by A. J. Markam
“Wow,” I murmured. I’d never given any thought about how sprawling the dungeon actually was. “Why didn’t you ever build aboveground? Because the castle is in the way?”
“OH, HELL NO – THEY KILL YOU FOR THAT SHIT.”
“What – building aboveground?”
“FUCK YEAH.”
I scrunched up my face. “What?! I’ve seen plenty of dungeons aboveground!”
“YEAH, BUT HOW MANY YOU SEEN THAT’S BOTH ABOVEGROUND AND BELOWGROUND? I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT MORE THAN THIRTY OR FORTY FEET UNDERGROUND, MIND YOU. I AIN’T TALKIN’ ‘BOUT NO ABOVEGROUND DUNGEON WITH A FUCKIN’ BASEMENT.”
I opened my mouth to answer – and then closed it as I thought some more.
He was right. I’d never seen a dungeon that went deep underground and yet had much surface presence to speak of, or vice versa.
In OtherWorld, dungeons were either a vast series of caves or tunnels, or some sort of surface structure like a castle or the labyrinth at Exardus. There wasn’t really any crossover between the two.
“YOU GOTTA CHOOSE ONE OR THE OTHER – ABOVE OR BELOW. IF YOU ALREADY BELOWGROUND AND YOU GO ABOVEGROUND, THEY DON’T LIKE THAT SHIT.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“THE GUILD, MAN. FUCKIN’ ASSHOLES… THEY’LL KILL A MOTHAFUCKA IF THEY DON’T LIKE YOU.”
“I thought you said all they did was look around and label things as either ‘advanced’ or ‘beginner.’”
“WELL, THAT’S ALL THEY DONE TO ME,” Deek sniffed. “BUT I HEARD STORIES, YO. SOME OF THE FOLKS I DONE BOUND TO ME, THEY CAME FROM OTHER DUNGEONS THAT GOT WIPED OUT. ONE CAT, THE ENTIRE GUILD GANGED UP ON HIM AT ONCE AND DESTROYED HIS ASS.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“DAMN, YOU REALLY DON’T KNOW THIS SHIT?”
“No.”
“OKAY, CHECK THIS OUT: ACCORDIN’ TO THE GUILD, THERE’S DIFFERENT CLASSIFICATIONS OF DUNGEONS. YOU EITHER DARK OR LIGHT, AND YOU EITHER ORDERLY OR CHAOTIC.”
The pool of water shimmered, and I saw two different dungeons.
One was an underground series of tunnels filled with skeletons in chain mail.
That faded into a picture of an abandoned castle overgrown with vines. Tiny fairies played amongst colorful flowers growing out of the stone walls.
“DARK ‘N LIGHT JUST REFERS TO THE TYPE OF ENERGY YOU USE, THOUGH DARK ENERGY DUNGEONS ARE USUALLY BADASS MOTHAFUCKAS. NONE A’ YA’LL MEATBAGS GOES TO LIGHT DUNGEONS CAUSE THEY BORIN’ AS SHIT, AND AIN’T NO MONEY TO BE MADE LOOKIN’ AT A BUNCHA PIXIES TIPTOEIN’ THROUGH THE TULIPS.”
The pool showed another couple of images. The first was a shot of one of Deek’s central atriums, the empty space where all the wyverns were flying. It was all straight lines and angular planes.
The next image was of a series of tunnels that looped and flowed through the earth, filled with kobolds and ogres armed to the teeth.
“ORDERLY DUNGEONS ARE JUST WHAT THEY SOUND LIKE: ORDERLY. AIN’T NO CRAZY MOTHAFUCKAS IN CHARGE. THERE’S A RHYME AN’ A REASON TO EVERYTHING. GOT A LAYOUT, GOT A PATTERN, EVERYTHING’S COOL. THEN YOU GOT THE CHAOTIC DUNGEONS.”
The water rippled, and suddenly I was looking at something entirely different.
It was like no dungeon I had ever seen before. There was a central pit like a rock quarry that stretched deep into the earth, hundreds of feet down. Holes dotted the slopes like an ant hill in Africa, and creatures crouched at the entrances of the caves. Some fought amongst themselves.
