A Living Dungeon

by Allan Joyal

  Faestari smiled. She brought her spirit back to her avatar in the dungeon heart and opened her eyes. “Fools,” she muttered as she looked at the dwarf who was still standing there.

  “What?” the dwarf asked.

  Faestari giggled. “You ask that a lot. I thought I was the one who should be asking all the questions.”

  “You seem to be able to handle things fairly well despite not awakening the usual way. I explored the dungeon while you were out there dealing with the Kindred,” the dwarf said.

  “You did not watch?” she asked.

  “You are the only dungeon I know that has a human avatar and uses it all the time. Most can make one, but only use it like I am using mine now, when outside our dungeon. Inside we allow our spirit to flow through the dungeon,” the dwarf said.

  Faestari nodded. “I rarely leave the heart chamber now. I only do when I want to look at something like one of the adventurers visiting the dungeon would.”

  The dwarf looked surprised. “I never thought about that,” he admitted. “I was going to say that I’ve looked at your floors and the monsters. You’re right, the orcs are going to be a problem at first, but the tribe isn’t large or powerful. Adventurers should be able to push through them. Your next floor is amazing, but you need more monsters and challenges.”

  Faestari looked up at the ceiling. She could sense that the golem was still slowly moving through the mountainside. The path was curving to avoid any of the orc’s chambers, which would delay his arrival. “I was going to use what the Kindred brought me to create an old dwarven fortress complex. Mostly traps and then some stone guardians. I’ve tried to reach out to some fire spirits, and I’ve found a mana node, but it’s a bit too deep for me to harness the fire to really make it work.”

  “Amazing,” the dwarf said. “That fits the rooms I saw, and it would work. You have put a lot of thought into this. What will you do if you can’t get that ready in time?”

  The fortress isn’t right at the stairway,” Faestari pointed out. “You'd notice that if you visited the entire floor. I have lots of spiders and snakes roaming the floor. I can add a few stone creatures to help add danger.”

  “I had,” the dwarf admitted. “And I noticed that some of your nicer floors are on the fifth level where this heart is. But do you expect adventurers to get this deep?”

  “I hope not,” Faestari admitted. “At least not for right now. I need stronger monsters, but they will take time to make their way here once they feel my call.”

  “It will happen, but are you otherwise ready?” her mentor asked.

  “We’ll find out. The kobolds are few in number still. The youths grow quickly, but at first they only had four warriors, two did not even have weapons. I plan on giving them some of the weapons the Kindred gave me. The orcs also were not many, but they had many young and now have about thirty warriors in the rooms I allocated to them. I worry about them though. If I could replace them I would.”

  “Orcs are hard to replace. There just aren’t many monsters at their level of danger,” The dwarf told her. “They should be willing to keep only a few members in each room and to accept losses. As long as that holds, it’s more useful to keep them around.”

  “I don’t like it,” Faestari said. “But I see that with the spiders as well. I’ll have to wait and see. I do know that the orcs will not leave their floor unless I throw them out of the dungeon entirely.”

  “Have they tried?” the dwarf asked.

  “Not yet, but I know they have looked at the walls and they set up to be able to ambush my avatar if I climb the stairs to their floor. I’ve already created some ways to bypass the floor if I need to visit the kobolds or my safe rooms just inside the entrance,” Faestari said.

  “You think more than any dungeon I know,” the dwarf said.

  “Including you?” Faestari said with a girlish giggle.

  The dwarf glared at the young woman. “I shouldn’t answer that. But I also should say you’ve had to think more.”

  Faestari nodded. “I know. Do you want to look at what the Kindred brought.”

  “How?” the dwarf asked.

  The wall opposite Faestari’s sleeping alcove opened up. The stone golem she had used on the surface stepped into the room leaving behind a small alcove. It then marched up to Faestari before setting the packs down at her feet.

  Faestari pointed to the packs. “We could just open them up.”

  The dwarf stared at the packs. “Well, I guess that does work,” he muttered. “How did you think of that?”

  “I played games with the village children before I discovered I was a dungeon. In the forests around the village they loved to play a game called Secret Messenger. One person was selected to be a messenger trying to get a very important message to a certain point to deliver to the king. Others would try to stop him. You had to think of ways to move about the forest without being seen if you were the messenger,” Faestari said.

  “But couldn’t the others just hunt down the messenger?” the dwarf asked.

  “They would try, but they started out far from where the messenger would start. A good messenger would come up with a way to sneak past them,” Faestari said. “At first I was terrible, but eventually I learned how to avoid getting caught.”

  “And this helped?” the dwarf asked.

  “Think of the rooms as the guards. I just had to map out a route for the golem to follow to bring the packs to me,” she said. “The tunnel closed behind him, so none of the Kindred entered and as that wasn’t the entrance, they can do little to harm me with what they discovered. I don’t trust that Varnil, though.”

  The dwarf nodded towards the packs. “Let’s see what they gave you.”

  Faestari opened the first pack. Once the ties holding it shut were undone dozens of daggers poured out onto the floor.

