--- Aranea ---
Aranea was on a cool adventure with her friends, and she was super excited about it!
It was almost enough to make her stop being sad!
She had been sad a lot, lately. Ever since Rania disappeared!
She was only gone, though, not dead. They had never found the body, so Aranea knew that Rania couldn't possibly be dead. She was still sad though, because Rania wasn't around to talk to her and to hug her. She was probably off having adventures of her own and it was anyone's guess when she would return.
When Aranea touched the weird multiverse portal thingy she had been so excited to go on adventures with her Big Sister.
She was hoping to end up in a cool universe. Like maybe one where giant sapient spiders were an accepted part of the community and there were no arachnophobes around. That would have been so awesome!
But instead, she had simply woken up outside of the Library of Akash, along with her other friends. All except for Rania, who simply disappeared.
It turned out that they were the original versions of themselves. The multiverse gate made lots of copies and sent them everywhere, but Aranea and her friends were still the originals. What were the odds of that? Pebble said the odds were pretty close to one in a million, which was why she shouldn't be surprised about it. Lilian agreed, saying that the main universe had more narrative weight and that they shouldn't be surprised to still be the originals, because of anthropics.
Aranea had no idea if that made sense, but Pebble and Lilian were very smart and she trusted them.
That had been months ago. They had been adventuring together ever since, and experienced so many awesome things! Someone really should be writing a book about it. Especially the fight with the cyber werewolf would have been so cool to read about.
Alas, as fun as adventuring was, it was just not the same without her Big Sister.
She really should hurry up and get back.
She was missing all the fun!
There were weird dungeons popping up all over the Cursed Lands, and team Nundru was investigating them. Rania would have loved that!
The dungeons had lots of cool monsters inside, but for some reason they never left. They just stayed put and didn't endanger the villages around them at all. Everyone thought that was really cool, but Dov and her parents worried a lot. The dungeons were much better than they used to be, but nobody knew why, and that meant that maybe they could turn even worse later. Someone needed to check them out to make sure!
Aranea knew she was not a very smart person, but she guessed that made sense, if her friends were worried about it.
"I promise you will like this dungeon." Pebble said. "The spirits have been hard at work and they even have a special surprise. Unfortunately I can't talk about it, because of spoilers."
She was happy to hear that. Pebble always knew a lot more than he let on. It must be very frustrating to be him. To know so much, but not be allowed to tell his friends. But rules were rules, and she knew enough about shamanism by now that she knew that Pebble couldn't just break the rules, even if he wanted to. The spirits took these things very seriously. Luckily, Pebble was very good at bending the rules and leaking info he technically shouldn't share. Just not in this case, apparently. She was excited to find out what he was alluding to.
Unfortunately she was still the only one who could hear him, so she telepathically relayed Pebble's comment to her other friends.
"*That doesn't sound ominous at all.*" Galanys said.
"*I disagree. I think it sounds very ominous.*" Aranea responded deadpan.
Dov giggled. Aranea was glad to see that her friends realized she was just joking. It wasn't that long ago that she was stupider, and could have said that out of genuine ignorance. She was happy that she was getting smarter so quickly. It was easy, too: All she needed to do was to kill large numbers of Bad Guy monsters and she would keep getting better at everything.
She didn't quite understand why everyone wasn't doing that by just killing everyone else all the time, but it probably had something to do with ethics. Ethics was a very complicated subject, but so far she seemed to be doing extremely well by following a simple rule: Do Good Things to Good Guys and Bad Things to Bad Guys. It hadn't steered her wrong, yet.
"*I hope this dungeon will make more sense than the last two did.*" Balron said. "*They felt so artificial. It's like someone just placed the traps at random, with no concern for logic.*"
Aranea hoped so, too. Atrog had been injured by a trap a few weeks ago. Balron said he hadn’t checked that wall because there was no way the construction workers would have been able to put a trap in it. Something about the layout and the wiring or whatever. And yet, there had been a trap there anyway.
