Dungeon Wars

by Jeffrey Logue

  He concentrated on Rowen and nothing happened.

  “Hm?”

  Doc moved his full awareness into Rowen, seeking to cut off his ability to use the dungeon’s mana. The dungeon spirit recoiled at the harsh rejection thrown onto him. Rowen, it appeared, had gone rogue.

  Doc was frightened. He’d only dealt with one rogue slime before, and it had almost cost him everything. However, unlike back then, Doc lacked the ability to take matters into his own hands, metaphorically speaking. His boss monsters were all dead or indisposed, he couldn’t create a slime stronger than tier 2 to fight, and if he fought Rowen directly, he ran the risk of losing the mana he had gained to operate the dungeon.

  “Claire, Claire open up!” Doc called out desperately. “It’s an emergency! Claire, I need your advice!”

  But there was no answer from the wall.

  “Claire! Claire!”

  “Shut up,” a startling, disgusted voice came from within the depths of the door. Doc, shocked, paused his summons.

  “Big, strong, dungeon, calling out so pitifully,” Claire’s voice, but not Claire’s voice, echoed in Doc’s mind. “Really, you are so pathetic it makes me sick, worse still the knowledge I am no better. We are cursed to be lower than dirt here in this miserable existence away from the sun, hidden from everything. All my fault, but yours as well. Pitiful . . . how, absolutely . . . pitiful . . . better to let it all . . . disappear.”

  Claire’s voice trailed off and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, but it left scorched earth behind in Doc’s mind.

  Doc couldn’t comprehend what he had just heard. His best friend, his partner, had just scorned him, with a voice he had never heard from her before. The raw emotions that flowed from her in just that instance, desolation, melancholy, hatred, and depression, set such a pain to the dungeon he thought he was back when there when the boss slimes died. He felt pain and loss, not understanding what he did wrong or how to react, more so still that Claire’s raw state contributed to.

  Combined with the severe anxiety toward Rowen’s new rogue state, Doc’s mental condition deteriorated into a mess. With loss of focus came problems throughout the dungeon as mana flow was disrupted and things began to die. Smell tremors sent echoing motions through the maze part of the second floor, breaking up the already shattered ruins.

  “What do I do?” Doc faltered as everything piled on higher and higher in his mind, creating physical repercussions as his heart crystal, the very core of his being, fractured under the pressure.

  As the dungeon spirit struggled with himself, a light shone through the agony and touched him at his core, illuminating it in a way he had not felt since the teleportation. It filled up the void with warmth, as the darkness it carried with it provided a substance, a strength, to his mental state. He felt it before he saw it, a familiar pair of eyes staring at him. Not the same as they once were, he instinctually realized, but ones filled with . . . a sense of family, an empathy that surpassed physical connection. The eyes stared down his soul and brought with them, a single word.

  “Poppa?”

  *

  “Rowen, wake up!” Anadine yelled once again as she slid free of the barrage of darkness.

  Same as before, Rowen seemingly ignored her words and unleashed more destruction into the dungeon. Orbs of darkness crashed into the ground around Anadine, splintering tress, destroying vegetation, and blasting holes into the dungeon floor. With a curse, the blue slime lost another tentacle arm and ten more percent of her body mass.

  “Fine,” she shouted. “This has gone on long enough!”

  Anadine finally began her counter attack, unleashing a flurry of tentacle attacks on the loose stone and dust, creating a smokescreen. Rowen’s silent form bombarded the area, dispelling the smoke and revealing Anadine’s missing presence.

  “Too late!” Anadine shouted, appearing behind Rowen with a sharpened tentacle poised to strike him. To her utter shock, a tentacle sprouted from his back, complete with an orb of darkness prepared to strike her up close. She let out a desperate roar as she aborted her attack and attempted to dodge out of the way.

  The ball exploded, sending both slimes flying apart from each other from the blast. Rowen lost the tentacle but appeared otherwise fine. Anadine, on the other hand, struggled back into cover with only half her body intact. A combination of overturned earth and collapsed trees were the only thing separating her from death.

