There's tons of ghosts in this dungeon.

I use my dwarven runed sword to hack away at them and it's really easy.

You would think the throne of the Emperor of Secrets would be a bit harder to conquer. But then again we have the world's most powerful heroes all working together.

This dark sorcerer doesn't stand a chance.

[Who dares disturb zhis sanctum!?]

There he is! The Emperor of Secrets!

I can't see much of him because he is all wrapped up in bandages just like his apprentices.

Wow! The library is coming apart!

The wooden floor is falling away. The bookcases are floating!

Some sort of magic is happening. I can feel my body getting heavier. Magical chains are coming out of the books?

This must be the power of the dungeon core!

[Alright! Now it's a challenge!] I'm getting excited!

But Klumpus simply swings his staff and the curse disappears.

Oh well.

With a single fire slash, the dark sorcerer is incinerated.

Now it's time to gather the loot!

-

Klumpus is very interested in the many scrolls and secrets that the library holds, but the rest of us are just looking for gold.

We've gathered so much gold from these S-class dungeons, we had to make sure to distribute it evenly between the realms, so one wouldn't become more powerful than the other. The cloud dungeon of the storm dragon alone had enough treasure to buy out my family's debt from the original story fifty times over. I wouldn't have needed to prevent the fall if I knew I could just become powerful enough to loot a mega dungeon that wealthy!

But this one has barely enough gold to fill one caravan.

[Maybe dark sorcerers are just poor?] I say.

Adel shrugs. [Well he wasn't as powerful as the others.]

That's true. The other mega dungeons were fortresses that had been raiding nearby baronies for decades.

This ghost library was hidden away underneath an old church.

[How can we be sure these mega dungeons we've been clearing serve Abyss?] Adel says. [They weren't in the story before.]

[The story changes with every new reincarnation.] I say, [but even if this is some sort of trick by the noble goblins, we're still doing a good thing defeating them. These dungeon lords are evil. I mean, just look around! Every one of these tomes is filled with horribly evil sorcery that no good man would ever use.]

Just as I say that Klumpus laughs triumphantly and begins tearing a page out of a book he found.

Poor timing Klumpus...

[If Scratch is a bad guy, he may just have used us to clear away competition...] Adel sighs. [An archbishop contacted me. He had received divine revelation that we should stop clearing these great dungeons. He said Benesant herself told him not to follow Scratch's advice.]

[Well that confirms our suspicions.]

[It does?]

I nod. [Either Scratch is corrupt, or the church is. Diedrich has taken his mech army to Heiligdom to find out which.]

Klumpus looks up. [He's taking an army? That's a big step.]

[I believe he wanted to make amends for blindly following their morality before. Don't worry, I've helped him determine his allies in the Blurichan court, and who is more loyaly to the church.]

[Ah, political manouvering. As expected of the duke's daughter.]

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

By the time all this had taken place, the war between Reddington and Grienice had long since cooled off.

"Inspired by the charity of these good-doers, the generals of the war found the good will in their hearts to call of the fighting. Asking no concessions." Scratch read smugly from the newsletter.

The Promise had a printing press now. Not by far the first city to do so, and it was operated by a few of his hobgoblins to print monthly tabloids. Mostly consisting of old facts and starting attempts at poetic musings. A creative outlet before it was a serious business.

The constable angrily snatched it out of the baronet's hand. "It was the royal armorer. Stahl. That seized political power and forced an armistice. Tell me why?"

"Me, tell you? We both read the same newsletters constable."

"You did something. This is all too convenient."

Scratch got up and walked onto the street, but the constable followed him.

"War is declared just when the Promise would be dissolved in the name of peace. Peace is declared just when the Promise would be claimed by war."

"Constable, your mind is fascinating. Peace is in my interest but war is as well? I am much humbler on these things. I dare not imagine the great powers flowing ebb and tide with our little town. We're much too inconsequential to declare peace over, wouldn't you say?"

He turned around for his diatribe, grinning up at the terse constable Harkness.

"Much more likely, in my mind, that Blurich, which was winning the war, became distracted by internals squabbles and couldn't spare the troops for trenches."

