A raven whizzed by Gulliver’s head now, making the scribe flinch.
“Bugger off!” he shouted, swatting the air with his hat.
Another flew at him from his right, and before he could react it had ripped a silver button from his coat.
The raven, with the button in its beak, flew overhead now.
“Shiny thing! Got shiny thing!” it bragged.
The other ravens looked on with jealousy, and soon they were lined up in the air near Gulliver, waiting to get their own shiny things from his coat.
“Cut it out,” I told them.
“That’s coming out of your share of the book profits,” said Gulliver.
“There will have to be some profits first.”
He fingered the broken thread that had once fastened his coat button. He looked genuinely saddened by the state of it.
“Doesn’t Shadow have her hands full, even without a band of thieving birds sky rats to worry about?” he said.
“You mean the puppies?”
“Aye. Cute little buggers.”
A few days earlier, after I had started my monster melding room on its task, Shadow had come back from a surface scouting trip with five little mongrels in tow. Small things with big paws and wide eyes, who proceeding to cock their legs on my core room walls.
“Found them up top,” she told me. “Caged and alone.”
I tried to think of an instance where a dungeon had become a puppy sanctuary, but nothing came to mind.
“Get rid of them,” I said.
“Beno, you are thinking with just your evil side as usual. Consider practicalities. Puppies can be trained. They have noses and teeth. What better than a pack of whelps, brought up in the dungeon? They will come to think of it as their territory and will defend it.”
I considered it, and she had a point. I had to admit, watching the pups play wrestle with one another, that they had a certain cuteness. I would never have said this though, because such a word is banned from a core’s vocabulary.
“Fine. But I want them raised as killers. Big, hulking beasts of fur and teeth who will rip and bite and tear.”
Just then, one pup approached me and licked me, leaving a trail of dog spit on my gem body.
Shadow smiled for the first time since the escapade with the werewolves, and then left me. Her puppies, seemingly bonded to the kobold already, followed.
That was how, not long after slaughtering the last band of heroes, my dungeon became the home to a wandering duck, who was fascinated with my traps, and five pooches.
Now, standing in the arena with Gulliver and watching the ravens play a game where they passed their new shiny thing from one bird to another using their beaks, I began to feel a core’s version of anxiety, where a flood of information and problems and possibilities flooded my mind.
Gulliver was standing in the center of the arena, trying to catch the ravens as they flew overhead and made jeering squawks, keeping his button out of reach.
The scribe jumped and tried to catch one bird, but missed and lost balance, landing on his rump.
“Just leave them,” I said. “They stole a silver coin from Wylie’s pocket, and he spent five hours trying to get it back. They’re like children; if you ignore them, they’ll get bored with their shiny thing.”
The scribe reluctantly left them and joined me. “You seem tense, Beno.”
“Tense? No, Gull. A core does not get tense. I am a little edgy, perhaps.”
“They are synonyms.”
“And scribes are annoying. I have good reason to be a little uptight.”
“Ah. Today’s the day.”
I thought about the hole in the wall in the southeast of my dungeon, and the narkleer and the other things that might wait beyond it.
“Yes, today is most certainly the day.”
Then, as a raven dropped the button and Gulliver scampered over to collect it only for another raven to beat him to it, a notification appeared in my inner core.
Monster melding complete.
Gulliver shook his fist in the air. “I’ll have you, you winged vermin! I’ll put you in a pie and feed it to a thousand cats!”
CHAPTER 23
For a core, waiting to see what kind of monster your melding room has created is like Year’s End for children, where they unwrap their presents brought to them by the Year’s End Golem. So, it was with a mix of curiosity and trepidation that I traveled to my melding room.
I couldn’t stop the questions swirling in my head. What would I find waiting for me, having mixed a mimic with two leeches?
A tiny little mimic who was only able to imitate slug-like creatures?
A leech who lacked the mimic’s ability to imitate, but inherited its ability to grow its form in defiance of science? I hoped not. The last thing I needed was a continuously-expanding leech whose growth couldn’t be checked. At least one core had died that way, I was sure of it.
Appearing on my pedestal in the melding room, I shut off my core vision and core hearing for a second. There, in darkness and silence, I told myself a few things.
Whatever the result here, I will put the boss monster to good use.
It isn’t the monster, but what you do with it.
Leeches are quite friendly when you get to know them.
And then I allowed my vision and hearing to return.
“Hello,” I said. “I am Core Beno. I go by many names: Dark Lord, Dark Magnificence, His Splendorous Maleficence, the Diabolical Diamanté. And what may I call you?”
“It has no name,” came the answer.
The voice was spoken by a creature on the floor in front of me. It was the size of a loaf of bread, shaped like an overgrown leech and with a hideous hole on its head, this filled with half a dozen spirals of jagged teeth. It’s leech-like appearance ended there, because this splodge of goo was transparent, with not a shred of color anywhere across its body.
“I can see the mimic and the leech part of you,” I said. “Very…fetching. But every creature in my dungeon must have a name.”
“It will take a name if it is offered, but it has no name of its own. It is a mimic, and as such must not own an identity.”