Also, the quarry pit was crumbling. Entire sections gave way in giant avalanches of rock, sending entire groups of creatures scrambling deeper into their holes – if they didn’t tumble to their deaths hundreds of feet below.
But it wasn’t just the pit. There were also grotesque outcroppings circling the ground around the pit – bulbous towers of earth with jagged shards of exposed rock pushing out of their surfaces. The towers were pockmarked with holes that might have been big enough for a human to enter, but just barely. The holes crawled with three-foot-tall spiders and black, tar-like slime molds.
Some of the towers were hundreds of feet tall with tiny land bridges between them – narrow footpaths of stone that looked like everything beneath them had been eroded away by eons of rain and wind.
Except they hadn’t been eroded away. Because the outcroppings were growing.
Some of them slowly pushed their way out of the earth foot by foot. Here and there, dirt exploded and giant slabs of stone erupted 20 or 30 feet into the air.
The overall impression was of a cancerous organism made of soil and stone, slowly growing in 20 directions at once while it collapsed in 15 others.
“CHAOTIC DUNGEONS? WELL, BASICALLY, THEY LOST THEY DAMN MINDS. THEY ALL OVER THE PLACE. NO METHOD TO THE MADNESS – JUST A BUNCHA FUCKED-UP SHIT EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK. SOMETIMES SHIT GETS CRAZY, THE DUNGEON GOES OUT OF CONTROL, AND MEAT BAGS LOSE THEIR CITIES ‘N SHIT.”
The water rippled, and a scene of utter devastation unfolded: a walled town slowly being swallowed as the earth opened up beneath it. Cobblestone streets and stone buildings collapsed into gaping chasms in the ground. Humans ran screaming in all directions as ogres climbed out of the earth with giant clubs, bludgeoning anyone unlucky enough to be within their reach.
“NO MEATBAG IN HIS RIGHT MIND WOULD GO IN A CHAOTIC DUNGEON – UNLESS THEY GOIN’ DOWN TO WHACK THE DUNGEON CORE. WHICH THE GUILD DOES WHENEVER THEY FIND ONE.”
On the water’s surface, a new picture emerged: a dungeon raid. Hundreds of men in black garments – Mages and Priests in robes, Warriors and Paladins in black tabards over their heavy plate armor – surged down into the twisted tunnels of a dungeon, chopping and spellcasting their way through hordes of red-eyed monsters.
Finally a single Warrior emerged into a small, cramped cave, where a black crystal throbbed with radioactive energy. Except it wasn’t a single crystal like Deek or Alaria; it was a conglomeration of tinier crystals jutting out all over the fucking place, covering the floor in a carpet of jagged shards. One larger black crystal jutted up off to the side like a mutation of glass – a hideous, deformed thing that looked like it had grown at random.
The Warrior heaved a massive war hammer above his head and brought it down in a devastating blow. The deformed crystal shattered into a million pieces, and black energy radiated out like an atomic blast of light.
The image cut to black-clad Warriors and Mages cheering as skeletons collapsed into piles of bone.
“SO… YEAH,” Deek said. “I AIN’T SAYIN’ CHAOTIC DUNGEONS AIN’T SOME CRAZY MOTHAFUCKAS, BUT NONE OF ‘EM EVER BOTHERED ME. BUT THE GUILD? THEY CUT DOWN A WHOLE LOTTA THEM POOR BASTARDS.”
I didn’t know if I agreed with the ‘poor bastards’ part, but I didn’t want to get into an argument over the ethics of dungeon extermination.
“I don’t understand, though,” I said. “You let in creatures from a crazy dungeon? Why?”
“SEE, THAT’S THE THING. THE GUILD, THEY SAY THEY ONLY TAKE OUT DANGEROUS DUNGEONS… BUT ACTUALLY, IF A DUNGEON’S JUST A LITTLE WEIRD AN’ DON’T FIT THEIR DEFINITION OF WHAT A DUNGEON SHOULD BE, THEY’LL KILL IT ANYWAY.”
