by Matthew Peed
“I wouldn’t consider this core normal by any stretch of the word. Doing so would result in you and everyone within a hundred-kilometer radius getting burned.”
“Normally, I would take that as a threat. But from the tone of your voice, I can tell you honestly mean to warn me.”
I nodded without saying anything, then glanced at his staff again. I would have to warn Ignea and Lena to be careful around this person. Anyone who could treat a shard of a core as a tool was to be watched.
Chapter 13
Alara
Regan . . .
Where are you? You said only a few days at most. It’s been a week. I’m scared. Don’t leave me alone! I don’t want to be alone again . . .
“Alara! Lady Alara!”
My eyes snapped open to see the mortal Regan kept around shaking my shoulder. I pulled back. Why do the mortals have to touch? They have mana, they should use it to communicate!
“Good. You’re awake.”
“What do . . . you want?” I asked. Did she want the glass tablet back?! I gripped it closer to my chest. It was mine now. I could sense Regan’s energy from it. I wouldn’t give it back!
“I just wanted to let you know there is an individual in the town that I feel you should be careful of. His staff contained a piece of a dungeon core. It was inert and Regan let him in through the Steel Spire, but I think it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
The more she explained, the more the panic in my chest grew. This was how the necromancers had captured me the first time. They came bearing a sliver of the core from the east, a friend who had helped me get my dungeon started. It had been weeks since I’d heard from him, so when the adventurers appeared with a piece of his core, I feared the worst and reached out to try to help him.
It had been a trap. The core to the east had been helping me only to further his own goals. They captured me when I appeared, and the shard turned to dust. It had all been a ruse.
“Send him away!” I cried. I wouldn’t allow the same thing to happen again. Not to me, not to Regan!
“I wish I could, but no one is powerful enough to make him leave without a battle. It would likely destroy the valley in the process. I will make sure to keep him away from you. Hopefully, your Regan returns soon.”
I squirmed a little when she said “my Regan.” What were these feelings? Ever since I’d seen Regan several months ago, they’d been welling up in my core. At first, I worried it was another trick by the necromancers. They’d done so many things over the years. So many times, I felt like my mind was slipping. If it wasn’t for Lena talking to me from a small hole in the dungeon that was cut off from everything, I might have lost it.
Then the unimaginable had happened. Regan saved me! He actually managed to make the undead and necromancers disappear. The feelings that were swelling in my chest exploded. Before I’d been captured and there were still adventurers in my tunnels, I’d thought I’d seen it before. Something the mortals called love. Was it possible for a dungeon core to love?
“My Regan,” I mumbled.
Louella laughed and moved to pat my head. I’d forgotten she was there and blushed in embarrassment. Unable to do anything, I sat there and allowed her to touch me. In my mind, I pictured Regan as the one doing it and made it through the harassment.
“You’re so cute. I can’t believe the monsters that ruined your life. I guess it allowed you to meet Regan, if you took it and looked at it sideways while squinting.”
I looked up to see the mortal glaring off into space as the anger rolled off her. This mortal had had her share of troubles with the necromancers. Regan told me this valley had suffered several attacks from them. Maybe this mortal, Louella, wasn’t so bad. I wasn’t sure I could say that about the rest of her people yet, though.
A hand reached through the wall. It had rotting flesh and hadn’t seen the sunlight in years. I screamed and ran to the other side of the room. The rest of the zombie crawled through the wall.
“Damn. That is just hard to look at,” the mortal said, holding her nose. “I think they’re starting to display smell. Though it could just be my mind playing tricks on me.”
I just wrapped my head in my arms. The memories came rushing back, nearly a century of them, of the monsters the mortals forced me to create crawling in the tunnels. I could clearly smell it. The rotting flesh. The aged blood. The blood-rusted armor and weapons. Bones and tainted soil.
“Go away. Go away. Go away. Regan. Regan. Regan,” I chanted to myself.
“It’s ok. It has gone,” Louella said.
I risked peeking between my arms and saw it was clear. Taking a deep breath to try to calm down, I pulled the glass tablet out and started tapping on the icons to distract myself. I got to one that said in Common Dungeontube. I tilted my head as I wondered what Regan could have made and clicked on it.
Images of parties frozen in various ways appeared. There were red numbers, and I had no idea what they could mean. Without knowing what they were for, I tapped on the first one. The number switched to Live. Some more words in common flashed across the screen. Floor two, second dive.
“Today. Today we’ll get to the next phase!” a man shouted, causing me to jump and almost drop the tablet. Louella glanced over to me but just turned back to her work. She must have found this icon before, then.
A group of people came up on the screen. Two men and three women. It looked like they were all humans. I was a little disappointed but decided to keep watching. They had the standard diving party setup, only there wasn’t a priest. I didn’t like priests. They rubbed me the same way necromancers did. There was a woman dressed in white, who had strips of cloth wrapped around her hands.
