NOVEL NEXT 114 - Rory is doing poorly and hates this job!
"You want to help me," Archmund said. He sounded incredulous. Rory had no clue why.
"Is it bothering you at all?" Rory said. "Needing to send Beatrice away?"
"No," Archmund snapped. "I mean… no, not really."
It was clearly bothering him. In such circumstances, Rory liked to stay silent and give the other person a chance to talk.
"Sometimes, Rory," Archmund said. "Well, you know firsthand that sometimes I don't explain all of the parts of my vision."
Rory snorted. He very clearly remembered Archmund's forehead bashing into his nose, all for the sake of his long-term economic plans for his county. Rory didn't even know where he'd gotten such ideas from. The closest things Rory had to that were wanting a cool castle to be an awesome knight.
Maybe it just came with the power of Gems. Already, the Gem of Mental Fortification was making it clearer to him that any good knight commander needed a whole bunch of knights to command, and that meant mouths to feed.
"Beatrice took issue with some parts of it," he said. "In a way that made it clear that she wouldn't be very productive moving forward."
"I'll admit this wasn't my first thought when I heard we'd be going on an adventure deeper into the Dungeon," Rory said. "I thought we'd be risking our lives more, but this is like we're farmers at the harvest."
Archmund kept silent. It was starting to make Rory uncomfortable. The silence was awkward, so he filled it.
"If you don't feel good about this — any of this — please just tell me. I'm sure there's something I can do."
"Why are you so convinced I don't feel good about it?"
"Because you're my friend, and because I know you care about people. Even if you pretend that you don't."
"Friends," Archmund said, turning the word over in his mouth. "Friends. You have too much faith in me."
Rory sighed. He reached for his back and drew his Gemstone Quarterstaff, intending to twirl it around, but quick as a whip, Archmund's Gemstone Rapier was in his hands, and he knocked the staff out of Rory's.
"What was that for?" Rory said, though he was more confused than angry.
"Sorry," Archmund said. "But that staff of yours — you know it gives you the power to influence minds, right?"
"I would never," Rory said indignantly. "I would never influence the minds of my friends like that! That would just be messed up!"
"Right," Archmund said. "Right. It would be, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah!" Rory said. "And I know you feel the same way. I've seen how well you treat Mary. You're practically looking for an excuse to let her roam the Empire as a free woman but with your legal backing. You'd never stand for mind control. Which is why I'm glad to have you as a staunch ally."
No matter what Archmund was going through, Rory meant it. He liked Archmund, but he wasn't stupid. Archmund was going places in life, but he also had the potential for great darkness. He could feel it in his soul. And if he could do anything to keep him on a good path, then he was more than glad to reap any of the side benefits.
Archmund looked stricken for a second, but his face smoothed over with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I'm really glad you feel that way, Rory," he said. "I'm glad we've worked together."
"Why are you talking in the past tense?"
"Past tense…"
"You don't know what past tense means? You did skip half our grammar lessons—"
"I do. I know what it means," Archmund said. "You're right, Rory. I can't make you do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. Not much longer. This is something I have to do on my own."
"Wait, Archmund. What are you saying—"
A portal opened in front of Rory, dilating open with the power of the Dungeon. But this one was rimmed with familiar red fire, the color of Archmund's Gem, not the blue of his raw magic or the colors of the Dungeon.
"I think it's best that you go," Archmund said. "I'll send you to where I sent Beatrice. You can take care of her and help her make her way back up. I'll be out soon. But I can't force you to help me anymore. It wouldn't feel right."
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"Hey, wait a minute. You're not forcing me to do anything. If you've got some burden, you can tell me!"
Archmund paused, but he didn't close the portal. "Tell her I'm sorry."
Before Rory could protest, the portal swept over him, carrying him away.
His staff, once the portal was cut off, started rocketing after him through the halls of the Dungeon.
And that brought Archmund to the fifteenth hour of his ascendancy.
He was starting to look at his portal spell and his Power to Fire in a new light. He'd achieved… something special. Non-linear, non-obvious growth. An emergent power, from components that shouldn't have been interrelated.
The Cufflinks were loot from the Dungeon that enhanced his mental authority so people would obey his commands. His knowledge of dropoff locations was granted by the map on the Gemstone Tablet. His ability to bend space was granted by the Diamond Hand.
But the Fire was his.
Not quite as his as the Infrared Lance, his first Awakening and first subversion of the strictures of Enchantment. But Fire was his power regardless.
He checked his tablet. There were only two entries still accessible: his own and Mary's. Somehow, Firing his friends had cut off their connection to the Dungeon.
