by Dante King
I had to admit, I was impressed.
“What do you require from your gracious and handsome servant?” Puck asked.
“I recall you mentioning an effigy your tribe had in their possession,” I said.
“Yes, of the Lesser Imp. Surely you don’t intend to fill the mighty halls of Zagorath with such troublesome creatures? Their minds are unlike the Hellbats. They are much too intelligent for their own good. I fear you would be unable to control them.”
“Don’t make assumptions about my abilities,” I said, an air of threat in my tone. I liked Puck, but as the dungeon’s overlord, I couldn’t allow him to speak down to me.
“I wouldn’t dare. I’m merely suggesting that your dungeon doesn’t need them.”
“I’ll be the one to decide what shall join my dungeon.” This time, I clothed Puck in my ethereal senses, and he shuddered a little. I didn’t want to cause him pain, just show him who his master was.
“Of course, Master,” Puck said after he exhaled. “I will retrieve the effigy for you.”
“Good. Your task will not go unrewarded.” I had something special in mind for Puck, a task that might make him the first Infernal creature to venture outside of this realm.
“I like rewards,” Puck snickered as he faded into a cloud of shadows. “Are you sure you will not require my strength and speed?”
“The dungeon is safe without you,” Bertha shot as she resumed her meditative position a few feet away.
“Ha! The half-troll knows so little about my new form. What did you receive? A few more tattoos. Me? I became one with the shadows. The very embodiment of darkness!”
“Bravo,” Bertha said in a deadpan voice. She opened a single eye and then, made a slow clap. “Would you like a trophy?”
“Bah!” Puck spat as his shadow form glided across the chamber, up the staircase, and across the Antechamber before he left the dungeon.
A flicker of emerald-green caught my eye as Bertha slid to her feet. A crackle of electricity, and Abby’s avatar spawned in a swirl of storm clouds and humming blue energy. Both female champions stood in front of my gem as it bathed them in a crimson glow.
“So, Dom,” Abby murmured, a little shyly, “what do you want me to do, now that you’ve got everyone else running off on errands?”
My dungeon had a particular kind of ‘loophole,’ one where I could summon minions and farm them for extra essence. It was the perfect method of passive currency and a suitable job for my champions to undergo while I excavated toward the travel stone.
“I need you to kill things,” I said.
Abby froze, the spell broken. “What?”
“The things. I need you to kill them.”
Bertha shrugged. “It is what I do.”
“I admit, I have changed much since meeting you, Dom,” Abby said. “But I’m not sure I’m suited—”
“You are a dungeon core,” I said. “It is what you do. Killing is the very nature of your being.”
“Not where I was first birthed. Remember? I charged adventurers a toll to cross my threshold.”
“This may not be your home dungeon, but it is your resting place for now.”
“I understand,” Abby replied with a nod that sank to her chest.
“I saw the way you handled the pirates,” Bertha said as she lifted Abby’s head with a finger. “You enjoyed the killing, didn’t you?”
Abby nodded, if a little reluctantly. “I did.”
“I know this is hard, Abigail,” I said. “But this is what you were destined to do. Maybe not in my dungeon, but your entire purpose is to grow strong and kill adventurers. To do that, Zagorath must grow stronger. And I lack Storm Essence. You will both kill sprites while I excavate.”
“It would give me great pleasure,” Bertha said.
“I can do it,” Abby said with a thin smile. Even though she’d probably been my strongest champion in our last battle, her old self still battled within her. Yet I knew that as soon as she took her elemental form, the thirst for violence would take over. I had seen it with my own dungeon eyes.
As though she wanted to show me her determination, Abby raised a hand, and lightning sparked from her fingertips. Then, her whole body became a crackling tempest of blue sparks.
“That’s more like it,” Bertha said with an appreciative nod.
“I’ll be busy excavating while you farm the minions. If we’re lucky, the travel stone will lead us straight to the Storm Realm, toward Karlyle.” He was the sorcerer who had stolen Abby from her dungeon back in the Storm Realm, and while I didn’t have any idea where the travel stone would take us, my champion’s former realm was as good a guess as any.
The blue lightning surrounding Abby’s face dispersed to show a cool smile. “You will keep your promise?”
“I will,” I said. “But the stone might not take us to the Storm Realm. If not, then I will find some way to avenge what Karlyle did to you.”
“Thank you, Master,” Abby said.
“Then, it’s time we assumed our roles,” I said.
Abby and Bertha ascended the staircase to the Antechamber, and I commanded the sprites to flood the chamber. As the sounds of battle filled my senses, I glanced over the location Bertha had pinpointed. Some quick mental mathematical acrobatics gave me an idea of the direction I was aiming.
Carving an enormous hole in the ground would give me plenty of room for expansion later, sure, but it wasn’t the most efficient way of managing my resources. I’d learned already that filling myself to full capacity was suboptimal because I’d have to use the Physical Essence before I could excavate again.
