by Troy Neenan
“Wait… wait,” David said. The fairy immediately spun around, hope in her blue eyes. “Tell me how this thing with my body goes? Am I going insane or something?”
“Oh, um.” The fairy looked down at David's sleeping body and another wave of uncertainty hit her. “I um. That's really odd. Usually your soul has to be in a soul stone for you to be a dungeon.” She flew to the Beast and gave it a tap with her tiny fist. “What is this? I’ve never seen this before. What world are we in? Are we in Alora?”
“Woah woah woah.” David held up his hand. It was starting to look like he got the slow kid in fairy school. The fact that she didn't know what a car was, was telling in itself. “Okay, next question. Is this the typical mouse trap scenario?” The fairy looked at him blankly and he let loose another frustrated sigh. “I build a dungeon, create monsters, and lure and kill adventures for magic or something?”
“Oh,” The fairy perked right up, “Yes, yes. I have to say you are getting this all very fast. Have you encountered a few dungeons? Are you a dungeon expert?”
“Sort of,” During his down time the trouble shooter had read a few litRPGs and Japanese mangas where the main character turned into a dungeon. At the beginning they had been interesting stories but they got ridiculously samey over time.
The problem was that magical dungeons don’t exist in the real world, and if they did nobody would be stupid enough to go inside one. There were no adventures, there were no monsters, and there were no swords and shields. Also, in the real world if you set up a death trap with a lot of mutants inside people in planes bombed it repeatedly.
David held his head. Okay, I'm dreaming that I am a dungeon master. Okay. Just stay calm David. You hit a roo and you are dying. No problem. Just wait it out. Hey, maybe if this thing continues you can see Tinkerbell, Cinderella, and Uma Thurman in a three-some.
“Okay. Now this is very important, so stick with me for a moment. How do I change the GUI?” David said.
“The goo-eee?” The fairy said slowly, not understanding the reference. “Do you want to make slimes?”
Seeing that he was dealing with a computer illiterate, David decided to try something else. For some unknown reason he wasn't freaking out about all this. It probably had something to do with being close to death or that he thought that this was one grand hallucination. He probably did have a concussion and this was just his mind working out the problem. He decided to get as much out of the fairy as he could.
First was the dungeon itself. There were no pop-ups or quests, just instinct. The fairy seemed utterly confused with anything that was game related. Also, he couldn't just magically make rooms; he needed monsters to do the hard part. The fairy seemed to be holding out on him, but from the gist of things this was starting to feel like the most retarded mining tycoon game in history.
A bit boring, but hey, who didn't want to let loose a full-on Minecraft death obstacle course on an unsuspecting world? The problem was that setting up a gauntlet wasn't going to help David's current condition.
“Okay, so how do I make like... enchanted swords and shit?” David asked. In the very slim margin that this wasn't a dream or he wasn't insane, the dungeon could make a hell of a decent living selling flaming swords out on eBay.
The fairy shook her little adorable head and gave David a smug smile, “That's it. No more freebies. You make a contract with me and I'll tell you everything.”
David considered the proposal for a moment. “And besides the tutorial, what can you physically give me and what do you get out of it?”
“You give me a home and I help you.” Seeing that the flying fat man wasn't convinced she spoke up, “I can go outside of your domain and get herbs and flowers. You. You can't do anything outside.” she said this like it was a challenge, forgetting that David's real body, while pretty much buggered, was still functional.
Outside of novels and cartoons, not many people were dull enough to care what a fairy did after they finished giving Peter Pan a back alley handjob. In the books they were there for the cute aspect, they didn't really do anything. Dungeon fairies, imps, and the whole midget thing was to tell the audience a slim tutorial.
As far as David was concerned they were a LitRPG author being lazy with explaining things, and they drew focus away from the main character. So, fuck that. If this was a dream he wasn't going to have Clara Oswald pissing in his Wheaties.
