Delta wasn’t sure exactly what she did, but she felt it wasn't the worst option of the lot.
“Ignorance or ‘being children’ doesn’t excuse them. They made monsters, they invited outsider gods, they made Dungeons... the Sister and Brother have caused untold amounts of destruction to everyone!” Mharia said with a snarl, her soul-space where her seed resided was twisting, reeling from the removal of two of the dark seeds from her main cluster.
Delta nodded as she eyed the damage. She was a little rougher than she meant to be, but Mharia was a big necromancer-lich girl, she could handle a little pain.
“Sure, but what you chalk up to malice is actually just incompetence. People trying to make things right aren’t the enemy. I gotta ask, what do you think will happen if their little brother returns?” Delta crouched down.
Mharia slowly rose to her knees, smoothing down her dress with a stiff expression of some princess.
Well... she was a princess, but Delta wasn’t too impressed. She had Lord Mushy in her walls and he just oozed elegance.
“Delta... you don’t really get it, do you?” Mharia said with a small smile and the sudden tone shift threw Delta for a moment.
Mharia’s smile fell away and Delta had a sense of something being wrong... not a danger to her, but something occuring within Mharia.
“Sorry, big sis, but I want to go to sleep with Sun... my best friend. He’s the purest form of the future and he has lived by his word. Perhaps you were told what the little sibling actually was? Did you get told he emerged with teeth and claws trying to devour all? Oh sad... that you listened to the first line of propaganda and didn’t ask more,” Mharia said with a sigh.
Delta crossed arms, scowling.
“Yeah, but if I ask the question you want me to, you’ll just go ‘oohhh spooky one-liner’ and vanish,” she accused. Mharia’s mouth fell open before her cheeks flushed.
“T-that’s besides the point!” she said, waving her hand in an annoyed manner.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Delta offered abruptly, thinking of a potential solution. Mharia thought about it.
“A deal with the monster who kidnapped your friends and has a horde of minimal-wage workers developing dark science?” she asked slyly.
Delta tilted her head as they slowly returned to the real world, sitting back in Mharia’s throne room.
“You can still pay your workers after being down here for so long?” she asked incredulously. Mharia raised a brow.
“It’s easy when you pay in compliments and days off,” she said easily.
“How about you send two of your crazy siblings off to your leader and I keep you as a devil’s advocate? You can try and corrupt me and I can pull secrets from you like a hairball from a crocodile’s throat,” Delta offered bluntly.
The throne was quiet aside from the stomping of Delta’s giant mound of cute critters.
“Why?” The question was said without any hostility or malice.
Honestly, Delta did sort of need someone who wasn’t jacked into the system or created by it to be able to offer her some answers. If the system put Mharia on a lock down... or removed her memories, then Delta had a good idea something was up.
Also, the first act of taking down an unknown enemy was to make them known.
Mharia was high up on the totem pole of their group.
“I already planned to make you absorb me, but there’s little point if it’s just my seed,” Mharia muttered but then shrugged helplessly.
“I accept, only because I am confident you’ll see the truth soon enough without any prompting on my end,” she said and looked away.
“Let me just say goodbye to my siblings,” she asked and closed her eyes.
Delta guessed she could be activating some trap or sending some last minute to her leader, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Delta would take them in or out one by one. The only one getting no mercy was the one who did the unspeakable acts upon Renny’s family.
Moment’s later, two dark glowing lights exited Mharia’s chest, the mere sight of them made her almost Dungeon-out. It took every inch of control for Delta not to reach for the seeds and cleanse them.
But she managed it by pretending they had puppy ears and big eyes...
Also those little thin tails puppies and kittens had. What if it was some mix of puppy and kitten?
A puppen or kippy!
“And a hearty ‘Go to hell to you too’,” Mharia scowled as the seeds shot off.
“Family issues?” Delta asked innocently, her mana surrounding the room, checking for any traps or incoming danger. She was confident, but being careful also didn’t hurt.
“Imagine sharing a room with your two siblings, but 10x more intimate and then doing that for a hundred years with no sleep. You’d develop some hostility too if they were stark raving mad,” Mharia said defensively.
“I don’t remember my brother. My memories are either scattered around the abyss, locked up in a system folder or coming back slowly,” Delta said bluntly.
