CHAPTER 1
Do you have any idea what it’s like for a dungeon core gem to be carried around in a rucksack? No, neither had I. Not until I, Beno the dungeon core, was carried around in a rucksack.
It was completely lacking dignity, let me tell you. Nothing to see but darkness. Nothing to hear but the tinkling of glass vials that sometimes rolled against me. We were traveling by horse and cart, I can tell you that much. The cartwheel closest to me was uneven and made a clack-clack-boof-click sound when it turned. Every so often, the horses would wheeze.
Occasionally I’d hear someone talk, but I couldn’t pick out any words. We traveled for a long time, but I couldn’t tell you exactly how much passed.
That kind of thing is hard for me, judging time. See, dungeon cores are made to withstand eternity, and as such, we have no concept of time. It makes it very annoying to make dinner reservations with us.
Not only did I have no clue how long we had already traveled or would travel, I didn’t even know where I was going. There had been no time to explain, and neither the overseers nor my new owner – ugh, what a word to use – saw fit to tell me. The only thing I knew was this.
Just a few days ago, I had finished building my assessment dungeon. This was something all cores had to do after studying and graduating from the Dungeon Core Academy. They’d get released into the wide world…well, a muddy room deep underground…with nothing but their wits and a scrap of essence moss.
From that, they’d have to apply all their lessons and grow and build an entire dungeon. The only way to make sure you passed was to kill a party of heroes who had entered your dungeon to get their grubby little mitts on your loot.
How did I fare, you’re asking?
Brilliantly. Really. I slaughtered a bunch of heroes like they were little beetles scampering over my dungeon floor.
Oh, you heard what really happened? Damn. I suppose I better be honest about myself and my abilities.
Fine, no sense us getting off on the wrong foot. Yeah, I let a couple of heroes flee my dungeon. That goes against the dungeon core rules, letting heroes escape with their lives. But they were brothers of my friend, who was both a little girl and hundreds of year-old dungeon core named Vedetta.
Plus, I did kill a party of heroes immediately after that.
Oh, someone told you that it wasn’t a party of heroes? Well, my friend, that person is uneducated on the finer points of coredom, and is slandering my reputation. Given I don’t have much of a reputation to begin with, that hurts.
Yeah, it was just one hero, and yes, he was a bandit who used to rob and murder innocent travelers. But the academy definition of a party is ‘One or more people working with an express aim.’ Their definition of a hero is ‘One who is not a core or monster, and finds their way into the core’s dungeon by their own means, for their own motives.’
So you see, the lone bandit was, by the laws of dungeon coredom, a party of heroes.
Unfortunately, the academy overseers didn’t look on my semantics too fondly, and they told me I had failed my evaluation and would have to be ground up into core dust, which would then be used to create a new core gem who, hopefully, wouldn’t be so disappointing.
Then, my friends, something wondrous happened! As I was waiting to meet my fate, which I was determined to take without showing any fear, an overseer came to see me.
He said, “Your fate has changed, Core Beno. You have been bought. Yes, yes, strange, isn’t it? A benefactor has bought you, a core.”
He told me that henceforth I would no longer be working for the Dungeon Core Academy, and I wouldn’t be pulverized into little pieces of core gem.
Woo hoo!
I tried to imagine who my new benefactor was, and why he would want me. There were a few plausible reasons. Dungeon cores are masters of traps and puzzles, which means we make for great home security.
Perhaps a ridiculously rich merchant had bought me to protect his family. Maybe I would live what counted as a life of luxury for a dungeon core. I would have a core room made of marble, and I would rest on a velvet cushion while harp music played from the corner, and the smell of extravagant spices drifted to my imaginary nose and promised untold luxury.
Which brings me to the present. To lying in darkness in a gods damned rucksack, with glass bottles rolling against me.
I’ve never been a snooty core, and though I don’t remember my first life, I don’t think I was a snooty man. In fact, I was probably a rough-and-ready barbarian with the silver tongue of a bard, deft fingers of a rogue, and a glorious, glorious wizard beard.
