Rule 19

Dungeon Managers Layer & Everything Bleeds

Statement: There are few vile hatreds I have in this new world. Slavery, being trapped, being out of control. Generally, my life is my own and while my choices may be limited, I still make the final decision on the lesser of two evils. I think this expectation—this ability—is important to everyone. Protecting Stella is a demonstration of a chain I choose to wear.

I say this, because in the past I’d found myself at odds with the ease I felt in murdering select people. The slaver Coach Madison had partnered with is one such example. I hated his black necklaces of servitude so much that I ended his life without much hesitation or worry. In this maze, I had been jailed for a short time, and my jailer was the slender man. So, he too, was doomed to die.

According to Allegra’s disembodied voice, there were sixteen rooms. I’d spent an hour blowing up vents in eight of them, in addition to the one I’d already damaged. This wasn’t me being inefficient. The effect of the gas had grown worse.

I staggered out of number nine and fought back a dry cough. There was a room around the corner that had recently been destroyed. My first goal was to knock out a solid three by three block, which I’d done.

“What is this ghost doing?” Callisto asked.

They had caught up with my latest bout of destruction. The sound of small incorporeal slimes blowing up must still be audible to them. I mean, even our separate dimensions—or, existences, whatever the proper label was—let sound travel. My talking and metal booming were far apart on the decibel meter.

“I don’t know,” Leon responded.

“Doesn’t your quest say anything?”

“It says nine out of sixteen.” Leon’s armor clanked from a probable shrug.

They were useless. So far it felt like I’d done everything in this stupid place. I’d found the hidden monster. I’d figured out how it traveled. I’d even taken steps to limit its movement. They couldn’t even communicate with the damn thing. Though, in fairness, I couldn’t see game stats or quest markers. And I wouldn’t have figured out a lot of information if it weren’t for their constant yammering.

I couldn’t remember them speaking this freely before. Maybe it was me. They simply didn’t like Hawthorn or Mister Underwood or whatever. But a ghost didn’t bother them. I flipped off the empty purple haze and hoped that it would reach my bitch of an ex-girlfriend.

“Can you guys hear that? Is it more slimes?”

“No. It sounds like”—Allegra drifted off before settling on a description—“coughing?”

“Maybe he’s poisoned?”

I tapped the wall once with my dagger. The world was still bursting at the seams. Bulges appeared along the walls. My dagger’s point pressed against the metal and a rolling distortion passed through the knife and continued down the wall.

My head swam.

“This will pass,” I mumbled.

“Allie?”

“Can’t see him. Can’t heal him. But the map shows these rooms all grayed out. Whatever that means.”

Her inability to heal me didn’t matter. My own regenerative abilities kept me going. Though my body, which apparently stole muscle tissue and fats to fix me, would eventually run out of material to work with. Even now, I felt exhausted. I had no shirt or well fitting pants and nothing to eat for almost a day. Hunger alone would have been fine. Hunger, and fighting was something else entirely.

“So, he blocked out a square?” Callisto asked. “Is that to help us? What happens if he does, whatever, in all these rooms?”

“You’ve noticed that the monsters aren’t spawning in these locations, right?” Leon asked. “Thank Mayor Kent for a small miracle. No more monsters out of thin air.”

I banged my knife handle against the wall then devolved into a full-on coughing fit. The room spun.

Over the course of my explosions I’d discovered they couldn’t completely hear me. Or least they acted that way. Reality and supposition were hard to separate. It made sense, or they would have freaked out at that skinny man’s shouting earlier. They must only be getting muffled bits.

The thin man stood down the hall again. He was even more ghostlike than me. If he had a means to attack, he should have. All this destruction I’d done had to be crimping his current style. Maybe I’d given him too much credit.

The cashier monster we’d fought in a dungeon also spoke. It’d shouted twisted lines at us like “exact change only” or something close. Confusing the ability to speak for actual intelligence was a frequent problem, in both this new world and the old one. High school had been a prime example.