  The dwarf snorted as he looked at the battered daggers. Most were plain and unadorned, with simple hilts that had rotted leather wrapping. A few might have once held gemstones in the pommel, but now just had empty sockets. The blades were pitted or rusting.

  Faestari sighed as she started to line up the ruined blades. She could see that many might be repaired over time. This was not something she wanted to work on immediately. She had placed eight in front of her when she felt mana coursing through the ninth blade.

  “What?” her mentor asked.

  Faestari closed her eyes and allowed her senses to explore the blade. It was feeding off her mana. There was an old enchantment that had been placed on the blade. It was supposed to keep the blade sharp. Unfortunately, someone had pried the manastone providing the power for the enchantment from the hilt. Without power the enchantment had faded.

  Faestari decided to save the enchantment. The magic weave that held it together had started to come undone, but she could see a way to repair the damage. It would not restore the entire enchantment, but the blade would never rust and would hold an edge in combat. She reached down to the floor and coaxed a small nodule of granite to from and break off in her hand.

  “You’re making a mana stone for that?” the dwarf asked. “It’s almost rusted into uselessness.”

  Faestari concentrated on turning the nodule into a mana stone and then fusing it into the empty socket in the hilt. As soon as the stone was able to link to the enchantment the rust on the blade vanished. The blade now just looked dull as if it needed to be carefully polished and oiled, but the dagger now looked usable. The girl smiled and set the dagger behind her. A moment later it vanished as the floor rose up to cover it.

  “You buried it?” the dwarf asked.

  “I’m giving it to the kobolds,” Faestari said. “But I figure I’ll play along with their worship of me. Their shaman will find it lying on the altar when he goes there to prepare their next sacrifice.”

  “They sacrifice things to you?” the dwarf asked.

  Faestari nodded. “Mostly rats. I’m sure they’d offer other creatures, but right now the only other creatur
es they see are the spiders, and they appear to use the spiders as pets.”

  “You are doing everything wrong,” the dwarf said.

  “Or perhaps, I’m finding a new way to do things right,” Faestari said. She placed six more daggers in her line of blades that she could repair. When she reached for another she found a mass of dark mana pooled in the pommel.

  “This one is cursed,” she said as she picked it up and looked at it. The dagger appeared to have a blade of obsidian. The edges were surprisingly sharp, but the mass of dark mana twisted and reached out to try to claim her.

  The girl released her own mana, quickly subduing the curse. She looked at the dagger a bit more closely and then set it far to her right. “I’ll fix it later. Or maybe I’ll leave it for an adventurer who causes trouble.”

  “You’re starting to think like a dungeon,” the dwarf said happily. “Well, if you don’t need any more advice, I’ll head off. And I’ll make sure that all the dungeons know about how the Kindred failed to show you proper respect.”

  Faestari shrugged. “I’d feel bad for them, but they did it to themselves. At least I know they’ll tell others. I expect adventurers to start arriving in the spring.”

  “Do you have enough treasure?” the dwarf asked worriedly.

  “Faestari smiled. “The orcs brought fungus. I seem to know of several forms of mushroom and moss that adventurers prize. Those have started spreading through the rooms. When you consider that the spiders and snakes can be harvested for alchemical ingredients, and that I’ve made sure that the orcs and kobolds have some copper coins. There should be enough for early groups.”

  “I should go then,” the dwarf said. “Good luck and make sure you are ready in the spring.”

  “Should I make changes to the mountainside?” Faestari asked. “I get a feeling I should improve the area just outside the entrance to make it easier to organize an adventuring party and then provide a path up the mountainside. I don’t want a town right at the entrance.”

  “I would agree with you there,” the dwarf said. “The town for my dungeon is over a mile away from the entrance. If you have a plan, go ahead and make the changes. You have time and no one should see them under the snow. If you get any.”

  “I feel a storm coming. The mountain should be blanketed with snow soon,” Faestari said.

  “Use that time to prepare. The Kindred will tell others and by summer adventurers will be here,” the dwarf said as a whirlwind started to rise out of the floor.

  “Thank you for everything,” Faestari said.

  The dwarf just snorted as the whirlwind reached his shoulders. He said nothing as the avatar body turned to mist and was spun out to join the rest of the wind. A moment later the whirlwind subsided leaving Faestari alone in the heart of her dungeon.

  Chapter 10: Spring Comes Late

  The storm that Faestari had predicted showed up four days later and blanketed the mountain under two feet of snow. Over the next twenty days seven more storms passed through the area. The slopes of her mountain disappeared under a thick coating of frozen water.

  Faestari welcomed the change. It allowed her to make subtle changes to the mountain, while secure in the knowledge that no one was watching.

  Under the cover of the blanket of snow, the landing just outside her dungeon’s doorway expanded and became flatter. A small berm at the edges ensured that nothing could easily roll off the side of the landing. She also formed a trail leading down the southeast side of the mountain. It curved regularly as it hugged the contours of the mountainside.

  She also worked to make the rest of the mountain more difficult to climb. The north and south faces were already extremely difficult. When she cleared out space for a new chamber, she would toss the extracted granite out on one of those two faces. They were now strewn with large blocks of granite. No clear path existed up either face.