“Maybe you should ask for them?” Mharia said casually.
“Starting this corruption thing a little blatantly aren’t you?” Delta asked as she stood up, her orange avatar making the throne room glow.
“Subtlety is for those who have need of it. I’m rather exposed as the enemy at this point,” Mharia said with a smile, sipping her tea.
Delta guessed she had a point.
“I guess welcome to the Dungeon,” Delta said, drawing her mana into the room. Mharia eyed the rising orange tide, turning nervous.
“Why is your mana chanting?” she asked suddenly. Delta listened, but didn’t hear anything.
“Maybe you have a ringing noise in your ears?” Delta suggested. Mhaira leaned forward and the illusion of flesh melted away, revealing the dark skull of her head.
“I don’t have ears!” she said before pointing at Delta’s mana again.
“They’re chanting war crimes-” was all she said before she was smothered in the orange tide.
Mharia’s attempts to sow chaos in Delta were mostly just confusing her at this point.
Chanting mana? For real?
The room began to shine as Mharia was broken down to her seed.
---
Delta’s ocean was churning on the surface, but once Mharia broke past that, she saw how... calm it was underneath.
Mharia knew she was effectively really dead this time. Beings absorbed by a dungeon came back in appearance only. Contracted humans got the better deal, but in the end... Mharia wasn’t sure if she’d be herself after all was said and done
What she saw... felt... experienced?
It was all symbolic.
Being broken down into mana meant what she was feeling couldn’t be real, not entirely.
But Mharia kept falling until she understood she was falling upwards.
After time passed, she found herself in a strange room, a central chair surrounded by screens that curved and flat runic consoles, some of which had mushrooms growing out of their sides.
“What do I call the adopted sibling of my Nephew?” a girl asked, bemused as she turned in the chair. Mharia blinked, on her hands and knees as it felt so hard to stand here.
“You are the... Sister,” Mharia said, gritting her teeth. It felt strange to have real muscle and flesh again, even in a simulated spell sense.
“And you are Mharia of Turtog,” announced the being that was so beyond Mharia’s power it was laughable.
“So, is it time for you to begin your interrogation? The turning of my mind to your cause?” Mharia asked and found it hard to keep in mind exactly what Sister looked like. A young girl with long hair and a white dress... but the details kept eluding her.
It was like staring at the sun, ironically enough.
“Perhaps once I would have simply dissolved you for your blooming seed, breaking you down to stare at the pieces to find an answer lurking in your existence. Like taking a jigsaw apart to see what shape each piece is,” the god admitted before she spun in her chair once, legs dangling.
“But I’ve learned a lot, just like you,” Sister said easily.
“...I have no idea what you mean,” Mharia responded, managing to get on her knees despite the force nearby.
Sister tilted her head and smiled.
“I’m going to tell her, I just didn’t want to drop it in the middle of her fight with you since it felt like a bit of a... what would Delta call it?” she mused, leaning back in her chair.
“Ah, a ‘dick move’,” she said sagely. Mharia stared before she clucked her tongue.
“Then Delta will despise you,” she declared as the screens around the Sister shifted.
“I think she might be angry, but I’ve learned a lot from her. I think it’s better for her to be upset with me than to simply keep on doing what I’ve done without her knowledge. I think that’s how people show they care. When the other person matters more than themselves,” Sister said slowly before she looked down as if she could see something.
“I only ever felt something like that towards my Brothers,” she admitted and this pissed Mharia off to no end.
“You mutilated and made your little brother fall into the abyss,” she accused and the Sister was still for a long time, making Mharia feel a twinge of fear.
“We did. I am a terrible person really. But I think since I can admit that?” she looked Mharia right in the eye.
“I’m maturing a little,” she declared and her form shifted... ever so slightly. Her cheeks lost some of the roundness, her hair grew longer, and she seemed to stretch out.
“And as for your fate...” the slightly older girl said, bemused.
Mharia felt karma crawling up her back.
---
Delta could feel the third floor shaking as her mana went berserk with work.
> Third floor was conquered! All excess rooms are being absorbed. Please stand by...
