I jerked upright and frantically began looking myself over—then sighed in relief. I had the same long but thick fingers, my nails were wide and mercifully flat, my arms were hairy as ever, and my chest remained lean and unpadded. And when I ran a hand over my cheeks, I found the same beard as when I had fallen asleep. Then, with a degree of hesitation, I checked down under, but that seemed…
I paused to lift my kilt up for a closer look, and my lips pursed in consideration. I was not at full mast, so it was difficult to tell whether there was any real difference. But I was definitely hanging a bit lower than normal. Then again, the morning sun on this lonely little stretch of beach was comfortably warm.
I gave my head a quick shake to stop my focusing on unimportant things. Then I noticed a swishing sensation in my ear and, on instinct, I began thumping the heel of my hand just behind it to release the water. For an instant, I had the brief recollection of seeing an error message to that effect, and my eyebrows knitted together.
I had never been one to take dreams all that seriously. I mean… they were just dreams. They had no bearing on the real world beyond reflecting your stress level or general state of mind. Still, that had been one of the strangest I had ever had—particularly toward the end. And it was so lucid! I had felt aware and in control of myself through the whole of it.
Why had Bline been in my reflection? Was I Her? Or was She me? Why had I started growing claws? I had felt that pain. Very clearly. I had been changing. And rapidly. With a thoughtful expression, I ran my tongue over my teeth. Same as always.
Calmer now, I decided to dismiss it. I was being silly. Lucid or not, it was still just a dream. I was fine.
Well now, wait a minute. I was in torpor though, wasn’t I? I nodded. I had been forced under before I could distribute my stats. There had been that weird message about… personality quarantine?
With the possible exception of that Boundary trial fiasco, I had never had a dream during torpor that I could remember. I mean, I never remembered much of my dreams per se, but I was at least aware of having them. There had been many times I had awoken with the memory of some oddity or other fading into the background of my subconscious. But never after torpor.
No, torpor was quite different. It was like being… switched off. Dead. Neither conscious nor subconscious. And when I woke from it, it was always a sudden thing. I had never felt groggy nor in any way tired afterward. But this time?
I sucked in a breath and slowly let it out again. I needed to talk to Bline. Or barring that, at least look over my stats. If there was any substance to that dream at all, that would tell the tale. And I really hoped it was all a product of my overactive imagination. I did not want to think of what that living membrane might represent.
“Lady Bline,” I called, “if you’re not still angry, I would very much like to look at my stat page. Please?”
A moment later, there was the customary chime followed shortly by a thump and the sound of a bell rolling along the ground. Then a tiny little voice sounded in my ear.
“Damn it all! How am I supposed to walk with—ugh!” There were some scrabbling sounds, and I distinctly heard some paper rustling. Then a loud rip. “Ah, crap. Uh… just a second, Donum.”
A few seconds of silence followed, then I heard what had to be a length of tape pulling off a roll and some smoothing sounds.
“Ok… shoot! Where did that bloody—Ah, here we go.”
I sat completely nonplussed for about a minute—not the least of which because my stat sheet looked like it had been folded up, crumpled, and taped but because I could distinctly see a delicate pair of clawed hands holding it up along the edges. Moreover, when I actually began looking it over, it was clear the page had changed a lot since the last time I had looked at it.
First off, I noticed ‘Claimed by Ahnbe’ had been added to my signs, and while that was not surprising given all that had happened with the Shepherdess, it did bear some consideration. Why was it a sign? Was that like a title? Some kind of… achievement I had unlocked? And if so, what did Marked by the Watcher mean? It had always been there, so I had not given it too much thought. But if it was in the same category as Ahnbe’s mess, then there was the distinct possibility it was having some sort of effect on me.
Meanwhile, my stats were looking a little off. I knew for a fact my Toughness had been at 10, and I was fairly certain I had left my Wisdom sitting at 13. So for them to have both improved by the one point was in line with the dream. But I distinctly recalled that my Charisma had been one lower than Wisdom. For it to be 14 now would mean it had improved by two whole points!
How in the hell…?
That should not have been possible. For one, I had never been able to improve a stat by more than one point per Layer. For another, since all of those stats were over 10, they each cost two points per increase. I had just gained the equivalent of eight stat points worth of attributes. Two Layer’s worth!
More, for some strange reason, Charisma itself had been marked in bold. And now that I noticed the detail, I could see that Strength, Toughness, and Wisdom all had a bit of a mark underneath them. What is that supposed to mean?
As I sat pondering, I could not help but recall that horrific thing growing over the consoles in my mind… dimension? The main body of it had been around Charisma, and there had been significant outgrowths over those three stats. And coincidentally—or perhaps rather the opposite of that—those were the same stats Ahnbe had indicated I should work on.
