Anima: A Divine Dungeon Series (Artorian's Archives Book 6)

by Dennis Vanderkerken

  Artorian held his mouth when he understood what was meant by ‘what was coming.’ The Guild. It was the Guild that was coming. Per the money? Of course it was about the money. Yet it didn’t make sense. That Core had no reason not to eat him whole. None. None at all.

  The pharmacist unfortunately, was stumped as well, even as he appreciated the patriarch’s support for his camp. “My… my lord Patriarch. I have no idea why the pill ejected itself, nor why it didn’t harm your son even a little. Unconscious, he couldn’t have accepted or rebuked the will of the pill. The heavens themselves have relayed this message to us. I agree with the Patriarch, Grand Elder Mang-du. The boy must live. He must go to the academy. You do not have my vote on this. I stand with the Patriarch.”

  The pharmacist was correct. Merli, at that point in time, would have been utterly unable to accept or rebuke the will of that Core. It had been him? Yet it couldn’t have been him. It simply couldn’t have been. Time did not work that way. The heavens were not so kind.

  Momentarily pulling himself back to the bonfire space, Artorian was trembling. Shaking. Something else was wrong. He moved his robes away to expose his hands. They were so puny. So small. So young. “Wh… what. Why.”

  Scilla’s response was deadpan. “I told you last time, I believe, that your soul and self-image hovers strongly between two points. The one that comes next, and one far into Merli’s memory future. Get back to it, I’m still repairing the original memory. I was expecting it to play five, perhaps six times before you chose to act and intervene. Though now you’ll have to do the opposite.”

  Artorian, in the body of his twelve-year-old puny self, frowned. It looked as silly as it was adorable. “What could possibly have been the point of that? What lesson could I learn? What pain could I grasp? That makes no sense! That is not what is eating me. What was that Core? Why do I feel responsible? Why do I think it was me that saved… me? That’s not… That’s not how the universe works. It couldn’t have been me.”

  Scilla cocked her head. “You’re right. It couldn’t have been Artorian, and yet Merli spat out that Core before it ate any of his vital Essence. That’s a fact. That’s truth. That’s history. That is exactly what happened. Reason or no. Action or no. That Core didn’t eat you.”

  She extended a hand for the physically twelve-year-old to take. “I told you. Nothing will have any impact on what’s to come. You can shout at your memories. You can twist them. Manipulate them. Bend them. Break them. Doesn’t matter. Not until you face the regret. For that I will run you through them again, and again, and again. Do you remember what you ran from back then? What you’re still trying to deny? Even in that body?”

  Artorian, stuck in Merli’s body, gritted his teeth in the bonfire room. It was difficult to tell who was who in this instance. It was like both of his selves were present in this moment. His jaw quivered, and he closed his eyes as he sunk back into the memory and did the part he failed again.

  Merli was slumped, but not as unconscious as Artorian had convinced himself he was. Lost in thought for a moment, Artorian had the start of an epiphany. It was there. Right there. The beginning of the regret.

  The sealing pill was administered, and he again felt the unbridled terror as the thing in him ate him. The Core reached his vital Essence, and this time… he squeezed his hands closed, and did nothing. Then he saw it. What he was food for. It had no color, but nothing had color anymore in this temporary world of gray. The Core seemed to ask him something, but used feelings to convey the words: ‘Do you rebuke me?’

  Merli didn’t have words of his own to use. His throat didn’t work, and his voice certainly didn’t either. There was terror, but also a strange comfort. The solemn steadiness of knowing the end. The first thoughts he had were answer enough. “I have nothing left worth taking. I rebuke nothing. Eat me.”

  Artorian waited with bated breath for what he was convinced was the inevitable. Except that it didn’t come. The Core didn’t eat him. Instead it spoke, just not with the words Artorian heard the first time. Those prior words were twisted because he’d attempted to shape the memory and intervene.

  As it was not rebuked, the Core gained full access to Merli. It studied him, measured him, and spoke in his mind. The tone was slow, methodical, and steady.

  Ending the connection, Grant severed their link. Merli spit out the Core while devoid of corruption, but without any loss to his vital Essence. The boy passed out completely.

