In the depths of the strongest dungeon in recent memory, explosions echoed down the halls. A trail of carnage scarred its walls from the surface to its very core. They were there for her, barely a room away.
The last of her friends stood silently with Avani in the final room, battered and weary. They had failed, and somehow gotten away from the invaders. She couldn’t blame them. She had failed too. Everyone was focused on the huge doors, the last barrier. Equipment was checked and rechecked. They knew what was coming and had already said everything they’d needed to.
An orb, her true body, waited restlessly at the back of the room. Around her sat the statue of a warrior clad in fierce dragonscale armor lounging atop a throne. The picture perfect memorial to a friend long gone, embraced her. Avani, the dungeon core, sat in the warriors lap emitting a warm glow.
It had been the only illumination the room had ever needed, until now. The glow dimmed by the second with every friend that fell. Avani felt the memories flood into her along with the fragments of their shattered souls. She hated her true body in times like this. If only she could’ve held them before they were gone.
Acceptance, determination, love, hatred, all washed over Avani as she basked in their final moments. With her humanoid avatar shattered fifty floors above, her tears had nowhere to flow from. The air around her core simply grew more humid by the second. Each memory of her friends sent pangs of pain through the very depths of her metaphorical heart, threatening to shatter it.
Heart.
The thought that she had such a thing still seemed weird to her. She was a core of solidified mana after all, a being of the purest form. The thought of having such a squishy thing be a part of her… but Avani had given up protesting somewhere around the hundredth attempt her friends had made stating otherwise. After all, they’d never lied to her.
Even as the leaking water seeped through her core, slowly turning to ice, threatened to shatter her, Avani forced her rampant mana to calm. Her glorious friends would laugh at her. She couldn’t ask for more, not of them. They’d fulfilled their vows a hundred times over and refused death even as their bodies broke and their very souls were chipped away.
Rest well.
That the thrice damned nations had resorted to using soulbreaker weaponry. The very thought of such things felt like someone had taken a dagger and scratched a line along her core. She’d never forgive them for that. Not that it’d be her problem much longer anyway.
It wasn’t the first time people had made it to her core. But it was the first time in over four hundred years. The last group reached her when she had barely two hundred floors. This time it had taken a small army of the strongest adventurers and soldiers of three nations to get this far. In main strike force were some of the strongest Humanity, Elves and Beastkin had to offer. Plenty of them smeared the floors above. Just the though sent a pulse of warmth through the room.
Not that many were left after Golgara and her monsters ambushed them in the midst of the [Perfect Illusions]. Only seven—or eight if you counted the dragon. As much as she’d refused to acknowledge the fledgling, still barely a match for others of its kind that had attempted to subjugate her, with the molten slag of her adamantite armored Spirit King of Metal at its feet, it was hard not to.
“Your Luminance, it’s time,” Riorn, her Kobold [Champion], whispered.
The room just beyond the last door went silent. All she could do now was start preparing the seeds. She etched runes along her core, praying it would work. She imagined this was like what those fools on the upper floors felt as her flood of Blade Beetles tore them apart. Little bits of mana formed dancing lights around her core, at the thought. It was small consolation. But no, this was no time to let her emotions control her mana. There was no way to test the spell beforehand and as far as she knew, no core had ever succeeded.
Barrier spells flickered into existence, slicing the room in half. [Remember Death] activated, along with a host of other legendary skills. Delayed spells were cast and held. Orbiting orbs or acid, fire and lightning hovered above the entryway, like a sea of stars ready to fall.
I hope this is enough.
They were as ready as they were going to be.
Reinforcements wouldn’t make it in time and everyone knew it. The floor above had a little over a hundred adventurers holding the way down. It was a far cry from the four thousand that had originally entered. Those sent to back up the core strike force had paid a heavy price to get them and those vaunted heroes of the core strike force this far. Their blood still contaminated her halls, clearly marking their invasion route all the way back to the surface.
Monsters from every floor rammed against the barricades. The barrier spells, long broken, and never renewed. The wounded were propped up and given crossbows, their ammunition dangerously low. The dead lay where they fell. A few knights were wielding shards of metal or even their fists. Every single invader died hard, dragging dozens of monsters with them as they got swarmed by claws or flooded by magic.
If only they’d die a bit faster…
THUD
THUD
THUD
The heavy sound echoed repeatedly, dragging her attention from the carnage at the blockade. The adventurers just beyond the door, hammered repeatedly. They all watched as the door cracked inward under each impact. She had to try one last time. Avani swept her gaze over her friends, one last time.
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“Please, let me send some of you with them.”
If she could save at least a few more of them…
“We’re not leaving you Avani,” her stalwart friend Vthandrai, the arachne [Knight].
“NOT. A. CHANCE,” Gathor the lava elemental burbled.
“Hehe, you can’t get rid of us that easily,” Fiabella the [Plague Pixie] chuckled.
Not a single one of the fifty remaining let her save them. Even though she knew they were all going to die if they stayed, Avani couldn’t help smiling to herself deep in her core. She didn’t want to be alone at the end.
The next moment, rock shrapnel exploded into the room, clattering against barrier spells. Then in strode the seven strode through the entryway, crunching debris beneath their armored boots.
