“What?” Abby couldn’t believe this nonsense. She and Owyn both checked her themselves. There was no way the Baroness was enthralled! But Owyn would never lie... “How-”
“I think she’s enthralled and I think Franz knows it. He’s not telling us for some reason though, and I don’t know why.” Owyn covered his mouth as he thought. His foot immediately started rapidly bounding in place. His nervous tick. If it was going this quickly, Abby suspected he might have been consciously holding it back until now.
Abby crossed her arms, ensuring that her shield still pointed in his direction for the light. “Alright then fine. I’ll bite. What makes you think so?”
Owyn pointed to his pinky finger. “Franz’s ring. It glowed when he kissed the Baroness’ hand. I think he did that on purpose to check her for enthrallment.”
“Ok? Again, we both checked her though, and she didn’t look enthralled. What changed?”
“Nothing changed.” Owyn realized. “She’s been suppressing it! It’s rare, but it’s possible that those with strong wills can suppress their attachment to a dungeon. Historically, it’s an indicator of a dungeon break! The dungeon sends out spies in the form of regular animals while it formulates a plan or evolves its monsters to directly counter whatever defenses the nearby human settlement has.”
Abby paled somewhat. “You think Lucid’s spying on us? For an invasion?”
“I…” Owyn bit his knuckle. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it is. Nothing I know explains its behavior. It’s… it’s too human.”
And to Owyn, that meant unpredictable.
“But that means we can talk to him, right? Like we did just now. Lucid didn’t try and enthrall us, you saw that.”
“Dungeons split their will among those they enthrall.” Owyn explained, mostly to himself. “By enthralling more monsters, the dungeon’s individual will gets proportionally weaker. If we are to believe it when it said it converted the other dungeons monsters over to its side, it should have noticed a difference each time it converted a monster. The first monster would have the will to resist with whatever will it possessed alone, as well as whatever will the dungeon itself possessed. After the monster was converted, the will that the other dungeon was using to control that monster would be returned to the dungeon. Meaning the second monster Lucid tried to convert would have the combined will of itself, the dungeon, and whatever will the previous monster was no longer taking up. Again and again, over and over for every fucking monster in that room.”
Owyn looked genuinely terrified, and yet, he had a smile on all the same. He laughed with tears forming at the edges of his vision. “It’s will was- is stronger than all those monsters put together, plus that giant dungeon down below! And it’s a week old! It didn’t even know that its will grew along with its core! Fuck!”
Owyn collapsed, both legs jittering. Abby quickly went to cover him with her body, holding down the moving parts. She patted his head, shushing him. She rocked side to side in an attempt to calm him. She’d never seen him this distraught before. Angry, maybe, or maybe impatient, but never actually distraught. Owyn was always the calm one, only acting out when things were really wrong. Abby could feel that she was missing something. She vaguely recognized that Owyn probably knew some obscure dungeon fact that meant he saw a larger picture than Abby ever could.
“It’s so close to Setterton.” Owyn muttered. “It’s in Setterton and we didn’t even notice! The Baroness is gone! We touched its fucking core! We shouldn’t be alive!”
Abby just sat there, holding him. “It’s ok though. We made it out. We’re alive. We’re free.”
“It was toying with us.” Owyn shuddered, calming down only slightly under her touch. He took Abby’s hand off his head, bringing it in front of him. He just held her hand there, watching it. Abby let him, feeling all kinds of horrible. They wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her blind stupidity that she’d convinced herself was bravery.
She closed her eyes and rested her head against Owyn's. “I’m not smart like you.” She admitted. “So you need to be strong. You need to be smart. Figure this out.”
Owyn studied Abby’s hand further. Specifically her pinky finger. “Why didn’t Franz tell us that the Baroness was compromised? Did he want to contain the panic? No, that wouldn’t make sense. It’d be smarter to tell everyone. The dungeon is still small enough that the Baroness ought to be far beyond its usual level of control. Their connection should be weak. She shouldn’t be able to communicate with the dungeon at that distance, no matter how hard it tries. It would be smarter to tie her up or something while we deal with the dungeon.”