  “I have mixed feelings over not feeling pain,” she joked out loud. “It’s nice to having it, but it’s hard to feel what’s still working without it.”

  Rowen only threw out more orbs of darkness, damaging her cover and forcing her to hunker down as she regenerated. With each attack, Anadine felt herself getting closer and closer to getting hit.

  When she’d regained most of her body mass back, the blue slime decisively dived out of her cover into the nearest hole and hid. A moment later, sounds of blasting confirmed the destruction of her previous hiding spot. With bated breath, in spirit, she waited and slowly healed.

  She listened to the sound of Rowen approaching, his squiggling body moving lightly across the destroyed earth. Then, she heard nothing.

  Her warrior instincts guiding her, the blue slime shot out of the ground right before the hole exploded into pieces. She formed her standard four sharpened tentacles of hardened slime and rushed her foe, his grey-white body facing her with orbs raised. Pressing her malleable body to its limits, she slipped through the barrage of attacks, the energy singeing her fleshless slime as it passed her by. She charged through the attacks, slamming her weaponized tentacles into Rowen, almost reaching his core.

  “Wake the hell up, you idiot!” She yelled at him, and her tentacle tips exploded out into splinters of hardened slime. Rowen’s body twitched uncontrollably as the shards reached his core, holes opening up and making him resemble that of a holed cheese. He collapsed into a puddle, unable to maintain substance.

  “And stay down,” Anadine muttered as the thrill of battle left her. She allowed her body to slouch forward, making her resemble an upside-down U. With a shudder, the conflict resumed inside of her.

  She wanted to feel sweat, the panting of breath as her lungs sought fresh air, the cooling of a heartbeat to signify the end, but she felt none of these and her mind rebelled once more. Anadine let out a groan as her form collapsed into a puddle once more, her core left out and vulnerable. The pain tore through her with a vengeance, and she could no longer move.

  In the midst of her painful haze, Anadine could only watch as Rowen recollected himself and reformed his body. The defeated slime looked none worse for wear, and it seemingly gazed soullessly at her quivering puddle. A tentacle sprouted above his head, forming a single orb of magical darkness.

  Anadine couldn’t stop him, couldn’t flee, and couldn’t move. She could not even close her senses and accept her fate, watching with her tremor sense vision as the tentacle fell.

  And then she was gone.

  The spot where she had dwelt was missing her body, and the orb left a fresh crater in the ground.

  Anadine felt the uncontrollable urge to blink as she found herself behind Rowen, her core safely in the mouth of... jiggling, yet firm teeth.

  “That’s enough fighting,” a voice vibrated out of the mouth Anadine found herself in. Anadine faintly recognized the voice, yet it was older and wiser than she remembered. Her suspicions were confirmed when a second form padded her way into view.

  “Put down the tentacle, Rowen,” Ayla said evenly, her legs pawing the ground. “You are not yourself, and you are injured.”

  The grey-white slime responded by throwing two orbs of darkness, but the two worgs were already moving. Aisha, who held Anadine in her mouth, gently placed her down behind a tree and winked at her.

  “You did well, little sister,” she said with a feral grin. “Let us handle it from here?”

  Anadine watched as the worg vanished with the wind.

  “So that’s how it
feels,” she muttered to herself.

  *

  Ayla and Aisha were twins. More than that, they were The Twins. That had been their collective name ever since they’d joined the dungeon, a single word to signify two unique individuals. The issue under the surface hadn’t been apparent until they’d fallen in a magical fugue sleep.

  They’d realized that neither one of themselves was truly a person. Everything they said, they said together. Everything they did, they did together. And everything they’d thought, they’d thought together. Rather than a conversation between two persons, they’d existed as two halves of the same, and thus they’d never grown.

  Not stronger, nor taller, nor smarter, nor wiser. For their first year of dungeon existence, they’d remained as such, easily putting aside the deaths of their pack, their mother, and the possibility of families of their own. Their only will was that of serving Doc.

  In their fugue sleep, however, they’d finally woken up.

