The City and the Dungeon

by Matthew Schmidt

  I was in charge. "Remain calm!" I shouted, ineffectually perhaps. Kill anything that's piercing your resistances, ignore everything else.

  But it was chaos. Too many monsters, too many places. Parties were surrounded, or fled one monster and kited it into another party. The clock was ticking—only a matter of time before it summoned another summoner and—

  Protect us! One Spellshaper mind-shouted to me.

  I will. "Rally to the north!” I shouted. “Protect our Spellshapers, and prepare for a counterattack! If you can't make it there, draw fire to the south!"

  Another wave of its staff, and the Lich brought even more monsters. But the Jester Knight cast a Taunt All, and was promptly flattened by every nearby monster.

  But that was enough. The two Spellshapers combined their spells, and an incredibly bright ray shattered through the south Nurikabe and into the Giant Lich.

  "Charge!" I shouted, and we did. A Knight Lord got between the swirling, remaining Nurikabe and struck his sword directly into the Giant Lich. It rasped one last time, collapsed, and was gone.

  The rest of the monsters died in moments. We were now organized and remoralized—and ready for the chests which appeared the moment a Berserker speared the remaining Gray Snake.

  "Good job, everyone!" I shouted. Great, guys, I thought to the Spellshapers.

  We had to wait until there wasn't anyone close enough to interrupt, one thought back apologetically. Only had enough mana for one of those.

  And it was enough, I thought. Good work, I thought to the Knight Lord.

  What I want most of all is a heal right now, he thought back. Like Dungeon are Nurikabe unable to do damage. Try getting hit by one traveling at that speed.

  I drew a Full Heal, but my hand was shaking. The light still was enough for him to stand up and bow.

  A number of chests lay unopened beside heartstones, where the other Alexander was. "Did their whole party get wiped?" I asked.

  "You tell me," Elise said. "When a War Tree gets spawned in your midst, how often do you last?"

  Success rate? Another healer thought to me.

  While my hands are still shaking from adrenaline, 80%.

  Ha. Tv-Type for the win. "Rise from the grave!" shouted the healer, and light shot into our previous leader's heartstone.

  He got up with a groan. "By the depths, we survived that?"

  "Barely," I said.

  "Speaking of the depths," the healer said. "Ready to see downstairs?"

  "Sorry," I said. "Our House has a policy on that. Got warned specifically not to do that."

  "Shame," the healer said.

  "Man," the other Alexander said. "I feel like I should give you a share from my personal."

  "Don't," I said. "It wasn't your fault the Lich spawned a War Tree in the middle of your party. Could happen to anyone." And wasn't I right? Could it not have happened to me? We were approximately the same level. What difference was there between us?

  "If you insist," he said.

  I switched to telepathy. If you got anything for Spellshapers, you might donate it to the two Spellshapers over there. Saved us all, for real.

  I'll see if I can. I know those two. If they got to the bottom of the Dungeon they'd apologize they didn't do it fast enough.

  I know, I thought. "Party at Mical's," I told my party.

  "Party," agreed Sampson.

  Chapter Eighteen:

  The Deep

  "Seth Black wasn't quite right about the skillstone," Mical said as she took a chair at our table.

  "So you regret it?" I asked.

  "Oh, no. It's... it tells me how to do things, not what. Or even why." Mical paused. "If I decide to advertise, it tells me how to write a plan, how to budget, how to judge the effectiveness afterwards. All that. But it doesn't tell me when to advertise. Well, it does, because it tells me how to accomplish other goals. When I started, I knew I had to advertise, because it told me. But if I had chosen a different kind of store, like those top tier gear stores, it would have told me something else."

  "That's like the painting skillstone," Elise said. "I know how to paint things, but I don't necessarily know what to paint. It's my choice, right? But the moment I take up the brush, I know immediately how to mix pigments, or get the lighting right—all of that stuff."

  "Right." Mical said.

  "You say 'it,'" Xavier said. "Do you consider it separate from you? I've never thought that way about my spells."

  "Yes and no," Mical said. "It's not separate after I had used it, sure, but it's... not really me. As if..." She paused again. "As if it were someone else's memories."

  "How so?" Xavier asked.

  "I can't put my finger on it. It's like I remember things I never did. Mistakes I never made, and how to avoid them. But it's... foreign."

  "I've never felt that way."

  "But I have, now that you mention it," Elise said. "Like... as if I've seen paintings that did this or that, but I haven't. I can't picture a single one of them, but..."

  "My Tactics stone," I said. "I can recall—that really isn't the right word. But I know that—that if I made this or that decision, terrible things would happen. And it's almost as if they did happen, and I regret it, but they never did."

  "This still never happened to me," Xavier said. "Wait, Alex, what about your spellstones?"

  I thought about it. "Yeah. Nothing. I just know what to draw in the air."

  "That makes sense," Xavier said, satisfied.

  "What do you mean, Xavier?" Mical asked.

