Chapter 50) The Piper comes calling. Or, My, what big everything you have.

Terri made her departure with one last quip and a promise.

“Good luck Tex, you’re going to need it. But I will keep an eye on the place.”

She started to head out then paused for a confession.

"Not because I'm such a good person Tex, but because an old friend asked me to in return for some favors."

Then she was off before I could think to ask who or what favors. But then I think I owe her enough by now that if she isn’t ready to tell me outright I’m not going to push her for answers she ain’t ready to give.

...wait? How the heck was she able to get over here in her normal ball of light form?

Was that one of those favors? Who the heck was able to change the rules like that?

Okay, I got some questions… but… Bugging Terri right now after all she did for me would be pretty… I don't know. Petty? Rude? Ungrateful?

Probably all three of those things, plus, what I don’t know, I can’t tell.

Not that I think I would, but I've never been in a situation where I was up against something terrible, and betraying someone was my only way out of it.

I've never had to choose a hill I thought worthy of dying on, not for real. I would like to think I'm that sort of guy, no, that sort of man. But, you can't really know that about yourself until you face that test.

I hope if that time comes, when it’s real, that I can be the man I would choose to be.

Megan finished up her training with a fight against a Horned Rabbit by finishing it off with a spear and I took over from Drew for a bit to talk her through field dressing the Rabbit after watching Drew’s attempt to prepare it for cooking.

He seemed to understand that you needed a knife to remove the skin, it was just the execution he was having trouble with.

My presence seemed to confuse her, but Drew reassured her with his explanation. “I’m still in training.”

...kind of a lie. But he was training, in learning how to teach, and how to skin a rabbit.

After Megan, we had Ronny, forty seven, from Brisbane Australia, although he had been visiting his sister in Tennessee. Then a guy who insisted we called him Baron Zaminski from New Orleans who claimed to be “As young as the day, and as old as the stars.”

He was pretty happy to get spells as well as a weapon skill.

"I wanted to be a mage, but I also wanted to survive to see the second level. This just seems too similar to D and D and if that game taught me anything it was being a glass cannon doesn't make for a long life span.”

Both of them choose the Planes, although the Baron liked the idea of the undead, but… “A woman in charge of a city of insane people, no thanks.” and then he stepped into the Portal to the Plane of Slaughter.

Drew frowned. “Kind of a jerk.”

…and that was coming from him. But, “Considering who the woman is, I don’t think he was far off on being in a place with her in charge being a bad place to be.”

One thing we learned from the Baron before he left was what had happened to the Liche.

He had gone home.

The Baron had talked about a Blog he had been following. “Nothing was being covered by mainstream media, but plenty of videos were getting out. Some crazy guy calling himself Lord Terrence Barraset took over a whole town with what looked like real magic because he claimed it had been part of his family’s lands before the crown took their title. Then he was calling for the king to send a champion to fight him for it.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Osalor caught up with me before we got a third person.

I felt someone staring at me even before I heard him clear his throat to get me to turn my attention up to where he stood looking down at me from the top of the Strata.

“Hi Boss. Oops, I forgot not to talk without your permission. But I think I’m in enough trouble at this point it can’t get much worse.”

He smiled slowly, then dropped down into the dungeon with a single step forward.

"I find your lack of faith in my inventiveness… disappointing. But then your ability to disappoint me couldn’t get much worse either.”

Behind him, in the side tunnel I had once started where Drew had set up camp with extra starter gear, my assistant carefully peeked around the corner, sword in hand as he whispered to himself “Mage Gaurd.”

He had unlocked the three spells for himself before I even got back, and Stealth since then since I had set up the wooden floor unlocking squares in a new room set up between the jumping and swimming rooms. For once I had made a room that wasn’t open to the sky, but hidden away under the Strata, which seemed appropriate for a Rouge ability unlocking room.

I had been planning on walking over to Terri’s dungeon as a Skeleton to get the other rouge unlocks, but time and Osalor had caught up with me.

Then Drew surprised me by whispering “Mage bolt” and getting the spell to show up in his hand while he was holding his sword, the glowing distortion spiraling around the blade instead of just balling up in his palm. That was new.

