“If his tricks involved sawing me in half, yes. Come on; you know our deal. I get to read everything.”
Gulliver sauntered over and tossed his book to me. It hit my gem body and fell on the ground.
“Gull…”
“There was nothing in my agreement about me being your hands. What next? I become your chief itch scratcher? I’m a scribe, not a dungeon core’s work monkey.”
“Wylie,” I said. “Could you please hold the book so I can see it?”
He did so, and I read the scribe’s words.
Pride teases many into a fall, using its wiles on fools and kings alike. Though, to be sure, many fools and kings are one and the same. Pride, too, will lead Core Beno into misfortune. Watch as he makes a chief wait on him for no other reason than because he can. See how pride does him a mischief.
“Pride is doing me a mischief, is it?”
“I don’t mean it as a slap in the face, Beno. But let’s not pussyfoot around sleeping wolves; you are prideful. I have never met a person for whom pride acts like a friend, that’s all. As a scribe, I’ve had to swallow some pretty ugly terms and promises in order to get access to my subjects, and I learned long ago that pride is not an ally, but an enemy wearing your friend’s cap and stockings. Sometimes a person needs to say, ‘be gone, pride!’”
Maybe he was right, but I had already told Warrane what to say. He left my dungeon, and I stared at the hole in the wall and felt my mind wander through the field of glorious possibilities the hole, and the narkleer, represented.
Damn it, they would have to wait.
“Brecht,” I said, casting my words through my dungeon using my core voice. “You’re coming to the surface with me.”
“I’ll come too,” said Gulliver. “I’m seeing more kobolds than beautiful women, lately. The balance is all out of whack.”
“Behave yourself around the clan,” I said.
“You might as well tell a flower to stop looking so pretty, for it is drawing too many bees to it. The clan women love me.”
Soon, I was joined by a kobold holding a giant tambourine. Brech was a level 15 bard, a subclass he earned after eating the distilled essence of a bard hero. Long story.
When ten minutes had elapsed, I pedestal-hopped through my dungeon, teleporting myself from one room to another. I could have just hopped straight to the surface, but if I was heading in this direction anyway, I may as well check on each room in my dungeon at the same time. You know, kill two kittens with one club.
Satisfied my labyrinth was in good shape, I made one final pedestal hop, transporting my core self through the ether, rushing upwards out of my dungeon and to the surface world.
I found myself floating atop a pedestal that I had constructed above ground. Brecht soon joined me. Lacking the ability to pedestal-hop, the kobold bard had transported himself to the surface the old-fashioned way…by walking.
Gulliver followed him, swaggering out of the dungeon and onto the wasteland and stretching his arms out wide.
“Ah, I’ll never tire of this beauty,” he said. “All these rocks. And rocks. And more rocks.”
The land around us was mostly featureless; just a never-ending spread of orange dirt sitting under an orange sky and a burning sun. Few buildings, other than the temporary storage shacks constructed by the Wrotun. Nothing growing from the soil, yet. No trees, no streams. Just a land of nothingness that it was my job to cultivate.
What it lacked in beauty, the wasteland made up for in the number of people swarming over it. Members of the Wrotun and Eternals clans were busy up here, some of them tilling the soil over and over in the hopes they could finally make it useful. Others using the stone Wylie and the others and had mined in my dungeon, and beginning to construct houses from it.
They worked with purpose every single day, sweating into their shirts, toiling until they were tired and even the sun had called an end to its duties. That was something I admired about them. It wouldn’t be true to say I had affection for these people, but I always thought of myself as a hard worker, and I respected it in others. Every person in the Wrotun and Eternal clans labored under a shared dream of making this place livable, of carving out their own empire in the vast spread of wasteland they had claimed.
And why not? Most lands in Xynnar were owned by dukes and lords and earls and barons and every other stupid title nobles give themselves. They had taken it all, leaving nothing for anyone else. But this wasteland, due to its remoteness and dead soil, was left alone, and the clans had seized it. They had ambition, and that was something I couldn’t help but respect.
