by Hugo Huesca
He threw Ed a reproachful look before continuing:
“On the other side, we have Carpenters. Carpenters are smart people. They have little tolerance for risk, and instead of becoming adventurers, they’ll learn a trade and become very skilled at it. Since they take little risk, they’ll earn few experience points, but the kind of talents they need are very cheap anyway—I’m talking resist disease, engrave rune, that sort of thing. Carpenters will make good money, have many children, and with any luck they’ll live to see their grandchildren. But Bards won’t achieve stardom by singing about the day-to-day of normal, happy, successful people. Idiocy and heroics run hand in hand. Bards need to develop an eye for the Idiot or Carpenter line and decide what’s an acceptable level of idiocy for the adventurers we’ll follow. And my bardic instinct tells me that Kes is squarely in the middle of the I-C line.”
When Alder had finished, Ed could picture his point. He imagined Kes’ behavior during a war. She’d never fight alone, always remaining with her squadron. She’d never bite off more than she could chew. She’d retreat when necessary and let reinforcements take her place. All of those actions would take huge chunks out of her experience point pool, but with hard training and good judgment, she’d transform what experience points she earned into a huge increase in power.
That’s exactly what I have to do, Ed realized. He had to learn to transverse the Idiot or Carpenter line to his own happy middle.
Then the mental image he had built of Kes was replaced by a memory of himself rushing headlong into the maws of Burrova’s mindbrood while his friends screamed at him to keep his distance.
Ed couldn’t help but wonder where Alder placed him in the Idiot or Carpenter line.
SINCE WINTER WAS FAST APPROACHING, night came early to Hoia Forest and its inhabitants. Ed spent most of the afternoon going from one part of the encampment to another, making sure the spiders kept a tight perimeter around it while at the same time remaining out of sight of the villagers, who were—understandably—unwilling to let the horned spiders come close to them. He also coordinated with Klek and the batblins to count the food they had procured. Ed didn’t need many ranks in survival to know that he had a higher population than what the batblins could feed by foraging, and that he’d need to fix this soon or risk disaster.
The rest of the day he spent with Kes, helping her deal with the villagers who wanted to leave the Haunt yet couldn’t be allowed to. Like Zachary, they were risks to others and themselves, and if captured by the Inquisition later on, they’d break during interrogation and would bring all the other villagers down with them… and they’d also reveal Ed’s location.
So Ed had to make sure each villager understood the risks of going to the Inquisition, had a temperament able to keep calm under pressure, and was smart enough to know how to hide in neighboring villages.
Kes helped tremendously with the efforts, since she knew almost everyone in Burrova and could tell Ed who was trustworthy and who wasn’t. In the end, the Haunt was left with a couple of village drunks, old people without families to care for them, the infirm, and the weak-minded. They would all need to stay with Ed until he could figure out how to help them. Ed assigned them to Governor Brett, since they used to be under his leadership and familiarity bred comfort.
A handful of forest critters, a clan of man-eating spiders, and traumatized refugees from a monster attack.
And they were all so vulnerable. Ed felt that if he made the slightest mistake, all these people and intelligent creatures would die. Death came so easily and, although he had always known that, he had never internalized it until he came to Ivalis.
Hunger. Sickness. Cold. All as lethal as a spear through the ribs if left unchecked. Not even counting monsters, mindbroods, other Dungeon Lords, or the Inquisition.
So many lives were now his responsibility. It was a part of the Dungeon Lord package that Kharon had neglected to mention to him, but it was Ed’s weight to carry, nonetheless, and Ed would rather die before failing them.
Tomorrow, Ed would start working on his dungeon in full. Besides the food issue and the villagers problem, he had to prepare for winter. Simply making tunnels and rooms wouldn’t cut it anymore. The dungeon needed functioning facilities, like the Training Center. It needed resources, and defenses, and magic, and a way to generate food, drink, and heat.
