“Like the one we used to come down here?”
“There are three such doors that we know of.”
“So you find the door, you come down and explore. Then what?” I said.
“Then we found the mana springs.”
If I could have jumped up and punched the air, I would have.
“I knew it!”
“Hmm?”
“I suspected you were hundreds of years old,” I explained.
She gave me a look that could have shattered a sword.
“I mean, your eyes. The way they shine so blue. That depth of color can only come from one who has ingested or been exposed to pure mana. And pure mana can extend a person’s life.”
“Ah, I see Core Jahn’s perception is rubbing off on you, Beno. You are right. All those years ago, we discovered mana springs here, deep underneath the wasteland above. Our people have bathed in them ever since, extending our lives beyond any mortal. But, with a gift, comes a price.”
“Mana addiction. I’ve heard of it.”
She nodded. “To leave this place, leave our springs behind, would mean walking away and facing mortality again.”
“So you settled here and built this place.”
“It is our home now, and has been for two hundred years. But we aren’t the only ones who have learned of the springs.”
“The seekers!” said Jahn, unbelievably excited to have guessed right.
“Yes, Jahn. We do not know where the Seekers live, only that they know of the springs. They have mages who can find the doors, just like Risto. Every so often, they send their best warriors here to take this place from us. No doubt you understand your purpose now, Core Jahn? Is it as you expected?”
I think I understood now, but I wondered if Jahn was still following. When he said nothing, I decided to spare him the embarrassment.
“There are three doors. The one we came through to get to your home, and two others. I’m guessing that the other doors lead to the mana springs.”
“Correct.”
“Core Jahn and I are to defend these doors for you.”
“A door is just a door. You need to defend the springs themselves. We aren’t ready to give up their gifts.”
“I understand.”
“I hope you do, but I fear you will need to meet the seekers in battle before you truly realize how much they thirst for our dearest treasure, for the very source that keeps our people alive. Every year they come in greater numbers, with stronger warriors. We can no longer defend against them ourselves. In their last attack, we lost every leaf on the Rischer tree. The leaves on this tree were our best fighters. Every time the seekers come, we are weakened.”
“And that’s why we’re your salvation.”
“I am glad you understand, Core Beno.”
I did, and that was the problem. I finally grasped just how important we were to these people, and how heavy a burden we were taking on. Building dungeons to defeat heroes was one thing…but this?
I started to feel a little anxious about it all. Because from what I’d seen so far, from the people I had met (rude orcs aside), I liked them.
The lightorium door flew open now, and a figure emerged in the doorway.
“Second-leaf,” boomed a voice. “Why aren’t the cores at work already?”
Galatee shot to her feet. A look of alarm crossed her face. It was the first time I had seen her lose her cool.
“First-leaf Godwin,” she said, her voice soft. “I thought you were meditating.”
“I had to come and see our saviors for myself,” he said, dripping a gallon of sarcasm on the word saviors.
CHAPTER 4
The first-leaf of the Godwin tree was a foreboding figure. I could tell that straight away, but not in his appearance. He was small even for a gnome, and he was so old he looked like a shriveled raisin. Pure mana might be able to extend life, but it isn’t a great beauty regimen.
I knew better than to speak this out loud. In fact, I had long ago learned it was wise to keep many of my thoughts to myself. I’m sure you are beginning to realize that about me.
First-leaf Godwin had this aura surrounding him. Not just in the way that Galatee, who had seemed so commanding, shied away. But in his stance, his expression, and in his eyes. These shone bright blue like Galatee’s, but the color seemed to swirl, as though inside his eyes was a raging sea. He wore a robe that trailed to the ground and walked with a staff that was curled at the top so it would wrap around his wrist.
It seemed to take an age for him to approach us, and when he finally did, Jahn turned to face him.
“First-leaf?” he said. “Pleased to meet you! I am Core Jahn.”
The first-leaf banged his staff on the ground. The noise was much louder than it should have been, and it rang out through the lightorium. Even the colors up in the dorm stopped swirling. All except two of them; black and red, great waves of it that swirled round and round.
“So these are the products of our fortune? Galatee, you have spent a king’s ransom on turnips.”
“Excuse me, first-leaf?”
“Look at them!”
“All cores look alike, first-leaf. I saw many of them in their academy. Different colors, different shapes, to be sure, but they are all gems like this.”
“Really? I can feel waves of imbecility come so strongly from this one that my brain is shrinking,” he said, pointing the bottom of his staff at Jahn. I felt a flicker of defensiveness toward my friend, but I held it in.
“And this one,” he said, pointing at me. Now I was really feeling prickled. “He thinks not of his service to us, but himself. Vanity seeps off him like steam from a fresh cowpat. Given enough time, he will think of a way to cross us.”
This was a little unfair. Vain? Sure, sometimes. I think everyone has a little vanity in them. One thing I would never do was to cross someone, nor act duplicitously.
Unless the duplicity was to murder a hero, of course. That was required, given the reason for my existence.
I sensed that our introduction to the first-leaf hadn’t gone as well as we could have hoped. I tried to think of something to say that didn’t make it worse, something that would let me exit this situation and go do what I love – making bloodthirsty creatures and constructing murderous traps.