"*Bob agrees, but he says he is not allowed to talk about the details.*" Balron continued. "*He is only allowed to give frustratingly vague and ominous advice. He keeps telling me that the dungeons in the Cursed Lands are run by hacks who have no subtlety at all. At first I thought that was just a very spirited professional rivalry, but by now I have to agree.*"
They continued their drive to the dungeon and Aranea spent the time practicing her civilshaping. She could now maintain her humanoid form for several hours! She had even learned how to civilshape without the elaborate power-up sequence typical of Magical Girls. She still preferred doing it that way though, both because it was more fun and because it looked awesome, and looking awesome was actually really important: The more impressive her transformation was, the more power the spirits tended to lend her in her Magical Girl form.
They soon arrived at the entrance to the dungeon: It looked like the mouth of a cave, but someone had put a heavy door in it.
On the door was a sign: "This dungeon is temporarily closed for maintenance. Please come back later."
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
They all stared at it. The spirits of dungeons were not usually this self-aware.
"Well, the instructions are clear. Let's leave and come back later." Galanys quipped and made to walk away.
Aranea appreciated the joke, but then got to work: With Rania gone, she was now the team’s shaman.
She opened her ninth eye to get a better look at the spirits, and touched her shamanic implement: A ring she wore with a very fine engraving on it. What made it special wasn't the artistry but the emotional significance it held for her, which the spirits could sense: The engraving showed a circle of humanoids and giant spiders, happily dancing together in harmony.
It showed a world without prejudice. A world without arachnophobia.
It was a dream Aranea held close to her heart.
The spirits of the dungeon responded, and she could sense that they were now paying attention.
She addressed the door: "Excuse me! We have traveled a long way to inspect this dungeon and it's really disappointing that the dungeon is closed!"
The door was silent for a while, as doors are wont to do, before it replied: "You are dungeon inspectors? But there is already an inspector here. Do you have credentials to prove what you are claiming?"
Aranea was confused. She hadn't known that dungeon inspecting was a thing and they needed official accreditation for it. She hoped she wouldn't need to fill out any forms. Fighting monsters was much more fun than fighting the bureaucracy, especially since she wasn't allowed or able to eat it.
She conferred with her friends telepathically, then responded to the door: "Dov over here is a princess of the Cursed Lands and she has declared that we are dungeon inspectors. That makes us, like, super official."
"Your logic checks out." The door replied sagely. "But this is beyond my pay grade. I'm calling a supervisor."
She relayed that to the others, too. Everyone was just as confused as her, except for Pebble, who kept silent because he wanted to avoid spoilers.
A short while later, the door opened and a small fairy floated out.
She was wearing glasses and holding a clipboard, so Aranea instantly knew that she was an official, and a very serious person. It made her nervous and confirmed her fears: They weren't merely dealing with monsters here. They were dealing with a bureaucrat!
"May I have your names?" The fairy asked.
"*Wait!*" Atrog called out. His warning was unnecessary: They all knew better than to fall for a simple fey trick like this, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
"Hm? Oh! I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm not trying to steal your names." The fairy responded. "They will still be legally yours. I just need to know them for the forms, you see. But if you are interested, we do also offer a safekeeping service for a reasonable fee: You can give us your names until a specified later date and we give you license to use them. That way you get the benefits of having a name, but other entities are unable to steal your name from you, because it technically isn't yours at the time."
The fairy looked quite proud of herself as she continued: "I came up with the idea myself! It's part of our new dungeon insurance policies. I normally can't talk about those because they aren't officially released yet, but if you are here to inspect the dungeon then maybe I can make an exception?
"I would love to show you around and explain all of the cool new ideas we are trying out, but unfortunately you have poor timing: We have a VIP visiting right now.
"I'm actually very surprised that we are getting a second set of inspectors while the VIP is already inspecting us. Would you care to explain?"
The fey looked at them expectantly and adjusted her glasses. Maybe it was just Aranea's imagination, but she thought the fairy was holding the clipboard menacingly. Not that there was a way to wield the implements of the bureaucracy in a non-menacing manner, as far as Aranea was concerned.
"It makes sense that you would be surprised that there are two groups of inspectors. We are surprise inspectors after all." Galanys responded without missing a beat. "Since you are surprised, that proves that we are good at our job of surprise-inspecting."