Ed imagined the dungeon as a living creature, a baby made out of stone and people. It was growing by the day, but as it grew… it hungered. It wanted—needed—more, more, and more, and it was never enough. Ed was sitting atop of it, but if he failed to master the full powers of a Dungeon Lord, his own creation would devour him and come crashing down over everyone he cared about. And it would be his fault.
It’s like Kes told me, Ed thought that night, in the darkness of his room when he was tucked under his blankets of drone-craftsmanship. I’m committed now. So I may as well go all in.
Sleep took a while to arrive, but it did. His body knew he’d need his strength.
ED WOKE up in absolute darkness to the smell of decay and the overwhelming feeling that something wicked was headed his way.
He barely had time to grab the handle of his short sword, which waited by the side of the bed, then long gray fingers wrenched open the fabric of reality above him. As the hands forced the tear to widen, a featureless head spat forth like the tongue of an invisible aberration tasting the air in search of prey.
A familiar headache came over Ed, like myriad screeching voices too far away to understand. Behind the thing’s head, Ed could see an apocalyptic storm raging over vast dark walls that extended beyond the horizon.
The creature’s eyes tingled with malice. His mouth was frozen in a permanent grin, too wide to be natural and filled with sharp teeth.
“Hi, Ed,” the abomination said. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
Ed fought back the cold weight over his lungs and made a titanic effort of will to keep his voice steady.
“Kharon. What the hell do you want?”
“I thought I’d come by and check on my good friend Ed Wright,” Kharon said, his voice like a constant screech of nails over chalkboard. “After all, it’s been a while since we last hung out.”
Ed looked Murmur’s envoy square in his tiny, black eyes. “Fuck off.”
“Classic Ed,” Kharon said. “No, but seriously, you’ll want to hear this. Come here, will you?”
Without waiting for an answer, an invisible force caught hold of Ed’s midsection and propelled him toward the tear in reality—and into Kharon’s open, waiting hands.
ED GLANCED at the black marble floor of the Dark realm. He was flanked by gigantic walls. Through the never-ending storm that consumed the sky above, colossal shapes fought and chased one another. Ed made sure not to look at them directly. Instead, he slashed with his sword—
Kharon’s neck knitted itself back together. It regarded Ed with a wounded expression. “Seriously, Ed?”
Ed shrugged and studied his blade, which was covered in unholy ichor. “Had to give it a shot.”
“Put that thing away before you hurt yourself,” Kharon said sternly.
“What do you want?” Ed asked. The Dungeon Lord’s throat was dry and his heart raced. In the Dark realm, he was at the mercy of the creature in front of him. He had seen what Kharon was capable of.
Not long ago, Kharon had torn out Ed’s heart in this very place and had replaced it with an organ called the Dungeon Lord’s Mantle. It wasn’t an experience Ed was willing to repeat.
He knew that his sword couldn’t harm Kharon, but Ed gripped it tight and kept it close to his body, because it was better than nothing.
“I want many things,” Kharon told him. “Right now, I’d like for you to get dressed and stop inflicting the sight of your… mammalian anatomy on my poor eyes.”
“If you didn’t want to see that, you should have called ahead.”
“Isn’t it too cold in Starevos for you to sleep naked?” Kharon asked.
The Boatman had erased memories from Ed’s head without even a grunt of effort. Ed and Kharon were in very different weight classes.
That’s going to change one day. You just wait.
“The sleeping quarters are next to the fireplace,” Ed said. It wasn’t as comfortable as he’d have liked, but he couldn’t get used to the itch of woolen clothes just yet. He managed to keep the cold at bay by virtue of a gigantic pile of blankets.
As a response, Kharon extended an arm that disappeared in the middle of the air as if swallowed by an invisible hole. His hand came back into existence, carrying a pair of leather bracers that Ed recognized as belonging to his own armor ensemble. Kharon produced the rest of Ed’s clothing and armor one by one until it was all lying in a neat pile.