Delta could only watch as everything beyond her garden of many doors was simply erased. More and more rooms were removed to feed her DP and Mana in return. She didn’t intend to keep any of Mharia’s ‘aesthetic’ so this was fine with her.
She sorted through her growing notifications until she found the one she was after.
> Lovely, we have a psychotic little lich girl on the team. Pardon me while I break out the confetti.
Nu was grumbling, but he seemed awfully keen on sticking by her side.
“Better to keep her where I can see her,” Delta said distractedly as she read. Nu’s text shifted to a tiny font to indicate he was muttering under his breath.
> Mharia defeated! Mharia absorbed!
> Special conditional existence due to Dungeon’s desire.
> Reforming...
There was a flash of light and, slowly in the air before Delta, Mharia re-formed into a Dungeon lifeform.
“What... have you... done?” Mharia wheezed as she turned in place. Delta stared for a long moment.
“Well... I guess I’m a real Dungeon now,” she announced.
Her small body was in a simplistic white dress with four crystal-dragonfly wings on her back. Mharia now was only slightly bigger than a Pygmy Mushroom.
Mharia had become a dungeon fairy.
The girl looked up and her face melted away to show the horrific visage of a demonic bone lich in a pretty dress.
“Neat... my fairy dual-classed into necromancy,” Delta said brightly as Mharia took this all in and let out a screech so high that Delta almost conjured glass to see if it would break.
Delta snapped her fingers in front of the fuming fairy.
“Hey... listen,” she prodded and there was silence in her Dungeon.
“I name you, ‘Mharia the super helpful and kind fairy guide’,” she said and the screen over Mharia’s head shifted to reflect the title.
> Mharia: The super helpful and kind fairy guide!
> System Tool: Able to act and communicate for Dungeon’s need. Must act as a guide to those that enter the Dungeon.
>
> A princess that turned into a lich that turned into a cult leader that turned into a cute little fairy. She despises everyone and everything, wishing to stab the system in the head with a rusty spoon. Her dust does not make you fly, but perhaps it will in a future upgrade.
>
“I take it back. I prefer to just die,” Mharia said with a hollow tone as she sat on the ground of the garden on the third floor.
“That’s just the first step of grief. Denial. Soon, you’ll move on to-” Delta began and the fairy tried to latch on to her face, screaming about bloodlines and bovine ancestors.
“-anger,” Delta finished evenly.
There was a notification that stood out as yellow and Delta focused on it, ignoring Mharia’s ranting.
> 'I believe we need to talk. May I meet with you when you’re free?'
It was polite, but Sis never really asked for meetings, so it had to be important.
“Let me just check on Alpha and get him outside,” she said easily, turning to the still sleeping boy that had her guardgoyles around him as per her order.
Leaving Mharia to bask in her new existence, Delta bent down, whispering quietly.
“Nu... every move she makes? Every word she utters?” she said and Nu flashed once.
> She won’t be able to think a bad thought without me recording it.
The words reassured Delta, because as much as she was sure this whole god-war was a big sibling falling-out gone extreme
Mharia was still dangerous.
She didn’t need magic or undead dragons to be a problem. Simply pissing off the right adventurer or making Delta appear as... a problem would have the same effect, if not more. Delta cared about what her image was, to a degree.
She worked hard to cultivate the idea she could be reasoned with; and her goal was to flourish with Durence, not in spite of it.
It was a gamble, to be perfectly honest, but Delta needed to know what the other side was thinking, how it operated, and how twisted any other members of this group were.
Alpha blinked his eyes slowly.
“Ow.”
Delta winced and silently shifted his soul two inches to the right, which aligned better. Upside of having a big sister like Delta? She could do stuff like that.
“You okay?” Delta asked and Alpha sat slowly up, flexing his finger.
“I got a lot of soul resistance skills, but I don’t think it’ll help if Mharia strikes again,” he said, businesslike and firm, as if his loss of soul was more a dreadful embarrassment than a traumatic incident.
“About that...” Delta said, one finger raised, trying to figure out how best to broach the subject.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“-HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE?!” Mharia screamed as Jack shook her like a small child with fish in a bag.
“SPITE AND SMUT!” Jack screamed back.
Alpha stared before turning back to Delta, hints of actual disbelief on his face.
“Mharia is effectively not an issue as far as things go,” Delta said brightly. He frowned before nodding as if accepting this.