A few of the workers glanced my way. Some people were still suspicious of me, though most clan members realized that as I was technically their property, I was oath-bound not to hurt them.
Pah.
As I floated there on the surface world, sunlight hit me. It glinted off the edges and angles of my gem body so that I looked like a prop in a party-mage’s bag of tricks.
I could never get used to that; the sight of the sun vomiting its disgusting rays of yellow from the sky. I had no doubt that I probably loved sunlight when I was a man, but now I was a core, and I hated the sun so much that I always prayed for passing clouds to smother it to death.
Gulliver took an iron tin from his satchel, popped it open, and took a swab of cream from it. He spread this over the parts of his pale skin that weren’t covered by his frilly shirt.
“The curse of the nacturn half of my blood,” he said. “The sun doesn’t agree with me.”
“You and me both. The sun can go swivel. So, where’s Chief Reginal, and what the hell does he want from me?” I said.
As I swiveled on my pedestal to find the goblin chief, I heard an explosion.
It echoed through the wasteland, making horses throw off their riders, halting the cultivators who were on their hands and knees working the mud and soil.
Debris sprayed off in different directions, showering the area around with stone, wood, and an assortment of vegetables. The boom drowned out the sounds of anything else. That’s the thing about explosions; they’re loud.
The rain of carrots, potatoes, and parsnips meant the boom had come from the wagons.
“What in all hells?” shouted Gulliver. “We’re under attack!”
“Calm yourself, warscribe. It’s worse than that, actually.”
“How so?”
“Look.”
The Wrotun and Eternal clan merchants had just returned from a week-long journey to the nearest city, so they could trade for food. When the Wrotun people had lived alone in the cavern under the wasteland, they had fed themselves by systematic hunting and poaching of the creatures that lived below ground; moles, rats, mud-badgers.
They supplemented this protein supply by cultivating the rare vegetables that would grow down there. Mostly fungi-based, with a few kinds of carrots and vegetables and potatoes alchemically-treated to grow in darkness.
But now that the Wrotun and Eternals clans had joined together, this diet wasn’t sustainable. There wasn’t enough vermin or soil below ground to support two clans, so they needed to be self-sufficient.
They needed to make the wasteland soil fit for growing things. They had tried all sorts of methods, and purchased seeds of an incredible variety of vegetables and fruits, but even the toughest of plants wouldn’t take here. Reginal had brought in an artificer who claimed he could make any seed grow in any climate, but the only thing he could make was a dent in the clans’ treasury as his expenses mysteriously kept climbing.
And so First-Leaf Galatee had sent for a bog-witch, an old crone said to be able to whisper to the inner workings of plants and change them from the inside. The only thing she changed was Galatee’s attitude toward witches; she would never trust one again for as long as she lived.
They purchased instruction books on farming and cultivation. They paid for seasoned growers to visit the wasteland and help. They tried anything they could, such was their desire to not have to aband
on this land. So far, nothing had worked, but it would. Everyone who lived here kept that belief.
Until then, both clans pooled resources to buy shipments of vegetables and preserves from the towns hundreds of miles away. Enough to last them until they made the wasteland bear fruit.
And now the carts, only recently-returned, had exploded somehow.
“Can vegetables explode?” asked Gulliver. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”
“Moot question. They already have exploded.”
“I once saw a pumpkin that looked almost exactly like Duke Hogarth, you know. You’ve never heard of him? Well, no surprise there, his castle is more like a stables. It was early in my scribeship, you know, the time when the guild sends its young whelps to cover the most mundane of stories.”
“This is much worse than a noble pumpkin. See those carts? A week of travel and a cartful of gold has been wasted on what amounts to pulped turnips and smushed carrots. But that’s not the most terrible part. The explosion came from Core Jahn’s territory, I’m sure of it.”