  Contrary to what the others had thought, the two worgs had been fully aware of each of their four family members, including their fears and pain. Through this shared experience, Ayla and Aisha grew up, finally becoming what they’d always be meant to be: a pack.

  “Ayla, Anadine is safely behind the tree,” Aisha reported. “I’m circling around to attack.”

  “I’ll hold his attention,” Ayla responded.

  The two worked together to take down their prey. Rowen responded with his orbs of darkness, but his attacks were too slow to hit them. In parallel, their claws sliced through Rowen, dividing him in half.

  “Is he down?” Ayla asked.

  “He’s regenerating,” Aisha responded after a quick glance. “He might have gone rogue, but he’s still connected to the dungeon’s mana. We need to break his connection.”

  “He’ll die without it,” Ayla warned as she leaped over a collapsed tree, it exploding behind her. “Can we isolate him?”

  “Knock him air-born,” Aisha said, and the two turned together to once again charge at the white-grey slime. Rowen was incapable of stopping as two paws tossed him high into the air. Below him, the two worgs opened their mouths and howled, their sounds magically enhanced into a sonic attack.

  Rowen’s body vibrated under the force and finally broke down. His slime disappeared as his core was freed and was caught by Ayla in her mouth.

  The battle won, Ayla and Aisha both howled in victory, their voices echoing through the air. When they were done, Aisha collected Anadine’s core and the pair carried their fallen slime comrades back to the starting room.

  “Thank you for saving me,” Anadine said, her sincerity shining even without sounds to communicate it.

  “It’s no problem,” Aisha said through her open mouth. “After all, we’re all family, a single pack. Pack members don’t leave pack members behind.”

  Anadine failed to continue talking, her thoughts wrapping around herself like a maze of knots. She stayed silent through the forest, up the wall, and into the starting rooms.

  “You’ve grown,” she finally said as Aisha laid her gently onto the ground.

  Aisha chuckled, an odd sound to hear from a worg.

  “Yes, but perhaps your confusion is less about my growth and more about how much you’ve fallen. Isn’t that right, Anadine?”

  “Well, I mean—”

  “I’m not talking to you,” the worg interrupted cryptically. “I’m talking to her.”

  The blue slime was suddenly at a loss once more.

  Chapter 14

  Rowen’s consciousness slowly became aware as the sound of voices filled his mind. The weary and fatigued slime lay loosely as the conversation continued, without him.

  “So, you could hear everyone’s thoughts while you were asleep?” he heard Anadine’s voice.

  “Yes. We were drifting through a sea of thoughts, fears, and doubts,” another voice answered. He didn’t recognize this voice, though he felt he’d heard it before. “It was a surreal experience for my sister and me, being unable to communicate, but still being kept in the loop, so to speak, with everyone. Seeing the pain everyone was in, and experiencing it for ourselves in this way, it changed us. In an odd sense, one person’s pain seemed to be solved by the corresponding thoughts of the others: thoughts of family, personal strength, conviction, loyalty, and confidence.”

  “So, you know what I... what I was thinking?” Anadine said once more, speaking with a soft, subdued voice.

  “Yes, little sister, but we shall talk more later. For now, it seems our brother is awakening.”

  Rowen, awakening in entirety, gathered himself up and reformed his body. Gazing around, he took in the surroundings. He was back in the intro room, with Anadine and two... worgs. It took him a moment for it to click that he knew the two as the worg twins.

  “When did you wake up?” he asked.

  “While you were going on a rampage,” one of the worgs answered. “How are you feeling?”

  “Rampage? Well, I feel like I was hit by a boulder,” Rowen muttered as he examined himself. “My mana reserves are incredibly low. What happened?”

  “You were swallowed up by your depression and self-loathing and tried to destroy Anadine,” the other worg explained. “You went rogue, and if not for our timely awakening, Anadine would be dead, and you’d be slaughtering everything in your path. Or you would have withered and died— same as usual.”

  Rowen rubbed his body with a tentacle.

  “I… tried to kill Anadine?” he asked, dumbfounded.