  The western side was her largest worry. This had been the side the Kindred used and the plateau they had climbed to was not too far from the summit. She used mana to drag massive amounts of soil away from the granite and then molded cliffs into the mountainside. It would not stop someone from using magic, but the average adventurer would hopefully circle the mountain and approach from the southeast.

  The kobolds had found the dagger shortly after her mentor had left. The shaman led a raucous celebration upon finding the dagger sitting on the makeshift altar. They had increased their efforts to create an interesting and challenging floor of the dungeon. Faestari was very happy with the work they put in.

  The orcs wasted a lot of their time trying to force their way deeper into the dungeon. Faestari was forced to kill two that jumped down the stairway. After the second attempt, she had one of her largest spiders take over the stairway room. The orcs continued to harass the spider, but they stopped their aggressive attempts to expand their lair. Faestari was particularly annoyed by this as her expanding domain had given her space to add more chambers on the floor, but she did not want to reward the orcs.

  She was increasingly both frustrated with and proud of her next floor. The rooms that adventurers would encounter before stumbling on the dwarven fortress had been turned into a fungus filled maze where spiders and snakes hunted. It would be a challenge to any unwary or unprepared adventurer. Faestari had even started working on growing several species of giant beetle to add to the danger. One specimen that she grew from a common stag beetle promised to be an unwelcome adversary.

  The problem was the dwarven fortress area. The packs provided by the Kindred did have a good selection of badly damaged but salvageable hammers and axes, including several battle axes. The dungeon soul soon had a small collection of weapons that could be provided to her stone guardians. The problem was that she lacked any creatures that could lair in the fortress. The kobolds were too small and physically weak and the orcs did not deserve the reward. She resolved to leave the problem for the future and ended up hoping that no adventurer powerful enough to reach the fortress arrived in the early spring.

  Her other big change was to create hidden cisterns near the summit of the mountain. They would collect the runoff from melting snow. She was going to use the water to help maintain the streams and ponds she had scattered throughout her dungeon.

  By the time the snow had melted from the path, Faestari was as ready as she could be. She closed off the dungeon heart and began scrying from the top of the mountain, watching for the approach of the first group of adventurers.

  The end of winter brought life to the mountainside. Grasses and flowers found purchase on the slopes. A carpet of purples and yellows spread from the stone landing just outside the dungeon entrance down to the tree line that had formed long before near the base of the mountain. Faestari was tempted to run out and play in the flowers, but stayed deep within the dungeon. She did use her air vents to attract floating seeds of many of the plants. Her chamber at the heart of the dungeon was soon carpeted with a field of clover and grass. Small plots of brightly colored flowers kept her company as she sat and reached out with her mana, watching for the visitors she could feel were coming.

  The wait proved to be longer than Faestari expected. Summer was only a few days away when she noticed a band of six people climbing the west face. They were struggling to find a path. She turned her attention to their progress and listened.

  “I’m telling you, this is not the right side of the mountain,” a young man with blond hair complained. He was third in the line formed by the group as they tried to negotiate a sheer granite wall. “No dungeon would make getting to the entrance this difficult.”

  “The man I talked to said they came up this side,” the leader called back. He was a heavy-set man with black hair. The man was holding a miner’s pick in his hand as he tried to chisel a handhold out of the cliff-face.

  “Did he also tell you that they tried to cheat the dungeon? Or that they have been banned from returning?” a female voice said. Faestari realized it came from the last person in line. This fi
gure was wearing a hooded robe. “Why did you not at least allow us to walk around the mountain first? There has to be an easier way up.”

  “Why would the dungeon have the Kindred come to this side then?” the leader asked.

  “Perhaps the dungeon knew not to trust the Kindred. We all know that they are always seeking funding. Are you really that surprised by the stories we’ve heard?” the blond man said again as he moved to jump down to a path that lead to the southern side of the mountain. Faestari had put it in as a way to encourage people to walk around rather than try to climb up the western slope.

  “Where are you going?” the leader asked.

  The blond man turned. Faestari could see the scorn and disdain in the man’s expression. “I’m not waiting two days trying to climb up this wall. This path appears to circle the mountain. I suspect it will lead us to the entrance.”

  “No dungeon remodels their exterior,” the leader said.

  “How would we know?” the blond man said. “What dungeons have we really heard about? Eastfjord was destroyed over twenty years ago after it rampaged and killed fifty adventurers in one year allowing none to escape. Wynterhold is well known, but it’s also ancient. No one is sure what changes it made long ago. It also could make changes in the winter when no one is around. Yellowrock? Highcliff? Auricglen? All of those dungeons have long histories and seem to be content with the challenges they have developed.”

  “And you’ve been to all of them?” the leader spat back.

  “Eastfjord was destroyed when I was five. I couldn’t have entered. As for the others, I told you about my experiences when I joined. I’ve tried Yellowrock three times. It was a fine challenge, but my partner ignored the danger and was killed about fifteen chambers inside. Once I retreated I discovered that there were no adventuring groups looking for someone with my skills. I then headed south, hoping to reach Lost Hope. I met you in Destrier’s Bay,” the blond man said.