Before I could speak, the first-leaf hobbled closer. I could see on his skin the battle of age versus the mana springs. It was written all over his body. The way his skin had shriveled so badly, how his limbs seemed to resist his attempts to move.
I wondered why Galatee feared him so much. It seemed to me that the first-leaf on any tree must always be the oldest, but not necessarily the strongest. What did she have to be scared of?
“Your minds are independent; I understand that,” he said. “I know it is that freedom of thought which makes your essence constructions possible. I cannot take that away, for I would be cutting off my foot to rid myself of a rotten toenail. What I can give you, cores, is a warning. The slightest hint of rebellion will mean the end of your pathetic second existences.”
That was an empty threat. As a core gem, Jahn and I were pretty hard to kill. Sure, if heroes busted their way into our dungeon, they might have a chance. Even then, they’d need the right weapons - legendary ones - and mages who knew the rare spells that could weaken our structure. In the academy, only the Forgers who made us, could also unmake us.
So this gnome? He was all talk.
First-leaf Godwin raised his staff. The bottom of it glowed red, and spectral flames seeped from it and wrapped around the staff shaft.
I was a little worried now. You can tell the quality of a made by the clarity of light around him when he casts a spell. All mages manipulate mana the same way a core uses essence. Rookie mages waste most of theirs, and this shows in the dilution of their spell light.
If an apprentice mage and a master both drew the same amount of mana to power a spell, the apprentice’s light would be dim, like a lamp on a foggy night. The master
’s would shine with blinding clarity, much the same way the first-leaf’s was shining now.
It was an attempt to intimidate Jahn and I.
“A light show to welcome us to our new home,” I said. “I would have preferred fireworks.”
He slammed the base of the staff on the ground.
Nothing happened.
But then…
Holy hells, I had never experienced anything like it. Agony flared inside me, not just in my inner core but somewhere deeper, a dark place within my gem that I hadn’t even known existed. The pain was worse than anything I could imagine, and I felt my consciousness warp, and the lights all the way above in the dome flashed black and red, black and red, and I heard only a screeching that drowned everything else out.
A piece of me flew off and hit the ground.
Yes, a piece of my almost-indestructible core cracked off me. I could hardly comprehend it.
It was only as the pain died and my senses began to return that I realized I had been shouting, and that a piece of Jahn was scattered on the floor too.
What kind of power did this crazy gnome have?
Galatee gave me a sympathetic look, while the first-leaf’s expression was murder. Right then, I believed he could rip me apart with a stare.
He was silent for a second. I looked longingly at the tiny sliver of myself on the ground, and for the first time since I had been resurrected, I became keenly aware of my mortality here.
Core gems weren’t supposed to crack like that. Not from a single gnome mage’s spell. It would usually take a party of heroes to even begin to chip away at us, so for the first-leaf to do it so easily…
“We will have our service from you,” said the gnome. “We paid a dear price for you, but you will pay a dearer one for failure. There are some here who will treat you as more than the tools you are, but mark me; you are nothing but a hammer with a consciousness. A forge with a dim-witted mind. You can be unmade.”
With that, he hobbled out of the lightorium, the base of his staff making a banging sound every time he planted it down.
I realized that Jahn was looking at me now. Cores don’t have eyes, at least not ones you can see when you look at us, but you can feel our gazes. I felt his gaze on me. I sensed the waves of fear coming from him, and fear coming from a core is not a thing you want to experience. He needed reassurance.
I pushed back all my anxieties and all my memories of the pain I had just felt.
“Nice guy,” I said. “I think he likes us.”
Galatee recovered herself. She seemed to have shrunk in the first-leaf’s presence, but now she stood tall now with her back straight and her eyes glowing blue.
“We will take you to your dungeons,” she said. She faced the entrance to the lightorium. “Core bearers? We need you.”
CHAPTER 5
Without even time for a goodbye, Jahn’s bearer lifted him atop his wooden pole and she carried him away, knowing where to take him without being asked.
Galatee looked at me. It was hard to read her expression. Though I hadn’t known her long, it was clear she wasn’t cut from the same cloth as First-Leaf Godwin. They may have been family, but they were different.
When Jahn was far enough away to be out of earshot, Galatee spoke to Warrane. “Can you give us a minute please, Fifth-Leaf?”
Warrane nodded. “This leaf will do so.”
When Warrane walked away, Galatee looked at me.
“I know about your friend Jahn,” she said. “I know he is not as learned as you. That he couldn’t even apply the little he had learned when your overseers tested him. I didn’t purchase the pair of you in complete ignorance. I hope you did not take offense, Core Beno, but I believed it was best to raise Core Jahn’s confidence rather than highlight his weaknesses.”
“Jahn is…”
“You and Core Jahn are all we could afford, even after sacrificing everything to this plan. We could have purchased a single core with more ability than the pair of you, but we needed two cores, or this is for nothing. Both doors must be guarded.”
