“Hand me that fancy magnifying monocle thing you got,” Jimmy demanded as he held a colorful stone between his thumb and forefinger.
“It’s called a loupe, Jackass,” Rick replied and handed the little magnifying eyeglass to Jimmy.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jimmy said with a wave of his hand. “What is this thing? An Alabama-drite? Alakazam-drite?”
Rick massaged the bridge of his nose, “I don’t know. You haven’t let me look at it, but I think the word you’re looking for is ‘Alexandrite’.”
“That’s the one,” Jimmy nodded along as he pressed his eye against the loupe and inspected the stone. “Man, this thing is so weird. Check it out.”
Jimmy held the stone under the bright LED light they used to inspect any gems that came through their pawn shop. The stone was a ruby red under the light. But then Jimmy brought the stone over to the window where it turned green under the sunlight. He looked back at Rick expectantly.
“Yeah, that certainly fits the description. Where’d you get it? There’s no way that it’s not stolen,” Rick said with a shake of his head. “Let me get a closer look.”
Jimmy gave Rick a look of feigned outrage, “Our customers value the discretion we provide. It is one hundred percent legit. I’m sure the young man was just another geologist that’s fallen on hard times.”
“Jimmy, we’re business partners. Who was it?” Rick said as he snatched the stone and loupe from Jimmy’s pudgy hands.
“Fine. It was that Adam kid again,” Jimmy mumbled.
Rick ran a hand through his hair and sighed, “That kid’s definitely making a name for himself. People are talking. Next time he comes in, we gotta turn him away.”
Jimmy nodded reluctantly. He knew it was only a matter of time before authorities started sniffing around their shop.
Rick might seem like the voice of reason, but it pained him too. The kid, Adam, had brought them a lot of fast sellers lately, helping to keep their lights on. Business had been good during the pandemic but had taken a huge step back within the last year. Without Adam, the shop would have been in big trouble.
“Alright, let me take a look,” Rick mumbled and brought the loupe and stone up to his eye. “Huh. This might not be Alexandrite, actually. There’s something off here.”
With his closer inspection, Rick could see a galaxy of colors. They seemed to blink in and out of existence, having a mind of their own. It seemed to pull him in. Even if he had wanted to, he wasn’t sure he could put it down. The stone and colors were just too beautiful.
“Yeah, man. I bet we can get $50k for that,” Jimmy’s eyes twinkled with greed as he stared at the stone.
Rick’s eyes also sparkled in greed as he smiled and nodded, “What did you give the kid for it?”
“Nine hundred bucks. Told him it was fake and that I was doing him a huge favor. I also made sure he knew that we expect him to bring us something real next time,” Jimmy chuckled as he plopped in an office chair. It was a wonder that it didn’t snap under his weight.
Rick’s expression hadn’t changed. In fact, he felt as if his face was stuck. The small facial muscles were frozen in place as he inspected the stone. The colorful lights inside grew brighter and brighter.
Rick tried to pry himself away, but his body rebelled. His eye began to throb in pain and his head began to hurt. The pulling sensation ripped through his entire being.
Jimmy looked at his friend with concern, “Uh, Rick? Quit smiling like that. You’re creepin' me out, dude.”
Rick was panicking inside and began to sweat. He could feel the stone successfully pulling him in. Not his body, but his mind and soul.
His feeble resistance began to falter. Jimmy was yelling his name but he began to tune him out. His friend’s large hairy hand was shaking his shoulder, much to his annoyance. The outside annoyances made it easier for him to give in to the call of the stone. It was his stone. It felt right.
As he gave in, the headache vanished as soon as it had come and he felt at peace. Rick closed his eyes and let out a long sigh of breath that he had apparently been holding in. Or, at least he thought he did. Because when he opened his eyes, he jarringly saw his own face staring back at himself wearing that same frozen smile. The image of himself was through a sea of colors and his buddy, Jimmy, was still shouting and trying to shake him.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He was startled once more as something invaded his mind and vision.
Compatible Soul Fused. Core Awakened.
Rick had no idea what the hell that meant as his vision returned to Jimmy creating a commotion. The colors slowly faded, making it easier to see. Jimmy’s eyes widened in horror.
Rick’s body began to crumble like kindling in a fire. The stone, or Core, clattered to the floor. The rest of his body crumbled and dispersed into ashes floating to the ground. It all happened within seconds.
