"What the fuck was that?" screamed Tehra. "Was that you? Did you just slaughter them?"
You were preparing to fight them. And you just killed a man recently, you said it yourself and with pride in your voice.
Tehra was breathing heavily as though she had actually just been in a fight, rather than an idle witness to this bizarre display of strange, dark magic. "What is that now? There's light coming from the corpses. You're glowing even more brightly." She had to cover her eyes and look away to shield them.
Mertho could feel something entering him, flowing across the room from the corpses. It was their life force, now that the mercenaries were dead and could no longer store the energy within them. As a natural center of this cavernous dungeon, he was the rightful owner of it. It was amazing how such knowledge came to him like that, without the need to study a single page of any book. This must be how naturally gifted magic users felt when they channeled magic from the world around them.
It was still amusing that although he had been given a way to use new types of magic, without countless hours of study and preparation, the wizard was still confined to a hidden away chamber beneath the ruins of his ancestral tower.
"What just happened? The energy, their inherent aura, it went from their lifeless bodies and into you. That skull that seems to contain whatever you are. Has this all been some kind of ruse? Are you going to drain my life force next, Mertho?"
Feeling good now and far removed from the hatred and anger that had been fueling him during the killing, Mertho did not want to harm anyone else. Of course, I do not wish to harm you. I could have done so the moment you entered the cave out at the side of the hill. Why would I entertain you as my guest and offer you a warm, dry, safe place to sleep.
"Safe? You are fucking joking, right?"
Mertho was starting to feel jaded. He had done something righteous and heroic, turning a bad situation around and putting an end to the living presence of a group of ne'er do wells who would only go on to cause more pain and suffering if they had been allowed to leave with their lives. I saved your life with my actions. It was necessary. I did the right thing.
"Okay, sure. I appreciate that," she said with a shaky voice; her hands had begun to tremble. "I have to go though. This is too much for me to process, right now. Will you allow me to leave?"
You are not my prisoner, and you never were. I was alone here for years before you came along. I need no one else, especially not a simple mortal, a young adult elf who doesn't even have the most basic of magical abilities.
"And yet you lured me with the smell and promise of food. Why?"
He didn't feel the need to answer, so he didn't. Curiosity was its own need and its own reward. A wizard never apologized or made excuses for having a thirst for more knowledge.
Tehra was edging slowly toward the entrance where the two warm corpses lay, cut to bloody ribbons and heaped on the cold rock floor. "You're evil, aren't you?"
Am I evil? No, of course not. I just saved your life and put an end to four very bad people.
"There were two more of them? How were you able to do that? What did you do to stop the other two? This is too much, no, this is wrong. This is dark magic, the opposite of what an elf should seek, if she seeks magic at all. I must leave. I must go!" She ran by the sliced up bodies, carefully leaping over them so that none of the shards of sharply flinted rock would cut her. The razor-like pieces stuck out from the corpses from thousands of places. Even their pricey looking studded leather suits of armor had been worthless at stopping the sheer number of projectiles from finding vital and uncovered places on their bodies. Blood oozed out into a pool around them, filling up the lines and cracks in the floor of the cave tunnel. Tehra stepped in it as she fled by, and let out a controlled scream.
Mertho sensed her leaving. She went even faster as she passed the other victims, noticing each time how they had been slaughtered in equally bizarre and unnatural ways. Unnatural was a word he was sure regular people would use to describe what had transpired here. Yet Mertho knew that it was the most natural thing in the world, to be the heart of a natural structure, the core of his very own cavernous dungeon.
9
Time again became strange, with no living person around to help guide him as to its passage. The night seemed to pass as he remained still, always still, yet now also without conscious thought. There was no reason to focus without anything to learn or plan for. Mertho felt cold, like a thing that was truly dead. Alone and unshifting.
It was some time later—days? Weeks? Months? If more than fifteen years had managed to somehow pass by him since he'd been turned into this natural core beneath the surface, any number of days might have passed before his next thought came to pass. It didn't matter, really. Had he aged since being turned into the magical skull? Would he continue in this state for eternity?
Mertho knew all too well that even those who attained immortality were never truly guaranteed eternal life. For, where there was one magical spell or ritual, another waited out there that could reverse it. Many were yet undiscovered, or they were spells that had not been created by the greater powers that were capable of doing such things. However it came to be, something or someone was always capable of destroying even the most powerful forces that existed.
If Mertho had become a great power, as he was convinced was true, he decided that some careful planning was required. He would need to give this careful consideration before acting further, in the same way that druids and monks took their time in reflecting on their place within the balance of good, evil, and the neutrality that existed. In the way that naturally born magic users focused to harness highly specific strains of magic, so would Mertho commit himself to this undiscovered yet dark magic that was built within his very being.
