by Hugo Huesca
The teachers that demanded he solve a problem their way, even if he knew another, fastest one. Or the ones who favored the students that sucked up to them.
His boss at his former IT job who got promoted instead of better-suited options because he was golf-buddies with an executive.
Ryan, who enjoyed the benefits of his parents’ business and used it to make the lives of others miserable.
I’m trapped, Ed realized, with his hands curled into fists. If he said no to Murmur’s Gambit, it would be like admitting he, Ed, could become just like the people he despised if he were to be in their shoes.
It would mean turning his back on everything he believed in.
Kharon would return him to a jail cell where not only would he lose his freedom, but he would spend the rest of his life knowing he had failed himself.
And Kharon knew it.
When Ed met his gaze, the man’s smile gained new shades of meaning that escaped Ed.
“So, no dark, mind-corrupting magic?” Ed asked.
“None. If there’s any, the deal will be broken in your favor.”
“Your god won’t try to stop me when I do whatever I want with these powers, even if it means joining the Light?”
“Not even Murmur himself will be able to take the mantle away from you once the Pact is made, only death can that. But—” he said, “—I suggest you wait before you go and try to join the Light. Just until you familiarize yourself with Ivalis, is all. After all, you’re going into a world with different customs and traditions than your own.”
Ed nodded. It sounded reasonable enough.
“Very well,” said Kharon. The car lurched to a stop and the door to the side of Ed unlocked itself. “Since it’s decided, please step out of the vehicle. There’s not enough space in here to do the deed.”
Ed exited the car slowly, trying to ignore the cramping in his legs and trying not to think of the giant creature-things in the edges of his vision. He also took care to leave the door open just in case Kharon was about to leave him stranded.
Outside, the landscape hadn’t changed—it was still the apocalyptic world without sun, enveloped in a reddish light that looked like some invisible titan had made the clouds bleed. Ed realized the paved road—some kind of dark marble—was surrounded by tall walls of reinforced, polished stone. He had missed them while trying very hard not to lose his sanity gazing into the abyss—or whatever it was they called something so ugly it made you go insane if you looked at it.
The walls reminded him of a labyrinth, though it had the added function of hiding the horizon from his field of view.
“Very well,” said Kharon as he stepped out of the vehicle. “Let us begin.”
Ed realized that Kharon was taller—much taller—than he first had expected. His legs unfolded as he left the car and just kept going up and up until it was clear Ed was seeing something impossible. Kharon was so tall his knees were at Ed’s face-level and so thin it looked like a small wind might send him flying.
The policeman uniform shifted and changed shape and colors, extending until it transformed into a black, old, and dirty cloth that covered the man’s body. It reminded Ed of the shroud people used to cover Death when they drew her.
Ed gulped loudly. Kharon’s appearance was decidedly non-human, and it was a strong reminder of the magnitude of the deal Ed was about to make, that there would be no chance of turning back.
So, Ed clenched his jaw and stood firmly with closed fists, hoping he wouldn’t lose his nerve.
“Good, that’s the spirit,” said Kharon. His knees folded in ways that implied many hidden joints where none should be, and his back bent and bent until he was face to face with Ed, who saw the man’s face for the first time. Besides the smile and two tiny black eyes that would’ve been more at home in a spider’s head, there were no distinctive features. No ears, no nose, no lines of age on his forehead. Only a chalk-white skin the texture of wax.
“Don’t let what’s about to happen scare you, Edward. It’s all part of the procedure,” Kharon warned him. Their closeness brought back his dizzying breath in tufts that made Ed’s head spin.
With that, Kharon stepped back a couple steps and bent unto himself. His long, rail-thin arms hugged the dirty cloth around his torso and he pushed. And he heaved.
“UAGHHH!”
“Uh,” Ed’s voice died in his throat as he saw Kharon’s go through severe, terrible, slimy heaves that made his entire inhuman body tremble and shake with the effort. “Are you…are you okay?”
“UAGHHH!”
