“Is he dangerous?” asked a younger voice.
“Absolutely. It is an inherent trait in a core, otherwise, he would be of little use to us. Though, after you see his dungeon, you may wonder if he is of any use at all, danger our not.”
“He hasn’t made progress?” asked an older voice.
“My dear Second-Leaf Rushden, if this dungeon core was a man, it would take him 500 years to cross a street.”
They all laughed now. I’ve always been a big believer in that a person should be able to laugh at themselves, but I have to admit that I found it difficult right then.
Imagine if you’d spent a long time painting your home, only for someone to walk by and tell you the color looked like a horse had taken a crap and flung it on your walls. A core can get defensive about his dungeon.
I used my core vision now, navigating through the tunnels until I spotted them. First-Leaf Godwin was leading a procession of the Wrotun, seven of them, through my dungeon.
There was a mix of ages; a few looked close to Godwin’s age, though none had as much strain showing on their faces as the First Leaf, while others looked young. They all had their race in common. With their sea-blue skin and the three curved horns sprouting from their heads, they must have been of the Goatief race.
I wasn’t happy. The First-Leaf looked like he was leading them on a tour. This wasn’t some magical forest wonderland; it was a dungeon of death. You didn’t come here for an outing unless you liked outings that involved bear traps slamming shut on your feet.
This was a test, I decided. The First-Leaf had made it clear that he had some reservations about me, and now he was trying to goad me again.
I checked my dungeon layout, and it looked like they were headed for the core room, where I was floating. Four tunnels led here, but only one that came from their direction.
I faced the opening they would emerge from.
Create riddle door.
An iron door now stood firm where there had once been empty space. The knocker sitting proudly in the center was a pig with an oversized snout.
“Go on then,” it said, snorting at the end of its sentence. “Give me a riddle.”
“Aren’t you going to rhyme?”
“Let’s pretend I did, if that – snort – makes you feel better.”
It did, actually. I much preferred this guy to my last few riddle doors. “Let’s see. A riddle that might stump the First-Leaf. Ah – At night they come without being fetched. By day they are lost without being stolen. What are they?”
The pig gave a snort so great that it shook his whole door. “Stars. Easy.”
“Easy for a riddle door, sure. It’s in your nature. It’s like a bird bragging how high he can fly.”
I felt sure that the riddle would keep the First-Leaf busy for a while. It was a rather immature thing to do, but we’re all like that sometimes, I think. Everyone has to blow off steam their own way, and one of my ways was to create a talking door that frustrated any attempts to get to my core room.
I used my core hearing to listen now, and it wasn’t long until they reached the door.
“What’s this? It wasn’t here last time,” said First-Leaf Godwin. “Another damn riddle. I tell you, this core loves them.”
I wondered how long it’d take him to guess it. Not long probably. But long enough to frustrate him a little.
There was a great blast, and the riddle door suddenly swung open. It was bent out of shape and hanging from its hinges, and the pig knocker gasped and snorted as steam rose from him.
Behind the door was the First-Leaf, with dregs of burned mana swirling around his staff.
“Ah, here he is,” said the First-Leaf.
“Godwin. This is a surprise,” I said, swallowing my anger about the door. I guessed that was what I got for playing tricks.
“I have brought the Rushden family tree to see the dungeon. They were one of the highest contributing trees when we pooled our resources to buy you and your friend. Their influence among the Wrotun cannot be overstated.”
“Nice to meet you. Any reason you’re here?”
“See?” said Godwin, looking at his guests. “I told you about his attitude.”
The oldest-looking Rushden leaf stepped forward. The horns that sprouted from his head were so curled that they were only an inch away from piercing his skull.
I’d heard about this. Left alone, the horns of the goatief race would grow and grow, curling so that eventually they began to grow toward the skull. Without regular filing sessions, they would grow so curled that they pierced their own heads. In fact, it was a punishment among goatief society; they would tie up a criminal goatief and keep them watered and fed, restraining them until their own horns killed them.
This goatief’s horns had been filed recently, so he was in no danger of such a death.
“I say, I say,” he began. “Do you think it is wise to treat your owners with contempt? With such an attitude?”
“Owners is such a harsh word when it comes to free-thinking beings,” I said. “You might say that considering me, a conscious being, as your property makes you quite a lot like the seekers.”
The horned man spat. “You have a dirty mouth.”
“Such lies,” said a woman who appeared to be his wife. Her horns were filed to perfect cones and were speckled with gold.
“Lies?” I said. “They use human slaves to navigate our traps. You’re using cores to kill them. A zebra can hardly look at a horse and laugh at his appearance.”
“I say, I say,” began the man.
“I wish you would just say it.”
“I say-”
The First-Leaf held up his staff. “Enough! I warned you, my honorable Rushden’s, that our core is prickly. I am told this comes with the nature of their second lives, and is considered a defect among them. At any rate, I am here to show you around, and hopefully put your mind at ease that our defenses will soon be improved.”
One of the younger goatiefs moved out of the pack now. “Father, I’d like to see the surface door.”
“I say, that is out of the question.”
