She wouldn’t get to go to the Caves of Prophesy. She wouldn’t get to smash her own tablet, to receive her own calling. The school had taken it away from her just because she wanted to help her friend. She understood their rules, yes, but expelling her? Changing her entire future just like that?
They weren’t going to get away with it. She wouldn’t be denied her destiny.
Two weeks later, Anna and Utta loitered near the Caves of Prophesy and waited for the right target.
“Are you sure about this, Anna?” said Utta.
“If they won’t let me go and claim my task as a Chosen One, then I’ll just have to take it for myself.”
“But this don’t seem right.”
“Neither does kicking us out just because I didn’t want to see you in pain. Now hush…someone’s coming!”
And there he was. A Chosen One leaving the Caves of Prophesy with a tablet in his hands.
“Now,” hissed Anna.
She cast a grey blanket in the boy’s mind. A deep, unsettling grey like the heart of a storm cloud. On it, she wove the faces of demons dredged from the boy’s worst nightmares, snarling ones with eyes that had no color.
He stopped walking. He began shaking. Completely unable to stop the fear growing in his mind, he wet himself.
Utta used his own power. He raised his hands and sucked just a little bit of the wind from the air, concentrated it, and threw it at the boy so hard that the slap of wind on his skin was deafening.
Anna hobbled forward, her ruined leg aching. Just before she could grab the tablet, her legs gave way, and she fell to the ground and tried desperately not to betray the inhuman pain ripping through her limb.
Utta put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her while she bore out the pain.
“It’s okay,” he soothed. “It’s okay.”
And like the tide retreating from the beach, the pain went. “Thanks, Utta.”
“Here,” he said, handing her the tablet.
She and read it, claiming the destiny for herself.
“What does it say?” asked Utta.
Anna shrugged. “Boooring. It says, ‘To prove thy worth, thou must destroy the core of a dungeon.’”
The violence they inflicted upon a Chosen One student meant that Anna and Utta weren’t popular in the lands surrounding the school. In fact, after unsuccessfully hunting them, the school made sure to spread the word of their deeds far and wide. Not many people would have cared, ordinarily, since the tribulations of a pair of Chosen Ones meant nothing to a farmer tilling his crops or a miner slaving underground. But the 500 gold for their capture opened a lot of eyes.
Eventually, Anna and Utta made their way west, where they came to a place named Blackheart Docks, named after the famed pirate Bob Blackheart, whose heart, a healer’s autopsy later revealed, was actually reddish pink. There, they found work with a ship crew who had no fixed destination and very few objectives. That suited Anna and Utta just fine.
“We jus’ sail coast to coast, so we do,” said the ship’s captain. “Raidin’ little seaports as we see fit. Boarding fishing vessels. Sinking frigates. Making a real nice nuisance of ourselves and earning gold to boot. Only, the sea’s getting hot. Not temperature-wise, y’see, but we done raided the same places too many times, and my ship could use a bit of love. A bit of repair work. So, lass, we’re going to moor up in a nice little grotto that I know and do some land piratin’ for a while.”
“I don’t know about this, Anna,” said Utta.
“Sounds fine and dandy to me, me old salty sea dog,” said Anna, sticking out her hand.
The captain scratched his beard. “We don’ really call each other salty sea dogs round ‘ere. Sort of a nasty thing to say. Might hurt a few feelings.”
“Got it.”
“Then welcome aboard, lass. I’m Captain Endliver Pickering, and you’re delighted to meet me.”
CHAPTER 2
“And so you see, my fine chiefs and my esteemed core, the weather can be yours to control. Think of that! Wielding the power of a god, becoming masters of a deital force. Summoning rain when you need water. Wind when you require a breeze. A power no mortal should hold…yet it can be yours for the low price of six thousand gold!”
As I watched the weathermage finish his presentation and wait for a response from us, it was hard to know what to tell him. Not just because the whole thing was absurd, but because he was our last petitioner of the day, and we were all tired.
