“I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.”

- Rick Moody

==Zidaun==

I might not be able to show the full measure of my relief, but I needed no help to express a genuine smile. For a moment, my internal sense of worship for my god blossomed further, filling my chest with warmth.

I smiled and reached out to squeeze Firi’s hand again.

“Okay, now I can share a few things.”

I gestured toward Gurek across the circle from me.

“I’ll start with what Gurek learned. Dungeon’s are more than people believe. People might wonder why we consider dungeon’s sacred, but since we keep almost everything about us secret, it is just one more hidden piece. It gets lost amid the rest.

“Humans worship the three gods to varying degrees, but disagree on the methods. Some of them even worship dungeons too, believing them to be an aspect of whichever god they favor.

“So, our beliefs get lost in the haze.

“Some dungeons are special, like this one. It is fully alive, aware, and conscious. It can even speak.”

“Dungeon’s are sentient?” Firi said, his voice incredulous.

“Sapient,” said Inda absentmindedly, before I had a chance to respond.

“Wait, what?” Firi said, his brows furrowed.

“Sapient,” said Inda. “You said sentient. Animals and monsters are sentient. They have some capacity to be aware and think. The word you meant is sapient. That they can think like people. Everyone’s always thought that dungeons were sentient, to some extent. They obviously grow and act with some level of intellect.”

“Right, yes. That.” Firi said, waving dismissively as he turned to me.

“Not all of them,” I said. “Usually they need to be quite old before they manage that change.” I looked pointedly at Inda with a smirk. “From sentient to sapient. And even we don’t know exactly why it happens. Even the dungeons can’t tell us. They are not aware of what they did before becoming sapient in any conscious fashion.”

“What are they like?” Gurek said. “Are they just like people?”

“No,” I said. “They are very much not people. Generally the best way to describe them... is to call them a predator. The various adventurers that go through them are their prey. They don’t actually need to kill them, exactly, but they get something from putting people into danger.”

“So, we are just food to them,” Inda said.

“That is mostly accurate,” I said. “However, they have a certain sense of fair play. An inborn need to make things balanced. Plenty of people die to dungeons, but generally the dungeons are consistent. The levels stay about the same, bosses are segregated off into their sections, the rewards match the danger or difficulty.

“Perhaps it is better to compare them to a herder. They winnow out the excess in the flock. They cull the weak, strengthen the rest, and shear the herd for their own gain...”

I shook my head, “Even that isn’t right though.

And this dungeon…”

I trailed off.

“What about this dungeon?” Gurek said.

“It spoke to you, right Gurek?” I said.

“Yeah. Just said ‘Hello, Gurek,’ though.” he replied.

“Can the dungeon talk to any of us?” Inda said, puzzlement in her voice.

“No, not generally,” I said. “The dungeon speaks telepathically, but usually only to those who have formed a connection with it. My telepathic link and transformation, when I connected, meant that I became the leader of my people here. That connection allows me to act as the intermediary between my people and the dungeon. The obvious physical changes are part of that; the dungeon adapted me to suit the environment better. I am not going to get into that too much.

“Gurek, on the other hand, can speak to the dungeon because that is what the artifact does. It links him to the dungeon. It also lets someone else telepathically connect to the dungeon too, as long as they are holding the artifact, and Gurek allows them to use it. He can also speak telepathically with the person who holds it.”

Firi stirred, his eyes looking at me more intensely. “We can talk to the dungeon ourselves?”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Honestly, most of the time, I would say it was a waste of time,” I said. “Dungeons are usually not all that talkative. They are generally terse, to the point, and don’t care about anything extemporaneous at all.”

“Disregarding the ability to talk to the dungeon,” Inda said, “you realize what an artifact like this is worth, right? Telepathy is a powerful and difficult magic. Getting experience with it… It would be priceless to the right people.”

“I knew exactly how much it was worth as soon as I saw it,” I said. “Fortunately for Gurek, it comes with a protection. It cannot be forcibly transferred in any way, not even through death. Not even our binding oath, or another made without complete and open consent, could make him do anything with the artifact. It is a system enforced right.

“Don’t worry though. When the Adar get here, and I expect that will be soon, I am their leader. I’ll compensate Gurek, and both of you, for not letting anyone outside our group use the artifact.”

“Good, that is fair at least,” she said as she nodded absently. “You gave a few caveats before, when you mentioned talking with the dungeon. You said it usually wouldn’t be worth talking to a dungeon, so what is different here?”

“Every dungeon is unique; we would know better than most,” I said with a small smile, as I looked for a moment at each of them. “That is especially true for an Awakened one, which is what we call intelligent ones. However,” I hesitated for a moment, but it wasn’t worth trying to hide this since Gurek and the others would likely talk with the dungeon on their own, “this one is even more unique than most. There are actually two voices, though I suspect Gurek probably only heard from one of them.”

“Wait, two, what does that even mean?” Gurek said, his head tilting to the side a little.

That confirms my guess. I wasn’t expecting Exsan to bother.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” I said. “I have never heard of anything like it. And I am a specialist in dungeons, in their different idiosyncrasies. However, even I have never heard of anything like this.”