After falling into a state of meditative trance, for an again unknown length of time, he chose a path. The wizard-cum-magical core would commit to punishing those with power who abused their positions. The use of strength, whether physical, magical, or through the influence and domination of others, was not to be used in oppressing those who were too weak to defend themselves.
He was not an evil force. The elf had been wrong in her speculations, but youth was naive and reached hasty conclusions without the ability to properly reflect. Mertho now knew how to take his time and think things through.
Neither would he be lonely and useless, even without his body or a way to actively go out and contribute to the world. His search for knowledge would become a personal one, and his library would no longer be made up of books. His inner chamber was himself, his mind, his magical core. Instead of pages with writings to teach him, he would use his natural senses to continue to learn and develop this new magic, just as he had begun to do.
10
If there were going to be enough time for him to continue his new quest to extend his knowledge of himself and this strange magic that he had become entwined with, being raided by dungeon divers or more mercenaries would not do. In fact, it was foolish of him to think that he had all this time to waste, when that pretty elf could have gone and told others of what she had seen.
It did not make sense that she would return to the city of Aklago across the river. She was clearly wanted by someone with a lot of money to offer cutthroats to bring her in. But she was fearful and confused, perhaps Tehra might have decided to leave this region completely.
Mertho would need to build up his defenses if he was going to survive long enough to make his planned mark on the world.
Sensing the cave around him, Mertho realized that there was so much he had never paid attention to. The flow of the natural world never stopped, and it was not all magical. As a wizard, he had been attuned to things that possessed notable magical properties. While he was unsure that everything contained magic, as some people would have one believe, he did possess the magical ability to sense important properties in everything. He just knew it, without the need to read about it.
First, he decided that the
table he was hovering above was not an acceptable place for him to remain. This was some kind of sham altar, perhaps created by chance, yes. More likely, it was put there as a result of the dark magic that had made him into the magical core. He channeled energy into the rock beneath him and raised it up until it resembled something more like a church altar. There was no room for unwarranted ego in Mertho's mind, but he was a powerful being and would reside somewhere grander than a slab of rough rock on the ground.
The front, he decided should have the image of a carved skull. He also created a magical barrier around himself, which would at least offer some protection and help to buy him more time, if he should find he was unable to defend his altar properly.
Having the entrance to his chamber so close to the surface was also a problem. The elf had been so close by chance, and the mercenaries had managed to track her down, even though it took them more than a full day and night. More might come looking for this strange cave, especially if they heard stories about the magical skull that appeared to be golden, and the green crystals that covered it.
Adventurers and fools were lured to their deaths time and time again by the promise of riches, fame, or just a way to spend their time and feel their lives were not pointless. But many times, adventurers who dared to face challenges head-on were successful in their quests. That included looting caves and dungeons filled with magical items and riches.
Mertho had not considered that he would be seen as a magical item, perhaps something that could be sold to someone who would study him as he himself had studied magical artifacts for more of his life.
He needed to hide himself better, to make it more difficult for people to find his core. Again, focusing his energy, he made his chamber shift downward into the rock, farther beneath the surface. Sliding downward into the rock, parting the very fabric of the world, Mertho knew that he could do anything once he got the hang of this core magic. It was a primal, almost sensual experience to penetrate the rock and soil. Whereas men who worked to dig away the ground in order to create underground dwellings were destroying the world to replace it with their own designs, Mertho was part of it all.
He was not destroying here like he'd done while killing the adventurers before. No, he was a creator, building his own natural dungeon. Actually, again, no—he was the dungeon! And his brain was starting to go into overdrive thinking about the wondrous things he could create to keep people from getting to his core.
The most obvious problem was the entrance being so open and accessible. Even though the place was clearly well hidden, enough so that no one had stumbled upon it yet, he was worried. That elf was bound to tell someone about him. After that, it would be easy to see that this was no regular cave, especially with those dead bodies just lying there. They'd clearly been killed by traps, instead of just being bitten by poisonous animals or perhaps monsters dwelling around the hills and in the caves.
Mertho weighed up his options. He could hide himself quite easily, and there wouldn't be any risk that he would be discovered; no one need ever know there was anything of interest in this cave. But then he would be closing himself off from the opportunity to obtain more of the glorious life force energy that was currently surging through his magical core, making all of existence and the world around him seem so bright and full of the types of possibilities that he had only ever experienced when learning an unfamiliar type of magic for the first time. The risk that he might lose that was almost terrifying. And then he would be destitute. It was a complete coincidence that Tehra had come along, unwittingly drawing in those mercenaries in her wake.
Mertho realized that he was potentially trapped in this cave for what might be eternity. Could he cope without the power to do much, or have a chance to discover the nature of his power?