“Alright,” David pointed at the exit, “go outside and tell me how you feel about it.”
The fairy looked outside like it would suddenly eat her. “Um, okay. That should be easy.” she then zoomed out of the cave and headed straight for the Australian outback.
David had enough time to go to the truck before the extorting little shit came rushing back.
She pointed her finger out the cave entrance, “What is that? It feels like a desert but there are trees out there, there are dragons the size of dogs and one of them almost ate me. It's hot, and there are flies everywhere, and it's hot.”
“You said hot twice.”
“Because it's hot!” The fairy yelled.
David nodded in understanding.
There was a lot to admire and curse about the Australian outback. The beautiful and brutal landscape, the untouched wilderness, the feeling that you couldn't get more lost if you tried. It was a place where a single distraction meant you were probably going to die.
The movies just never could do the place justice. There were few places in the world that seemed to want to kill you as much as Australia did. Oh, there were mountains, and deserts, and oceans that were a pain in the arse, but they didn't give you hope and then smash it like the Never Never could do. It was as if everything was designed to kill you in the most miserable way possible. The ants, the snakes, the unbearable heat, the flies. You get bitten by a spider or your car broke down and you were basically screwed.
“Do you want to go out again?” David asked.
“No. The flies are bigger than I am,” the fairy said, forgetting that she was trying to sell her services as a mascot.
The ghostly form of the dungeon leaned forward and narrowed his eyes at the Disney reject, “Then why the fuck would I want you?”
For a tiny instant, David thought he saw the fairy's face morph into something not nice indeed, something with fangs. But it must have been a trick of the light as the cute thing let out a stream of tears.
“I can show you how to make monsters.” The fairy insisted, still trying to think of a way to prove her usefulness. “First you need a creature to get within your domain.”
The dungeon turned his head to the dead ikky goran. He didn't know why but he thought of it as a Barney. A big, colourful bipedal dinosaur that annoyed the shit out of him. Yeah, Barney was a good name for it. “Like him?”
The fairy looked to the creature and shook her head sorrowfully and David knew why. He couldn't claim monsters that another dungeon made without permission. It was sort of like brand names. He could steal the idea and make a knock-off version, but he couldn't take Barney.
His eyes drifted to the fairy and he considered a different approach. And somehow he just knew. It had nothing to do with how he knew about Barney or some dungeon sense. No, this was more like a loser high school boy sense that had been cultivated by working in a soulless corporate environment. In other words, his bullshit meter had just flared up.
He tried to look at the thing that he was dealing with. She was beautiful, that was if you were into Thumbelina. Blonde and slim. The type of woman who wouldn't give David the time of day. Just how had she gotten here so fast? And for that matter, how did she get in here? No, David wasn't liking this. She was just too cute, and she wanted this enough to put up with his abuse.
His thoughts drifted back to the cave. What was a RPG dungeon doing in the real world? Yeah, something was wrong here.
As for the fairy, he got the sense that she was trying to fuck him over. He thought about interrogating the midget, but if his body were able to get his fat arse up, Dav
id doubted that she was just going to let him catch her. He needed a different angle.
His eyes turned to the back of the truck, “Could you please get something in there for me, and I promise I will think about letting you squat here.”
Pleased to finally prove her usefulness, the fairy nodded enthusiastically. David couldn't move things in the traditional sense of the word that was what monsters were for. He could absorb or mass produce items but that required energy, which he replenished over time. Or he got when he managed to kill something in his domain, i.e. the cave. This all meant that if David wanted to do some physical labour he was going to need minions.
It took some time but the fairy managed to pull out an object the mean dungeon told her to. She had never seen the like of it before; it looked like a lamp, only this lamp had a metal cage encasing a dark glass pillar.
“Is this what you wanted?” she asked.
“Yes. Now, there is a switch on top, I want you to turn it.”
The fairy flew up and looked at the device, curious as to its functions. She found the switch almost instantly and flipped it on, “Like this?”
