NOVEL NEXT 115 - Threshold of the Precipice
"Another way," Gelias said. "Whatever could you mean, Beatrice?"
"Well, if I know Betty…" Rory began.
"We could fight our way out of here," Beatrice said. "Tell the Empire. Tell the Omnio what he's doing. Maybe they'll send that Agent back, the one who mysteriously appeared. They seemed to know each other. Maybe he'll have a better chance at convincing Archmund to give up on whatever he's doing."
"Thought you'd say something like that," Rory said.
Beatrice didn't answer.
"When the Omnio send in their Sacred Guard after a living noble? That's not out of the kindness of their hearts," Rory said. "I know all about the knights and soldiers of the Empire."
"Don't they do plenty of rescue missions?" Beatrice said. "That's what the Sacred Guard is for. To make the lands safe, and to rescue high-value people lost in Dungeons."
"Yeah, but they lose a lot of the people they're supposedly rescuing," Rory said. "I almost think it's part of the design, taking out nobles that have fallen to the temptations of the Dungeon. And if Archmund's gone, the last person remaining with a claim to the Granavale lands would be…"
"I'm not closely related enough to him," Beatrice said. "My father and his mother were siblings. He had a greater claim on Blackstone than I do on Granavale."
Rory snorted. "We all saw how the Lord Granavale doted on you. If Archmund gets tragically lost down here, I'd bet he names you the Granavale heir."
Beatrice looked pale for a moment. Something gleamed in her eye.
"Imagine that," Gelias said. "It seems Archmund is hardly the only one being tempted by power in this Dungeon."
"That seems like it would be rather inconvenient for me, actually," Beatrice said. "I mean, having to deal with Granavale and Blackstone? I hate taking the carriage between them. The hills are far too steep, the roads far too winding. Plus all I've known is coal and darkness. I couldn't deal with whatever silly tournaments he throws and trinkets his people make. I'd rather that he do stupid things like that. It means I can focus on things that matter. We should get him back."
It was, all things considered, an immensely selfish proclamation that conveniently required rescuing Archmund from whatever situation he was in.
"I mean, I like my house. My current house. And my parents. Even if they're mean, they're still my parents," Beatrice said.
Rory and Gelias didn't say anything.
"Really!"
"Are you trying to convince us or yourself?" Rory said. "We get it, Betty!"
"It's almost like you actually enjoy his company."
"It's a matter of duty! If I'm he only heir to Granavale and Blackstone, then I'd have to settle for all manner of inconvenient marriages because of the worth of my titles. But if he can take some of the heat, then no one's going to want to marry me just to get an irrelevant county like Blackstone."
"You're pulling out a lot of meaningless reasons," Rory said. "It's cute. Glad to have you back."
Beatrice shot him a glare, and then sighed.
"If only I had been more convincing," Beatrice said. "Then we could just drag him out of here and we'd be done with all this."
"If he'd just let me help him," Rory said.
"If he wasn't such a blockhead," said Beatrice.
"I have faith in him," Gelias said.
"You were the one comparing him to the Frontier Dungeon and its Demon Lords…" Rory said.
"And he's the type to fall into temptation," said Beatrice.
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"Sarcastic. Abrasive. Hungry. Megalomaniacal," said Rory.
"Smiles instead of ever saying anything's wrong. Won't rely on help from anyone. Tries to carry everyone's burden on his shoulders. Throws himself into danger."
"Stop flirting," Gelias said.
"We're not!"
"He has an ambition that all of us share," Gelias said. "I won't deny that. He pairs that ambition with recklessness, discarding the traditional wisdom of Dungeoneering and Adventurecraft in favor of chasing raw, immediate power — a temptation I know you, Beatrice, must resist yourself."
"What do you think you know about me?"
"I notice your attempts to mimic my gifts with your own wooden trinkets. It won't work simply because of how our souls are structured. You glom onto others' successes. It's quite endearing."
"I've never brought those within miles of you!" Beatrice's mouth fell open. "You're that sensitive to it? Shit!!"
"Archmund's ambition, his hunger, is what drew us to him. His success begets further success, and we follow that in hopes of attaining our own victories. And yes — some of that is driven by his… more asocial personality traits. I find that much like myself he's a condescending jerk to can't help but look down on people, yet despite that, or perhaps because of it, he can't help but throw himself into the paths of others, to adopt burdens he can hardly bear himself — much like yourself, Rory."