Thus far, we had solved construction funding issues, intervened in two gnomes bickering over shop boundaries, and even had a man try to get us to grant him permission to take more than one wife, despite both his current and potential wife being against such an agreement. When I had bargained for a seat in the Yondersun chief meetings, I hadn’t expected this level of tedium. At least the weathermage was somewhat interesting.
Chief Reginal, Chief Galatee, and I gave time to each petitioner in a meeting room in one of the lodges in Yondersun. Until recently the room had been windowless thanks to the chiefs’ obsession with eavesdroppers, but things were much more stable in the town now, and they had installed a window and had allowed townsfolk to come here to make requests.
With its new window, the room looked out onto the Clasped Hands, a stone statue memorial commissioned to mark the end of the Wrotun and Eternal clans’ war and the founding of Yondersun town. Nearby, a construction core named Jahn was directing his workforce in his latest – and most anticipated among the townsfolk – project: a tavern with four separate levels.
The streets outside thrummed with activity, and there seemed to be more and more merchants, travelers, and craftsmen passing through the town gates every day. The main strip of shops – named Jahn’s Row – had become so packed that a second thoroughfare called Galatee Avenue had been created. It was surely only a matter of time before Beno Crescent was constructed.
“Well?” said the weathermage. “I am open to your inquiries.”
“No, not a chance, not interested,” said Chief Reginal, and then crossed his arms.
“I have a few questions,” said Chief Galatee, tapping a piece of paper covered in her handwriting.
Reginal leaned close. “Galatee, my love, we discussed overruling me in public.”
“Yes, darling,” she whispered back, “But I cannot just let you have your own way. Married or not, we are both chiefs.”
“You are my wife, woman!” Reginal hissed. “You will do-”
Galatee fixed him a stare that would have cracked a diamond. Reginal furrowed his brow and swept his hand dismissively. “Ask your bloody questions.”
“Now, mage,” said Galatee. “If I understood you correctly, you are offering to alter the weather for us.”
The mage, who wore robes covered in colored suns, clouds, and lightning bolts, clasped his hands together. “I cannot alter it permanently, you understand. I am offering to manipulate it on a use-by-use basis.”
“And it is 6000 gold each time? If we want you to summon a rain cloud, that would be 6000?”
“Correct.”
“Rather pricey.”
“Madam chief…”
“Just chief, thank you.”
“Chief, you must be all too aware of the difficulties of growing crops in the wasteland. Staring at the sky, praying for rain that might be years in coming. Seeing crops fail because the sky is being selfish.”
“We buy a special alchemical fertilizer. We don’t need rain.”
The weathermage didn’t miss a beat. “Ah, but need and want are two different things, no? I don’t need to buy a new set of robes every time I pass a mage tailor shop…yet I want to. You say you don’t need rain. Fine. But do you want it? Forgive my presumption, but I say yes! A few spots of rain could boost your harvests four, perhaps five times. A worthy investment.”
“And how is this done?” I asked. “Even magic needs fuel.”
“I should have known the core would have such insight! What a delightfully intel
ligent being you are. To use my spells, I simply make a humble prayer to the gods of the sky and ask that they bestow their blessings upon us.”
“Absolute crap. You’re a mage. You deal with certainties, not prayers. What’s your method?”
The weathermage clicked his fingers, and three boxes appeared on the table. He tapped one. “I left this box in the Vainvine rainforest for a month. It absorbed a storm that would drench this entire wasteland and turn it into a bog.”
He tapped another box. “This one I left in the flashing valleys, where it absorbed lightning strikes that would make the god of thunder tremble.”
He tapped the final box. “And this is-”
“We get your point,” said Reginal. “But after my wife…my co-chief’s…all-so-pertinent questions, mage, I think the answer is still the same. We cannot afford to spend so much gold on playing with the bloody weather.”
The mage looked at Galatee, who nodded. “I am afraid that I agree.”
