The Dungeon Traveler

by Alston Sleet

  The initial impact drove her to all fours, her right-hand stub sliding across the ground as she lost her weapon from her left. This stone wasn’t magical. It wasn’t pushed down by anything but gravity. I barely had enough control of my mana with sapients this close to dissolve the linchpins which held the block in place. Once the supports were removed, it fell like any other stone. The woman screamed her prayers as the divine power flowed into her with even greater fervor, but she was trapped.

  Slowly she was unable to hold herself up as her body slid to the floor, the stone pressing down on her shield as much as the shield pushed down on her. Eventually, the divine power slowed, and it no longer poured into her healing spell. When her healing spell stopped, her eyes cleared up. She stared at my ogre and screamed, her body unable to move as the shield and my stone held her in place. Bit by bit, the shields started to crack, the stone slowly lowering. When the last layer broke, the massive rock suddenly slammed down on the young woman and ended her suffering.

  Even as the woman was being crushed by my stone, I was being slowly crushed by my mana. The pressure backed up behind the new blockage until it finally collapsed on her. When the paladin died, I had a brief moment of her memories. I was filled with the experience of a paladin bursting with the power of her goddess; the righteous fury and the certainty of the need for her [Crusade]. I saw the history of a little girl who had no one and nothing, who had eaten trash from a garbage heap because it was all she had to survive. How she had been taken in by an orphanage and grown to believe in the mission the Church had for her. I remembered the ogre watching her with cold, uncaring eyes as the stone slowly pressed her down, her last moments knowing that she had failed her goddess, drowning in her anger and pain.

  Then I was back, and I was drowning on my own mana, suffocating as the pressure built. I flung my will at the stone, drilling away at it using the most straightforward and most instinctual ability to dissolve my own created material. With a sapient this close, the disruption from their own mana field played havoc with my control. Even as I evaporated the stone, I watched my ogre being eaten away from my uncontrolled flailing, my walls and pedestal being etched just as deeply. The only thing that was protected was a small area around my core where I seemed to be unable to affect anything.

  It was a race to see what would kill me first. Would it be the mage waiting beyond my last defense, or the stone of my last defense? I could feel my gem starting to flex in some weird direction that I had no name for when I finally punched a hole through the stone. My ogre was left half liquified before the pressure finally started to ease. Once the pressure equalized, I stopped absorbing the rock. I sat there, hiding like a child beneath the covers hoping the monster would leave if you just don’t look under the bed. Unlike in my childhood, this monster could rip my flimsy protection away.

  I felt the mage’s mana reach out and pull the space that I had punched through the stone, the crawlway expanding to allow him to step through and approach my gem. He looked around to check for traps, his mana cloud sweeping around everything and clinging to my surface. All control of my dungeon powers left me as the mage's mana touched my surface. I was more powerless now than I had been when I first arrived in a magic prison.

  It was as the mage moved forward that I felt a new notification blast through my mind. This one was different. Instead of the odd blue box which wasn’t blue, the standard alert I had become used to, this one was glowing and highlighted, slamming forward into my mind like a neon sign. I knew, though I had no idea how I knew, that this alert was for everyone, that it rang out to anyone who knew of Coldona, my dungeon, or Vetta.

  Vetta, goddess of Order and Light, has lost in a contest of champions against Coldona, Goddess of Challenges, Mother of Monsters, and Birther of Dungeons.

  The [Paladin] Yorga has failed in a Crusade against the [High Priest] of Coldona, The Dungeon of Challenges.

  The announcement echoed in my mind before it was followed by another neon announcement.

  The Goddess Coldona has created the Pantheon of the Grey.

  The Goddess Denda has joined the Pantheon of the Grey.

  The God Beld has joined the Pantheon of the Grey.

  The God Welden has joined the Pantheon of the Grey.

  The God Telden has joined the Pantheon of the Grey.

  The God Hamndel has joined the Pantheon of the Grey.