“Father,” said the youth. He looked Warrane’s age, which would make him a fifth-leaf. His future prospects seemed a lot healthier than Warrane’s, though. “Father, I will see it.”
The older one laughed. “This one has First-Leaf written all over him. You hear the way he orders me?”
“You shouldn’t stand for it,” said Godwin.
“Pah. Better a lad with spirit, than a mouse.” He turned to me now. “Do you have someone who can guide him through the dungeon?”
Damn it, I just wasn’t going to get rid of these guys, was I? The best I could do was hurry it along.
“I suppose so. Shadow?” I called.
There was no answer.
“Shadow?” I said, this time using my inner core voice.
No answer again! I swear, if she has tried to escape…
“Father, I want to explore the tunnels now!”
Godwin eyed me. The elder goatief glared. I imagined that I was taking a deep, relaxing breath.
And then I imagined breathing fire on them all, melting them to puddles of gloop.
There was nothing for it. “Wylie?” I said.
A minute later, the kobold came running in. “Yes, Dark Lord?”
“Show the kid around the dungeon. That kid there, the one with the limp horn and dopey face. Make sure he doesn’t get caught in a trap.”
“Wylie show!”
“Can you cut out his kobold tongue?” asked the boy. “I won’t listen to his prattling.”
“You know what, Wylie?” I said. “If he was to step on a pressure plate, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”
Wylie and the boy headed off toward one of the tunnels that led north, to the surface door. Just as they had almost left us, I had a realization.
“Wylie?” I called. “Don’t take what I said literally. The little git is not to be harmed.”
“Wylie protect!”
With them gone, the First-Leaf and his Rushden tree guests bombarded me with question after question about defenses and traps, how they were made, and where I would be looking to place more of them.
The elder Rushden, with his curled tusks almost touching his head, was a little more perceptive than the others. He had a wary manner about him, but the questions he asked me indicated that he at least knew a little bit about cores.
“I say, I say. One last question, if you’ll indulge me,” he said. I had no reason to believe it would be the last, since the twelve preceding questions had begun the same way.
I felt like I was trying to justify my existence, that it was somehow my fault they had spent too much gold buying me.
“One thing that concerns me is the idea that in an emergency, perhaps a fire of some sort, we may need to flee the caves by a different surface door. What if we must use one of the doors protected by our cores? Surely we would all flee straight into our own traps?”
“It makes sense to worry about that,” I answered. “However, Second-Leaf Godwin bought me from the academy, and she is technically my owner, as much as I hate the word. She could command all my traps to deactivate and my monsters to stand down.”
“Ah, very clever.”
The First-Leaf regarded me for a second then, with one eyebrow raised. Then his face relaxed.
Well, relaxed as much as was possible for him. He’d always look like someone had kicked him in the nuts; that was just the way he was.
“A sensible precaution,” said Godwin. “It seems your academy core forgers are sensible fellows.”
“I agree.”
And I would have agreed, if I were telling the truth.
See, there’s no such rule that means our owner can deactivate all our traps. I pulled the fact from my gem arse. I hadn’t planned on lying to the First-Leaf, but it had come to me in a flash of inspiration. It seemed like a good idea to have him rely on something that wasn’t true.
A message appeared before me now, writing itself in spirals of light for me and everyone else to see.
Melding complete.
“I say, melding?” asked the goatief.
“It’s nothing special,” I said. “It just means my boss monster is ready.” I used my inner core voice now. “Tomlin, are you around?”
“Tomlin is working on the red essence.”
“Really? Have you cultivated it yet?”
“He has not, but he is close.”
“Good job! Listen, can you go open the melding room door for me?”
“Melding room, Dark Lord? That is…uh…that is a long way from the essence rooms.”
“It’s right next door! You’re scared, aren’t you? Scared of the idea of a new boss monster. Fine.”
I looked at the Wrotun people. “Kobolds,” I said. “Always acting like cowards.” And then I realized the dialogue with Tomlin had been in my head, so they’d have no idea what I was talking about. I thought better of trying to explain it.
“Something the matter?” asked Godwin. “Is everything under control? I hope this dungeon has not strained your competency.”
“The opposite. Everything’s great. Excuse me a minute.”
I was about to hop to the pedestal in my melding room when I heard a sound.
It was a noise that I didn’t need my inner core to hear, because this was a shriek that wound its way through the dungeon tunnels. A cry of utter pain, one that made even I, a dungeon core, wince.
Something very bad had happened to someone very unlucky.
“What in all hells was that?” said Godwin.
And then the sound came again. A desperate scream of pain.
It sounded for all the world like…like…
“I say! That was my boy!” said the elder goatief.
Godwin gave me a look of pure anger. Anger that had been boiled down to its essence, then mixed with fury and rage to become the expression currently gouged into this old gnome’s features.
“You should pray to your forgers that nothing has happened to Second-Leaf Rushden’s boy,” he told me.
The Rushden family tore off down the tunnels, with the younger third and fourth leaves reaching the entryway first, and the elder leaves and First-Leaf Godwin behind. I knew that the tunnels ahead were still strewn with some of Tavia’s traps, but I hadn’t gotten around to laying my own yet.
