A Pug's Journey (Cultivation Starts with Breathing)

I was in heaven. Or at least, my taste buds thought they were.

With a blissful snarl, I clenched down harder, feeling the bone crunch satisfyingly between my jaws.

A cloud of age-old dust puffed out from the crack in the marrow. It wasn't exactly the juicy treat of my dreams, but beggars can't be choosers.

And I, apparently, couldn't be stopped.

"Unhand me, you vile beast! I demand a death of dignity!" the skeleton hollered.

Hard to be intimidating when someone has their teeth sunk into your humerus, I suppose.

I barely spared him a glance. My body had fully betrayed my higher reasoning, descending into a kind of gnawing glee. I hadn't savored a bone in ages, and now I had a whole animated skeleton's worth at my disposal.

"Insolent… mongrel!" the skeleton sputtered. His free arm, well, the one I wasn't currently chewing, flailed around as if searching for something.

Probably his sword, which I dimly recall to have clattered to the floor when I tackled him.

"I… I am the King of ████████!" he wheezed out. Weirdly, as he said a name, it was like hearing static in my ears, a muffled blank where the words should be.

I paused my gnawing. The King of… what? Did he just speak nonsense?

I spat out a splinter of bone and loosened my paw-grip on what remained of his arm.

"What did you say?" I asked bluntly, tilting my head. "King of where?"

The skeleton's skull swiveled toward me. "Uneducated cur! I am ████████, King of ████████!" he proclaimed again.

There it was again, the garbled distortion. I could see his jaw moving; I knew he was saying something important, but I simply couldn't make it out.

I released what remained of the skeleton's humerus from my mouth and sat back on my haunches, panting slightly.

Around us was a chaotic scatter of bones: a rib here, a femur there. And yet, the exit hadn't revealed itself.

Perhaps I needed to do something specific, like finish him off entirely by destroying the skull.

The skeleton seemed to realize this too. He fell silent, the blue lights in his eyes dimming. His skull slumped slightly forward from its base atop a few remaining vertebrae.

"You do not know…?" he said with a sign of resignation in his voice. "I see. So, it finally happened."

I blinked. The fury was gone from his tone. He almost sounded sad.

Before I could puzzle it out further, a new scent suddenly entered my snout, cutting through the musty odor of decay. I lifted my head just in time to see a ripple in the air to my right.

A ball of water larger than my head was heading straight toward me.

I yelped in surprise and tried to dodge, but I was a bit too slow. The water smashed over my face and instantly enveloped my entire head like a fishbowl. Cold liquid filled my nostrils and eyes.

My claws shot up, trying to swipe it away, but the water stuck. Clinging to my head.

It even followed when I moved. Like a sphere locked in place.

I thrashed once. Twice.

I growled, muffled. Tried to claw again, but it slipped around my paws like it was alive.

I had no idea where it came from.

But someone was trying to drown me.

A slender figure stepped carefully through the stone arch half-buried in the desert sand. The woman paused only to pull a small vial from her satchel.

She uncorked it and poured out a handful of clear water, which immediately swirled and solidified into a large curved wedge of ice in the air. With practiced ease, she drove the ice down into the sand at a few feet from the base of the arch.

Before long, the outline of a heavy stone door was revealed beneath the dunes.

Brushing sweat and sand from her brow, the woman gave a firm shove. The door groaned open, releasing a puff of stale air from the darkness below. She melted her ice and returned it to the vial, then pulled a lantern from her bag and lit it.

She began her descent into the dungeon's depths.

The wide stairway beyond the entrance burrowed deep underground. Each step blew dust into the air.

The lantern's light bobbed gently in her grasp as she reached the bottom. Another large stone door, this one carved with symbols of trials and triumphs. What immediately caught her attention, though, was the rough hole torn through the door's center.

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The edges of the opening were splintered and gouged, as if some great beast had clawed its way through.

The woman's eyes narrowed. This weird opening in the door was not mentioned in any of her research notes. She carefully slipped through the jagged gap into the chamber beyond, storing the lantern back in her bag.

Torchlight fell upon rubble scattered across a sandy floor.

In the far corner lay the massive remnants of a shattered stone statue—the guardian that was supposed to greet any challenger here.

According to her notes, a golem in this room would normally pose a riddle, testing a challenger's wisdom. She had memorized the ten possible riddles and their answers in preparation. Yet now, the guardian lay in crumbled pieces.

She wondered if this was what happened if the guardian's riddle was correctly answered.

A mix of relief and unease fluttered in her chest. 'Someone's here.'

And recently, by the look of it.

The woman advanced cautiously, walking towards the next doorway at the opposite end of the hall. It stood open, likely left that way by the previous visitor. She stepped through into a long corridor lined with faded murals, the floor covered in suspiciously uneven tiles.

This was the third trial. She knew it from her research: a hall of traps designed to test caution and cunning. As long as one stuck to the safe path, which she'd painstakingly mapped out already, one could avoid triggering the pressure plates that unleashed arrows laced with deadly poison.