Jimmy paced around, grabbing his wispy hair in a panic.
Rick tried to yell at his friend, but the sound only reached his senses. As he looked down, he realized he didn’t have a body. It was just his consciousness floating within the stone. Or, Core, rather.
Rick’s vision was once more flooded with another prompt:
Choose Core Function:
Vengeance Dungeon
Hermit Dungeon
Challenge Dungeon
Hellscape Dungeon
Slime Dungeon
Time Left: 04:48
“What the hell is this?” Rick yelled in this new domain.
There was no answer and the time kept ticking down. He had five minutes to choose one of the five options in front of him.
“Tha’fuck is a ‘Vengeance Dungeon’?” Rick shouted again, not expecting an answer. Instead, more information was made available to him:
Vengeance Dungeon: Emit a signal with the promise of riches to lure Challengers. Feast on their souls to gather Hate Points. Spread like a cancer and consume all who would dare to enter your halls.
“Uh, no thanks,” Rick mumbled and checked the time.
Time Left: 4:01
Rick realized time was moving fast. Really uninterested to see what happened when the timer ran out, he quickly skimmed the rest of the options and found the one that interested him the most:
Challenge Dungeon: Lure Challengers with a promise of competition. Reward the strong and brave. Feast on the foolish.
Rick wasn’t entirely sure of the consequences and there wasn’t time to find out so he mentally selected option three: Challenge Dungeon.
Immediately, Rick’s consciousness spread throughout his pawn shop. He could sense everything within the shop. Including the small diamond ring in Jimmy’s back pocket. Rick had bought it earlier that day and had already forgotten it. Was Jimmy trying to steal it? He wondered. Perhaps he had shown it to a customer and absentmindedly put it in his pocket. Whatever.
There was even a rare coin in a drawer in Rick’s desk that he had blamed Jimmy for stealing. It made him remember that he had put it there and just forgotten about it.
The sense of the store around him became an all encompassing vision. He could see all at once as well as focus on one thing at a time. It was an odd sensation, yet it came naturally to Rick.
He watched Jimmy lock the door of the shop and continue to scramble around. His friend and business partner found some bright yellow rubber gloves and a pair of metal welding tongs. He stared at the yellow gloves for a moment, shook his head, threw them to the side, and grabbed a hazmat suit from a storage closet in the back office. Rick chuckled at remembering how those things sold like hotcakes when the pandemic first started.
The hazmat suits were Jimmy’s idea and he bought a pallet full of them before panic had spread. Jimmy also insisted on keeping one for costume parties. Not that they had been invited to a costume party in the last decade.
“Oh, buddy what the hell am I supposed to do?” Jimmy pleaded as he climbed into the suit which was comically tight on his round frame.
Rick thought about how he could communicate. The fact that his body had disintegrated into a pile of ash hadn’t fully set in for him. None of this felt real and he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. All he could do was try to tackle one thing at a time.
Jimmy lumbered over to the stone and plucked it up with the welding tongs then quickly snapped his eyes closed, clearly afraid of suffering the same fate as Rick. “Shit, shit, shit,” he chanted.
Rick didn’t believe he could touch or move anything, but there had to be a way to communicate, he thought while he watched his friend.
Jimmy blindly shuffled as carefully as possible to the big safe in the office. With one hazmat suit covered hand, he typed in the code, swung the big metal door open, and dropped the stone inside. Once he slammed it shut, he slumped against the wall and sighed.
“Thanks for not throwing me in the garbage,” Rick said within his domain.
Despite being in the safe, Rick could still sense everything within the store. He also noticed that he had managed to ignore a prompt that had been waiting for him. He quickly expanded it, worried that there might be another timer. Thankfully, there was not.
Unnamed Challenge Dungeon (Level 1): Choose Name
Energy Available: 100/100
Skills: 3
Floors: 1
Challenge Points: 0
Loot Level: 14
Floor Bosses: 0
Minions: 0
Treasure Rooms: 1
Dungeon Attendants: 0
Challenger Leaderboard: N/A
—ALERT—
1 Free Floor Available
1 Free Floor Boss Available
1 Free Minion Available
1 Free Dungeon Attendant Assignment Available
Rick wondered if he was involved in some kind of government experiment or if he was dreaming. Where was this information coming from? He figured the best way to find out was to study the prompt at the forefront of his mind.
Hopefully, Jimmy wouldn’t do anything absurd in the next few minutes.