Couldn’t a plan go as he wanted it to, just once?
Still, surely it couldn’t get worse?
It was then Godwin heard footsteps from the north tunnel, and a group of kobolds ran in. One of them, a kobold with only one hand, dragged a tambourine. Another had mice scurrying all over him.
Slurping sounds came from the east, from yet another tunnel.
How many tunnels had this stupid core created??
Soon, Godwin saw the source of the slurping sounds. Eighteen figures made from slime shuffled into the room. Their eyes, beneath their film of viscous fluid, were dead, their stares cold. Each figure seemed smaller than the last, until the final one to enter was only as tall as Goodwin’s knee.
Chief Reginal stepped forward now.
“Fitting that we meet today,” he said. “On the anniversary of the day you took this place from us.”
CHAPTER 29
It was all quite delightful, really. Like watching a theatre troupe perform. I was safe in my core room, watching them all through my core vision. I saw Godwin and his people enter the loot room, followed shortly after by the chief Seeker and his goblins.
At that point, I felt it was a good time to ask my fungi-creature to go say hello. The hivemind spawned their oozes, and the army of oozes, in their ever-decreasing sizes, dutifully oozed over to join the main party.
Then, just to cap it off, my one-handed bard and his anti-seeker team caught up, and the bard placed his tambourine on the ground and began to pound a gentle beat. It didn’t sound all that musical, given he had lost a hand, but it was still nice.
It was a little like someone had arranged a dungeon ball, so many guests were in the loot room. Only, instead of drinks and dancing, there would be death and destruction. Beautiful.
Reginal raised his sword and commanded his people to attack. My ooze and my kobolds answered, and so did the Wrotuns.
The battle became chaotic. If this had really been a play, I would have set the stage a little better. As it was, the scene before me became one of utter mayhem.
Goblins stabbing kobolds. Kobolds slashing the Wrotun. Young orcs screaming and thrusting at anything that moved. Drumbeats casting waves of mana spells, ooze monsters leaping onto their victims and biting and scratching, and covering them in fire and ice-imbued slime.
The sounds were horrifying, even for a core. Such screams of pain. Death rattles. Choking throats as swords pierced them.
And the blood! I used my core smell then, and the utter volume of iron-rich blood stench was enough to make me dizzy.
This was the thing about battle, you see. When you get down to it, when you really get to the heart of it, it isn’t beautiful. It is a picture of utter, utter chaos.
But still I watched it, and I saw goblins die. I heard the Wrotun scream. I saw piles of ooze on the floor.
I was just beginning to enjoy it when I realized something.
Where the hell was Godwin?
I focused on the warriors fighting in the loot room, and I tried to pick out the shriveled old gnome, but he and his staff were nowhere to be seen.
And that was when I heard a sound. A noise near my core room, down one of the tunnels. One that seemed to be getting closer and closer.
Rat-tap-tap.
“Hello, core,” said a voice.
I didn’t need to play the game now. You know, the game where I’d pretend to be psychic and guess who had joined me in a room.
“Godwin,” I said.
And there he was. An old gnome, one who seemed older than the dungeon itself. His robes were covered in blood. It was smeared over his wrinkled face, over his hands, all over his staff.
“Here he is,” said Godwin. “Our savior.”
His voice was etched with pain, but I couldn’t see any wounds on him. Sure, he was covered in blood, but it didn’t seem to be his own. He eyed me now with a gaze of pure fire, yet his stare kept darting between me and the mana spring set into the wall. I could see his saliva bubble on his lips as he looked at it.
“Do you know why you are here?” he said.
“Sure. The academy thought I could use a holiday.”
“Stupid, insolent gem. You were here to save our people.”
“And I thought I was doing a good job, having already stopped a party of Seekers. What the hell was all this about, Godwin? The Rushden boy. You know that Gary didn’t kill him.”
“Of course! It was me. Conjured from my staff, a spell of-”
“Yes, yes. You cast a spell to kill one of your own people, and then you blamed me. You took away one of my best monsters, and you convinced the Wrotuns to destroy me.”
“Well, yes. But you have quite robbed me of the speech I had planned.”
“You can still tell me why.”
“My people are addicted to the springs, core. But their gift of life comes with consequences. You can see it in me. Every year I live beyond my mortal allowance, my pain grows. Every step is a cascade of agony. This is no life. And we live here, underground. Here in the darkness, always scared that the Seekers will attack. We have never known happiness here. We should have left long ago, but the draw of the springs was too much, and I knew that my people would never leave willingly. Not unless there was no other choice.”
I tried to digest his words. I felt like understanding was coming to me, but it was slow. Godwin wanted to leave this place? What?
“I don’t understand my part in this.”
“I had to convince my people that they had no choice but to leave. That the Seekers would keep coming, and eventually they would destroy us. But to convince them there was no choice but to go, they had to believe there was no hope. I needed a tool to destroy their hopes, and you were the hammer I wielded. If we put everything we had into one last desperate way to beat the seekers, into one last form of defense, and the defense failed, they would know we could not stay. They would finally accept it.”
