rocky outcrop with a forested cap. Winter dominated one half, snow and ice coating the leafy trees. For the leaves to remain, the cold must be unnatural. The polyp rotated and observed.

The cold came from the spawning of Ice Mantises. A Seventeen Winged Mantis ruled them as queen. She would be a powerful enemy for the polyp’s children.

All the better for them to test themselves.

Was this its thought? Or that of the polyp mother that harbored it before its seeding? Too early to tell, but never too early to question.

The polyp turned its attention outward as it drifted down and settled itself in the center of the small town. Burned buildings surrounded it. Charred wood and blackened bricks. Devastation, as though a liquid flame washed away all trace of life.

No. Not all life.

The polyp shed its burned outer layers. The bubbling fat and skin sloughed away and revealed the polyp’s true shape: a hunched child of gold as tall as the second-story balconies of the surrounding buildings. The spark expanded as air inflated lungs, as the light of the shifting sky touched soft metallic skin. The polyp huddled, for it could not move, not yet, not without a mayor, not even to open its eyes.

It breathed. It could not move, but it could still grow. Liquid thought surged, uncurled inside its body, and tendrils of thought-flesh extended out from the soles of its feet. They burst down into the heat-cracked concrete, deep into the earth for hundreds of feet before the polyp expended its small reservoir of energy.

But its nostrils flared as it expanded its spiritual senses and sought to identify the town’s inhabitants.

Eighty-two souls lay scattered about waiting for the fear to end. Survivors from the breaking of their world.

It’s children.

Waiting for death as monsters crawled through the ruins, seeking the fresh blood, the living Skein.

His children, these… humans… cowered in the ruins of the town… no… two towns stitched together by the reshaping of the world. The architecture clashed, and this would bring a clash of societies. The polyp filed away this information for later use.

A winter wind brushed against the polyp’s shoulders. The Ice Mantis were expanding their territory. They wanted the island. Already they were nesting in abandoned buildings, taking the houses of people for themselves, and birthing new drones.

Anger crackled through the polyp.

Without the golden light of the safe zone, these people had become prey.

Its children were in danger!

This could not continue.

The tendrils of sinuous spirit drew energy up from the Great Carrier keeping the island aloft. Skein and understanding flowed into the polyp, and its heart thundered in its chest for the first time. Blood flowed. Slow, like sludge, but it flowed.

A trembling raced through the polyp’s nerves as it prepared to speak.

Fear?

No.

Excitement!

[Attention all souls! Your safe zone is gone, and without it, you have suffered. But now, I am here. Come to me and join your forces with mine. I shall protect you, for you are my children]

The polyp squeezed its connection to the System and…

[Mayoral Quest: if you are level ten or higher, approach me and receive my blessing. Together we shall bring glory to our town!]

The polyp smiled as it huddled and waited.

Soon, all would be right.

###

The three humans cut into their Mirrordile steaks as Zazzatha poured gravy where they wanted. He was as polite as any high-class butler, whether that was genuine or a part of the dungeon’s compulsion, Zoe couldn’t be sure. The longer she stayed, the more artificial the place seemed. She had thought — briefly, ridiculously — of remaining in the relaxation area forever, but now she almost physically itched to leave.

Her freedom beckoned, and she wanted it. She also wanted to check up on Oriz, who was apparently somewhere between the dungeon and the outside world. Safe, for now, but still unconscious. Zoe wasn’t worried, but…

Zazzatha set down the gravy and took up the decanter. He spoke as he replenished their drinks.

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“It all started in the Church of the Mirror Bell, though it was just a shack far outside this town back then. Nobody knew about it, and so it was a perfect base of operations. The ruler of my town…” Sadness passed across his face. “I can’t remember the name. The ruler was an arrogant monster, a high leveled bastard who took control of everyone and everything and treated it like his personal playground. There was nothing anyone could do. Nobody in my town had crossed the threshold of level 50, and the mayor was near level 99. I worked at the school, but when I, and some of the other educated people in town, spoke out against the mayor’s indulgences… Well, we fled the wrath and flames to the outskirts of the town, to the countryside. We had been citizens, but now we were rebels. We couldn’t let him treat our history, our people, with such disregard. It took years of scrabbling in the wilds, gathering resources, and suffering the injustices of that monster before I finally completed the bell. And with the bell,” cruelty flashed across his face like lightning. “We destroyed that man and made of his family a pile of ashes.”

Satisfaction warmed his face.

Zoe continued chewing her steak. It tasted more like chicken than anything else, but the gravy was nice with a hint of green peppercorns. The flavor distracted her from the pointless cruelty of Zazzatha’s story. She couldn’t trust him, of course not, and from his story, it sounded as though the conflict had been more ideological than anything else. To wipe out a family for the sins of one man…

She swallowed.

It was ancient history, not even the history of her world, and it was not the past that concerned her, but the future.

“I don’t understand why the System let you build the bell, and use the bell, but then turned you into a dungeon.”

“You said you’re from a new world, so let me ask you: what do you think the System is?”

Anton spoke first.

“It’s a domain. A territory and Earth is a part of it.”

Bella shook her head.

“No, it’s people. We’ve met the Gambler and the Smith. We’re just toys for them.”

“I think of the System as a system,” Zoe said slowly. “Don’t roll your eyes. I mean that it’s not just a person, or a place, but a way of doing things. A pattern of events that we’re all caught up in like a never-ending avalanche.”

