by DB King
He nodded. “Good idea.”
With his mace in his hand, Marcus turned and faced the blank wall which had been custom built for the placing of dungeon entrances. He pointed his mace at the blank face of the wall.
“Crucible: Place Grove chamber!”
There was a bright green glow, and a beam of light cut through the dimness of the dungeon lobby. The light struck the stone wall in front of him, and a doorway was outlined. Unlike the doorway to the bladehand chamber, which had been stone and glowing with impressive lights, the doorway to the Grove chamber was low, rounded at the top, and made of humble wooden planks with solid iron studs reinforcing it.
This door shimmered into existence with a faint noise like wind washing through the leaves of trees. A fresh, green smell wafted past them.
“Oh, that smells good,” Anja exclaimed.
Marcus smiled. He looked at Ella and raised his eyebrows questioningly. She thought for a moment, then nodded and smiled. Marcus nodded back. The exchange only took a moment, and Marcus made sure the others hadn’t seen it. It was important for him to make sure that Ella was OK with having the others enter the Grove chamber. Up to now, it had been a place where only Ella and Marcus went. Marcus was pleased that she assented to the others entering, but he was also pleased that he had asked her.
The Grove chamber was the first dungeon chamber that Marcus had created. It was unlike any of his other chambers in a few special ways. For a start, and probably most importantly, the Grove chamber was not a combat dungeon. Instead, it acted as a base camp for Marcus, a secure place where he could store things, experiment with new powers, sleep, and consult in total privacy with Ella. Only Marcus and Ella had the power to open the door to the Grove chamber, so when they were inside, they could be confident that they were completely secure.
The other key difference was in the way the Grove chamber had been created. With all other chambers, Marcus placed a few ingredients in a bare starting chamber, and then closed it and let it evolve into a fully-fledged dungeon. But with the Grove chamber, the only ingredient he had left in there to influence the dungeon’s path was Ella herself.
This was her special ability, and her affinity—Ella was a grove faerie, a faerie with a special connection for nature, for trees, and for the wild outdoors. So, Marcus had, on Ella’s instruction, left her inside the blank dungeon and activated the gestation phase. When he returned, he’d found that the Grove chamber had developed into a beautiful and quiet outdoor space, a grove of trees set in a meadow of deep grass, with a waterfall and a deep pool, and low cliffs all around. That was his first experience of the dungeons of evolution, and now, standing with his adventurers at his side, it felt like a lifetime ago.
It was a beautiful, restful place, but it was not without magic. For one thing, the Grove chamber had the ability to spawn useful and pleasant things. It spawned barrels of beer, a campfire, bread, cheese, and haunches of pork and venison to cook on the fire. There was a little seating area with sawn logs around the campfire. The time of day—and sometimes even the season—changed in the grove depending on Marcus’s mood and his energy levels.
The Grove chamber had not, of course, played any part in the battle—it was entirely unsuited to such a purpose. But still, it was a part of the overall dungeon system, and the dungeon system as a whole had gained a massive boost of energy from the battle. The Grove chamber was intimately connected to the rest of the dungeon system, Marcus was sure of that. If nothing else, it had been locked and inaccessible along with all the others for the last four weeks.
He was eager to see if and how much it had changed.
Hanging his dungeon mace on his belt again, he stepped forward and pushed the door open. It swung back smoothly and silently, as if on recently oiled hinges. A warm, green smell drifted out from the door, and the adventurers all sighed with pleasure. Kraken City and the wasteland were often mired in thick fog and the stench of urban congestion, so the smell of a woodland grove at night was a rare treat for all of them.
Eagerly, they followed Marcus inside.
Chapter 9
The Grove chamber was, to Marcus’s eyes, not significantly different. He had expected to be disappointed if the chamber was not impressively upgraded, but to his surprise he found that he actually found it all comfortingly familiar.