“Afraid? Is agreeing with me such a bad thing that it should scare you?” asked Reginal.
“Now now, chiefs,” I said. “We spoke about you bringing your bickering into the meeting room.”
“Ah, core. Ever the voice of reason,” declared the mage. “What say you?”
I saw no reason to lie. “Something smells wrong here. You tell me that you source your spells by having these boxes absorb the weather. I presume you have to use mana, as well, but it’s beside the point. There’s another cost that you aren’t telling us. There’s something wrong with this. I am with the chiefs on the matter.”
The weathermage stared at his final box for a few moments. His eyes narrowed and the creases around them looked more pronounced, like cracks in the wasteland soil.
He smiled. “Very well. I wish you good fortune and clear skies. I pray that no elemental accidents befall you.”
After the mage collected his boxes and left, Reginal sighed. “Is that the last presentation for today? Good. I’m sick to my arse of hearing people waffle. Now, let’s discuss the rest of our business and leave this stuffy tomb of a room.”
“Okay, Beno,” said Galatee, consulting her list. “The first thing to discuss is…”
On and on the meeting went, until the chiefs finally broached a topic that didn’t make me want to doze off.
“This is a good thing, Beno! A visit from a duke? Can’t you see the benefits? Why are you so persistently negative?” said Galatee.
“Realistic is a better name for it,” I said.
“I understand that, being a dungeon core, you are predisposed to weighing the dangers of any enterprise and trying to spot potential traps,” said Reginal who, since his wedding to Galatee, had been in a better mood than ever. “But sometimes there is no trickery.”
“This would be a boon for Yondersun,” said Galatee.
“Here’s what I think,” I said.
“Oh yes. Enlighten us.”
“Duke Smit owns the closest fort town to Yondersun, and he has written to us declaring that he wants to visit. One way of viewing this would be as you said, Galatee - for us to think that it’s a good thing.”
“It is a sign that Yondersun is a settlement worth recognizing.”
“The duke isn’t going to stroll across Jahn’s Row, pop into a few shops, and then compliment us on what a nice place we have. No nobleman worth his gold shifts their noble rump from their noble thrones without good reason. Think about this; right now, Yondersun comes under no vassal and swears fealty to no duke, no lord, or any other kind of silver-spooned nitwit.”
“You think the duke will want us to ally ourselves with him?”
“He’ll make an offer that sounds generous. Then, he’ll arrive with a hundred or so troops and offer to leave them here for our protection...if we merely swear that Yondersun now comes under the Smit banner. But whether we swear or not, the troops will not leave. The only difference our agreement makes is what the troops do while they are here.”
“You seem to know a lot about the inner workings of nobility, Beno.”
“I enjoy reading court intrigue novels.”
“Ah, so we are to consult the realms of fantasy when we make decisions. And no doubt half your information comes from your bloody scribe friend?”
“Gulliver is in Hogsfeate. I haven’t seen him since Sir Dullbright appointed him head of public communications.”
“Assuming you are right, Beno, what do you suggest we do? The way the duke has worded his intention to visit doesn’t make it sound like a request, but a statement. Using polite language, of course,” said Reginal.
“And by the time he arrives with his troops, we will already be in trouble,” added Galatee.
“It’s a problem.”
Reginal raised his fist and pounded the table. “I say we send our people out and forcibly turn the pompous prat away!” he said. “And before you rebuke me about hitting the table, Beno, just remember that this is my table, not yours, and I will hit it as much as I want!”
Galatee placed her hand on Reginal’s and stroked his fingers. “Calm down, darling. Your healer said you mustn’t get worked up. Your heart, remember?”
I sighed. “We have discussed this. You might be married, but I don’t want to see evidence of it in our meetings.”
“Might I remind you that we are the chiefs, and this is our meeting room?”
“Might I remind you that although there is no evidence of it happening, there’s also no conclusive proof that cores are unable to vomit?”
