Monster Core 2

by Dante King

  “This must be Elderwood, the guild house of the Deadeye,” Ralph said.

  “Do you always state the obvious?” Puck asked.

  The wooden buildings were connected by rope bridges and platforms. Dwarves, humans, and elves congregated among the huts above the forest floor.

  As the trio of adventurers passed into the tree-house, the very air around them rippled for a moment. Bright green sigils illuminated around their feet before they crossed beyond the magical barrier.

  Inside the town, they seemed to relax, and their voices faded in a hubbub coming from the rest of the residents. Bolnir gave Quinn a playful shove, and the pair vanished inside a hut built into the branches 20 feet above the ground.

  Puck’s shadow-cloaking spell dissipated, and Ralph sat with his back to a tree, just beyond Elderwood House’s magical barrier. The deep sable of his armor would keep him mostly hidden in the dark. Puck reduced himself to a cloud of shadows that might have been mistaken for a swarm of black insects if anyone saw him.

  “Now what?” Ralph whispered.

  “Those enchantments around the clearing may prove to be a problem,” Puck said. “They look to be a kind of ward.”

  “Surely, they wouldn’t be designed to work against an Infernal creature, like you? And it’s not as if you’re a mere realm monster, either. You’re a dungeon champion, aren’t you?”

  Puck considered the thought. “You may have a point, stable boy. It’s not as if Infernal creatures roam these lands.”

  “So, we should be able to enter.”

  “Possibly. But Master told us to keep our quest in the shadows. Strolling headlong into a village of trained guild members sounds like an excellent way to lose our heads. Best we keep them where they are.” The Shade went silent for a long moment before he turned his head to Ralph. “What do you make of all of this?”

  “I’m sorry; you’re asking for what I think?”

  “Trust me,” Puck said, “I’m no more pleased than you are.”

  “The Sage,” Ralph said, after a moment of thought. “He sounds like a kind of priest or higher level Deadeye Guild member. If he’s not the man who can craft an Adventurer’s Sigil, then he’ll know someone who can.”

  “Mm.”

  Ralph smiled. “We’ve found everything we need.”

  “Slowly, Kraus, slowly. Use your head and think. How are we going to find this Sage without arousing suspicion?” Puck dissolved into a cloud of shadows that flew above the tree. He materialized on another branch, this one closer to the villager.

  “If the dwarf is to be believed, the Sage is a higher ranking member of the Deadeye Guild. Probably has a big, fancy house. Something with a lot of trimming and stinks of wealth.”

  “You humans and your absurd fascination with appearance.”

  Ralph scoured the village for any sign of wealth, and it didn’t take him long to find a house removed from the tight cluster of buildings. The opulent dwelling boasted tall, arching doorways, green and gold inlays, and even its own glowing, magic light sources. It certainly seemed like something a guild official would take for a home.

  “I see it.” Puck nodded as he met Ralph’s gaze. “Suppose I believe you; in all likelihood, we’ll be kicking his door in.”

  “Not very subtle,” Ralph warned.

  “Manner of speech. Let’s get closer.”

  It only took a few minutes to circle around the edge of the village. Puck rippled from shadow to shadow, and Ralph took extra care to make absolutely sure that no hidden sentries would see him. As they crossed over the magical barrier, a slight warmth ran over Ralph’s body, but he had passed through without any trouble. There didn’t seem to be any indication that they’d alerted a guard or triggered a magical ward. Ralph exhaled as they crept toward the fancy building.

  Part of him wondered whether the dwellers of the village had become complacent, with their magical ward around the edges of the clearing. As they came to a halt less than 50 strides from the guild house, he decided that it was likely the case.

  Puck settled in the branches of yet another tree, and Ralph crouched by its roots, watching the house for any movement.

  “Can your cloak hide us from sight here?” Ralph asked.

  “Yes,” Puck answered. “As long as we remain stationary.”

  “Then, we should wait,” Ralph whispered. “There are too many people around. We’ll go inside the building when it’s safer.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Puck agreed.