The water showed an underground dungeon that was gorgeous but entirely unlike anything I had ever seen before. Its walls were made of red gem stones that glowed faintly. Its structure was a series of spiraling loops that stretched deep into the ground. It looked sort of like a DNA double helix, but with tunnels instead of twirling strands of genetic material, and with tunnels carpeted with rubies.
“THAT’S WHAT THE GRAND INQUISITORS DO, MAN – THEY THE ONES THAT MAKE THE CALL: KILL ‘EM OR LET ‘EM BE. AND ANYBODY THEY DON’T LIKE OR UNDERSTAND… THEY WASTE ‘EM.”
Tiny pixies fled in terror before a Warrior in a black tabard. The brute walked up to a delicate white crystal – not a single shard like Deek, but a pattern that fanned out beautifully like a lotus flower made of quartz.
I winced in pain as the Warrior shattered it with his broadsword.
“SHIT, THEY EVEN KI
LL BABIES, MAN – DUNGEONS THAT AIN’T EVEN FIGURED OUT WHAT THE FUCK THEY IS YET.”
In another nightmarish scene, a figure in black robes entered a tiny earthen cave like the one I’d found Alaria in. A single black crystal not two inches long jutted out of the soil.
I gasped as the man ground the black crystal into dust beneath the heel of his leather boot.
“MOTHERFUCKERS ARE STRAIGHT-UP STONE-COLD MURDERERS, YO.”
The images faded out, and all that was left was the rippling water of the basin.
I stood there in shock, appalled and horrified by the final images I had seen.
But I also remembered the earthen towers that had surrounded the pit, the gaping sinkholes that had swallowed the entire town, and the ogres that had killed hundreds of people.
“What kind of dungeon are you?” I asked.
“PFFFT, THAT’S JUST MEATBAG BULLSHIT. I MEAN, I AM WHAT I AM, YOU FEEL ME? BUT TECHNICALLY THEY CLASSIFY ME AS AN ORDERLY DARK DUNGEON.”
“Do orderly dungeons ever go chaotic?”
“YEAH, SOMETIMES. THEY CALL ‘EM ROGUES WHEN THEY BEEN NICE AN’ CALM, AND THEN THEY LOSE THEY SHIT.”
I looked hesitantly at Alaria’s tiny crystal propped up against Deek’s larger one. “Uh… no offense, but… you’re going to stay orderly… right?”
“THE FUCK, MAN? YOU SERIOUS?”
“I’m just asking.”
“YOU THINK I WANNA GET SMASHED TO BITS? FUCK NO. I AIN’T GOIN’ ROGUE FOR SHIT. HELL, I DON’T EVEN WANNA KILL NOBODY – I’M BIG ENOUGH, I DON’T NEED NO MORE LIFE FORCE TO MAKE MORE FLOORS. WOULDN’T KILL NOBODY, NEITHER, IF DUMBASS MEATBAG MOTHERFUCKERS DIDN’T KEEP COMIN’ AROUND HERE TRYIN’ TO KILL ME AND MY CREW.”
“What would you do if you could?”
The dungeon core’s voice grew wistful. “MAN, I DREAM ALL THE DAMN TIME ABOUT STARTIN’ OVER… SOMEWHERE WITH A VIEW, MAYBE BY THE OCEAN. LIVIN’ THE SIMPLE LIFE ON THE DOWN-LOW, SO NO DAMN MEATBAGS KNOW WHERE I’M AT. JUST ME AND MY MONSTER HOMIES, CHILLIN’.”
“So you’d retire?”
“YEAH, EXACTLY. I BEEN DOIN’ THIS SHIT FOR 500 YEARS, MAN. I’M TIRED. YOU DO ANYTHING FOR 500 YEARS, YOU READY TO CALL IT A DAY.” Deek’s voice grew bitter. “BUT AS LONG AS MEAT SUIT MOTHERFUCKERS MAKIN’ MONEY OFF ME, AIN’T NO WAY I CAN STOP. THEY GONNA KEEP ON COMIN’, AND I’M GONNA HAVE TO KEEP ON KILLIN’ EM, AND IT AIN’T NEVER GONNA CHANGE. FUCK.”