Harkness pointed the paper at him. "I will find out what you're doing. And how you're communicating with the outside world. I know you're doing something." He turned around to go back inside.

But Scratch called him back. "Severus."

"What?"

Scratch took the newsletter back. "I don't emphasize this enough, but I am your boss."

The man clicked his tongue.

"What would you say your job is is, here?"

There was a frustration behind constable Harkness' eyes, but also a certain catharsis for Scratch to finally drop his faux-friendly politeness. "I keep the peace within the town." He said reluctantly.

"That is incorrect. Your job here is to be miserable."

"Wha-"

"Your job is to sit back and watch this place you tried to destroy flourish. Your job is to see the daughter you disowned become the head of a large family."

"You think you're on firm ground don't you? This barony only exists for as long as the count allows it to."

"You do not have the count's ear. I do. I'm the one making him rich. Even if you had anything to report on, he'd rather not hear it. The reason you're still here is not to keep me in line but to get rid of you. You are gotten rid of. Take the rest of the day off."

Scratch walked off, leaving him there.

"Heck. Take the rest of the week. We don't need you for much!"

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

But it wasn't true. The Promise was very much still on shaky ground with the Reddington nobility.

The church opposed them, and the Reddington court had no shortage of religious ideologues itself.

Bree could prattle on about it endlessly while she helped him lift that evening. "The Dichtershires still have their divine crest on the door of the main house," she said, "but the Shurlings removed it when George took over as head of the family because of the war with Blurich."

Somebody had told her about the rumors and intrigue of Reddington high society, and the poor girl had absorbed everything like a sponge.

"But George may not be the head of the family very long, 'cause they say his sister Theophany wants it now and she's older so..."

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Scratch let her speak, it didn't slow her down. As they took the statue of Benesant into the first level of the dungeon, through the various winding corridors of the basement and to a hidden dark corner in the back of the stone.

She stopped to deposit the heavy thing onto the floor and it made a hellish thump.

"What is this place?" She asked.

"It's called an oubliette, or a forgetting corner. It's where I keep all the horrible things I want forgotten."

At the far end of the room stood a tiny chest, like the kind to hold jewelry or... whisk cards.

She reached for it but he put his hand on hers. "Forgotten."

"Oh," she said, remembering another fact, "Reddington nobles have secret card stashes too. They hide away embarrassing cards so that they can't be used to blackmail them."

"Well then we are Reddington nobles.... would have destroyed them if I could."

"Yeah you can't- why put the statue here."

Scratch looked up at the stone chiseled woman. "Because of this," he kicked the pedestal, "wake up!"

"WRETCH!"

"There it is."

Bree jumped as the statue came to life and spoke.

"My disciple will return, and she will not be along. You can not escape judgment forever."

"We've relocated Bennie. We're about to have visitors again and I can't have you making a scene upstairs.."

"You only announce your guilt to the world then. Human beings, adventurers or otherwise, will make note of my absence."

"Why can the statue move?" Bree whispered to her father.

"Bree, why don't you leave us alone for a moment?" He told her. "This is a private moment."

"But how!?" She whined. She knew she'd be stuck with that question for the rest of her life if she didn't get it answered now.

"Well it's... witch magic." Scratch said.

"Huh?"

"What?"

"Remember when I had cursed your auntie Lacrima? I used a locket with her hair in it. That's her sympathetic magic. If something comes from someone, or it is made to look like them, there's a connection there. We had the stone chiseled to look like Benesant, so it's connected to her and she can move it."

"My divine presence is not some magic trick. The sympathy of forms is not 'witchcraft', it is divine miracle. Not that I understand the likes of you to understand the difference."

His face showed that he indeed did not, and neither did he care to. "You've been activating these things all over the county then?"

"...The power is stronger in the presence of a true believer... I find more willing ears in farther steads."

Bree was up in her personal space, inspecting the moving textures on the animated stone. "So you're a witch?"

"No!"

"Goddess," Scratch said, "the same thing, broadly. More powerful."

"That you would be a believer. Sickening. I shall waste my time-" she pushed the troll off her, "no longer on you subhumans. Know that you will be destroyed. And it will be not a mortal weaving the stuff of mana responsible, but a being of fate and ether itself."