  Leaning in to look at my core, the old mage said, “You know. When Welden asked me to follow along and help that [Paladin], I thought he was making a play against Coldona.”

  All I could do was lay on my pedestal as my instincts screamed at me, terror unlike any I had felt before flooding through my structure. Most of my time as a dungeon core had been with muted emotions. Most of my feelings revolved around my instincts screaming out with instinctual fear for protection. My terror now was like nothing I had experienced before. At that moment, with the old mage looking closely at my gem, I would have gladly destroyed myself if it meant I could avoid the terror I was experiencing.

  “I couldn’t figure out what was going on, why would Welden ask me, his [High Priest], to help an [Paladin] of Vetta? I guess now we know.”

  When the mage leaned back, I returned to something resembling fear instead of terror. His words finally started to funnel through my mind, and I began to believe that I wasn’t going to die. My terror returned though when the mage waved his hand forward and started to chant. When he finished chanting, I could feel a strange bundle of divine power peeling off my front facet, the mana disrupted with the tell-tale passage of the invisible force. Suddenly, I could see a hidden message, a message painted in mana and masked by divine power, a message written on my gem in the common tongue.

  “Denda and Beld have married! Shhhh, it’s a secret!” - Denda.

  When I understood the message, a new notification slammed outward, my mind rocking as the intensity of the new box was orders of magnitudes greater than those before.

  The Goddess Denda and The God Beld have joined in divine marriage.

  Siv, the goddess of Whispers, has been born to Denda and Beld.

  The Goddess Siv has joined the Pantheon of the Grey.

  Welden's [High Priest] stared off into space as he read his notifications before he turned back to face me, “Well. That’s…uh…Shit. The gods are going to war over this.”

  I could almost feel the terror flowing off of the mage as he focused on a point in space. His mana grew until he was able to rip a hole through my domain and out of my dungeon. His portal was connected to right outside his house, the gateway a tear in the fabric of space entirely unlike my smooth distortions.

  “You need to defend yourself better. You did better than a mindless dungeon would have, but nowhere near what you could have. The mage spire is far to the west, and they have no love of Vetta, leave this kingdom and prepare for the coming of the Church.”

  With that, the old mage stepped through the ragged hole in space and released the mana holding it open.

  I was left in my dungeon, mentally exhausted but alive. Despite my mental fatigue, I used [Directed Prayer]. I needed to scream at the monstrous goddess Denda, and I was hoping that my goddess, the goddess of monsters, would be able to get me in touch with her.

  Epilogue

  I'm Sorry

  Before I could contact Coldona, I was surprised by Denda appearing next to my core.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her bright yellow eyes were focused on the ground while she held the hem of the sundress she wore when she first contacted me. I watched as the tears dripped down her face before falling to the ground around her feet. I just watched her, holding back my anger and fear to see if she honestly did have a reason for all this. A reason beyond messing with me, a reason beyond screwing with my life, a reason for letting my secrets out to the world and risking me in this insane way. I mean, she wrote on my facet with mana and divine power like I was some passed out frat boy. Beyond the risk to my life that she played with that
[Paladin], something I’m convinced she set up, the mana message on my facet showed a level of disregard for me that was hard to process.

  “I had to do what I did for my family. Without you, they would have all changed. They would have become evil. I would have watched over the years as everyone I loved would have become my enemy…and then I would have had to help end them,” she said, her voice fading away into a whisper at the end.

  I was about to respond, but before I did a little girl popped into existence before my core. My dungeon core instincts spazzed for a moment before calming down. This wasn’t a person who was there-but-not-there like Denda and her weird way of avoiding my dungeon sight. Instead, this little girl was just an image; a projection.

  “Moooooom! Daddy won’t let me go with him. He said he was going to spy on the dwarf king and I want to pick up some more gossip!” began the girl in a high pitched and much put-upon voice before she spun around and stared at me.

  “Wow, mom! You’re right, he does think funny things!”

