There was no mana…anywhere.
As he started to run through the inert dungeon towards his parents’ core room, he could see a few faint signatures of where the dungeon defenders used to be – as well as the trap placements – but it was more of a film left behind with no actual mana inside it. He recognized the “film”, however; it was what the defenders left behind for almost a day after he had mock-fought and killed them. The mana was reabsorbed right away, but there was always the barest trace of them left behind.
Halfway through the rooms – which he traversed faster than ever due to the absence of defenses – he saw his first sight of something unfamiliar. There used to be a fire trap that would shoot out jets of scorching-hot flames toward whoever stepped on the wrong piece of flooring; now it was as dead and lifeless as the rest of the dungeon. However, just past it, he noticed a faint green signature on the ground that he instinctively knew was originally mana from the Nature element.
That was it, though; Fred couldn’t determine any more than that something foreign had been there and was most likely killed by his mother’s trap. Leaving it behind, he ran through the rest of the dungeon, his breathing ragged as worry swamped his emotions and he started to panic. He flew by and absently noted a few other foreign signatures strewn all over the place: a few brown ones here, a yellow there, two more green ones near another fire trap, and even a white one. He ignored them, though, as his panicked state could only focus on the hope that his parents were still alive and waiting for him.
He blew past his own dwelling, built with his own two hands long ago, and made his way to his parents’ abode. He flinched slightly when he saw that the crack leading to their room had been enlarged, the large gouges around the opening hinting at what was responsible. He didn’t even have to squeeze through, at least, so he was quickly able to get inside.
Utterly devastated – both the room and his world were completely destroyed.
The walls and ceiling appeared to have suffered from some sort of explosion, as whole chunks were missing here and there, ending up on the floor of the room strewn all around. The rest of the room didn’t fare any better, with scorch-marks marring the previously smooth and pristine look of the cave. His mother did like to keep a neat and tidy home – at least in this room.
All along the floor – and even plastered along one of the walls – there were concentrated blobs of mana scattered everywhere, some very small while others were huge. They came in every color he had ever been taught about, and he instantly knew what they were without having to think about it. The black ones were from the Dark element, white from the Light, yellow from Air, brown and green from Earth and, of course, Nature.
What surprised Fred the most, though, was the presence of blue and red foreign mana. He thought he might’ve been able to tell even if just their signatures were there, but with the entire mana blob there it was more than obvious that the half-dozen of each color didn’t come from his parents’ dungeon. He had lived with them so long – had, in fact, interacted with them every day – that he intimately knew the signature of every single defender that had been inside his home. And these were unrecognizable.
Near the center of the room – and where the blast that had destroyed the room and killed everything in there originated – were a few small slivers of blue and red crystallized mana. Fred walked over in a daze, tears running down his face as he collapsed to his knees next to all that remained of his mother and father. Through his blurry vision, he reached down and picked up a shard of each color, holding and squeezing them in his hands as if by sheer force of will he could bring them back.
Maybe I can! What if I give them all of the mana I had absorbed? Through the sobs and shaking his body was involuntarily doing, he reached into himself, holding with inexperienced “fingers” the mana inside of him. At first, it just flowed through his grasp, feeling like water flowing away from his open hand. However, that analogy helped focus his efforts, as he imagined the mana inside of him as a pool of differently colored liquid, and his attempts to grasp it like cupped hands.
The efforts paid off, as he was able to “hold” a portion of his mana in his mind, though it was constantly trying to escape. He envisioned pouring some of the blue-colored liquid into the blue sliver; he felt his heart lift in joy for a moment when the mana poured out of him but was dashed back to pieces when it just seemed to flow off of the lifeless crystal in his hand. A small pool of blue-colored mana formed below him, the results of his attempt an obvious failure. That doesn’t mean that I can’t try again. I’ll keep trying and trying until I bring them back. Maybe all I need is more mana.
Fred looked around at the room full of lifeless mana blobs, a plan forming in his mind. However, before he could even get off his knees, there was a loud *crack* that echoed through the room, followed by a stream of pulverized rock flowing down from the ceiling. Oh, no…
He was barely out of his parents’ destroyed core room before the ceiling collapsed, burying everything inside. The ground shook from the impact of multiple tons of rock against the floor, causing Fred to stumble to his knees outside of the room, the differently colored shards still clutched in his hands. When he recovered, he looked back at the wall of rock where he had just been seconds ago, wondering if he could dig it out given enough time.
Fate – or whatever you wanted to call it – didn’t feel obliged to give him the time, unfortunately. Another, larger *crack* occurred overhead, dropping a fist-sized rock down from the ceiling onto his shoulder in the process. The impact, followed by the sharp pain in his upper shoulder, told him that something had broken inside; that was all secondary, however, as he took off running, yelling at the top of his lungs to help ward off the intense torture his steps along the ground was having on his shoulder.