So, I decided that I’d suck it up. I didn’t want my mysterious benefactor’s first impression of me to be that I was a pain in the arse.
As we carried on going wherever we were headed, sounds increased. Muffled voices. Horses braying. Maybe cows, too. Do cows bray? No, cows mooing. That’s what I heard.
Smells drifted into the rucksack. Incense. The delicious aroma of a stew cooking that threatened to awaken taste buds I didn’t have. That was a bad part of being a core – phantom feelings. I don’t need to eat, drink, sleep or urinate, but sometimes I get glimmers of those urges. It’s a hangover from my first life that should lessen the older I get.
It was then that I heard a voice.
“Ahhh,” it said, coming from right beside me. “What a nap! I could have slept for decades. Wait…tell me I didn’t sleep for decades!”
I knew that voice!
“Core Jahn?” I said.
“Beno? Is that you?”
Hearing Core Jahn’s voice was like a blast of comfort. Despite the manly front I displayed, one I would bet that even you hadn’t seen through, I had been a little worried, and a little lonely.
But Jahn was here, so I wasn’t the only core bought by our benefactor. I’d always liked Jahn. He was a joker. He was cheerful. But he never, ever listened in core class.
Jahn had become a bit of an academy legend over the last few days. See, his dungeon evaluation happened at the same time as mine. During our evaluation, we all started in a small core room with nothing but a patch of essence moss on the wall.
Essence is part plant, part fabric of the world. We cores draw our energy from it. We absorb it deep inside our gem selves, and we can convert it into actual, physical things. Monsters, traps, tables, rugs – you name it. A whole dungeon is built from essence.
During the assessment, we were expected to cultivate the patch of essence moss, turning it into essence vines that grew on our dungeon walls and gave off essence to replenish us. Grown this way, the vines were self-sustaining and rewarded us with an endless supply of essence.
Core Jahn, however, had the bright idea of fully absorbing the essence moss before cultivating it. In effect, in core terms, he ate the moss, and this left none to cultivate.
It’d be a little like a farmer planting an apple seed, caring for the tree until it finally grew an apple…and then eating the apple and burning the damn tree to cinders. It meant he had no means of regenerating essence, and no way to build a dungeon.
Yeah, Core Jahn failed his evaluation in the most miserable way, and the academy was going to smash him into dust just like me. I was so happy that he’d been spared.
“I’m glad you’re here, Jahn,” I said. “But I thought you were a potion bottle. You tinkle like one.”
“I was sleeping, Beno. Didn’t the evaluation tire you out?”
“We’re cores. We don’t get hungry, sleepy, or anything like that.”
“I do.”
“Impossible.”
“I promise! I learned how to separate a tiny sliver of myself away, Beno. In that, I locked my sleepiness. I said to myself when they resurrected me, if I have to spend e
ternity as a dungeon core, then I still want my sleep.”
“Separating part of yourself? How? Jahn, that technique…I haven’t even heard of master cores doing that.”
“I can’t explain how. I just did what felt right.”
Unbelievable. If Jahn was telling the truth, then this core who didn’t even think to cultivate essence, had managed to trap a part of his old humanity in himself. There was more to Jahn than me or anyone else gave him credit for. Interesting, very interesting. But that was something to delve deeper into later when I knew what was going on.
“Where are we going?” he asked me.
“I’ve been thinking about it. For one, you have to be rich to buy a dungeon core. Two cores, in fact. After all, the Forgers at the academy grind up failed cores and use them to make new ones. Finding fresh core dust is hard, so I’m told.”
“That makes me feel better, Beno. That we’re worth something.”
“We’re worth a lot of somethings. The overseers would have made our new owner pay. And anyway, about he or she…the way I see it, the only reason you buy a dungeon core is because you need them to create and maintain a dungeon of some kind. And why do you do that?”