“I failed,” he said almost out of the blue.
“What... at the Game?” Delta asked, head tilted. Alpha pursed his lips.
“That too... but no, I mean with dealing with Mharia. I was woefully underprepared,” he explained as he stood up, looking around.
“Where’s Hero?” he asked, troubled as he searched for the golden bug.
“Resting, but you didn’t fail, Al,” Delta said earnestly as she patted his head. She didn’t know why, but he was quite pattable.
“I only won because Mharia let me in as close as I needed to so she could drive me crazy and turn me into a dungeon demon that would ravage the world!” she explained, her tone calm.
“And I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for your meddling,” Mharia muttered as Jack brought her over... stuffed in a bottle.
“I think we should cook her,” Jack said viciously. Delta shook her head, but narrowed her eyes.
“And how do you keep making references that you shouldn’t know about?” she asked the creepy fairy girl.
She merely smiled in return, but Delta was already turning away.
“Right, don’t have time for your dramatic foreshadowing. I got a lunch date. Alpha?” she turned to the younger man who stared back, ready for instruction.
“Go outside and have fun. Real sun is good for you,” she insisted, making shoo-ing motions.
“Delta!” Mharia said before she could leave. Looking back, Delta gave her a look of boredom.
“I can’t wait to see your face when you return,” Mharia cackled and Jack dunked her into a nearby pot. Inside, the bubbling crime against life, Troll Soup, muffled her screech. Jack raised the bottle and Mharia was flailing and looking sick despite having no organs.
Delta would rescue her when she returned... so Mharia could look at her face.
It was what the little fairy wanted after all...
---
Going to where Sis was involved a lot of mind skills. It was sort of being able to pretend the space directly behind her body didn’t exist, but instead, her world was a construction of carefully put together powers.
Delta slipped into her dungeon mode, seeing the walls and monsters all become see-through, their power and meaning flowing inside them, drawing in from the very air the mana they needed to keep surviving.
Then it was a matter of falling backwards, and she was somewhere else. Sis sat surrounded by her monitors, and she looked different than last time they met... Delta couldn’t put a finger on it exactly, but she looked older.
“Delta,” Sis said with such affection that Delta had the urge to turn and smile. Sis was pure in that way.
But that same purity let her do some pretty nasty things with the same earnest attitude. Like with what she did with Alpha in the beginning and this war.
“We need to talk,” Delta said simply. Sis nodded and closed her eyes.
“I think it’s best we involve who we can,” she announced. That sounded both interesting and ominous.
“If I am the Sun and Brother is the Land, then we cannot casually meet without causing an issue. However, a long time ago... Brother and I devised a meeting ground we could use at times,” Sis explained as she stood off her chair.
“Like in a Starbucks, or some cool Stonehenge or...” Delta began to list, and Sis smiled as the room began to glow.
---
Waddles opened his eyes. The ground shook through the underwater tunnel.
He was moving before he was even fully awake. As he emerged on the outside, he saw the lake was completely dried. The water was suspended in the air, floating as if gravity had lost all meaning. This ended up revealing deep carved lines all along the lake bed that looped around in sweeping curls.
Slowly, from the earth, raw power coursed through the lines, travelling to the shrine island in the middle where it pooled.
Then the land went dark. As Waddles looked up, the sun went dark at the same time the shrine exploded with a large pillar of mana, raw power that shot into the sky. The colour was a dark amber.
Waddles followed it to see why the sun had gone dark.
From the sun as well, a pillar of mana was exploding down to the land, but both beams... almost at the same time, clashed in the middle... met the same object at the same time.
The moon began to glow a deep green that was tinged with orange.
From the lands, the forest, and the very earth, monsters began to rage, coming alive as if the eclipse over this part of the land was a signal to raise hell.
Waddles would not let a single one pass into his domain nor his handmaiden's side rooms.
---
“-Or like a cute teahouse or maybe a...” Delta trailed off as she seemed to have been teleported by Sis to a strange flat surface, pock-marked occasionally by odd craters.
“A teahouse would be cute, but Brother won’t let me decorate...but regardless, welcome, Delta, to the Moon,” Sis introduced.
