The first was a flash of blinding red light from Razensen’s face. He roared as he got to his feet, and it was like the rumble of an avalanche careening down a mountainside. He punched guards so hard that they flew away into oblivion. He crushed heads, he pierced stomachs with his horns and carried on fighting while the poor guards were still impaled on them. He squeezed skulls, pulverized bones, stomped through ribcages.

  Next came the war cry of a man. He charged at us from the darkness, the moonlight glistening on his naked torso and showing muscles that would have put a troll to shame. His long hair blew majestically in the wind as he ran.

  “Gods’ fury! Power of the stone! Blood of yesterday!” he cried nonsensically, before cleaving Sir Dullbright at the waist.

  Ting!

  Dullbright fell on his back, but he wasn’t dead. I was forced to admit that he wasn’t quite as out of shape as I had thought; he clearly wore metal armor under his clothes.

  Pvat picked him up and dragged him away.

  “Pvat you coward!” said Dullbright, despite not complaining about being dragged away. “Let me finish this. Let me go…” his voice trailed away as they became silhouettes in the darkness.

  The guards were all dead. Only Claus remained of their party, and he tried to sprint after Dullbright and Pvat.

  “I don’t think so,” said Gulliver, on his feet again. He punched the wagon driver and knocked him flat onto his back.

  He walked over to Dolos and kneeled beside him. “He’s dead, Beno.”

  Another creature had fallen in service to me. I wished that I could say that it broke me. That I felt sadness welling inside.

  Some beings just aren’t made that way. As a core, the academy forgers had made me without such feelings. Though tiny flickers of human emotions sometimes slithered into my mind, they were never strong enough that I couldn’t master them when I really needed to. And right now, I really needed to.

  “Beno?” said Gulliver.

  But my lack of emotions didn’t mean I didn’t know what was right.

  “Collect him please, Gull. Dolos will not be left here for his body to dry in the sun.”

  - Level up to 15!

  (Exp from: Razensen [Bogan])

  - Total essence increased to 1505

  - Existing crafting categories expanded

  - Dungeon capacity increased: 25 rooms, 30 traps, 17 puzzles, 31 monsters, 3 boss monsters

  Since Razensen had joined my dungeon, however temporary our arrangement was, I would benefit from his kills. And demons below, I’d really benefitted today, judging from the corpses strewn around us.

  But as I watched Gulliver place Dolos in his satchel, I found that I didn’t much care about improving my core level or increasing my essence.

  I looked at the new arrival who’d helped me with Dullbright. It was a barbarian. A barbarian wearing a brand new leather thong, by the looks of things. I recognized him now; it was the barbarian who had been eating chicken near the bulletin board.

  “Three leather thongs for the price one?” I said.

  “Na. That turned out to be horse shit.” He looked at the guards' corpses scattered over the wasteland, most in various states of pulverization. “Looks like I missed the fun parts.”

  As much as slaughtering guards rather than heroes wasn’t much to my tastes, I had to admit there was a certain element in fun to all this. It left me in no doubt that Razensen was dangerous enough for Cael, in the right circumstances. We would just have to get him mad enough.

  “Oh, it’s you!” said Gulliver, rushing over to the barbarian with a grin on his face. “Eric! How goes it?”

  The barbarian shrugged. “That’ll be five gold,” he said. “Three for knocking Dullface on his arse. Two for letting the scribe here have rights to my side o’ the story. Now, have any of you lot got something to eat?”

  CHAPTER 8

  - New level excavated in dungeon! [Total levels: 2]

  - New chamber added to dungeon [Assigned to: Razensen]

  - Wylie [Kobold] is now a level 17 Supervisor!

  - Tarius [Kobold] is now a level 23 miner!

  - Jopvitz [Kobold] is now a level 7 miner!

  - Redjack [Kobold is now a level 7 miner!

  - Klok [Kobold is now a level 5 miner!

  - Maginhart [Kobold] is now an apprentice tinker/alchemist/artificer!

