image [https://i.imgur.com/xcvmi8u.jpg]

The borehole opened into a large central room. The ravages of time had little effect on the round room’s many decorations. Someone painted the chamber’s domed ceiling to represent the sky, including a sun, four moons, and constellations of desert animals connecting little dots representing stars. A desert city diorama commanded the entire floor space, whose buildings rose only a few feet tall. A temple dominating the far end of town stood as the only exception. Its dimensions matched that of a car.

Barrel-chested people wobbled through the city streets, each a half-foot tall. They wore white kilts showing off their muscular legs, and not one had a head on its shoulders.

“What the…?”

My jaw dropped. “They have no heads?”

We moved closer to the edge of the town to get a better look. Someone hadn’t decapitated the doll-sized citizens. A nose, mouth, and two eyes covered their chest. Their asymmetrical facial features bore expressions ranging from twisted snarls to perennial surprise. Some eyes were closed or cockeyed, and they all looked insane.

The Lilliputian monstrosities hadn’t noticed us. They went about nonsensical routines. Some gesticulated as if arguing with imaginary companions. Others loaded imaginary cargo onto nonexistent carts. Many walked sideways or backward in irregular paths. One lay on its back, flailing its limbs like an upturned beetle.

Stranger still, the word “Blemmyae” appeared in nameplates over their heads—but they displayed no health bar or level information.

“How do you pronounce that?” Fabulosa asked as if I knew.

I shrugged. “Blemmy, maybe?”

Fabulosa curled her lip and snorted. “I don’t want to hurt the little guys, but blemmies are kinda gross.”

“Yeah. I hope they stay that size.”

“Me too.”

“Did you notice? There aren’t any females?”

“Yeah, but that’s the least disturbing thing about them.”

Watching their antics gave me the creeps, even if they ignored us. One had wandered beyond the edge of town. It made whipping motions as it staggered, yet it held nothing in its hands. Fabulosa placed her saber in front of its path, and she received no reaction. The creature walked around it. She poked it gently, careful not to hurt the little thing, to see if it was an illusion. The slightest touch of her sword toppled it over, but it righted itself in a different direction and resumed its whipping motions.

“I kinda feel sorry for them.”

“Really? Why?”

“I don’t know. The gremlins look trapped in a delusion or a fantasy world. It just seems sad.”

I chuckled. “You could say the same about us.”

Fabulosa didn’t immediately understand that I joked about The Book of Dungeons’ dream interface. She rewarded me with an eye roll and a grin when she caught on.

Small nooks alongside the chamber’s outer wall surrounded the town. A few of them contained ceramic jars. I reached one and found a scroll inside. I unfurled it on the floor, cast Detect Magic, and saw no glow. The writing was in Common, although the spelling looked archaic.

“Can you read it?” Fabulosa asked.

“Yeah, bits of it.” The words made little sense, but I pieced together several phrases and read them aloud. “The eaters of uncooked meat… who know no grains… who do not bury their dead….”

I stopped scanning through the text and read the next one. Its content contained similar phrases. “This means nothing to me. They seem like scouting reports of long-gone civilizations.”

Fabulosa grunted and studied the city diorama. “These crazy little guys look civilized.”

We walked around the edge of the town. Fabulosa placed glow stones to brighten the corners and soften the shadows made by Presence. The reckless child in me wanted to wade into the buildings and stomp on them like a Japanese movie monster, but my vandal days were long over. Besides, the attention to detail astonished me. Someone had devoted much time to bringing this creation to life.

The city’s waist-high buildings had footprints of irregular quadrilaterals. Even the streets were haphazard, which sliced through the neighborhoods in crooked lines. Its citizens wandered without a semblance of traffic, congregation, or purpose.

The town center surrounded an empty, knee-deep arena filled with white sand. Toothpick-sized wrought iron spears ringed the inner edge. The spears tilted over the arena but were too far apart to prevent tiny gladiators from climbing out. If anything, they provided handholds. They must be a decorative element.

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I pointed to the arena’s lip. “Be careful around the arena’s edge. Those could be poisoned needles.”

Fabulosa leaned over to study them but offered no comment.

We promenaded around the city as if on a countryside constitutional. Soon, we neared the temple. Its wall sections looked ceremonial, as wide gaps between them suggested whatever rested inside didn’t need protection. The blemmies never ventured near the temple.

The temple rose four feet, but its tiny, open doors weren’t big enough to crawl inside. I crouched over to peer inside. A faint green glow showed a statue of a blemmy sitting on a furry bench. The sitting figure stood almost two feet tall, although size comparisons were difficult because blemmies were stocky and had no heads.

We circled the city’s perimeter—the only place with enough floor space to walk without stepping on the diorama. Small lizards had built little mounds along the walls’ edge, similar to anthills. They seemed wholly unconcerned with the blemmies. They poked their heads out of burrows like nervous prairie dogs, searching for errant crickets.