  I was a bit flustered trying to recover from the whiplash of Denda’s tears to this little girls exuberance. I apparently wasn’t the only one, because Denda smiled through her tears and wiped her eyes.

  “Hey! What’s wrong mom, did he make you sad?” she asked while interposing her image in between her mother and I. The act was hilarious to me. Denda had nothing to fear from me, and this little girl was just an image, yet she was still trying to block me from hurting her mother. Denda didn’t need protection. Everyone else needed protection from Denda.

  “Nuh uh! Mom’s good. She wouldn’t hurt anyone. You’re mean!”

  I forgot about the annoying tendency of the gods to read your mind, and apparently, this little girl could do it the same as her mother.

  Putting her hand on her daughter's shoulder, how that exactly worked I couldn’t imagine, she gently turned her daughter until she was facing her.

  “Why don’t you go play with Welden or Telden, I need to talk to Dale. I did things he didn’t like even if I think they needed to happen and I’m trying to apologize. OK, honey?”

  The little girl turned back to me with a concerned look on her face. Her eyes resembled her mother’s. But the shade was a glowing grey instead of her mother’s yellow. Her small hands clenched into fists while her eyes squinted at my core. Her hands finally relaxed as she tucked her night black hair behind an ear.

  “OK,” she said, and then she was gone.

  “How can she be, what ten? Twelve? The announcement was from moments ago,” I asked.

  Denda sighed while she dropped into a criss-cross position on the ground of my tunnel. She demurely tucked her dress under herself as she sat, propping her elbows on her knees, she then placed her chin in her hands.

  “The gods are not like mortals Dale, we may look similar or act similar, but we aren’t the same. Vis has more in common with you than I do a halfling.”

  I sat silently considering the questions I wanted to ask, wanting to know the justifications for her actions but also fearing them. For a long time Denda had been a creepy, scary, powerful, but generally friendly benefactor. I had known she was playing a game, and with myself as a piece on the board, but now that I could find out I dreaded discovering how much of a pawn I was.

  “Do you know why gods give so few blessings and what it means for you to have so many?” Denda asked, her yellow eyes staring into my gem.

  “I assume it requires power and you want to limit how much power you give out. I guess it means you guys like me and think I’m a useful tool,” I answered in a bit of a petulant tone.

  “That’s true, but only to a point. Every blessing is an investment of divine power. It’s like an open wound that the essence of what we are leaks out of. A wound of our selves that allowed us to pour our power into you. A wound that will never heal while you live. Each of the blessings you have is an investment that could one day mean the death of a god. An investment that will never end unless you do.”

  This answer started to ramp up my fear. I wasn’t just a pawn; I was now a liability.

  Denda flinched and frowned, her eyes starting to tear up, “Dale, you’re safe. None of us are going to hurt you. We did it willingly. We gave up our power to you for the plan. My family trusted me to help, trusted me to protect them. They figuratively slit their wrists and poured out their very lifeblood into you, for me. I won’t betray that trust, from them, or against you.”

  I felt a bit sheepish for reacting so quickly in fear. I’ve always had issues with rejection and trust problems. It’s why Jessica left me, though that feels like decades ago to me now.

  “I wrote on your facet since I needed to hide the secret, and nowhere in this dungeon is free from your view…except at your surface. Close to the surface of your gem is a distortion of reality, a distortion I’m sure you have noticed before. It’s where the mana stream comes from. You can think of it as the human blind spot. You think you can see there since your mind fills things in, but you really can’t.”

  Interesting, and now that she pointed it out it was a bit obvious. I had experienced similar things. The odd slowing of the stones when I and the wizard pair took that dimensional slingshot ride came to mind.

  “Why did you do it at all? You used my face to declare your marriage to Beld. Wooo! Congratulations, I’m happy for you, but you didn’t need to do that. That was so...so...hurtful.”

  To this Denda started to smile, a small, satisfied smile instead of her creepy Cheshire grin. I was getting angry, but her smile dropped into a lopsided frown as she explained.

