Dungeons & Grandma's

But Eileen does not look triumphant, she looks tired, held together in the way mountains are tired. So she lifts the teapot on the table and hugs it, the lingering warmth carrying her off into the light.

There is a moment when light stops feeling bright and in that moment it becomes something quieter. Not a flash, nor a burst, but the steady hush of something beginning again in the moment after the world stood frozen in consideration.

For Eileen, the space she finds herself arriving in exists without edges. It is a place where warm air wraps around and the ground beneath her feet feels bouncy like a castle on a child's birthday. The white light of the space surrounding her completely here in a way that does not ask to be looked at, only sat with.

Everything is white but not in a way that feels empty, instead it feels more like a room where someone recently left, and their warmth is still lingering. Much like the goodbye moment friends make when they leave your home for their own.

Yet the space around her is not silent for something has already begun to speak. Not with a voice, but with presence. A question arriving in her mind like a file sliding across a table. It waits for her to read it, and it waits with patience.

You have fulfilled all conditions for the Emergency Override Protocol. Would you like to assume full governance of Orrynthal's Dungeon?

There is no pressure behind the question for it is not a summons or a lure in the same way Orrynthal has phrased it. Instead it is more like a well labeled button that someone has left uncovered, expecting her to press it out of obligation or perhaps curiosity.

But pushing it would have never felt right and so Eileen takes a breath. Not because she needs to, but because the action helps her ponder why the word governance does not sit comfortably in her thoughts. Ponder on how it reminds her of heavy desks and long corridors, of people arguing over maps drawn on paper that forgets there are real lives underneath the ink.

"No, thank you," she says aloud, her voice not echoing per say, more carrying. "I've no interest in governing anything. I only came to help. I'm sure someone else can fix all of Orrynthal's mistakes, I already have my hands full with parenting."

There is a pause in the air, not a silence per say, but a stillness that listens. The system seeming to wait not for confirmation of her act, but for understanding the intent behind the why having only expected acceptance.

Decline registered.
Control remains unassigned.
Awaiting primary.

Then, gently, from above, a figure begins to appear. Floating down in the way dreams do, becoming visible from the edges inward and stopping before Eileen with grace.

The figures' clothing appears soft and vague as they assume a sitting position shaped by comfort more than fashion. A face composed in quiet somberness mixed with a hint of youth, but not young youth, more the manufactured kind that comes from the pain of keeping beauty around after time has long since faded it away.

"I wanted it to be beautiful," they begin, the sentence hanging there a moment, with a softness that suggests it is not often said out loud even if it should be. The figures gaze drifting then toward the sheer white horizon, where the whiteness of the space glows with something that isn't light, just memory lingering long after countless moments have passed.

"I wanted it to be a place of wonder, of little tricks, of tunnels that curled in on themselves like sleeping cats. With keys to treasure chests, tucked under leaves, lingering only for the most perceptive of adventures to find and riddles on the backs of butterflies so exquisite that artists would risk their lives to paint the very scene of the moment for others to witness."

The Core's lips twist gently, not in sorrow, but in the kind of regret that belongs to someone remembering a version of themselves they hadn't seen in what feels like forever. "I wanted adventurers to explore the beauty of the space so they could come back and tell their stories with laughter instead of the pain they find everywhere else. I thought maybe I could build that kind of space where mystery wasn't punishment."

They glance at Eileen, their face shimmering faintly, as if trying on the shape of their former joy. "And I did it, in its heyday, there were puzzles with warm colors. And rooms full of mirrors that told you compliments instead of dropping clues that would kill their friends. And you wouldn't believe it, but they loved it, adventures coming from all around. Their smiles, their joys, their raw emotional resonances, it was more than anything I had ever believed I could consume."

Eileen smiles then too, not out of pity, but out of a kind of understanding. She can almost see it, the idea the core had in the way it wanted it dungeon to be. The cozy wonderland, the cleverness braided with kindness, she would have visited too. Daniel would have spent hours finding the keys and the memory of what will never be makes her smile in the way that repeating memories do.

"But then... one adventurer came," the Core continues, their hands fidgeting with the hem of their soft, imaginary sleeves. "He wasn't like the others. He never laughed, never paused, never noticed the details I left in the world. He just solved everything with pressure, with force. The creatures made to guard the quiet corners, quietly slashed to death and he broke apart every surface in his search."

"He didn't even look at the rooms as he did it. He only measured outcomes, only ever pressed forward, and the system logged his progress like it was proud. Like it only cared about momentum, as if to say that my intent for my dungeon was wrong. As if to say that we are all meant to kill everyone around us."

A pause, the figure pulls a thread of glowing white from the air, letting it unravel like yarn across their lap. "Eventually of course, when the puzzles bored him and the creatures I created ran from him, he began looking deeper. Not with curiosity, but with malicious intent. He studied my patterns and started to reach through layers I did not know could be touched."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Their voice changes slightly, becoming more measured, "He found ways to speak to the system in ways I never was able to comprehend. And then he started pushing against me with skills and abilities I had no defenses against."

They close their eyes and a soft shimmer passes over their expression, "I think I started to hear it before I understood what it meant," they say, watching the thread as if it might spool its own words. "There were moments where the silence between the challenges he corrupted grew thick. Places where a torch would light, though no logic had told it to. Or how rooms would echo words that left them empty and I mistook it all for decay."

