by Matthew Peed
“Run away, Mistress? From all the hard work you’ve put in here?” Ezal asked jokingly.
“No, I won’t run again.”
“I’ve grown quite fond of this little valley as well.” She smiled and rubbed her stomach. “Besides, if we run, who would keep that insane dungeon of yours in check?” she added with a thumb toward Regan’s dungeon.
“I have a feeling he would get annoyed with everyone and turn them all to ash,” I said making myself laugh at the image of dozens of nobles trying to boss Regan around. The laugh died in my throat when I thought about his fortress in the sky. The station, if I remembered correctly. Regan could quite literally rain down death.
We made our way over to the barracks where Lines was waiting for us. I didn’t know anyone by that name, no nobles, merchants, adventurers, nothing. Given how things were going recently, unknown meant dangerous. Ezal and I made sure that we were prepared for whatever met us.
When we reached Ezal’s office inside the barracks, a man was sitting on the guest chair. I wasn’t quite sure how to describe him. He was tall and wore a robe that wouldn’t have looked out of place anywhere, be it in court or an alleyway. A large staff next to him marked him as a mage, but I couldn’t get a read of his cultivation nor his mana type.
He saw us enter and stood up calmly, as if there were no wasted movements. He bowed to me—or us. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. “Good evening, ladies. Lady Louella, it is a pleasure to see that you have recovered from your illness.” His voice was strangely calming and seemed perfectly even.
“Thank you . . . Lines, right?” I said.
“Correct. Please, if I could borrow some time from the two of you,” Lines said with a gentleman’s smile.
“Of course. Please tell me exactly who you are first,” Ezal said before we moved.
“I am Lines, the king’s inquisitor,” he said simply.
We both grew much more serious. I’d heard rumors of the inquisitors back in my ambassador training. They were the king’s bloodhounds who sought out anything the king wanted found. And if they came to find you, it usually meant you were on thin ice. I internally wondered what the king could possibly want with me. The dungeon, surely, but taking that could and most likely would cause a war with Lecazar. No, I felt that this was something else, something that was happening in the background without our knowledge.
“I understand. You have my full cooperation,” I said honestly. I didn’t need more enemies right now.
“Good, that makes things much simpler. Please, have a seat,” Lines said, gesturing toward Ezal’s chair and the one I usually used when I visited. We nodded and took our seats as I mentally prepared myself. I just hoped Ezal was doing the same.
“What do you need, Mr. Lines?” Ezal asked.
“Just Lines,” he said with a wave of his hand, then continued. “I am tracking a murderer. He was last seen about a month ago in a village to the southwest of here.”
“Alright, so his trail leads here?” Ezal asked.
“Indeed. It was raining, which caused me to almost lose his trail, but a band of adventurers inadvertently helped him by lending him a horse. Thankfully, they knew the direction he was heading in, so that saved their lives.”
I narrowed my eyes slightly, as this story was sounding familiar.
“What’s his name? Maybe we could help track him down. We do know the city,” Ezal offered.
“I already know where he is. The only reason you two aren’t behind bars heading to the capital for aiding and abetting a criminal is my long years of inquisitorial work telling me this case has been fouled by someone. And as the king’s dog, it is my duty to get to the bottom of it,” Lines said with his level gaze that almost pulled you in.
“Who?!” I demanded. This was my town, and I refused to let a murderer run loose.
“If you must know,” Lines said with an even voice, but still managed to convey exasperation, “Bruce please come in,” he shouted.
The door opened and the large man walked in. There was rage clearly written on his face but also a bit of sadness. I was able to quickly put the pieces together from there. Someone knew Bruce was alive and was trying to frame him for the marquis’s death.
“He didn’t do it!” Ezal said with a fist slammed on the table.
“Please remain calm. I know for a fact that Bruce couldn’t do it, but the marquis’s father has made a very strong case against him back at the capital. I need solid proof before I can absolve him of his crime. You more than anyone should understand politics, Lady Ezal,” Lines said, then briefly glanced at her stomach.
Ezal jerked back, putting a hand over her stomach as if to protect it.
“What do you want?” I asked, getting a little annoyed.
“I need to speak to a certain friend of yours.”
My eyes widened—Regan again! Why did this Lines even need to speak with him in the first place? He should have had no connection with the marquis since he’d left.
“I can ask but I have no guarantee that he will come,” I said with a bit of heat in my voice. Damn, maybe I was getting jealous. I took a deep breath to calm myself.
As if on cue, the ground began to shake. Some of the densest, if not the densest, mana I had ever felt surged from the direction of the dungeon—and I had merged with lightning. It felt like the weight of the world increased by severalfold as we were forced to our knees. I was surprised that none of the decorations on the walls, or the building itself for that matter, fell or collapsed.
Suddenly, the energy inside me that I was still getting used to flared to life. Arcs of lightning started to jump across my skin. I managed to look at Ezal and saw that she had flames pouring off her liberally as well. Wondering if it was just Ezal and I, I forced my head toward the inquisitor and saw sparks of different mana types appeared to be popping off him.
