Their pace picked up. The villagers seemed surprised when Lucid didn’t raid the village. Well, to be fair, Owyn was a little surprised too. Even he stole some food so he wouldn’t have to eat whatever they came across on their journey. Although the villagers still seemed on edge, all in all, they went along with everything.
After the dungeon had been destroyed, the monsters went into their usual frenzy, giving Lucid a chance to bolster his numbers even more. They also arranged a new carrying system for his core, so that more of his monsters could receive slow evolutions to drain the mana he’d gained. For some reason, he was really focusing on the squirrels the fish monsters had gathered. He wasn’t turning them into some super soldiers, but some malnourishedly thin abominations with no eyes, teeth, or any other recognizable features of the poor woodland creature. Their tails no longer even had their previous bushy feature, instead looking like some kind of living needle.
They encountered four more dungeons before night, but only engaged with two. The second one had invaded the next village, much more successfully this time around. A large number of the humans had been turned into undead, including some recognizable faces from Settertons survivors.
They elected to sleep outside the village after that.
Lucid had elected his newly acquired wolves to evolve overnight. Owyn didn’t see them the next morning, since they ran into the woods surrounding their trail for scouting purposes. It was this very fact that gave them forewarning of something new to come.
“The church is ahead of us.” Baroness Bellamy informed the humans.
“They’re coming to save us!?” A villager said happily.
Owyn, along with the others from Setterton, gave them a pitiful look.
“How many?” Owyn asked.
“Too many.” The Baroness said calmly. “For direct confrontation at least. Sixty knights, and ten priests.”
“Should we go around?”
“Nope!” The newest mimic crab to carry Lucid giggled. The near black remains of the squirrels swarming his core scattered throughout Lucid’s monster army, hiding on the shoulders of fish monsters and mimic crabs.
Wolves howled across the woods. Although Owyn knew they were allies, he couldn’t help but feel his hairs raise.
“This doesn’t feel like a good idea.” Mr. Mayflower stated.
“Probably not.” The Baroness agreed. “But Lucid needs to confirm something.”
Lucid’s monsters scattered into the woods, running ahead of them. A few of the larger mimic crabs stayed behind to guard the core. Although their pace didn’t increase, Owyn couldn’t help but feel the adrenaline of a fight build within him. His hands reached for his quiver again out of instinct.
“You know you won’t need to fight, right?” Lucid’s carrier mentioned. A few other mimic crabs had come closer to utilize the newly vacated surface area of the core.
“I know.” Owyn lied. “I’d still feel better with a gun in hand though.”
“A berry in the hand is worth two in the bush. I’ll see about making you some new barrels tonight.”
“I’d appreciate it.” Owyn nodded.
They walked in silence for a while. The dirt road they were following was heavily forested, which obstructed their view for quite a while. However, it didn’t do much against the noises. Wolves howled, fish creatures gargled war cries, and the various other monsters Lucid had collected from the other dungeons all gave their respective sounds of intimidation. Amidst it all, Owyn expected to hear sounds of steel meeting flesh. But there was nothing of the sort. And soon, they found out why.
After rounding a small bend, the group witnessed what was happening with the church’s members. Lucids monsters were almost nowhere to be seen, but they could be heard from every direction. Shadows rushed from hiding spot to hiding spot. Leaves rustled with seemingly no source. The knights had created a wall of bodies surrounding the priests, who stood back to back, looking wildly in every direction. The ones facing the procession's direction noticed their arrival.
“Head on? Really?” Owyn questioned the plan once again.
“There’s a reason…” The Baroness muttered.
Mrs. Vernant gestured to the knights of the church, looking at the handful of survivors they’d accumulated. “Well? Aren’t you going to ask them for safety?”
The mismatched villagers silently questioned each other, trying to find a group decision without words. One of them, who’d apparently volunteered as the voice of the group, spoke for them.
“Aren’t you going to kill them? If we went to them, wouldn’t that make us your enemies?”
The Baroness tilted her head back and forth. “True, however you could convince them to just let us through, and we’ll be on our way.”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” The villager asked.
Owyn sighed, and raised his voice for the church members to hear him. “If we said we come in peace, would you let us go?”
“Fuck you, inhuman thrall!” Came the reply.
Owyn gave the villagers a look and a shrug. Confused, the villager shouted back.
“We’re not thralls! He’s not a thrall either!” The villager gestured to the various unenthralled.
Lucid’s thralls all moved as one, some of them diving for the unenthralled.
“MAGIC!” The Baroness shouted.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
A crack of lightning shot down the center of the road, striking one of the mimic crabs touching Lucid’s core. It dropped dead where it stood, and the rest of everyone else ran for the cover of the woods.
Owyn’s pre-fight adrenaline buzzed through him. He picked up the first, closest fallen branch he could see as a weapon. It had many other branches tangled up in the underbrush, but it would be better than nothing once he got it free. In the meantime, he watched as chaos descended on the church.
The various forms of fish monsters cascaded out from all directions, throwing armfuls of sticks and rocks at the armored knights. Leaping through the distractions were the squirrels, neatly blending in with the noise. He knights paying the smaller, feeble creatures little mind, focused on the larger threats charging directly at them. Steel met flesh, and magic struck out at random. The mimic crabs that had joined the fight were mostly resistant to the blades, and engaged with the knights directly, but they fell quickly to magic.
Then Owyn saw a knight break formation, slashing at his comrades.
Owyn wanted to take a second to fully absorb that, but then he saw another knight do the same. Very quickly, a new form of chaos ensued as knight turned on knight and priest. They killed each other without hesitation. When the other knights were able to realize what was happening, they turned their backs on the unarmed monsters to better fight their fellow knights. They seemed to fare well against their own, overpowering them in most circumstances. That was when Owyn saw the difference.
