by Marty Myers
Meanwhile, their mental conversation continued. “ Something else the spices brought to my attention,” Hank mind spoke, “ is how strange it is that Anatolius recognized almost all of the spices I brought from home. I didn’t think about it initially because I have seen so little of this world, but why are so many of the animals, people and plants that are a match for my own far off realm? Even the things we don’t have any more like elves and dwarves are part of our myths so they might have once existed back home.”
Alastor was quiet a moment before replying. “ There are many theories why so much of life across the various realms are mirror images of one another. One of the most popular beliefs is that there was an ancient Creator that spread many of the same basic life forms far and wide seeding most of creation with a basic template for life to arise. Others say the various gods have all carried their preferred plants, animals and followers far and wide as they have spread out looking to be worshiped in the many different realms. There are many similar creation myths among the various races, but no real answer has ever been found to prove one of them correct one way or the other as far as I know.”
“ Now,” Alastor mind spoke, “ please tell me that I don’t have to warn you to keep quiet about your new ability to reach out to your home. “ Hank replied “ yes, I understand it would be disastrous for my homeworld if the Dark learns I can raid it for him. I am sure he would want to abduct more of my people to exploit the bans loophole for instance and bring back more of his most powerful deceased followers. I want to keep this a secret for as long as I possibly can.”
“ I learned of a way to hide some of my thoughts and knowledge from our masters from Llywelyn when the portal was open.” Alastor said, “ I wanted to ask you how meeting the Dark Citadel went. I could tell something passed between you two, but it was over in a blink of an eye and I didn’t get much of an impression from it. I have heard so many things about her, but it’s all legends from long ago, I have only been to where she lies in the north one time long ago. I went there to take Provoas’s master there to retrieve an item for the Darkness.”
“ Llywelyn, The Dark Lady is something else,” Hank said. “ She showed me many things. “ “ Like what,” Alastor asked him. In answer with a concerted effort, Hank focused upon their bond and stepped out of himself while making a mental replica of his favorite coffee shop. He pulled Alastor along with him into the construct. This time he did not even have to keep a hold of him because the bond and the cord between them meant that mystically they were always touching.
“ Alastor, Hank said, welcome to one of my favorite places back home.” As they stepped into the shop and over to a Hanks favorite window seat. “ Look outside,” Alastor saw through the window glass both of them still standing perfectly still there on the 2nd floor. “ This is one of the perks of being a dungeon apparently. I am unfettered by a true body so since I am nothing more than a mental projection, therefore, I can be in multiple places at once simply by concentrating and making another part of me there. I can even project myself into my own memories such as this place. In here our minds are linked together and our thoughts run like lightning so time appears to move much slower out there but it’s all really relative.”
“ With another dungeon in contact with me this effect is even more pronounced, until everything and everyone else appears to be frozen in time. We were able to converse for hours while a minute or two passed during the guards transfer through the portal. She even took me on a small tour of some of her dungeon and we spoke of many things. About what it is to be a dungeon and what I can and can’t do. She shared a lot with me,” Hank said.
Here inside Hank’s mindscape Alastor was even closer in all ways to Hank than they normally were being bonded, so he got a decent echo of Hank’s thoughts and experiences with Llywelyn. “ Hank.” he said a bit enviously, “ I don’t know how you do it. She could be a deadly foe for us, managing to become her lover instead seems a stroke of marvelous luck. I would love to get to meet her sometime my friend.”
Hank felt a bit uncomfortable thinking about this, so he focused and instead of answering right away he had two cups of his favorite coffee appear on the table and he invited Alastor to try it. He picked up his own cup and enjoyed the feeling of warmth in his hand. The steam rising out of the cup and the smell of the coffee all combined with the familiar ambiance of the place to relax Hank. Alastor tried drinking the coffee and found it to be an unusual but good tasting beverage.
“ We can come here inside my mind from now on to have conversations we wish to keep secret and it should go completely unnoticed as long as we don’t spend too much time in here,” Hank said. “ After we get this project finished I want to go check out the treasure vault and each chest there. Llywelyn should have slipped me a rock fragment from her dungeon into one of the chests. It is supposed to help me to communicate with her even over these distances much like our telepathy I think.”
“ So you really are planning on trying to have a long-term relationship with the Dark Citadel,” Alastor said with more than a hint of admiration in his voice that echoed through their bond. “ She was the first and some say the greatest of dungeon kind ever created,” Alastor said. “ She who has defied the Lords of Light more times than any others who serve the Darkness other than a few of the fallen angels themselves and yet lives.” “ Yes,” Hank said, “ she laid out a host of good reasons why doing so would be beneficial to us both and talked me out of hoping that my relationship with my old girlfriend back on Earth could somehow impossibly be fixed to work out after the changes wrought upon me here.” “ I just bet she did,” Alastor ribbed him while leering good-naturedly at his companion.