  Artorian held his heart, then collapsed to his knees in the bonfire space, feeling overwhelmed. His head pressed to the ground as he tried to process what Scilla had shown him. “A Core? A Core took pity on me?”

  Scilla pulled him back up, squeezing her arms around him. How strangely caring for someone who had proclaimed to be heartless. “Not pity. Never pity. An Immaculate Core of an intelligent creature saw you, and touched your heart. Then, when it realized what you had become, what did it give you? You tiny, childish old man. What did it truly give you?”

  Artorian wasn’t sure, but looked when the memory played on.

  Merli remembered waking up, snug on his mother’s lap. Held close in her loving arms. It was the next true and proper thing he remembered when the experiences with the Core became… fuzzy. Like Merli considered it little more than a strange dream. An event that didn’t actually happen, and was thus swiftly forgotten. After that, all that was left was the warmth, and the sight of his father rushing to him. He looked at his dearest with deepest concern, but she just smiled as he asked the question that ached him. “My son. Is he well?”

  His beauty of a mother nodded tenderly. “Our son is well, and still with us. I could not ask for a greater blessing. He is our world, dearest.”

  His father nodded, exhaling a deeply relieved sigh. “He is indeed. Our favorite little hellion. I only hope the academy will see to him better than we have. I should have known he was different. No other child of mine steals scrolls just to read them. Nor sneaks out nearly so often. Where did I go wrong, dearest?”

  Merli’s mother just shook her head no. “We wished to protect our little wombat against the world. So tight did we hold him that we did not see the span of his wings. What can we do, but give him a home, and let him fly free?”

  The patriarch sighed deep, but assented with a nod as he pressed a hand to his youngest son’s cheek. “He takes after you so strongly. Very well. I desire him safe in my heart. Always. Yet I shall let him fly free. I shall argue with the elders, and make the arrangements. Keep him close?”

  Merli’s mother beamed. “For as long as he will let me. Before we find him dirty and in the grass again.”

  Artorian understood then, the reality of a moment long rebuked. “It… it gave me. It gave me… Belonging. They were always… always my parents, and they loved me. Completely. The one who was wrong. It was… it was me.”

  Scilla squeezed him tight, so very proud as he made the leap. A core memory set of his was shifting to be seen in a new light, and those were the cogs in the clock that Scilla wanted to see turn. Her words were softly spoken, though she firmly meant them.

  “First regret. Resolved.”

  Chapter Twenty

  In an opulent Asgard training ring, Dawn cackled as Marie slammed face-first to the ground. Her aggrieved shrieks were muffled by the dirt as she simply couldn’t get a handle on the basics of walking. She had just made such progress with her Magehood before the canting, and that progress had been undercut. Now Marie was in a Spirit body, and the whole set of rules was thrown out of the window and turned on its head. Again.

  As an amusing bonus, the interplay of Asgard gravity and Marie’s new form was an exercise in comedy. Marie’s prideful demeanor didn’t hold up so well when she went from ‘being just fine,’ to ‘puddle.�
�� The sight just tickled the Incarnate in the ribs.

  Dawn’s laughter died at the drop of a copper when she finally felt Cal decant her Artorian. A poor feeling accompanied it, prickling her skin. This decanting was wrong. Very wrong. Marie yelled some complaints, but Dawn didn’t hear her. The Fire Soul had already shot right off Asgard’s surface. Turning into a Mach ten projectile as soon as she was in the air, Dawn left a burning trail while hurriedly en route to Midgard. As far as she was concerned, Sunny’s decanting had gone awry.

  Cal was painfully aware. His reply came swift and grim, clearly in the progress of working on it.

  “Artorian!” Dawn grabbed the air to slow down quickly enough, grayscaling the area with ferocity rather than tearing her surroundings asunder. Her feet hit Midgard ground hard, digging deep divots on impact that carved into full trenches when her gray dropped away. Worried sick to her stomach, she hustled over to the form of a very meager boy. “Sunny! Are you well? You have always been very particular about your—”

  She stopped in her tracks. “Appearance.”

