by Nick Harrow
“We aren’t stopping,” I reassured her. “But I need to patch you up before we continue.”
It was time to put my new spellcasting abilities to use.
I knelt and rested my hand on the top of Delsinia’s head. A strange string of syllables filled with pops and cracks wormed its way out of my mouth, and a rush of golden light flowed down my arm and poured over her like a pot of warm honey made by psychedelic bees.
The knots vanished from Delsinia’s taut muscles as the light poured over her body, and her chin sagged toward her chest with relief. I wasn’t sure how much damage I’d just healed, but the dungeon lord looked much better now than she had a few moments ago.
“Thank you, my love,” she said.
Kezakazek’s eyebrows shot up at that, and it was my turn to shrug. Delsinia’s mind had been mauled by centuries trapped in this hellhole and then hammered into obedience by the drow. There was no accounting for anything she said while she was in such a fragile state.
With the healing out of the way, Kezakazek wasted no time finishing up her job. Her nimble fingers found the last piece of the puzzle and tugged it out of the lock’s guts.
The collar shattered like a crystal goblet dropped onto a stone floor. The links fractured into dozens of individual pieces that scattered across the chamber like shooting stars. They smoldered where they lay on the floor for a moment and then vanished with faint crisp pops.
Delsinia groaned and fell to the floor. Her hands groped at her neck, and she moaned in pain when they encountered the ugly band of vivid red wounds that encircled her throat like the memory of a noose. She cried out in pain and writhed on the floor for a moment. Her breaths came in jagged, shuddering spasms.
And then the dungeon lord lay very still.
“Fuck. Did I kill her?” Kezakazek asked me.
I took Delsinia’s hand in mine and felt for her pulse. After a long, tense moment, I felt the faint thump of her heart against my fingertips.
“Nope,” I said. “She’ll be fine. Good work.”
“I didn’t spend my entire childhood learning how to build instruments of death and destruction for nothing,” Kezakazek said. She blew some imaginary dust off her pointed fingernails. “Maybe you could advance us all as a reward for my efforts?”
“Maybe,” I said.
Delsinia’s eyes opened to narrow slits, then widened when they locked on mine.
“Rathokhetra,” she whispered. “You freed me.”
I tried and failed to hide my frown at the name and offered Delsinia my hand. She took it and stood with graceful ease. She was almost as tall as I was, and her eyes burned into mine with an eerie intensity as she searched for something only she understood.
“You can call me Clay,” I said. “Rathokhetra is just, you know, a title, I guess. Clay’s better.”
“As you wish, Clay,” she said. “You have freed me from Kozerek’s grasp, at least for the moment. My mind is clear, but I do not know for how long. The dark elf’s power over me was not just the collar, it would seem. I can feel his foul touch still on the reins of my soul.”
“Then we don’t have much time,” I said. “Can you show me where the dark elves come from? I’d like to prepare a surprise for them.”
“No,” Delsinia said in a calm, regal tone. “You must take my core before he reclaims my mind. I am not strong enough to fight him any longer, and I am not sure what he will do when he returns.”
“Any idea how to do that without killing you?” I asked.
Every person in the room tensed as Delsinia reached toward me with both hands. Her limbs were sleek but well-muscled, and she was a powerful dungeon lord, after all. If she wanted to take another shot at killing me, this was as good a chance as any.
“No one moves,” I sent to the guardians. Their minds roiled in protest, but they held their ground.
“My love,” Delsinia whispered as she clasped my face between her palms. Her face was less than an inch from mine, and the only thing I could see was the vivid emerald of her eyes and the strange shadows that surrounded them. “I have waited so long for your return. I have suffered so much. I am weary and broken, and that vile wretch could return at any moment to destroy the last shreds of my mind and spirit. Will you not release me from my torment?”
The fallen dungeon lord’s voice was an orchestra of emotion. Relief that I’d come for her at long last, sorrow at what she’d lost, frustration at her damaged mind, and a deep exhaustion that tinged everything in melancholy tones.