Feeling very much like changing the subject. Hank said, “ I also have a pressing urge in me to see the gold that will be my payment when this dungeon construction is done. It’s like an ache somewhere in my head.” Alastor nodded as he too felt a little bit of the urge due to the contract binding both of them and Provoas into the bargain. Hank had it the worst because his part of the contract was not completed yet. “ I even want to check on the chest we took from Alastasia’s crypt. I really have no idea what’s in it, but after studying the pendant and getting an idea of the oubliette I definitely know she didn’t collect junk.”
So saying Hank finished his coffee and brought them out of their moment in time and back to their bodies on the second floor. Hank felt a slight twitch as he did so, but Alastor was a bit more effected jerking in place before catching himself. Otherwise they were both fine and finished up trapping the 2nd floor ceiling in a fraction of the time it would have taken to do it conventionally.
Hank checked over the zombies and skeletons on the floor just to be sure everything was as it should be while passing himself through the stone once again. He found he liked to reinforce his hold upon the dungeon regularly and that each time he did he felt a little more comfortable being a part of everything. Perhaps this too was part of the attunement process he was going through as a dungeon.
Hank also took the time to get measurements for the doors he wanted up here and passed them onto Alastor to give to Birch before he approached someone to craft them for them. Hank still planned to learn more about bone crafting from Provoas and craft the doors down in the lower dungeon himself, but up here the whole point was to make it look like a normal dungeon made for the last human lords to hold prisoners before they died off.
Hank and Alastor teleported down to the vault, the twenty one chests sat before them in the middle of the floor with the chest from Alastasia’s bedroom sitting off to one side. Hank adjusted the lighting in the room with one of the tricks Llywelyn had shown him and motioned for Alastor to open the one chest that Birch had personally carried back. “ My guess,” Hank said, “is that the stone may be in this one.”
Alastor took a careful look at the chest with his soul sight before opening it. You could never be too careful when dealing with chests since so many of them had been designed with clever traps t
o snare the unwary. He saw nothing untoward about the first chest and opened it. Inside of it there was mostly old gold coins showing many different stamping’s of old kingdoms Hank only recognized due to his recently acquired dwarven memories.
Hank wondered how long counting everything out would even take and thought about just passing through the chests and imbuing them with his essence, then he would know just about everything about the chests contents but Hank immediately felt like he could not do it. It would be claiming the treasure in a way and he could not be paid per the demon contract until he had completed the dungeon to Master Provoas’s satisfaction.
If we wanted more than just an eyeball count Hank would need to physically count them. It was frustrating but seeing the treasure did ease his suffering somewhat. He looked at Alastor and answered his unasked question saying. “ I would have to do it the hard way. We don’t have the time to count out thousands of coins today.”
Instead, Hank and Alastor looked for the stone hoping that it would not count as part of the treasure otherwise Hank thought they would by stymied in their efforts. Luckily it was in its own small jewel box laying on top of the coins inside and when he saw it he immediately knew what it was and that it was not counted as Provoas possession by the contract.
Hank had Alastor pick up the box and open it. Inside was a fairly regular stone that looked at first glance like it might have been a broken cobblestone. He could see Llywelyn’s essence in it though and knew that it was still connected to her. He wondered if it had hurt her letting it be taken so far away and suspected the answer was yes. He resolved to work at communicating with her as soon as he could get the stone and the castings set up to do so.
They worked through inspecting each chest before opening them. Almost all of the others were trapped although they had all been disarmed before being brought over. Most of them were set with magical traps set to poison or curse either whoever opened the chest or with area effects to affect all those nearby. Hank studied each one carefully and the grimoire in his head supplied the chants for half of them from the Darkness, Sickness, and Death path of necromancy.
A couple of the magic traps on the chests he remembered from the Dwarfs memories of their lore and one or two of them were curses Llywelyn had taught him which left a couple he didn’t know or couldn’t learn from the book. Hank worked at learning to cast each of the curses he could learn and then dispelled them repeatedly before recasting them upon one of the trap free chests. He studied how each one took hold of the item being cursed and then dispelled them again. He could see that the chests set with permanent spelled traps were crafted with materials that actually held the spell or curse to help boost its potency or increase its range or duration.
Sometimes instead they were made to help disguise its presence or its capabilities. There were sometimes small crystals set into the chests to help with this as well as certain oils and necromantic ingredients inserted into the wood for similar purposes. He noticed too that any of his curses set on the chest actually drew power from him and the dungeon itself and so would never deteriorate as long they were within him, only if they were removed would they eventually begin deteriorating. He really needed to master these curses Hank thought to himself as they could potentially be set into walls, floors and into door traps in his dungeon as well. He had an idea that he might set one trap on the chest and another upon the floor beneath it so that if it was moved it would set them both off!