Poor little thing. Everything deserved a name, even disgusting blobs of leech-shaped mimic clay. And really, as loathsome as it was in appearance, I found it fascinating.
“I will call you Dolos,” I said.
“It will accept its name.”
“Don’t you want to know what it means?”
“Meaning will add to its identity, and a stronger identity will weaken its mimicry.”
“Fair point. It’s time to see what you can do.” I spoke across my dungeon now. “Maginhart, can you come here, please?”
“Yesss, Dark Lord,” came the reply.
Now, I knew that mimics could only imitate forms they had already seen. Dolos had only just been born, so he hadn’t seen much.
Note to self: Don’t associate leech-shaped blobs with normal birth. Disgusting image.
As such, I would need to supply new experiences for Dolos to mimic, and that was where Maginhart came in. And there was a reason it had to be Maginhart, and not anyone else.
Maginhart the kobold arrived shortly after. His lizard nails scratched on the stone floor, and his tongue hung from his lips and gave a gentle rattling sound when he breathed.
I quickly brought Maginhart’s information to mind.
Race: Kobold
Class: Miner
Level: 22
Weapon proficiency: Crossbow
Special Relationships:
Cynthia [Tinker]: Warm acquaintance
Maginhart had begun dungeon life as a miner, though he had done little mining for me lately and instead had drifted into the role of dungeon-surface go-between, getting whatever items I needed from the clans. This meant he had seen more of the surface clans than anyone else, and that was important for my mimic.
It was probably time for a new specialization if he wasn’t going t
o do any more mining, but that would have to wait. For now, I needed Maginhart’s memory, not his skills.
I just hoped this worked. I had taken the boss monster combination of a mimic and two leeches from a book I had read in the Dungeon Core Academy. This was an obscure one chronicling the life of a core named Tayla. I had used the same mix of monsters like her, but there was no guarantee that things had worked the same way. There was an element of unpredictability when using the melding room, after all.
“Now,” I said. “I don’t want you to worry, Maginhart, but this might hurt.”
“The promissse of pain and a requessst not to worry do not go hand in hand.”
“You’re too clever by half, Maginhart. Wylie wouldn’t have moaned at all. This won’t hurt much, I promise. Okay, just a little. Be brave, okay?”
“I sssupossse, Dark Lord…”
“Dolos; use your talents on Maginhart.”
Instead of just transforming into the kobold, Dolos slithered over to him. I had expected his leech-like body to squelch across the ground, but he was silent. Come to think of it, he didn’t have any sort of smell to him, either. It was as though, in his natural mimic form, Dolos barely existed when it came to any of the senses.
When it was beside Maginhart’s leg, Dolos latched onto the kobold’s ankle.
“Ow!” Maginhart hopped and tried to shake it off, but Dolos held firm.
“Just calm down, you big baby,” I said. “I can’t hurt that much.”
“It’sss taking my blood!”
“Don’t be silly, it’s nothing as hideous as that. It’s taking your memories.”
It is well known that in Xynnar there are alchemist sorcerers who, when given a drop of blood, can work their spells and tell you who the blood came from, why they spilled it, and can even use it to control the poor sap. And how do they do that?
Using magic and leeches, obviously.
Dungeon leeches differ greatly from regular swamp kinds, and added to that, a monster melding room can lend unexpected bounties to anything it blends. This was what I had banked on, and now I was incredibly grateful for all the hours I had spent alone in the academy library, while the rest of the cores were larking about. If I hadn’t, I would never have learned of core Tayla and her boss monster.
Dolos sucked on Maginhart’s ankle, draining not blood but memories. Its skin began to take on colors, which gradually transformed into images flashing inside its body one after another.
Within the leech’s skin, faces appeared. First Cynthia the tinker. Then Chief Reginal. Clansmen and women who I had barely met. Dozens of them flashed inside the creature, forming one after another until it was hard to keep up with them all.
After the faces came a medley of pictures. I saw carts, vegetables, shirts, spades, anything Maginhart had ever seen while on the surface.
Dolos grew bigger, his body bulging at the seams as though ready to burst.
Maginhart stared at it wide-eyed, clearly too surprised to utter even a single word.
“That’s enough, Dolos,” I said.
The mimic-leech unlatched from his ankle. Maginhart stepped away, then rubbed his sore skin. There were a series of teeth marks left on him, though it could barely be called a wound and would have no lasting effects.
“Step outside the room a second, please,” I told Maginhart.
The kobold looked at me with hurt in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Maginhart, but you wouldn’t have agreed to let a leech bite you if I’d told you that was going to happen. I know for a fact it doesn’t hurt much.”
Maginhart traipsed out of the room while muttering to himself, leaving Dolos and me alone.
“Let’s see…” I said. “Dolos, can you turn into Cynthia the tinker, please?”
Dolos’s body transformed now. Expanding, twisting, bulging, taking on color and height, stretching upwards and outwards until a person was standing before me.
She was a five-feet tall ratbrid with cunning eyes and a snout adorned with not just whiskers, but a pair of tinker’s goggles. She wore a leather chest piece designed not for combat but to spare her from the occupational hazards of a tinker, who dealt with all kinds of chemicals.