  Puzzled, Ralph looked up at the Shade, practically invisible in the tree’s upper branches. Had he started to win the creature’s respect, after all of this? He waited for a barb, but Puck stayed silent and watchful.

  “We’re in for a little excitement in the next few hours,” he said. “Rest.”

  This was just getting downright strange. “You have nothing sarcastic to say?”

  “As much as I’d like to kick your ego into a corner while you bawl and beg for mercy, it’s counterproductive.” Puck chuckled. “Sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s time to get your flesh carved.”

  Ralph closed his eyes as a small smile touched his face.

  Maybe the sarcastic little bastard really was starting to warm up to him.

  Sleep closed in, only to be torn away from Ralph after what seemed to be less than an hour.

  His mind snapped to attention after a twig fell onto his face, and he shot out from the gray swirl of sleep. The lights of the Deadeye Guild’s village were dimmed, and the shadows around the buildings had lengthened, providing a better opportunity to approach the guild house undetected.

  “You’re lucky you don’t snore,” Puck muttered, “else the good people of the village would have rolled out of bed looking for a large black bear.”

  Ralph ignored Puck’s apparently revived razor wit and drew his sword. The murmur of voices had vanished, and he guessed most of the inhabitants were asleep.

  He had a quest to fulfill.

  Ralph followed Puck up the giant tree, careful not to draw any attention to themselves. The place was still awash with activity, but no one seemed to notice the black-clad figures approaching the guild house built inside the tree. The pair scaled the ladders and crossed the swinging bridge to the opulent residence.

  There were no guards posted outside the front door, and the flicker of candlelight was visible through a circular window on the house’s upper floor. Someone was home.

  Ralph waited for Puck’s nod of encouragement before he tested the door’s clasp. He’d been half-expecting some magic defense, but it was only secured with a simple lock.

  “Allow me,” Puck said as he tossed a shadow-sphere at the lock. The dark magic consumed the simple mechanism and ate a hand-sized hole through the door.

  Ralph pushed on the door, and it swung inward with barely a creak. He crept through the doorway, and Puck swept in. Polished wooden floorboards gleamed in the soft light of the dimmed golden lanterns outside. Animal hides covered huge expanses of the floors, and tattered books rested on neat shelves.

  Puck moved ahead as Ralph waited. The Shade was faster, quieter, and less likely than Ralph to be discovered.

  He returned in less than a minute and wordlessly shook his head and gestured upstairs. Ralph nodded and suppressed the absurd excitement stirring in his gut. It was impossible to ignore; he felt as though he was five years old again, stealing from his mother’s pantry.

  The stairs were draped in the same hides as the floor, and Ralph’s worn and well-traveled boots barely whispered as he climbed the staircase. There wasn’t so much as a squeak as he took each step before reaching the second floor. A hallway stretched in two directions, and the candlelight he’d spotted from outside glimmered through a doorway.

  The target had to be in there.

  Chapter Six

  With Ralph and Puck gone, the dungeon grew silent.

  I had a dozen different ideas for renovating my dungeon, but my thoughts were interrupted when Abby summoned her ava
tar beside the Gorengar Travel Stone.

  “It looks like something I had back in my dungeon,” Abby said as she ran her hands over the obelisk. The almost-liquid stone flashed at her touch, and the Infernal Essence inside recoiled as though it was repulsed by her.

  “You’re made of Storm Essence,” I said. “It can probably sense that in you.”

  Then, the essence inside the stone shot forward like a caged animal, but the physical prison prevented it from striking her. “Eek! The one I had was never this feisty.”

  “You had a travel stone?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” Abby said. “It was more like a tool for storing essence and transporting it to my core. My pixie, Gadrili, had me build the stones.”

  “They could be useful for me,” I said. “I wouldn’t be distracted by collecting essence from dead adventurers. I would need only to concentrate on battles within my dungeon’s levels.”