"Hey now- HEY!" Scratch blurted out, slipping in decorum to catch her attention.

She had already left the statue but then came back. "This should be an entreaty on your part."

"Don't subhuman me, you were the one that put me in this body."

She raised a disdainful eyebrow. "It suits you."

"You could have put me anywhere. Peasant boy in the middle of nowhere doesn't bother anyone for a decade and a half at least. But you had to humiliate me, because a goblin was the worst thing you could think of, because you had to make me small. But being a goblin is what gave me this family. Remember that when we come for you... you did it to yourself."

"What else would you have had me do?" She said angrily. "Wrest my own power from my soul to give you the body you think you deserve? Raise you up to the divinity of a man? By what right are you owed such a privilige?"

Bree looked on with quiet amazement. She had never heard of Scratch having been anything but a goblin before.

"I was already a man!" He fumed.

"Nay, you were a weak creature from Cradle, a shadow of a human without magic and susceptable to disease. Your soul never held the potential to inhabit a denizen of Lite."

They stared each other for a moment, both with the hands on their hips.

"You're saying humans on Earth are weak?"

"Other sources of corruption have been eliminated by my disciples quite handily. It was only because you deceived them into sharing the power of reincarnation that you are still a thorn in my side."

"How many?"

"..."

"Now I know Sanadora got put right back in here. How many other power rangers have reincarnated already?"

"You may find out soon."

She disappeared again and he kicked the air.

"Whatever you heard just now, forget about it." He told Bree. "It's not an oubliette for nothing."

"Yes Papa."

But of course she didn't. Being a troll every word was etched more-or-less permanently into her mind.

Something else she couldn't forget was the world memory she'd snuck out of the box while he had been occupied. Stealing is only allowed if you don't get caught, her father had taught her. And the world memory was about her.

Theft of Humanity the card read, with a human infant on the devil altar being partially discolored in the skin. It triggered a hidden memory in the back of her mind.

Scratch had once been a human. And so had she.

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

An invitation from the ravenous lich did not carry as much of an ominous air as it once had.

A necklace with the zombie curse, a flight over the wastes. One could take a trip to the meeting of dungeon lords without all too much stress.

Though the meeting room seemed eerily empty as of late.

With no more deserving behinds to fill up the chairs, Scratch claimed one for himself. At his stature it was a bit uncomfortable kicking his feet up all the way onto the table, but he did it anyway.

"Is this all we have?"

Ritter let his ghostly gaze move over the room. Besides Scratch's soles he saw only Arlette and the ghost.

"I have lost everyzhing." Yanis said. Shed of his mortal wrappings, he had been reduced to nothing but a ghost. "Zhe company of heroes has obliterated us."

"I still control most of my domain, but the Storm Dragon has been vanquished." Said Arlette.

"And Abyss?"

"I don't know... perhaps his demise was as shadowed and sudden as his ascensions."

"Empty chairs at empty tables~" Scratch sang.

"Ritter, vhy is your vassal here?"

He jumped up on the table. "To take inventory of course." He gestured with his fingers making snapshots of the two dungeon lords. "Who's left? Who benefits?"

Ritter lowered himself into his seat- he would have sighed if he could- and gestured at him to tone down the theatrics."I have asked the champion of Cyclophan to assist me this meeting."

"Vhat are you saying?"

"Use what's left of your head, Yanis. He suspects one of us of orchestrating the upset."

"None of you owe the others loyalty," Scratch said, "but siccing adventurers on one's base could reasonably be called aggression. Couldn't it... Yanis?"

"Vhat!?"

"You always had an uncertain position. If the god of evil were revived now, you certainly wouldn't be his champion again. Better to remove the competition first. If it sets back overall progress... well you're undying, you have the time."

"Out of all zhe mad-!"

"But the attack cost you your own throne. And my birdie tells me you've not been lying about that. So... Arlette."

She smiled. "This oughta be good."

"It oughta. You made it through relatively unscratched, didn't you?"

"Indeed, it seems the company has all but avoided my new centers of industry."

He lowered himself beside her. "Could you be real sweet and outright state you had nothing to do with these attacks?"

"There are ways around a lesser Kishin's sight you know."