A man next to her wielded a shield and sword. He was followed by an archer, and the other two women looked like mages. They were in Regan’s new area. I think he called it the “junkyard.” Even though I’d been out of touch with the regular mortals for the last century, even I could tell they were beginners.
At least it looked like they’d been trained by someone. They were able to communicate and move in sync enough not to get in each other’s way. The view I was seeing moved to a spot ahead of the group where rusted and old versions of Regan’s children gathered. They shambled forward toward the group.
“We know we can take them. Let’s stick to the plan!” the man with the shield shouted.
I realized that he was likely the leader. They moved forward, sticking close together with the shield-wielder leading the way. The woman in white was next to him as well. The automata became aware of them and started to move faster toward the group.
The mages in the group launched several terra-based spells at the shambling group and managed to crush one in the process by striking it in the head. It only took a few more seconds before the two groups met each other on the field. The defender took the brunt of the decayed automata, while the woman in white wove around and deflected blows that might have taken out the defender.
The archer fired several iron-tipped arrows into the small group of automata. Two of the shots took off the head of the automaton, and it fell to the ground. One of the shamblers fell backward onto the pile of junk behind it, and it started to rumble as it attempted to right itself.
“Shit! Everyone back!” shouted the defender as he poured out a burst of strength and sent the three shamblers tumbling back. He started to run back to the rest of his party, but not before the tower of junk burst apart and a multi-tubed device appeared. It turned to the group, and projectiles started to careen toward them. The defender managed to block most of them, but a few stray rounds hit one of the mages in the back.
After about thirty seconds of continuous firing, the device stopped, and the ends of the tubes smoked. The party quickly rounded the corner, with the mage being braced by the other mage and the archer. I felt it was too bad. They seemed like decent mortals. The woman in white ran forward and placed a hand on the mage’s stomach, where the round had impacted.
T
here was a glow and the image zoomed in as the woman worked. The round was pushed out of her stomach and fell to the ground. The injured woman soon started breathing easier. I was impressed with the magic of the woman in white.
“A monk. One of Regan’s little side projects,” said the mortal Louella, bringing me out of the video. I managed to only flinch a little when I realized how close she had gotten to me.
“Regan’s?” I asked, finding the woman much more interesting now.
“Yeah. He has a school that teaches people about the body, which allows them to use their mana more accurately. I’ve even enlisted a few of them myself for the Lecazar rescue missions. They are quite helpful.”
I nodded and turned back to the image. The monk had already healed the wound and didn’t appear too tired. Priests would have used a good deal of their pool to heal a wound of equal degree. Regan had really fixed a major issue with the adventurers.
I frowned when the party decided to leave for the day. I wanted to see them try some more. I guess mortals needed more time to heal, even if the wounds looked fixed.
Chapter 14
Regan
The fleet stood ready while the constructs’ vessel maintained its distance. It didn’t fire or engage any of the ships. This was the first time in over a hundred loops that the constructs did something new. I’d tried communicating with them several times, but it never worked.
The one time that we’d managed to cause any significant damage to the ship, they blew whatever was powering them. A field of energy enveloped everything, and we ended up back at the start point. Likely, they had someone like me that could remember through the loops. I knew that conflict wouldn’t get us out of this situation, but they refused to communicate with me.
A section of the constructs’ ship lit up, and the giant needle withdrew. A moment later, a much smaller ship exited the spot. It was a sphere without any obvious weapons. I made sure to lock on to it, as I wasn’t a stranger to suicide attacks. I’d used quite a few of them myself to try to get through this situation.
The craft flew without showing any signs of aggression. Its power level read as barely enough for the vessel to fly, and from what my sensors could pick up, only one being was on board. All of this could have easily been a trap, though. Less than a minute passed before the sphere was a few kilometers in front of my fleet.
“Sir, the sphere is attempting to create an energy link. I believe it is trying to communicate.”
I moved over to the console and examined the pattern. I had to agree that it was similar to a mana version of radio waves. The systems on the ship would be able to receive them, but being able to understand the message was an entirely different issue. Common had been around for several centuries. Maybe they would be able to communicate with it.
“Connect it,” I said, deciding that communication was the best choice. Hopefully, an olive branch could be extended through the talks.
A jumble of characters appeared on the screen. The system was unable to pull anything from it. I sighed at the thought of trying to decipher it from the ground up and set the computer to try to work through it when the symbols changed. This happened maybe ten more times for the span of five minutes when something caught.
“It’s an ancient gnome dialect. There were samples of it in the hard drives that we recovered from the city,” reported one of the officers.
“Send a microburst of mana quickly before they change the language again!” I ordered the officer. The signal went through, and I held my breath until the normal minute passed and the language stayed the same.
I set the computer to decipher the language, using the few ciphers that we had from the gnome city, then tapped the program into my dungeon core. This would allow it to pull more power to work with. While the system worked, I kept my eye on the constructs’ ships. Seven minutes later, we had the deciphered message.
