“I’m going to continue exploring the dungeon a bit, what do y’all wanna do?" Zoe asked the group as they celebrated their victory and bickered over the details of the statue Timothy would make.
“I’m done. This was fun, and now I’m rich!” Jeffrey laughed. “Could you drop me off outside the dungeon? I can walk the rest of the way to Foizo.’
“Yes, please. I simply must begin sculpting as soon as possible. While the memory is still fresh in my mind.” Timothy said.
Emma got up from the chair she was sitting on and laid down on the couch. Harmless purple flames licked at her feet as she hung them over the armrest. “I’ll join you for some more exploring.”
Zoe nodded and held out both of her arms. Jeremy and Timothy grabbed on, then she nodded at Emma and looked out over the arena they’d just fought the elemental in. The flames had begun creeping up the canopy, filling the arena with flickering purple light once more. Though, not to the same intensity as when they entered before.
Would the boss be easier if she tried again now? Did it continue building up with flames until somebody entered it, and the longer it had to build up the harder the fight would be? Maybe she’d try again someday, by herself. Or maybe with just Emma, and see for herself.
She peered through the flickering flames that surrounded the arena and teleported the group outside to the air above the city, catching herself and her two passengers in suits of earth. Colourful flames filled the city as elementals roamed the streets. Several groups around the tree fought the elementals, a variety of magic being thrown around to fend off the elementals that approached. Water mages dousing them in towering waves, earth mages suffocating them in blocks of dirt. A few warriors that swung at the elementals, leaving gaping holes where their weapons ripped through them.
She looked to the north, and in a few more Cosmic Steps landed just outside the dungeon. Jeffrey thanked Zoe and ran off to the north, towards Foizo. While Timothy sat down on a pillar of white stone that shot out of the ground from behind him.
“Thank you,” Timothy said. “I will forever appreciate the favour you have granted me.” An intensity radiated from his eyes that she hadn’t expected, passion and pride radiating from him to her Vampyric Empathy. The white stone pillar he sat on began to pulsate, as a malleable clay-like stone poured out from it between his legs. He grabbed it with his hands and formed it into a round disk that he placed on the ground in front of him.
Zoe nodded and teleported back up into the air to watch him from a distance. More of the white clay poured out from the pillar he sat on, and Timothy continued forming it with his hands and pressing it into the platform he’d built. Slowly, Zoe began recognizing the shape that was forming. A rough shape of a tree, with three human figures standing on top of it.
Timothy’s eyes closed and a gray, almost opaque magic washed out from him that seeped into the statue in front of him. Details began appearing in the statue — the stone mask Zoe was wearing, Emma’s short hair that waved gently in the wind and caressed her shoulders. Jeffrey’s gaudy belt buckle and the ponytail that stretched to the small of his back.
As the details formed, Timothy began waving his hands around the statue and the structure came to life. The three figures moved around on the tree like puppets manipulated by strings, as Timothy tried different poses for them. Or maybe programmed different movements for them? Zoe wasn’t too sure how a sculptor’s skills would work, exactly. Maybe she’d give it a try someday.
He played around with the positions of everything for a few minutes before he sat back down on his white pedestal. Zoe’s masked figure stood at the front of the tree, with Emma and Jeffrey floating behind her on tumultuous waves of stone that just reached the tips of their toes. Flames roared around the top of the tree, reaching for the group. Some of the flames were cut abruptly in half, appearing elsewhere on the statue. Others were blocked by waves that rose from the statue to meet them.
Timothy nodded and touched the statue with his finger, and it melted in an instant, as though he’d touched a switch that turned it to liquid. The white stone swirled as it rose to his finger and vanished as though it had never been there in the first place. He turned and seemed to almost skip back to Foizo with joy.
Zoe smiled and teleported back to the lounge at the top of Kaira library where Emma was waiting, looking through all the cupboard and drawers.
“Took you long enough,” Emma said. “I was just thinking I’d go explore myself.”
“I watched Timothy make our statue.” Zoe said.
