Blue Core

Meil was worse off than when she’d left, but it hadn’t been fully converted yet. It was only a matter of time, but even a mage-king couldn’t simply swallow an entire city overnight. There was the tower, of course, that she’d seen rise over the course of a week or so. From there it seemed the mage-king had focused mostly on the noble quarter, but much of the merchant quarter was dungeon-stone too. The atmosphere was tense, but not as strained as when the tower first went up. The fact that they kept people fed, despite what fields had been burned and farmers killed, was probably why.

People lined up at a shop where the core’s brown cauls created raw meat and vegetables, which the vendors turned into something edible. Neither of those things looked as good as the stuff her dungeon made, and she knew from experience the stuff wasn’t entirely healthy. In fact she was pretty certain it was one of the many ways the mage-kings siphoned off the health and skills of the people under their rule.

In fact she felt a little odd stepping onto the dungeon-stone as she made her way carefully through the crowd. Like something was splashing off her, a little bit like elemental protection did when it was active. Admittedly she’d only felt that in the first escape, when her Queen cast protections on them all.

She kept [Suppress Presence] as strong as she could make it, and not just for the visible agents of the mage-king. The red leathers were not, themselves, Flame Knight specific. Anyone who was serious about fire protection might have them. But they were of a quality enough to possibly draw unwanted attention, and even though she had Luck back finally she knew better to rely on it.

Past the merchant quarter and into the small priestly enclave, her ears twitched at the clipped sounds of the invader’s language. The core itself may not have been present, but the mage-king’s agents were. She actually wasn’t sure if they realized the Queen had escaped, was still trying to work against their control, to subvert their designs. Maybe they didn’t care.

Even if they didn’t, she made sure none of the human-like monsters, or actual humans, saw her walk past the servant sweeping the steps of the cathedral and give him a sign with three fingers. Nor did she let them notice when, not much later, she went to one of the plainer, smaller buildings for those seeking blessings. The priest there escorted her past both the inner door into the quarts and under a hidden slab in the rock. It was a passage concealed not by magic but by craftsmanship, created by some truly paranoid and prescient ancestor of the royal house.

“By the gods Shayma, it’s good to see you!” Tulk abandoned his role as ascetic confessor to envelop her in a hug, the big man making her spine creak with the force of it. The feeling of being watched over flickered for a moment, more intense, then faded again. “What happened? How’d you get out?”

“A lot of things, and Astair is dead.”

Tulk dropped her. “How’d you do that? And...abyss take me, is that his uniform?”

“I didn’t do it and yes it is. It’d be easier if you asked one question at a time.” She gave him a bit of a smile. “I need to speak to her. Soonest. I have a place for us to go.”

“Wait, what? That’s what you were doing? I thought you were supposed to be finding the...well, you know.”

“Tulk. Now.” She prodded his chest with a finger. “We’ll be here all day if I start answering you.”

“Fine, fine.”

They went further down, her skin prickling as they passed layers and layers of magic. Wards, protections, whatever other arcane things the Queen and her mages could come up with to hide them and protect them from the eye of the local mage-king. It was beyond her ken; her skills had very little to do with magic. But at least someone had spared enough power to keep the underground halls properly lit and clean.

Not as well lit or clean - or large - as the walls of the dungeon she’d found. That bore thinking about.

Queen Iniri was no further than at the end of the hall from the bottom of the stairs. A far cry from the palace, which of course no longer existed. Most of its marble had been absorbed into the mage-king’s tower, and the remainder was just...gone.

Iniri was in the middle of some sort of ritual casting when Tulk ushered her in, hands moving and voice rolling in a low murmur, but she still flashed a brilliant, toothy smile at Shayma. Toothy because Iniri was a kirin, one of the few demihuman ruling races, and had inherited the fangs of her mystical ancestors.

After a few minutes she finished, the incantation winding down and an additional prickle of magic running over Shayma’s skin. Then the Queen fairly launched herself at Shayma, abandoning dignity for an embrace. “You’re alive! Just...how? No one escapes that Flame Knight...prison.”

“It’s a lot easier when you’re a Seeker and the Flame Knight that’s supposed to be keeping you gets eaten by a dungeon.”

“He brought you to a dungeon?” Iniri lifted her expressive eyebrows.

“No.” Shayma considered how to tell the story. “He used a ritual to borrow my Seeker skill and find the first city-cube, which I’d hidden in a dungeon. He didn’t come back, and that gave me enough time to escape. With a second city-cube that Astair had found. I went to hide that one in the same dungeon and found...this.” She tapped the leathers she was wearing. “Along with a flame-knight badge, next to the first cube. So the dungeon got him.”

“Wait.” Iniri’s eyes narrowed. “You went in and out of a dungeon twice and the second time it just...let

you take things out of it?” She knew that Shayma’s Seeker skill locked out weapon skills, and while she still had stealth it wasn’t likely to be enough to go deep inside a dungeon.

“I did pay it,” Shayma said, not wanting to go into the details with Tulk and likely an invisible bodyguard or two in the room. “But yes.”

“Pay...Shayma, your skills are in bad shape as it is, you can’t afford that depletion.” Iniri was upset, and not just about that. Dungeon cores didn’t take many currencies.

“I...so here’s the thing.” She dug a coin out of her backpack and tossed it to Tulk. “Flip that.” He obeyed, and she started calling it. “Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads.”

“...you got [Luck] back? How?” Nobody got back what was lost by depletion. Either the mage-kings dungeon cores ate it, or, if the Depletion was from the random vagrancies of the world, it was just gone forever.

“The dungeon does anti-depletion.”

“No.”

“Yes. It’s a weird one too. It never tried to hurt me, it acted like it understood me. It doesn’t look like either the Great dungeons or the mage-king’s, and weirdest of all it made a little house on a lake for me to stay in the second time around.”

“Sounds like someone else has claimed it.” Iniri sounded thoughtful.

“Even if someone has they’re better hosts than the mage-kings, and you know this hidey-hole can’t last much longer.” Iniri’s mouth tightened at that, but Shayma persisted. “The city is gone, Your Majesty. I saw it when I came in. Nobody was upset, people were getting food and drink...you’re not going to be able to stir up a rebellion against that.”

Iniri’s eyes flashed. “You’re leading up to something.”

“I think we need to move there. We need a dungeon of our own to fight the mage-kings.”