  “I believe such tools would be useful, yes.” Abby smiled, growing more excited by the minute. “Mine were like keys to different floors of my tower. An adventurer would have to part with their essences to continue moving through. It was how I managed to build most of my power.”

  I needed some kind of system that would passively absorb Soul, Elemental, and Physical Essence without my consciousness being present, and the setup in Abby’s dungeon sounded like the perfect fit.

  “Can you help show me how it was built?” I asked.

  “I can try,” she answered.

  I took her consciousness and guided her to Zagorath’s Antechamber. I found the blueprint for a travel stone and transferred it to her mind. Abby recoiled slightly at the touch of the foreign structure that I projected, but then, she seized it eagerly as the electric tendrils of her thoughts raced around it.

  “You said you can’t excavate Shadow Crag, right?” I tried to put a lid on the new wave of excitement. “But, given essence, can you build with me?”

  Her mind flickered, and her whole core shone with excitement at the idea. “Let me try. Where do you want this stone?”

  I scoured my dungeon for the perfect location for a pair of mini-travel stones and settled on the eyes of the sprawling bat-statue jutting from the Antechamber’s far wall. The bat would look all the more imposing if its eyes were glowing siphons drinking in the essence from the corpses of adventurers who fell to my minions and traps. It would save me a lot of time, and I wouldn’t have to worry about adventurers absorbing the essence from their fallen comrades. Any who escaped my dungeon alive would leave empty-handed—unless I intended on providing them with some small gift for their efforts, of course.

  Abby saw my intention and laughed. “You’re rather theatrical; you know that, right?”

  “I’m a sucker for beauty,” I replied. “As you well know.”

  I returned to the moving parts of the blueprints, dipped into my resources, and began forming a new travel stone. Unlike the original stone I’d created, I poured both Storm and Infernal Essence into it. I sifted in a small amount of Soul Essence alongside the others. I created a jewel-like eye and set it into the Hellbat statue. The single eye magnified the light of the soul forge as it bathed the whole Antechamber in an unnerving blood-red.

  Zagorath Built a Siphoning Stone

  Consumed 20 Physical Essence

  Consumed 50 Infernal Essence

  Consumed 60 Storm Essence

  Zagorath Activated Siphoning Stones (x1)

  Consumed 12 Soul Essence

  I reached into the new stone glittering in the bat-statue’s right eye socket and found it was incomplete. I visualized forging a path back to Zagorath’s dungeon heart, and the stone-eye’s liquid blackness seemed to shimmer. Veins of gold, azure, and crimson twisted into existence as the link completed.

  Abby’s consciousness latched onto mine in a kind of mental kiss that electrified my core. “You completed the link on your first try. You didn’t even need me to show you.”

  “You could have told me how to do it?”

  “Of course. I might have said something, but I wanted to see how you’d fare. I can see you don’t really need my assistance, although there are a few things you’d never be able to do by yourself.”

  “Ha. You’re right. Maybe later, though? I want to give the new siphon stone a try.”

  Abby seemed satisfied to wait for our next romp, so I disturbed a single Hellbat in the vent above the Antechamber and spawned my Tainted Elf avatar. As the minion swarmed into the room, I inhabited the elf’s body before delivering a spinning slash to the creature’s abdomen. Blood splattered across the tiles, and I immediately returned Von Dominus to my core. Infernal Essence hovered around the Hellbat’s corpse, but only for a second.

  The siphon stone inside the statue’s right eye sockets lit up as the dead Hellbat’s essence surged toward it. Before I could consider how to transport the essence from the stone to my core, the magical energy pulsed along the walls and continued toward my core, as though each inch of polished obsidian was an optic fiber cable inside a supercomputer.

  Part of me wondered why all of this came so instinctively, but it occurred to me that, much like every other invention or discovery, most people simply resigned themselves to the basic utility of an item or tool. Other dungeons likely used travel stones in this manner, but they’d had a pixie to advise them. I had to do most of it myself, or take the comments of Abby and develop them into fully functioning devices like this new stone.

  Although small, it had cost a lot of Storm, Infernal, and Soul Essences to construct. Good thing I had a massive resource pool waiting to be spent.