“What?!" Emma shouted as she slammed the cupboard she was looking in. ”You saw it first? That’s not fair!“
Zoe laughed. “You should’ve come with us, then.”
“You didn’t grab me.” Emma pouted.
“I didn’t ‘grab them’ either,” Zoe said, making finger quotes. “I just held out my arms and they grabbed me. You could’ve just come along. Also, you can teleport yourself. You have no excuse.”
Emma pouted. “Still. That’s not fair. You should’ve let it be a surprise.”
“I think he destroyed it anyway? Or maybe he just saved it to his finger? It was weird, honestly. Sculptor stuff, I guess.” Zoe shrugged.
“No way he destroyed it. We were way too cool.” Emma crossed her arms.
“Mhm.” Zoe hummed.
“We were! Did I look cool at least?" Emma asked.
“So cool. The coolest.” Zoe nodded.
“Really?” Emma asked.
“No.” Zoe laughed.
Emma rolled her eyes. “Whatever. So, what are we exploring?”
“I kinda wanna see if some of the old places I used to visit are still around? Like Joe’s inn, or the bench I sat on in the park below. John’s bookstore, that kinda thing.” Zoe answered.
“Ooh! And my tower, I wonder if it’s still there.” Emma giggled.
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The two tleeported to the bottom of the tree and wandered through the city. A few elementals tried to interrupt them as they walked through the streets, but without Jeffrey and Timothy slowing them down, they weren’t much trouble.
Most of the elementals, they just ran past. Explosions of flame rattled the buildings near them as they dodged past fireballs that hurtled through the air at them. Some of the elemental swere lower enough level that Zoe or Emma decided to crush them in almost an instant as they ran past.
At first glance, the city looked like it was restored to its former glory. Buildings that were once destroyed were rebuilt, magic flowed through the streets and caught their attention. Stores advertising their wares, smells that wafted from the restaurants. Small, personalized details even littered the reconstructed city. Markings in benches from past lovers, paintings of business owners.
To somebody who had never seen Flester, it would look like the dungeon had repaired an enormous amount of the damage. The buildings were still burnt, still damaged and worn. But compare to the devastation that the city once was, it looked almost livable.
But to Zoe and Emma who had spent so long in the city, it all looked wrong. Like the dungeon had been given a loose description of Flester, and rebuilt it to that image. It didn’t know the history of Flester, it didn’t know the specific people who lived in it. The lovers on the bench didn’t exist, but the dungeon knew people would have done that, so it made up lovers.
Buildings were in the right places, but they weren’t the right buildings. Clothing stores with new names, remnants of menus leftover from the blaze that didn’t match the food they once had. Furniture stores with names Zoe had never seen, inns with job boards that had jobs posted that didn’t even make sense for Flester’s area. Not a single catering job, Zoe laughed.
Would all ruin dungeons be like that, Zoe wondered? Grotesque, rewritten histories of civilizations that had fallen? Would there even be any way to tell, millennia afterwards, when the only mark they had left was the twisted version the dungeon deigned to show?
One day, far in the future, would this be how Flester was remembered? The magic of Kaira library’s platforms lost to time, remembered only by the lucky few who grasped immortality? The complete lack of any catering businesses in Flester a forgotten blip in the city’s grand history?
How many other ruin dungeons were there out in the world, being used to study the world’s history? How little would the people truly understand of their world when history could be rewritten so completely, so casually?
The first destination they arrived at was Emma’s tower, which fared no better than the other buildings. A destroyed tower made from white stone stood where once was a pile of dark rubble, but it wasn’t Emma’s tower. The colour was wrong, the garden was wrong. The stone pathway that led through her garden was replaced with a messy gravel path, the bench she sat at was gone.
Inside, the layout of the tower was no different. The ground floor was a kitchen, with her bedroom at the top and a workshop on the middle floor. It didn’t even have a basement, to Emma’s disappointment.
“I expected it, after everything we saw.” Emma said as she walked out of the tower. “I did. Everything here is wrong. It’s Flester, but it’s not... Our Flester. It’s somebody else’s. But this is just sad.”