Rory scratched the back of his head. "If I can take it easier than others, then why shouldn't I? Isn't that what the whole "noblesse oblige" idea's about?"
"You've convinced me we've got to pull him out of there ourselves, Gelias," Beatrice said. "But how? He's so much stronger than we are."
"I fled as soon as I felt his Charisma spike," Gelias said. "We have a few options. We could train to enhance our own abilities to resist his powers, a tactic that is almost certainly not going to bear fruit, or we could search this place for artifacts that could give us temporarily boosts akin to his."
"He gave me a Gem," Rory said. "It made me think clearer."
"May I?" Gelias said, and Rory nodded. Gelias ran his magic over the Gem, a miniature diagram of the Dungeon's magical hierarchy glowing in his eyes.
"It's clean," Gelias said with some surprise. "No influence from the Dungeon. No attempts to keep you ensnared in the hierarchy. He genuinely wants us free and thinking clearly. He genuinely wants us to stand on our own feet and lend him our strength."
"I still had faith in him," Rory said.
"Yeah, but you have faith in me," Beatrice said. "Which says a lot about you as a judge of character."
"One day you'll see," Rory said. "One day you'll see that I'm actually a great judge of character!"
"I told you two to stop flirting already," Gelias said.
"We're not!"
"The issue is that any artifacts from the Dungeon, whether taken from Monsters, run the risk of being tied into its magical web. Once sucked into the magical web, users of it risk being sucked into it as well. Usually, the effect is weak. Unnoticeable. But when a Dungeon is actively being tuned to absorb energy, or if there's a sufficiently powerful mythology around that Dungeon…"
"You end up with the Omnio Dungeon and the Empire or the Holy Dungeon and the Church," Beatrice said. "But Granavale doesn't mean anything like that. Surely the magic web isn't strong enough for that. So are our hands tied?"
"No," Gelias said. "Archmund, whether or by accident or design, broke the connection between your Gems and the Dungeon when he… 'fired' you. I can't say the same would apply to anything else formed of Dungeon miasma — but I can check. There's plenty of raw material here, and if all else fails, if he lets us down one more time and is weaker than we imagined, we can make some ropes, tie him up, and drag him out ourselves."
Sometimes, Archmund felt like his hands were tied.
Stuck in a rut.
Walking in circles.
No matter how much he did, the Tabula Rasa project failed to move forward.
He'd forgotten himself. He hadn't successfully created SMART goals. That meant he wasn't going to make meaningful progress.
Had any of his SMART goals actually worked out? Had he actually stuck with them?
This was what project managers were for. They could take the difficult work of keeping everything organized and make it make sense.
Unfortunately, Mary was unconscious. He'd fired everyone else. Gemmy was… he didn't know what Gemmy was.
"I can turn your goal of a Tabula Rasa Monster into a SMART goal for you! Would you like some help with that!"
"Sure," Archmund said. "Go ahead. And don't eavesdrop on my thoughts."
Gemmy spat out a list reformatted as a SMART goal:
Specific: Create a Tabula Rasa Monster, a Monster that can be molded arbitrarily into Gems with any specifications
Measurable: It will look white instead of black, regardless of what stats it has.
Attainable: It's probably possible. Anything you imagine can be done!
Relevant: Which will help you attain ever greater power
Time bound: Before the end of eternity.
Really if nothing else it emphasized just how unlikely these goals were.
He needed a break. He stood up from his desk, feeling the sudden shock of blood returning to his limbs. Just how long had he been sitting there?
He almost tripped over his own feet. Was he that much tireder than he'd realized? It had only been a few hours, and he'd moved around plenty, to terminate the Monsters or collect their output. He hadn't spent that much magic feeding into the loop.
Perhaps it was just the psychic backlash of being in an office environment, doing office-like work. Being in a place like this drained his vitality as surely as it drained his attention, funneling it all up the hierarchy to make the big boss at the very top rich.
But that didn't make sense. Wasn't he at the very top of the pyramid? Even if the place was inverted, he was still at the peak, or the zenith, or what have you.
He walked up to the great blue window that peeked out into an endless illusion of eternity.