Was the man dying? From what Ed managed to see, Kharon’s face was contorted with effort and pain—still smiling—and something started to bulge inside his white neck.
Feeling like he may vomit himself, Ed stepped back as the bulge rose up and up.
What the hell is that? It should have torn Kharon’s throat apart.
“UAGHHH!”
The bulge reached the back of his mouth. Ed’s eyes widened as he saw something black and pulsating and covering in goo start to pry Kharon’s jaw open. More and more—”
It was an organ. Ed could see veins over the black mass. Long tendrils of brown saliva fell to the floor, and the rocks sizzled as if exposed to acid.
It was half-way out now. Kharon used his hands to help the rest of the organ emerge. It came still connected to arteries inside the man’s body, long chords that looked like tendons. The organ pumped, and the arteries engorged rhythmically…
It was a heart. That black organ was a heart.
With his chin and cloak covered in saliva and lines of blood, Kharon chomped down on the arteries.
Ed looked away, but not fast enough to avoid seeing the black, tar-like substance erupt out of the severed veins.
“Fuck!” Ed felt like all the blood in his body had turned to ice. He grabbed the door of the car to stop himself from falling to the floor, and he may have run away if he had somewhere to run to.
“Aaaahhhh,” Kharon’s moan came from somewhere far away, and it sounded satisfied like someone who had just managed to get rid of a particularly painful ingrown toenail. “Ah, that was a hard one.”
Then came wet noises. Ed turned—despite very much not wanting to—to see Kharon cleaning the black tar-blood off his face with the edges of his cloak.
The other hand held the heart with long, pale fingers. The organ still pulsated as strongly as if it was still connected to a body.
Ed tried to speak, but no words came out.
Still clutching the heart, Kharon’s smile was now directed at Ed. The smile wasn’t white now, but covered in streaks of tar. “The hard part is over. Now, Edward, be very still. I’m going to tear out your heart and replace it with this one.”
And he crept toward Ed fast as a nightmare, so fast Ed didn’t have time to scream.
Ed groaned. Kharon’s wax-like face was right in front of him and his tiny, spider-like eyes were focused on Ed’s chest with a hunger that added a malicious glint to them.
“Stay back!” Ed gasped. He tried to push the monster away, but Kharon had Ed’s arms pinned under his own, and they were surprisingly strong.
Kharon’s gaze shifted to him. His smile was still marred with the tar of his own blood. “Oh? Awake so soon? You’re a sturdy one, Edward.”
A terrible suspicion arose in Ed. He realized he wasn’t standing anymore, but laying on the cold marble floor. Behind Kharon, Ed could see the charred sky. “What—”
He looked down, to his own chest, and discovered with dismay that the operation had already begun.
Huh, he thought with dubious calm while his mind recoiled in horror, so that’s what my heart looks like. A bit underwhelming, I’d say. I thought it was bigger.
He tried to say something, but his throat had closed and was refusing to listen to his commands.
“Sorry you saw that,” Kharon replied while he pried Ed’s exposed ribcage open with a smaller pair of arms that had been so far hidden inside his cloak. “I
took away your memory of the last few minutes so you wouldn’t be traumatized for life. You shouldn’t be awake, Edward.”
A cold, tiny hand caressed Ed’s beating heart.
Ed trembled and, using an overwhelming amount of willpower, he fought back the horror. “Can you put me under again?”
“But of course,” Kharon replied. “Who do you think we are, savages?”
Relief flooded Ed just as a pale hand passed over his eyes, and then it was whiteness.
The towering monstrosity hungered and laughed as it caressed the pink, beating rock in its hands. Ed’s gaze shot up and up across a body bigger than any man-made building, that rivaled a world in its vastness. A great vault supported by charred bones that were like pillars and corridors and chambers and passages. Across them, tar-like blood flowed freely and without spilling, following alien laws of physics that no life-supporting universe could fathom.