The fey looked at her skeptically, then nodded. "That makes sense. In that case, where would you like me to start? Would you like to have a look at the monsters? We got some new drakes that are super challenging to fight!"
"We are actually here to ask some questions about your dungeon, not to fight." Dov interrupted her. "For example, why is this dungeon so direct about being a dungeon? It has a sign and everything. It used to be that 'dungeon' was just a label we assigned to certain types of ruins, but now you made it an official term."
"That decision was made by upper management. Getting mortals to test-run our dungeons makes it much easier to balance them so that they provide an appropriate challenge. Labeling them appropriately helps with marketing."
Balron looked confused: "But doesn't this defeat the whole point? Isn't it supposed to be a secret that dungeons are created as-needed instead of being historical artifacts?"
Aranea was confused as well, but for the opposite reason: "I don't see the problem in revealing that. Fey already have an in-universe reason for building dungeons. They are immortal, and fighting is fun! Does it really need to be more complex than that?"
The fairy nodded vigorously. "I agree! fey bullshit is a fully generic excuse for doing strange things. I can get away with so much weird stuff, it's great!
"I will even let you in on a secret: By making some dungeons super obvious, we are actually diverting attention away from the normal types of dungeons. That way nobody suspects that they are artificial, too."
Aranea sensed surprise from everyone, and respect from Balron. Galanys felt like she was busy brainstorming and was going to do something weird with this knowledge. As usual.
The fairy seemed unaware of their reactions or their telepathic communications and simply continued talking: "If you have comments or suggestions about this, please be aware that any decisions will have to be made by Upper Management, not me. I'm just a floor supervisor. You will probably want to talk to the dungeon's head of marketing."
"How do we do that?" Dov asked.
"The bosses are all meeting with the VIP right now. Even the Senior Dungeon Builder is there. Just follow me, I will lead you there!"
The supervisor fairy then began leading them through the dungeon. She asked the traps to turn off and the monsters to hide when they drew close, which Aranea thought was very considerate of her. It made for a very relaxing walk through the tunnels. Unfortunately the rest of her team didn't relax at all and kept looking for traps and monsters. They acted distrustful of the nice fairy, and it was really very rude. Maybe it was because she was a bureaucrat?
She suddenly had a strange and shocking thought: Was hating someone for being a bureaucrat the same as hating Aranea because she was a spider? Was Aranea being as bigoted as an arachnophobe right now?
Her heart dropped.
But no. That couldn't be the case. She was a spider because she was born that way. Bureaucrats were bureaucrats because they made a conscious choice to embrace evil. Fearing and disliking them was a rational decision.
Thus reassured in her moral standing through perfectly reasonable rationalization, Aranea put the thought out of her head and moved on.
"*Does this whole situation sound worrying to anyone else?*" Atrog asked the others telepathically.
"It sounds like you are pretty excited about this VIP. What can you tell us about her?" he asked the fairy out loud.
"She has super cool ideas! We have been looking forward to her visit for weeks, but she is very busy and restricted in when and where she can show up. It was a lot of effort to get all the paperwork filled out that allows her to come here.
"She has this amazing new idea that will make our dungeon even better: A respawn mechanic! Any adventurer who dies just comes back to life, so they can go right back to adventuring."
A respawn mechanic? Oh! That would allow her to get smarter and stronger and better by killing Bad Guy monsters without any risk! It was like Adventure with training wheels!
"That does sound pretty amazing." Atrog added. "But I have to admit, I am worried. Reviving people sounds extremely powerful. What exactly is the VIP, to be able to do that?"
"She is an Adventure Consultant!" The fey responded.
"What's that?"
"just what it sounds like: Someone who consults on Adventures and Adventure-related activities."
"Wait. That phrase..."
The fairy opened the door, to reveal a Perfectly Normal Elf.
The Perfectly Normal Elf looked as surprised as the rest of them, but Aranea didn't give that any thought: She immediately sprang into action and hugged her Big Sister.
"I missed you so much!" She shouted in joy, as Rania hugged her back.