  “Dale, the message was what let me and Beld get married in the first place. We both had to show a sign, a…something like an achievement if you will, that would let it happen. Gods can’t join or break away easily. The same with the creation of the pantheon. Something had to give to allow it to happen.”

  She seemed so satisfied and happy about that. Her smile was annoying in the extreme, but I could sort of see her point if she wasn’t able to marry who she wanted because of some stupid rules.

  “Not just married, I couldn’t have Vis. They aren’t rules, they are more like physical laws. I needed to use my cunning and Beld had to create a secret. Then someone else aligned with the gods had to find this secret in a struggle against the gatekeeper. You! Even harder, the gatekeeper couldn’t know they were a gatekeeper or what the secret was. I had few options Dale. There were other options, but all of them required more power than any of us could bring together, and we were all fading Dale. Dying. We didn’t have the power for something as frivolous as my marriage. Beld and I had to give up a significant amount of our power to form Vis. None of that was possible without sacrificing your dignity like that.”

  Given that point of view, I felt a little bit like a heel over getting upset. I wasn’t hurt, and the gain was impressive. Compared to death, marriage, and birth, my little bit of loss of dignity was a minor issue. That being said, the [Paladin] wasn’t a minor issue. She almost killed me. If things had gone even a little bit wrong, I would have died.

  “She was needed. A new pantheon can’t form without power. Power needed to be invested. Power that we didn’t have. Vetta is the Head of the pantheon of the Light. Think of the invested power of a challenge between her champion and Coldona’s. This was a contest within Coldona’s domain of Challenge with a [Paladin] directly invested with the power of her goddess, all while on a divinely accepted [Crusade]. For Coldona to win…that power, all went to forming the pantheon of the Grey with Coldona as the Head.”

  I was starting to get frustrated. Reasonable answers, rational reasons, but I was still upset. I was hurt. I was harmed, threatened, I could have died again.

  “I could have died again,” I said.

  Denda nodded, her head still in her hands, the silly motion making her look even younger than her halfling appearance usually did. When I thought that, Denda stuck her tongue out at me then quickly pulled it back in and smiled at me in a friendly way.


  “Dale, from my perspective, the worst thing I’ve done to you was sending you to the dwarves and the kobold’s first.”

  I didn’t understand and told her so. I had enjoyed my time with the dwarves and the lizards. I had learned valuable things, and I had been safe the entire time.

  “Yes, safe. The dwarves wouldn’t threaten your core since you looked like a well established, though odd, dungeon. The Kobolds would sneak through and train you in how the sneaky would behave. But neither would try for your core. I stunted your growth. If you had opened your dungeon door in any of a thousand locations without my first suggestions, especially having forgotten to put up lights, you would have been besieged with people trying to steal your core. A young dungeon core is just about the only type of captured core. Without lights, setting down in some random location, you would have been seen as a strange young dungeon. You would have fought off waves of adventurers trying to make their fortune. You would have always come into conflict with the king, that was always your fate. Without my pushing, it would have been a far different contest.”

  I started to see what she meant. If I had prepared, if I had used any of the hundreds of things I had thought of since my fight with the [Paladin], then no one would be able to get to me.

  “Once a dungeon reaches about a hundred years old, with constant combat, they can’t really be destroyed. They are too deadly, the traps too numerous, the monsters too powerful, the weapons brought against invaders too powerful. Eventually, the main use of dungeons is to harvest the overpowered weapons from the defending monsters in the first few chambers. Even that costs hundreds of lives. Only young dungeons are in danger of being destroyed or harvested for their core. You never matched anything like that, and if I had sent you anywhere else, you would have figured it out and become like an old dungeon in a matter of days. I set up that [Paladin] to die. I set up the king to send her. I set up that entire kingdom to die. I’ve set up the Church of Vetta to bleed its mortal power dry against you in the coming years. That’s what I did to you Dale. I’m sorry.”