NOVEL NEXT 78 - Back 2 the Dungeon (For Real This Time)
"It really is creepy," Mary whispered, awe in her voice as she looked around. "It's just like the manor."
She broke away touched one of the large, wall-spanning windows with her finger.
"The glass feels the same," she announced to the group. She made no mention of the impenetrable darkness that lied beyond it.
Rory, Gelias, and Beatrice had mixed expressions on their faces as they examined the false manor that was the Lowest of Tier 1, at the charred wooden drawers and burned curtains and fire-pockmarked carpet from Archmund's last battle. Rory looked over them with bemusement, Beatrice with a troubled look on her face, and Gelias with cool impassivity.
They followed him slowly, meandering to the chthonic mirror of his room, where the gateway to the Middle Tier awaited.
It was just like his room, the bed and chairs laid out just like he remembered, the walls covered with bookshelves and half-read books, though only Mary would know that. He'd never invited any of the others into his chambers.
And there was a wide open window on the wall, that in the living world showed the bucolic and arcadian planes of Granavale County. Fields of grain. Meadows of grass. Trodden dirt roads.
The window itself rippled like an oil slick, distorting the image of florescent white lighting upon endless gray corridors, walls of drab carpeted gray, the industrial drabness of a cubicle farm.
Were they cubicles? He couldn't say. But they looked it. That, or prison cells.
He couldn't begin to imagine the sorts of monsters that lurked here.
"Why are we here?" Beatrice said.
Archmund took a breath.
"I'm going."
"What?"
Beatrice was alone in her disbelief.
"Wait, did you guys know about this?"
"I had a guess," Rory said. "He's like you, you know."
"No I'm not." "No he's not."
"What Rorhid means," Gelias said, "is that both of you are… impulsive, easily driven by desire. Both obsessed with strength and power. Both, to your misfortune, bestowed with it: We have attained power beyond most of our peers through real-world dungeoneering experience, and yet we have hit a plateau. Accepting the next great challenge was logical. Inevitable. Didactic."
"Of course I knew."
That was Mary, but the nobles weren't completely sure how to act around her, so they gave only slight acknowledgment of her deep knowledge of Archmund.
"I'm with you," Mary said. "You were going to ask, weren't you?"
No point in false modesty or dancing around the obvious.
"I was," Archmund said. "I need to harness the power of the next Tier, and this time, I don't want the Omnio looking over my shoulder as I do it."
Mercy Stirpstredecim di Omnio had been an invaluable battle buddy and a friend, but she had been lying to him the whole time they knew each other. And she had done something to make his Dungeon poorer, somehow. Even if they'd had an unspoken unsteady agreement to explore the Middle Tier together, that was no longer an option.
"But I can't force you to come with me," he said. "I'm asking. But I'm not going to bother convincing you."
Well, he could force Mary, but he wasn't going to, and he also wasn't going to need to. As for the others…
Rory could draw the fire of others, so he'd be useful to have around. But he couldn't morally justify asking someone to come along as a punching bag. But Rory was nice enough to volunteer anyways.
He couldn't get a read on Gelias, but while he provided valuable kill power, Archmund had enough of that on his own.
Beatrice he expected to refuse, which would be more than fine.
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Mary was unhealthily devoted to him already. He probably couldn't convince her to stay behind if he tried.
"Do you really have to?" Beatrice said. "We've gotten real good at killing those Starbeasts. I've already started mailing my friends, and they want cloaks like these."
"You have other friends?"
"Uh, yes? Don't you?"
He didn't answer that because he didn't know how he currently stood with the crown princess. And also because she had said friends, plural. Four and a half friends was plenty. Really.
(Beatrice was only half because family didn't count as friends.)
"I'm going," Rory said. "You'll get yourself killed if I don't."
He flashed a winning smile. How irritating.
"I'm going," said Gelias. He didn't give a reason, feigned or otherwise.
"I'm going," said Mary, inevitably. She was never going to let him die alone.
"Fine," Beatrice said. "You think I'm going to stay behind?"
Ah, peer pressure. Back in his old world it got kids a bit above his current age to do risky behaviors like drink alcohol or do drugs. Here apparently it made them risk their lives in futile quests.
Not like he had room to talk.
"Your parents will kill me if you die, you know," he said.
"Then you'd better keep me alive."