It had been a while—my memory was far from perfect—but I could still recall the pop-up which had spawned just before She had dismissed me. To satisfy Her, I needed Strength. To withstand Her, I needed Toughness. To see Her, I needed Wisdom. And in return… let me see. How did it go? Something like… my flesh would be sculpted to please Her?
That sounded pretty close. And it was enough to cobble together a working theory as to what was going on. I could have been wrong—I would need to experiment a little—but I was assuming that as long as I invested into one of those three stats, I would also gain a point in Charisma. Which was nuts!
I was about to start fooling around with my latest batch of stat points, just to confirm, when I noticed something else. Both Manic Force and Breadth had gone through the roof!
“What the fuck, Bline?” I exclaimed. “How by the starry Eye did my Manic stats shoot up ten whole points overnight?”
“Go fuck yourself, that’s how!” she yelled back. Then she pulled the stat sheet down slightly and shot me an apologetic look. And as my eyes slowly widened, she pulled it further down, allowing me to see the rest of her.
It was immediately obvious that she had changed a great deal since last I had seen her. First off, her eyes had gained a tinge of red along the outside edges of her irises. And not only her eyes, her hair, once a simple, wavy brunette, had also begun blending into red along the tips. It was as if it had been bundled up and lightly dipped into a vat of red ink—but a much darker shade than Jax’s.
Beyond that, I could not help but notice the little pair of narrow and somewhat spindly-looking horns poking out of her hair. And like her hair, they were a brownish black, except there was a strange bark-like texture to them. Then, of course, her ears were now poking out sharply from the sides of her head. I do not know what they had looked like before, but they had to have been small enough to escape my attention. Not so any longer.
Oddly enough, I could not see any of her lower body. However this worked, there was some sort of limitation on the viewing window. She was mostly transparent, after all.
She cleared her throat.
“Sorry. For swearing at you, I mean. Questions, you know. And uh… we may have… sort of… forgotten about updating those. Briefly.” She grimaced. “Also, not Bline. Not anymore.”
I sat back. As usual, I only had about a thousand questions I needed to ask all at once. “Uhm… consider me confused.”
She nodded in understanding. “Noted.” Then she pulled the sheet back up to cover her face again. Though, her claw drifted down and tapped at yet another detail I had missed. Right under the bit indicating my lilim slots, there was a new entry.
Faen: 1
I had to give my head a vigorous shake on seeing that.
“Bline… not Bline… whoever you are! I need to know what is going on.”
“No, you don’t,” she retorted quickly from behind the stat screen. “You merely wish to know. Whether I explain or not, you have no means of changing what has already come to pass.”
“Fine,” I replied through my gritted teeth. It was already difficult enough to dance around the prohibition on questions without also dealing with her mile-wide pedantic streak. “Please explain. If you are not Bline anymore, then I have some… concerns about what that might imply.”
“Really?” she returned, poking her head up again. She was sporting a mischievous look. “What concerns?”
“Well, let’s count them off, shall we? And do please consider these rhetorical, since you’re so sensitive,” I began. “I think it’s a little worrying that the Lady of Power’s name has abruptly changed for no apparent reason. Does that mean She doesn’t exist anymore? What the shit is that going to mean for the world? Would it even still function? And yet here you are. With claws and horns. And sharp teeth. Don’t think I didn’t notice those! How is that possible? And what the ever-loving fuck do you mean, you forgot to update my Manic stats?”
She began to grin. “Mostly good questions. However.” She tapped that word again. Faen.
I frowned. “You’re saying… you’re a Faen?”
She did not reply save to nod. She had an expectant look on her face—like she wanted me to puzzle something out.
“Goddesses are Faen…s?” Do you add an ‘s’ for the plural? No, that doesn’t sound right.
She scowled at me.
“Bad question. Okay,” I murmured. “So, then Goddesses can… become Faen?”
She gasped in surprise, then gave an excited little hop. “Oh, you’re so close!”
Uhm… Whatever I was supposed to get from that, it was clear she was a Faen now. “Well, then I guess… uh… if you’re not Bline… anymore?”
She nodded expectantly.
Encouraged, I continued, “Then I don’t know what to call you.”
“Oh! Hold on, I was prepared for this part,” she exclaimed, then hastily began folding up my stat sheet again. A moment later, she held up a new sign—this one mercifully undamaged.
| Wonder of wonders. Through unknown means, you have spawned a Faen of your very own. What is its name? |
I blinked in utter confusion. “I’ve… spawned you? What in the—“
“Never mind that part,” she interrupted, then began tapping at the last sentence.