Long grass brushed his knees and he waded through it, sending up a haze of seed heads floating in the still, warm air. A grove of trees crowded the middle of the space, and in front of them, a little area of short-clipped grass was surrounded by a hedge. Sawn logs, for seating, surrounded a crackling campfire. Even from this distance Marcus could see a beer barrel and a bundle that looked encouragingly like a package of food.
“Oh, that looks promising,” he said, striding forward. The others followed more slowly. They gazed around in wonder at the Grove chamber. Kairn took off his helmet and breathed deeply, while Anja ran her hands across the grass, smiling as if at some old, pleasant memory. Dirk stood blinking, open-mouthed, looking around at it all.
By the time they had all gotten over to the campfire, Marcus and Ella had unwrapped the food and laid it out on wooden platters: a soft, ripe cheese, red apples that gleamed in the firelight, two loaves of dark bread with seeds and dried fruit, a crock of butter, and a haunch of venison. The venison Marcus had immediately skewered and put in place over the fire to begin roasting. As the others settled themselves, Ella busied herself pouring out mugs of beer into silver tankards.
They took their time eating. In the chamber, it was a blue evening, with a clear sky and a few early stars showing above the horizon. Of course, it was still day up above, but the chamber’s weather and time of day changed sometimes according to Marcus’s mood, and sometimes apparently just as it felt was appropriate.
It made for a pleasant meal. They were all hungry after their adventure, and they set about the bread and cheese and apples while Marcus tended the roasting venison. By the time they were done with the bread and cheese and fruit, and had gotten through their first mug of beer, the venison was ready.
Marcus took his belt-knife and served portions of the hot meat, dripping and sizzling onto the wooden plates. Something caught his eye. The feeling reminded him of having an insistent thought which he couldn’t quite place plucking at his mind.
He didn’t stop serving, but he allowed himself to slip into his own mind slightly deeper than before. It was a light trance-like state, something like the place he went when reaching for his augmentation view. A message flashed across his vision in the familiar golden afterimage style.
Spells: Level updates available. Show?
That was new! Usually, as soon as a battle had finished he would be presented with the level upgrades and progress he had made on his spells, but this time it hadn’t happened. Instead, he was now being presented with the option to check, but he didn’t have to look right now.
He handed a plate to Kairn, who inhaled appreciatively and said something about the food. The words didn’t fully register for Marcus, but he smiled at Kairn and continued to hand out the plates.
I can maintain this awareness of my magic while carrying out this simple task of serving food to my friends, he thought. This is valuable. I wonder how far this can go?
The message still hung in his mind, awaiting a response.
Spells: Don’t show level updates now, he thought, speaking clearly in his mind and focusing on the message. It immediately retreated into his subconscious, but he felt that as soon as he wanted it to show itself again, it would.
Fascinating, he thought, and useful.
He was eager to have a private conversation with Ella about this, he realized. As he had the thought, he glanced up at her. She was perched near the fire on a sawn log, nibbling at a piece of bread. Their eyes met, and he knew that she was as eager to talk everything over as he was. He nodded at her, and she smiled.
“So,” Marcus said to his adventurers, “when are you going to open your loot parcels?”
“True, true,” Kairn said, who was finishing a second helping of venison. “I’d nearly forgotten about that, with such good food to claim my attention!”
He wiped his fingers on his tunic and set his empty plate to one side, picking up the roughly cylindrical package that had his name on it. The others followed suit, putting down their plates and picking up their packages. Silently, they all worked at the red cords that knotted the parcels.
Marcus saw that Ella had also retrieved her parcel. She flew over to open hers with the others.
“Armor!” Dirk said, astonished, as the black wrappings fell away. “And such armor! I’ve never seen anything this good in my life!”
“Ooh, armored gauntlets,” Kairn said, as he pulled a pair of heavy gauntlets of gleaming blue steel from the package.
“And what’s this?” Anja said, opening her package and finding, to her surprise, that all it contained was a flat leaf of thick paper.
Whip, whip. The sound of something thin cutting the air caught their attention. They all looked up and saw Ella brandishing an incredibly thin sword with a basket-hilt. The whole weapon seemed to be made from one piece of black steel. This was her present from the dungeon.