Owyn broke away from Abby, still seated on the ground. He stared her in the eyes, a new kind of vigor burning in his own. “If you were the church, with all the power the church wields, and you discovered that a Baroness was enthralled to a dungeon with only seven monsters, what would you do?”
“I don’t know.” Abby answered honestly. “But I would try my best to destroy the core in order to free the Baroness from its control.”
“Exactly! And they haven’t! Why?”
“If you want to talk about weird things, then why does Lucid hate the church?”
“It’s the church's job to kill powerful dungeons.” Owyn said, matter of factly.
“It’s also our job. And he knows that. And yet, when he wanted to talk to us, he didn’t want the priests in the same room as us.”
Owyn absorbed that information for a second. He leaned back, deep in thought. “There’s something we’re missing here.”
“Are Denzel and Ryker still in town?” Abby asked.
“Room 2D, other side of the Inn from us. Why?”
“I’m wondering if we could ask them to play tic tac toe against Rab. Maybe that’s the key to Lucid being friendly with us?”
“What, you’re thinking the game is a sort of test?” Owyn scoffed. “That’s…”
The first time Abby and Owyn went into the dungeon, Owyn toyed with figuring out what the mimic crabs were doing. The next person to enter the dungeon was Faux. Did he play? He was dead… The next time someone went in was when it was as a party with Denzel, Ryker, and the Bellamy’s. The large crab… Rab wanted them to play tic tac toe. It only fought back after Lady Bellamy threw her fireball. But it never specifically attacked Abby or Owyn. Then the church went in to kill it, so obviously they wouldn’t have entertained the idea of playing some game.
“You know what…”
Abby perked up. “Did I say something smart?!”
“Maybe.” Owyn shook his head. “It’s a working theory then. We’ll have to test it out. But that doesn’t solve the mystery of why the church isn’t doing anything about the Baroness.”
“Maybe they are?” Abby suggested. “Maybe they’re waiting for backup? Franz did say he was going to send out his letter now that he knew more about Lucid.”
“Fine, they’re waiting for backup. Makes sense. Again, why hasn’t he told anyone about it?”
“To stop panic before it begins, like you said.” Abby bounced the idea back to him. “But now that we know, and we’re done panicking, couldn’t we just ask him about it?”
“Maybe.” Owyn didn’t seem so sure. “I don’t feel comfortable acting on a hunch though. As good as my memory is, and as much as I believe I know what I saw, it’s different from confirming the fact for myself. I think we need to see for ourselves if the Baroness really is enthralled or not.”
“And how do we do that?” Abby pointed accusingly at Owyn. “You said yourself that she’s supposedly suppressing it. We’ve already checked, and we saw nothing.”
“Suppression isn’t a subconscious thing. It has to be actively done. By catching an enthralled off guard or surprising them, you can see the suppression slip a little. Some hunters did it when they caught an enthralled bear off guard outside its dungeon.”
“So we just need to surprise her.” Abby said dubiously.
“Or we watch her sleep.” Owyn said. “But there’s something else that we can use to check. Enthralled humans can’t use magic.”
“Again, we can’t let her know that we know though.”
“Right.”
“IF she’s enthralled.”
“Yes.”
“So we have to peep on her while she sleeps?”
Owyn buried his face in his hands. “Can we just get one night of normal sleep for once?”
----------------------------------------
They spent the rest of the day doing their jobs. Clearing out the dungeons in the Setterton cave system. While these dungeons were a little tougher than they normally would be, it wasn’t anything Abby or Owyn couldn’t handle. Even alone, if they really had to. But by working as a team for over five years, they’d grown so used to each other's company that it was simply both easier and faster for them to work as a unit. Not to mention safer. It helped that for once, Owyn didn’t stray off topic and inspected the quirks of the dungeons or harvest any odd plants or rocks he found. They were there for one thing and one thing only. Destroying and collecting dungeon cores.