“Could be a supervillain, Beno. Like Lord Saurgoth or the Shadow of the Dark Mountain. One who wants to kill heroes.”
“They wouldn’t sell us to someone overtly evil. We might kill heroes, but we adhere to guidelines when we do so. No, our new owner needs a dungeon or the thing a dungeon represents.”
“Huh?”
“Protection. Security. I think we’ve been bought to guard something, Core Jahn.”
“I’m worried.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said, feeling bad for him. “You technically graduated from the academy. Whatever happens next, you can cope.”
“But I failed my evaluation.”
“You failed because you absorbed all your essence moss in one gulp, instead of cultivating it. Just control yourself.”
“Thanks, Beno.”
Suddenly, daylight emerged above me. Colors streamed in. A bright orange sky that looked like it was burning. Orange sky…where in the world of Xynnar had an orange sky?
Wherever it was, someone had opened the rucksack to let the outside air in. I chose to allow myself to feel it. This was something that cores could do; our default state was a kind of numb void, but we could choose to feel heat and cold. We could choose to smell things. I kept my senses working as much as possible, though it was advisable to mute them when dealing with certain dungeon creatures. I mean, come on…you’ve smelled a kobold after he’s spent hours digging tunnels, right?
Still, it was a good trait to be able to ignore my senses, for a time. See, dungeons cores spend quite a lot of time in dungeons. And dungeons are cold. Being able to willfully shut the cold out helps a lot. They don’t make gem core-sized wool coats.
Note: Future business venture to explore.
So I enjoyed the breeze now, and I looked up at the orange sky above and tried to remember how long it was since I had even seen a sky. It was probably when I was still a man, and I couldn’t remember that.
The sky was then replaced by a kind of black mass. Dark, impenetrable, and completely covering the newly created opening in the bag. Like the soul of night itself, some evil, all-encompassing presence here to spread doom and desolation over everything.
“Core Beno?” asked Jahn. “What…argh!”
Jahn was lifted from the bag, leaving me alone.
Only when a hand reached inside and pulled me out of the bag, did I realize that the dark mass was a face covered by something, and it belonged to a person.
Two metal hands lifted me aloft so fast that I felt a phantom queasiness. I was about to protest at how much I hated being picked up like a puppy, when I stopped.
The sight before me took my imaginary breath away.
There, held up so high, I could see my new surroundings. I was in a bazaar of some sort, with dozens of market stalls all around. One stall had scented candles and incense sticks, and another stall had a cauldron with steam rising from it, which must have accounted for the stew smell.
But there were no houses around. No buildings whatsoever. In fact, for as far as I could see there was only a desert wasteland, the ground dry and cracked and baking under the orange sky.
It sure as all hells wasn’t the Endless Gardens in the King’s palace, let me tell you. Then again, I’m a dungeon core. Home comforts mean as much to me as a towel means to a fish.
It gave me a weird feeling deep inside my core. As if I was floating at a great height and scared of falling. Maybe it was anxiety because it had been so long since I was outside.
Yes, I still get anxious. All cores have their quirks. Anxiety is a remnant of my first life that sometimes creeps back into my second, or so the academy core physician once explained.
The most breath-taking thing was the crowd staring at me. There must have been more than a hundred people. Judging from their varying shapes and sizes I guessed that not all of them were human.
Guessed, Beno? I hear you ask. How can you not know for sure? Surely it’s easy to tell a human from a non-human?
It is, with some notable human exceptions. But these people were wearing suits of a thin metal. Liquid metal, I suppose I’d call it, in that it seemed to reshape itself when they moved. These liquid metal suits covered them head to toe, with only a semi-transparent panel in front of their faces giving me any indication of what they looked like.
I turned to Jahn now, who was also held aloft, also held by this same person.
“The people can’t survive on the surface,” I told him. “See the sky? The air, the way it seems to shimmer and burn? And their suits…”
“Overseer Bolton told us about something like this. Gas? No…no…come on, Jahn! Think! I hate it when things get stuck in my brain.”
