The City and the Dungeon: And Those who Dwell and Delve Within

by Matthew Schmidt

  "Sure thing," he said, and walked to the Lockstone. The rest of us took our positions—Andy in front, Xavier and I behind her, and Elise on the other side of the room from us. Theoretically this put Elise at an immense amount of risk if the Boss decided to target her instead of us. But if it targeted us, Elise had access to its rear for backstab bonuses. Elise and Xavier had argued over this tactic for literally an hour, and Xavier still wasn't happy about it.

  "On the count of three." I said. "One, two, three!"

  Sampson tapped the Lockstone and dashed back to us. I tried to remain calm as the stone twisted and grew.

  The stone mutated into a Minotaur, the variation with the blood-covered horns and the excessively large battleaxe. It let loose an awful bass roar and moved far faster than something that size ought. Any plans to have Sampson on our frontline crumpled as he nearly did, one swing knocking him across the Lock. I ran and drew a Heal, but I flubbed a line and the spell was ineffective. Elise threw a dagger, missing the Minotaur and almost hitting us.

  Xavier fired a Stun at the Minotaur, which shrugged it off. Then it was after Andy, who swung her pick to block the battleaxe. The pick broke instead. She fell with a scream.

  I thought—a moment that stretched on forever—that we were finished. That we would die here—be forgotten or be found, expelled from the House for incompetence. I would never—But NO!

  "Regroup!" I shouted. "Xavier, Slow!"

  Xavier's spell just connected with the Minotaur, and it moved as if contained in jelly.

  "Sampson, try to circle it. Elise, stay behind it!"

  The Minotaur turned and turned again as it tried to find the nearest of us. Andy stood back up. I cast a Heal before she bled out. Elise threw a dagger perfectly into the back of its head, and it roared in fury.

  The Slow wore off instantly—stupid Bosses and rule breaking.

  We had one last chance. "Rush it!" I shouted. Xavier unloaded his remaining spells. Andy swung with the remains of her pick. Sampson slashed with his sword. Elise threw a dagger from behind.

  The Minotaur groaned one more time and dissolved into the floor. Then chests emerged from it, three by the stairs and two by each of us.

  We all breathed deeply. The Experience was wondrous—two levels and almost the next level for me.

  "After this," I said between pants. "We are going to party. Also, I think we'll all need some more firepower. I think Elise did most of this."

  "I agree," Xavier said. "I'll have to get more damaging spells."

  "A bigger sword," Sampson insisted.

  "Yeah. I don't know how," I said. "But we were underprepared."

  "Too confident," Elise said. "Too much trying to cover all our bases with crystal instead of experience. Which, by the way, I think I burned through several green in daggers." She pointed at the remains of the Minotaur, where several daggers I did not see her throw lay broken. "Andy, you OK?"

  "Pick," Andy said so softly I barely heard. She looked at her pick's remains with the solemnity of a funeral.

  "We'll get you another pick," I said. "A better one. Promise."

  "Check the personal chests," Elise said. "They'll only drop what you can use. Andy, seriously, there could be one in there."

  "Yeah, let's open them already," I said. One of the most controversial arguments over the Bosses was how that worked, but I found evidence they did as I opened mine. I found a staff with a glowing tip. I waved my Identifier over it.

  Staff of Light

  Yellow Gear

  +5/+5/0

  Requires: 16 Intelligence. 16 Wisdom. Class Restricted.

  +1 Wisdom. +5 power to Light spells. Casts Light.

  Resist Blindness

  I grinned despite myself. Even if I could have bought the same with my riches, it was mine in a special way. That, and an item with a resistance like that was worth much crystal—into greens, maybe—way more than I would have shelled out.

  Sampson dragged a long sword, or rather, something that made a long sword look like a short sword. I'm not sure how an ordinary human could have wielded the thing. "Now this is what I call a sword."

  Andy pulled out a pick, and I saw a rare smile. "That's really lucky," Xavier said. "It's what you want, too."

  "Why is that odd?" Elise asked. "It is a personal chest. By the way, look at something I got." She held up a box. "Renewing magic lock picks. These are like greens at the auction house."

  "Xavier?" I asked.

  "Both of my chests had spells. Lots of spells," he said. "Don't know if I should just use them or, well, sell them."

  "Use 'em," I said. "Feels like they're really yours, right?"

  The moment we had stowed the last items from the chests into Bags of Holding, the doors swung open and Alice Black walked back in. "Glad to see you all made it. Congratulations."

  "Thanks," I said. "Out of curiosity, what was your first Boss like?"

  "Didn't make it. We all had the wrong build. Anyway, have you gotten the best treasure?"

  "What?" I asked.

  "Elise is standing by it."

  Elise was standing by the open stairs.

  * * *

  The 6th Floor looked barely different from the 5th. Maybe, if you worked at it, you could pick out a different number and color of crystals. But... but we had crossed a boundary. We had gotten deeper than most delvers ever did.

