A green mist started to cloud Ezra’s vision and he was hearing wet hacking coughing coming from behind him for some time and screams, however, he didn’t have the time to turn around at the moment to take a gander.
He moved his body with brutal efficiency crushing and breaking anything that came close to his fighting line, occasionally he would feel the glance of a blow on his armor but ignored such minor matters, soon he noticed that he was getting hit more often and his peripheral vision told him the common soldiers were dying next to him.
He and the other stonemen were taking the brunt of the attack so the relatively safe soldiers should be fine.
Just as he was wondering what was happening behind him the ants and skeletons attacking them halted the attack, the ants going from a desperate fight to get to them to a complete standstill left the stonemen with a strange feeling.
Ezra had a terrible feeling clamp down on his stomach as he stole a glance behind him and he froze for a moment. All the soldiers were dead, foaming at the mouth.
He herd skittering sounds once more and quickly turned back only to find the ants fleeing in the opposite direction with the slower undead shambling behind them.
Now there were only 2 others left besides himself, both stonemen and equally confused as him, not why the soldiers died, the rolled back bloodshot eyes and foam still pouring out the corpses mouths made that obvious. But why the enemy retreated.
With the supporting soldiers, they could be quickly overrun and the ants didn’t push themselves up against his stonemenes meat-grinder like offense for nothing.
His question was answered when a deep voice reverberated throughout the cave, “Greetings Ezra, I’ve been watching you--”
“WHO ARE YOU” one of the stonemen shouted out in response while his head swiveled between both tunnel directions.
“I was about to introduce myself, perhaps you would rather I sent the ants after you again” replied the disembodied voice.
Ezra signaled for the man to shut it and loudly spoke in no direction in particular, “I’m open to negotiations please speak”. He didn’t know who or what this unknown person wanted, but he didn’t miss the opportunity to direct the conversation towards a positive outcome.
“pfft, negotiations, do you think your in any position to negotiate with me” laughed the voice.
Ezra smiled wryly, “as you can see” he gestured to himself, “I’m quite hard to kill”
“indeed, you specialize in killing weaklings, with your endless stamina powerful defense and absurd weight to use as a weapon there isn’t much these ants can do in the short term, you even have an immunity to the poison, however, you are not hard to kill.
There were quite a few more of you when I started and the only reason you still stand is because I allow it”
Ezra sarcastically countered, “so all that fighting we did was just an illusion and Jeffery wasn’t slowly ripped apart by ants”
…
Moments later an ant tunneled in from the roof a dozen meters away from the trio and jumped to the ground. Ezra could see something shiny in its pincers and a chill skittered down his back as he realized it was a mana crystal.
Chink, the ant bit down and violently exploded and the three Rockman braced themselves as the shockwave shook them. The disembodied voice said, “would you like more proof”
Ezra now knew that he was being allowed to live and also knew where the earlier explosion that nearly killed all his men came from. If a dozen of these ants or even just two or three attacked them they wouldn’t stand a chance, they didn’t have any range weapons to kill the ants before they got close and even if they did they would be useless with the ants tunneling ability. You cant shoot something at range that appears under your feet.
One of the stonemen said, “what kind of crazy bastard uses a mana crystal as a suicide bomb, do you realize how expensive that is”
Ezra mentally shook his head at his money-grubbing subordinate before asking directly, “what do you want”
The disembodied voice replied, “nothing really, I just took a liking to you and decided to give you a chance at life on a whim”
“and how do we go about getting this chance at life” Ezra replied.
“simple, I will bind your souls to my service--”
“pass” Ezra retorted.
However, immediately after Ezra spoke both his subordinates grabbed him and said, “we all accept”
Ezra glared at them and before he could speak his mind one of them said, “if you choose to die here I’m going to tell your wife”
the other added on, “yea do you want to meet her in the afterlife, you will NEVER hear the end of it, literately”
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Ezra felt the urge to punch his battle brothers in the face, “so its either becoming a slave to a being we don’t know and probably suffering a terrible end or eternal damnation”
They both smiled and happily replied, “yep!”
Ezra deeply sighed before accepting, “fine we accept”. Moments later they felt a strange magic entering their bodies intrusively, they could feel the fragileness of the magic. It was barely a strand of magic and if they resisted at all it would dissipate, but they allowed it to go unobstructed.