As was his charge at Osalor’s back, whispering “Power strike” he closed in using Stealth behind the god.

The god.

Who didn’t even look over at him as he half turned, drawing his sword as he did so, and swung.

His blade cut through Drew’s sword, and Drew’s neck in a single motion, before Osalor finally turned to look down as my friend choked on his own blood, fell onto his knees, and clutched at his neck with one hand while weakly trying to connect the slowly swaying tip of his blade with the back of Osalor's leg.

Osalor turned back to me, brows raised. "Who the heck was-”

“Mage bolt! Power Strike! Mage bolt!!!”

He flicked the first spell away with his sword while rolling his eyes, then he let out a surprised sound and had to brace himself to hold me back with his off hand as I flew at his face, the Mage bolt cracking around me and pumped up somehow with Power Strike.

Combining a spell with a fighter's ability, my friend taught me that.

But still, a god.

With a swipe of his hand, he knocked everything thing away from me, leaving me floating in front of his annoyed looking face, “That is enough of that Szoke.”

“Yes, that is enough of that… godling”

I slowly, weakly, turned my attention to the side to see Allie, Alice Something or Other, or Allysiara as I had called her at various times, standing there, a tablet made of red stone in one of her hands as she walked past Osalor without a word to drop down a bit as she reached out to touch Drew who had collapsed on the floor.

“Panacea”

That… did something to fix him. The wound in his throat, the paleness in his skin from blood loss. It even brought him back to consciousness.

Looking up at her with a shocked look on his face he asked. “Wha... who?”

She patted him on the head. “Skip.”

Oh, she’s familiar with him.

And whatever Osalor had done to me, I was shaking it off. I had been tired, cold, and just not caring about anything for a moment there. Is that like what had happened to Josh? It was like being so tired it was making you sad.

Oslaor turned to glare at Allie. “It was my understanding that you were no longer welcome in the godly realm, outcast.”

She stood up to look at him and smiled sadly. “This was never a godly realm godling. And I have other employment now.”

Oh… She must be the one giving favors to Terri…

I tried to question how, but it was so hard to care...

Behind me, and Osalor, the wall of the dungeon had begun to glow red deep within the stone, as if something was changing the Strata, but deep within the stone wall… and on a much larger scale than anything I had ever done.

Osalor tilted his head to one side. “And who would that be, Mortal.”

My old boss grinned. “Someone who isn’t upset with you Osalor, despite the suffering you caused.”

“She’s just disappointed... and she wants to have a talk with you”

The face made from red light that emerged from the Strata was more than large enough to have swallowed the god whole, but as it stretched out from the wall and tilted down toward him, all it did… was sniff.

Third short ones as Oslor slowly turned around, a horrified, then shocked look on his face.

“...Omnis Mater?”

Then he was off, doing the stretching thing into the sky, even as the face lifted free of the stone, and an immense arm rose up out of the Firmament flooring of the Dungeon, as well as rising up from a good length of the Strata on the other side of the room.

Then a set of shoulders made of the same light rose as she reached for the fleeing God, and… a rather… healthy chest, which was a little embarrassing even if everything on her was made of red light that sort of smoothed out anything sticking out.

She rose until she stood towering as tall as the sky, standing waist deep in the Strata and wider at her hips than my entire Dungeon as she lowered her outstretched arm from above the sky with a pout of disappointment.

Allie made a “Hrump” sound from behind me.

“I’ll say that for him, the guy knows when to run.”

The woman made of red light looked down at me, and I saw the familiar red bracketed lettering appear in front of me.

[ We should talk ]

...I think I might know how Allie was able to do those favors for Terri.

“Okay… Strata.”

All this time I had thought the words in the brackets were some other system. Something older, more basic than the Panel system the gods used.

Instead, this entire time I had been having a conversation with someone.

Someone older than the gods who choose to appear as people.

A person, a goddess, an Elder goddess, who mainly chose to appear as a place.

I guess I just have to hope that I hadn’t disappointed her too...

End Book I