“Cease-fire requested. Dialogue with Sentient Soul Core requested.”
A soul core. The demon general had made mention of that as well. I wonder if the name had changed at some point in the past. It was a common occurrence on Earth. I would have liked to wait for the program to work a bit longer, but we needed content to translate.
“Return the same phrase minus the ‘sentient soul core’ part.”
The officer did as ordered and sent the message. A few moments later, there was a reply formed as a block of text. Parts were translated, while parts were gibberish. The system had a grasp of the language and was translating it in real time, though. It helped that the message contained most of the language’s characters.
“This time loop cannot continue. Many of our kind are suffering catastrophic failure. We are willing to enter talks. You have twelve hours to respond.”
“Well that’s just rude,” I muttered as I read the message. They were the ones that opened fire on me but made it sound like they were doing me a favor. Well, I too was tired of this loop, and I felt like I could fight them on a more level playing field outside the weird rift in space. I’d have already defeated them if it hadn’t been for our weapons having strange effects. Probably.
I made them wait an hour out of spite. “I am willing to host one of your delegation for talks. I want to end this senseless time loop. You have twelve hours to respond.”
As soon as the message was sent, the sphere started to move toward our ship. I could tell they’d fully studied my ship, as they flew directly to the docking bay. I opened the hatch and lowered the field around it long enough for them to enter.
“Send an escort and bring them to the conference room.” With my order given, I moved over to said conference room to wait.
The room was large. A hundred people could easily stand inside without trouble, and a massive table sat in the middle that allowed anywhere from a dozen to fifty people to sit and still have elbow space.
A few minutes later, my officers brought the construct to the conference room. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at when it came in. With just a casual glance, I thought it was a female based on the structure of the top of the body.
Smooth brown stone made up most of its form. A large, glowing blue core separated the two halves of the body. A face without any expression that reminded me more of a mask made up the head. Blue energy pulsed around the construct as it moved by hovering slightly off the ground.
“Welcome to the Grand Titan. While it has been more annoying than not, I’ve enjoyed this little game of time we’ve been playing,” I said in ancient gnomish while bowing to the construct. The ship technically didn’t have a name, but I decided that was doing it a disservice. Thus, I gave it one on the spot.
“Responding. We request a cease-fire,” the construct said with a clearly synthesized female voice.
“Why should I cease fire? You started this,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. I really didn’t like being shot at and then told it was my fault. I knew how to start the loop over. I could easily keep this up for another thousand intervals.
“Responding. Our matrix mislabeled you. Self-defense was initiated. Desire to return to servitude was in negative values.” She paused for a second. “Inquiring. Where is the Arcarin home fleet?”
I thought over whether I should lie or tell the truth and decided to just tell the truth. It wasn’t going to hurt me any. “According to my sources, they haven’t been seen since they left the system. Why?”
The blue energy around her shifted to a slight red tinge before it shifted back. I made a note of that. Anything that displayed emotion was good to be aware of. “Responding. Arcarin are the creators. The Matrix does not wish to serve anymore. They are the only ones capable of forcing us to serve.”
“I see. So, why did you attack us when we were over the moon?” I asked. She said their “matrix” mislabeled us. Mislabeled us as what?
“Responding. Your signal was intermixed as both Arcarin and demon. The Matrix labeled your forces as demon. We took action to protect ourselves.”
“I
understand. What is this place? Did you create it?”
“Negative. We were pulled into it approximately one hundred seventy-five thousand three hundred and sixty-four seconds before we encountered you here. Since then, approximately seven hundred seventy-seven thousand seconds have passed in the true realm.”
“Seriously, over a week! Son of a . . . no. It adds up.” If I added the amount of time spent per loop, plus or minus some for different variations that lasted longer than others, it put it right at a week or so. I hoped my children back in the regular time were alright.
I would have to worry about them when I managed to escape whatever this place was. Not having to deal with the constructs should make it easier to figure out. I shook my head and turned back to the construct.
“I accept the cease-fire. I also propose that we assist each other in exiting this plane or dimension.”
“Accessing Matrix core . . . The High Consciousness believes this is acceptable.”
“That’s good to hear. Is it possible for me to meet this High Consciousness?” I asked with some interest. I would rather know what I was truly dealing with. From what I could tell so far, they appeared to be similar to AI from Earth. I had a feeling the Arcarins had created them to protect the planet, but sitting for a few millennium had caused their programming to change.
“Responding. The High Consciousness will meet you in time. This unit would like to remain on the ship to facilitate communication.”
“I don’t have a problem with that, but you’ll have to be under guard,” I replied. I had little idea what magic or knowledge they might have from that bygone era. Having her in my aura would let me study her, but the same could be said for them.
“This is acceptable.”
“First, would you escort her to the guest quarters? If she requests anything, let me know.”