  "Enjoy," Alice Black said. "It's only a few times in your life that you'll kill a Boss."

  * * *

  We did have a party when we returned, and there was only one place we could do it.

  Strange but potent herbs appear randomly throughout the Dungeon. There appear to be patterns, but it's arguable if those are more than coincidence. Unlike Hanabi, most take time to work, some even hours. Like Hanabi, most taste terrible. Someone had the idea to have a restaurant that serves herbs, so delvers could eat something delicious while they choke down a herb. Mical had a better idea.

  Her mushroom stew was delicious in and of itself.

  "You look a lot better," I told Mical.

  "Thank you." She smiled. Even if she still looked tired, she now looked healthier. "I've wanted this for... Oh, I don't know."

  "I mean, um, you look, um..."

  "More Charisma?" she raised an eyebrow.

  "Of course!" Sampson said, and I winced.

  "I'm not offended," Mical said. "It was cheaper than hiring someone else. I mean, by amortizing the cost over the same period..."

  "What?" I asked.

  "You haven't noticed that all the hostesses you've ever met are pretty? There's actually a section in the Law on Charisma limits for outside hostesses, to prevent a cuteness arms race." Mical said and sighed. "I can't afford an outside hostess yet, but there's no reason I can't buy a few stat items of my own."

  "That's... weird," Elise said. "Hiring someone simply because they're pretty."

  "I think that's always happened, Elise," Xavier said. "It's just that here you can bring up your prettiness through stat abuse—no offense,"

  "None taken," Mical said.

  "Yeah, but what if people didn't care about prettiness in the first place?" Elise asked.

  "Would you rather drink Charisma dropping items?" I asked.

  "That's—come on!"

  "Xavier, are you all right?" Mical asked.

  "What? No, I'm fine," Xavier said, and then frowned. "OK, not fine."

  "What happened?" I asked. "You really saved our butts."

  "But... Did I draw it wrong?" Xavier asked. "Why didn't the Stun take? We would have won almost instantly if it had. I drew it just as I saw it in my head. What if there's some... some real way to cast a spell and I don't know it? That bothers me."

  "There isn't," Elise said. "Listen, the Dungeon knows. If you had been able to, it would have made the Boss too easy. So it spawned something that's resistant."

  "The Dungeon isn't alive," Xavier said. "It can't 'know.'"

  "Sure it's alive," Elise said. "Why did it give Andy a pick?"


  "A coincidence."

  "Not this again," Mical said. "While you two are arguing, I need to talk to my cook. Be right back." Mical got up and walked back to the counter.

  "Actually, there was something I wanted to ask her in her in private," Elise said and walked after her.

  "So," I said. "Xavier, think of it this way. If there is a 'real' way to cast a spell, why hasn't anyone ever found it? Why hasn't someone found different levels of spellstones, like there are different levels of skillstones?"

  "Maybe there are," Sampson said. "Just deeper in."

  "In the—what were they calling the layer beneath the Deep?" Xavier asked. "The Core?"

  "Yes," Andy said.

  "I wonder what that's like," I said, "to be on the deepest level of human delving—to open the 50th Lock, like we just opened the 5th."

  I didn't know. And some part of me badly wanted to find out.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  The Sixth

  Of all actual delvers (defined as anyone who ever entered the Dungeon), half never venture beneath the 1st Floor. Ninety percent never go beneath the 5th. There are three major reasons for that latter statistic, and we faced all of them.

  The first reason is that the Elevator is only accessible in the first five floors. A fast party, if in danger, might be able to run to the Elevator in those shallowest floors. But below, they have to fight. Anyone who goes deeper—unless they are completely insane—carries either some item that can return them in an emergency or has someone with them who can cast Return. The former can get expensive as the necessary power increases, forcing deeper dives simply to stay solvent. As for the latter, the various forms of the spell have obnoxious stat and level requirements—trivial perhaps, to a serious party, but enough to prohibit casual delving.

  But Xavier already had Return. We just had to make sure he never cast too many spells and couldn't bring us back out.

  The second is the 5th Boss, and you can understand why that's enough by itself. But we had just beaten it.

  The third is that some of the nastier monsters and traps only start appearing directly after the 5th floor staircases.

  There are the notorious nasties: Leocrottas, Battle Bats and Fork Bats, Hate Puddings, Tengu Madoushi, and the much-detested Munsae with their drain attacks. Some particularly horrible stuff might spawn out-of-depth, like Emperor Mimics, Rust Lords, Cockatrices, and the Ghost Fisher.

  Traps include the polymorph trap, great for a terrible time, and a rare occurrence of the trapdoor. Unlike a shaft which a Perceptive party can see, a trapdoor is literally invisible until it opens under your feet. Your friends must then decide whether they care about you enough to jump down who-knows-how-many Floors in the hopes of finding you before the monsters do.