Somehow, that lightened the grim darkness in his heart.
Maybe he was smarter than he thought. Maybe that would set them free. Free from whatever specter possessed him, the specter of capitalism. Metaphorically, of course. As far as he could tell, his mind and all his choices had been fully his own.
They'd been more pliant than he would've liked. They'd started to wake up a bit, towards the end, after he'd given them the Gems of Mental Fortification. But that had led to the end of the viability of their participation. He'd sent Beatrice away frankly in a fit of rage, because she'd dared to challenge him, and then he'd sent away Rory in a fit of guilt, because he'd stumbled into discussions of mental influence.
Really, he was flawed. The world would be so much simpler if he knew what everyone was thinking and how to manipulate them perfectly. But even his Gemstone Tablet couldn't manage that, and he couldn't imagine how horrifying it would be to be the only thinking mind left in a world of puppets.
Now he was alone. He was no longer weighed down by them, and they no longer had to put up with his excesses. This was a victory for all of them.
The work could continue. The empty dead could do the manual labor of self-consumption and self-destruction — it would just be a little less efficient and a little less manageable.
Really, he was fine.
Definitely fine.
There were still problems that bothered him — where exactly was the power associated with "lost" stats when Monsters ate each other going, for example? That power wasn't reabsorbed by the Dungeon fully to spawn new Monsters, so where did it end up?— but he had ample time now to investigate them.
Everything was fine.
Progress would go a little slower without his assistants, but Mary would surely be fully healed up soon, and she could step back in. In the meantime, he could dedicate this time not to churning out decent Gems worth selling but development of a Tabula Rasa — a Monster that could be shaped into Gems with any properties he could imagine. He could dedicate all the miasma of the Dungeon — whatever of it wasn't lost to the mists — towards this specific experiment.
It was harder than he imagined. He hadn't made any real progress since sending Beatrice away. But it was genuinely a good idea. After Awakening a Gem, a skilled practitioner could wring out a few novel uses of its power. But imagine how much faster and more powerful he could become if he could get Skills ready-made from them.
He had time, and he could focus now. He didn't have to worry about improving their equipment so they wouldn't be a burden to him. That was all on them now.
"Rory!" Beatrice shouted as a portal appeared, dropping him in front of her and Gelias.
"Did you leave, or did he send you away?" Gelias asked.
"He sent me away," Rory said. Gelias's face darkened.
"Oh, don't look at me like that, Gelias," Rory said. "My head feels clearer now. Was he doing something to us?"
Gelias nodded.
"Is it possible he was being controlled by something else, too?" Rory said. "Something more powerful than him."
"What do you think?" Gelias asked.
"No," Beatrice said. "That's just how he is."
Rory nodded. "That's just how he is."
Gelias sighed. "I suppose the servile aspects of your nature made you more susceptible to such influences, Rorhid. And you, Beatrice — can you really say you wouldn't have done the same, if you'd been put in his position?"
"He certainly didn't seem to think so," Beatrice spat. "Said I wasn't good enough."
"Was he meaner than usual?" Gelias said.
"No."
"If anything, he seemed torn towards the end," Rory said.
"Then there's hope," Gelias said. "We can pull him out of there."
"Why should we?" Beatrice said. "He seems happy. He kicked us out. He was meddling with our minds!"
"He was barely meddling with your minds," Gelias said. "Can you honestly say anything you said or did wasn't something you could have done naturally under other circumstances?"
"That's the worst kind of mind magic!" Beatrice said. "The kind where you can't tell you're being controlled."
"He said he'd come out of it on his own soon enough," Rory said.
"Do you really believe that?" Gelias said.
The other two were silent.
"The Church and the Empire have been at each others' throats for generations," Gelias said. "A conflict for which most pure elves care little. But I… well, I've inherited their memories. It's one thing for a Dungeon to ruin a prosperous County by turning it into a dungeon-based economy. It's happened often. That's not the worst thing that could happen."
"You sound like my erstwhile cousin," Beatrice said. "He was monologuing about that."
"No, the worst thing that could happen… is a human—it's always one of your kind—who gets completely consumed by the temptations of a Dungeon, and then brings it to the outside world. Why do you think, after two thousand years of civilization and imperial rule, that we have a Frontier at all?"
"You're losing me," Beatrice said. "But ruling like a king of the dead is what… what he was tempted with before down here."
"Then the situation is even worse than I thought," Gelias said. "Like you said, the worst kind of mind control is the kind you can't distinguish from your own thoughts."
"But I don't think we're strong enough to face him on our own," Beatrice said. "Is there another option?"