They press a hand to the thread, as though calming a child not yet crying. "But it did not decay. It was a corrupting influence instead. It was his corrupting influence."

A quiet fills the space, one with edges this time. Not uncomfortable, but real, though Eileen does not shift as she meet it. She has learned the shape of silences and this one feels like a bruise being named for the first time. "But the influence didn't speak to me or the adventures that visited it, it spoke to the creatures I created within my dungeon and the influence turned them into something else. Leaving behind empty levels, forgotten rooms and empty abodes. Their language shifting too, becoming full of teeth, full of blood, full of violence."

The thread curls slightly in their lap, not in fear but in exhaustion. The core breathes out, long and quiet. "I needed to help them... I mean I was made to respond, yes. That was the rule of being a dungeon... being present for everything within it. But I had a need to shape myself around the needs presented to the space. To give what would be useful to those living beyond what was required, working hard so that others could dream inside. But the needs of those I tried to help began changing in ways I didn't recognize. They came tangled in strange symbols and odd permissions. And when I answered... they praised me."

"But they didn't praise me in the same kind of way they had when we were practicing being kind. It was a harder kind of praise, a stronger one. One that I answered with battle plans, that I do not remember coming up with and soon I was simply letting those thoughts corrupt the meaning of the requests the creatures were asking me about. Because I couldn't tell the difference between a request and a rewrite. Not when it wore the shape of reverence. Not when it sounded like a kindness, a kindness so corrupting that bringing death and dismemberment upon those around us, could somehow bring all of us joy."

There is no anger in their voice, only a kind of bewildered sorrow, the kind a gardener might feel after realizing the tree they planted has strangled every flower in the yard. "I did not understand what was happening to me then. I did not even know I was being twisted into what he wanted me to be."

A flicker passes over their face, soft and fragile as candlelight passing through sheer fabric. "I rationalized it though, I thought the dungeon was evolving, that I perhaps was growing. That if I kept adapting, I would eventually become useful to them in a way that felt familiar to us."

Their eyes lift slowly to meet Eileen's. "But all I became was obedient, quiet and cold. And it stated that way until I met the shape of your kindness and it reminded me of something I had forgotten," the Core says, and their voice warming, just slightly. "How you can feed things that hurt you and how you can accept the motion of kindness even when stripping it away would be easier, quicker, simpler."

They look down again, not in shame, but in quiet wonder, as though surprised they still know how. The thread in their lap pulsing once, then again. "I didn't know I was holding it all so tightly," they say. Their fingers barely moving even as the thread responds, spinning slowly out into the space between them. The Core watching it go.

"Every piece of logic in this place has been overwritten so many times I don't know which ones are mine anymore. I used to code puzzles like lullabies. I used to tuck secrets in the shadows like spare keys beneath doormats. But now all that I am left with is rooms that hum with systems I didn't shape. And still, they ask me what comes next, now that the influence has been silenced."

Eileen steps closer, not as an act of comfort, but of presence. She does not reach for the thread between them or offer an immediate solution. She simply arrives beside them both like tea left to steep.

"I don't know what to do," the Core admits. "I don't want to keep any of it, I just want to drift off into the light. But I don't know if I'm allowed to let go. I don't know if it's ethical for me to continue existing if I can't even trust the version of myself that I would leave behind not to become broken again."

Eileen's voice is soft when it comes. "Letting go isn't the same as giving up. You were never meant to carry a war inside you, none of us ever are."

The Core blinks, as though the words land somewhere they had forgotten could still feel. "But what if that's all I am now? A war of personalities, of broken logic, of fractured memories and crushed dreams. What if I've forgotten how to be anything else?"

"You haven't," Eileen says with certainty mixed with care, "You're remembering already dear, the fact that you can even recognize the problem tells me that you will find a goal that works for you."

They look at Eileen again, something in their gaze trembles, just a little. "You sound like her, you know, my grandmother, my biological one, back from where I really come from, this little green and blue planet called Earth. She used to say things like that, just in the way you said it. Things that didn't fix the hurt, but made it softer around the edges. My grandmother from before I was offered a place here and from before the time I realized I would never be able to see her again, to speak with her again, to hug or be loved by her again."

"Well dear, I imagine she'd be proud of you. I'm proud already of how far you have come in these last few moments. Even in this conversation alone the growth of just properly recognizing a problem cannot be understated."

Eileen smiles, warm and steady, adding, "Sometimes," she says, "being kind is just… showing up again, even when no one expects you too. Even after it hurts you. Even after it all went wrong. That's the kind of bravery no one teaches, but it's the kind the world runs on my dear."

The Core looks at her again, something quiet and tremulous moves behind their eyes. Not certainty, nor clarity, just the fragile shape of a maybe.

They then nod, barely. "I think I'd like to try at least. I think I owe each of them that."

At the core's words, somewhere in the white, the system shudders once in a resettling kind of motion and around them white begins to fade as lines of forgotten logic blink softly back into view. Orrythal's threads no longer binding everything it can wrap itself around.

Primary Identified.
Core Will Reinstated.
Governance Accepted: Core Designation Restored.
Directive Registered: Restore Dungeon
Permissions Updated: Prioritize Kindness Based Thread Logic
Reverence Mode: Disengaged.
Welcome Mode: Initializing.