I opened my mouth… then closed it. And sighed. “Why you insist on referring to people as it is beyond me, but… fine. Uh. I don’t know. What do you want to be called?”
“Cram it up your ass, cunt!” she yelled. Then she slapped a hand over her mouth and blushed scarlet. After a moment, she delicately cleared her throat. “Apologies… my curse seems to have… mutated. A bit. What I… meant to say was that’s for you to decide.”
I did not reply immediately. I had been struck by an unfamiliar emotion, so I could not immediately put words to it. But it was similar to… cute? Which was weird. I mean, a person does not usually come off as ‘cute’ while swearing a blue-streak. Must be hanging out with Jax too much.
I clicked my tongue. “Right. Well, let’s see then… I guess you should start with the naming conventions just to avoid my having to guess at them.”
She turned her head to one side and, with an aloof sort of expression, began inspecting her claws. “I would imagine them quite similar to others you have discovered.”
There was a beat of silence, then she flicked her eyes to my own. And rather deliberately, she began running her tongue over her fangs. It was… kind of sexy, actually. Whether she had meant it that way or not.
I shook my head to dispel the thought. I had no idea why, but she was sending me very clear non-verbal hints. But given the features she was drawing my attention to, I had a pretty good idea as to what she was getting at.
“Okay, that’s clear enough. I really do wish you’d drop whatever game it is you’re playing, though,” I complained. “Things would be so much easier if you’d just explain yourself.”
She expelled a long-suffering sigh before turning to me fully. “Tell me this, alien.” She paused to smirk at me. “Oh, yes. We—or I suppose I should say ‘She’ now. Anyway, you were certainly heard despite the state you left us… Her in, and I am still working through the implications. But never mind. Do the goddesses of your world have a habit of explaining themselves to mortals?”
I frowned. That slip—if it had been one—had actually revealed quite a lot. Bline… probably still existed. But separate to the individual in front of me, despite them sharing a face.
Of course, that this entity shared Bline’s face was not particularly surprising. I had witnessed Her self-copying abilities first hand, and it made sense for Her to have something like that. How else was She supposed to service the needs of the people of this world? I had assumed She had been using Faen, but apparently not.
So then, if this being was—or had been—a copy of Bline, why did she now have lilim-like features? All of the other ones had looked exactly like the original… if lesser. Something about this was different in some as-yet-undefined way.
Although, if I were to take into account the whole ‘personality quarantine’ thing, that might help explain it. Going from the wording, this entity could very well have been some aspect of Bline that had been forcibly cut away then discarded. Like a cancer. And if goddesses could become Faen—or something in that ballpark—then I could assume that act had given birth to the entity before me.
Somehow.
So why is she suddenly my problem? I had no answer to that, nor could I logic my way to an answer. Not yet, anyway. I needed more information. It might explain the horns, though. Something about my Class might have caused the change once she was attached.
In any case, there were a lot of ways to go about replying to her question depending on one’s cultural background. However, if a person was at all honest with oneself, the answer arrived at would always end up the same.
“No,” I admitted eventually. “As far as I’m aware, no… deities communicate with us at all. We pretty much have to figure everything out for ourselves.”
“Hmm… not at all? That’s a bit much. Though, it might be entertaining for the first few centuries,” she mused aloud before turning her attention back. “But it makes my point rather well, I think. You should be more than satisfied with whatever hints I deign provide you.”
“Fine,” I growled. “Maybe you’d be satisfied if I deigned provide you with the name, Vex?” That would have been so very appropriate.
She quickly held up another sign and smirked.
| Rejected |
My eyebrows lifted automatically in surprise. “You actually came prepared for that?”
“Die in fire,” she chirped happily.
*****
Eventually, we settled on the name, Mia.
The entity formerly known as Bline… or maybe a part of Bline? I still was not sure. Anyway, she was quick to inform me that it meant ‘beloved’ in a variety of languages she had never heard spoken aloud, so she was excited by how foreign and exotic it sounded. I had wanted to reject the name on hearing that, but she had gotten so weirdly hysterical about the whole thing that I had eventually relented.
I had picked it because it was an acronym for ‘missing in action.’ And I felt that was appropriate enough given what I suspected about her origin. Plus, my limited knowledge of Latin had run dry of fitting three-letter words.
In any case, I had decided to begin exploring the island. Despite having been dropped into the middle of the ocean, I had little doubt that I was still in the Dungeon. Somehow. And I suspected there was something here I needed to find.
That and I was pretty much done with talking to Mia. Despite being my Faen—whatever that implied—her refusal to be straight-forward with me made it all but pointless to continue. Though, if I were being honest with myself, I would have admitted it was mostly a decision borne out of frustration.