  [Progress to level 1: 2%]

  Wylie and his kobold miners, three of which were new creatures I had created to bolster the workforce, were standing in a pack before me. Their shirts were covered in dirt and sweat, their wolfish faces plastered with dust.

  “Dark Lord like it?” asked Wylie.

  “I’m afraid not,” I said.

  Disappointment crashed upon their faces.

  “That’s only because I love it!” I said.

  My miners grinned back at me. Wylie clapped his team on the back one by one. “Good job, lads! Good work. Wylie happy!”

  “Go and take a break. You earned it,” I told them. “In fact, have the rest of the day off.”

  “Woohoo!” said one miner. “We go to Yondersun? Anyone, yes? Anyone come?”

  The idea of visiting the town was met with widespread approval from the other miners. That wasn’t really a surprise, given that in Yondersun there existed a thing called a tavern, which served a chemical composition known as booze. There was also a cuckoo clock shop that the kobolds were strangely enamored with. They could spend hours watching through the window, celebrating every time a cuckoo popped out of a clock. I was planning to buy them some, actually.

  “If you go to Yondersun, then keep a low profile,” I said. “Some of the townsfolk are still iffy about us. Stay away from the No-Cores, and don’t make drunken fools of us. I won’t have you bringing shame on our dungeon.”

  “Yes, Dark Lord.”

  “We go to Scorched Scorpion,” said one. “Then to the Sand Rat. Then…”

  Wylie blocked the tunnel archway, arms folded. “Not so fast. What Wylie tell you?”

  “Store tools in inventory chamber before shift ends.”

  “Correct.”

  “Yes, supervisor Wylie.”

  My kobolds scuttled away, leaving me in the freshly-excavated chamber on a completely new level of the dungeon. This newest part of my dungeon was also the largest, and it had taken Wylie and his crew – minus Maginhart who was now studying with Cynthia – three full days to dig it out. That spoke a lot about how laborious a job it was, given how experienced Wylie and Tarius were in their mining craft.

  This chamber was on the level beneath the main chambers of my dungeon, accessed by a slope that led down from the loot room. Much of this first chamber on level two was taken up by a pool of water sourced from an underground spring. The water was murky and uninviting, but it was impossible to find crystal-clear waters in a dungeon.

  “Will this suit you?” I said.

  Razensen lumbered toward me, decorated with dung poultices spread over the half dozen of his battle wounds. He surveyed the chamber.

  “It’ll do, stone. Better than going to the ice.”

  “Better than being on the wasteland, too. It should be cool enough for you down here.”

  “I shall not be staying forever. Mark that.”

  “You can come and go as you please. Use this place as a base while you search for your brother so you can send him to the snow, or whatever. But if any heroes attack when you’re here, I expect you to defend the dungeon.”

  “Yetz. Clear as frost.”

  “And when I am ready to attack Cael, you will come with me, no matter what you are doing at the time. No refusals, no objections.”

  “Yetz, Stone. I understand. A worm baking under the sun doesn’t have much choice than to accept the shade he’s given.”

  “Good, then we understand each other. Tell me, why exactly do you want to kill your brother so badly?”

  “I don’t.”

  “If you don’t want to kill him, there are easier ways of not killing someone, than by chasing them around the wasteland and trying to kill them.”

  “I don’t want to kill him, Stone. I have to. It is a matter of honor. Parricide can only be righted by murder.”

  “Your brother killed one of your parents?”

  “Both of them,” said Razensen. “Sent them both to the ice after I was laid up with lungworm and couldn’t stop him. My skin was aflame. Every breath was fire in my heart. He took it to mind that it was the perfect time to send my parents to the ice, and then send me to follow them. Clear the line of succession.”

  “Succession? So you are…what? Royalty?”

  “Yetz. My mother was the Grand Star of our lands.”

  Demons below, the things that power does to people. I’d like to say it astounded me, but in actual fact, I would have been more surprised to hear a story where the promise of power didn’t corrupt someone.

  Using my well-honed emotional intelligence, I decided this situation called for something described as empathy.

  “I am sorry to hear that your brother murdered your parents, Razensen. That must have been upsetting for you.”