Delta stared as on the other side of the far field... the form of the demonic brother appeared. He appeared to be walking the line between the front and the dark sides of the moon. Delta slowly looked out to the ‘dark side’. It was completely flat and unremarkable, as if someone had stopped making it halfway through.
“Why... is the moon flat on the back?” Delta asked faintly.
“Well, no one ever sees the other side, so why make it that special?” Sis said easily.
“I wanted to put a moon dragon here, but Sis said it would ruin the scenery,” Brother sniffed as he approached, his yellowish eyes still slit-like.
“I wanted to try making a race of moon-dogs,” Sis said and Brother eyed her.
“You’re taller,” he accused and Sis smiled serenely.
“Am I? I hadn’t noticed,” she said, brushing her hair back with clear pride. Delta coughed to remind them that she existed.
They both eyed her.
“Right... one sec,” Brother said and snapped his finger. Alpha appeared, ghostly and surprised by their side. He took one look at Bro and Sis, and began to hyperventilate.
“Is he still traumatised? Delta, you had him for a whole day! Have you not made him better yet?” Brother asked, surprised.
“He lost his soul and was a plaything of a lich before I saved him. It’s going to take time. People take time,” Delta stressed. Brother blinked slowly.
“Like three days or something?” he asked and Delta knew without a doubt he was legitimately serious.
“He’ll be better when he’s better,” Delta said finally, still having to suppress her urge to cower before the being. It was hard to forget things like his face when he took her name.
“Why are we here?” Alpha asked finally. Sis went up to him and hugged him.
“To make wrongs right,” she admitted.
Brother and Sister shared a look before they looked down at the massive, oddly-shaped rectangle. It was mostly a rough flat plane, but occasionally new land or seas seemed to be growing out at the edges, slowly but surely curving in on itself.
“And the others? Beta and Gamma? Also, whoever this ‘fifth’ is that Mharia mentioned?” Delta asked quietly.
“Beta is refusing us full-blank and working with the asshole tree,” Brother said flatly.
“Gamma is... how would you say it...” Sis trailed off.
“Funny, but dangerous to both of you in different ways,” Brother said casually.
“The fifth that Mharia of Turtog mentioned is not a part of what you all are, not truly. The fifth was actually the first. Little Brother was the first. I shaped him and Brother gave him a soul. We could not create what we did not know,” Sis said with sadness as she looked at the stars above, blinking.
“We did it so wrong. A soul like that... like yours... was not meant to be in such a state or body. They went mad, or perhaps they were simply mad at us,” she carried on.
“The reason why people get... knowledgeable or perhaps even attuned to your old world is because in every seed is the memory... the essence of that first soul. Every human and half-human down there carries memories of your world, locked deep within them,” Brother announced, hands spread as if capturing the image of the world in his hands.
“A soul like us...” Alpha whispered, hand to his chest.
“When a seed falls to another, the seed moves on or carries down the bloodline. The seeds merged, far more completely than what the lich chick did with her family. A single seed, a single person. You repeat that every generation, and every time the seed becomes more complete,” Bro went on, turning to Delta.
“But what happens when someone’s seed is too strong? What if it gets the memories back?” Delta asked, feeling dread inside her. Sis looked at her.
“Durence happens,” she said simply.
“The cult got real close, but honestly, they can’t really do what they need on their own. They need people, strong people. So, they caused a little havoc and boom, heroes and antiheroes show up to wage epic war! But the catch is... the loot? It ain’t so good. People remembered, and the collection of seeds began to rise. The memories of that name... the true name of the Little Brother, made them understand that win or lose against the Silence? They would become the Silence,” Bro explained as he sat on the ground and got comfortable.
“No... I don’t understand,” Alpha objected.
“How could memories make you into a cult or change you?” he demanded, distressed.
Brother closed his eyes, apparently getting ready for a nap.
“You wanna know? Ask Delta... every single one of her monsters has the exact same thing going on... or did you not notice that?” he asked her amused.
“Not the insane or seedy part, but... by sharing your memories with them... they understand you. Your emotions are tied to a certain memory or reference or joke... they flow through that and subconsciously or not... they feel closer to you. Wyin, your second floor boss, resists this well and even sees it as a threat that she isn’t sure she can resist...” Sister explained and Delta couldn’t speak.