Still, the process took time. They had to be thorough and the caves weren’t shallow. After six hours, the branch they were dealing with was cleared, and another two hours later they climbed back out of the mouth of the cave.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
In the forested area on the other side of the creek, a pair of tents were set up. All three of the knights of the church all lounged about a fire off the beaten path, none of them wearing their armor. They greeted Abby and Owyn warmly as they passed. They even offered some supper, but Abby and Owyn had to refuse.
It was nice to not have to worry about guarding the caves any more.
“Think they’re in the know?” Owyn whispered once they were out of earshot.
“You’re being paranoid.” Abby said, quickly followed by, “Yes.”
“Ok, so what are we going to do if the Baroness is enthralled?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well we’re not going to kill her for it, obviously.” Owyn shook his head. “I mean, the dungeon core is right there. As soon as it’s destroyed, she returns to normal. Boom, done. But what about in the meantime? It’s not like she’s doing anything particularly suspicious. That we know of.”
“Is there any other way to un-enthrall her?” Abby asked. “I mean, we inject our will into cores in order to make them do spells. Can’t we do that with the Baroness and just say ‘return to normal’?”
“Directly? No. Humans need cores to perform magic. So we can’t overwrite the dungeons' will with our own. Not without a core. But in the first place, there’s a number of things that human magic simply can’t do, even if dungeons can. Enthrallment being one of them.”
“Ok, so what if we ask Lucid?”
“What?”
Abby shrugged. “The letter it sent to the Baroness said it was willing to trade. Maybe we can ask Lucid to trade something in order for him to free her?””
Owyn felt the cores in his bag weighing slightly heavier. Could they trade those for her life? It would be a cheap trade, and the cores are far too useful to a dungeon for it to pass up. This run alone had produced eighteen cores. More than their average. But then he considered the timing of events.
“She was enthralled when that letter was sent. It was a show, maybe put on by the dungeon for some reason. Do you think the letter was encoded in some way?”
“What, like with secret instructions?”
“The Baroness lives far away from the dungeons. Maybe it was testing some other form of communication with her.”
“It’s worth a shot.” Abby admitted. “And it’d give us an excuse to visit.”
“We need to visit when she’s asleep. If we ask for the letter, it’ll be when she’s awake.”
Abby had a thought. “What are we going to tell the Lady?”
Owyn fell silent as they entered the village.
“We’ll figure that out later.”
----------------------------------------
They knocked on the Bellamy mansion door. After waiting for a few minutes and trying again, a little Lady Bellamy answered the door, wearing her night clothes.
“Hey guys.” She rubbed one of her eyes. “Everyone’s just getting ready for bed. What’s up?”
A maids' voice called for Lady Bellamy, saying unintelligible things.
“Abby and Owyn are here!” She shouted back.
“Greetings.” Owyn bowed a little. “Do you remember the letter that Lucid sent to your mother?”
“Yeah? Why?”
“We were hoping we could take a look at it again.” Abby said.
“Something the dungeon said made us think about the letter, so we wanted to see the exact wording again.”
“Isabelle?” Came the Baroness’ voice. “Why are you answering the door? A young lady needs her sleep, go. Go-go-go, get to bed. Sadie is looking for you.”
“G’night Abby. Bye Owyn.”
“Good night Lady Bellamy.”
The Baroness opened the door wider in place of her child. She clicked her tongue, watching her daughter wander in the direction of a maid.
“Even tired she’s a handful. She’s been playing hide and seek lately in the effort of trying to stay up later. Poor Sadie’s been having such a hard time. Come on in, what brings you here so late?”
Abby and Owyn both secretly judged her with their mana senses. Neither of them could see anything particularly wrong with the Baroness. Owyn spoke as the door was closed behind them.