“I’m impressed,” Ella said, sheathing the sword. It was perfect for her small size, and though it would only have been big enough to be a knife in a man’s hand, in Ella’s hand it was a perfectly balanced sword. “I’ve never seen such loot from a dungeon before. But what’s yours, Anja?”
Ella flew down to Anja’s side and looked over her shoulder. Anja had begun by looking slightly disappointed, but now her eyes widened as she read the text on the paper.
“It’s an enchantment!” she said, reading out the text. “To be applied to the user’s weapon of choice. This will grant a 50% increase in fighting speed. Place the paper on the body of the weapon...”
Excitedly, Anja drew her sword and laid it across her knee. She took the paper and, after a glance at everyone, she laid it flat against the blade.
The blade hummed. The flat piece of thick parchment glowed white for a moment before melting into the blade. The whole sword shone with bright light. Anja gripped it by the handle and held it up as the light faded.
“An augmented weapon!” she cried, and everyone cheered. Leaping away from the fire, Anja swung the sword about herself in a swift combination of deadly cuts. The blade seemed to glow white as she swung it, leaving a trail in the still evening air. It moved so fast they could barely see it. As she stilled the blade again, the white glow faded, but as she leaped out into the grassy meadow and moved through an elaborate sequence of moves, the blade lit up bright in the air.
Anja sheathed the blade and put it away. Her eyes gleamed with pleasure as she walked back to the campfire. While she had been testing her blade, Kairn had put on his new gauntlets and was admiring them in the firelight.
Marcus smiled at them both, then looked around and frowned. “Where’s Dirk?” he asked. Everyone looked around. Dirk was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m here,” Dirk’s voice said from nearby. They all turned to look at him. He was standing right there in the glow of the firelight, dressed in his new armor. It was black and fitted him like a glove. Countless small plates of interlinking black steel made the armor almost as flexible as leather. Even as they looked at him, Dirk’s image seemed to fade in their eyes. When he stepped toward them, he did not make a sound.
“That’s… slightly disconcerting,” Anja said to him.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Dirk marveled, holding out his arms and turning so they could admire the fit of his amazing armor. “It seems to completely muffle any sound I make, and allows me to blend in completely with my surroundings. And look at the sword!”
He drew the blade that came with the armor. It was a katana, like those used by the traders’ mercenary guards from the Isles of the Sun. The blade gleamed in the firelight, and the edge whispered death as Dirk whipped it through the air experimentally.
“I don’t even really know how to use a sword properly,” Dirk admitted humbly. “Anja, you’re good at swordplay, how would you feel about giving me some lessons?”
Anja hesitated for a moment. When Marcus looked at her, he saw a look of uncertainty in her gray eyes. That was surprising, since he would have expected Anja to jump at the chance to teach the art of swordplay to a friend. As he looked at her weather-worn face, Marcus realized that her eyes were fixed on Dirk’s new blade.
“Anja?” Dirk said again.
Her eyes dragged away from Dirk’s blade and up to his face. Dirk tilted his head at her questioningly, and Anja blinked rapidly several times, pulling herself together with an obvious effort.
“Of… of course,” she said, stammering a little. “Of course I’ll teach you. Yes, those blades are used differently from a regular straight sword of the kind we use in Kraken City. I, uh, I know those blades well, actually. I’ve fought with them before.”
”Great! Thanks!” Dirk said happily, sheathing his new blade carefully.
Kairn stepped forward, wearing his new gauntlets, and admired the marvelous workmanship of Dirk’s armor. As they talked, Marcus heard Anja mutter to herself. He didn’t look directly at her, but he heard her quiet words clearly.
“A Sun Islander’s blade,” she said, as if talking to herself, “and armor of the old wars… why? What can it mean?”