I sharpened the tendrils of my mind and began to burrow downward. No wider the diameter of a quarter, I decided. I avoided tunnels and caverns for now since I didn’t know what creatures might be lurking in them. Sure, my champions were strong, but I’d read Lord of the Rings and knew a mountain’s insides could contain serious monsters.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, I began to expand Zagorath once more. I spiked down through endless feet of breadrock, obsidian, and the occasional pocket of troll iron. They were all familiar minerals, and the molecular structure of each fell apart under my disciplined psychic drill. As I claimed each newly formed inch of the mountain, I felt exhilaration build. It was only the thought of my champions along in my dungeon that made me return for a few moments.
All of the Storm Sprites were dead, and Abby and Bertha were consciously avoiding each other. At a flick of my mind, I channeled the crackling Storm Essence within my jewel to the forge and spawned more minions until my Storm Essence counter reduced to zero. Abby and Bertha immediately leapt to arms and brawled with the new minions. Slowly but surely, my Storm Essence reserves would increase. Killing one of the minions gave me a little more essence in return, an exploit I was sure had been a gift from Lilith.
With another twist of mental energy, I jumped back to work and continued to burrow deeper. The work might have been monotonous if being a dungeon wasn’t something I was born for. Back and forth. It became something of a routine.
After a little while longer, I returned to the surface again. My champions had dispatched all the Sprites already, and I guessed time had been lost on me while digging. Abby was quickly filling her core with essence and siphoning off two-thirds of it into my own core.
There had to be a more efficient way to provide minions for my champions to farm while I excavated. Abby couldn’t assist me since the essence of this realm made it impossible for her to break down anything physical. The best I could do was to spawn more sprites so they could kill them.
I continued the cycle of excavating and spawning minions, and the occasional glance over the map in my built-in, game-style readouts told me that I was getting near to the travel stone. On the 15th return to Zagorath’s main floors, things took a turn for the worse. Reflexively, I reached for the soul forge, ready to spawn new sprites, and found that something was blocking my flow of essence. I pressed against th
e forge and examined it, but the sigils weren’t shining bright with scarlet or blue essence. Instead, they stayed dull and hidden in the Lilith-like claws of the forge.
“Lilith provides,” I said bitterly. “But only for so long.”
While Abby and Bertha had been killing sprites, I’d gained 512 Storm Essence through the loophole. But, now, I suspected the soul forge had ‘overheated’ in a countermeasure to stop a dungeon ‘cheating.’ The constant farming of essence seemed to be a limited-time benefit. If my working theory on the Sinarius Realms was correct, there was a cosmic balance struck between the dungeons and those adventurers that entered them for spoils. Irritating, sure, but I could see the rationale behind it.
“I take it that we’ve gathered as much essence as we’re able to for the moment?” Bertha asked after sensing my presence.
“Yes,” I told her. “You’ve done fine work.”
The half-troll beamed at the terse praise. “We’re here for you, Master, when you need us.”
“I’ll be sure to reward you, champion.”
Bertha slid back easily into her cross-legged position on the floor. She rested her halberd on her muscled thighs and flicked her warrior’s braid off her shoulder. Within moments, she was breathing evenly in the center of the carved obsidian floor of the Antechamber.
Abby stood behind the half-troll, a pleasant smile and just a slight sprinkle of sweat on her forehead. “I enjoyed that.”
“I knew you would,” I said.
“Found this treasure yet?” she asked.
“I’m close,” I replied.
“Maybe when you’re done, we could. . .”
“Of course,” I said. I was eager for another moment with her, and I felt equal desire for Bertha. I could tell they both yearned for my touch, but there was work to do. Soon, I promised myself.
“You’re still only one core, despite how much you may think otherwise,” she said.
I chuckled. “One core? I have you, and maybe I’ll have a few more soon.”
“I hope you don’t work them like you’re working me.”
“Afraid of a little hard work?”
“Not at all. I just require rewards. You really shouldn’t keep a woman working so hard without an incentive; you know that, right?”
“You know the incentives,” I replied. “This’ll all pay off soon. Until then, I need you guarding the First Floor. At least until Puck gets back.”
Abby sighed, but her lips curled into a smile, all the same. “I’ll go there now.”
The Storm Avatar blew a kiss before she crossed the Antechamber and descended the staircase.
I returned to the tunnel and redoubled my efforts. My Physical Essence was starting to reach its full capacity, so I worked on making the tunnel even narrower, like a hole burned with a laser. By only carving out a tiny amount of rock at a time, I could avoid rapidly filling my core’s storage capacity.
After a little while longer, I reached open air. I’d found the exact cave that I’d been looking for.
It was a small room of about 30 feet in diameter with a narrow exit tunnel. Before I even glanced at the travel stone, I made the cavern a part of my dungeon by swarming every inch of rock with my existence. Then, I closed off the exit tunnel so that no one else would be able to reach my precious prize.
I turned my mind to the travel stone with bated breath. Bertha always managed to impress me, and today was no exception. Like she’d mentioned, the stone was a crystalline construct. It looked vaguely like an obelisk of liquid darkness, shimmering even in the non-existent light of the cave while it swam and moved with its own energy.
As I reached out with my consciousness, I couldn’t help but admire how smooth and musical the stone seemed to my touch. Standing at 20 feet tall, and stretching almost two feet wide, it seemed to melt out of the mountain itself, like some kind of arcane finger pointing at the ceiling. As I combed over it, I found the chinks in its molecular structure, and excitement raced through my mind.