“It’s a kill box. Look. Allie you said there was something else here. If we can meet at these junctions. Here. Here, and here.” Callisto must have been pointing at the blonde’s map. I hoped they were.

My knife tapped weakly against the wall.

“And ghost is running out of time. Those last few strikes are weaker. It’s got to be more than poison,” Callisto said. “At least I feel like we’re on the right track.”

Another tap. It could have gone with either of her statements. But if I was in trouble, so were they. They were lucky. Allegra usually had snacks hidden away in her duffle. I still only had a pair of loose pants, a messy shirt, and my spell book.

Post Note: I wonder, was it better to be myself, but have no one know it was me? It seems that it’s been this way all along. I am not who I am, but who I pretend to be. But is that unique? Before, this place, it could be argued that we all pretended to be someone else. Right?

The monster might have been frowning. It could have laughed as well. Maybe it only judged my position in confused silence. It could feel my heat, that I knew. But it didn’t seem to care and whooshed away again.

“So, what are we doing. Boxing it in?”

“Can’t. Not by blocking out rooms anyway. Is that ghost thing trying to reduce it to one room?”

I did, but another six rooms might leave me unconscious on the floor. That’s what the creature had implied. I’d be quiet then. It was possible that slipping into unconsciousness would result in death. The monster might pray on people falling asleep.

The remaining rooms all connected along two lines. I’d confirmed that by walking past three rooms and coming to a whole, undamaged vent, before heading into exploded land again. In my mind, this was about measuring the creature’s territory, forcing it to react differently, and limiting its movement routes. Anything beyond that was outside my scope.

“Maybe a slash this way? Depending on light I can try a stun. Might cover these halls here.”

“No. That still leaves these halls open.” Their words were almost useless. Allegra would hum every now and then. Callisto’s finger probably jabbed paper. Being unable to visually spy on people was boring. “Even if you sat there and managed to block the entire path. All the halls are intact. Whatever ghost is fighting can still escape anything we try to do. It could go this way. Or that way. It might even be able to walk through walls. Remember Mayor Kent’s pet monster? That thing walked right through walls.”

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“Walks. Mayor Kent’s blessed beast is around still,” Leon added.

That small tidbit of information interested me. The horse monster was still the outright scariest creature I’d seen. It also worried me. If it could walk through walls, then getting to Stella would only take a whim.

“At least we have less slimes,” Leon repeated.

“Mmmhm.” Allegra sighed in a way I took as happy.

“What about the creature? That’s where our focus should be. Not on these rooms. We need to kill the monster.” Callisto’s voice reminded me of metal. The gas was screwing my perception. I’d been dosed a dozen times since being trapped here and each time took longer to clear.

“I’m running low on mana and haven’t been checking as frequently.”

It had to be costing Allegra a lot of mana or whatever she used to keep those maps up to date. We’d spoken about it in the woods and I got the impression keeping them up to real time was a constant drain. She’d showed me a copy of Leon’s theoretical bars representing mana and health.

“Should we be talking about this in front of the ghost?” Leon asked.

“Do you have any ideas?” Callisto asked. “Because my gut says there’s no other way out. It’s got to be a place like Lance said. Remember him?” She paused. I assume the other two nodded, but my brain froze for a moment. It had to be a coincidence someone else named Lance had survived. “He said there are mazes with no exit. Once you’re in them, you have to break the place to get out. But I can’t!”

A foot stomped.

I snorted in amusement.

“Quiet,” a voice whispered in my ear.

“Mother—” My head turned sharply and I caught the fleeting edge of the damn white-faced, featureless monster. It was already retreating.

“Fuck you!” I shouted.

“Quiet!”

“There’s that noise again,” Leon mumbled.

“Fuck you too!” I directed my anger toward the balding bus driver. He ignored my outcry. I banged on the wall a dozen times with my knife’s pommel.