“Core Jahn…to put this delicately…”
“Are you capable of putting things delicately?” I asked.
“Jahn isn’t like you, is he, Beno?”
“We’re wrought from similar cloth, but his was frayed at the seams. That’s as best as I can put it,” I said. “This could be a disaster. The Eternal and Wrotun clan chiefs already have faces like slapped arses when it comes to Jahn. He’s been given more last chances than a…than a guy who keeps being given last chances.”
“You didn’t tell me you were also a wordsmith, Beno.”
“Reginal and Galatee are going to have a fit when they see this.”
“You’re worried about your friend? Cores have a sensitive side that I didn’t expect.”
“I need to help my buddy out,” I said.
Damn it. As if being summoned to the surface wasn’t bad enough already. For a dungeon core, being in the open surface air was like a shark taking a beach holiday.
By now, the surface workers had stopped what they were doing and had gathered around the explosion site, picking through the remnants of their vegetables.
The workers included cultivators, whose job was to use alchemically-enhanced fertilizer to make the barren mud around them capable of supporting growth. The workers also included forgers and scourges and hunters and scouts, whose jobs were to comb the wasteland for miles and find anything that could help the clan, like signs of foliage and old streams that had dried up but might still have a source hidden somewhere.
Even from a hundred feet away, I could see the tension built up in their shoulders as they edged around the blast site and tried to see what had happened. I could almost feel their panic as they picked through the pulped preserves that should have kept them fed for months.
A square patch of ground near the workers rose upwards, before transforming into a door as the illusion cast on it faded.
“Ho,” said Gulliver. “The honorable leaders emerge like worms crawling from the ground to drink rain.”
From this door cut into the ground, emerged a party of goblins, orcs, griffins, and dwarves, led by the stern figures of First-Leaf Galatee and Chief Reginal.
This wasn’t good for Core Jahn. My friend, my old Dungeon Core Academy classmate, was in deep trouble.
I focused on a pedestal point near the blast. With a mental blink, I transported myself through the ether, arriving a half-mile across the wasteland near the blast site.
There, sitting atop a pedestal created by Core Jahn, I was still no wiser as to what had happened. There was a great sinkhole, and peering down I spotted Core Jahn’s dungeon twenty feet below ground.
Nestled amongst a mess of mud and rubble were the smashed remains of the clans’ wagons, though calling them wagons now was being kind. When you take a wagon and smash the carriage, storage area, wheels, and driver’s seat to pieces, it is hardly a carriage anymore, is it?
Like when a hero succumbs to one of my delightful dungeon traps and gets stabbed, disemboweled, and decapitated; you’d hardly call the mess of blood and bones a man anymore, would you?
Gulliver followed me with his usual swagger, puffing up his cheeks and making sure his shirt frills were perfect as he walked.
“Some warning would be nice, when you’re about to hop from your pedestals. Some of us have to walk.”
“Jahn?” I said, shouting down into the dungeon.
Up on the surface, the Wrotun and Eternals workers were foraging through the ruined vegetables, scavenging any edible ones and rubbing the dirt off them. Others were talking in that strange high-pitched way people do when they’re really, really worried.
First-Leaf Galatee and Chief Reginal approached them, followed by a gathering of clan members who had been in the main cavern below ground.
Galatee was a person you had to watch for. She had a kind smile and twinkling eyes much of the time, but displease her and those lips would purse and her twinkling would become a cold glare. She looked much younger than she really was; though she was reluctant to give out her real age, I had worked out that she was at least ninety years old. Yet, constant bathing in mana spring water had kept her looking sprightly.
Lately, the clan had seen much more of the glaring version Galatee’s eyes than the twinkling. She was a new ruler, and she was still getting used to the pressures of it; of trying to lead her people while getting them to live peacefully alongside the Eternal clan, who had been their enemy until recently.
