by Alston Sleet
THE DUNGEON TRAVELER
Alston Sleet
Copyright © 2019 Alston Sleet
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9988283-3-6
Illustration © Tom Edwards
TomEdwardsDesign.com
CHAPTER ONE
Dying, Death, and Birth
Death is unpleasant.
That’s probably no surprise to anyone. After all, not many people want to be dead. When I say that death is unpleasant, I don’t mean the process of becoming dead. No, I mean being dead. Not that the process was much better. It was relatively quick for me, but it still wasn’t a slice of cake. It actually involved cake since the truck was a bakery delivery truck rushing to a wedding, but I never got a slice and what I ate was more asphalt and sidewalk than delightful icing.
I can’t even claim some kind of noble act of bravery rushing forward to save some child's life. No, I was playing on my phone while walking home from the pub after a few too many drinks over the weekend. A midday drinking binge, an untucked shirt covering my belly lapping over my too tight belt, hair disarrayed since I didn’t have a wife or other to direct me to get it cut, a quick squint at the screen while walking through the crosswalk and…splat.
In my defense, I had the right of way, and the driver was speeding, but still. I was hit by a bakery truck while drunk and disheveled, and I didn’t die with a phone displaying a rather delightful image a mate sent to me. No, I died hours later in the hospital, having survived just long enough to see myself reported on the news as ‘man hit by a truck while looking at porn on his phone.’
If I hadn’t died from a bleed in my stomach that the doctor hadn’t detected, I think I would have perished from embarrassment soon after.
So here I am. Floating in a gray nothingness.
I say floating, but it’s not really floating since I could be inches above some floor and never know it or falling at thousands of miles an hour and also never tell since I can’t really feel anything. Certainly not gravity.
It’s not actually grey either. It’s the closest I can come to explaining it, but there isn’t really anything either, again, definitely not color. It’s just…nothing.
Unpleasant like I said. Not bad, not good, but it’s like a bit of used gum with no flavor left over. It’s not good by any means, and I don’t really want it, but it’s not actively harming me either. It’s just something there and aggravating enough to get my attention but not actually being something to hold my attention. Grey. Nothing.
I still don’t know how long it was. It could have been hours, minutes, years, decades, seconds. The entire thing was very disconcerting, and I could feel myself sort of drifting and I think if it had been years I would have slowly lost myself. It had probably only been minutes, but even minutes of a not-gray gray nothing like that was enough to make it an unpleasant experience I would not recommend. Like that gum, that I definitely didn’t eat on a dare, that was found on the bottom of a chair when I was in elementary school. Definitely not.
My next awareness, beyond the not-gray gray, was blue. A large, square blue window that was hovering directly in my mind. If it had been hanging in front of my eyes, it would have been one thing. Odd, but I could have pretended to myself it was some miracle invention of the hospital. A new way to charge far more than was reasonable perhaps. But no, it was in my mind, directly in my head, no eyes, ears, or other sensory devices. Boom. Smack dab into the thinker without any interference.
Worse, it was without words or sentences or number, but it had concepts and ideas all nicely organized and outlined within that mental box construct. How a collection of thoughts could be placed on a blue background, bordered by a box, and for these ideas not to be words, I couldn’t understand, but I still comprehended the frame of information and concepts.
Whoever created this box, and there was no way there wasn’t someone who designed this thing -some software monkey reject perhaps- they also included a nice delightful happy sound to go with it. Somehow they included the mental construct of a joyful signaling noise but did so without sound. They added it in the box. A happy sound, without sound, in a blue box, which wasn’t blue, filled with words, which were not words. If I had eyes, they would have been crossed.
Ding!
Congratulations on your birth.
You have been born as a ‘Dungeon Core.’
Go forth and level, explore, and live!
Worse than the horrible mental intrusion and the confusion it caused was the disconcerting feeling like the entire thing had been built with a low budget. The message itself felt like someone had constructed it with loving care, presenting it with every bit of nuance and articulation possible…then directly inserted the concept ‘Dungeon Core’ in an obvious cut and paste job. It felt like a form letter that someone had just inserted a keyword in when needed. It was like listening to a warm message of welcome said in your mother's voice but when she says your name it sounds like an old computer. It’s more horrific than if the whole thing had been done by the computer in the first place.
So, not-blue blue screen, happy sound in my brain inside a box that doesn’t exist, beautiful voice that scared the beer that was no longer inside me out of me…and then I’m looking in every direction at once while I’m inside a delightfully large cut gem, and stuffed inside what can only be magical lines of force. All while a pimple-faced young man runs his hands over my surface.
Dying had not been what I had expected, death hadn’t lived up to my admittedly low standards, and now birth was also feeling particularly unpleasant. The fact that those three came in the wrong order didn’t make me feel much better about the whole thing.
“Yes! Yes! It worked! You are just lovely! I’m going to pass for sure.”
