by Dakota Krout
Dungeon Born
Book one of The Divine Dungeon Series
Written by Dakota Krout
Illustrations by Mikko M. L.
© 2016 Dakota Krout. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Also, check out Dakota’s website for book updates and news!
Visit my Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/TheDivineDungeon/
or my Blog at: https://dungeonborn.wordpress.com/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is rated PG-13 for literary fighting, foul language, and puns unsuitable for people of all ages. It also contains advanced mathematic concepts unsuitable for liberal arts majors.
~Acknowledgments~
There are many people who have made this book possible. Chiefly among them is my amazing wife who always encourages me to do the best at any task I set my mind to. I have a habit of getting excited about a new project and leaving the current one behind. For anyone who would like some advice, the best I can give you is this: I highly recommend marrying your best friend.
Next would be Mikko M. L., who went out of his way to make a spectacular cover for my book! Let’s be honest, against the advice of every teacher out there we all judge books by their cover. Thanks to him, the first thought will be: “Oh, that looks cool!” Thank you my friend! Hopefully you will all stay for the great story!
Finally, a great thank you to all of my friends and family who made their way through the awful early editions in order to give me advice and suggestions on storyline and descriptive writing. A special thanks to my friend Dylan S., who helped revise the first version of this book. Thanks to all of your careful reading and comments, this book should actually be readable!
~Prologue~
They laughed when they murdered me. Laughed! Their squeals of delight were sickening as they reveled in the blood pouring from the jagged knife wounds spread across my chest. These disgusting people - I use the term ‘people’ with trepidation - were obviously disdainful of all living beings. They killed me just for...! For...? Odd. This was strange - I couldn’t remember why they killed me. Who were ‘they’? Matter of fact, everything was starting to become... hard to...remember...? I...
“Oh no, you don’t!” The nasal, phlegmy voice of one of the assailants shattered the silence. He loomed over the broken, tortured body I was fleeing, “Dying won’t let you off the hook! Hee-hee-hee! Stealing from me was the worst decision you ever made! Now you will serve me, beg me,” he screamed, spittle flying. His mood shifted abruptly as madmen were prone, “to free you, because of your own stupidity! Ha-ha-ha!” A smile was back on his face, though his eyes were manic and unfocused.
With his declaration and an arcane gesture, pain shattered my confused senses - pain more traumatizing than my recent death by repeated stabbing. I found myself being forcefully drawn toward a tiny gem in his hand. I screamed as only a tortured soul is able, albeit silently to the human ear. I imploded into the small gem, which gleamed brighter by the second. The agony became more intense, interrupting all rational thought until all I knew was torment. With a final gasp of pain, I was firmly embedded in the glowing gemstone.
“Welcome to your eternity, thief.” The malicious voice spit at me. Then he coughed at me, spitting again - wait. Spit wasn’t red? With an unexpected spasm of his hand, I found myself slipping the surly bonds of earth, that is, I found myself flying. Bizarrely, I could see everything around me, three hundred sixty degrees in perfect detail. We were in a mountain range, with a beautiful and lush forest surrounding the base. The air had a stiff, crisp breeze flowing through it. The sun poured across the landscape with properties more befitting a viscous honey.
One other detail stood out as I reached the apex of my flight. A group of people in armor which blazed with the reflection of the sun were walking toward black-clad bodies now sprawled in ignoble poses.
“Filthy Necromancers!” The largest, shiniest man roared, distaste evident in every motion he made. “Make sure to burn their rotten corpses and everything they have with them, it is sure to be tainted by the infernal.” He glanced to where a - somehow familiar? - body lay broken and covered with blood and filth.
“Poor bastard, I’m sorry we weren’t fast enough... to save you.” He managed to say brokenly, keeping his voice low in an attempt to preserve morale in his followers. Mixed emotions skittered across his face before finally settling on anger. He then turned and began barking orders, the last I saw of his group before slipping over the edge of a crevasse, falling deep into the earth.
There was one final hole in the wall, where I got my last glance of the wide world for a long, long time. Gorgeous. It truly was too beautiful of a day to die.