The mutilated corpses would do plenty to deter any innocent passersby who might look into the cave entrance. Mertho did not want to have to kill anyone who wasn't already living a violent life - like the men who did this to him in the first place. He could almost remember their faces, only, humans were already becoming like a distant relative in his mind. That pretty little elf, even though she'd run away in fear as though he were a demon, she had been like more of a fellow than the humans whose remains were already beginning to fester and rot within the confines of his rock gilded tomb.
Above, Mertho created another level. He didn't want to use up all of his new energy supplies on more floor space and walls, but in order to have traps to stop people, there needed to be a larger area for people to move around.
Not wanting to make it too obvious that there were intelligently built traps here, Mertho decided to use more rock traps. He created a series of falling rock traps so that it would look like the top of the cave was merely unstable. So, the entrance tunnel was simply lined with traps, and he removed all evidence of the large spike that he'd sent flying through the side of the mercenary who'd come looking for Tehra. The body was still there, though, and it was bound to begin to draw in wild animals. Hmm, he thought, wild animals could be particularly useful. There was a way that he could charm them. And, while such spells did not last forever, he could simply renew them when he sensed they were starting to wear off. Druids and rangers were known to use simple spells so they could get wild animals to help them, to stop themselves from being attacked in the wilderness, or to protect others from them.
These rotting corpses would be just the thing to draw in wild animals. The idea of reanimating the dead bodies so that zombies could be used to defend the core was tempting. But Mertho had only the most fundamental understanding of how necromancy could be used in any practical application. He had studied it, and learned to detect and repel it, of course. However, to actually learn the use of the dark arts was firmly forbidden by his family's code of honor. Not to mention that he would have been driven away from the city by the local guards, and the military would have gotten involved. Necromancy was hated by the public, and seen as a real threat by royalty and nobility. It would never be tolerated.
So, even if Mertho had been able to use necromancy with these corpses, doing so would have all but ensured attracting a powerful spell user, possibly a veteran cleric and his cohort, to destroy the source of the evil. It was best to keep away from that sort of magic, which was fine with him; it was not one of his stronger magic types anyway.
No, using the rotting bodies to draw in more natural allies was a superb idea. People wouldn't be suspicious at finding aggressive predatory animals lurking around the dungeon.
The idea of powerful magic users finding out about his dungeon was worrying. There were some out there who could halve come down to his core and snuffed him out of existence in an instant. More likely though, they would want to confine him and study what he was.
Wizards were students of not only magic but also of the places where magical artifacts and ancient tomes could be obtained. That meant dungeons, and the things they contained. In order to build proper traps, he would need more than just the rock around him. If someone were to come through with a magical charm warding off damage from rock, he would be sunk all too quickly.
Mertho was no stranger to alchemy, and he found deposits of metal, drawing them up and forging them into discs for the trap he had in mind. He created serrated sections in the discs, and made the edges razor sharp. It then occurred to him that there was a deposit of precious stones, diamonds, nearby. He used those to harden the edges of his circular blade, which was several times the length of a man. He created a spinning disc trap that would send the spinning blade down from a narrow slot in the floor, causing a particularly nasty ending for anyone who triggered it. The benefit of this was that it could take out more than one person at once, and could be easily reused.
The power required to do this was no small amount, and Mertho was worried he wouldn't be able to get any more for some time. Sensing the world around him didn't drain him, though, and he could feel the natural world swirling. There were small creatures who had no doubt called his cav
e home since it was first created, long before he declared it a dungeon. Bats, insects, even some small snakes. There were also plants, such as moss, and an abundance of tiny water sources that were not much to a larger creature like a human. Mertho could draw upon these if he desired.
To make it more suitable for animals to live there, he created a pool of clear water that naturally filtered through tiny pebbles, much in the way an artificial pool would be built in a palace. Only, this looked like a perfectly normal underground pool. Around the water, he created crawling vines that could wrap around any unwanted guests who made the mistake of trying to drink or swim at the water. He utilized the natural plant life that was there to do this, something he had never actually done before, although his knowledge of nature magic was as good as the other major fields of magic he had spent a lifetime studying. Mertho realized this was like his own real-world magical study, but so much better than just reading about it.
If a group of experienced adventurers, particularly one with a relatively powerful magic user, were to find the dungeon now, they would still be able to get through to the core. Even though it was risky to use so much of his magic, Mertho created two stone golems from the rock and had them remain either side of the entrance to his core. They were only about the size of a large man and didn't need to be animated until they were required. That would require magic, which he planned to have enough of, hopefully.
11
The golems were a good idea, but only as a backup. They couldn't be kept moving without using a constant supply of magical energy. After all that building, it was painfully clear that Mertho had gotten much less from those mercenaries than he'd at first thought. He felt panicky now, like he was sitting there, helpless against the threat of any moderately skilled adventuring party.
The Wizard (Dungeon Core Book 1) Page 6