I did not sleep well; my body might have been on the point of collapse but my mind was wound as tightly as it could be, and kept giving me restless dreams. That is why, when I first heard the sounds, I put it down to a dream, but eventually I got up and investigated. I ended up climbing the wall behind us [being careful to puma-crawl onto the top to try and avoid the fairies] I made it to the edge of the wall and looked into the darkness on the other side, a moment later a flash of light showed the room below me. The room was one of the long straight passage ways. Here and there the walls were hairy with that strange moss stuff. But what got my attention were the minotaur, about 20 of them, some grazing on the walls, some mock fighting, and some just looking on! I stayed frozen in a sort of horror, even as a tantalising idea popped into my mind, I quickly discarded it as stupid. And then backing up I, very carefully, fell down the wall.

It was as I was picking myself up that I saw the mark I had made, it was almost gone, I stepped up to get a better look, but even as I did, I realized my error; the dungeon was repairing itself! I could leave all the marks I wanted, and they would be gone by the time we came back to them! The idea that had popped into my head popped back into my head, and this time I was angry enough to listen to it!

I climbed back up to the top of the wall and, lying flat, looked down at the minotaur’s. I ignored the three biggest and settled on one of the medium sized ones. Although medium in size for this group he would have towered over any human. As I watch he moved in towards the centre of the group, perfect! With my target selected I took a deep breath and cast fury. And then I watched as the destruction unfolded. Taking down a minotaur is no joke, lots of adventures, even good adventures, would struggle to deal with more than two, now here I was taking on 20 or so! I cast fury a few more times into the fight raging below me. We have an expression in Elba, ‘drunk on power’ I think that that is what I must have been, but can you blame me? I had never been able to win anything, I had always just been the inventory unable to affect the world, but in that moment; on top of the wall in the labyrinth I was controlling the fight from the shadows, I was doing what no swords men could do! I had said that I could be an adventurer and I could! In that moment I felt I could do whatever I wanted, intoxicated on power! That is why when Scar crawled up the wall to see what the noise was about, I threw him off into the whirling mess below. It happened in a moment, and I regretted it almost at once, but it was too late then. Far too late.

What did I tell Tom? I could hardly say that I had thrown Scar to his death while dizzy on power, could I? in the end I just told him that Scar had lost his balance while walking along the wall and that when I had gotten to the top of the wall to see what had happened it was already over. I expected Tom to ask for details, or to simply not believe me. In fact, he didn’t say anything, just sat there staring, and then he opened his inventory and pulled out a bunch of poppies, I saw his eyes glaze over, and I knew that he no longer saw me; he was once more in some waking dream. Well l couldn’t leave him there and carry on exploring on my own, I was not sure if I could find my way back, and there was no way I could carry him, so I stayed, waiting for him to wake up. Eventually I climbed over the wall to inspect the passage where the minotaur’s had been. The minotaurs had gone after the strange goings on and the passage lay deserted. It looked just the same as any other we had walked down since we got to this level, there was nothing to show what had happened only a few hours earlier, or almost nothing; I was just about to climb back over the wall to wait by Tom when a flash of light showed something at my feet. I bent down and picked it up, it was a thin leather collar with small metal studs on it. I was so used to Scar waring it that, in my mind it was just part of him. I thought of giving it to Tom, and then I thought I had better wait until the rawness of Scars death had subsided a little. I opened my inventory and placed it inside, and it was then that I found the mirror, the mirror that I had so painstakingly put back together; I had assumed that it had vanished when we had gotten to level 5, but here it was. I took it out of my inventory and held it, the cracks seemed to be gone and it was giving off a strong blueish-white light, by the light of the mirror, I could see something painted on the wall; reflecting the blueish-white light someone had written;

‘Beware that the light you have is not darkness,

because if the light you have is really darkness, how deep is that darkness?’

About two paces past where the words ended, a stone in the rough wall had been painted with the same reflective paint. Ignoring the words for now I reached out and touched the stone, it felt solid enough, I pressed in on it and felt it give a little. I flet a rush of excitement at having discovered something. Putting the mirror back into my inventory I used both hands to press harder, and, as the stone gave way, I felt a dropping turning sensation in my stomach. It was a feeling I knew all too well, it was the feeling of the next level!

Level 6; the core!

Toms’ body slumped to the floor beside me, still passed out from his resent dose of poppies. We had materialised in a cave; the rock walls were not unlike the large cavern where the goblins lived. There was a difference though; not far from where I stood the walls were covered in red veins, and a little farther in I could see the dungeon core! It was huge, larger than my old house on the surface! But strangely misshaped; most cores have a uniform shape, some look like cut jewels, some are more like spherical orbs. But this core looked more like a jiggered chunk of rock. The core was slightly translucent, shadows and light seemed to be moving inside the it, so that it was not pure red. Instead, it ranged from places that where so dark they were almost black, to places so light they were almost pink. Now and then an arc of red light would shoot out and ground itself in the vein covered walls.

