Akahana looked mildly offended at the suggestion. “I don’t need to be paid to help protect my daughter!” She said with a frown.
Mordecai smiled, “No, but it is advantageous for the dungeon if you are. Because we can pay you in goods, and those goods could include, say, twice the amount of any ingredients or materials you need for the ritual, assuming we already have a sample or I have the knowledge of how to make it.”
Ricardo’s eyes lit up now. “Oho, that could be quite profitable.”
“That it could,” Mordecai responded, “And I have a project for you as well. I want to build our reputation a bit more, so I would like to arrange for some of your fellows to work with some bunkin and rabkin, and build a trading post in the area outside of our entrance. I want to include things like a proper inn and a stable, and our crafting rabbits can trade their work independently of our loot process. And very importantly for the community, they can delve into proper merchandising.” Mordecai conjured up a plushly stuffed doll version of Zushi. “Someone who has just fought through the first floor might not want something like this as a direct prize. But as a memento of a victory, one that they can buy? That’s a different story. However, hashing out the details can wait.”
He turned to look at Brongrim and Nainvil. “I wasn’t certain if I needed you as part of this little council, it just didn’t feel right to exclude you. I do have something I would like you to do however; I want you to be less-partial witnesses. Our relationship started off adversarial. That makes you a good point of view for what comes next. Shizoku and Takehiko will be taking reports back to Aia, but that’s hardly going to be a convincing point of view for those already hostile to us. Now, I think we’ve let the three guards stew long enough. Ricardo, I would like you to question each one before me, I’ve already constructed a story in my head so it might bias my questioning, and you know the three of them better.” He was also hiding part of his plans from all four of them, which he felt bad about, but he wanted them to be able to be completely honest with the rest of the world while still hiding a part of his and Kazue’s capabilities for now.
One by one each of the three was led in to be questioned. They were worried, nervous, tired, and a tiny bit guilty as each realized what happened. Their stories were similar, though the details varied, they’d each been approached by a woman claiming to be from Riverbridge who was very interested in their upcoming delve, and by the end of the evening they’d been given a ‘good luck’ token by the woman. The descriptions varied and the times overlapped, so it was probably three separate agents.
In the end, all present agreed that the men were innocent of ill will, and were merely pawns in this scheme. It wasn’t a bad way to do it, dungeons were good at sniffing out true hostility. There were so many subtle clues a person could give away, and dungeons had very keen senses in their territory. So they were sent off to enjoy the feast hall, prizes to be awarded later.
After that, it was time to deal with the prisoners. The cells were created down the same hall that led to the kitchens and other work areas, which was a practical consideration on Mordecai’s part. There was likely not going to be frequent cause to use them so there was no need to create their own completely separate area, the prisoners would need to be fed anyway, and unlike most places, the dungeon’s cooks and crafters were also combat capable, making them secondary guards.
In the newly built room holding a ring of cells, there were several bunkin finishing the preparations for a ritual under Mordecai’s mental instructions. The cells were reasonably spacious and each held a single occupant, and each cell had a small private area for basic needs. The privacy was Kazue’s touch, Mordecai wasn’t feeling that generous, but he had given each of them basic, grayish robes to replace their clothing, as all of them had been completely stripped of their clothing. This included all piercings, and any signs of magic etched into their flesh had either been dispelled or surgically removed, leaving scars on a few of them where permanent magic tattoos had once been. He preferred the least invasive method available, but he was not going to tolerate any of them having anything that might turn out to be usable against the dungeon. A few teeth had to be removed as well.
There was a platform ring around the room about ten feet above the floor, with no stairs or other method to get there by foot, not even entrances to the Warrens. The only way there was to fly or be carried, which the rabkin could take care of for the bunkin. Mages, archers, and gunners stood guard from there.