“Don’t worry, Jahn, I don’t have a clue either.”
I felt myself lurch, and the person holding me lifted me higher, and every suited person looked up at me and Jahn now.
“My friends, my family,” said the benefactor, and I realized she was a woman. A woman with big hands, apparently. “We gather today on the surface of our dying land, a gathering we have not undertaken for many, many moons. I have returned from the west with our salvation.”
Salvation? That didn’t sound good. I had never had to bear the burden of being someone’s salvation before.
Wait – did this mean these people believed that a dungeon core could adapt the surface atmosphere? That we could make this placed hospitable again, or something?
Oh, no. I hoped they hadn’t paid much for us, because they were in for a surprise. Nah, they wouldn’t have paid much for two failed cores…right? I mean, cores were rare, yes. But we were classed as failures. That had to have come with a discount.
I felt a little more reassured now. There was no way these people had paid a fortune for us hoping that’d we’d save them or something.
Willful self-delusional is a powerful medicine, by the way.
“We have all sold everything we owned, we have put all our hopes and dreams on this,” continued the woman. “All our dreams of the future, our very existence as a people.”
I felt an imaginary lump form in my imaginary throat now.
“Hail the Cores!” shouted a person in the crowd.
“Hail the Cores!” the others said, all of them carrying the chant until it became quite uncomfortable. Jahn and I exchanged looks, but Jahn seemed to be basking in it.
The woman slowly lowered us onto two metal rods fixed into the ground, with little holders on top. We fit snugly into them.
Half the crowd bowed to us, while the other half folded their arms, or scrutinized us with looks that seemed intended to bore deep into our gem souls. Not everyone was as hopeful about us, it seemed.
I decided it was time to address my benefactor now.
“I suppose we haven’t been introduced,” I said. “I am Core Beno
, and this is Core Jahn. We are grateful that you saved us from being pulverized into gem dust. It’s a sure way to become my friend. But please, let me ask; what is it you would like us to do?”
She stared back at me now. She wiped the dust off her face panel, and I saw her eyes. Wide, blue, and with a kindness in them. “It is simple, honorable gems,” she told me. “You and Core Jahn will save our people.”
CHAPTER 2
“I am Galatee,” she said next. “Second-leaf of the Godwin tree.”
“Galatee…Galatee…” said Jahn. “Yeah! I remember. Galatee; she was the god of fortune.”
Galatee smiled at him. It was hard to see through the mask film on her face, but her lips definitely creased. “You are as knowledgeable as they promised, little core. I hope your friend is as wise as you.”
I looked at Jahn now, wondering where in all hells he plucked that information from. Then I remembered; Jahn was the class joker, he never listened, and he couldn’t read you the rules of coredom from memory if you paid him all the gold in the King’s vault. But, his memory worked in such a strange way that certain facts stuck to him like pollen on a bee’s arse.
“You will now receive your gifts,” said Galatee. She addressed the crowd. “The five-leaves will begin, and then fourth, third, and thus.”
The crowd began to approach us, each person bowing respectfully and leaving a present at the base of the rods we rested on. None of them spoke and few of them even looked at us, though some of the younger ones sneaked a glance.
Galatee had said the five-leaves should go first, then the fourth. At first, I had no idea what this meant, and then I realized that the crowd was approaching us in age groups, beginning with the youngest. I could only guess that your leaf meant which generation you were born in.
She had mentioned she was a second leaf in the Godwin tree. Godwin must have been a family name, and she was perhaps one of the oldest.
Finally, after all five leaf groups had given us gifts, I had amassed a pile of treasure below me. Daggers, leather chest pieces, boots, rings, necklaces.
There wasn’t much that I, a core gem with no arms, could do with those. Still, I wasn’t going to appear ungrateful.
Dungeon Core Academy 2 Page 1