“You’ll need it,” was all Kharon said as an explanation. “More so because you refuse to use the spell I gave you. Murmur’s reach is one of the favored tools among the Lotian Dungeon Lords. The longer you spend without figuring out its many uses, the more vulnerable you’ll be later.”
With Lavy’s help, Ed had finally cracked what Kharon’s spell was meant to do, and he didn’t like it at all. Murmur’s reach was a control spell that had the Dungeon Lord leave his body and take possession of one of his minions. If someone killed that minion while the Dungeon Lord was in control, he simply returned to his original body. The minion, on the other hand, didn’t share his luck.
It was extremely dark magic, which Ed had no intention of using. “You done?” He asked. Despite his aversion to doing anything that Kharon told him to, Ed got dressed without letting the monster out of his sight, because if he had to face Kharon, he’d rather do it fully equipped and not naked and vulnerable.
Of course, the idea of leather armor doing anything to protect him at all from Kharon was as laughable as the concept of hiding from him under a blanket.
“To traverse the catacombs,” Kharon said. The Boatman looked like he was having a jolly good time.
“Ah,” Ed said. He refused to indulge Kharon by asking him to clarify.
“They’re filled with undead, from what I’ve seen,” Kharon went on. “So you’ll need to protect your squishy parts from their teeth.”
“Why the hell,” Ed said slowly, “would you ever think I’d do anything you wanted me to?”
He strapped on the last part of his leather armor. The extra weight over his body did help him feel better about his situation.
“You owe me a favor,” Kharon said. “It was thanks to me that you saved Alder and Lavy’s life the day of your arrival in Ivalis.”
Ed made a point of laughing long and hard before telling the Boatman to go fuck himself.
“As you wish. Guess I’ll have to resort to the old-yet-reliable maiden-in-trouble gambit.” Kharon sighed. “There’s a young, innocent woman lost in those catacombs. The people that brought her there want to sacrifice her to power some nasty ritual or another.”
Laughter slowly died in Ed’s throat, because, firstly, Kharon knew him well enough to have a pre-planned “maiden-in-trouble” gambit, and, secondly, it was probably going to work.
“And, thirdly,” Kharon said, reminding Ed that his thoughts were never hidden from the Boatman, “those people are Ranger Ioan’s friends.”
Ed stared at Kharon with dawning horror.
“Since no one else will come to her aid if you refuse,” Kharon went on, “that makes the young maiden’s demise in the catacombs more or less your responsibility. But we both know that you decided you’d go long before I started talking. So let’s save ourselves the part where you call me names and get on to the action part, shall we?”
“I have no words to express how much I despise you,” Ed said. “Bring me back to my dungeon so I can gather everyone.”
With the combined efforts of Kes, Alder, and Lavy—and the horned spiders under Queen Laurel’s command—Ed was confident they could make short work of any undead infestation and be back in time for breakfast.
“Yes, about that,” Kharon said. The abomination at least had the decency to act remorseful as he said, “I’m sending you alone.”
Ed took a brief pause to process this development.
“Are you playing with me?” he bellowed.
“In this specific instance? No. There are rules, Ed. Rules that even Murmur and the Golden Bitch must abide by—ones that regulate how much we can interfere in mortal matters. I can’t explain those rules to you without causing your brain to melt out of your ears, but the gist of it is… the father of the young lady in trouble made a pact with the Dark a long time ago. That pact now gives me a little wiggle room to send her someone with around the same experience points as her to help her out. I’m choosing you because you’re closer than any other suitable agent of the Dark, and because your attitude entertains me. But this is me helping her, Ed. If I helped you by, say, bringing Kessih of Greene with you, that’d mean the Light would gain a pass to intervene in some matter of their choice. And the Light would surely think very carefully about how to use their intervention. Probably by sending an Inquisitor worth Kes’ experience points to stop some Heiligian orphanage from burning down, and I’d like it very much if the Light didn’t do that.”