Zazzatha swirled a glass of his own but he did not drink. Zoe hadn’t seen him eat or drink at all since he first appeared in the bathhouse. Perhaps he couldn’t?

What a pitiful existence.

“You are all correct in your fashions, Anton most of all. All Systems are living reality. They are thought made flesh. Where they spread, like a virus, like radiation, contaminating space, they enforce and encode their souls, their way of doing things. They remain as people, as personalities, but they are also spaces, places, and rules. Above and beyond all else they are rules. Living gears replicating themselves until the entire universe is but a machine they both are and control. Do you understand?”

A gloom fell upon them as the three humans nodded. Heavy clouds crossed over the otherwise clear sky. A white-clothed attendant hurried about the walls lighting sconces in the wall as the skylight dimmed to uselessness.

“It can’t be all doom and gloom,” Bella said slowly. “In the Gambler’s game, he mentioned Earth had a god — does that mean we already had a System of our own?”

“You went on his show?” Zazzatha wryly shook his head. “I must believe you are new to the system, otherwise you must be mad to speak so casually of meeting the Gambler.”

“How,” Bella sipped her drink, tried to smile, and sipped again. “How bad is he?”

“He is arbitrary doom,” Zazzatha said with all seriousness. “Some say he is not bad at all. For example, is a tossed coin bad?”

Zoe flinched at his words.

“It depends,” she said. “What is wagered?”

“Exactly. Exactly right. What is wagered? The Gambler cares not, or rather, the wager itself is what drives him. The Crimson Armada is too large, too spread out, for everything to be calculated to the precision demanded by the Smith. Across the distances of space, there must be an allowance for randomness, and that is the role and burden and joy of the Gambler. But how can you make an ally, a god, of someone as willing to watch you die as watch you succeed? How do you look a tossed coin in the eye?”

“Have you met the Gambler, then?”

“Only once,” pain and distance stole his words. “When they turned me into the dungeon.”

For a moment, silence, broken only by the gentle lapping of bathwater and the scratch of Anton’s knife against his plate.

“But to answer your question,” Zazzatha said. “All the universe has some kind of System, but not all of them are powerful enough to dictate the lives of their users like the Crimson Armada.”

“So the System is a machine,” Anton said as he swallowed and cut again. “Then the Mirror Bell is like a magnet?”

Zazzatha frowned at the analogy.

“If the machine ran on electricity, then yes, that is a perfect example. The sound of the Mirror Bell is anathema to the Crimson Armada System. It nullifies the frequency of Skein, rendering it useless. The mirrored aspect then reflects System attention away from the influenced area and prevents the System from reactivating the Skein. Since Skein is the building block of the Crimson Armada System, this removes any System enhancement that comes from levels. It removes the ability to harness techniques and Body Paths.”

“But Body Path abilities don’t use Skein…” Zoe said.

“No, they don’t use your Skein. They rely on the Skein of the system.”

“What about Mountains? I don’t understand them, but the System gave me a quest to climb the Mountain of Faith.”

Zazzatha’s eyes widened slightly.

“Mountains grant a significant boost to your power. Each one effectively multiplies your level by a factor of five. To climb the peak of a Mountain requires a great understanding of the concept — in your case, Faith — but there are also trials on your way to the top. The mayor of my town had no Mountain, and so I cannot speak to the Mirror Bell’s effectiveness against them, but…” he paused, gaze growing distant as he calculated something. “It should work. What good is understanding if the user has no access to Skein?”

Everything Zazzatha said only made Zoe want to ask another question, but she pushed her plate forward instead. The itch of discomfort was only growing.

It was time to leave.

“We have the blueprint, but what else do we need to build the Mirror Bell?”

Zazzatha nodded as though he sensed her motives.

“When you build, a quest will form and detail what you need. I warn you though, in an undertaking such as this, not everything will be apparent or orderly. The crafting, and even gathering of resources, will depend more on your ability to understand the concepts of the Mirror Bell rather than simply follow instructions,” he paused, as though weighing something. “You only received a B-, and so your quest to build the Mirror Bell will be less helpful, but I can give you a different instruction. Though it truly pains me to say it…”

Already the walls were growing foggy, as though the dungeon sensed Zoe’s readiness to leave and was accommodating her wishes.

“Yes?”

“Don’t rely on the Mirrorbell.”

Zoe started.

“What do you mean?”

Zazzatha looked at the walls and sighed.

“Our time grows short,” he met Zoe with a piercing gaze, and Zoe shuddered under the pressure of one who defied the System. “All dungeons contain secrets. Forbidden techniques. Great weapons. One is never enough. Mine… is not enough. I don’t know this Rue you wish to destroy, but he will have monstrous techniques and secrets of his own. You must conquer other dungeons, take their spoils, and combine them with your own projects. Only by creating something new, can you be sure it cannot be countered by something old.”

Zoe nodded. Her friends stood beside her. They exchanged a glance before she turned back to Zazzatha.

“Thank you, and… I’m sorry.”

Anton nodded as he scooped up as much of the decadently prepared dungeon fruit pies as he could carry.

“Yeah,” Bella added. “The System did you dirty.”

Zazzatha shrugged, though the pain in his eyes belied the carefree gesture.

“I had it coming.”

The dungeon rolled away into a great cloud of fog. For a blissful moment, Zoe floated upon clouds of steam and sunlight and the liquid ambrosia of amber alcohol.

But in a blink, it vanished, as all things do. Chilled air embraced her. She stood upon a snow-swept hill surrounded by winter-coated pines.