The device let out an electric hum as it began to power up. Frightened, the fairy flew away from the device, then, seeing a cool light within the odd construct she went back in for a closer look, “What is it?” she said in awe.
“It's a magical lamp.” David said.
The fairy stared deeply in the white glow of the lamp and her skin tingled from the gentle humming. Though David couldn't see it, the fairy's eyes had become dilated and thick drool started to gather on her mouth. “It's so beautiful,” the fairy said. Hypnotized by the glow, she put her hand inside the lamp's cage. She needed to touch the beautiful light.
In his mind David was counting down. 3, 2, 1.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” The fairy screamed, and it was very easy to picture every girl in the universe lamenting.
Smoke started to spew from what had been the fairy's golden hair and her painful scream died in her mouth as a ghastly amount of volts fried her internal organs. That's when David saw the real creature that hid underneath the glamour.
“Damn,” David said at the repulsive little grifter.
Though it was difficult to see behind the burns, the fairy or whatever it had been was a hideous thing. The dungeon could clearly see that he had been dealing with some kind of devil insect. Its head looked like it belonged to a mosquito, and what David had first thought was a dress of leaves was in fact a shell made out of what looked like human fingernails.
He looked down at the now burnt and twitching remains of the fairy. The fairy was not created by a dungeon, he had not made a pact with it, and he had killed her on his home turf. “Lawyered bitch. I just got my first monster.”
Chapter Three
David opened his eyes. He had just had the weirdest dream. He dreamed that he had turned into a dungeon. Like a resource gathering/city building game. He had even killed evil Tinkerbell by tricking it into a bug zapper. It was awesome.
He had even dreamed that he had made one of the little shits and told it to heal his body. That had been where the dream had cut out.
Feeling slightly better, the overweight call centre attendant sat up. His truck was fucked. Broken glass was everywhere, his windscreen had a hole in it big enough that he could stick his head through and what looked like a… “Oh no,” David said as he saw Barney's arm sticking out of the windscreen like he was posing for an action movie poster.
Oh yes. Came the voice David realised was his own.
Some people think that they would recognise their own voice when they heard it, and some people might, but for most they are astonished when they hear themselves for the first time.
David managed to bang his head on the Beast's roof as he tried to get out, “Son of a bitch.” he cursed.
Hey, watch it with our body, arsehole. I just got around healing it.
“What?” David said while rubbing his head. “Did I just call myself an arsehole?”
Yeah, well, we are used to putting ourselves down. How are you… Oh, don't start hyperventilating.
David couldn't help it. He looked around, trying to find a paper bag to breathe in. Damn stores using plastic and hemp shopping bags. It was real, it was really real. David was a dungeon. Or part of him was.
Yo, snap me out of it. The Dungeon said.
Something sharp slashed David's cheek. He hopped back and waved his hands around wildly, “What the…”
“Did I do good, Master?” came a piercing, yet, quiet voice.
David touched his bleeding cheek and saw blood on his fingers. Horrified, he looked up and held in a girlish scream.
Floating above his nose was the evil little dungeon fairy that he had killed. This version was just as ugly as the previous one, except that this one was naked. She looked more like a mangled wasp then a mosquito, her body was ugly with tiny barbed hairs, and instead of hands she had eight armour plated insect legs.
“You're real?” David said.
The fairy hovered up and down, “Yes, Master.” Well that was good. In the dream, one of his fears had been about her seeing his real body as an enemy and attacking.
David needed a moment to compose himself. This wasn't a dream, the pain and the thirst that he was feeling kept reminding him that he was awake and that he really needed to get to a hospital.
You might want to get a move on. I really don't want to get fired. And you know, die.
This telepathy thing was going to get old and fast. David moved to the car and drank greedily from his supplies. Done, he moved to a cave wall and opened his pants.
Woah. What are you doing?