Ed’s splintering headache had returned with a vengeance, but now, in this realm where silence was absolute, he could distinguish that the needle-like pain was, in truth, millions of soft, whispering voices screaming at him, over and over again, but in such a low intensity—or from so far away—that his own heartbeat had been enough to drown them.
But he had no such problem now. What were they saying?
The being’s face was shrouded by darkness. But across its forehead shone a white crown made of silver and its eyes were two malicious stars, forever burning in place.
The hands rose and rose across impossible distances, still carrying the tiny—yet perfectly visible—pulsating rock with its humble, pink, warm light. Soon it reached the being’s mouth—or at least the place where the mouth should be—and Ed could see the leviathan tremble with pleasure and expectation as the pink light fell down a throat made of shadows. It must have taken years for the fall to end, but time didn’t matter here.
The God trembled with orgasmic pleasure when the stone reached its stomach. It was so small, so insignificant, yet it provided it with such satisfaction…Ed saw how the blood carried the stone in its currents through chambers and passages and falls and bones and guts and muscle, all embedded with uncountable rocks like Ed’s own, pulsating with their own pink light, so many that he soon lost track of his own. The rocks formed the foundation of the being’s body, of this God-Dungeon that spanned time and space.
Ed could hear the voices. They were singing. “It’s only him, it’s always him, he’s the only Lord that matters, the one who comes in the silence between heartbeats, all the dungeons belong to him, all the dark spaces belong to him, he’s the dungeon that matters, he’s the dungeon, he’s the dungeon, he’s the dungeon—”
The God’s eyes gazed upon Ed, and it was suddenly aware of the young man’s presence. Ed screamed as the vast head shot at him like a meteor, he screamed as the darkness parted to reveal a wide, white smile…
5
Chapter Five
New Blood
“Are you okay, Edward?” asked Kharon. His tiny eyes glinted with concern. There was no divine monstrosity in sight, only the Boatman. “You should have no memories of the procedure, and you have a new heart which is as good as the old one, if not better. The Pact is forged, young Dungeon Lord. Arise.”
Ed jerked up with a scream, and he shoved Kharon aside as Ed’s hands frantically passed all over his own chest. His work shirt was gone, and he was naked from the waist up, but the skin and the muscles of his torso were intact like nothing had happened. No exposed ribs, no beating heart, not even a scar. His chest looked perfectly normal, but the face of the god that had devoured his heart—his former one—was still fresh in Ed’s mind and his body trembled in horror…
He stumbled on his knees, shaking so hard he was in danger of falling on his face. Ed looked up, straight at Kharon, and suddenly all the fear and horror had been replaced by raw fury. The world was bathed in a green, eldritch tint and Ed’s eyes felt feverishly hot.
The young Lord willed his body to stop trembling. He leapt up and grabbed Kharon’s thin neck with enough force to make hunched figure try to straighten.
“What have you done to me?” Ed demanded through clenched teeth. He was face to face with Kharon and close enough they could’ve kissed.
Ed’s veins weren’t filled with blood, they were filled with fire. He could barely think straight, and the impulse to push on that frail neck until it broke like a twig was almost overbearing.
“What,” he repeated, “have you done to me? You said you wouldn’t mess with my head—”
Kharon raised his arms in surrender, although he didn’t seem particularly concerned for his life. “And I haven’t, my Lord. If I had, the deal would’ve been broken in your favor. What you feel is your own body’s doing—as a response to your new heart. Everyone’s body reacts differently. It seems yours is overflowing with a mix of hormones. Adrenaline and testosterone are natural parts of mortals’ functions and you’ll soon regain control. Try, in the meantime, not to snap my neck. It would annoy me if you did.”
Letting his hands slowly open was almost painful with all that primal, burning fury hammering his temples and the veins of his neck, but Ed managed it after a deep breath. Kharon fell like a rag-doll before regaining his composure and doing the same multi-jointed trick to remain at Ed’s height.