“We were wondering if you still had the letter Lucid gave you. We wanted to see the exact wording again. We just had a thought is all.”
The Baroness nodded, gesturing further into the mansion. “Of course. It’s important that we consider all interpretations of such matters. I myself had to give it much thought, as well as consider what sort of aftermath would follow. I do believe I have come to an appropriate response for Lucid however. Would you mind bringing it to him tomorrow?”
“You’re not going yourself?” Abby immediately cursed her curiosity. What if the Baroness read between the lines and figured out they suspected her? Thankfully, the Baroness didn’t turn around to see her reaction. Or Owyn’s look.
“I’m afraid I have too much to do as the Baroness. It’s for the best that we told the people to prepare for the worst, because when I suggested to everyone that they prepare some manner of quick grab bags in case they need to flee, nobody seemed too surprised.”
The Baroness led them into her office. She kept talking as she went around to her chair behind her desk.
“Since you’re here, you might have an opinion about this. See, my plan was to try and initiate trade with Lucid at first. Material goods, mostly food and grain. Setterton makes both in great quantity, so losing a small amount shouldn’t be that much of an issue. In the case that this is a clever method of learning what we’re capable of on the surface, and Lucid suddenly gets greedy, I wanted everyone ready to flee at a moment's notice. Hopefully a day and a little is enough time to prepare the bare amount.”
“That’s smart.” Owyn admitted. It was also curious that she would suggest such a contingency, presuming she really was enthralled.
The Baroness produced a letter from a stack of papers. She tucked the rest away in a drawer. “I could show you all the math that went into my various suggestions, and the numerous favors I had to cash out in order to make sure everyone had the means to be ready, but that’s not what you’re here for.”
Owyn approached the desk, accepting the letter. He and Abby read it over again, carefully this time. Owyn, being exceptionally well read, focused on the letters themselves, while Abby paid attention to other details. Splotches of ink, frayed edges of the page, anything that would indicate it was anything other than they thought. To the best of both of their knowledge, neither of them could find anything that would count as code. Well, any more than the subtext behind the words actually being said, but Owyn was still convinced it was just a thinly veiled threat.
He handed the letter back. “I apologize for taking up your time.”
“Nonsense.” The Baroness dismissed. “If anything, this is perfect timing. I wanted to ask you what you think Lucid would be willing to trade in exchange for our services.”
Owyn couldn’t help but hear a double meaning behind those words. He knew she supposedly meant it as a business transaction, but it could also be interpreted as an intention to be entirely in service to the dungeon, and he didn’t know which she really meant.
“It gave us a fraction of a dungeon core today.” Abby offered, taking the green core fragment out of her pocket. “It’s not a big one, but… He gave it to us as a reward.”
“Like your statue?” The Baroness asked. “Why?”
“For winning against Rab in Tic Tac Toe.”
“Who’s Rab?” She asked.
“The big mimic crab that looked like it had a shield and lance.” Owyn said. He raised a hand a little higher than he was tall. “It’s about this big now. Eyes not included.”
“I see. At this rate, you might need to give me a daily report of what Lucid changes.” She smirked.
Abby and Owyn did not share in her humor.
“It’s not an order, obviously.” The Baroness’ joy faded a touch. “Is something wrong?”
“Lucid found a giant dungeon from the depths.” Owyn said the first excuse that came to mind. “He’s fighting a losing battle.”
Hopefully. He silently added.
The Baroness stiffened. If neither of them were looking for it, they might not have noticed.
She relaxed back in her chair with a serious look. “Hmm. I can’t tell if that’s good news or not. On one hand, a powerful dungeon is dealt with. On the other hand, an even more powerful dungeon takes its place. One we possibly can’t reach. I’m almost finding myself rooting for Lucid.” She waved off the thought. “The people of Setterton are prepared for an evacuation at any second. If Lucid remains where he is, I’ll deem it temporarily safe, so long as the church is in town. If Lucid falls, we’ll evacuate the town. No questions about that.”
