“She was acting suicidal.”
“I had a plan and she disagreed with it,” Minette explained, finally talking. Silver waves hazed off of her orb.
“It was a run-us-to-the-grave type of plan. She handed us shovels so we could bury ourselves.”
“You’re wrong. You didn’t let me finish.”
“Because I’d seen enough. We had three adventurers here. We didn’t have any information about them, besides them being the classic triad, basically. We’re lucky that I was around and I enacted my plan. It drove them off.”
“And made us lose a dagger,” Minette said.
“Dungeon, has Arden explained to you why she’s here?” the Demon Lord Oiseau asked.
“No.”
“She doesn’t have to know,” Arden said.
The Demon Lord Oisea held up a hand to shush her. “What ended Arden’s tenure with her last dungeon was her inappropriate usage of the sudo command. Seems like she’s becoming trigger-happy with it. I don’t need trigger-happy pixies in my realm, do you understand me? Arden was already on her last chance. I was willing to give her until the end of the month. I may have to rethink that.”
“Wait, wait, hold on!” Arden jabbed her thumb against her forehead. “Search through my memories. You’ll understand exactly why I did what I did. You would’ve done it, too. You’ve got to hear me out.”
“I’ve heard plenty from you. And I’ve heard Minette’s side of things, unless, Minette, you have more you’d like to add? From what I understand, there was a disagreement over tactics.”
“Yes,” Minette confirmed.
“Has your pixie been well behaved until now or is this the result of a bad situation coming to a head?”
“I’m not going to lie. It’s hard working with her sometimes. I waffle between thinking she’s a heartless jerk or a nice person in a hard shell.” Minette sighed. “I know she’s super stressed because she doesn’t want us to die. If I’m not a good dungeon by the time you do your review, that’s it for the both of us. She’s trying to save us.”
The Demon Lord Oiseau snorted through his beak. “I have to correct you on that. You won’t die from a bad review. She will. You might be deserving of your Trash Tier title at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to destroy you. You’ve got potential.”
“Wait, so, let me get this straight. I’m not going to die if you hate me?” Minette asked.
Again, the Demon Lord Oiseau snorted. “No. Did Arden misunderstand me? I thought I made myself clear on that. She dies if you’re not up to my standards.”
“Oops, yeah, I definitely misunderstood,” Arden said, trying her best to sound honest when she wasn’t.
“I see…” Minette trailed off.
“I think I’ll cover all of my bases and review Arden’s memory, after all. Please wait one moment.” He held his hand over Arden.
A white-blue light overwhelmed Arden’s vision. Although she wasn’t moving anywhere, her body felt like it was being vacuumed. The Demon Lord mined her mind for what he wanted to know.
He reviewed what had recently transpired between her and the dungeon, starting with their arguments and then continuing on to the present moment. Arden always found these sorts of scans to be invasive, but they eliminated a good amount of “he said, she said” in pixie/dungeon quarrels.
Once he finished, he moved his hand away and heaved a great big sigh. The full body weight of that thoughtful noise didn’t bode well in Arden’s mind. The Demon Lord Oiseau wasn’t immediately leaping to her defense. Then again, he wasn’t siding with Minette, either.
“What do you think, boss?” Arden asked.
“Sometimes, the best way to deal with these things is to leave it up to the dungeon,” he said.
“C’mon, you know I was in the right. This shouldn’t be up to her.”
“This is about more than the sudo command. I am taking everything you’ve done together into account,” the Demon Lord Oiseau said. “You don’t get to argue with me. My patience is thin as it is. Do I make myself clear?”
“Understood.” She bowed her head.
“If the two of you no longer want to work together, then I see no use in prolonging this. I will find you a replacement pixie as soon as I can, Minette. I’m sure that there are pixies more willing to work with you now that you’ve gone through some changes. If anything, they’ll jump at the chance to prove they’re better than Arden the Endless Terror. She has a bit of a reputation in the dungeon community.”