Despite all that, I couldn’t let her die. Not only did I want her help to defeat Kozerek and his pointy-eared pals, I was sure Delsinia could be saved. She deserved better than to die in the prison where she’d suffered for centuries.
“No,” I said. I took her hands in mine and held them against my chest. “Not yet.”
“Please—” she started, but I cut her off before she could tug at my heartstrings.
“You’re a dungeon lord, Delsinia,” I said. “You were a queen. I know you’ve been hurt. I know you’re tired. Give me a few more hours. We’ll make those animals pay for what they did to you.”
Delsinia leaned into me, trapping our hands against her chest. She turned her face up toward mine and gave me a small, sad smile.
“How many times have I told you that vengeance is not important?” she whispered. “I will give you this, my love, as my final gift. But you must swear to me that if the fiend takes my mind again, you will destroy me before I can follow his commands.”
“I think I can keep him out of your head,” I said.
“You always have a plan.” She stepped back from me. Her fingers slipped from mine, and she smoothed her green hair down her back. The scales on her forearms shimmered like a rainbow over a waterfall, and the shadows around her eyes danced like smoke on the wind. “What would you have me do?”
“Your core,” I said. “Can you give it to me without dying?”
The rest of my guardians watched us with sharp interest, and I waited for Kezakazek or Zillah to chime in. The fact that they hadn’t so far was amazing, especially given Kez’s distaste for any show of emotion that didn’t involve some form of sexual activity.
Delsinia’s brow furrowed as if she hadn’t even considered that option. She must’ve been more badly damaged than I’d thought.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But without my core, I will no longer be a dungeon lord. What use would I be to you?”
“Let me worry about that,” I said.
Delsinia narrowed her eyes in concentration. She held her hands out toward me, palms upraised, fingers cupped. Her brow furrowed with intense concentration, and beads of sweat appeared across her forehead and cheeks. A low groan escaped her lips as she struggled to call forth her core. Apparently Delsinia’s core was happy where it was and had no intention of emerging from its safe place inside her chest.
My own core hummed and emitted sharp pops like bursts of static electricity. On a hunch, I held my hands over Delsinia’s and willed her core to show itself.
A few moments later, a faint silver spark appeared above Delsinia’s hands. Her eyes met mine, and a connection between us snapped into place.
The muscles in my arms went rigid and I couldn’t have moved my hands if I wanted to.
Slowly, very, very slowly, the spark between Delsinia and I grew. After a minute of intense concentration, a baseball-sized silver orb hovered between our palms. After five minutes, the sphere was the size of a softball.
And then, with one final push from Delsinia and a pull from me, the orb swelled to the size of a bowling ball and its silver hue changed to an opalescent sheen.
“Take it,” Delsinia said, her voice ragged and weak.
She rotated her hands, and I mirrored her motion until her hands were above mine. Her core fell into my hands, and I felt a sudden surge of strength burn through me.
“Wow,” Zillah said as she returned with the scorpions perched on her tail. “Now you have two balls. Awesome. I
didn’t find anything out there, by the way.”
“Bummer,” I said. “Not about my balls, about not finding anything.”
Pieces of Rathokhetra’s memories drifted up to me as I studied my second core, and I understood what I needed to do next.
“You hid it right here?” I asked Delsinia with a chuckle. “I should have thought of that.”
“You did,” she said with a wistful smile. “Once.”
I walked to the center of the room and held the core out at waist height. The floor buckled beneath the glowing orb, and the strange vines and stones unwound from one another to reveal a perfect circle a little less than a yard across. A deep rumble shook the floor, and a pedestal rose through the hole in front of me.
As it settled into place, I realized the pedestal was a stylized lion. Its clawed paws clasped Delsinia’s stele between them, while its head was tilted back in a ferocious roar.