I was losing my mind. These last few hours had been an exercise in patience. I’d run out. This place was going to be the death of me. So what if I managed to blow up all sixteen rooms? It wouldn’t unlock a secret tunnel. This world wasn’t a video game to be solved in such an inane manner. We weren’t in a dungeon where the rules were warped and self-contained.

My chest heaved in slow steadying breaths. This place must have been created through intelligent design. Be it lingering thought patterns, influences from dead human psyches, or some asshole in a control room giggling to himself, this place hadn’t simply popped into being.

The biggest clue was the creature re-stocker. That’s what he really did. One simple task and nothing else. He brought monsters in, triggered them when people got too close, and fled before anyone could attack him. It was deliberate. My real concern was if he chose to do those things to help hasten our demise and keep us spending energy, or if some jerk set him here with a task like a mindless robot.

Post Note: I mean, he couldn’t simply pop out of the ether and go, “This place looks fantastic for a bunch of plastic containers filled with slime monsters” right? What kind of—on second thought this inquiry shouldn’t be finished. Obviously, this world is insane. That’s it. It’s simply crazy and I should spend less time trying to analyze it. But I can’t—I may really lose my mind if I don’t understand “why” these events happen.

My quandary lasted too long. The others sounded like they were faring better than myself, and they had to fight slimes. I only had a disturbing otherworldly companion who kept shouting at me to shut up. I felt thankful he didn’t develop a large face at his torso and try to eat me. On the other hand, I didn’t know how to relate to monsters too fast to be stabbed. This world had trained me to kill inhuman creatures first and ask questions later.

I regretted not stabbing it right away. Asking what its intentions were had been a mistake. I could write it off as not wanting to eliminate options when trapped, but that’d be half a lie. It had me worried, distracted, and almost scared.

“Look here,” Allegra said. “The map shows a different symbol.”

“What is it?”

“I have no clue, but whatever ghost is doing to these rooms, is being undone. That’s got to be why the gray lines are going away. See? The one in the middle is being rubbed out. Maybe that was a key room?”

I pulled myself out of the funk and got up. One hand readied a fresh blade, the other an explosive spell. I put it on top of a discarded plastic container that the monster-moving-foe hadn’t cleaned up. Seconds later I’d dropped it in favor of a more ridiculous idea for my explosion spell.

“Ghost?”

I didn’t have time to tap on a wall or shout. The monster moved quick, but if it was distracted then I’d be able to get the jump on it. There’d be no escape this time.

“Ghost?” Callisto’s voice bounced down the hall after me.

There was no time to waste. The creature had to be in the process of fixing the vents. That’s the only thing that had changed and might impact Allegra’s maps. I rounded two corners before slowing to listen. This creature showed an amazing dislike for sound, which meant I had to sneak up on it.

The starry blade went under an arm. I pulled out the netting and put my explosive rune in its threads. This was a new trick I hadn’t used but the rune didn’t seem to care about the gaps caused by net’s shape. It glommed on twisted material to form the shape of the explosive spell. I stared at the frozen night sky swirls that now had a tinge of red mixed in. The rune glowing across it reminded me of miniature suns instead of the smaller dots that were like distant stars.

My lips pursed and I made a mental note to throw it first. I didn’t need another title like [Knife-Eared Exploder] on my business card.

With that in mind, I tiptoed down the hall. The others would hopefully get lost for a moment, giving me time to launch an attack. If I was lucky, Callisto would time her light blade with me flushing it out of the hallway. Maybe Leon could use his hammer.

Post Note: I wonder why it picked the worst room to start repairing? Maybe it didn’t know what else to do. Or it simply started with the first room I’d blown a hole in—like the rest were in a queue. I’ll never know.

There it was, inside the room, with both hands locked on a piece of metal grating that had bent backward in to barbed hooks. Its shirt tugged at the edge. It pulled away only to reach a limit, like the grating and clothing worked together as a leash of sorts.

I smiled. The creature had tried to repair the damage and got stuck. I didn’t know if it was a stroke of dumb luck or God giving me a break, either way I leapt to remove a problem. The net flew from my hands to where the monster stood.