Beneath the domed sky stretched a strip of color tiles. Each tile framed a hole in the wall. Someone hung the tiles like a color wheel—one side of the room bore red tiles and the opposite green. The red tiles graduated to orange, then yellow, and circled the room.

After we took in everything, Fabulosa sighed. “I’ll admit this is a pretty room, but I don’t get it.”

“It’s a diorama. Maybe this is a museum of some sort.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t buy it. I say it’s a tomb.”

“Hmm. Egyptians built tombs to be an afterlife for their pharaohs. They served as immortality machines.”

“Yeah, but where’s the dead pharaoh?” She raised her arms and spun around, giving the room another examination.

I had no answer for her. The temple glowed green inside, seemingly an obvious choice, but we couldn’t fit inside. The doorway stood only a foot high.

I stepped between the nearest buildings, careful not to step on the blemmies, to see if anything reacted. Nothing did. I took guarded steps down the street, passing buildings on both sides. It felt trippy to tower over everything, but nothing responded to my intrusion.

Fabulosa smiled and followed me. She, too, tiptoed around the blemmies and their artifacts. We meandered about until Fabulosa headed toward the town’s center. “What about this pit? It’s kinda weird to have a gladiator arena.”

I joined her. The pit spanned the size and depth of a plastic kiddie pool, yet its edges stood too tall for blemmies to escape.

“Do you want to put one in with us to see what it does?”

Fabulosa wrinkled her nose. “I’m ain’t touching them. If you want to, go ahead, but be careful.”

I stepped out of the pit, reached over a building, and plucked a blemmy off the street. It showed no reaction to being picked up. It stood only half a foot tall and weighed a few pounds, more than I expected. Its limbs flexed as if bones lay beneath its muscular flesh. I took extra care not to crush it.

I stepped back into the area and lowered my hand to the ground. The blemmy didn’t move. It simply lay in my palm. I tipped my hand, and it rolled onto the ground. When the blemmy stood, I backed away and prepared myself for anything.

We watched it for a while. It bent over and made motions as if pulling weeds.

I watched it until I caught Fabulosa’s gaze. She stared at a gong the size of a saucer on one edge of the pit. Next to it rested a pencil-sized metal stick.

Fabulosa picked up the stick and tapped the gong when I showed no objection. The sound emitting from it wasn’t the tinny cymbal-like chime I expected. A deep resonance, sounding far too big for the tiny instrument, reverberated over the city.

The colored tiles ringing the room glowed, and a whispering strand of smoke drifted from one tile. Above the vapor hovered a nameplate.

Name

Sallow Specter

Level

6

Difficulty

Easy (green)

Health

310/310

The vapor had a yellow glow, and it drifted toward us. We backed away to one side of the pit as the trail of yellow smoke dropped to the arena’s center. The white sand made the color of the specter easier to see, but instead of attacking us, it descended onto the blemmy we placed in the pit. It squeaked and waved its arms to ward off the spirit.

Fabulosa sliced her Phantom Blade through the gaseous predator. High-pitched whispers came from the cloud as the blade swooshed through it. They weren’t loud, but the rasping sounded evil. Its health bar dropped 10 percent, and it stopped harrying the blemmy.

I whipped my spear through the specter, and its health dropped another sizable chunk. Our foe looked like a miniature storm cloud when it charged itself and zapped us.

/You hit Sallow Specter for 27 damage (5 resisted).

/Sallow Specter zaps you for 6 damage (25 resisted).

/Sallow Specter zaps Fabulosa for 3 damage (20 resisted).

/Fabulosa hits Sallow Specter for 29 damage (4 resisted).

This specter rated only level 6, so I expected an easy fight. We resisted a surprising amount of damage.

“Hah!” Fabulosa brought the specter to half its health.

“What?”

“Do you know why its shock barely hurts us?”

I shrugged as it poked us for another single-digit amount of damage.

“It’s primal energy. I activated the charm we bought in Grayton. It cranks up our willpower by 20 against primal attacks.”

“Ah! I remember now.” I wore the protection from the dark magic charm. However, I haven’t used it. As much as it pleased me to see the protection charms at work, no Aggression bonus worked inside this miniature city. The game must not have considered it a settlement.

Fabulosa critted, and the creature hung to its last dribble of health. “I turned on the charm to see what it does. Would you believe nothing’s hit us with primal magic since Grayton?”

“How long does it last?”

“Five minutes.”

The specter dissipated with a swing of my spear. I wielded it like a baseball bat after realizing it did better damage as a staff. When the wisps of yellow fog vanished, a cracked core and a marble of cloudy glass dropped to the floor.

Item

Sallow Mote

Rarity

Rare (yellow)

Description

Level 10 collector’s item

The sallow mote is piece number 21/32 in the Spectral Spectrum collection.

Fabulosa uncharacteristically squealed with delight. “Aw, that’s cute! What do you suppose happens when you have a full collection?”

“I don’t know, but we should find out. Have you checked your combat log?”

Fabulosa beamed. “Hey, cool! 3 experience points.”