“Jahn will learn. They don’t just resurrect anybody,” I said. “They weigh our souls on death. Judge them. There is always a reason a person is made into a core. Jahn just hasn’t unlocked his yet.”
“I hope you are right. The first-leaf is a little…temperamental. He has been clipping not just leaves, but whole branches. For minor things, sometimes. Rumors of betrayal. Or rumors of planned betrayal. Even for spreading wrongful rumors of planned betrayal. He believes everyone is plotting to join the Seekers or to open our doors to them. He’s is a man slipping off an icy edge, grasping nothing but snow as he falls.”
“By clipping, do you mean he’s killing people?”
She shook her head. “He isn’t that far gone, and his soul isn’t murderous. It is a great weight on him, keeping us safe. That at least is something that you can count on; the first-leaf’s motives never stray from protecting his people. But his means are something different.”
“Then clipping means casting people out.”
“Correct. Even a second-leaf in his own tree isn’t safe from his fury. I couldn’t leave the academy without two cores, and you and Jahn were all I could buy.”
“Then I’ll try to repay your faith,” I said, feeling a little moved by the sadness on her face.
“It wasn’t faith, Beno. It was a necessity. It was you, or nothing. Warrane? Take Beno to his dungeon please.”
“I’ll need to know more about who I’ll be facing. Their numbers. Weapons. Spells. Anything they can use.”
“Sometimes, the deepest learning is done in deeds, not words,” she said, and walked away.
Sure, that sounded good. It sounded like quite a deep thing to say. In reality, surely it would have been better to just explain a few things to me?
Too late, Galatee had walked away.
I’d just have to adapt. And hope like hell that Jahn didn’t gobble all his essence like a greedy pig this time.
“This leaf will lift you now,” said Warrane, holding a wooden pole in one hand. I looked at him again. I had been too awash with confusion and surprise the first time we’d talked, and I never really tried to work out just what he was.
He was green-skinned like an orc, yet he was tall and slender. Anatomically human, in fact, except for his third eye. I had never seen a race like it.
“Ready?” he asked me.
I was glad he was being so polite about it. Cores hate being carried around. “Let’s go.”
As Warrane carried me to my new dungeon, I had a lot of time to think about what had happened.
Being a core, I was never going to be a master of my destiny. The academy gave me a second life, and they owned it. They owned me. I had rebelled at first when they resurrected me, just like most cores do, but the feeling had eased when memories of my first life left me.
I’d always assumed I would spend my second life working for the academy and killing heroes. I had never guessed I would end up helping to defend someone’s home. The home of an entire people, in fact.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Was it a higher cause than working for the academy?
Huh. Tough one to answer. I’d never really questioned whether killing heroes was a good or bad thing. It was just what I was taught to do.
But this? It was undeniably a good thing to help defend Galatee’s people.
Then again. The first-leaf was dangerous. I had never felt pain in my second life until he lifted his staff and cast whatever the hell that spell was. He made it clear that morality and opinions had no place here because I wasn’t here through choice. I was a tool, a slave with a task that I succeeded in or faced death.
I was a little worried for myself but more worried about Core Jahn. He would need help defending his door, and I had to work out a way to get that help across to him.
And then a cold shudder ran through me.
If Jahn failed, we were both in trouble. If the Seekers breached Jahn’s d
oor, then we had both failed. My fate was entwined with Jahn’s. Damn.
Warrane carried me through the cavern, where most of the Wrotun folks stopped what they were doing and watch me pass. I tried not to let the weight of their expectations rest on me.
“We will walk through darkness,” said Warrane. “Torches are too much of a luxury for barely traveled tunnels. We must buy oil, wax, or diluted mana from villages far, far away. We cannot make our own. Therefore, we do not light the ways where few feet tread.”
“Cores aren’t so bad with darkness. How will you see?”
“This leaf has walked these passageways many times. He knows their shape even in darkness.”
That would have sounded great, had Warrane not stumbled on a rock and almost fallen. Luckily, he steadied himself, and me, and kept balance. I decided not to mention what effect this had on his previous statement.
After that, Warrane carried me into the black passageways without another misstep. It wasn’t just a single route, either. It seemed that the Wrotun people had carved dozens of different tunnels that led away from their cavern home.
“Did you help make these tunnels, Warrane?”
“This leaf was born decades after they were made, Core Beno. Has a core such as yourself worked out their purpose?”
“They tunneled through so many different ways because they were looking for more mana springs, I would guess.”
“Their original purpose, yes. After failing to find any but the two springs we guard so truly, the tunnels have been given a new task.”
“To confuse intruders. Stop them having a clear route to your home. They’re probably strewn with traps.”
“This leaf knew your mind would be attuned to such things. Not far now.”
‘Not far’ to Warrane was a lot further than I expected. I guessed that he’d walked these tunnels for so long that it must have felt that way to him. When you’re going somewhere new, like I was, it always seems to take more time.
It wasn’t just that, though. I was getting a feeling inside my core. Nervousness. Excitement. It felt the same as the moments before the overseers put me in my first dungeon. A core is created to live and breathe dungeons, and being close to one sets our metaphorical pulses racing.
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