Shortly afterward, Dirk, Anja, and Kairn all agreed that it was time to get back to the stronghold. There was still a lot going on up top, and they all had important roles to play in the management of the stronghold. Dirk had reports to gather from the slum dwellers, and supply routes to organize now that the impasse with the Traders’ Council had been resolved. Anja had intelligence reports to gather from her agents at the docks, and Kairn had the continuation of the building work to oversee.
Marcus bade them all farewell at the door. Before they left, they tried to divide up the gems and gold from the dungeon and give Marcus his 20%, but he laughed and said that they could do it later. “There’s wealth there that we can use for supplies,” he said. “I trust you all not to squirrel it away when I’m not looking. Except maybe you,” he joked, poking Kairn in the ribs. “You know what dwarves are like with treasure. Incorrigible!”
Kairn lifted his gauntleted fists into a boxer’s stance and threw a mock punch at Marcus, and they both laughed. As Kairn turned away to go, however, Marcus looked up and caught Anja staring at him. To his surprise, the look on her face was one of pain. If he’d had to guess, he would have said that she was torn by a hard decision. As soon as she saw him look at her, though, she forced a smile and laughed along with everyone else.
Something’s going on here, Marcus thought. What did I just say to make her look like that? That I trust her? That was an uncomfortable thought. Did Anja have some shameful secret that she was torn about whether to tell him or not? Did she feel that his trust in her was misplaced? His mind jumped back to the information he’d seen when he’d looked at her in his augmentation view.
Name: Anja Drakefell
Species Marker: Human / Darkling hybrid.
And she knew something about the sword that the dungeon had given to Dirk. What had she said? “A Sun Islander’s blade, and armor from the old wars…”
Well, there was plenty of time to discuss it with Ella, and for the moment, whatever Anja’s shameful secret, he did trust her. She had fought bravely alongside him and remained committed to his cause.
She will tell me in her own time, he thought as the adventurers all filed out of the chamber. If that look she gave me at the end was anything to go by, it will be sooner rather than later.
“Something’s troubling Anja,” Ella said as soon as the others had gone and they had sat back down by the campfire.
“You’ve got that right,” Marcus agreed, refilling his beer mug. He told Ella of the strange look Anja had worn as the adventurers had left the Grove chamber, and her words about Dirk’s armor and sword
.
“Yes,” Ella said, “and remember how she didn’t want her origins discussed?”
“I remember. What is a Darkling anyway? And what did she mean by the ‘old wars?’”
Ella gave a helpless shrug. “I’ve never heard of a Darkling before, and as for the old wars, well, I have to assume it’s referring to some old war that took place here in Kraken City or in the Isles of the Sun. The only old war I know about is the wars of the dungeons that took place in the Kingdom of Doran. Anja seemed to think that Dirk’s armor was from this mysterious ‘old war’ and I’m certain that such armor has never been used in Doran. She can’t have been referring to the wars of the dungeons in Doran. Those happened centuries ago.”
Marcus nodded. “That’s a blade from the Isles of the Sun, there’s no doubt about that, at least, though I’ve never seen such armor before.”
“What are the Isles of the Sun, anyway?” Ella asked.
“I don’t know a great deal about them,” Marcus admitted. “They lie about a week’s sail south of Kraken City, assuming the winds are right. It’s an archipelago, many small islands all clustered together around one big one. They have a fairly martial culture there, or used to at least, but these days I think they’re pretty peaceful. Like everyone else these days, they prefer trade to fighting, and they produce many valuable trade goods—excellent paper, rare spices, and beautiful artworks. But I’ve certainly seen blades like that in the hands of the mercenary guards who ride with their trading ships, and I’ve seen them fight. There used to be a Sun Islander who competed in the fighting pits in the Goreway district in Kraken City. He used a blade like that, and he was unstoppable. His fighting technique was so different from the Kraken style that no one could touch him. The Kraken City champions didn’t know how to react.”
“What happened to him?” Ella asked.
Marcus shrugged again. “Who knows? He won every prize there was to win, then carried his gold and his strange sword away from Kraken, never to be seen again. But hey, enough history, what do you think of this?”