“What's it look like?” David asked. Relief washed over him as he emptied his bladder. It felt as if he hadn't taken a piss in days, and the release was so great that a tear ran from his eyes. “Aw God, that feels so good.”
God dammit. I have to live here. It’s like I pissed myself. At least aim it outside the cave.
David looked at his watch, “Shit, I've been here passed out for nearly thirty hours.” he didn't think that they would fire him for getting in an accident with a roo, let alone an alien monster, but he was sure that he was going to get a lecture from his supervisor for being unlucky.
Seeing his obvious pain, the fairy buzzed around his head. “I am sorry for not fixing you, Master. I did my best.”
He didn’t give a shit about the evil thing's guilt. After emptying his bladder, the wounded David winced and held his back. “Back's mangled. Blood and cuts everywhere and I think my right arm is fractured.”
Maybe we can get worker's comp.
Great minds must think alike because David was thinking just that. Feeling like he slipped a disk, the trouble shooter gave the Beast a look of pity. He had grown fond of the diesel guzzler. It had been an economic nightmare but it got him from point A to point B, it had also kicked Barney's mutant arse. “I've really got to get a doctor to have a look at me.” It wasn't crippling bad, but the unergonomic sleeping arrangement hadn't done David any favours. There were fewer bruises and scrapes than he had expected but his head still felt like it weighed a ton.
Any idea why we aren't freaking out more about this? I don't even know what this is.
David probably would have been thinking the same thing, but the stabbing pain in his arm, head, and back had slowed him down, “Don't know. Maybe it hasn't hit yet. Or maybe I'm psychotic and you're just a voice in my head telling me to kill people. Please don't by the way. I am not the type that would flourish in a prison environment.”
Why bother? The idiots calling up about putting their phone in the dishwasher would do a better job of it than I would.
David laughed. Yeah and those were the Einstein’s of the dickhead pool. He went to the car and cursed, “Crap.”
What?
David didn't answer. Instead he brushed the glass off his seat and tried the key. The Beast didn't so much as whimper. In his brain-dead haze, the trouble sh
ooter had forgotten to close the door or turn the car off. In this enclosed space it had been a miracle that he hadn't died of monoxide poisoning, but that meant nothing as the battery was dead.
“Shit,” Both David’s said at once.
The fairy flew up to David's head, “What is it, Master?”
The fairies appearance was enough to make a full grown man shit himself. David swatted her away, “The battery is dead, damn it.”
Check the phone.
“Yeah yeah. I'm doing that.” David checked his phone, or would have if it had been on him. Not feeling it on him he looked back in the car. He had forgotten that he had left it on the charger. Praying hard, he let out a sigh as he discovered that only a single bar remained. The Beast was maybe dead for good but it hadn't totally let him down.
Seeing no reception, the computer monkey went outside and prayed again that technology hadn't let him down. The blazing sun struck David with full force. It had to be damn near 45 in the shade. He hadn't realised it but the cave had been super cold compared to the world outside.
He checked his phone and started walking until he found a signal. It took almost half an hour in the heat, and the flies, and the dust. There was no way that David could walk all the way back to town. Even if he was built like a basketball star, which he wasn't, no sane man would walk a hundred kilometres in this wretched environment.
He journeyed up a tortuous hill, hoping that he would find just one bar. Staring at his phone intensely, David was rewarded with a signal.
Seeing the first good news that he had for a long time, the trouble shooter cried, “Thank you. Thank you. Okay, okay. I'm not out of here yet.” The connection was choppy at best but somehow David had managed to give the operator what he hoped was his general location, but the road was long and most of it was dirt.
In a world of heat and dirt the trouble shooter felt his shirt become heavy as he sweated more into the fabric, all the while he shouted into the connection. Every second word that the operator spoke was static, but having spent nearly ten years listening to people bitch about stuff over the phone, David was eventually able to get the woman to track his GPS signal. He just hoped that he had been able to call in an emergency helicopter instead of accidentally ordering a pizza.
