“Well, Dungeon? I’ve held up my side of the bargain. I’ve seen what you can do. I’m ready to make a deal, and I’m ready to make it worth your while.” Suffi stood at the edge of the ravine, waiting for an answer from the dark and gloom. There was a strange air that existed only here, in the Dungeon, an atmosphere of skittering motion crawling through the dark. Every shadow was full of imaginary monsters.
This time, no half-man half-spider crawled forth to speak to her. There were only the muffled protests of the adventurers they’d apprehended. Her guards held them at spearpoint, only waiting for her order to kill.
She waited, and moments ticked by. Nothing. Among the spears of glass that grew at the top of the ravine, spiders crawled, navigating a shining web and throwing out their own nets. She watched in fascinated horror as one of the fat, eight-legged things closed in on a bright little bird caught in the silver threads, the poor birdie’s struggles only winding it deeper into entanglement as the giant spider slowly lowered its drooling fangs down…
There was something beautiful about the moment, to hold her eyes transfixed, but she couldn’t for the life of her tell what it was.
She could only hope dealing with this Dungeon didn’t make her the little bird.
But with every moment that passed without answer, she felt more and more ridiculous.
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Without Cabochon, I had no messenger to send. I paused, thinking hard for a moment, and then committed to the only course I had left. I wove lights of pure Mana through the air, draining myself terribly to write a single word.
APPROACH.
At the same time, I sent calming, soothing waves of emotion down across the spiders nesting in the ravine’s slopes, trying to send them into a torpor so they wouldn’t swarm to attack her as soon as she descended.
I watched the fear on her face as she descended, boots skittering unsteadily on the loose rock of the ravine’s walls. To be fair, I’d never expected to have a guest when I designed the place. It was a fall of some twenty feet, with much of the way covered by thorny, dense briars. Numerous little cracks in the stone hid burrows where the fisherman spiders slept, ready to rise up in a sudden bloom of furry limbs shoulder invaders stumble past, clumsy footsteps disturbing the earth.
Suffi’s steps were quite clumsy, and it took every bit of my limited control over the spiders to keep them from waking. She slid down into the trough of the ravine, where green moss lined the earth as grass might above, and strange lightless trees grew directly from my Mana without need for the sun. They spread branches without leaves, pale white fruit the color of pallid flesh hanging from their boughs. The bottom of the ravine was maybe two hundred feet across, a short enough distance to cover in a sprint.
Of course, anyone who actually tried to make a run for it would fall into pit traps hidden below the moss, anger the hordes of spiders waiting in the far wall, or even more likely, be bitten by my serpents. The ground was thick with them, green beauties sliding amidst the moss and stones hunting for little birds come to peck the insects from the ground.
Above, spidery bodies crawled over the canopy of glass that hooded the ravine.
She was in the heart of my territory now, carefully watching her feet, glancing up every now and then at shadows, fearful of the spiders above descending. I could have spoken now, with plenty of moss and greenery to twist into my words.
I let her stew in fear just a few steps longer.
The time was welcome, because I still needed to think. The prophecy Strix had delivered, the promise she would be an arrow cast at the gods for me, was tempting, very tempting. The result, Caltern being destroyed, less so. My relations to the city weren’t friendly but they were symbiotic. In the way a parasite needed a host, I had built myself to intertwine with Caltern.
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Put prophecy aside for a second, and I had a different facet of the deal to see.
I didn’t like Suffi, and didn’t for a moment believe she was trustworthy, but with a Contract I could control her somewhat. Even killing her now while I had her in my power wouldn’t be as effective; it would leave her family and her political allies furious with me, bent on my destruction. In a way, the very fact she was untrustworthy made her ideal to trap in a Contract’s binding powers.
Besides, I didn’t need to like mortals - I probably would never be fond of any of them, besides my own creations. What I needed was ones I could work with.
And did Suffi fit that description?
From a third perspective, Suffi had kept her end of the deal. She would keep her end of the deal, I knew, until the moment I was useless to her. And how could I ever be useless? There was so much to gain from me, and I only needed to maneuver so more was always on the horizon, promised but yet to be delivered.
My glass faun descended into the valley from the far side. He had come up from the river yesterday, unharmed by the water and simply able to walk home from underneath.
I lifted a stone slab from the earth, carving into its surface.
ONE - SUFFI HALFHAND SHALL DO NOTHING TO HARM THE DUNGEON OR EXPOSE ITS SECRETS.
Looking at it through any lens but the prophecy, I should take the deal and bind her as an ally. The only question was whether I trusted the little prophet Strix enough to change my entire course based on her words.
And in a way, I did.
TWO - THE DUNGEON SHALL PROVIDE ATTUNEMENT FOR ONE MEMBER OF THE HALFHAND’S CLAN EACH MONTH, OTHER THAN SUFFI.
I saw her face go rigid. She would benefit greatly from the added strength of her clan, yes, but she herself would be the one who never recieved my gifts.
THREE - THE HALFHAND CLAN SHALL TEACH THE DUNGEON ALL IT KNOWS ABOUT JEWEL-SETTING AND SPELLCRAFT.
Anger. She was angry, and showing it, her good hand curling into a fist. I needed to sweeten the deal, to add a little honey to even out the sour taste of asking for her clan’s secrets while offering her, personally, nothing in return.
It wasn’t impossible she’d lose control of the clan, if others surged to power while she remained behind. Mortals were fickle like that.
FOUR - EACH MONTH THE DUNGEON SHALL PROVIDE TWO GOLEMS PERSONALLY LOYAL TO SUFFI HALFHAND.
She stared at my terms for a long, long time. “Fifth!” She called out. “The Dungeon shall tell Suffi Halfhand before it makes plans for the surface world. Suffi Halfhand shall do likewise for the world below.”
I added it, but not without a price of my own.
SIXTH - SUFFI HALFHAND SHALL DISCOVER THE PURPOSE OF OLIN FRAMPT’S EXPERIMENTS ON THE DUNGEON’S BEHALF.
It was weighted in my favor, despite her added clause. I had to warn her, but not actually restrain myself on her behalf. She would be bound not to harm me.
Something she didn’t miss.
But as she stood there, chewing her lip, she nodded. Holding out her already-bandaged left hand, she conceded to my terms. “Take my blood then. It’s time we meet in person.”
I agreed entirely.
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Suffi knew a core was a type of gemstone, containing a rift of pure Mana within. She had expected them to look that way in the mental plane as well.
But as she faded into the dark of the Void-realm, that wasn’t what she saw. There was a gem, yes, glowing like a green star in the night, but it was at the heart of a beast unlike any she’d ever seen.
What she saw was a snake and a spider, a rat and a man, it was all of those things and none of them. Its flesh was translucent, made of shadow and light in geometric planes like the facets of a gem. It shifted constantly, folding in and out of itself like a kaleidoscope in motion.
But most of all, in its constantly changing form, she saw a beast. A terrifying, primal shape that struck chords of terror. Something that felt recognized out of a nightmare.
It’s thoughts washed into hers like a wave. They were inhuman, cold, cruel. It thought in the long dark terms of the earth and in the language of paranoia and hunger. It’s only warmth was a satisfaction in creation, and that she knew well.
In many ways they were alike. She had the same restless hunger, the same paranoid drive that kept her up at night. The same love of slowly working her will into reality through the acts of creation. They were alike, but she was mortal, and it was a cold alienated being.
Something about that - how far it was from human, truly, how relentlessly without mercy or morals - made her suddenly regret the deal.
But it was too late.
She was bound in Contract as the stone tablet descended.