What in the fuck, Ed thought. Then he said, “So, you… want me to go alone… because otherwise the Light will save an orphanage from burning down?”
Kharon made finger-guns and pointed them at Ed. “Yup. Orphans grow into soldiers, you know, and soldiers kill Lotian families during wars, and dead families are families that Lotian Dungeon Lords can’t sacrifice to the Dark god Murmur—”
The Boatman’s body regenerated as fast as Ed’s sword pierced it, if not faster than that. Without acknowledging Ed’s efforts, Kharon calmly drew an invisible circle in the air. The circle became a wound in reality that led to a black passageway badly illuminated by the distant light of a magical torch. The walls were engraved with skulls and bones.
“If you think you’re angry now,” Kharon told Ed, “wait until you realize that I’m basically your quest-giver for the evening. Ain’t that neat?”
Before Ed could react, Kharon’s long arms caught him by the shoulders and pushed him through the portal with enough force to smack him against the stone wall and have him fall sprawling to the floor in a shower of bone splinters.
The Boatman closed the portal. He was alone once again. He glanced up at the sky where the Others fought their never-ending battle. Then he stretched out his long extremities, groaning with satisfaction.
“Ah, how I love my job,” Kharon said.
5
CHAPTER FIVE
CATACOMBS
Ed dusted himself off and cursed Kharon loudly, but the portal had closed the instant Ed had passed through, and he was alone in the passageway.
The faint light of the torches drew dancing shadows across the yellowed bones that decorated the ceiling, floor, and walls. It was like the empty cavities of the skulls followed Ed’s movements as he tried to gather his bearings. The sensation of being observed was almost overwhelming.
He withheld a sneeze. The air smelled of mold and humidity, and Ed could see the particles of dust floating all around him.
Filled with undead, Ed reminded himself. He had to move quietly. Behind him was a dead-end, so the only way to go was forward.
Before that, since he was alone, it’d be best to have his character sheet fresh in his head. Just in case.
Edward Wright
Species: Human
Total Exp: 319
Unused Exp: 114
Claims: Lordship.
ATTRIBUTES
Brawn: 9
Agility: 10
Endurance: 10
Mind: 12
Spirit: 14 (+1 Dungeon Lord mantle)=15
Charm: 12 (+1 Dungeon Lord mantle)=13
SKILLS
ATHLETICS: Basic (VI) - The owner has trained their body to perform continuous physical activity without penalties to their Endurance. For a while.
-Basic ranks allow them to perform mild energy-consuming tasks (non-combat) such as running or swimming without tiring. Unlocks stamina-related talents.
UNTRAINED COMBAT: Basic (IV) - Temporal skill, can become trained or be improved to open the brawling branch.
DUNGEON ENGINEERING: Basic (VIII) - This skill represents the user’s knowledge of magical constructs pertaining to dungeoncraft. As it improves, it opens new rooms and traps, as well as adds to the Dungeon Lord Mantle capacity of storing the user’s own blueprints.
COMBAT CASTING: Basic (V) - Pertains to the speed and efficiency of spells cast during combat or life-threatening situations.
-Basic status allows the caster to use spells every 20 seconds minus 1 second per extra rank. The caster must say their names aloud and perform the appropriate hand gestures.
LEADERSHIP: Basic (V) - Reflects the owner’s capacity of inspiring and managing his troops and minions. For a Dungeon Lord, improving this skill adds to the bonus they and their minions receive.
TALENTS
EVIL EYE - ALLOWS THE DUNGEON LORD TO see the Objectivity of any creature or item. If the target of their gaze possesses a strong Spirit (or related Attribute or Skill) they may hide their information if the Lord’s own Spirit is not strong enough.
Energy Drain: Active. Very Low.
DUNGEON LORD MANTLE - The mantle is the heart of the Dungeon Lord and represents the dark pact made in exchange for power.
-It allows the Dungeon Lord access to the Dungeon Lord status and powers, as defined by the Dungeon Screen.