After what felt like a lifetime, the force lifted, and the pressure went away just as fast as it came. I stood up shakily, but quickly sat down in the chair as I felt nausea hit me like a brick. Ezal, being pregnant, couldn’t fight it and emptied her stomach behind the desk. The inquisitor held his stomach with his hands but didn’t lose his lunch.
“That would be your guy,” I said a little breathlessly.
“So, it would seem,” Lines grumbled.
I guess Regan would be a handful for even one of the king’s dogs.
Chapter 14
Regan
I pulled out of the pocket dimension for the time being, as I wasn’t sure what to really do with it at that moment. My mind instantly went to my main core, whose form changed drastically. The outer surface was technically the same, but it turned clear, losing its silver hue. Inside, the structure was that of a tesseract, each face of the surface pulled into another face. I could have stared at it all day, as the knowledge of a tesseract was limited even with the technology we possessed.
It was amazing to say the least. Waves of energy that felt almost ethereal left the core. They had no physical interaction with the world around them. I examined the energy and found it was actually coming from my pocket dimension. Some kind of wake from the energy entering it. I decided I would have to study this in depth to learn what new insights to the universe it might give me.
I couldn’t even begin to figure out how much mana I could hold by that point. It also felt purer, and I had to wonder how the adventurers were taking it. I needed to make a few hours to watch some parties work their way through the dungeon. With a quick glance, I saw that a party had actually managed to make it to the thirteenth floor. The twelfth floor was also crawling with adventurers.
“Sir?” I heard suddenly. Looking, I saw the city and ships still waiting over the outpost. I moved over there to get the mission underway. If I wasn’t careful, the mission would be delayed due to my fascination with the new discovery I had.
“Sorry, Jarvis. Just broke through to tier three,” I said once I was next to him.
“Understood, sir. I hope the last fe
w hours weren’t too difficult for you,” Jarvis said with a bow.
“Hours?” I asked, surprised. It had felt like minutes.
“Yes, sir. We have been waiting for you to return before beginning the mission. Approximately four hours and thirty-six minutes have passed.”
“Alright, let’s get this show on the road. All ships depart!” I ordered.
The airships started their engines all at once and began moving toward where I figured the dungeon that was resisting Alara would be located. There was a chain of mountains that were lacking in the black color that usually colored the landscape in space. Once I got closer, I would be able to locate the other core via the core communication function.
Mentally checking my satellite, I examined the map that was being created daily. The network was expanding continuously, and soon satellites would start heading for the Lecazar Empire and Thonaca Kingdom. I estimated roughly two months before I would be able to see the whole of the continent and I could start expanding from there.
The city’s engines turned on once the airships got some distance. With a shudder we started to move forward. Again, the aura that had finished cleansing the taint while I was . . . busy clashed with the presence in the forest. The source was in the path we were taking, so it would have to be dealt with before we continued past.
~~~
“Regan! Are you busy?” I heard Louella call through the bracelet a few hours later.
“Define ‘busy,’” I sent back with a laugh.
“I have a busybody who wants to speak to you.”
“Do you really need me?” I asked while I looked over the consoles. The forest’s level of taint was reaching an all-time high. I felt we were getting very close to the source.
“I think it would go a long way for everyone if you could pop over for a minute,” Louella said with some actual reservation in her voice. It must have been serious if she was that worried about bothering me.
Cutting the link to Louella, I turned to the command deck. “Order a full stop! Do a short landing and scout the area. I want the scouts to bring back some samples so we can see how the density of the unholy mana effects the changes in creatures. Go ahead and set up a transponder. It’s a little early but it never hurts to cover a larger area. Send these orders to the captains,” I ordered.
“Yes, Master,” an automaton said, then began sending the messages through the console. This way I wouldn’t have to send a mental communication every time I wanted to speak to someone. While it barely required any mana, like everything else in this world, it still required some. The longer the distance the more it cost. Just using the bracelet to talk to Louella was already hitting the triple digits.
The transponder was a mixture of Earth science and this world’s magic. It would allow my automata to operate by sending them mana while within a hundred kilometers of them up to a certain amount. From there it took in the tainted mana and sent it along the channel to one of my cores that then cleaned it. As Alpha was currently the closest core to the location, it was siphoning all the taint to it. I wanted to use this method, as it required a little less guarding than my cores did.
When I moved my mental eyes to the bottom of Alpha, a large bay door opened on the underside. A tall metal rod fell straight down and impacted with the ground with enough force to bury a third of it. An aura much like that emitted by the dungeon core spread out. It was clearly weaker by every standard but would get the job done. The best way to describe it would have been to say that it was less all-encompassing.
I felt the link between the cores solidify a bit. Before, I would have to “travel” the link multiple times to solidify it to reduce the time lag between the cores, but with the transponder I could feel Alpha’s core much easier. If I had to compare it to Earth terms, it was simplified in the same way as going from dial-up to cable for internet. The best part was that even if the transponder was destroyed in some way, my link would never really go down.