“See? You are already doing better. Just be careful of your temper over the following weeks and you’ll be dandy. I can tell that the Hungry One was right about you. Most people would be trembling with fear by now, not up on their feet and threatening me with death.”
Ed shot him a sarcastic grin. “Your god is mistaken, asshole. After what I’ve seen of him, what he’s about, I’ll never do anything to help him. I’m going to take whatever power I have and use it to thwart him at every chance I have—”
Kharon’s arms went up in surrender once again. “As I said before, what you do with your mantle is up to you, my Lord Edward.”
“What happens now?” asked Ed.
“Now,” Kharon said, “we set you on your way, my Lord.”
The Boatman reached one of the black marble walls that hid the horizon from Ed’s view. “This will do,” Kharon said. He patted the stone twice as if he were admiring the masonry.
“I can’t help you much now,” the man told Ed, “lest the Light be made aware of our interference. I suspect that remaining in the shadows will be your best bet to avoid the visit of a group of Heroes not unlike the ones that killed Kael. That, of course, is your choice.”
Ed nodded without committing himself to any course of action.
“Still, you’ll need smart minions who can help you acclimate to Ivalis. And a safe base to grow your strength. You could get both once you step outside this portal if you’re fast enough. That’s the gift Kharon, the Boatman, offers to celebrate the birth of Dungeon Lord Edward Wright.”
Before Ed could ask Kharon what portal was he talking about, the man muttered under his breath a set of snapping words designed for mandibles and not for human mouths.
The black masonry in front of Kharon pooled and seemed to become liquid. It began to glow a ruby red while it slowly acquired the consistence of molten rock, only without the heat. The portal acquired the shape of a flat oval with lines of fire around its edges, and Ed had the overwhelming impression he was looking at a doorway.
He glanced in Kharon’s direction, unsure whether or not to trust the man. Kharon hadn’t lied to him yet—that he knew of—but he had also never given Ed much time to consider his options. And the thing with the new heart was definitely crossing a line, no matter how the Boatman chose to interpret it.
“Before you go to make your fortune,” said Kharon, unaware of—or ignoring—Ed’s doubts, “you should know a few things. First, are you aware of a certain heat coming out of your eyes? That the world looks…say, a certain shade of green? Good. Now, look at your hands.”
Ed did. He saw the eldritch light reflected over the lines of his open palm and realized it was coming f
rom his eyes. Then the light changed, and it concentrated through the air like blazing lines of vapor which formed letters and numbers.
Ed found himself staring at the following:
Edward Wright
Species: Human
Total Exp: 100
Unused Exp: 0
Claims: Lordship over: 0 dungeons.
Attributes
Brawn: 8
Agility: 10
Endurance: 9
Mind: 11
Spirit: 11(+1 Dungeon Lord Mantle bonus) =12
Charm: 11(+1 Dungeon Lord Mantle bonus)=12
Skills
Athletics: Basic (III) The owner has trained his body to perform continuous physical activity without penalties to their Endurance. For a while.
-Basic ranks allows them to perform mild energy-consuming tasks (non-combat) such as running or swimming without tiring. Unlocks stamina-related talents.
Talents
Evil Eye: Allows the Dungeon Lord to see the Objectivity of any creature or item. If the target of his gaze possesses a strong Spirit (or related Attribute or Skill) they may hide their information if the Lord’s own Spirit is not strong enough.
Energy Drain: Active. Very Low.
Dungeon Lord Mantle: The mantle is the heart of the Dungeon Lord and represents the dark pact made in exchange for power.
-It allows the Dungeon Lord access to the Dungeon Lord status and powers, as defined by the Dungeon Screen.
-It allows the Dungeon Lord to create and control dungeons, as per the limitations of his Dungeon Screen.
Energy Drain: None.
“This is a character’s sheet,” Ed muttered. “You’re sure this isn’t a videogame, Kharon? I’ve used one just like this for my Ivalis Online playthrough. Except this one looks…mediocre. Where is the spell list? Where are my health points and my damage-per-second? My item list?”