  Was that enough empathy for the situation? Had I said the right things? It was so difficult to gauge.

  He stomped over to the pool of water, sat next to it, and put his toes in. He kicked his legs gently, sending ripples through it. “Well, Stone, once an avalanche has fallen you can’t put the snow back on the mountain. Nothing will change what I must do.”

  “But if you were ill when your brother tried to kill you, then what happened? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t look dead.”

  “You do not treat going to the ice as sacred like most people, do you? I like that very much. There is no room for sadness in leaving this world. We will all do it sometime. ”

  “When you’ve already died once, it loses its intrigue.”

  “You went to the ice, Stone?”

  “Cores can only be made with resurrected souls. Didn’t you know?”

  “We do not have such things in the south. No cores, no resurrection. When you go to the ice, you stay there for good. My brother thought he had done for me, but he did not make sure. When you decide to murder someone, have the brains to make sure they are dead, I always say.”

  Razensen lifted his great paws and parted his fur on his neck, revealing pink skin with a terrible looking scar besmirching it. Holy underworlds! It looked like his brother had tried to cut his damned head off completely.

  “You were lucky to survive something like that,” I said.

  “Yetz. But he will not be. Now, Stone, I wish that you leave me. I will swim for a while.”

  Razensen pushed himself forward, plunging into the pool. He disappeared into the water, becoming a dark shape under the surface before reappearing amidst a spray of water on the other side. Then he dove again, before re-surfacing. Diving. Re-surfacing. It became clear that this wasn’t just for exercise, but was pleasing or relaxing to him. It was equally clear that he considered our conversation done.

  “Tomlin doesn’t like it and he doesn’t trust it,” said Tomlin as he paced around my core room, hands behind his back, wearing essence cultivation gloves that looked like a baker’s oven mitts. As much as his circling around the room was making me dizzy, I needed Tomlin’s council today. His natural cowardice was a great balance to Gulliver, who would climb into a volcano if it would get him a juicy story.

  Gulliver had taken his usual position leaning lazily against the wall, quill and book ready. He was wearing a shirt patterned to look like a peacock, and had made the interesting – if I was being nice about it – fashion choice of hanging little bells on his belt.

  Namantep, the inactive core, was floating on the pedestal in the center of the room which I would have once occupied, before I earned the float ability. She was still completely inert, kept in the air only by the force of the pedestal.

  “What exactly don’t you like or trust?” I asked Tomlin.

  Tomlin pointed at Namantep. A stray string of essence vine fell off his glove. “She is a core like you, Dark Lord. If you were not my master, I would not like or trust you.”

  “Tomlin, your words spear right through my tender heart.”

  “Dark Lord is dangerous. But Tomlin happy when his danger is on Tomlin’s side. This core? Gives him a dark feeling in his stomach.”

  “Gulliver?” I said. “What are your thoughts on our guest?”

  “On the face of it, Hardere just needs a place to keep her where Dullbright won’t search. After meeting Dullbright himself, I don’t doubt that he would happily grind every core in Xynnar to dust. I think this is as simple as it seems; Hardere needed a favor, and you needed a portal stone. Contrary to popular belief, mages don’t much bother with ulterior motives and secret plans. They just don’t care enough to make the effort. The idea of mages as sneaky rats dabbling in magic was spread by an influential duke to vex a mage who refused to make a love spell for him. It seems the commoners latched onto the duke’s lies, and this idea spread.”

  “You know a lot about mages.”

  “Who do you suppose the duke turned to in order to spread his anti-mage propaganda in the first place?”

  “You?” I said.

  Gulliver laughed. “Way before my time. It was the scribes’ guild. All scribes are taught the story as apprentices so that we can appreciate the power of words. One well-aimed, well-funded propaganda campaign, and the reputation of mages has never recovered. Which is a shame, because for the most part they’re a good lot and always pay when it’s their turn for a round of drinks.”