“The race of humanity? It’s all one big Dungeon species that took the death of our sibling to make,” Bro added, voice much quieter.
Delta felt ill... she felt... for the first time in a long time... scared of what she was.
“Alpha, who would build bonds with people. Beta, who would rally monsters created by their magic. Delta, who would repurpose their gifts, and Gamma who would take them by conquest. In the beginning that was the plan. You’d help each other train to fight the Silence whilst also taking their seeds to slow down the great Remembrance.” Brother sighed, then shot Delta a grin.
“To be fair, you can’t really say you have a cult when half your monsters argue with you and the others question you. It’s more a close knit-family that may go crazy. You may also spread your memories like fungus on perfectly good fields, but you also pass on more,” he pointed out.
“In fact, you pass on the most important thing of all,” Sister said to her as she smiled.
Delta slowly looked at them, the weight in her chest heavy.
“You taught them it's okay to question life. It’s okay to be wrong... and most importantly?” Sister leaned in, arms around Delta.
“You taught them it's okay to laugh at themselves. It’s okay to have their own feelings,” Sis finished and Delta was about to make a nice reply when she noticed something. Brother had zoomed the air in front of him to focus on a village near a drained lake.
It looked like dozens of ant-sized dots were converging on the village in the round shadow of the moon.
“Where’s that unlucky place?” Delta asked as she pulled Alpha into the hug.
“Durence,” Brother said easily. Delta nodded for a moment before she paused.
“Look! Alpha’s body is on the ground,” Brother announced as he zoomed in further to show Alpha’s physical form passed out in front of her dungeon. The monsters just ran past, unbothered by them.
“Where are they going?!” Delta yelled and Sister blinked.
“To get seeds. Durence isn’t very active so the monster’s shouldn’t be able to sense too much,” Sister promised easily.
“There are two royal knights in town,” Alpha said, muffled by Delta’s tight grip.
The siblings shared a look.
“Well, this could be awkward, but... I think it’ll be alright,” Brother said as he waved a hand. Delta was going to ask how when something odd occurred.
Far off, a large town that had a golden colour around it drew her attention.
Near the field, an unnoticeable being that was near the city turned its attention to the town and all the monsters abruptly just... stopped. Complete and utter lack of motion. The force grew to such an extent it was visible from the moon for a brief moment then it was gone with a thunderous...
Poi?
“What was that?” Delta asked, stunned.
“Danmulecus or ‘Mule’ as he likes to be called. He’s a big fan,” Brother said easily. Delta didn’t want any fans that did that!
Delta just wanted to be a peaceful Dungeon doing Dungeon things... why was she on the damn moon having a lunch date with two gods as some dragon thing scared monsters emerging from an eclipse?!
She didn’t need any more surprises...
---
In the abyss, past the dark sea of turbulent souls and oblivion, the demon world could be found.
In the untamed lands, unseen by the dukes or their king, a bright orange mushroom formed in a forest.
Then another formed... then another.
Eventually 7 cheerful mushrooms formed a perfect ring in the middle of nowhere.
A moment later, when nothing happened... the mushrooms began to slowly wiggle back and forward, harmonizing slowly.
The tempo increased faster and faster until the mushrooms were a blur of red and noise. Then a single note was hit and the space in the middle of the circle began to rip open.
Orange mana exploded upwards like a geyser of bubbling foam. Then it slowly settled until the circle was a rippling orange liquid that seemed to occasionally shift. The mushrooms pondered this then began to dance in different patterns, causing the liquid to slowly shift as if they were tuning a tv station.
Then it finally found what it was seeking.
Waddles emerged a moment later, his body rotating as if he simply spun himself underwater.
It was surprising to be home, but he might as well report to his father while he was here. Then he could get back to sleeping.
He flapped his wings and took off, heading for the Lake of Wrath.
He would find the Duke of Wrath there, presiding over all the Dark Drakes. Waddles now might have a solution for the problems the demon world was going through.
Well... not him, but Delta.
She was useful like that.
Waddles supposed if he was with Delta right now? She’d have called his father... the Duck of Wrath.
Waddles wouldn’t say it, but he would think it hard at his father in her honour.
Waddles was good like that.