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If you are ever around something with a high level, and you really concentrate, you can feel the level difference. From where I was standing, I didn’t even need to concentrate, I could feel the power coming off the core and washing over me like small waves.

And then it spoke! I had never thought of a dungeon speaking, but some monsters could speak, so why not a dungeon? “It has been a long time since I last had visitors.” It said. The voice was not at all human; it had a high ringing quality, like glass being struck and vibrating, but at the same time, under that was a deeper note, the sort of thing you hear from avalanches. The voice came from everywhere; it came from all over the core and it came from the walls, like a hundred voices all speaking at once, all the same voice, but all slightly different at the same time. “I must say I am impressed that you made it as far as you did with the poor grasp you have of your class.” I had been unsettled by the core speaking; and that feeling of being off balance made me angry “what do you mean ‘poor grasp’? I became an adventure despite my class I-” I was cut off by the core “You have a great class, you have a dreamers’ class, a class that is wasted on you. If you lived for a thousand years you would never unlock the true potential of it!” “I am an illusionist.” I said flatly, the core seemed amused, “what is an illusionist but a dreamer; a dreamer who can share his dream with others, someone who can make others see the world as he wants them to see it. Yes… definitely a dreamer class. But you don’t have the power to use it!” And then he laughed, hollow and menacing, “but at least you have the potential to dream, unlike your friend. Oh, he can bend the world to his hand, but he has no dream. He lacks the ability to dream. Like so many creatures! But you… ah, so much wasted potential,” it sighed almost wistfully, “Why does the Great Architect give these stupid creatures abilities they can’t understand or properly use?” “Why do you keep saying I can’t unlock my ‘potential’ that I can’t, ‘use’ it?!” I said angrily. “You don’t even have enough manna to create a solid core the size of a thimble! Even if you lived for a thousand years, even if you where the greatest human warrior alive, you would have no comprehension of true power!” the voice changed now to a sneering one “you call these grains of sand dungeons! All you have to do is look into the night sky and you will see the real dungeons! Up there the real battle goes on, between the stars, so far away from you that you don’t even know it is happening! What is a planet but a star waiting to be born! And what is a star but a Dungeon core that has grown! When all the cores on a planet are defeated and there is one Dungeon, then the real fight begins! That is real power; manna condensed into crystal larger than a planet! But enough of this nonsense. We are wasting time!” I looked for some response to the dismissive way the dungeon talked, “If dungeons really are so powerful, how come I made it this far? How, if you are so powerful, did I survive?” There was silence. And then the core started to laugh, at first it was far away and then it came closer, it was all around me, it was a strange laugh, not just amused but properly laugh; high and jingling but at the same time low and grinding. “Do you think that you got here by your own skill? I was curious about you, a human with a dreamer’s class… I wanted to see you for myself.” “Are you saying you helped us get here?” “of course. Don’t feel too disheartened, you have made it through, even with help that is an impressive feat. So, I am going to offer you something, something you have always wanted; a Class change.” I stared at the core in surprised silence. “You can change my class?” I asked, “Oh yes.” I felt a thrill of excitement run through me. But following close on its heals a feeling of unease; if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is. “Why” I asked, “why would you do this?” the shadows inside the core seemed to move and shift, as if thoughts where floating round inside the core “As I said it is a ‘reword for getting to the final level.’ But that isn’t really what you are asking, is it? You think this sounds too good to be true, you want to know what strings are attached?” “Yes” I said with the uneasy feeling that the core was looking into my mind. “Well, I will tell you, because I see a lot of myself in you, I was despised by my father too. I was a star then, he did not believe in me and because of that he shattered me, and threw me down here! What you see here is just a shard of my former self. So you see, I have a great deal of empathy for you. But ultimately, you are right; everything has a cost, it is the nature of the world. I believe you have a saying that goes; ‘you need eggs to make an omelette.’ And to change a class, I need blood, human blood, and a lot of it.” In the silence that followed Tom let out a gentle groan. “Just look at him; is it really life without a dream?” I looked at Tom, and then at the core, “it really isn’t that high of a price. Besides, he has lost his pets, wouldn’t it be kinder to end it for him here?” I stood there, looking between Tom and the Core. It would kill Tom, I was sure of that. But was that really so bad? It was hardly like he was even functioning at the moment any way! I couldn’t remember the last time I had had a proper conversation with him! But part of me was horrified at the idea, at how wrong it seemed. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to choose? I have always tried to rise above the hand I had been dealt; to be something more than my class. But how do you do that in this situation, is accepting a re-deal rising above… or is it rising above to die a death that no one will remember? The more I thought the less certain I was about what I should do. And so, I stood there looking from the core to Tom, and from Tom to the Core.

The end

Wait! The end? That’s the end?! How is that the end? Well, to the three readers who made it this far; the ending itself really does not matter, after all this is just a fantasy story, in a few months’ time you will have forgotten you ever read it. So, perhaps the question is not ‘how can this be the ending’ but rather ‘how would you end it?’ If you were placed in this situation how would your story end, what would you choose, and why? Because one day that might be important.