Nearly thirty minutes passed while I was taking care of that, so I figured Louella had waited enough and was most likely getting upset with me. I moved to the town while looking for her signature. She was sitting in the barracks, so I made my avatar in an empty room before walking out and causing the guards to panic slightly. Sometimes it’s fun to do things that cause a bit of chaos.
“Regan for Louella,” I said simply.
The guards called down, then nodded when they heard the name. One guard turned and knocked on the door before cracking it and announcing me. He waved me forward while holding the door open. I nodded in thanks. Never hurts to make nice with the salary workers.
Once in the room, I saw a man who was giving off a serious amount of mana, but nothing compared to the two women inside. It looked like he was at the very peak of tier two and would be able to break through with the proper push—not that I wanted to give him that push. Louella wore a complicated look when I glanced at her. She looked pleased to see me, yet not pleased at the same time, and was having trouble with that fact. I really needed to work on some mind-reading magic, I thought to myself.
“Mr. Regan, I presume?” the man asked after the door shut behind me.
“Did someone tattle on me? Am I in trouble?” I asked sarcastically. This guy practically screamed school principal.
“The last time a dungeon got out of line, it was eliminated,” the man said evenly.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to take that as a threat or a warning. “Really, then how do you explain Alara?” I shot back.
The man frowned and I smiled in return, having won the battle. The man stood, but Louella spoke up before he could say anything. “Regan, this is Lines. He is a king’s inquisitor from Thonaca.”
“So a dog,” I said dryly.
“Indeed, and as a dog, once I get a scent, I don’t lose it easily,” Lines said with a perfectly even tone.
I narrowed my eyes, a little weirded out by the tone. “So, what exactly do you want?” I made sure to pay close attention to his next words with my dungeon senses.
Lines explained the situation. “The duke’s son was murdered. Bruce was under magical contract that could not be broken to do no harm to the man. He could not possibly be the killer. Unfortunately, that doesn’t hold up in court as well as one might think. According to Mr. Bruce, necromancers were involved and quite a few of them at that.”
As I listened to him, I found that he was using mana to control the wavelength of his speech so that it always sounded even and calm. I wondered if he was doing it on purpose or as a subconscious thing that he’d developed through many interrogations. The calmer the person being interrogated was the more likely they would be to help the person calming them down. Classic good-cop, bad-cop thing. The only question, then: Where was the bad cop?
“Your point?” I asked.
“You, Mr. Regan, have the ability to detect unholy mana in a way that has never been accomplished before. In fact, according to my sources, there are several necromancers and necro-sympathizers locked away in your dungeon at this very moment,” Lines said. If it hadn’t been for his magic, I felt that I would have heard a smug tone come through.
“Ah, my collection. So . . . you want to see them?” I asked, using the same technique as he did with his voice. Lines’s eye twitched but he nodded in reply. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?!”
“Can we tag along, Sir Regan?” Ezal asked.
“Sure, let’s make it a field trip. I know that Julie has been a bit bored down there by herself since Wrakras keeps sneaking off,” I said with a shrug. Ezal had sent Julie back to me while Louella was . . . under the weather, and I’d forgotten to send her back.
“How will we be getting there, Regan?” Louella asked curiously. Of all the people I’d met since coming to this world, I liked showing Louella magic the most, I think. She was like a child watching a magic trick for the first time. Of course, it would have been nice if she didn’t throw a fit afterward, but she was getting better now that she realized
I was the only one she could truly trust—her close friends excluded, of course.
“Well, it’s not like it’s a big secret anymore,” I said offhandedly. I tapped my foot, then a large magic circle filled the room. With a flash of light, purely cosmetic, we ended up in a room in the forest tower. I wanted to put the necromancers away from the town but somewhere I could observe them without them interfering with any important tasks I might have going on. I certainly wasn’t going to put them in my main dungeon.
Screens covered one wall of the room we ended up in. Each screen displayed a cell from multiple angles, not allowing a single blind spot. There was even a camera viewing the shadow realm, which had taken me a whole DAY to figure out. But with some good old-fashioned infrared and some light mana, I was able to view it without too much difficulty.
There were twenty-three screens in total. Each had a person in varying states of insanity—not my fault, by the way. The men and women couldn’t handle the complete sensory deprivation of the cells—though, to be fair, if it had been darkness, they would have probably been fine—but there was just nothing in the cells. No gravity, no heat, no cold, no anything that could give them feeling. A small repulsing barrier kept them in the middle of their cells as they floated free of any bindings, but it wasn’t strong enough for them to actually feel. I love antigravity magic.
“I may have forgotten about them for a few weeks,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. They were kept alive by a space connection that fed nutrients and hydration directly into their bodies. The devices were literally inside them so they wouldn’t be affected by the prisoner. It was funny, even though they cultivated dark and unholy mana, they were being kept alive against their will much like they raised the dead against their will.
“Who is the most informed?” Lines asked, looking at each prisoner displayed.
Pulling up a mental list of the things I’d thought to ask the necromancers, I pointed to a woman on one of the screens. She’d been the most informed when I’d questioned her. I was really getting tired of the cell organization these people were using, though. If I’d had a brain, it would have been hurting from the headache they would have been causing me.