~One~
I fell for an extremely long time, rock blurring past me as my fall increased in speed. Dropping too long really, as I was worried I would shatter when I landed. This was a serious concern for me momentarily. Then some shiny rock distracted me, light sparkling off of it as I passed. Pretty! Is my mental state deteriorating? Ooh, that sparkle was red! The fall was probably only a few hundred feet, but since I was so tiny it felt like miles, like hours to my distracted thoughts.
*Bloop*
I landed in a puddle! Rejoicing at the good fortune that had saved me from shattering when I landed, I realized that I couldn't remember why I was falling in the first place. I had fallen right? I tried to think back, but hadn't I always been in this puddle, on this stone? Rocks don’t move around, do we? Well, I was rather cozy here, nothing to worry about now at least. --Filthy Necromancers--.
Necromancers? I hated Necromancers!! Where had that thought come from? I clung to it, trying to ensure that I would remember this. The thought wrapped around me, becoming one of my mental pillars, a foundation for my thoughts. Knowing I would remember my hatred for, um? Necromancers! Right. What the heck is a Necromancer? I don’t really care, I suppose, but ohhh boy do I hate them! I finally looked around myself, trying to describe for my fleeting sanity how things looked.
I didn't really have words for things, but the names of them kept popping into my head. Rock. More rock. Water. Head? What? Where am I? What am I? Oh yeah! I’m a gem! A beautiful shining gem. Blue light appeared around me at the thought, actually, it was coming from me! Am I a light stone? The water surrounding me began to absorb the light and, over time, became brighter. This took hours. Days? The natural light that managed to filter down to me came and went many times. Does that help? Does that mean anything?
Remembering is hard. I eventually gave up trying.
Time slipped by and even the lingering remnants of memories faded, vanishing until I was near thoughtless as a babe. My mind became small and unconcerned with anything outside of my life from moment to moment. The water I was in froze and melted several times, when it froze it seemed like forever until it warmed up again! That was never fun.
One day I noticed that the puddle I was in had slowly shrunk as temperature increased, but now water was coming down from above and refilling it! This made me really happy. That is a good thing I think, having my puddle full. I like my puddle. But now it is getting too full? This had never happened before! My puddle was about to spill! Oh no, would that ruin it? *Drip* A final drop hit and the puddle spilled over its stony boundary, pouring down the sides of what turned out to be a hollow stalagmite. Water must have taken the core of this rock and hollowed it out before I got here.
Something was happening, something...
odd? Not bad, I don’t think, but certainly odd. I was at the bottom of the small puddle in my rock, and whereas previously I could only see in a direct line of sight around me; I could now see everything where the water had overflowed to! Neat! More than see, actually! I could sense everything in that area perfectly - as if all of my senses were attuned to the space around me.
I tasted the salty stone, smelled the earthy fragrance, saw every flaw and nuance of the stone, and heard echoes of falling water. The perception only went as far as the water had drained, so it wasn’t true sight or hearing, or... but really it was... better! More fulfilling and satisfying somehow. For some reason, I also really began to understand the rock I was on. After all, now I knew the word “stalagmite”. I also knew it was made out of limestone, mostly calcium carbonate. Fun, new words! Even when the water that had spilled eventually dried up, my perception of the area remained.
What was that? There was a dark earthy color moving through the rock, wriggling in set sequences like a worm moves through dirt. I reflexively reached out and touched it with my mind, and little sparkles of it pulled away from the stone and drifted toward me! What was this? How did it follow my mind? It kept coming closer, now of its own accord. In an act of defiance, when the dark color touched my crystalline surface, I grabbed at and pulled it in, absorbing it. Shock rippled throughout my being.
It. Was. Amazing. The most delicious thing I had ever eaten in my life. To be fair, the only thing I had eaten in my life. I wanted more. I tried to reach out to that brown energy again, but it kept slipping away before I could “touch” it again. Was it mad at me? I kept trying, again and again, but I got so tired.
Refocusing on myself again, moving in disappointment, I looked at the energy I had absorbed. I “ate” what I could, savoring every bit while the light within slowly faded away, until there was only a filthy brackish-brown color remaining. Trying to “eat” this as well, I found it tasted horrendous, like roasted turds. Disgusted, I tried to “spit” it out, and surprisingly it quickly streamed out of me and floated back to the rock around me, which drank it in like rainwater falling on desert sands. Wait a sec, what is a desert...? Meh. What was I thinking about? I forget. There is food to be eaten, hopefully I could get more!