I lowered the core into the lion’s mouth, and it fit perfectly between the creature’s fangs. A crystal-clear chime echoed through the chamber and vibrated in the still air for long seconds.
I placed my hand on the core and invested five motes of ka in the Claim Stele ability. A silver flash burst from the core and Delsinia’s dungeon shuddered around me. Chips of stone fell from the ceiling and parts of the floor unraveled as the vines retracted and stones fell away to reveal layers of rich, black earth.
“Uh,” I said. “That didn’t happen the last time I did this.”
“How soon you forget, my love,” Delsinia said with a wry grin.
<<<>>>
Congratulations, dungeon lord. Would you like to claim this dungeon, or raze it?
<<<>>>
“Make it mine,” I said.
There was another flash of light, and the dungeon’s appearance underwent a sudden and radical transformation. The creepy tentacles, vines, and worms all vanished and were replaced by the clean, smooth stone lines of my territory. I briefly wondered if I could change the basic décor of my dungeon to something that better suited my aesthetic but decided to leave that for later. I could play my own version of the Sims XIII when I had more free time and fewer enemies threatening to eat my soul.
A perfectly clear vision of my new territory leapt into my mind. Delsinia’s lair was only a little more complicated than I’d imagined, which was good to know.
We’d missed a concealed door just inside the dungeon’s entrance. That door opened onto a passageway that led to a small, fifteen-by-twenty-foot chamber, and another passage led out of that room to a second hidden door that exited into the hallway just before the ghoul-respawn chamber. In addition to that spawn, which was now defunct since I hadn’t invested any ka in it, there was also a spawn for skeletons and one for zombies, which were also dead for the time being. Oddly, I couldn’t find anything that looked like a secret passage that would let the drow come rampaging into the place. Was Kozerek bluffing?
“I need you to show me where the drow came through,” I said to Delsinia. “But I have an important question to ask you first.”
“Anything,” Delsinia said.
“Will you serve as my guardian?” I asked.
Conflicting emotions flickered across the former dungeon lord’s face like streaks of lightning through an approaching storm. Anger sparked in her eyes, then sorrow pulled down the corners of her lips, and lines of consternation etched themselves into her forehead. She clenched her hands into tight fists, then unclenched them.
I knew it was a risky request. Firing someone from their job and then asking them to work for the new boss didn’t usually go over well. But it was my only play.
Delsinia was the only one who could point me toward the drow before the fuckers invaded. She also knew more about Kozerek than I did, and that had to be useful.
She was also very, very deadly.
And hot enough to melt iron with a glance.
Finally, she gathered her composure and nodded.
“I will serve you,” she said. “As I served Rathokhetra in days of old.”
I sealed the deal before either of us could change our minds. It cost me fifteen motes of ka, but it was well worth it.
<<<>>>
Delsinia, Soketran Soul Taker, Challenge Rating 5
<<<>>>
Well, that was impressive. Not only was Delsinia a hell of a fighter, but she could also suck the life out of her enemies to heal herself or soak damage. She was sneaky, too, which would make her a hell of an assassin if push came to shove.
“Oh, I see how it is,” Kezakazek snarked. “No advancement for those of us who’ve been with you from the start, but we’ll add new bodies to the pile?”
“Kez,” I cautioned, but she raised her hands and backed away before I could continue.
“I know, I know,” she said with a lopsided grin. “My time is coming. I’m a patient dark elf. I can wait.”
Zillah waited for Kezakazek to leave the chamber, then tossed a little shrug my way. I’m not sure if she was trying to smooth over Kezakazek’s little tantrum or if she was siding with the drow.
“Can you?” I said. “You know what I mean.”
“I’ll calm her down,” the scorpion queen said. “But you do need to remember to dance with the ones who brought you once in a while.”
Ouch. She had a point, but that stung.
Delsinia watched my other guardians go with a slight frown tugging at the corners of her lips.
“Do they always speak to you like that?” she asked.