  “You’re going to fill the whole of Zagorath with these things?” Abby asked, predicting my intention.

  “As many as necessary,” I answered. “I can see they don’t have great range, and I need a way of absorbing essence if I’m not inside Zagorath.”

  “Not inside? You intend to venture into the Nature Realm after the others return?”

  “No,” I said. “Not just the Nature Realm. Every realm, if I can find the means of reaching them.”

  “Won’t you be needed here?”

  I could tell the Storm dungeon was a little clingy, but I could understand her displeasure at the thought of me leaving after what had happened to her.

  “Bertha can remain here with you,” I said.

  “She is a little boring and doesn’t talk much. But she’s strong, so I suppose that wouldn’t be so bad.”

  I shot a look at Bertha, who was still sitting in the middle of the Antechamber. She almost looked like she was sleeping, so content to remain seated while I modified my dungeon. A single eye opened, as though she had sensed my gaze upon her.

  “Master has need of me?” she asked.

  “When my avatar eventually leaves this place, you and Abby will cleanse my halls of intruders, and I’ll be capable of absorbing the essence passively.”

  “It would be my pleasure to show the little lightning bolt how a true champion performs in battle.”

  Abby rolled her eyes and folded her arms over her chest, but I left her to glower while I returned to work.

  I constructed a new siphon stone on the wall of the Antechamber.

  Zagorath Built Siphoning Stones x2

  Consumed 40 Physical Essence

  Consumed 100 Infernal Essence

  Consumed 120 Storm Essence

  Zagorath Activated Siphoning Stones (x2)

  Consumed 24 Soul Essence

  I still had more essence, so I created and inserted another stone into the staircase behind the Hellbat statue. I added a siphon stone above the side-altars in the Pretzel, ready to absorb the essence of lesser adventurers who would fall to my minions stationed there. I set a siphon stone into the center pillar among the twelve pillars of the First Floor.

  Zagorath Built Siphoning Stones (x3)

  Consumed 60 Physical Essence

  Consumed 150 Infernal Essence

  Consumed 180 Storm Essence

  Zagorath
Activated Siphoning Stones (x3)

  Consumed 36 Soul Essence

  “You’re done?” Abby asked.

  “I’m not even close,” I replied. “There’s one feature I’ve been itching to add since I excavated toward the original travel stone.”

  “What is it?”

  “A big, fucking hole,” I said.

  With the stones completed, I went to the First Floor and consumed the rock on either side of Lilith’s likeness. A downward sloping tunnel formed, and stairs rose into being as I carved into the rock. I searched for the tunnel I’d used to locate the original travel stone and connected with it. Then, I began to widen the hole.

  I couldn’t think of anything better to improve my dungeon than an enormous chasm, a gaping maw that plunged into the mountain.

  I carved the chasm until it was roughly a hundred feet wide, then began pushing downward, excavating layers as I went. After the chasm reached a depth of 200 feet, I felt my Physical Essence swell to almost maximum capacity, so I formed spikes at the bottom, giant lances of rock that would impale even the largest adventurer who fell to the bottom. I continued adapting and morphing the chasm until it reached a depth of 500 feet. It was still only halfway between the point of my dungeon and the chamber where the original travel stone had been.

  I decided to name this pit, much like I’d named the rest of my dungeon’s major rooms. And like my previous naming tendencies, I chose a simple one: the Chasm.

  I stretched stairs from the gulf’s edges in rectangular platforms only a few feet long. I kept them disconnected from each other, so there was a little danger in traversing them, but a humanoid creature would have only a little trouble if they concentrated on where they stepped. Handrails, however, were completely out of the question, and there was nothing to prevent the long fall and the sudden stop at the end. Every 50 feet, I created a curved bridge that snaked across to the opposite wall. It was a narrow walkway that would only allow humanoid creatures to walk in a single file. I made sure to keep the bridges unique, with different lengths and widths, and some of them would lead to dead-ends.