  Deserving its own paragraph is the Summongus, a giant flashing toadstool which is somewhere between monster and trap. It doesn't attack directly. Yet it can spew spores which float around the whole section. Said spores, if left untouched, will grow and eventually summon a random monster in a flash of color. If undisturbed long enough, it will inevitably spawn something out-of-depth near you, shortly leading to your death. There had been a movement to amend the Law to require any delver who found a Summongus to kill it. It failed, but even its greatest opponents could sympathize. The mere presence of a single Summongus in a section makes everyone's life miserable. Some parties would rather Return immediately rather than deal with it.

  I mentioned the Ghost Fisher. A number of extremely rare monsters exist which are unlike any normal monster, nor are they ever seen in multiples: Uniques. They're somewhere between a Boss and a normal monster in power. You'll almost never see them on the first five floors because the RDU takes care to exterminate them whenever they appear. Some argue whether this is in "the spirit" of the Dungeon. I don't know, but what I do know is that a random party of shallow delvers would get wiped by the Ghost Fisher in seconds.

  But we didn't have much choice in going down, ourselves.

  * * *

  "Congratulations," Anthony had told us. "You've now met one of the minimum requirements for liegemen—just one. Now go deeper. I want to see you at the 15th."

  "Why?" I asked. "We're in the top ten perce—"

  "TOP?" Anthony demanded. "Don't you talk about a top. We are a High House. The minimum is not sufficient!"

  "But if it wasn't sufficient, it wouldn't be the minimum, no?" Xavier asked.

  "How about this? Get some Wisdom boosts before you smart off to your boss. I'm sure you can find plenty—on the 15th Floor!"

  * * *

  We did delve deeper. We felt almost a euphoria, no matter how much more dangerous the 6th was. We had survived; we had conquered. Deeper and deeper... and deeper.

  I'll have to summarize, as much as it was. It just seemed the rush never ended, the deeper we went. And yet there were times, checkpoints along the journey: Our first telepathy. Our first wipe. Our first stat grinding...

  * * *

  We were in the 7th Floor, the Big Room, when a Floating Eye came after us.

  The 7th's called that because it's an enormous open cavern without walls or corridors, just one massive exposed room. Flying monsters are killers there; there's no cover—anywhere they spawn they can get to you. Usually parties just run from one staircase to another.

  A Floating Eye is called a Floating Eye because it's an eye that floats. It can paralyze anything it looks at, and in the Big Room, that's deadly.

  It didn't move that fast, so we just backed off. Xavier fried it with multiple spells. "No messing around," he said.

  "Sheesh, what if it had reflected those?" Elise asked.

  "No Reflecting Eye spawns this shallow," Xavier argued.

  "But if it was an out-of-depth..."

  I took the amulet it had dropped from the ground. It was more a gorget, really, pearl and inlaid with an abstract symbol for an eye—the best drop of the Floating Eye. "Yes!" I said. "A Necklace of the Eye. Who gets to wear it? It soulbinds on equip."

  "You do," Elise said. "If only one can have telepathy, it's best that the leader does."

  I put it on, and I sensed monsters all around. Strange. I could sense things—people and monsters—but I can't describe how. People were complex, marvelously so, but monsters were simple. Mechanical, even.

  "How do you use telepathy?" I asked.

  "Think at someone?" Xavier suggested.

  I tried thinking Like this? at Xavier.

  He nodded. "I think you got it."

  * * *

  "You just got telepathy?" Alice Black asked me in the common room.

  "Yes," I said. Pretty cool? I thought to her.

  You're coming with me, she thought back, and walked off. Time for telepathy drills. Never had any, right?

  Um, no? I thought.

  It's not hard. You just need practice.

  Several turns down the corridors later, we were in the library.

  George eyed both of us with disgust. "Oh, no. You aren't using this as a silent room, are you?"

  "Of course not," Alice Black said as she sat down by a table. "As long as we talk only with telepathy, we won't make the slightest noise."

  George rolled his eyes but went to reshelf a book.

  "This is fighting dirty," I said as I sat down.

  Telepathy. Keep using telepathy.

  Sorry. I thought. So... what?

  There are several skills you should learn. First, etiquette: Don't use telepathy on someone you don't know. There's an exception for party members, but seriously. You can imagine how obnoxious it is.

  Figured. You can't shut someone up. Odd. I had to keep my mouth from moving, but our conversation was going just fine.

  Precisely. Also, we're going to learn not to thought-shout. If you're hurt, don't use telepathy. Or you'll spread your pain or excitement. It's even more of a faux pas and can get your party killed.

  Got it.

  Skills. I'm not going to tell you how to lie. It's pretty obvious. Y
ou can't. Alice Black smiled.

  I thought through her words, the very feel of her thoughts. I... Um, are you telling the truth?

  Everything I thought was true. She thought. Again, I could sense something.

  You're hiding something.