“Mostly,” I said. “They’re stone-cold killers, so I cut them a little slack in the attitude department. And Kez has been asking for an upgrade for a couple of days now. I should hook her up soon.”
“Perhaps,” Delsinia responded. “You could also remind them that you are the dungeon lord, and they are your servants.”
It was my turn to hold up my hands.
“Whoa,” I said. “That’s not the kind of show I’m running. They’re my guardians, but I’m not their master. We work together.”
Delsinia appraised me for a moment and then leaned in so close I could feel her lips against my ear as she whispered, “My love, perhaps you should be reminded of how rewarding discipline can be.” She trailed her index finger down the ridges of my abdomen and tugged at the waist of my breechcloth. “For both sides of the paddle.”
My breath caught in my throat, and my pulse jumped to attention, along with other parts of my anatomy. Old memories from Rathokhetra blazed across my mind’s eye, and it took a great deal of effort to get my attention back to the present.
“We have work to do,” I said.
Delsinia kissed the side of my neck so lightly I didn’t realize she’d done it until I felt the lingering heat of her lips on my skin. She smiled at me, and her eyes smoldered with promise and some sultry memories of her own.
“May I show you your territory?” Delsinia backed away and straightened the bone chain that hugged her body. She managed to pull it just enough to make me sure it revealed a lot more than it actually did. Her chained daggers had returned and were now wrapped around her waist like the world’s most dangerous belt.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s have the guided tour.”
“As you know, this is my core chamber,” the soul taker said. “I love what you’ve done with the place. It is so you.”
She spared me a sly smile at that and turned on her heel to lead me through the chamber’s sole exit.
I followed her around the sharp corner of the passage and into the next small room. I didn’t even try to keep my eyes off the mesmerizing sway of her hips.
“This is where the caller of the dead once spawned,” she said. “But now that this dungeon has passed into your hands, we shall not see its kind here again.”
I hadn’t realized we’d lose the dungeon’s guardians, but I supposed it made sense. They had been tied to Delsinia, and she was no longer the master of this domain.
We left that chamber and made our way back to the circula
r room with the pillars. Delsinia moved to the center of the four columns and raised her hands.
“Here is my ka refinery,” she said. “Or rather, it was my ka refinery. Its power has already begun to fade, however. If you wish to retain this augmentation to your dungeon, you will have to invest your motes into it.”
I frowned at her words because I’d thought this whole dungeon would become mine once I’d claimed the stele. Apparently, that wasn’t how things worked.
I had thirty-nine motes of ka, including twenty-three I’d gained by absorbing Delsinia’s core and claiming her dungeon. That was a decent enough amount, but I’d also promised the temple to Nephket and needed to consider advancing all of my guardians soon.
I summoned my Tablet of Engineering to figure out the costs to claim the two new structures I’d discovered. The ka refinery would cost me ten motes, but the temple wasn’t even on my tablet yet. If I was lucky, it would be a chamber that unlocked at fifth level. I did some quick mental math and figured out the cost for fifth-level chambers should be twenty motes. If my math was right, and I could claim chambers that were higher than my current dungeon level, that would only leave me with nine motes free.
Fuck.
That wasn’t enough to buy the advance ability. Kezakazek was going to be seriously pissed if I didn’t give her a healthy boost the next time I saw her. I really did not want to find out just how big of a fit she could throw if she put her vicious dark elven mind to it.
But maybe I wouldn’t have to.
I raised my hand and reached out to the ka refinery. I sent ten motes from my core into the chamber, and the pillars flared with golden light.
<<<>>>
KA REFINERY
Cost: 10 motes of ka
Limit: No
Spawn: No
Combinable: No
Type: Arcane
Description: The ka refinery extracts motes from the geomantic streams that flow through all worlds. The refinery pulls a number of motes equal to the dungeon's level and stores them in the dungeon lord's core.
Multiple refineries can be positioned in a single dungeon, but the number of motes each refinery will extract is reduced by 1 for every additional refinery in the dungeon.