“A good one?” Minette asked.
The Demon Lord Oiseau chuckled. “What do you think?”
“A bad one.”
“You didn’t have to answer that,” Arden said, crossing her arms. “Rhetorical question.”
The Demon Lord Oiseau stretched his free hand towards Minette. “I’ll leave this decision to you. You can carry on working with this pixie or divorce yourself from her. If you choose the second option, I’ll obliterate her right here and right now. I could use the snack.”
“Before you obliterate and eat me!” Arden was quick to exclaim. “Remember all of the good times we’ve shared, like that time I pet the catten. You liked it when I did that.”
“Do you remember that catten’s name?” Minette asked, expectantly.
“Was it Blaize or Mickey-Scotia? Okay, I don’t remember for sure, but you’ve got to remember that time I saved you when you were sick. And that time when I danced with a workercat! I’ve been looking out for you this whole time. That’s love right there. You might not like the way I show my love, but that’s love right there.”
Minette paused to chew on everything Arden said. “How do I trust you after this?”
“Give me a chance and I’ll show you. You’ll never know if you don’t give me another shot.”
“I guess I can work with you a little bit longer. Hit me with another sudo thing, though, and I might not be this forgiving again.”
The Demon Lord Oiseau nodded. “Good. This saved me from a lot of paperwork. Filling out Obliteration forms is always a headache. Good luck with her, Minette. I hope your next weeks are better than this one. I’ll figure out a shortlist of pixies that can replace Arden. That’ll save me some future work.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Arden said through clenched teeth.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Once I’m gone, your dungeon operations will resume. Try not to do anything to interrupt me again. I’ve got a flock of cross-eyed pigeons to watch.”
With a snapping sound that came out of nowhere, the Demon Lord Oiseau disappeared. Arden thudded to the ground, pain jolting up her side from her sudden fall. A workercat came into the room, then threw some shinies at Minette. She was still dark and in a bad mood, judging by the erratic patterns her swirls moved in.
“So, you lied about the review thing to get me to help you?” she asked.
Arden struggled to find a good way to put it. “I thought it would motivate you more to collaborate with me. It gave us a shared goal to work towards.”
“By collaborate, you mean you wanted me to let you do everything.”
“Sorry. I know I probably shouldn’t have used the sudo thing. That was crossing the line.”
“By miles. By countries. By provinces. By a lot.”
“And I don’t disagree with you, but I maintain that at the time, I thought it was justified. I panicked,” Arden said. “And something about the game we played, the one where we switched places around, brought me back to a bad place. All I could think about was my past. I hate being powerless.”
“What happened with your last dungeon?”
“Are you sure you want to hear about it?”
“Yeah, of course!”
“Then, I’ll bring us back to the beginning of my story, way back to my younger days. I was a fresh graduate from the Dungeon Pixie Academy. I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, or rather not that, but bug-eyed and stinger-tailed. He was an insect dungeon…”
***
…and she was woefully naïve, full of the dreams and fantasies her school teachers fed her. They told every pixie that once they were united with their dungeon, their feelings of emptiness would come to an end. Every Dungeon Pixie, from birth, was inundated with stories about their loneliness. There was no avoiding hearing about it.
“You won’t be whole without a dungeon,” the stories said. “A dungeon will complete you. Do your best in the Dungeon Pixie Academy so you can graduate and get your ultimate pairing.”
They described the dungeon/pixie bond as impenetrable and unbreakable. Nothing could get in the way of a dungeon and its pixie. Their connection was something magical, mystical.
Beautiful.
Her favorite times in school were whenever Academy alumni visited. They talked to the students about their adventures, their mutual love for their dungeons, and the various monsters they were raising together.
Arden cried a lot on those days. How was she supposed to avoid doing that when her life shaped her into a sensitive soul? She was raised to see beauty, and only beauty, in dungeon and pixie match-ups.