I could hear the resignation in his voice. I felt bad for him, but my girlfriend was trapped inside of a crystal, and I had three bounty hunters on my ass.
I had troubles of my own.
29
After my lengthy conversation with Deek, I basically just hung out.
I ate some food with Fugly and drank some wine with Stig (who were both still indulging their vices of choice – gluttony and drunkenness).
I also watched Alaria practice.
Deek had finally let her begin manipulating actual things in the real world. First she carved tunnels out of the marble walls and floor. Then she started building things: doorways. Fountains. Trap doors. Pits with spikes in the bottom.
After that, it was on to assembling her minions. She could summon slime molds pretty easily, but anything more complicated than that was dicey, to say the least.
Deek supplied her with a pile of bones, and she was able to string them together into a walking, shambling skeleton – but her initial attempts were kind of, well, bass-ackward. Literally. The first skeleton wound up with his head where his ass should have been. Seconds later he quickly fell apart.
On the second try, Alaria accidentally flipped the legs and the arms so that the skeleton was ambling around on his hands.
“WELL, THAT’S ONE WAY TO DO IT,” Deek chuckled.
- Damn this to Vakaris! Alaria yelled in frustration as the skeleton collapsed back into a pile of bones.
“YOU DOIN’ FINE, GIRL. THIS AIN’T EASY. YOU ALREADY DONE IN TWO HOURS WHAT IT TOOK ME TWO WEEKS TO FIGURE OUT.”
“Yes, Mistress, you are doing wonderfully!” Wylla cheered as she zoomed through the air. “Although, if I might make a suggestion – ”
- No! Alaria barked.
Wylla ignored her. “ – increase the dark energy binding spell by a smidge, and your bone warriors will stay intact even when you turn your attention away from them.”
- Look, you twinkly little bitch –
“ANH, ANH, ANH,” Deek chastised her. “LISTEN TO THE FAIRY. SHE KNOW WHAT SHE TALKIN’ ABOUT. DO IT AGAIN… AND INCREASE THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ DARK ENERGY IN THE BINDIN’ SPELL.”
Alaria grumbled, but she did as she was told. This time the skeleton stayed intact… even if he did have his hands attached to his head like a pair of bony antlers.
“So Wylla’s actually good for something?” I asked Deek in amusement.
“FUCK YEAH, MAN. SHE A DUNGEON FAIRY. SHE KNOWS WHAT’S UP.”
“Dungeon fairies help dungeon cores?”
“YEAH. THEY TEACH ‘EM SHIT WHEN THEY FIRST GET STARTED.”
“You seem a lot more helpful than Wylla.”
“THAT’S CUZ DUNGEON FAIRIES IS LIMITED TO IMPARTIN’ KNOWLEDGE BASED ON HOWEVER POWERFUL THE DUNGEON CORE IS.”
Translation: a Level 1 dungeon fairy helps Level 1 dungeon cores, and can only tell them Level 1 information. Sort of like how a Kindergarten teacher would only teach a five-year-old his ABC’s, not quantum physics.
But Alaria was moving right along. She had progressed to Level 7 (a crazy-fast jump in just a couple of hours), and Wylla had leveled up right along with her.
Deek continued. “BUT ME, I GOT AN EDGE ON A DUNGEON FAIRY. I BEEN AROUND THE BLOCK A FEW TIMES. I KNOW THE SHORTCUTS.”
“Did you start out with a dungeon fairy?”
“OH YEAH, SURE. BEELA’S HER NAME.”
“What happened to her?”
“OH, SHE AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE. SHE BASICALLY RETIRED 300 YEARS AGO. DIDN’T HAVE NOTHIN’ ELSE TO TEACH ME, SO SHE JUST HANGS OUT WITH THE OTHER PIXIES ‘N PUCKS ‘N SHIT UP ON 75.”
Huh. Deek was apparently running an old folks’ retirement home for fairies.
“Do dungeon fairies find you and offer to serve you like the other creatures?”
“NAW, THEY GET BOUND TO YOU WHEN YO’ CORE GETS CREATED.”