“Tomlin, Shadow, everyone; make sure nothing happens to the people currently running through our dungeon Make them aware of any traps.”
There comes a time when it’s okay to panic. To exaggerate. To use harsh words.
This was one of those times, so I will say this; things looked bad.
I just couldn’t understand what had happened. The scream came from way north of us, and it was unmistakably the Rushden boy. Had Wylie failed to lead him away from traps or something?
“Wylie,” I said, using my core voice. “What happened?”
“Wylie didn’t see!”
“Is the boy alive?”
“Wylie doesn’t-”
Wylie shouted something, but I couldn’t hear. I used my core vision to take a look through the dungeon, whizzing through the tunnel until I saw it.
I couldn’t believe the scene in the room near the surface door.
The Rushden family had surrounded Wylie. Two of them restrained him. Wylie had a look of fear and confusion on his face. On the opposite side of the room, First-Leaf Godwin had backed Gary into the corner, using his glowing staff as a threat.
And then there was an older female Goatief in the center of the room. She was kneeling beside a body. It was the body of the fifth-leaf of the Rushden family.
CHAPTER 19
I hopped to the room next to the surface door. It was hard to know what to focus on. Two goatiefs were restraining Wylie, bending his arms behind his back. The boy was lying dead in the center of the room. His mother kept shaking his face, as though he’d wake up.
“A healer! Get us a healer!” she shouted.
The boy’s father looked at Wylie, then at Gary in the far corner of the room. “Which beast did this?” he shouted, his voice thundery.
“If everyone could calm down,” said Gary, lifting a leech leg and holding it high in the air. “We can straighten up this mishap. A calm mind is a mind that can cast itself on the winds of thought.”
“Mishap??”
“He doesn’t mean it that way,” I said. “He’s a boss monster. Empathy isn’t his strongest skill.”
“It’s no mishap,” said First-Leaf Godwin. “It is murder.”
“A healer! A healer!” cried the mother.
Godwin shook his head. “Your son is dead.”
“Then get him to the mana spring.”
“The spring extends life; it cannot restore it.”
“I say, I want both creatures killed on the spot!” said the eldest Goatief. His voice was strange, his words coated in a mixture of anger and grief so that he was half-screaming, half-shouting the words.
I could tell he hadn’t processed what had happened. He was in shock, and his shock response was to demand anger and retribution.
This didn’t seem right. I was certain that neither Wylie nor Gary had killed this boy. For one, I had ordered Wylie to escort the boy safely around the dungeon. Even if he had decided to go against his nature and deceive me, he was hardly a ferocious beast. I didn’t see how Wylie could have done it.
Gary, on the other hand…I was going to have a hard time explaining how Gary couldn’t have done it. I knew he was a delightful guy, but he looked like a hideous freak. In the nicest possible way.
The only fact I clung to was that the boy’s wounds didn’t match up with Gary or Wylie doing it. He had three long cuts across his chest, from which blood poured freely and gave my dungeon floor a rather pleasing crimson hue. Actually. It really set the room off. I’d need to look into…
Not the time for planning decorations!
“Look at him,” I said. “Slashes across his chest. Gary couldn’t have done that; he’d have left bite marks, not slashes.”
Godwin, still pointing his glowing staff at Gary, fixed me with a stare hotter than fire. “Do you think they want to know how your monster killed him? Do you think this is the time to draw attention to the horror? You’re a menace. To think, we welcomed you into our caves.”
“I want the monsters dead,” said the boy’s father. His face was paler than ice.
“And you shall.”
I heard a pounding inside my head. It was though I had a pulse again, and that pulse was racing and racing, building into a toxic mix of rage and adrenaline.
“If either of my monsters are harmed without establishing the facts, I’ll unleash everything in my dungeon and set them loose on your people,” I said.
The words left my mouth and seemed to take on a weight of their own. I could hardly believe I had said it. Like it or not, every core has a duty, and my given duty was to defend these people, not hurt them.
I guessed it was just my own shock response. I was worried about my friends.
It seemed that the threat was enough. I could see in all the Rushden’s’ faces that my words had affected them. Even Godwin looked a little worried.
He nodded at a younger Rushden. She was older than the dead boy, but younger than the eldest goatief. A fourth leaf, perhaps.
“Fetch Galatee and five strong men and women. We will take the monsters away until we learn the truth,” Godwin said.
“No you won’t,” I said.
“Core, you are lucky that the Seekers are still out there, because it means we cannot afford to remove you yet. But the truth of this will out. I will not stand for added danger in our caverns, and certainly not from our own defense system.”
My mind was a crazy blast of thoughts now. Of the questions I should ask, things I should say.
I knew Gary or Wylie hadn’t done this, but that certainty led to the bigger question; who had done it?
“Gary?” I said. “What did you see?”
Godwin raised his staff and pointed it at Gary. A blast of foul-smelling black smoke left it, drifting over to Gary and then splattering against his mouth. It formed a barrier over it, preventing him from talking. Before I could ask Wylie, Godwin did the same to him.
Dungeon Core Academy: Books 1-7 (A LitRPG Series) Page 28