She prayed that she’d get paired with a dungeon who was as much of a gorehound as she was. In her diary, she jotted down her dreams of blood-soaked walls, flying skulls, and intestines hanging from the ceilings. Arden longed to see adventurers struggling to hold in their organs. Blood and guts and gore!
Sadly, Arden wasn’t assigned to a zombie dungeon where the gore would be immediately abundant. She held in her disappointment, though, and tackled her assignment with a gusto.
Her dungeon’s name was Bugsy and his specialty was insects. They were both brand new at the whole dungeon and pixie thing. Bugsy’s units were mainly scorpions and spiders, but his dung beetles reigned supreme. They were the reason behind his predilection for rage dumps.
“Sorry you got caught in another shower,” he’d say.
Wringing the waste off of her dress, Arden would laugh it off and say, “Don’t worry. It was my fault for flying over there.” She never got angry or frustrated with him, because that wasn’t her place as a pixie.
Even when she suspected him of being up to no good, the worst thing she could do was playfully call him a name. For instance, Bugsy loved making her fly in all sorts of directions. Back then, she hadn’t caught on to the importance of wearing shorts beneath her dress, and Bugsy had no problem letting her embarrass herself in front of everyone.
How many friendly people from their town’s adventuring guild saw her like that? One too many.
All throughout their time together, Arden calmed herself down by remembering her Academy training. She reviewed her class notes, thinking about their lessons on dungeon and pixie peace mediation. Having graduated with the top grade in her “How to Get Along with Your Dungeon” class, she was sure she knew exactly what to do.
Remember your studies. Be a good pixie. Never waver from being the pixie Bugsy deserves.
Bugsy handled everything on his own. He called the shots. He decided on the tech trees and the evolutionary lines for their bug monsters. The dungeon layout was under his control. All strategic and tactical decisions were made solo. Whenever she had a suggestion, he didn’t want to hear it.
It became clear that as his pixie, she was only there to read system messages, listen to him complain, and “tease” him with sickening nicknames in a very forced manner.
“Bugsy,” she’d try to call him.
“Honey bug,” he’d correct her. “You should always say my pet name right whenever you say your catch phrase.”
And Arden would do it every time, whenever he asked. That was part of her duty as a pixie. She’d clutch the base of her antennae and say, “Honey bug, I’ve got feelers for you.”
It didn’t make sense as a catch phrase. Bugsy made her say it so she could butter his ego. He paraded her around their town’s adventurers, forcing her to say it whenever they showed up. The laughs at her expense chipped at her. Every push, every prod, brought her closer to the edge of revolt.
One day, she had enough of saying it, and snapped, “You’re not my honey bug! You don’t even let me have any say in anything. What kind of honey bug is that? I’m sick of this.” Arden kept going. “All you do is make fun of me and leave me out of things. We’re supposed to be a team, that’s what all of my teachers said. You know what, I’m sick of you! You’re a terrible dungeon. I hate you.”
As soon as she said those words, she wanted to suck them back into herself. Arden couldn’t believe what she’d done nor the moment of silence that followed.
Finally, Bugsy said, “If I’m such a terrible dungeon, why don’t you give it a try?”
“W-what? I couldn’t.”
“It’s your turn, love bug. Run our dungeon.”
As much as she wanted to deny the opportunity, Arden jumped on it. She’d been waiting for a chance like this. For the first time, Bugsy shared his menus with her. He left her to her devices, letting her figure out the controls on her own. She became lost in a world of numbers and never-ending screens.
While she was still getting a handle on the dungeon keeping menus, bruiser monsters wandered into the dungeon. Seeing them chilled Arden at first, but she knew their traps would take care of them. They had all sorts of blades, spikes, and magical traps set up along their initial hallways.
None of the traps triggered.
Confused, Arden called on Bugsy for help. Bugsy refused to respond. He reminded her that the dungeon was hers to run.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she’d said. “The toxic scorpions should get them. They should be patrolling the next hall. They, wait, where are they going? Bugsy, what’s going on? Why aren’t they sticking to their patrol routes?”