I had met Cynthia twice, and had I not created Dolos myself, I would have sworn this was our third meeting. The imitation was outstanding in all ways but one; this version of Cynthia the tinker smelled like a garbage pile in the Underworld.
Though I hadn’t expected the stench, it didn’t surprise me. All mimics had a tell; something about them that betrayed what they were. For some, it would be some kind of physical defect in their imitation. For Dolos, it seemed, the smell was his giveaway. I’d have to bear that in mind.
“Maginhart,” I called. “Come back in, please.”
Maginhart entered the room, having procured a bandage for his ankle from somewhere, which was surprising since I don’t keep bandages in my dungeon. When he entered the melding room, he stopped. His eyes lit like fireworks.
“Cynthia!” he called.
He rushed over to his tinker friend, only to stop and cough. “Cynthia…a sssmell lurks around you. I am sssory, the dungeon isss not a nice place for you.”
“That’s not the smell of my dungeon, you cheeky lizard,” I said. “It’s the mimic.”
“Dolosss?”
“The same. Dolos, transform back, please.”
My boss monster did as commanded. As Cynthia the tinker disappeared and gradually resumed the form of a transparent leech, Maginhart fainted.
“Karson, Tarius,” I called out. “Come and help your friend. Be nice to him, he’s had quite a day. Some bloody cruel person made a leech bite him.”
Fainting kobolds aside, I was pleased. Dolos was going to come in very useful to me. In fact, I already had a way to improve him.
And not only that. Perhaps there was a way to earn my freedom that didn’t involve the narkleer. I would still need the creature for my dungeon, but if I could earn my sovereignty back from Galatee without causing harm…
I needed to think of a plan. One of many, it seemed. I needed a plan for everything these days. Luckily, I had plenty of things to experiment with.”
“Wylie,” I said. “Come here, please. And bring the werewolf essence dust. I need to see what happens when you give it to a mimic.”
CHAPTER 24
The morning after I had met my new mimic boss monster, I gathered my clanmates in the south-east section of the dungeon. The hole that led into the dungeon next door was in the corner of my vision, tempting me, drawing me in. I ignored it until I finished my briefing.
Much like in our celebratory loot room meeting, it was a full house today. Not every dungeon creature would play a part in the conquest to come, but they all needed to know the script.
I had explained my plan to my clanmates over and over while Gulliver watched from a corner of the room, scribbling notes in his book. His experience as a warscribe had taught him there were times when his quips and morsels of advice were best left unspoken, and he’d said nothing as I explained our plan.
“You’re all absolutely sure about your roles in this?” I said.
“Yes,” sighed Shadow, with five puppies by her feet and four ravens resting on her shoulders. “We understand. We understood the fourth time, the fifth, and surprisingly, we understand after a dozen times.”
“Sorry if I’m a little on edge. This is just an important moment for our dungeon. I’m almost certain the narkleer is guarding a core, and if we can defeat him, we’ll be welcoming an incredibly powerful monster into our brood.”
“About that,” said Gary, resting a big, leechy leg on Tomlin who stood beside him. “I have been asked to speak up, if you will permit me, my dear gem. There is some concern over what happens when we are successful.”
“We’ll have a party,” I said.
“And we will also have a narkleer in our lair. After what happened to poor Dylan, and the things Wylie and Tarius and Karson told us all about the narkle
er shooting deathly energy from its eyes…”
“It doesn’t shoot deathly energy from its eyes,” I sighed. “How ridiculous! No, it emits deadly energy from its whole body, in a certain radius. It can’t control it, and it certainly doesn’t shoot it.”
“That is a little more reassuring.”
“Good. Because the only thing the narkleer can do with its eyes is cause instantaneous insanity.”
The creatures all began to whisper among each other now.
“Enough!” I boomed. “For one, the narkleer is forced to patrol its passageways in a set route, and we’ve timed our attack so that it will be far away. Furthermore, when the narkleer joins our dungeon, you will be safe. Wylie and his crew have excavated a chamber and maze of tunnels for the narkleer, and we have lined it with steel to make sure its energy is contained. All you will have to do, and we’re thinking ahead here, is divert hero parties to that part of the dungeon. The narkleer will make your job easier.”
“Why do we even need a narkleer?” asked Shadow.
“Why do we need one of the most fearsome creatures known in Xynnar to patrol our dungeon, a place where I am tasked with killing heroes? I won’t dignify that with an answer. And when Kainhelm arrives, I don’t want any of these questions. He might emit deathly energy and cause insanity with a mere stare, but you are to treat him with friendship and respect. Got it?”
A few weak replies of “Yes, Dark Lord,” came back. Not a great response, but I didn’t have time to rebuke them.
“Onto the task at hand. Next to us, we have a series of passageways patrolled by a narkleer. It is more than likely a dungeon, which means there is a core. After spending however long alone, he probably went into a kind of hibernation. This means that although his lair will be trapped, his reactions will be sluggish. This calls for stealth over brawn, so I will not be sending a horde of you into the breach. The only brawn I will take is Gary, who should be enough. Shadow, you and Edgar and the ravens will scout ahead. I want all the information fed back to the others.”
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