  The twelve-year-old sitting alone on the edge of a gazebo wore the telltale expression of one who had been crying, but was now all spent and out of tears. The boy looked tired, but the gleam in his blue eyes shone stalwart. Artorian was spent, but not broken. The youth weakly smiled up at the tall-in-comparison Ancient Elf. When he spoke, his childish voice matched his stature. “I’m fine, Dawny. Just went through a few things. How long has it been, this time? The Soul Space feels overhauled.”

  Dawn took a knee, concern plastered heavy on her face. “Cal is nearly at the double S-ranks long. Canting people into Incarnate bodies has been a challenge. Dani has been our guiding stone, but we ran into many problems and delays. There’s also a goose on the loose, and it has consistently remained one rank above Cal just to spite him. Well, perhaps to bite him in the keister because it’s trapped? Can we address the obvious here? Why are you a child?”

  Artorian didn’t reply, busy inspecting his hands, but she didn’t need him to. The information available to Incarnates, true Incarnates, was impressive. She sucked breath between her teeth, her blazing eyes calming their investigative spin. “Oh, you poor thing. You’re on the tribulations track of A-rank advancement. Instead of the power gathering or exemplar tracks. That is my least favorite of the three.”

  The young boy frowned, but it didn’t carry the wrinkly impact his elder form did. “You… you can see what I went through?”

  Dawn offered comfort by swinging her open arms, then collapsing them back around him. Sunny hugged her tightly in response. He hadn’t expected to be picked up after, but it was fine. “Not quite. I recognize the kind of improvement you just made. You’re at A-rank one, but you canted as an A-rank zero. I know for a fact you had no chance to advance on the other tracks to do that, and there’s no way in Cal he’d give you the freebie. So. Tribulations track. Why didn’t you tell me? That is easily the worst track to be on. Is your trial for A-rank two to be in the child form? They can be weird like that. They are always something off-the-wall odd. Remember how I told you I was a candle for a while?”

  He shook his head to the negative, mind elsewhere. “I haven’t wanted to speak of it, but I suppose it’s too late now. Here comes the C’towl and the bag. Caliph, your dreamt one? I have one too. Her name is Scilla and, for lack of a better term, she lives in my mind. She got together with my Law, and now I’m on what you named the tribulations track, I suppose.”

  He needed to squeeze his grip, but Dawn didn’t mind being his support one bit. “Throughout my life I have done a lot of things, and made many choices I’m not proud of. Scilla is making me face those. Until they are all done, she holds hostage my ability to Incarnate. By keeping all my Liminal energy. She also just established that I have to face a regret in order to gain a rank. So. One down. Nine to go. This first one was not gentle.”

  Dawn understood, and carried him like she carried Caliph. Artorian said nothing in response to the act. Honestly? As awkward and embarrassing as it was, it helped. He wouldn’t say a word against things that helped. Not now. “Can I get a primer on events? Cal at double-S seems strange. He was A-zenith last I knew. I also recall I should be mad at him, but I honestly don’t have the heart for it.”

  It was odd to see an eloquent child speak with such large words, while being held daintily. Dawn shrugged it off. “We both have much on our plate. Know I’m here for you, Sunny. I don’t much care what form you’re in.”

  She then considered his query. “What you missed? I don’t know where to start. Tatum and I now both have Seed Cores. We got it to work with Cal being an Incarnate, which allows me to keep climbing. The Soul Space was vacant for a very long time, and then when we got people going, had to rebuild. Several realms got destroyed from people going rampant in poorly balanced Incarnate bodies. Cal has, in response, instituted his ‘system’ fully. He hasn’t yet found a good way to lock off our old methods of cultivation, but they are essentially a ‘please don’t.’ I’ll explain to Cal that’s not an option for you.”

  Artorian was thankful, and nodded. “I don’t appear to be breaking the world by existing?”