By pure dungeon instinct, I looked to the skeletal structure and how the essences within were combined. Physical and Infernal Essences swam within, tinged with the lightest touch of Soul Essence. It was truly a thing of beauty, this stone. I didn’t quite understand the applications yet, but excitement boiled and swelled through my whole dungeon as I greedily pulled at the molecular bondings. This was something I could use. I’d been worried, but my mind now dug into the stone’s shifting energy masses, and I knew I could consume it. And I did.
This substance was designed to siphon energy and move it. How, and where, I couldn’t quite determine. It almost seemed to have a dull consciousness of its own, some kind of connection with the physical reality around it that I couldn’t quantify. I watched in fascination and savored the aromatic essence of the structure as I drank it into my core. The stone began to disintegrate and come apart into a black mist before absorbing itself into the ground beneath it. The magical energy raced back to my core.
Consumed a Gorengar Travel Stone!
Gained 5,000 Infernal Essence
Gained 2,000 Physical Essence
Acquired Crafting Material!
Portal Crystal
It took time, but the blueprint began to form inside my core.
Acquired a Blueprint!
Gorengar Travel Stone
Blazing bright and new and fresh in my mind, I beheld the travel stone as only a dungeon could. Its structure was foreign to the other objects I’d consumed before. It seemed incomplete, but I’d consumed the thing in its entirety, so there had to be more. There was only the slightest trace of Soul Essence, so slight that my count didn’t tick over a single digit. Was it Soul Essence that it lacked? The soul forge had needed that type of energy to become fully functional, so perhaps that was the problem?
Rather than siphon my limited resources into the stone, I studied its blueprint further. The image of the travel stone revolved around my mind like an object on a turntable. I could see tiny channels built into the seams, like nodes in a computer network, and residue from essence stuck to the sides of the pathways. The almost liquid nature of the stone was designed to efficiently hold and transport essences. It was a masterpiece of engineering, a fantastic tool for dungeons and adventurers alike to use. Much like any kind of hyper-sophisticated tool, it required time, training, and intelligence to apply it to the right kinds of situations.
I built an exact replica in the center of the dais, right under the carved representation of Lilith. In this location, it was easily accessible to my avatar and champions. As the new stone slid out of the shivering obsidian dais, my Physical and Infernal counters dipped to the levels they’d been before I’d absorbed the original travel stone.
Zagorath Built a Gorengar Travel Stone
Consumed 5,000 Infernal Essence
Consumed 2,000 Physical Essence
Abby’s mouth dropped as she came to stand beside my new obelisk. “I didn’t think you’d find it so fast. It took you little more than three days!”
“Three days? It’s been that long already?”
“Yes,” she replied. “You were rather busy.”
“I can hardly tell when I’m excavating.”
“It’s wonderful,” Abby said. “You might even be able to go to other realms—if you can make it work.”
“Oh, I’ll make it work.”
I turned my attention back to the newly formed stone and examined it once again. There were spaces all throughout the structure, almost like a cable network for both Physical and Infernal Essence. A central section seemed to work as a CPU might in a PC. I injected the scarlet and black Infernal Essence in first, and the stone shimmered before giving off a humming sound. The temperature even rose somewhat, and I fed it more until the CPU pulsed like a beating heart. Scarlet veins throbbed visibly inside the shining mass of almost-liquid stone.
As my mind slid around the surface of the travel stone, nothing happened. It seemed to have the essence it needed, so I figured I wa
s approaching it the wrong way. It was strange how excavating and siphoning essence; deconstructing and building weapons, traps, minions; and contacting your champions could cause you to temporarily forget the other kinds of powers you had. After planting my roots, I’d turned Shadow Crag’s peak into a mighty dungeon, but I’d forgotten a power I’d used while still a dungeon core without a home.
At the beginning of my quest in the Sinarius Realms, I’d contacted Puck through a kind of extended telepathy. When I’d been outside of my dungeon, I’d been able to hear whispers of his thoughts somehow.
I attempted this form of listening on the travel stone, and suddenly, a different kind of sense washed over me. It felt as if the stone itself was a doorway that opened into another world. A twisting thread, tied securely to another stone I couldn’t quite see or understand. But the pathway was there. It was fixed and incapable of being modified, at least for now. It wouldn’t take me wherever I wanted, but something was fresh and throbbing with life at the other end.
There was a clear gap in a veined pathway, and a little more study of the various channels proved that this particular pathway was intentional. The ‘gap’ actually had a kind of magnetism, as though it was meant to connect to an identical pathway, but not one on this stone. It was meant to connect to another travel stone, a corresponding object in an entirely different location.
It would take an individual’s combination of essences and consciousness, and move it through to the other location. That was why there felt like there was a gap somewhere; they were designed to be built in groups—at minimum, in a pair.
I sent a telepathic whisper through the pathway and waited. There was no response, and I wondered whether I’d been wrong. Rather than give up, I started filtering Soul Essence into the obelisk. The stone drank the substance hungrily, and I continued feeding it until the object’s glassy surface was brimming with golden veins.