OK, it sounded nothing like English or French, the two languages I liked to pretend I understood despite what my grades had said about the matter. I was hoping though, even though I didn’t actually speak the language, and while I wasn’t sure how I was actually hearing it -gems not being well known for listening- I still hoped I was right about what he was saying. Whatever he was saying I just wanted him to stop stroking my facets, it was causing me to freak out in more ways than I usually would when some guy started rubbing on me and talking about how lovely I was. Something inside my…brain? Stone? Structure? Something…whatever I was using to think anyways, whatever it was, it came with instincts, and those instincts were saying that I should kill this guy using every method possible. Typically when a buddy at the pub got a bit handsy after a few too many drinks, a simple chuckle and shove was enough to move on, but no, my instincts were screaming at me and telling me in no uncertain terms that I needed to kill, destroy, maim, and eat this pimple faced groper.
Not my usual experience in any way.
Worse, I couldn’t do a thing to him. The stone room I was in came with odd glowing lines of force that kept me from acting against him. Not that I could imagine what I was able to do as a gem, but every instinct was saying that without those lines of force I would definitely be doing something.
After a few more mutters and lightly rubbing my top facet, he left the room. He left me laying on the top of a stone pillar in the strange glowing stone room. I say ‘laying’ but the truth was I was strapped down by the bright magical lines of force. What was strapped down? No clue. But it was most definitely strapped down.
I looked around, again with what I had no idea, but I looked around the room. Dark gray stone with tiny bits of quartz stuck in it, covered with a lightly glowing structure that was carved into the rock. Intricate glyphs connected every square inch of the room with magical forms. Some glyphs were deeply carved and joined the lines of force to me, while other glyphs were smaller and see
med to connect the larger glyphs together. The only area not covered in my magical straight jacket was the plain wooden door the pimpled groper had used to exit.
After a few minutes looking around and trying to figure out what was going on and what I was going to do, I had only one clear shining idea.
I thought ‘shit’ really hard and sulked.
CHAPTER TWO
I Pulled Something
My sulk lasted about an hour before I decided I couldn’t just sit there looking shiny and sad. That, and I needed to do something. What to do in this circumstance I didn’t know, but something was certainly called for.
I spent a few minutes carefully looking around the room. Nothing new really jumped out at me except that it appeared that the room was oddly uniform. Looking closer it was clear that no tools had been used to form the room. It appeared to be solid stone without joinery, a few meters on a side, although the scale was difficult to tell given my change in perspective. While the stone looked unworked, it was also obviously not natural in origin. This wasn’t a cave, it was a room.
After focusing on the glowing lines of force, my magical straight jacket, I noticed that the slowly shifting fog-like glowing threads of magic was not actually visible. They were there, they existed, they bloody well held me down, but they were not visual in any way. Whatever I was doing to ‘see’ them, I wasn’t actually ‘seeing’ them. This was more of the ‘it-is but it-is-not’ stuff that was making me feel like it should be driving me crosseyed. Considering I lacked eyes and apparently was still able to see everything in the room at once, it wasn’t that disabling of a sensation.
With a mental sigh, a verbal one being impossible, I started to try and flail around in an effort to do something, anything. I didn’t move an inch, and I couldn’t actually see anything moving, but I could still feel the magical glowing lines pulling and stretching around me. I was still held down tight, but it actually felt like something was being pulled around by my efforts.
Grunting hard (mentally) I increased my efforts to jerk and twist and whip myself around in as fast a manner as possible. It took a few minutes, minutes where I kept expecting to become tired but never seemed to, but I noticed that the magical lines of force were delayed in their responses.
I would pull in one direction, and moments later the glowing strands would start resisting and pulling…something…back in the other direction. With that, my plan was born.
A swingset!
I was going to jerk in one direction and the moment when I feelt the push in the other direction I would then push in that direction! If I timed it right the lines of force would start helping me out instead of holding me down. The real issue was that while the lines of magical force held me down, the pushes back and forth that the lines caused were oddly subtle. It was like someone pushing through layers of blankets. It still pushed me around, but detecting the pushes was harder to feel than I would have expected for something so overwhelming.
It took some practice and more than a few false starts before I got a feel for the timing. After a few seconds of practice, I was swinging…something…back and forth with some real energy behind it. I still wasn’t moving, but I was obviously doing something that the magical lines of force were trying to prevent, so I counted it as a win. Then the damn window was back and it threw my timing off entirely. It felt like leaning up against an object that then moved. My whole body expected something then some flailing and then…splat! Only mental, which didn’t make it any better. Worse in fact.
Ding!
Congratulations, you have reached the minimum level of competence in
[Mana Sensing], Level 1.
Mana Sensing allows a ‘Dungeon Core’ the innate sense of mana and its actions, direction, effect, magnitude, and duration. A rare skill highly prized by magicians, crafters, merchants, and even warriors. Allowing for improved spell construction, the improved construction of magical devices, identification of enchanted artifacts, and even detection of the nature of hostile spells as they are formed. While this skill provides no help in spell construction itself, the ability to understand what is formed is of immense assistance.