“Hello everyone,” Mordecai’s voice carried through the chamber. “I’ll be talking to you in a moment about the sort of idiots you are, but I need to verify some information first.” The others were spreading out on the wall behind him to give him room as Mordecai walked to the center of the freshly inscribed circle and started the finale of the ritual.
Light flickered out in waves, followed by questing motes of energy that danced in complex patterns before darting back to the ritual circle, repeating several times until Mordecai was satisfied and he brought the ritual to a close.
“And that’s pretty much what I thought.” He looked around at each of the cell occupants, receiving glares from all but the most badly injured one, whose flesh still looked ashen gray and his body still convulsed occasionally as Akahana’s regeneration spell competed with the after effects of being nearly absorbed by Zushi’s void. The broken bones and other purely physical injured were mostly healed. “So, it’s not hard to figure out that you lot were sent by the purity cultists, unless there’s another fanatical group out there with cause to hate me. No, please, don’t bother with denials, nor do I care about fanatical rants trying to justify your cause. You are here to listen to me right now.”
As he spoke, Mordecai activated the ‘traps’ he’d prepared for the room earlier. The first was a magical suppression aura that would make any use of magic more difficult. The second overlaid the first and created turbulence that could disrupt any magic that did manage to be cast. He did make an exception for healing magic, which might have a way to be abused, but it was difficult to use vitality offensively against most beings.
The mages assigned as guards here were rendered immune to both effects, by volunteering to have their magic irrevocably altered, whether here, elsewhere in the dungeon, or even outside the dungeon. Any magical effects they created would always be a little more chaotic and prone to strange misfires. It almost perfectly balanced out the chaotic influence of the trap.
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“First of all, I don’t know where you got the idea of sending in a team this small against even an ordinary six-floor dungeon. Even without our numbers, all but the most anemic dungeon should have some interesting resources and tricks by now. Oh, you’d have done better against a normal dungeon without support, you might even have found and killed the core, but a good number of you would be dead.” He shook his head in disgust. You needed the numbers to completely clear out an entire dungeon twice if you wanted to be sure you got through, especially for any dungeon wise enough to hold back on activating their Break until the last feasible moment. Three times was a surer bet.
“As for the history of the cult and I, the short version is that you guys started it, and I did my best to finish it. I,” he paused for a moment and softened his voice. “I did not do well there, I admit. I made some very wrong and very dark choices in my pain and rage.” Now he let sincere emotions begin to leak through, echoes of trauma that had never left him. “Your founders wiped out the village I founded, and tried to wipe out the bloodlines started by my various avatars. Ask yourselves what you would do were it in your power, if you had discovered a conspiracy that might have just wiped out every blood relation that you had, as just the start of their atrocities?” His voice was tight and held an unsubtle snarl. “So while I may have my sins to atone for still, your organization is not a whit better, and I consider them worse. Expect no sympathy from me over your plight.”
He wanted to vent his rage now that it was this close to the surface, and he had to fight that urge. These people had not only their perverse tradition, they had now just tried to murder his wives and the newfound friends and family he’d made since awakening. But stepping away from the cycle of vengeance was part of what he needed to learn to do. It took him a few moments of controlled breathing to restore his calm, and only after that did he realize how much menace must have leaked into his aura. The prisoners looked terrified.
Mordecai rolled his shoulders to release a last bit of tension before he continued. “Your cult’s sin of stupid decisions compound themselves beyond that. The mere premise is idiotic. My ritual just now was an analysis, and not a single one of you is pure human. By physical inheritance alone, all of you carry markers that come from different primary ancestries. Your spirits also carry inheritable influence from other sources, including all of you having signs of Dungeon influence. But that’s true of every single person who I’ve had a chance to examine since I awoke, so I assume that this is the result of what happened before I was sealed. Three of you, however, have accidentally tried to commit another sin. That of Parricide, though I acknowledge I am using the word loosely here.” He pointed at the woman still regrowing the rest of her arm, one of the men who had been heavily armored, and one of the male mages. “You three are direct descendants of mine, though fairly distant. I won’t be offended if you don’t believe me, but ask yourselves if any of your relatives have slightly purple hair. I never intended my little vanity to have a use like this, but here we are.”