Fred didn’t know how he did it – though he suspected that the mana still present inside of him was helping somehow – but he ran faster than he ever had before; racing just barely ahead of the collapsing ceiling behind him, he jumped over ponds, ducked under inert trap blocks, shimmied along edges that were barely wider than his foot, and hurdled a few walls of cooled lava rock. The entire dungeon shook as the ceiling fell, making it harder and harder for him to keep his footing as he literally ran for his life.
Finally, out of breath and heart pounding so hard he thought it would break right out of his chest, he saw the dim light of the breaking dawn through the entrance. Has it only been a few minutes? So much had happened in the last little bit that it felt like he had been down there for days, and not less than an hour. I’m going to make it!
Just as he thought that, the entrance collapsed in front of him, chunks of stone in all sizes piling up and blocking all but the smallest space right in the middle of the rockpile. With the rest of the dungeon collapsed or collapsing behind him, he couldn’t stop; with a final yell, he dove through the only place still open, hoping that it would stay there long enough for him to escape. The pile blocking the entrance shifted a little, closing the hole by a slight bit, but it was enough to feel like he had ripped off his arm as he shot through.
He somersaulted uncontrollably as he hit the fresh – and shockingly cold – air outside the dungeon, the pain in his shoulder almost impossibly agonizing. He rolled to a stop on his back, looking up at the grey sky that was just barely touched by the rising sun. He closed his eyes at the pain – both at the injury in his shoulder and at the sudden and devastating loss of his parents. Fortunately, his mana was still able to help with his wound, though it took much longer than just a few scrapes along his hands and face.
He lay there on the ground, freezing and in agony as the mana inside of him was steadily drained as it went to work on his injury. However, he didn’t care; he looked over at what was left of the dungeon he had grown up in, seeing it as little more than a big pile of rocks now. His whole world had collapsed just as much as his home had; he had no direction to his life now that his parents were gone.
Fire Mana: 12/100
When the pain finally left from his shoulder, he barely noticed. He was growing a little numb from the cold, although he could tell that the little power that he still had inside of him was doing its best to keep him warm. It was a good thing that no wild beasts had come by while he was incapacitated, because he didn’t think he had the energy or drive to fight them off. Although, his convalescence did allow him to think a little.
Who did this to them? Better yet, why did they do this? He knew it wasn’t a collection of wild animals/beasts/monsters that had invaded and killed his parents; although that would be extremely strange, it wasn’t out of the realm of insane possibility.
However, that wasn’t what happened – if they were wild beasts, the small amount of mana inside them would’ve been released upon their deaths, but their bodies would remain. He had seen it multiple times over the years, so the fact that they didn’t leave corpses behind was evidence against that fact. In addition, there weren’t any bodies of “humans”; which, granted, he hadn’t seen before, but if they looked anything like himself, he thought he might recognize them. Therefore, that left only one option.
They were mana-formed dungeon defenders – from every element.
The fact that they all arrived at the same time couldn’t be coincidence; the coordinated attack must mean that someone had planned for them to join together to essentially assassinate his mom and dad. He still didn’t know why they were killed – of all dungeon cores apparently out there – but he was determined to find out.
And exact revenge for their deaths if he could.
He thought about trying to look for another dungeon core nearby, one that might know a way to contact his parents’ relatives, but he thought better of it immediately. Even though not every dungeon core might be part of the plot to kill his parents, he had no way of knowing if one was safe to approach or not. Eventually, he was going to have to do a little investigating face-to-core, so to speak; however, in his condition he wasn’t ready to attempt that.
He was well aware that his goal was fraught with danger, because whoever or whomever decided that his parents had to die had to be extraordinarily powerful to track them down in the northern wasteland. Even from the small glimpses he had in the forest to the south, he knew that the land around there was very, very poor in terms of ambient mana – which was the primary focus of most dungeon cores. This meant that extreme measures had to be employed in order to find them, where they had retreated to be alone and have their privacy.
In light of that, he knew that he needed help. With other dungeon cores out of the picture, and his own abilities as a “newborn” dungeon core barely enough to keep him alive, there was only one place to turn.
He was going to have to find some humans.
II – Humans
Chapter 7
Fred perched precariously on a sturdy branch, slowing his breathing; the last year and a half journeying alone through the wild had taught him to make as little noise as possible to avoid drawing unwanted attention. He waited until his body settled into a comfortable – and balanced – position before he looked down at the huge…he actually didn’t know what it was called. I wish I had asked more questions about humans, though I guess it wasn’t as important at the time.
Regardless of the name of whatever he was looking at, Fred looked down on a collection of fifteen structures, most with some sort of smoke emerging from the top of them. At first, he thought they might all be on fire since they seemed to be made primarily of wood, but after watching for almost an hour he realized that there might just be a fire inside of the…dwellings?
It was midday and the sun was shining brightly against the snow, nearly blinding him in its intensity. His parents had told him of the different seasons, though he had never really experienced them before inside his dungeon home – it was the same all year-round. Apparently, it was in the middle of winter right now, which didn’t really matter to Fred; although traveling through the deep snow was harder than without it, the cold didn’t really touch him. His mana provided all the warmth he needed.