Chief Reginal, on the other hand, displayed his true age proudly and wore his leadership like it was a snug wool cardigan knitted by his grandmother. He was tall by goblin standards, and though he was well muscled, his biceps and triceps and all his other ceps were losing definition as he got older. His skin, the parts uncovered by chief robes and battle armor, showed scars from a long life of combat, and his belly showed signs of swelling from his recent spell of non-combat.
Galatee stared at the workers around her for a few seconds, before speaking.
“The fact that I need to ask one of you to explain what has happened worries me,” she said.
The Wrotun and Eternal workers looked at each other, at the ground, up at the sky.
Chief Reginal’s green skin looked like it was slowly turning the color of beetroot as anger built up inside him. A little like the pulped beetroot on the ground near him, actually.
“If one of you doesn’t grow some balls and explain this right now, I swear on the name of the Divine Nine that I will issue so many whippings that Whipmaster Poppleton’s whip will wear down to a little nub.”
“An explosion,” said Gulliver. “A bloody great explosion like the wrath of an angered god. Dirt flying in the air like so many fairies, waltzing amidst a spread of pulped carrot, potatoes, cauliflowers. A boom like a volcano born in a time long passed…”
“Someone explain it in simple speak, please,” said Reginal.
“Simple speech,” corrected Gulliver.
Reginal glared at the scribe. “You better be true to your word, scribe. Because when I look at you, I get the strange urge to club something into pieces so tiny that an ant couldn’t see them.”
Gulliver shrugged. “As I said, esteemed chief Reginal, ruler of this vast plain of nothing, my words will reach the right eyes. News of your settlement will spread, and with the right embellishment, I can attract traders here, have no fear.”
“I want to see a copy of everything you write,” said Galatee.
“I’d like a king-sized bed and a king’s daughter waiting for me in it,” said Gulliver, “But fate isn’t always looking in our direction.”
“Gull…” I warned.
A goblin stepped out of the crowd behind the two leaders. This goblin looked as goblins should; short, green, with a hunched back and pointed ears. Like the product of an unholy union between an ape and a frog.
“Remember your heart, chief,” the goblin whispered to Reginal. Nobody would have heard that c
learly but me; as a core, I have enhanced hearing and sight, especially underground. Even above ground, my senses were magnified compared to most people.
“I’m hardly likely to forget my heart, am I?” answered Reginal.
The older goblin, whose name was Dandie or Handie or Tandie, I didn’t care enough to remember which, looked at Chief Reginal with the patience of a goblin who had the same conversation several times a day.
“You are getting displeased, and anger follows displeasure like a lamb following an ewe. Remember when our cavers dug the wrong tunnel last week? I would hate to see the veins on your temple pop out so much again. It would not look great for you to become sick, not in front of everyone.”
“Nonsense,” whispered Reginal. “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. Fetch me a sword and something that needs stabbing and you’ll see.”
“You have fought too much, for too long. Now that you don’t need to fight anymore, it seems your old battles are catching up to you. The further you run from them, the more exhausted you will get. Relax, Chief. Let them catch up to you gently, and greet them as friends and then stroll beside them. Let your body rest.”
“What in all hells are you two whispering about?” said Galatee. “Reginal, it appears your tunnelers have put us knee-deep in shit.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the great hole in the ground, and the carts and foodstuffs buried in the debris way below.
“My tunnelers?” said Reginal, his temple veins twitching. “How do you know that my workers caused this, you…you…”
As Chief Reginal searched for a suitable insult for First-Leaf Galatee, Handie-Tanie-Dandie the goblin raised him an eyebrow at him.
I decided I would ease the Chief’s stress. “Shriveled-up old raisin husk?” I offered.
“You shriveled up old husk of raisin,” said Reginal.
Galatee glared at the goblin chief for a second, before the ghost of a smile haunted her lips, and then disappeared.
“See that smile? That look? The chiefs are getting on very well behind closed doors, so I hear,” whispered Gulliver, while nudging me with his elbow and giving me a saucy grin.
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