Zoe nodded. “Yeah, it is. We’ve got a nice home in Foizo now, though.”
“I know. It’s just. I don’t know. When we were coming here, there was this part of me that hoped it would all be here. That my kitchen would be fine, my cupboards would all be there. My bed, and my closet full of rotten food by now I’m sure.” Emma sighed. “It just feels bad. I’ll be okay, though. We’re doing well in Foizo, it’s just. Final? You know?"
“I do, yeah. I had a similar experience when I first came to Flester. You just hope, and then one day that hope is gone, and it sucks. But you’ll be okay. Fennel and Oliver are back home. They’re comfy and happy, and good little boys.” Zoe said.
“Mhm. They’re the best little boys.” Emma sniffled and took a deep breath. “Sorry.”
Zoe hugged her. “It’s okay.”
Emma hugged her back, and they stood there for a few minutes as Emma cried. “I’m okay,” She said as she wiped her nose. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?” Zoe asked.
Emma nodded, wiping her tears with her sleeve. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she took a few deep breaths. “Yeah. I’m okay. It was just a lot all of a sudden. Okay. Joe’s inn?”
Zoe nodded. “I don’t think it’s going to be any better though.”
“Probably not,” Emma said and took off down the street.
Zoe followed along after her, and the two ran through the streets in silence. Whenever an elemental tried to interrupt them, they teleported past it and continued on. Neither were much in the mood for dealing with them, even if it would only be an instant. Soon, they were at Joe’s inn which was in similar shape.
The kitchen was on the wrong side, the tables were all different. His engraved dishware was nowhere to be seen, the beds in the rooms lacked the luxury that Joe enjoyed providing and the rooms themselves were far smaller. It was difficult to see, Zoe found. To see her friends’ history twisted and warped for some messed up dungeon’s fantasy.
“This is messed up,” Emma said. “John’s bookstore next?”
Zoe nodded and ran off down the street. It was a short trip to the bookstore, and to Zoe’s shock, his bookstore still seemed untouched by the passage of time. The dungeon’s mana tried to press in to his stone building, but it may as well have been up against an impenetrable wall. Or maybe it was, Zoe realized. What was John?
The black voids that filled his windows were still there, cutting off her view of the inside. Even with Cosmic Mystic on her side, she couldn’t quite understand what was happening. Space twisted in ways she’d never seen before. Winding over itself and stretching as it filled the space.
“You think he’ll be back one day? Open up like nothing ever happened?” Emma asked.
Zoe shrugged. “Maybe? He’s an odd fellow. Maybe he wouldn’t even notice he was in a dungeon now. Or maybe he’ll be gone for so long that when he does come back there won’t even be a dungeon here anymore.”
Emma laughed. “It’d be pretty funny if he was gone for so long that an entire dungeon formed, was destroyed, and then another different city was rebuilt around him. He’d come back and it’d be like nothing even changed.”
Zoe shivered. “That’s kinda scary to think about. Do you think we’ll ever get to that point?"
“Maybe. This planet might not even be his home, maybe it’s just a hobby of his.” Emma shrugged.
“I guess. I feel like I’d be excited to see everything that changed if I was gone for this long, though.”
“Me too. But maybe John’s like, a gajillion years old and it only feels like he’s been gone a few minutes.” Emma stretched. “Anything else you wanna check out?"
“Yeah, I wanna see Kaira park.” Zoe said.
“Okay!” Emma said and teleported away.
Zoe chuckled and Cosmic Stepped towards the park. She arrived at the base of the massive library trees first, with Emma showing up a few seconds later. The park itself was dark, with specks of light where elementals were drifting around. The trees were scorched, the few that still stood little more than charcoal. The ground was covered in ash and soot, with not a table to be seen.
“Sorry,” Emma said.
“No, I expected it after everything. Would have been nice to still have that bench to sit at. I liked watching the birds. Nekhbet I think they were called? They were cute.” Zoe said.
Emma nodded. “Back home, then?”
“Back home.” Zoe confirmed.