“Ah, so you thought you’d destroy me, leaving yourself defenseless. Your people would finally get it into their skulls that the Seekers wouldn’t stop coming. Quite clever, Godwin. Eight out of ten for the theory, two out of ten for execution.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I’m still here. And you led your people into a bloodbath in the loot room.”
“You mark my execution, core, yet I haven’t completed it yet.”
Godwin raised his staff, and the base of it glowed red with a fury I had never seen.
Memories flashed inside me now. Memories of death and reawakening. Flashes of fire and light.
It was a memory of my forging. Of the academy forgers placing my consciousness into my gem. I had seen a light like this before.
Then another memory came; one of Godwin striking Jahn and I, chipping parts of us away.
This old gnome could destroy me.
In my early days as a core, I had remembered my first death. Those memories faded as I got used to my gem body, and I forgot what it was like to face mortality.
Here I was now, facing death for the second time.
My instincts fired. I madly thought of anything I could do, anything I could use my scant essence on.
No, there was nothing. Nothing I could create to stop him.
Godwin approached me, his burning staff raised high. I wouldn’t shout. I wouldn’t scream. I’d face my second death like a true core.
And then a shape leaped into the core room, smashing into Godwin. There was a great slurping sound, accompanied by the gnashing of teeth.
It was Gary!
There he was, my beautiful spider-troll freak, with all his leech legs wrapped around the gnome, their dagger teeth tearing into him and sucking his blood, draining him dry amidst a chorus of sucks and slurps.
The old gnome went limp. His staff fell from his hands and clattered on the floor, and the light at its base dimmed.
And still, Gary slurped. Again and again, his leech teeth drinking the gnome’s blood.
It took quite a long time
, actually. I got rather bored.
Finally, Gary unlatched himself and stood up, his legs covered in blood.
“Nothing quite quenches your thirst like gnome blood,” he said. “Ah, Dark Lord. What a delight it is to see you. You look ravishing.”
CHAPTER 30
Two Days Later
For the second time in my second life, I found myself locked in a darkened cell. Coils of metal rope were latched around me. It wasn’t to stop me moving, since cores aren’t known for their great range of movement.
No, after the battle, Chief Reginal had fetched the rest of his people to the cavern. He had brought a goblin mage with him. Acton, he said his name was. A friendly old goblin, actually, but he had these annoying metal ropes that, when latched around me, drained my essence. Without any essence vines, and being removed from my dungeon, there was nothing I could do to replenish them.
After that, Reginal had locked me in here while his people moved into the cavern.
So, I spent my time brooding in the darkness. That is something we cores are great at; we love a nice bit of brooding time.
At first, I ran my racing mind over Godwin’s last words. Over his treachery towards Jahn and I. Over the great risk he’d taken with his people and the lives that had been lost because of it.
As Galatee had once told me, Godwin had his people’s interests at heart. His plan was centered around saving them.
He’d just done it in an utterly moronic way.
After I had thought about the stupid gnome for as long as I could bear, I turned my attention to other things. First, my friends. Gary, Tomlin, Wylie, Brecht. All of those lovely creatures and kobolds who had stood by me. There, in the darkness, I missed them. I hoped that Chief Reginal had not hurt them.
To distract myself, I turned my attention to other things. Namely, to the Soul Bard story I had begun imagining in my head, a sequel to one I had written before. If I ever got a chance to meet the writer of the great Soul Bard series, I would share my ideas with him.
I was halfway through it when I heard a distant voice.
“Ah, what a nap,” it said.
That dopey voice. I knew it! How could I not?
“Jahn?”
“Beno?”
“Where are you, my friend?”
“I am here.”
“Well, yes, but where is here?”
“I believe I must be in the cell next to yours.”
“Then you survived,” I said. “The academy has a lot to answer for, selling us to those lunatics. Really, I’m thinking of lodging a complaint with the ethics board if I ever get out of here.”
“You should have seen me, Beno. You’d have been so proud. I cultivated my essence. I made traps. Bear traps and pitfalls and-”
The door to my cell opened.
A goblin stepped in. An old goblin wearing gold-trimmed metal armor, with a crown on his head. With him was a young goblin boy with a pale-green face. He was holding an orb that had traces of black smoke inside it.
“This is him?” asked the boy.
“This is him, Devry. The core.”
“He looks smaller than I imagined.”
“You’ve seen him now. So go along to your room.”
“I want to speak with him!”
“And you will, but not yet.”
The boy left, and then it was just the goblin and me. I recognized him as the leader of the Seekers, the one who had led his people through my dungeon and into the loot room.
“We have a lot to discuss, little core,” he said.
“Indeed,” said another voice.
And then I had a shock that would have stopped my heart, if it existed.
A man stepped into the room. A small man with a bald head.
“Overseer Bolton?”
“You have changed, Beno. I see it in your core.”
I couldn’t believe it. What the hell was an academy overseer doing here?
“I hope you brought a wordsmith,” I said. “One practiced in law. You have a lot to answer for, Bolton. Do you even do due diligence before you sell a core to someone? The old gnome was a lunatic.”