“Oh, and your raid has made us stronger. Not only have we defeated you, we now have fourteen living hostile people leaking their mana to fuel our growth. Were we cruel, I wouldn’t have told you this part and arranged to make you into a breeding population forever trapped in the bowels of the dungeon, a perpetual source of mana to grow the dungeon. I could even arrange for the occasional ‘escape’ that would give a chance for my creatures to practice against you. And don’t think I’m the first core to think of it, I learned of it from a psychotic dungeon that I aided in taking out.”
The looks of horror on their faces were satisfying, but he wasn’t here to torture them. “Now, I have vented a bit of my emotions, and feel much better. I doubt you share the sentiment. It is now time to let you know your possible future paths.”
He raised a finger. “One: The most likely path for each of you is to be handed over to Kuiccihan, as we have a formal, signed, and witnessed treaty with them. Oh, I could try and torture you for information or otherwise use you, but the kingdom can use you as political capital in ways I can not, and probably gain information through much nicer methods. I don’t have the patience to deal with you properly anyway.”
Mordecai raised a second finger. “Two: Ask for sanctuary by becoming inhabitants of the dungeon. I doubt any of you are going to take me up on that, but it is there. Just be warned that you had better be sincere in your conversion. You can’t fake it, and the process of allowing yourself to become part of the dungeon will enforce a bond of loyalty. I’ve seen the results of someone trying to infiltrate a dungeon, thinking they can keep their will opposed to the dungeon at the same time. What was left of their mind was not something I’d choose to inflict on anyone.”
As he raised a third finger, Mordecai smiled. “Three: There is a chance a young ratling will find his way here. If that happens, and he chooses to help you escape, I will not interfere. But neither will I intervene on your behalf. All I can do is advise that you not lie to him. Fate tends to be very unkind to those who treat Li poorly, and lying to or deceptively manipulating him counts as treating him poorly. That kind of luck twists reality far beyond the depths my power has ever reached.” Most of the prisoners looked confused, but at least two of them seemed to understand what he was saying from the way their eyes widened. “Yes, I do mean Li Zarb. You can thank him however, luckily for you his intervention led to your quicker, cleaner capture, or at least a few of you would have died before we wrapped up. I’ll leave further explanation to those of you who already understand.” Li’s luck had also probably influenced Chance to keep weapons from piercing immediately fatal locations.
“And beyond that, well, I don’t really see much possibility. I had considered keeping my three descendants here in order to offer a reeducation and a chance to redeem themselves, but honestly, the thought of dealing with you sounds exhausting. I want to cling to ties of what I had, however faint those ties might be, but that’s not a truly reasonable thing. So it is my intention to hand you over to Kuiccihan with your fellows.”
He gave the lot of them one more look over and sighed. “I thought I might actually take the time to talk to some of you individually, but I don’t really want to get to know you. You will be fed and well treated for the rest of your time here, but I for one will not give you more consideration than that. Kazue and I can both hear anything you say, and you can try to impose upon her kinder, more empathetic nature, but much like with Li, I really don’t recommend trying to deceive her.” His smile held not a hint of humor. “Aside from the fact that I think my ratling friend likes her and would hate to see her sad, you don’t want to provoke anyone else here. She’s universally adored.” And she was adorable he noted to himself as he watched her avatar blush. “That is all I have. Akahana, please feel free to continue any treatments you believe necessary. I’m leaving, anyone else is free to stay and talk with the prisoners if you like.”
He turned on his heel and stalked out, his emotions simmering under his calm facade. Mordecai wanted to make them feel even a fraction of what he’d felt, to inflict upon them the sort of pain that haunted his soul. But that was not the sort of rage he could afford to let himself fall prey to ever again.