"Do it anyway."

She floated upward in her bubble. "I have not betrayed any of you. I have not revealed the location of your dungeons, and I have not empowered any land-dwellers to find them. What about you,

Ravenous Lich?"

"My conduct is not in question."

"Vhy is zhat?"

The lich sat silent for a moment. "Pinchin, God of Death and Undeath, yearns for the revival above all else. Never have I strategized against other dungeon lords, and you know this."

"Pinchin can speak to him directly at any time," Arlette whispered to Scratch, "no willful communion necessary. It comes with being a lich, I suppose."

"Sounds invasive."

"But I shall prove my good will, and take away suspicion that we would benefit from this calamity. The shards of our fallen colleagues will be split evenly among us."

"My my~!" Arlette gasped eagerly. "You will share with us your secret maps?"

"I will. So that this may not slow the revival."

Scratch was less than thrilled, but hid it behind a pensive expression.

Yanis tried to slam the table, though his arms phased right through. "Zhat still does not answer our dilemma. Who set the company of heroes upon us?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Said Scratch. "Who isn't here?"

"Abyss."

"There's been no demise, shadowed or otherwise. His agents are still active, gathering items of power for him."

"That rat, he never respected our ways."

"Once we gather our strength, we should take collective action against us."

-

After the meeting, the lich's apprentice, Podesto, came by to retrieve the goblin.

"One more thing, Scratch." The lich said, now without the other dungeon lords to hear it. "Being less fractured, we shall achieve the revival much sooner."

"Oh? You must be pleased."

"Pinchin is most pleased. We must ensure the cooperation of the kishin that have inhabited these shards for so many years."

"He has not reached out to them yet?"

"Kishin have no inherent ability to find one another."

"I thought Pinchin in particular may have had a special affinity for a number of them."

Neither spoke for a few seconds. The utterly lifeless still air of the black spire hung around them like the absolute nothing and there was only a silent understanding of one another.

"Anyway, what did you want to talk about?"

"That was all for now."

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

Great fortune and joyous tidings had come to the rural lands bordering Grienice.

Despite the wars raging in and between their countries, the greatest heroes in the land had come together to vanquish their greatest enemies.

And more importantly, liberally shower them with gold.

"Heck Gereau, what's this I found under your mattress?" A widower complained.

"Ah, ma. Heck ma."

What she was waving around wasn't gold or even silver. It was a stack of cloth rectangles, baring the faces of subhumans.

The woman's grown son threw down his scythe and wiped his forehead. "It's outlaw money."

"Outlaw money! Has my son become an outlaw!? Ah, that your patre isn't here to see this."

"No, I bought it off the piggy twins at the market." He gently grabbed her hand and took it from her. "With this we'll be able to buy you some new shoes. It breaks my heart seeing you break your back just trying to get around."

"The piggy twins are layabouts, they're hooked on the sweet crimson you know."

"Yes ma, but they can help me buy off an outlaw merchant. We can get some shoes, and a decent roast for once." He counted the money before stuffing it into his garden overalls.

She huffed and sat herself down on the rusted old plough. She wasn't that old, but the years in the field had taken their toll.

He looked with sad eyes at the frail woman she'd become.

"What's wrong with old bonny the cobbler, why don't you got to her?" She said.

"I would, but you know the cobbler's been real busy helping everybody that done got the dungeon gold. All the beggars' getting new things from the heroes' charity and we regular folk have to get in line right along them."

"Pauca from upriver got his parents a set of new shoes just last week, and his little nephew as well." She said.

"...Pauca doesn't keep to guild prices. He gives them twice the money under the table to jump the queue. We can't afford that."

"Damn him them, and his family." She spat on the floor. "Nothing left of equality and brotherhood, just as before the revolution there's the haves and the have-nots."

"Ma!"

"You burn that outlaw money son. We're civic minded people in this home. We'll sell this barley above price, people don't need it any less."

He shook his head. It was hardly more civic minded in his mind to gouge prices above what the state had determined them to be. But they didn't have much choice, if everybody else was doing it.

Strano, he thought, it seems as if we have more gold than ever, but it feels as if we're poorer than ever as well.