“Indeed.” Owyn muttered.
Abby bowed to the Baroness. “Thank you for your time Lady Baroness. We’ll leave you for the night.”
The Baroness stood. “Thank you for your concern over the dungeon. Please come back some time to play with Isabelle. She’s been so abhorredly bored. It’s been interfering with my work!”
Thank you for your concern over the dungeon. Owyn felt shivers crawl up his spine. Two can use subliminal messages. “We promise. We’ll take great care of the Lady.” He bowed perhaps deeper than he needed to.
They left the Baroness’ mansion, not once looking back.
----------------------------------------
A few hours later, long after it had gone dark, Abby and Owyn sat waiting in the forested area outside the Bellamy property.
“Were you talking to the Baroness, or the… thrall, when you said you would take care of Lady Bellamy?” Abby asked. The question had been lingering on her mind for hours.
Owyn didn’t answer, just keeping his eyes on the flickering light inside the windows of the mansion. It wasn’t anywhere near the Baroness’ room, but he wanted to make sure everyone was asleep before making his move. The light vanished.
“Did you mean what you said?” Abby asked instead.
“I always mean what I say.” Owyn said with a hard voice. “Let’s go.”
They left the safety of the bushes. Neither of them carried any of their equipment, especially not anything that would reflect the moonlight funny or make noise. Their steps landed perfectly in sync with each other.
Abby quietly asked a different question. “If enthralled people can’t use magic, why didn’t we just use magic when we thought we were enthralled earlier?”
When she didn’t hear a response, she turned to Owyn. She couldn’t quite tell in the moonlight, but she swore she could see him blushing. She smiled to herself when she realized he hadn’t thought of it. He wasn’t as infallible as he made himself out to be.
They slowed as they got against the walls of the mansion. WIthout actually touching the stone, they rounded the corner, covering themselves in the shade of the building. Silently, they got to either side of a window. The Baroness slept one floor higher, so they would have to climb.
With just a nod, they turned to the building. With a leap, Abby and Owyn began climbing, quietly using the decorative stone to their advantage. Abby scaled faster than Owyn, but got stuck at the lip dividing the floors. They couldn’t climb over without being seen, so they could only peer over the edge if they wanted to see. Owyn, with his stronger arms, shimmied his way over to Abby, bracing himself on the windowsill below him. WIth a heave on her belt, he lifted her enough that she could get a look over the edge while supporting herself. Then, Owyn pulled himself up, just peering his eyes over the ledge.
The window to the Baroness’ room was shut, but thankfully the curtains were open. Abby and Owyn could see a lump slowly rising and falling in an oversized bed. And while weak, they both say exactly what they feared. A disturbed flow of mana surrounded her. Subtle, but unmistakable.
Owyn’s arms began to hurt, so he dropped first, falling to his ass after landing. Abby landed solidly, concern riddling her face.
“Fuck.” Owyn whispered.
“She really is enthralled.” Abby muttered.
“At least we know now.” Owyn got to his feet. “Which means we can plan around it. Come on, before we wake anyone up…”
----------------------------------------
Isabelle Bellamy didn’t dare to breathe. She held her hand firmly over her mouth in her effort to remain quiet. All she wanted to do was practice her magic. She’d done it before. Sneak out at night to practice for just a little longer. She only ever wanted her mom to be proud of her. And now…
Abby and Owyn’s forms ran away from the house, disappearing into the woods at the edge of her home. Her home. Now that her mom was enthralled that meant-
A huff of air escaped, and just like that, the dam broke. Tears blurred whatever vision she had at night. The bark of the tree scraped her back through her night clothes as she slowly collapsed to the ground. Isabelle choked back a sob, trying ever so hard to keep quiet. She had to be strong. That’s what her mother would have said.
Isabelle pulled her knees in close, dropping her wand to the ground.
She had to be strong.