The disembodied voice said, “now that you are my subordinates I will properly introduce myself, my name is Lucifer Morningstar, A sentient dungeon” the gasped slightly, “my rules are simple, 1 Don’t try to manipulate me in any way, I don’t mind being asked any question or taking any criticism but only when it is said directly, most importantly this is the punishment for breaking that rule”
Three stonemen fell to the ground twitching in pain, the pain being so unbearable that they couldn’t even scream, but it only lasted for a second before disappearing completely.
“rule 2, do not knowingly and through action bring harm to me or my subordinates unless I say otherwise.
Rule 3 as long as don’t break these two rules you can do whatever you want, even ignoring my orders if you so choose”
Ezra stood up on his shaking legs and asked, “so if you are being attacked and I don’t help that's within the rules”
Lucifer affirmed, “yes, I don’t consider inaction as action so doing nothing is not wrong, this changes if you become my soldier of course but you are only a subordinate”
“what do we get if we become your solder,” the money-grubbing Stoneman asked.
Lucifer replied, “you gain what I can offer depending on your usefulness to me, you are strong so giving you a longer life would benefit me, if its riches you want you can have that, again depending on how useful you are, however, I demand absolute obedience from my soldiers so they lose the ability to turn down my orders, and the punishment is as you’ve felt, but far stronger and far far longer”
Shivers went down their spines and the money-grubbing man who was about to agree turned silent, he was already a soldier so taking orders wasn’t a problem but the punishment for insubordination gave him pause, after some time he quietly said “I’ll think about it”, gaining him strange looks from the other two men.
Lucifer let them think about the rules for a moment longer before he added, “my first order is to go back to your homes and report to your king, I want you to tell him of my existence and that Swadia is taking the duchies back”
Ezra was startled, “do you work for Swadia” he questioned.
“no” Lucifer replied, “its more of an alliance for the moment”
“my king won’t surrender to Swadia even if he knows of your existence,” Ezra said.
Lucifer chuckled, “thats fine, your king can do as he pleases, however, once I reach your Duchy I will expect a surrender or he will never get another chance to”
…
one of the men asked, “so what do we do after we report to our king”
“whatever you want” replied Lucifer, “we will probably meet again considering your leaders rank”
Meanwhile, in one of the ambushing tunnels, Arthus paced backward and forwards in front of Lucifer's still body, a scout ran up to him and gave a report on the battlefield above and Arthus started grinding his teeth.
This report was at lest 30 minutes old because of the time it takes the scouts to get past all the soldiers squished into the ambush tunnels. Arthus wanted to use magic relays but his only advantage in battle was the element of surprise and sending magic messages around the battlefield wasn’t a good way to keep that.
Unable to take it anymore Arthus grabbed Lucifers shoulder and shook it, “wake up dungeon we have important matters to discuss”
A disembodied voice soon answered back, “what important matters”
“Lucifer?” questioned Arthus.
“yes,” said the disembodied voice at the same time as Lucifers body, then his body opened its eyes and he stood up and asked, “what important matters”
“finally” Arthus growled, “The Citadel is going to fall any second now and my Alexander is probably using the escape tunnels right now”
“escape tunnels?, why didn’t you tell me about such a thing earlier”
Arthus explained, “I didn’t think the citadel would fall this quickly, I thought that my brother would be loseing for quite a while until he used the magic cannons stored in the citadels armory, most of the duchy armies would die in the initial scuffle the duchies would back off, then we would spend weeks fighting a gorilla war while we waited for the man Swadian armies to arrive”
“is it that important that we kill your brother, once we take the citi--”
“YES IT'S IMPORTANT!” Arthus yelled, “that fool split Swadia in half and as long as he lives the Duchies have an excuse to continue rebelling”
Lucifer shook his head, “I don’t think the people care anymore whether there is a justifiable reason for the countries split--”
“perhaps, but many duchy nobles would have a justifiable reason to pledge allegiance to Swadia again once I'm the only living son of the old King”
Lucifer chuckled, “you seem to want to take over the duchies without fighting, defeating your enemy while leaving their resources whole is a good thing, however, we don’t have time for a complete restructuring of the duchies from within, that would take years of more civil wars between the duchies and its nobles as they grab at power.