Archmund opened his mouth to respond, and then didn't. Someone had died on his watch. Technically. Maybe he was taking too much credit for it. Was it really his fault for asking someone to hire — no, retain — a guard who ended up dying? This was just like when J. Robert Oppenheimer ended up crying to President Harry Truman about how his atom bomb had killed so many people, only for President Truman to say that Oppenheimer hadn't been the one to drop the bomb — Truman had. And then he'd called Oppenheimer a whiny little shit and kicked him out of the White House.
This was just like that.
"Let me rephrase," Beatrice said. She had a very minimal interest in their familial bond. "I'm not going to fall behind you or anyone. I've already needed to spend so much time on catching up. I won't let you stop me."
"C'mon, Betty," Rory said. "You're always like this."
"I mean you guys cheated. You jumped ahead. You with your Gemstone Gear and Gelias with his elf powers. Meanwhile I'm stuck with my Onyx of Darkness. Obviously you're jumping ahead of me. But that doesn't make me useless!"
And there it was.
Did he sound like this?
Had he ever sounded like this? Whining about his comparative disadvantage, while at the same time clawing desperately to leverage it?
Still, he couldn't really blame her for this.
She was just at an unspeakable disadvantage, because he had the magic spreadsheets of his Gemstone Tablet, while she did not.
The truth was that he wasn't sure he could keep them alive. He wasn't sure all five of them would come back from the Dungeon, hale and whole.
But he wasn't in the position to refuse them.
As young as they all were, they were nobles of the Omnio Empire. Though these days nobles mostly acted like typical rich aristocrats, they were also the sacred few entrusted with Gems, granted the power and the right to use magic, in service of taming Dungeons and keeping the world at peace.
(He was vaguely aware that there was some jurisprudence that governed the role of independent adventurers. He had no idea what that jurisprudence was.)
Mary was an exception, but she had sworn her life to the cause for other reasons.
"I have no idea what to expect on the other side of this," he said, pushing at the oil window. It rippled and flexed back at his touch, waves undulating through it. "But I'm glad to have you with me."
It wasn't even a lie. It was always useful to have distractions.
They pushed through the window that rippled like oil. It felt thick upon the skin, like fog that left no moisture, heavy and enervating.
And once all five of them pushed through to the other side, what awaited was not quite like what they'd seen.
Yes, there was a corridor. Yes, there were endless cubicles. But in the distance.
Imagine the modern office campus with an open office plan. Imagine a Silicon Valley campus, a place that pretends to be a home as well as a workplace, where one can spend sixteen hours a day devoted to Deep Thought. Bookshelves, filled with binders full of resumes and corporate policy and meaningless drivel no one's read in years.
Imagine a swanky corporate office in New York City, where every pantry is stocked with free snacks, and every computer has three monitors, and the floorplan is filled with wide open spaces where you can hang out instead of doing work.
Imagine a corporate lobby. Drab and lacking in life and purpose, an entire ground floor dedicated solely to reception, gates, elevators. There's an entire wall dedicated to a simple fountain that's nothing more than a single row of water pouring down a slap of black granite. Water cycling endlessly with no purpose.
Of course, this is just what Archmund thought of — those places a world away, a lifetime ago. The corporate campus, replete with mandatory fun, despite the earth-tone colors of the Dungeon, the sallowing light with no source, the grand and vaulting architecture that evoked the Pantheon of Rome. To Beatrice and Mary and Rory and Gelias, this place no doubt reminded them of the Imperial Capital, or the University of Mages, or the Holy City, and their vaulting halls and luxurious fountains and ornaments of glory.
That is what the opening of the Second Tier looked like, somewhat. But with the gaudiness of the mimicry of classical architecture, aping marble and black granite and gold. Where the obligatory plants are tropical, palms and pineapples and cacti and amaranth.
The drab gray corridors of the Dungeon have given way to haunting, cavernous widths. A palace, grander than Granavale Manor. Laid out as to be welcoming. Yet in the distance, past this grand entrance hall, past the only way forward, the Dungeon proper remains, marked by row after row of tedious cubicle.
He wondered what they thought of this place.
"Eyes up," Rory said, grabbing their attention, drawing them away from marveling at the spectacle of the Second Tier. "We've got a welcome party."
He pointed towards the distance gateway, the only way forward and into the Dungeon.
Darkness amassed, twining upon itself, drawing itself up into a thin, needly shape with distended limbs and fingers.
Archmund's breath caught in his throat.
It looked like a Monster he'd already slain once.
It looked like the Ghost of All Granavale.