Surprised at how quickly the brackish energy vanished, I watched as the brown energy in the rocks returned to a normal look, and the clean energy seemed to wave at me again. I tried to reach out, and success! I was able to make a few more sparkles flow toward me! A little more than last time too! Was that the secret? I just had to return the waste, then it would like me again? The energy I had already absorbed was pure white, slowly gaining color toward my normal blue.
Taking in the brown energy, I really focused on what I was doing this time, instead of just eating as quickly as I could. I was actually pulling the white energy from the brown, separating the two until only a dull brown color remained. “Spitting” out the filthy tasting remainder, I again pulled the earth colored light from the stone around me, continuing for a time I didn’t know how to count.
Rain came infrequently; every time it did, the depth of my vision, my knowledge of the surrounding world, increased. Each stone the water washed over increased my knowledge. Soon I could tell you the names of everything in reach, and their properties. For instance, I knew just how much energy they contained, allowing me to calculate the sustenance I would be able to draw from them. I knew what they were made of, how tightly bonded they were, their density, and which of them would float (none of them). From this knowledge, I found more efficient ways of ‘eating’. Pulling the brown stuff from sand released almost no energy, while more dense stones like quartz gave off larger amounts, so I made sure to focus on them.
During a powerful rainstorm, my knowledge of the world suddenly and drastically changed. The water had come again, and I was happy that I would be able to see farther soon. As my puddle finally overflowed, more rocks appeared to me, but the water also sloshed over moss. Moss… I suddenly knew everything there was to know about it. How you could grind it up and put it on shallow cuts to help wounds recover, how it grew with abundance when it had access to water and space, but most importantly, that it was alive. The life in it sang to me, tantalizing my senses with the knowledge that there was so much to learn and taste. In simple astonishment, I realized a new color was suddenly visible to me. Green… What a beautiful, vibrant color this tiny plant exuded. I stretched my mind over to caress this unknown, gorgeous emerald light, when it suddenly reached back. Shocked, I pulled away, and the light returned to the moss, seamlessly re-integrating with itself.
Tentatively, and with great trepidation, I reached out again. So did the light! Connecting with it, the contained energy flowed toward me, similarly to the way the brown energy moved, though much faster and far more powerfully. I drank it in, then began to “eat” it. The most crisp, flavorful salad in the world could not compare to the pure, delicious energy this small plant willingly gave to me.
I gorged myself, eating so fast I would have choked if I were able. Unlike the stone, the green energy just kept coming, and I ate it until there was no more light coming in. Just as I thought it was over, a moss-ive burst of energy flew into me, so much that I nearly shattered! Terrified, I quickly absorbed the energy, simultaneously releasing the waste to return. When I finally had processed everything, I was full, something that had never happened as far as I had been alive. Also, I had made a pun, another first for me.
I looked back at the moss and was horrifically shocked at what I saw. It was no longer vibrant and living. It was crumbling before my eyes, turning to dust. I was disgusted with myself that I had killed it - not the death itself, which was just natural part of life - but the fact that I could no longer pull the yummy food to myself. Ruminating over the loss of this huge source of mouthwatering energy, I quickly brightened when I noticed that behind it there was a veritable carpet of the stuff, growing across the floor of this crevasse. I returned to the brown energy, slightly disappointed now by how hard it was to keep forcefully pulling it to myself. Hungrily, I waited for the rain to come again, so I could reach that tasty, tasty treat just out of my reach.
the voice continued.
I realized this was true. I did want things. I wanted to be alive. I remembered that I planned on eating the moss just out of reach.
He paused, thinking. I feared he had disappeared, when his voice sounded again.
Kantor’s voice was fading, becoming more strained as he worked to speak with me.
I cried out, desperate to continue hearing another voice in the darkness.
~Two~
I wonder what kind of help he was sending me. This thought occupied my mind for a spare moment until my hungry gaze returned to the feast of moss waiting just out of reach.