Again with the wholesome wonderful not-voice combined with the grating mechanized words ‘Dungeon Core’. At least this time the the announcement actually did something useful. The lines of magical force made more sense now. More, not a lot, but more. The big glyphs directed the effects of the little glyphs from around the room onto the pedestal in the middle which effected whatever was resting on it. The little glyphs kept me from doing…something…to the room. The best I could guess was making the room mine. How that worked or what it meant, also no clue, but hey, it was a start.
It took a few further false starts to get the swinging back and forth against the force of the glyphs but it was a lot easier after my first try now that I could sense the magic shifting against my efforts. After I got things going it became clear that this wasn’t going to work. I was straining at the edge of each pull, but the magical lines had some kind of self-dampening effect going on. I could literally watch the glyphs’ glow brighten and dim as I swung around. While I was sure there had to be some giving point somewhere, it was also clear I wasn’t going to meet it.
Now that this plan failed I reverted to my previous plan. Sulking.
I still couldn’t keep a good sulk on, I was far too impatient and hyperactive for that to last. It was actually kind of comforting to realize that even though I had died, I was still very much still the same person personality wise. Arms and a voice would have been nice, but still being me was also good. Also a downside as well. I was a failure in my last life because of my procrastination and avoidance of my…issues…and since I haven’t changed, that would continue as well. Luckily, I didn’t have to consider those problems at the moment since I had the issue of my freedom to consider.
Ok, new plan. If I can shake and move around, that means I have some give, and if I have some give…can I do something in the small little area where the magical lines don’t have control? Can I gain something there?
Struggling for another hour showed me that this was also a resounding failure. It wasn’t from a lack of trying either, I struggled to push, pull, or even think really hard at the small area around my surface but nothing seemed to happen. It wasn’t until I shifted my power around slightly in frustration that I realized that I didn’t actually have any available space! The magical lines of force hugged to my facets like water, not like a blanket. My pushes and pulls were more like making a small bubble of space that then collapsed in, not unlike huddling under a blanket and making room underneath all propped up by my imaginary knees.
So my plan changed, I would shift and try to fight the magical pull and then try and shift…something…around to make a bubble of space for myself. This plan worked out far better than the previous attempts (though I would argue my sulking plan was also effective).
After a few tries I finally managed to shift around and tuck, yes tuck was about the best way I could describe it, something into the magical places around me in a way that wasn’t there before.
Oh dear god! I’m held confined in a place against my will and I’m resorting to tucking things into a ‘magical pocket’ to hide it from the warden…I’m in prison!
Hysterical giggles induced from mental exhaustion and a difficult situation sound even odder when it’s entirely inside your head and you can’t even close your eyes for a mental rest.
After I had ‘rested’ for a bit and took stock of how ridiculous my situation was I noticed that my pocket of closed in…something…was getting smaller. Whatever I was doing was also straining the glyphs around the room, they had all started to glow brighter after I had created my little free area but it was barely noticeable.
“So…let’s keep this up then.”
Great, now I’m starting to talk to myself in my own head. I’m going to end up crazy from this I just know it. Although being a magically imprisoned gem, it’s probably not that far o
f a journey to ‘go crazy’.
So I went back to working on my half-baked escape plan. Push, stretch, and then twist and tuck! Each time I gained a little more of whatever I was doing although what it was and what I was doing was even less clear then my swingset plan. After half an hour of struggling along, I had enough room inside the area ‘tucked in’ that I could start pushing from the inside instead of pushing against the magical lines of force outside. Whatever I was doing, if the glow of the glyphs was anything to go by, it was helping me.
Pushing from inside my magical pocket felt oddly different though, some part of the pushing wasn’t against the outside of the pocket, it was against something else entirely. What that was, or even what that meant wasn’t exactly clear. I was still getting used to these new sensations and I didn’t really have a vocabulary that explained it. It became far more clear when misses blue-window that’s not a window came back.
Ding!
Congratulations, you have reached the minimum level of competence in [Spatial Manipulation], Level 1.
[Spatial Manipulation] is the legendary skill which allows for the creation of bags of holding, teleportation devices, portals, pocket worlds, and other places which are ‘bigger on the inside’. [Spatial Manipulation] is the unstructured form of spells dealing with the stretching, shrinking, folding, tearing, or connecting of the very fabric of space.
…O…K…
So, I’m actually creating a ‘magic pocket’. Interesting, and I’m certain it will definitely help me somehow, but I’m not sure how it will help me right at this moment. I mean, it had the potential to do it for certain. A nice portal jaunt or a bit of teleportation would solve my problem quickly (if I could jaunt). The ‘Level 1’ hinted that I wasn’t very good at it so far and that I would probably have to get much better before I could make a portal.