Bolton fixed me a kindly smile. “We owe you an explanation. And there is a lot to explain.”
And so, Bolton and the goblin chief, who introduced himself as Reginal, spoke to me. They explained things. Lots of things. Events that happened long before my second life. Things that the Wrotun had hidden from me.
I learned about the Eternals clan, and how this was their home. They weren’t the Seekers, that was just a name Godwin made up to rid the caverns of their true history. They weren’t invaders. They were people trying to win back what had been taken from them.
They told me about the battle; how the Wrotun warriors were killed, and how they found Godwin’s bloodless body in my core room.
With the Wrotun beaten, Reginal had led his goblin fighters into the caverns that were once their home. There, he met with the kind of hostility you’d expect from all the Wrotun leaves who had been told again and again that the goblins were their enemy.
But he addressed them with kindness. He let the adult leaves pull their children close to them. He told them that those who wished to leave could go without being harmed. Those who wished to stay in peace, could join the Eternals and help their clan prosper.
“That’s great,” I said. “A lovely tale. But what of me? Of my clanmates?”
“Clanmates?” said Reginal.
Bolton sighed. “He means his kobolds. Core Beno has quite an unusual way of seeing the world, for a core. Your clanmates are safe, Beno. Wylie was hurt, but Tomlin has been at his side while the goblin shaman tends to him.”
“And Warrane?”
“This leaf has found his tree again,” said a voice.
Yet another figure appeared in the doorway of my cell. This was getting ridiculous.
“Warrane? I’m glad you’re safe.”
“This leaf’s family came with the rest of the Eternals. He understands now. They have explained why they left; about their dreams. He will stay here.”
“As will I,” said another voice, a female one.
And there was Galatee.
“This is getting quite cramped,” I said.
Reginal and Galatee eyed each other. There was a flicker of hostility in their gazes, but I could see the struggle on their faces as they both fought to bury it.
Bolton addressed me now. “The Wrotun and Eternals have found peace, as fragile as it is,” he said. “But this underground chamber is too small for them, and it is no home for people. If they are to thrive, they need a true place to live.”
“Well, there are lots of places in Xynnar,” I said.
“True, but no lands they could truly claim as their own. The king has allocated almost every fertile land in the world to his lords and dukes, and the rest. The allies he made promises to so he could unify our lands. But there is one place that has no owner. A place that no sane lord would wish to rule.”
“The wasteland up top, I take it?”
“The core is more preceptive than I realized,” said Reginal.
Bolton nodded. “And there is more to a dungeon core than you know. The essence they use to create can be wielded in places other than a dungeon.”
I thought I was begging to see what he was implying.
“Then you mean-”
“Yes, Core Beno. You have proven yourself a much worthier core than the overseers and I expected, and we believe it is time you learned what else a core can do. First-Leaf Galatee remains your owner, along with Chief Reginal of the Eternals. You and Jahn are to transform the wasteland for them.”
The End of Book 2
Dungeon Core Academy: Book 3
CHAPTER 1
The Young Hero
The young hero was alone in the dungeon, his party dead, his jerkin and trousers swathed in blood, his hair covered in shards of bone and gooey innards. Not a great day by any measure. Especially when the trousers were a birthday pre
sent from his mother.
His family seemed so, so far away now. Technically, they were far away, he knew, but he meant it more metaphorically than physically.
How had it come to this? He wanted to cry. He was close to begging for his mother to help him, whimpering in the useless way people do when they are long past the point of being saved. It was only a vague sense of self-pride that stopped him blubbering.
Yes, he was a very scared hero, and even he would have admitted that 'hero' was used in the loosest sense of the word when applied to him.
And yet…it still applied.
After all, the esteemed Dungeon Core Academy defines a hero as ‘One who is not a core or monster, and finds their way into the core’s dungeon by their own means, for their own motives.’
So, the sniveling, on-the-edge-of-weeping, ready-to-wet-himself teen was technically a hero. Close enough to the definition so that the creatures that dwelled in tombs like this might earn their sport with him.
“If only I hadn’t gotten so drunk,” he said.
It had started with a drink in the Portly Pig tavern a week ago. One drink turned to two, then four, eight…and soon he found himself climbing aboard a wagon, joining a group of heroes who were destined for the eastern lands.
Where exactly in the east he was going, he didn’t know. Penzartium? The Growling Copse? Old Taskden? He didn’t have a clue, but that was the point, really. He’d always wanted to see the rest of Xynnar. He’d also ached for adventure and to be a hero, but had never had the balls to do it.
But that day, after he’d finished his day’s work in the mill, he’d gone for a few drinks in the Portly Pig. There, he saw the group of heroes supping ale, and he’d recognized an opportunity.
The teen was nervous at first. The heroes were mysterious and brave and enjoyed mocking some of the other townsfolk, so he’d waited to approach them. He sat across the tavern and watched as they supped beer, spilling more and more of it on the floor as the night wound on. He watched them tug on the barmaid’s skirt as she walked past. He watched one of them start juggling with four hand axes, terrifying the patrons around them.
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