the only true authority is the authority of force, we have to march through those lands and anything that doesn’t bend the knee dies, any rebellion dies, any resistance dies”
Arthus objected, “the duchies are still my people, I won’t go on a thoughtless slaughter through my own lands”
Lucifer argued, “is it better to leave them to thoughtlessly slaughter each other as they have been since the countries fracture”
…
One of the kings mage advisers said to Lucifer, “dungeons are indeed evil, you speak of killing any resistance, that will only lead to--”
Lucifer interrupted sarcastically, “yes sooo evil, I’ve been cursed with math and logic, just tell me where those tunnels are so your “just” king can commit fratricide for the greater good”
Deep underground a man ran along a metal encased tunnel with several beautiful women and two guards that were protecting them, each guard was a knight in exquisitely crafted full plate armor, each piece of armor gave off a slight magical hum only perceptive to mages.
The man in front was Alexander the kings brother, occasionally he would come upon a door and push his bleeding thumb against a small dial, the door took a moment of clicking and clacking before it glided up into the tunnel ceiling and the group continued deeper into the cave with the door quickly shutting and locking behind them.
Not too long later another door came into sight under the dim lights of depleted mana crystals inlaid in the roof, he was starting to wonder if he would bleed to death before he got to the end of the tunnel or die of exhaustion owing to his overweight body.
He could feel a tightness in his chest that he hadn’t felt before, but he ignored it and kept moving. One of the ladies following behind him was almost in awe having never seen the man move so much, although she couldn’t blame him, she had seen the destructive power those god worshiping nutcases had and didn’t want to test these doors reliability in keeping them back.
Alexander panted as he waited for the door to open and cursed it when it did because that means he would have to continue running. Again he cursed his own stupidity for not leaving earlier, he placed too much hope on the ancient magic cannons and when most of them failed he knew he had to flee.
Right now his loyal soldiers were holding, but it couldn't last for long. Some of the failing cannons blew large chunks off the walls and most of the earth mages that could fix it were focusing on defending against religious factions attack, but they were running out of mana and slowly the wall was crumbling more by the second.
Soon the wall would fall and the duchies would swarm into the citadel as after the magic cannon attack the duchies were now working together. The only good things were that one duchy army was decimated by the cannons who would have used their siege equipment specialty to cause headaches for the defenders, and the digger duchy had yet to show itself, however, Alexander had a bad feeling about that, after every door he expected to see men with picks waiting for him on the other side.
They went through several more doors and he was covered in sweat, he pressed his thumb on the activater almost missing then practically collapsed while he waited for the door.
One of the knights began to say, “your majesty we can take a short rest, I’m sure those doo--!”
Alexander turned his head to see why his guard stopped talking when he saw the knight draw his enchanted blade and rush past him before he could even react.
He spun around as loud crashes sounded and echoed throughout the tunnel, “Arthus” Alexander gasped.
“brother”
Alexander jumped up backpedaling as he asked, “why are you here” in a frightened voice.
Arthus dropped his blood covered sword and strode towards his brother with bloodshot eyes. Alexander looked for his guards and found them cut in half as if their enchanted armor was made of wet paper, he turned around and started running ignoring the worsening pain in his chest.
Bang, his chubby body hit a suddenly appearing Arthus and bounced of his plate armor onto the ground. “let me live, I beg you, I’ll live out my life as a political prisoner”
Arthus glanced at the half dozen beautiful woman with him and almost spat on him, “political prisoners live good lives, you don’t deserve to live out your days in comfort with your wives”.
Alexander yelped as Arthus sat on him and grabbed his neck, he wanted to scream for someone to help, but his voice wouldn’t come out. He bashed his flabby fists onto Arthus’ face but he simply shrugged those hits off, Alexander even hurt his own fists doing it.
With that not working he tried shoving his thumbs through Arthus’ bloodshot eyes, however, even with his eyes open Alexander couldn’t damage the eyes of Arthus’ divine body. Alexanders face became pale, veins showed themselves from the exertion and his eyes almost popped out until he finally died.
Arthus looked up and sighed, “do any of you have any children”