Despite the cold, there were human people moving from building to building, trudging their way through the snow and making paths as they went. Since he wasn’t affected by the severe cold temperatures, he didn’t know how cold it actually was; however, judging by how much the humans were bundled up under multiple layers of clothing and furs, he assumed that it was life-threateningly cold.
The strangest thing about the humans, however, was that when he looked at them – albeit from afar – he received none of the information he usually received when he looked at a beast or even a dungeon defender. Normally, he would see the name of the creature, followed by an approximate “level”; the dungeon defenders in his former home usually provided more information, of course. But when he looked at any of the humans, there was…nothing. It was like they didn’t exist.
If I’m going to try to gather some allies, I need to be able to blend in and make them believe I’m one of them. Fred looked down at his own clothes; they were unwashed, shredded, and bloodstained – with scraps missing from various places where they had been lost during the many fights he had endured to get that far.
He had thought about just ditching all of his clothes, since they served no purpose anymore; however, he was reluctant to part with some of the last pieces of his former life so easily. The pants, shirt, coat, socks, and shoes (along with his dual knives) were all created by his parents, and to just throw them away just seemed like sacrilege to him. His shoes had worn away and fell apart almost a year ago, along with the pair of socks underneath; his coat had been lost a couple of months ago when it ripped apart after he fell from near the top of a tree that he had climbed to get a better look at his surroundings. There was nothing he could do to fix them, so he had to leave them behind.
He still had his pants and shirt, as decrepit and torn apart as they were. Nevertheless, they reminded him of home; even if he ended up having to replace them, he planned on keeping at least a few scraps to remember where he came from. Though, when he really looked at his shirt, for instance, it was pretty much just a bunch of scraps already.
Where the left sleeve and a portion of the shoulder used to be, he could see the tears and bite marks left over from when a massive wolf had ambushed him; it had clamped down on his arm and nearly ripped it off, though in the end the only lasting damage had been to the shirt – especially after he stabbed it in the eye repeatedly, trying to get it to let go. The mana inside of him took more than a day to repair the damage to his body, but it did nothing for the cloth. Fortunately, the giant wolf had provided a substantial amount of mana to recharge his dwindling mana resources.
Knowing that walking into the human dwelling-place with very few clothes probably wouldn’t be the best idea if he wanted to blend in, he stayed watching the people moving back and forth. Fred was close enough that the few times he heard someone shouting to another, he was relieved that he could understand them; he had been worried that he wouldn’t be able to. It was a reasonable concern, since he couldn’t talk to the animals and beasts inside the forest, he wasn’t sure if the humans he looked so similar to would be able to communicate intelligently. Fortunately, his worries were unfounded.
His observation also provided him the opportunity to get a better look at their clothing, though it was difficult to make out the specific pieces being so far away. Luckily, on two different occasions, two humans walked a little way into the forest – once, almost beneath the tree he was scouting from – and urinated into the snow, turning it bright yellow. It was only then that Fred realized that he hadn’t had to do the same since he left home; without having to consume any food or water now, he had no need. Again, just as the mana kept him warm, it also provided sustenance.
Unfortunately, the constant need for his mana to sustain his health meant that it was constantly being drained, though he had quite a bit stockpiled in his body, which meant that – unless some
thing drastic happened like a severe life-threatening injury – he could probably survive for another couple of months. Fighting and killing so many beasts over the last year had allowed him to absorb the mana in their bodies, though it wasn’t nearly as much as a mana-formed dungeon defender. There had been some close calls, too; the huge wolf that nearly ripped his arm off was just one of them.
He didn’t personally know all of the creatures he had attacked or been attacked by, but he recognized most of their names from his lessons with his parents. Now that he looked back, they were surprisingly knowledgeable about the different beasts in the world, though it made sense – they used some of those same animals as dungeon defenders (or at least, a tailored version of them). I guess knowing examples of what you can create can lead to better and better defenders; I just wish that vast knowledge had extended to humans.
All his parents knew (or deigned to share) about humans could be summed up in a few statements. First, they were a vital part of dungeon core success by providing large amounts of ambient mana when they entered a dungeon, as well as providing even more when they were killed inside of one. However, the more that were outright killed inside of a dungeon, the less likely it was that future humans would visit – there needed to be a balance established, something that would normally be taught to newborn dungeon cores.
Additionally, cores tailored their dungeons to entice humans to come to their dungeons, providing them with mana-formed precious metals, weapons, and armor as they invaded and “conquered” their domains. It seemed counterintuitive, but the mere presence of humans inside the dungeon more than made up for the mana expenditure.
Lastly, humans were the only lifeform that dungeon cores couldn’t replicate inside their dungeons, leaving them with a vast lack of knowledge about the beneficial species.
Thus, his parents told him about the benefits that humans provided to dungeons cores, as well as their knowledge about human language, clothing, weapons, and food; essentially, everything that they could see and observe about the species while inside their dungeons. Apparently, nothing much was known about them outside of their domains, as no dungeon cores still in existence had ever seen a human in their natural habitat.
Dungeon World: A Dungeon Core Experience Page 5