A cough got his attention, as Alastor tried once again to interrupt him. Hank you have been down here for hours casting these curses. I kept up with you for a while but even I got tired of cursing after the first couple hours or so. Hank realized Provoas’s commands had kicked in again without his catching on to it. Since it hadn’t caused him any moral dilemmas he hadn’t even hesitated to throw himself into his work. Still, it was a troubling reminder that he couldn’t even trust his own mind at times.
Alastor reassured him through their bond. “ I don’t believe that anything that needs your immediate attention has happened while you were preoccupied Hank,” he said. “ But we never did really look through all this treasure either once you went off on this tangent.” Hank looked around and realized that Alastor was right. He couldn’t recall any particulars of the contents beyond looking into the first gold coin filled chest. Hank felt a bit drained mentally and essence wise from his marathon curse casting. “ Your right Alastor, but I don’t think I am ready to dive back into them just now. I have seen them enough to satisfy the contract for now that the payoff is here and available. But not being able to claim any of it has its own downsides to it.”
“ Instead why don’t we look into Alastasia’s chest. That one is all ours to do with as we please. Then if there is nothing pressing going on, I will go back up to the second floor and set some of these new curse traps out.” He was just getting ready to have Alastor open the chest when he noticed the small jewelry box sitting nearby. Now he regretted getting sucked into Provoas’s compulsion to practice his necromancy for the past several hours even more. He needed to master this long range communication to talk to Llywelyn but it wasn’t part of the grimoires spellcraft so he had ignored it in favor of the curses.
Hank thought about where he would want to set up the scrying pool to communicate with Llywelyn. He particularly didn’t want Provoas or the Dark to know what he was about. Llywelyn had said that once he had mastered it he might be able to set it up purely as a mental construct except for the physical stone from her dungeon acting as both a mystical antenna booster and as a decoder to get past the defenses set upon her dungeon. After a bit of thinking, Hank decided to try to set it up that way since he had been doing a lot with both his scrying and telepathy. He decided he would communicate from down in the kitchen since he was expected to be doing a lot of regular scrying and teleportation down there just to feed the guards every day. If his master did feel him scrying down there he should assume he was busy with menial chores.
“ Okay,” Hank said, “ change of plans I am going to go down to the kitchen for a bit and try setting up communications with Llywelyn. Have you brought in the next load of game for the guards?” “ No,” Alastor said,“ I have been working with you and then Birch to fulfill our list. He is currently out bargaining for the doors to me made up for the 2nd floor cells and guardroom.” Hank nodded. “ Good job, I am glad your keeping up on getting what we need to finish the upstairs.” “ Why are you going to be doing that in the kitchen,” Alastor said. “ Well I figure it will be like hiding in plain sight. We are going to be regularly scrying from down there from now on to bring the guards food in so if Provoas feels me doing it down there he should just assume I am working on feeding our company.”
Hank focused upon the Llywelyns stone and teleported out a hollow shaped with exactly enough space for it to be hidden inside a wall of the kitchen. He then teleported it into the spot and went down to speak with Anatolius and see how the last shift change had went and what he would want to fix for the next shift. Appearing in the kitchen he found the ghostly chef and his crew cleaning cups and dishes and simmering a soup out of the remains of the rabbits. “ How goes it,” Hank asked? “ Well, the rabbit went well enough, although the guards are definitely a rowdy bunch. I am glad you made the dining hall with immovable stone tables and benches otherwise I think they would have made an even greater mess in there.”
Hank remembered he was supposed to build the guards a training hall. He supposed he should do that soon so they would have an area set aside to blow off some steam. He remembered his earlier idea about building an amphitheater like the ancient Colosseum, but again dismissed the idea as too grand and time consuming right now. One day maybe he would get a chance to make such a grand structure. Instead, he decided he would need to hunt up Captain Kravous and work out a more modest arena.
Hank needed to stop getting so distracted and stick to one project at a time. He turned his attention back to the ghost before him. “ So Anatolius, what woul
d you prefer to have brought in for the next meal?” “ Well,” the cook said a bit nervously, “ I was hoping I might get you to make me a couple more fireplaces arranged around the room here. Or if you could, to make me an oven that I might bake bread eventually.” Hank said, “of course just show me where you want them and I will work on making them for you.” And so he spent another half hour making changes to the kitchen. He created another fireplace and some more stoneware for it as well as a big stone oven and topped off the coal bin again before he began scrying for more fresh game.
“ So any preference this time,” Hank asked. “ How about some larger game Anatolius warriors often seem to equate big with better.” Hank nodded and cast his scrying out farther than before across the mountains and down the foothills out onto some plains. He found some antelope like grazers before coming across much larger wild cattle similar to aurochs grazing in large herds. Their giant frames and massive horns were impressive to Hank who wasn’t used to seeing domesticated cattle in person let alone these wild beasts.