  “Even so, they’re still people. There’s always something lurking behind the face of it. Better to be safe than end up as core dust, I always say. I’ll build a chamber for Namantep. Keep it locked, keep it guarded, and keep it far away from the rest of the dungeon. Then, as long as I don’t accidentally summon a core forger to the dungeon or complete the ritual of reawakening by mistake, there’s no chance of an upset.”

  “Very good. Are you ready to make a move on Cael? We’ve already given him a few days of recovery time.”

  “We have a portal stone Hardere made using Cael’s blood, so it should lead us to him. Razensen needs a day or two to recover from his wounds, and then he’ll be ready.”

  “Is he enough?” said Gull.

  “On his own, in his normal state? No. He’s strong, but he’s not made of steel. But you saw what happened when he was mad enough and his eyes turned blood red. One blink later, nine men were pulped.”

  “What’s your plan? Send him through the portal and then prod his arse with a hot poker?”

  “Something like that, but I won’t be sending him alone. That would never work. We need to maneuver Cael into a trap.”

  “Supposing he’s ready and waiting for you? What then?”

  “A dungeon core never pursues a hero outside of the dungeon. It just doesn’t happen, it goes against our natures. It’d be like seeing a shark leave the sea to chase a swimmer onto the beach. Cael will never expect it.”

  “Sharks don’t do well in the open air, Beno.”

  “True, but sometimes sharks have to take a risk.”

  “We’ve rather burned out this shark talk, haven’t we?”

  I couldn’t have said that the remembrance chamber made me feel sad, but it certainly changed my mood. It was like stepping out of the dungeon and straight into a ray of sunlight; it couldn’t hurt me, but that didn’t mean I liked it.

  The mana lamps in this chamber glowed faintly, sending out solemn traces of light. There were twelve of them on the north-pointing wall. A dozen lamps, each one lit in memory of creatures who had fallen in service to the dungeon. There was no single monster assigned with keeping them lit, and instead, everyone took turns in refilling the oil. Even Gulliver played his part. The first thing he did whenever he visited the dungeon was to stroll to the remembrance chamber.

  It was illuminating, seeing the lamps. Not just in the light that they gave off, but what they symbolized. Seeing them like that, a visual reminder of the creatures who I had sent to their deaths in service to the dungeon, was important because it kept me grounded. Plenty of cores were happy to send wave after wave of kobolds, fire beetles, and other beasts straight to their deaths. When they died, they simply waited for their essence to regenerate, and then made more.

  That was no way to run a dungeon. I knew the rumors that spread about me. That I lacked a core’s cold-bloodedness. Pah. They could say what they liked. I bet that if you added up all my victories, I had killed more heroes while losing fewer of my dungeon mates. I wasn’t going to change just because looking out for your creatures wasn’t ‘the done thing.’

  “Good afternoon, Dark Magnificence,” said a voice.

  It was Brecht, the kobold bard, walking in with his tambourine slung around his back. He was followed by Rusty, my shaman, and then Shadow, my kobold scout. Four dogs accompanied her, two on either side. Her ever-present protectors, whom she’d brought into the dungeon as puppies and had raised to be lovable creatures who could also tear a chunk out of a hero’s arse if needed.

  Three of her dogs sat patiently beside her, while the fourth, the smallest one with scraggy fur and a streak of fire-red running down his spine, stayed standing.

  “Sit, Arcas,” said Shadow.

  Arcas, who like his brothers and sisters was named after places in Xynnar that Shadow wanted to visit, nudged her for affection.

  “No. Not until you sit. Come on, we’ve been through this.”

  Still no sign of obedience from Arcas.

  Shadow addressed the other dogs. “No treats for any of you until Arcas sits.”

  To my surprise, one of the other dogs stood up and used his snout to gently nudge Arcas to the ground. Shadow laughed, and she tussled Arcas’s head, and the other dogs nudged her for affection until soon she was lost amidst a sea of fur and wagging tails.

  Soon, almost every creature in the dungeon joined me, filling the chamber with beetle squeaks, kobold chatter, the warbling conversion of my elemental jellies, the polite yet cheerful babble of Gary.

 

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