It hardly noticed as my trap curled around its body. It reached for the grating again and jerked as its hands refused to come completely free.

The monster’s head turned. I smiled and stood in the doorway. The creature had been pinned with no way to escape.

Its speed nearly caught me off guard. The slender monster flew by. My hand grabbed onto the netting. We moved from one room to the next in the blink of an eye. The thin man stopped while my body continued into a wall. I crashed and jerked the bit of material in my hand. Air flew out of my lungs in a huff. My legs curled tightly to protect my wounded side.

It had to die, no matter what happened this was the closest we’d come to killing our jailer. My knife slowly lifted. The creature fell in my direction, limbs flailing madly to gain purchase. Then we moved again. The scene changed. We were in a hall. I refused to let go. Then we were in another room I’d exploded. My lungs burned with the need to take a breath.

“There!” Allegra shouted.

A flash of light careened down the hall. Callisto’s ranged attack tore the walls with a sharp metal on metal sound. The creature moved again, but our scene didn’t change. It stumbled and fell to the ground. One arm weakly tried to escape my net.

I ducked but firmly held the net. It reached out toward something behind me. A sudden horizontal beam cut off the monster’s outstretched fingers. The creature jerked us to a new location. Bile crawled up from my stomach. These sudden shifts made my head spin. We’d moved so many times that I couldn’t see straight.

My thoughts reset as cold liquid splashed my face. A small hiss of noise filled the air as green goo and moss started their chemical reaction. The world rattled and shook and I tilted right into a wall and fell to the ground.

A explosion echoed down the hall. My ears rang and everything went silent. I couldn’t hear. Distortions painted the world purple and black, making insane bulges roll across the walls and my own flesh.

“I will survive this.” I stood on wobbling legs.

“Quiet! Quiet,” it repeated the word over and over, slowly devolving from shouting to a whimper.

The monster was inside a room. Pieces of plastic and green goo everywhere. Allegra and the others would have a freshly triggered batch of monsters to deal with once they figured out which room we’d gone to.

My net was in shambles. Pieces of the starry rope were seared into the creature’s skin. A hole in its side showed where the explosive rune had detonated. I realized that this caretaker hadn’t set off the trap, but the oozes inside its tubs had. It must have moved too quick and knocked them over, triggering my spell.

Still, it was tough. Perhaps more resilient than me. Though I’d lost both legs and an arm. It might also heal and that was unacceptable. I walked in slowly. The creature jerked an arm and I reached for the netting in case it zipped away again.

Thankfully, it barely managed to stand. The slender creature’s body rocked a moment before I dove for the weak spot that surely lay at its neck. White blood gushed. It made me happy—to know this monster could bleed. Weaknesses implied mortality. Mortality meant they weren’t above me.

It spun. My other arm wrapped around its chest holding it still as my blade dug in.

“Shush, shush, shush,” I whispered near where its ear should be. It might not matter. It might not hear me.

The creature’s one free and functioning arm batted pathetically at my face. I knew I’d heal and simply rode out the last of his sad efforts to stay alive. The creature whimpered. I kept an arm locked around its neck then took a moment to jerk my knife out and stab it in with more force.

“It’s okay. Shush. It’ll be quiet forever now,” I said.

Before it fully registered, I stabbed the knife into its chest, again, and again. The creature stopped moving. It barely twitched as the blade tore apart its all too human body. This damned thing had kept us trapped here, I was sure of it. Being caged like a mindless animal bugged me beyond belief.

I leaned over the lump of meat and its alien white body. “Listen? Can you hear it?”

He, or she, couldn’t anymore. I smiled as a rush of tingles shot down my back and legs. This was good. This was cathartic. Never mind that I had clearly gone insane. My head tilted in the same direction as my deceased companion’s. We both stared at the door, well, I did.

“That’s the sound of silence,” I whispered in a blissful tone.