“How does a core get created?”
“SHIIIIT, FUCK IF I KNOW. I JUST KIND OF WOKE UP ONE DAY AND BAM! THERE I WAS.”
I remembered back to my conversation with Orlo on the rim of the volcano. “Alaria’s former master supposedly figured out how to create them.”
“WHY WOULD HE WANNA DO THAT?”
The irritation in Deek’s voice gave me pause. “Uh… I think… to make money off of them?”
“WE AIN’T A FUCKIN’ PUPPY MILL,” Deek said angrily. “FUCKIN’ GREEDY MEATBAG MOTHERFUCKER.”
“Well, you’ll be happy to know he’s dead.”
“GOOD. LET’S HOPE THE FUCKER STAYS DEAD.”
That made two of us.
Alaria kept progressing. Deek brought down a mushroom creature and a gremlin and had Alaria bind them to her service. Then Deek killed them (he warned them first), and Alaria resurrected them on the spot.
“GOOD!” Deek crowed as the mushroom and gremlin reappeared in flashes of light.
- I’m tired, Alaria complained. Can Ian come in here and take a break with me?
“NO! YOU TWO’LL JUST END UP FUCKIN’, YOU’LL FORGET EVERYTHING YOU LEARNED, AND I AIN’T GONNA SIT AROUND HERE RE-TEACHIN’ YOU SHIT YOU WOULDA REMEMBERED IF YOU WASN’T BUSY GETTIN’ YOUR BRAINS FUCKED OUT!”
- But –
“NO! EN, OH SPELLS ‘NO,’ MOTHAFUCKA!”
- Can I at least SHOW him what I’ve done? she groused. He DOES have magical powers, you know. He does this stuff all the time.
“YOU COMPARIN’ GOBLIN FRUIT AND DRAGON BERRIES, BITCH.”
“Maybe a break would do her good,” I suggested.
- Please! Alaria said, though she was more demanding
than pleading.
Deek sighed loudly. “FINE – BUT NO FUCKIN’! I DON’T WANT NO DANGLY PARTS GOIN’ IN HOLES, EVEN IMAGINARY ONES!”
“Fine,” I grumbled.
“ALRIGHT… GET ON UP IN THERE, THEN.”
“Tha’s whut she said,” Stig croaked drunkenly from under the table.
“THAT’S WHAT – HAHAHAHA! THAT’S A GOOD ONE!” Deek laughed.
“He learned it from me,” I said.
“YEAH, YEAH. TAKIN’ THE CREDIT AWAY FROM THE IMP.”
“No, seriously, he did.”
“DID YOU COME UP WITH IT FIRST? WERE YOU THE VERY FIRST PERSON TO EVER SAY IT?”
“…no…”
“SO YOU LEARNED IT SOMEWHERE ELSE.”
“Yeah, so?”
“SO QUIT ACTIN’ LIKE YOU ALL WITTY ‘N SHIT AND GET ON UP IN THERE! FIVE MINUTES, ALARIA, THEN WE START AGAIN!”
I touched Alaria’s crystal, and reappeared in a flash of light in a new location.
Wow.
It was quite a bit different from last time.
She had gone from a crude tunnel and rock bedroom to a palace interior, with walls made of red agate. There were all sorts of vaulted ceilings and arches and ornamental filigree everywhere. Frankly, I was blown away.
And the menu controls for her magical powers had increased substantially. All the elements (fire, water, earth, and air) and magical types (dark, light, death, life) were filled in now, and submenus appeared where before there had been none. A dozen icons appeared on her Summoning action bar – slime molds, skeletons, and the mushroom and gremlin.
I was dumbfounded at how much progress she’d made – but Alaria wasn’t interested in showing me around.
As she rushed into my arms and grabbed my crotch, she moaned, “Hurry – just a quickie!”
“NO FUCKIN’! I’M WATCHIN’ THIS TIME!” Deek’s voice boomed out all around us.
“Watch this, then!” Alaria yelled out, and dropped to her knees and began undoing my pants.
“Babe, babe – come on,” I laughed, pulling her up to her feet again. “We promised. Sex can wait.”