  That was an easy answer for Dawn. “Do you by chance remember that cobbled together status screen during your last decanting? We all have them now, and we start as ‘level one.’ Our big discovery was that the Mana bodies didn’t have the malleability to handle the Pylon number system. Incarnate bodies rely on thought, and the constant stream of referenceable facts are very much adored. So making the bodies function based entirely on the system Cal has been harping about for all of forever? That works now. Unpleasant as this may sound, you are now based on numbers. Even if somewhere deep in the background you have personal cultivation progress. Expect to hear a kind of static when you try something that doesn’t work.”

  Artorian twisted his palm over his ear. So that was the strange noise going off now and again. He’d tune it out eventually. “Sounds like progress. Is there more?”

  Dawn squeezed his hand for support this time. “There is always more, Sunny. We’re building and running a world here. Or we were. Beta stages are starting. Instead of supervising, we’re now going to be play-testing. Oh, I suppose something worthy of note. Remember how you were decanted first before? That didn’t happen this time. This time, you were last. Everyone else has been around for a while. Henry has easily gone through forty reincarnations to make his kingdom better. Marie had to step back because of unexpected Incarnation issues. Aiden is a recluse. Tatum and Chandra are likely doing very well as they spend time together. Odin hasn’t changed a hair.”

  She paused a moment as she considered Vanaheim. “Deverash is no longer around. He is one with the system. Loved being a dev more than a Dev. Said he finally found something he was good at making. Oh, developer, instead of Deverash. He’s a Cal subsystem and has never been happier, or so he says. He tidies things up. Keeps them dapper. Minya is back, and she’s the big boss in charge now. Brianna is back too. I’ll let you meet her rather than spoil anything.”

  Artorian nudged her. “What about you? How are you?”

  Dawn merely winked at him with a smirk. “When Cal takes the second S-rank step, I’ll be right behind him. I’m Cal-near kicking him in the rear about it. Though I let the goose do the hard work for me. I’ve been alright. Caliph grew up a long time ago. It was… Good. It was exactly what I needed. He’s not around anymore, but I treasure his memory. One can’t forever pretend not to know when a person is made from the Liminal, and that doesn’t stick around. I always wondered why I never had an A-ranked Liminal event. I suppose it was just waiting on me. Caliph said that I ha
d someone else to rely on for my Incarnation. Someone much better than anything he could have done for me.”

  Artorian just smiled, not saying anything in return. He just appreciated the mention.

  Dawn sat under a large mahogany, her favorite person still in her arms. “I’m going to kiss you now. Okay?”

  A little confused, he kept silent as his forehead got a peck. Ah… so innocent. He smiled, and held his commentary. He wouldn’t sour her moment. She was clearly elated to have him close, and him being bundle-sized was a convenience for her. It was for him too, he supposed. He couldn’t walk. Not that he was going to mention it just yet.

  The sun pulled around Asgard, and they winced as the soft light turned into direct luminance. Dawn threw up a field, returning the grove to a reasonable brightness standard. One that didn’t stab their eyes. She cocked her head as the twelve-year-old shook his balled fist at the sun. “We win this time, shiny sky orb. We win this time.”

  He burst into a fit of laughter afterwards, but Dawn didn’t get the joke. “Ah… ahhh. It got me. It’s… old joke. I don’t even know how old now. What is time? What is age? I’m… I don’t know how old. Stuck in the body of myself at twelve, because that’s where my trial has me. I think I’ll grow up as I face Scilla? Though that’s conjecture. Why are you looking at me funny?”

  Dawn raised an eyebrow. “I know and understand all of that. It just doesn’t make it any weirder to hear such smart talk come out of a twelve-year-old. Also, you are a complete shrimp. I swore up and down you were sick when I first saw you, because you seem much smaller than you reasonably should be for your body’s age.”

  He shrugged. “Corruption drawbacks. It’ll mend. Are you level one as well? What of our chosen?”

  Dawn shook her head no to the first question. “I am maxed out on everything the system offers, save for titles due to the limited slots. I test the highest-level content to set a baseline for what the ‘maximum’ is. If an effect we craft goes over that baseline, we know it needs to be scaled down, or tagged as a different category. Or fixed in any of a dozen ways. Do you remember sealing broken items? It’s all like that now. Speaking of, I finished your warehouses for you. You’re welcome.”