In the back was Fyrin, a bookish lady in expensive robes, a mage of sorts and very pretty by Vthandrai’s standards. In front of her was Novri, the very image of a [Paladin] sent to ‘slay evil’ wherever it lurked. Nettelis, a [Rogue], was little more than a shadow at the edge of her vision. Kriac, the tired looking [Cleric], had his armor shredded in a number of spots. Tanilith, a [Shieldbearer], stood at the front. He was probably heavier than most of her golems in all that armor. Lilireth, an [Alchemist], stood at the back, pulling a seemingly endless number of vials out of her bags. Then there was Rhyga, the ice dragon. He’d have made a great friend. Then there was the leader of the coalition of nations that started this incursion. Sarah. A bespectacled human [Spearmaster].
A rare accessory for a warrior.
It was then that Avani, finally noticed what they were wearing. Their descent hadn’t been easy but there were only a few visible indicators of battle marking them. All their rended flesh, broken bones and wounds had long since been healed. Their melted, torn and broken armor? Discarded or replaced. But they hadn’t walked in unprepared. The murderers had taken her friends equipment, still marked and punctured by their death wounds.
Those were gifts. Theirs! Not some trophies for your corrupt hands to sully.
Just looking at it made her sick. She’d never forgive them. She’d etched the names of every being that’d taken part in this into her soul if need be.
“Deepwood Labyrinth Avani, surrender,” Sarah, The ‘Hero’ of Durindel bellowed. “And your few remaining creations may yet walk away.”
Avani barely held back her words. Sparks flew off her core, as more magic than she’d intended was pumped into the spell engraving runes on her core.
You ask that like you don’t know how those I let go were massacred? They weren’t part of this.
The moment she’d felt children’s connections cut, she knew it wasn’t just an invasion. They wanted to exterminate everything.
Words meant nothing coming from the liar in front of her, so there was no point responding. Even so, Fiabella couldn’t help but burst out laughing at their audacity before cursing them, in every meaning of the word. Immediately Fyrin sent glowing arcs of electricity across the now flickering barriers inches in front of her friends.
Metal clashed and spells went off all around her, but Avani didn’t have the time to focus on that. It was now or never. She concentrated on the spell. Minutes passed at she kept pouring her power into the magic. Unknown to the invaders, the dungeon went quiet. The mana Avani had been dedicating to her other floors started draining from each layer. She watched as her dungeon died floor by floor. The halls lay empty, their traps inert, and natural darkness took hold. The flood of monsters assailing the group holding the way down to this floor slowly died out as the mana, she’d been spending to keep their numbers up, was sucked back into her core.
For the first time since she’d been born, Avani’s entire being consisted of a single room. Her senses of the outside world faded away. She was like a person trapped in their mind, body unresponsive. Once again, she was a speck in the void. Everything she’d ever created, her children, their home… all gone, beyond her reach forever more. Then again her true body had always fit in this single room.
Was I always this small?
Her core thrummed with power, the mana visibly crackling. Then she breathed out, letting the vast quantity of mana flow into the spell. Suddenly runes burned into the air, forming three rings orbiting her core. Faster and faster they span, digging into the statue around her. The marble quickly became a fine mist and floated up with her, contained within the gyroscopic runes.
“Fyrin, aim for the core!” Novri called out. “The mana spilling off it is enough to drown an [Archmagi].”
“[Annihilation of Mana],” Fyrin cast the forbidden spell. The world itself seemed to pause in disbelief as a void opened up just in front of her palm. A beam of nothingness stretched out towards Avani. Everyone in its path simply dropped, their mana drained and existence forgotten. The fragments that filled Avani were the only evidence that anything had ever been there at all. The void lanced through reality directly toward her. She could hear her friends cry out for her. The spell wasn’t done yet. Avani shut off her senses and waited for the end. Only to realize she wasn’t dead yet.
She spread out her senses once more to see Gathor covering her with his massive flowing form. Even as her memories faltered, Gathor refused to be forgotten, even as his lava cooled and he was slowly crumbling away.
“See. You. Later,” Gathor rumbled.
“Don’t go…,” Avani whispered.
“I. Am. Part. Of. The. World. I’ll. Be. Wherever. You. Are.”
“Just a little longer Gath. Hold on. Please…”
Gathor only grew stronger in as his mana, his very being, was eaten away. His ever more solid form shielded Avani. Fyrin couldn’t maintain the spell, even with her massive mana pool. Even as the spell faded, the beam would stain the world forever more and yet still Gathor denied it.
Whispered goodbyes continued to flow into her as the room got darker by the second.
The room was still a torrent of spells. The heavy clang of blades echoed off the walls. Avani knew her friends were struggling, but she couldn’t afford to focus on that now.
THUD
She could hear some kind of hammer breaking away at Gath’s determined form.
THUD
Just a little more.
THUD
Just as they broke through, her core shattered on its own.
But even as the scattered pieces broke apart, flinging them across the room, an ethereal force linked them together.
She had barely more than an instant. Avani could feel the spell trying to tear her exposed soul apart, as she held it together with all her might. She couldn’t manage that for long. But it was long enough to finish her grand spell. Feeling herself starting to fade, the dying core left the shards of itself, its children, with bits of its own memories and a final message.
Live.
“[Shards of Hope]”
The 12 shards started glowing.
She felt a weight lift from her core as their forms began to turn, ignoring their opponents. When her few remaining friends were wrapped in a warm light she knew it worked.
Avani?!
At the speed of thought, their cries burst through their bond.
Look after them for me, will you?
Finally she let go. The adventurers could only watch as the magic completed and the shards disappeared from the now dead dungeon along with the few monsters that remained. They all stood there, unsure of what to do, looking at the empty space where Avani had been. Only Sarah could bring herself to speak.
“That can’t be good.”