“Did it- they,” Inda stumbled on her words for a moment, “refuse to talk about it?”

“No, that is one of the other special things. Neither of them can speak common, or any other language I know, but one of them has been learning from me. It has pulled me aside a number of times, in our tests, to talk to me. I know that my people have run into dungeons that cannot speak our language before, but it is very uncommon.

“This place...” I gestured around us, trying to encompass the sheer scope of what we had seen so far, “I don’t know how long it has been since the dungeon was last active. My people get to every dungeon that we can. Yet… it seems to understand people incredibly well, and it doesn’t speak our language.”

“The bathrooms,” Firi said softly, “it understands what they are for.”

“Yes,” said Inda thoughtfully, “and all the art, the buildings for us to stay in, the gradual progression of the dungeon… It all points to real understanding. And if it doesn’t speak the Adar language...” She looked at me pointedly. “Then your people didn’t help it build everything.”

I sighed. “Yeah. I thought... maybe the dungeon had help from someone. We do help our dungeons with design, since they often don’t understand what we want or need. Our perspective is very limited by comparison. I thought at first one of the voices might be connected to it, instead of being the dungeon. However… as far as I have been able to learn, both voices are the dungeon. And both the two voices have names.”

“You say that like it unusual,” Inda said, quirking her brow.

“It is.” I said. “People assign names to dungeons. They describe a dungeon by what they do, or the monsters inside. Dungeon’s don’t need names, they simply are. Both of the voices have their own name, however. The one I have talked with, for the most part, and the one that talked to you,” I waved toward Gurek, “is named Caden. The other, Exsan, is much more like a normal dungeon, reserved and to the point.

“When I started to talk with Caden, one of the very first things he made sure to understand was my name, as well as making sure I knew his name. And then he wanted to learn all of yours.”

“He?” Inda said, her eyebrows quirked.

“Another aberration,” I said as I bobbed my head. “Caden and Exsan are male. Most dungeons have no gender at all. However, when I started teaching Caden common, the words between male and female were part of what he wanted to know. He very definitely used the male for himself. Plus… his form is… very much masculine.”

“What does that even mean, what form?” Gurek said, his voice puzzled.

“I can speak telepathically to the dungeon, and I do,” I said. “However, Caden can manifest some form of projection. It appeared in front of all of us, but only I could see it. I’m not sure if the artifact will let other people see it or not. The form was human, male, and… very naked.”

“Naked?” Inda barked out with a laugh. “Oh, this is great! How awkward was that?”

“Very,” I muttered, averting my eyes for a moment, “at least at first. Once he made chairs and a table for us to sit at… it was out of sight. At least until the next time.”

“So how hung, exactly, is your god?” Gurek said with a huge grin.

Inda smacked the back of Gurek’s head, shaking her hand a moment later.

“Hey, what was that for?” he said.

I gave her a grateful look. That was not a subject I wanted to talk about right now.

“Sometimes, you need to be a bit more serious, idiot,” Inda seethed at Gurek.

“What, it was a natural question,” Gurek protested.

“Only for a moron like you!” Inda almost shouted.

“You started it by asking about it being awkward.” Gurek said.

“That’s right, I was circumspect about it. I didn’t come right out and ask if his god had a nice ass, let alone ask about his dick!” Inda raised her voice further.

As embarrassing as the subject was, I couldn’t help holding Firi’s hand and offering him a little grin at the antics of the others. I was trying not to think about the answers to either of those questions, either. I was happy enough to already be yearning over one unattainable man.

I cleared my throat.

“If you two are done, I can answer some other questions.”

Inda and Gurek looked at each other with their mouths open, their rants caught in the middle. Firi asked a question of his own to fill the sheepish silence.

“You don’t speak the same language, so how did you understand anything Caden asked you?”

“Simple things were done with gestures,” I said. “We got our names across that way. It got your names the same way it got most information, though. It made statues of each of you and pointed. It made coins when it wanted to learn about coinage, and so on. Generally it either made a real copy of what it was asking about, or made a model.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Gurek said. “You can show us what Caden looks like in a statue.” He glanced at Inda, and added hastily, “Not the private bits, but his face, and chest, maybe? You have traveled farther afield than the rest of us, right, Inda? Maybe you can pinpoint if the statue reminds you of any country’s racial features.”

Inda had opened her mouth in the middle of Gurek’s statement, no doubt preparing to scold him, but she paused for a moment before she spoke.

“Actually, not a terrible idea. I have only been to a small part of the world, but I have a better chance at least. Would that be okay with you, Zidaun?”

I couldn’t think of a good reason not to, and it seemed harmless enough.

“Sure, why not?” I said.

I gathered together stone to the side of us, pulling it up through the dirt to the surface of the ground. A statue started to emerge, and the features of Caden started to appear. The straight, but neatly combed hair, the intelligent eyes, the slightly larger than normal nose vaguely reminiscent of a fierce bird’s beak, it all combined to form a complete picture. Together the features were striking.

And, behind the statue I was working on, the stone started to move. A humanoid shape started to emerge from it.

It appeared the dungeon wanted to make its own appearance.