  "Painting, business, and tactics exist outside the City. But spells exist only here. The former skills—if they really are based on someone's memory—would have people to remember them. But no one had a Revive spell before the Dungeon appeared."

  "And it's arbitrary," I said. "The way I move my staff has nothing to do with how someone is revived. It could have just as well been in a different pattern, right? That's not true of business."

  "So what are skillstones, then?" Elise asked. "Did someone die—really die—in the Dungeon, and we're using their memories? Or does the Dungeon assemble stones from multiple people's memories. How does it decide?"

  "Here we go again, Elise and her labyrintholatry," Xavier said.

  "I'm not—I don't worship the Dungeon," Elise said with emphasis. "It's just alive. That's blatantly obvious."

  "But you believe it is alive," Xavier said, "against all evidence to the contrary."

  "So? I still don't worship it. Someone who can't stop delving is far more of a labylat than I," Elise said.

  "You're the ones to talk," Mical said. "How many levels have you gotten?"

  "I'm at fifty-four in Black Acolyte, but I'm going through a few other classes to get Black Minister," I said.

  "I'm... at thirty?" Xavier said. "I just have a zillion smaller classes, since I'm building for Master of Magic."

  "See?" Mical said. "You've been delving for only months, and you're trying to dig to the bottom—Sorry, Andy, didn't mean that."

  "We've been gaining so fast so we can get to the Deep," I said firmly, "which we just have."

  "But why do you need to get to the Deep?" Mical asked.

  None of us could answer her.

  Why, after all, did I? For the Deep itself... or because maybe, just maybe, I could please Alice Black?

  * * *

  I had the same thought in mind as I asked her for build advice.

  Tv-Type is a type of magic almost identical to V-Type, but with one very important benefit. Rather than draw the shape at the time of cast, you draw it earlier and assign it to a simple action, usually a verbal cue. Higher level Tv-Type casters can combine multiple spells this way.

  Such as, say, a good Revive and several heals.

  "Why do you need my permission?" Alice Black asked me. "It's your life, your build. You decide if you want to change it."

  Did it sting because she had a point, or because I wanted her approval at every moment? "I was asking for advice then,"
I said.

  "Buildwise, you'll be stuck with Black Hierarch as a Tier One, but you'll enjoy the drain resistance piercing. And don't try to make your triggers magic words. Just make it the name of your spell. I've seen one too many Tv-Type casters die because they mixed up their triggers in battle. Unless you're going to do some serious slayer hunting..."

  "No," I said. "Absolutely not."

  "Then don't. Use the names. Just shout 'Revive!' or 'Drain Life!'—it's not as dorky as it sounds. Or talk to Adrianne about it; she's Tv-Type."

  "I'll take your word for it," I said.

  * * *

  I looked through our library's section on V-Type for a book on triggers. Had I known it would be in the T-type section I would have saved a lot of time. As it was, I was still browsing futilely when I saw images in my head—I can't put them into words, because they weren't words. It was... me?

  I turned and saw Andy was wearing a Necklace of the Eye.

  Wow, wait, Andy? I thought.

  After a moment, more pictures replied. Her picking up the necklace—or the concept of the necklace, us in danger at the 25th, a cartoon illustration of telepathy in a book... Then a flashing—wrong word, but it'll manage—a flashing through of several images fragments. I understood that she didn't want to show us how she thought. But then, after the 25th...

  Wow. I thought. I'm... I couldn't express in words, either, what it meant that she would give up what privacy this offered to talk to us. So I tried sending pictures of my own back across. I tried to picture Elise.

  I saw Elise's shocked face and Andy holding out the necklace. I didn't realize it wasn't real at first.

  "Man," I said. "I don't know how to train you, but looks like you've already got it figured out."

  "Thanks," she said aloud, and walked away.

  * * *

  New gear isn't always a happy occasion. It's amazing how attached you can get to the gear that's served you well.

  I sighed, but handed my old Staff of light to the teller, who then put it into a box behind him. That personal drop had served me well, but now it would only harm me to use it longer. Even I couldn't deny that the Prism Staff I found in one of my personals from the 25th Boss was better in nearly every way.

  "You were almost as bad as Sampson and his cape," Xavier told me. "He's had it for, what, months?"

  "I like my cape," Sampson protested, with a twirl of that same blue cape. "Nothing wrong with that."

  "You're using a perfectly good slot over sentimentality."

  "I've had it enchanted all sorts of ways," Sampson said.

  "It'd be cheaper to just get a better cape," Elise said.

  "It's. Still. My. Cape."

  "If you insist," I said with a sigh.

  * * *

  "We have a policy," Anthony explained. "No one goes into the Deep without a party; no party goes in without a high-spectrum to show them around. It's too dangerous for solos."

  "There've been solos who have survived the Deep," Xavier said. "J.R. Jackson."