Yet as she looked further into the hallway, her breath caught. The corridor was a porcupine's nightmare of arrows. Dozens upon dozens of slender shafts protruded from the walls and floor at haphazard angles. Some had even pierced straight through the murals.

The air carried a faint acrid tang that made her nose wrinkle, a lingering musk of poison.

She knelt briefly, examining one of the arrowheads embedded in a crack on the floor. The tip glistened with a sticky dark residue.

She rose carefully to her feet and peered down the length of the hallway. Every trap had already been sprung. Whoever passed through here must have set them all off deliberately..

The unease in the woman's chest grew stronger. Someone surprisingly resourceful was a step ahead of her.

She continued on, tip-toeing over the arrows, following in the stranger's footsteps. At the end of the corridor, another large stone door waited.

She simply pushed and it gave way, revealing a wide chamber filled with rows of stone soldiers. Five hundred of them, if her research was correct.

This trial was meant to test leadership and perception: the challenger needed to identify the five finest warriors among the ranks to proceed. She'd been prepared to spend a careful hour here, studying stances and inscriptions on the soldiers' armor to pick out the elite five.

Instead, she was greeted with the sight of yet another door at the far end already breached. A ragged opening had been clawed directly through its center, just like the previous second door she saw.

She had suspicions now. Could it be that the being that passed before her broke the trials through sheer force?

'No way, right?'

The woman huffed a quiet, incredulous laugh.

She waalked between the stone soldiers, feeling their blank eyes upon her as she passed. A part of her regretted not getting to challenge these trials properly; after all, trials deserved at least a modicum of respect. But another part of her was grateful for the quick passage.

Entering the next chamber, the woman nearly gasped aloud.

Piles of gold, silver, and gemstones glittered in the light, heaped almost carelessly across the floor. Treasures beyond counting, enough to ransom a kingdom, lay everywhere. This would tempt even the most stoic hero.

Immediately, she felt the tug of greed, an almost overwhelming urge to fill her pockets then and there. Who would ever know?

However, she bit her lip and tore her eyes away. According to her notes, this trial allowed a challenger to take up to three pieces of treasure, no more, or risk being cursed.

She had no intention of jeopardizing her mission for a few shiny treasures… no matter how exquisitely that diamond necklace draped over a golden chalice happened to sparkle.

Mindful of the limit, the woman allowed herself three careful selections: a ruby earring the size of a quail's egg, a delicate bracelet inlaid with opals, and a palm-sized golden idol of a cat with twin emeralds for eyes.

Each item she wrapped in a bit of cloth and tucked into her satchel. Three pieces, as permitted.

If nothing else, she thought with a faint smile, she'd at least come away with some compensation for this expedition.

Treasure secured, she crossed the vault, sidestepping an overturned chest of coins that had spilled across the stone floor. At the vault's exit stood the final door. She pushed it open cautiously and revealed a scene she could never have anticipated.

Bones everywhere. The remains of a skeleton, the Forgotten King himself, were scattered across the dais and floor. And sitting amid those bones was a large beast, munching on its bones.

It was chewing something. Gnawing, actually.

A femur protruded from its mouth like a drumstick clutched between canines. Rib bones lay snapped nearby.

She froze.

Her fingers tightened on her satchel strap as her brain caught up with what her eyes were already screaming.

A snubbed muzzle, thick neck, mud-brown fur, and that unmistakable way of sitting.

Pophet.

She didn't say it aloud.

'Why is he here?'

But before she could make sense of anything, she saw the Godbeast raise its paw, as if about to strike the skeleton's skull.

The skull looked at her, and the blue light in its eyes made her realize who it was.

The Forgotten King.

A cursed king sealed with memory and pride, awaiting a challenger to bear his gift forward.

She raised a finger slowly, pointing it towards the Godbeast. Water surged from her bag, gathering into a sphere. It hovered for a heartbeat before shooting across the room.

As the ball of water flew, the Godbeast's nose twitched faintly before turning towards her.

BAM—!

Water wrapped around Pophet's head like a liquid helmet. He yelped, thrashing, clawing wildly at the fluid encasing his face.

Aephelia winced. She didn't want to hurt him, only enough to subdue and make him lose consciousness.

She stepped past the struggling beast and toward the throne, crouching before what was left of the Forgotten King. Gently, she lifted his skull with both hands, brushing the dust clean.

She asked him a question. "Do you know who you are?"

A pause. A long one.

Then, with a voice soaked in resignation:

"Yes. Cursed to whittle away until I find the worthy."

She swallowed, unsure what to say next.

But behind her, claws scraped stone.

Hrrkk-fff—Ghhrrk-huff!

The sound of heavy, wheezing breath. Wet fur. And then,

"Why are you here, Aephelia?"

His voice was calm. The water was gone.

She turned slowly.

Pophet stood behind her with a glare in his eyes.