Galatee withdrew her hand. “Fine. Now, darli…Chief Reginal, you know I admire your desire for combat and your strong-armed approach to solving problems, but we do not have anything close to the force needed to defeat a duke who owns a fort and an army. Unless Beno and his dungeon creatures help, of course?”
“I don’t recommend that,” I said. “Even if we managed to scrape the bottom of the barrel and come up with an army as big as Duke Smit’s, it wouldn’t help. Dukes often have friends. Some dukes have lesser nobles who are sworn to serve them, other dukes have masters who own even bigger armies. Those masters might view us thrashing their duke’s arse as a slight on their pride. We’d be signing our own death warrants.”
“Then what do we do? The duke is setting off tomorrow!”
“Let’s approach this logically. Now, we know that…”
A voice spoke in my core, distracting me mid-thought.
“Core Beno?”
“Just a second,” I told the chiefs.
“Beno, you wanted a seat in our meetings. The least you can do is to-”
Amidst the protests that our meeting wasn’t done yet, I floated out of the meeting alcove and into an empty room in the lodge.
CHAPTER 3
“Core Beno?”
The voice came from my mimic, who was currently across the wasteland in a town called Hogsfeate. For the last two months he had intermittently been mimicking the appearance of Sir Dullbright, the man who used to be the town’s mayor. The Hogsfeate townsfolk and influentials had no idea, of course, that I had sent my kobold rogue, Shadow, to assassinate the mayor and ordered my mimic to take his place, giving me effective control of the whole settlement.
I brought my mimic’s core information to mind.
Morphant
Race: Mimic
Level: 14
Mimic Proficiencies:
Sir Dullbright - Moderate
Good. Morphant had made excellent progress over the last couple of months, and he’d only get better the longer he spent pretending to be Sir Dullbright. The better he was, the longer he could stay in his mimicked form at one time, and the weaker his ‘tell’ would be. That was the thing about mimics; each of them had a tell, a giveaway that they were a copy of something and not the real thing. Morphant’s tell was quite common.
“Everything alright?” I said. I used my core voice which, coupled with the mimic possessing a few shavings from my core, allowed me to speak to him from all the way across t
he wasteland.
“There’s a visitor at Sir Dullbright’s house, Dark Lord.”
“So? Use some talcum powder to cover up your stench and have a chat with them.”
“This isn’t an ordinary visitor. It’s…well…”
“Out with it, Morphant.”
“It is Overseer Bolton, from the Dungeon Core Academy.”
I felt my whole core lurch. If I was to make a list of people who it would be inadvisable to try to fool by using a mimic, a Dungeon Core Academy overseer would be at the top. Overseers were the ones who trained cores like me in how to create monsters, traps, and puzzles for our dungeon. Overseers had innate magical powers that let them not just sneak into dungeons, but to detect traps and to spot trickery crafted by a dungeon core’s metaphorical hands.
The second that Overseer Bolton was in a room with Mimic Dullbright, he’d rumble the ruse. And Bolton wouldn’t be content to walk away. There wasn’t a chance he would let a dungeon core’s mimic impersonate the leader of a town. He would not allow me to keep control of Hogsfeate by using Morphant as a proxy.
“Send a guard to tell Bolton that you’re ill,” I told him. “Then have Gulliver meet him and find out what he wants.”
“I tell people I am ill when I need to leave Dullbright’s form and replenish my powers, Dark Lord. I am using the excuse too often, and it is beginning to wear out. I suspect not everyone believes it.”
“Right. We need to have a rethink once we’ve dealt with Bolton. Now, let’s see. Perhaps we can…”
Another voice intruded into my thoughts.
“Dark Lord! Dark Lord! Problem!”
This voice came through my core senses again. This time, the source wasn’t across the wasteland, but from directly underneath me. It was Wylie, my kobold dungeon enforcer.
“What is it, Wylie?”
“Heroes in dungeon, Dark Lord!”
“Demons’ arses! Heroes are raiding the dungeon? Now?”
I heard a door inside the lodge open.
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 87