  "And notice how no one's ever found J.R. Jackson's heartstone or shards?" Anthony asked. "Considering that two out of the three most successful solo Deep delvers have not returned, I suggest you think about the odds. In any case, I'm not changing policy. A high-spectrum's coming with you, and it isn't me."

  "Then who?" I asked.

  "Adrianne Black," Anthony said.

  "No," Adrianne Black called from the distance. "Absolutely not, Anthony."

  "Never mind, then," Anthony said, and pulled out papers. "Looks like Adam and Alice Black are free. Your builds won't do with Adam—he's more melee. Alice Black, then."

  I didn't dare breathe, or in any way suggest that this was beyond my hopes. "Yes, sir," I said.

  "Or Adrianne Black," Anthony still threatened. Whether his warning was for us or her, I don't know. "The other choice is Seth Black, and I'd like to see you try to get him to come with you."

  * * *

  The Deep—now there's a name to frighten delvers. While only 10% of all delvers go beneath the 5th Floor, only 1% go beneath the 25th.

  The other 99% of the entire delver population have a good reason—many good reasons.

  The danger increases more crossing into the Deep than between the 5th and 6th. Many monsters down there have a modifier known as Deep. Deep monsters wound permanently—only Healer subclasses Tier Two and above have the spells can heal them. Deep monsters have an aura that prevents teleporting nearby—again, only extremely high level mages or Titans can break this. Deep monsters resist ranged attacks, sometimes just randomly ignoring them. Deep monsters have an entirely new set of thought-rules, which makes much knowledge from above the Deep dangerously wrong.

  But worst of all, Deep monsters can shatter heartstones if their attack kills.

  It isn't permanent death, albeit that every Repair-and-Revive (the extremely rare and difficult spell which is necessary) always has complications. But for an R&R to work, the caster has to have every shard that broke apart from the original heartstone. Unless your party is there to immediately gather your pieces, it becomes vanishingly unlikely to be revived. Shards take a different rare spell to have a chance—a chance!—of detecting a shard.

  Even if this wasn't sufficient to deter all but the bravest delvers, the Deep interferes with a number of spells—including, of course, Return. Even the highest-level Dimensional Archmage has never succeeded in teleporting in or out of the Deep. The one exception is that Return works at cleared Locks. A party that seeks to delve further must fight their way through the Deep until they reach the next Lock, with no easy escape from danger. Then they must fight the Boss, without being able to retreat if that battle also goes wrong.

  The Deep has many enjoyable new traps and monsters. You start seeing Dragons and Liches, but also Lesser Horrors, Tengu Shogun, Prism Hounds, Ominous Slimes, Emperorcs, Master Horserors... The Uniques are the sort to make strong parties retreat—because no Return, remember. There's even the Humongous Summongus, which is precisely what you think it is. It's only overshadowed by the rest of the trash that the Deep throws at you.

  Yet another reason is that since so few brave the Deep, fewer still support those who brave it. Almost all Retrieval Insurance policies have a clause removing Deep deaths as an insured peril. To hire someone to find your heartstone—or even worse, every one of your shards—is well into indigo. Retrieval parties rake in that crystal, but precisely who will retrieve them?

  But that was not all. Alice Black held a hand up to us before the stairs. "Wait."

  "Yes?" I asked.

  "I'll now tell you the most important secret about the Deep," Alice Black said. "And the moment you know, you'll never think about telling anyone else, right?"

  "Aren't we about to find out?" Xavier asked.

  "You would rather me tell you now, believe me," she said.

  "Then tell us already," Xavier said. "You don't need to be all theatrical about it."

  She let loose a theatrical sigh in defiance. "As you wish. Are you ready?"

  We all nodded.

  "The Law does not apply in the Deep."

  "That's impossible!" Xavier said. When Alice Black smiled sardonically, he added, "That doesn't even make sense. The Law doesn't stop applying if someone doesn't want it to apply. It's a platonic ideal—"

  "It's also an extremely powerful spell," Alice Black interrupted. "One that is disrupted in the Deep. Anyone who breaks the Law isn't noted. So if some slayers ambush and kill you? The Law doesn't know a bit of it. They can walk back into the City, sell everything they took from your body, and the Court can't even stop them, because this has to be a secret. So this isn't even mentioned in the Law."

  "Why?" I asked. "This would be really horrible to discover on your own."

  "Because," Alice Black said with didactic politeness. "If everyone knew they could get away with slaying by hiding under the twenty-fifth floor, there'd be no end to it. It's hard enough to root out slayer camps without dealing with eve
rything else wrong with the Deep. Also," she paused. "This is also a secret: There are crystals on the deeper floors of the Deep that have that disrupting aura inside them. So someone who knows about this, and can delve far enough, can break the Law anywhere."

  "How does anyone stop them?" Elise asked.

  "It goes both ways. Anyone with one of those crystals can't complain if he gets ambushed and slain himself." Alice paused again. "I'm not going to tell you how often and when it happens, but the High Houses take care of that."