  “If you want to be more specific, you attempted to disintegrate her,” the worg sister said, an unspoken, teasing grin behind her words. “Thankfully, you failed once more.”

  “What she means,” Anadine quickly butt in as Rowen twitched in irritation, “is that they saved me and stopped you. No harm done.”

  “There was plenty of harm done,” the worg corrected Anadine, “and it was caused by his weakness, the same way as yours nearly caused your death. This isn’t the time for coddling or sympathy. Doc has tasked my sister and I to whip you both into shape, since neither of you seem capable of completing a simple task like crossing a single floor.”

  Anadine drooped, clearly subdued by the worg’s words. Rowen glared at the furry monster.

  Before he could say anything, the other worg sister had grabbed him with her mouth and picked him up off the ground.

  “Ayla is correct. You need help,” the worg, Aisha, said. “Come, come! We are going now to learn.”

  With shocking agility, Aisha ran out of the room and took Rowen through the tunnels leading out.

  “Hey, wait, where are you taking me?” Rowen protested, as he found himself trapped in a cage of teeth. “I haven’t apologized to Anadine and—"

  “Time for that later,” Aisha interrupted. “You won’t mean it, not the way it counts. I know you as much, perhaps better, as you do: too much pride, too much self-loathing of weakness, too many thoughts. You don’t need them, not anymore. They aren’t you.”

  “What are you—ahh!” Rowen screamed as the worg leaped into the air off the edge. The two sailed through the air in a graceful arc as they fell together into the forest. When they reached the tree line, Aisha kicked off the branches and moved forward with the grace of an arrow through the trees and down to the ground, free of any injury. She plopped Rowen onto the ground and sat back on her haunches.

  “So, I am Aisha,” she introduced herself formally. “I am your older sister and teacher. You listen now to me.”

  “You said that wrong,” Rowen muttered angrily as he collected himself.

  “I said it the way I mean to say it,” she corrected him. “Your views are irrelevant to me. Lesson begins.”

  “Lessons? Wait, no, you did say it wrong,” Rowen argued.

  “Big deal made of small comment. You are unaccepting of things that do not fit with your views, yourself included, hm? I talk with your tongue, your language. It does not come to me the same as my sister, more apparent
now that we do not talk together. I am myself, yes? You, though, you are limited.”

  She raised a paw and poked Rowen.

  “Tell me, should the rain fall if there are no clouds?” she asked.

  “No, rain comes with the clouds,” Rowen said.

  “Wrong. That is common, but not always. Can water be walked on?”

  “No, not without magic. I don’t see—”

  “Yes, many little ones and bugs walk on water without magic. If tree falls in forest and no one is there, is sound made?”

  “Er, I don’t really know—”

  “Sound always made. Existence always is regardless of watching or hearing or smelling. Things just, are.”

  “What is the point of these questions?” Rowen asked exasperatedly. “I don’t see the point of these riddles.”

  “Last question then. Can a slime be human?”

  Rowen failed to say anything as the question echoed in his head.

  Aisha slapped him suddenly, surprisingly causing actual pain. “Can a slime be human?”

  “Ow, no! No, a slime can’t be human!” he answered as the unexpected pain set in.

  “Hm,” Aisha hummed. “Then, can slime be person?”

  “No, that’s asking the same–”

  Aisha slapped Rowen again. “Dumb slime, head full of nothing. Person isn’t human. Person is person, not people. Elves are people, slimes are monsters, humans are people, worgs are monsters. But all each are person if able to say ‘I.’ I am worg person, you are slime person. You were human person, now slime person, but still, you are person. Understand?”

  “No, I don’t get it.” Rowen argued. “I’m a... a slime. It’s different now!”

  “You think you failed,” Aisha summarized. “You sacrificed your life to save your beloved, but since you didn’t leave, you add failure to your success, yes? Unable to continue your royal bloodline, unable to take revenge for family and kingdom, unable to do more, unable to live with new family. I see your dreams while I sleep. Doubt and failure eat you away. Nothing left for happiness or moving forward. You’re stuck.”