“Do some problem solving.”
Arden shouted at them. “Turn around! Kill the invaders. Defend your dungeon. Do something.”
Bugsy laughed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. She tried to command a different cluster of units. “You four, do something. Go over there and fight.”
The enemy monsters crawled their way further into the dungeon. The traps didn’t work on them.
“They’re going to kill our workerbugs if you don’t do something,” Bugsy pointed out.
Busy scrambling through the dungeon keeping menus, Arden missed out on the workerbugs gathering in a room to nap. “Why are they doing that?” she cried.
“Stop asking me and think for yourself. Be quick about it. The bruisers will probably get to them in about, I don’t know, two minutes. They’ll shred our peons to pieces.”
“No, no, this doesn’t make any sense.”
“What kind of dungeon gets all of their peons killed? That’s pathetic.”
“Tell me what I’m supposed to do to save them.”
Arden flashed through the menus. Nothing about the units’ informational screens indicated that they were suffering from a drowsy debuff. The toxic scorpions’ Morale scores looked fine.
“Wow,” Bugsy said, “this really calls into question the definition of a terrible dungeon. I wouldn’t have let our peons die. That’s going to put us so far behind. It’s going to be all your fault.”
“Tell me what to do!”
“Apologize for calling me terrible.”
“I’m sorry. Just please, do something.” Arden selected the traps lining the hall to no avail.
The bruiser monsters came closer, well on their way to the workerbugs’ room.
“Beg for my forgiveness,” Bugsy said.
“I’m sorry, Bugsy. I’m so sorry. You’re not a terrible dungeon.”
“Say it the right way. You should know what to call me by now.”
“I’m sorry, honey bug. You’re the best dungeon ever.”
“And you’re a terrible pixie.”
“You’re the best and I’m the worst.” Arden couldn’t hold it in anymore. She burst into tears.
Bugsy took over. He fixed whatever was wrong with the traps. The traps caught the bru
iser monsters. The toxic scorpions turned around, heading back to fight the ensnared beasts. The workerbugs woke up, fully energized. Everything went back to the way it was supposed to be, all thanks to Bugsy. He was the hero that rescued everyone from Arden’s muck-up.
Beat down, Arden threw herself back into her pixie role. To Bugsy, she was back to being the quasi-assistant he always wanted. Cute. Flouncy. Constantly smiling and full of motivational yuck.
“You’re a god tier dungeon,” she’d tell him repeatedly. “You’re so amazing, honey bug.”
Bugsy was too busy hardening his hubris to notice her insincerity. Arden increased her flattery as time went on, using his pride to her advantage. He explained his decision making process to her, all the while basking in her compliments. She pried information out of him. She made notes whenever monsters or adventurers arrived.
Arden convinced him to let her visit their town. She learned more things from the humans that lived there and perfected her usage of her Disguise skill, something she hadn’t been able to do trapped within Bugsy’s walls. She swore to become a pixie deserving of a leadership position.
Her moment to shine arrived when a rival adventuring guild showed up to raid Bugsy’s dungeon. They were twenty heroes strong, ranging in class types. Bugsy saw it fit to send his weakest units their way.
She commented on Bugsy’s strategy. “Don’t you think you’re spoon-feeding them experience points? They’re swatting our flying spiders like they’re nothing.”
“I know that, love bug. I want them to get stronger.”
“They’re here to destroy your Heart.”
“No, they’re not. Our town loves me. I give them things.”
“Look at their flags. This is the guild that’s been warring against our town. Haven’t you been listening in on them? They want to destroy us then destroy the town.”
“Listening in is for cheaters,” Bugsy said. “It gives us an unfair advantage. I hate that.”
“Bugsy–”
“You’re not supposed to call me that.”
The Trash Tier Dungeon Page 12