A knight had his arm lopped off, and a sword shoved under his arm and through his chest. A thin black form wormed its way off the neck of the dying knight and darted for the knight that had his sword stuck in his comrade. The knight shouted in surprise, swatting at the small monster, but not before it could get behind his neck and shove its needle-like tail in his spine. His face, still full of confusion and fear, quickly turned to surprise as his arms suddenly no longer obeyed him. The knight clumsily spun around and sucker punched a priest, bowing over the knight to knee it in the face.
Owyn watched with horrid fascination as the fight ended far faster than it should have, and with the knights and priests either dead, or with a squirrel clinging to their necks under their helmets. The remains of Lucid’s monsters gathered themselves up.
With tepid steps, Owyn followed the civilians of Lucid’s troop back to the road, his branch forgotten behind him. He activated his mana sense to look at the knights still standing. Unenthralled.
“What… have… you… done?” A knight wheezed out. His eyes glared in Lucid’s general direction.
“Oh goddess.” The Baroness whispered, her eyes going wide at the sight.
The mimic crab holding Lucid’s core spoke with a calm enthusiasm that only a child could have. “Cool! Lucid says the squirrels are controlling them!”
“How?” Owyn whispered.
“He says the squirrels have severed the nerves traveling down their spine and interrupted them with their own signals, essentially swapping brains! Of course, the head is still being controlled by the human, but that’s even better!”
“That’s horrifying.” Mr. Mayflower whispered.
A villager threw up.
“Puppetry!” The mimic crab declared happily.
“Why?” Owyn asked. Harder, he tore his eyes away from the puppet knight and demanded answers from Lucid. “WHY? Enthrallment is one thing, since people are essentially brainwashed into obeying you, but this? You’re-”
“They still have free will.” The Baroness interrupted. She looked half sick as she spoke Lucid’s words. “Enslaving them like this doesn’t remove their will like enthrallment would. Lucid says… he says it’s a legal loophole to the law declaring enthralled as not human anymore.”
A shiver iced its way up Owyn’s back. “That-”
The Baroness held up a hand to Owyn, silencing him. Her face fell darker and darker, regaining its original color. Owyn watched, in real time, as she not only accepted the situation as it was, but agreed with it.
A mimic crab tugged Owyn’s sleeve gently, holding up Lucid’s core for him to touch. A number of Lucid’s injured thralls were touching the core as well, probably healing. But they’d left behind traces of blood on the core. Owyn hesitated, but touched the open space on his core.
Hello Owyn. Lucid greeted. Owyn felt him casting his gaze over the carnage through the mimic crab’s eyes. I’d like to tell you something about me. About dreaming. See, not all dreams are nice. Sometimes they become nightmares. And I’ve experienced every form of nightmare there is. Monsters of all sorts. Aliens, pirates, war, you name it, I’ve experienced it. But I don’t fear nightmares. They’re just another story for me to live out. However, there is one fear that I’ve never overcome. One I’ve noticed that this world shares with me actually.
Tell me, Lucid focused his attention solely on Owyn now. What does the hell of this world look like?
It’s… it’s one giant dungeon. Everyone is enslaved to it.
Lucid sniffed, content with the answer. My greatest fear is not a loss of free will. If my will was to change, then would I really notice? Would anyone really notice? No, my greatest fear is something a little simpler. It’s a loss of autonomy.
“Kill… me…” A knight wheezed.
Whoops. Can’t have that.
Angler approached the knight. He held the knight by the jaw, inspecting it.
With a small crack, bone broke.
----------------------------------------
The reality of Owyn’s situation settled in. He wanted to berate Lucid for devolving to such barbaric tactics, but he couldn’t find fault in the dungeon’s actions. Was it truly any more different than enthrallment? In a sense, it was, but… Oh goddess, Owyn didn’t know any more.
He envied Lucid. And Mycroft. And all of Lucid’s other thralls too, really. To them, life was simple. Kill or be killed. Enthrall, or die. Servitude to the greater power, or death. Admittedly, against something like the God Core, Lucid had chosen death, but then again, hadn’t Owyn done the same?
And for Abby, Owyn would do it again.
They camped far outside Everlast. They could just barely see its tallest spires over the horizon.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow Owyn would see Abby again. And that would make everything right again. Owyn would have his purpose again, and… and then what? The church was still a problem that needed to be solved. It wasn’t even guaranteed that Owyn would get in to the city tomorrow.
At a distance, Owyn could see a cluster of torches and lanterns bobbing their way across the landscape. More refugees. Undoubtedly making their way to the capital just the same as nearly everyone else who’d been fleeing their homes. Villages and towns stood no chance against the sudden influx of dungeons on the surface. Only the cities had walls built specifically for emergencies like this, but even then, no city could house so many people all at once. There would be riots in the streets as people demanded that the church or the King fix the problem. Riots that would take resources away from the reclamation process. Would an army even be enough? Was it even possible for things to go back to ‘normal’ again?
Owyn wrung his hands on the steel barrel of the gun he was given. Lucid had used a considerable amount of his mana in the attempt to form it. It had even taken away from his ability to evolve his monsters, something he’d only recently returned to.
The gun felt nice in Owyn’s hands. Right. It had fascinating grooves spiraling down the inside, something called rifling. More physics concepts that had massive implications for magic.
Nothing would return back to normal again. That was something Owyn wholeheartedly accepted. He welcomed the change. This change. He wanted the surface dungeons gone. He wanted the God Core gone, and he wanted Abby back.
That was right. That was why he was here. Why he followed a dungeon into battle.
It really was that simple. This was what Owyn wanted. Therefore, he’d fight for it.