That did not stop her, though.
“Have you given any thought to your next skill purchase?”
She was not visible at the moment, having disappeared along with her signs.
“Why?” I asked absently, my attention diverted up the side of the craggy rock face before me.
I was not particularly enthusiastic about climbing yet another obstacle, this one far more daunting than the last, but the thing seemed to stretch almost uniformly in both directions as a barrier between me and the center of the island. And I had a feeling that whatever I was looking for would not be on the beach.
That would have been too convenient.
“Is that still your job?”
“My tits are your job!” She cleared her throat in embarrassment. “Sorry. I didn’t uh… Yes. The Lady has mmmph—“
I paused, distracted from my attempts at finding a potential path upward. “What? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I said yes, Donum. That is the… a role I will fulfill for you.”
“Oh.”
I had been thinking that—given this new paradigm—she might have lost her powers as a goddess, but it seemed not. Or at the very least, she was still able to perform her duties for me. So she was not totally useless.
Sighing, I squatted down and stared at the sand at my feet. It had mostly solidified near the cliff side, what with the tall grasses and palm-like trees scattered about, but there were still some loose patches here and there. While I pondered how to go about scaling the cliff—perhaps by constructing a rudimentary ladder out of the local vegetation—I began to idly doodle with my finger.
“Donum… what exactly do you think you’re doing?” Mia asked after a moment.
I shrugged. “I dunno. Just think…ing?”
I pulled my finger away from the sand and stared. For some reason, I had started to sketch out what I could remember of that bizarre alien math outlined in Moisture. I had only managed the one symbol—one of the bigger, reoccurring ones—and I still had no clue what it meant.
But it had started to glow.
“Uhm… is it supposed to be doing that?”
“I’m going to ignore that question, you fuckwit! Ass munch!” The percussive sounds of her rapidly slapping her own cheeks reverberated in my ear for a moment. “Damn it, Donum! You know that sets me off. Now, erase that before it explodes.” While I hastily complied, she sighed. “How could you possibly know that symbol, anyway?”
I shrugged. “It was in one of those Word-books in the main room. Next to the desk? No idea what it means, though.”
“Of course, you don’t have any idea what—wait, books?”
Abruptly, there was the screeching sound of a microphone distorting, then I distinctly heard footsteps rushing off into the distance.
I waited for a few moments, but she had gone silent.
“Well, that certainly set a bee under her bonnet.”
It had been accidental, but I had been meaning to ask about that, anyway. And it was a fairly decent way of broaching the subject given Mia’s reticence to discuss things I did not already know. However, now that it was on the table, there was the possibility something interesting might come of it.
Plus, she had already let the one thing slip. If I drew a certain shape, it would explode. How useful that would be was yet to be determined. I would need to figure out just how powerful the explosion would be and how long I would have after drawing it before the reaction would occur. There were probably other variables too, but for the time being I now had a potential flameless alternative to my Detonating Sap. It even came prepackaged with a timer.
And that was cool! It made me feel all wizardy inside.
“Hey! Are you a monster?”
I blinked in surprise as the child-like voice intruded on my thoughts and glanced up. There was a little head with a shock of green hair poking over the side of the cliff, staring down at me.
“No,” I called back. “Are you?”
A few moments of hushed whispering floated down before whomever this was answered.
“That’s a dumb question,” the child retorted. “Are you dumb?”
I chuckled at the brutal frankness. “Sometimes. But I don’t think it’s so dumb. This is the Dungeon. You could be another Faen trying to play a trick on me.”
“I’m not a Faen,” the apparent boy-child shouted. “I’m a laoi!”
“I doubt that,” I called back.
I did, too. Arx had explained to me back when we had first met that people who had never been in the Dungeon before went to the tutorial for their first time. There was no way I would just happen to meet an uninitiated child in here. Something else was going on.
“You look like you’re just a kid. Do you even have a Class?”
“I’m not a kid!” the boy shouted indignantly. “I’m eight years old!”
“He’s right, though,” another voice sounded faintly from above. This one sounded a bit higher-pitched. “You don’t have a Class, Mik.”
“So?!” Mik retorted over his shoulder. “Neither do you, Gweyir.”
“What are you two doing?” yet another voice shouted. This one was distinctly female. And adult. “Come away from there before you fall.”
“Aw, Lynnria,” Mik complained. “We weren’t going to fall. We were just talking to the dumb monster-guy.”
“Yeah, still not a monster,” I shouted, folding my arms. I considered refuting the dumb part too, but I had a feeling that would just make things worse.
A moment later, another head poked over the side. This one was no doubt the woman I had heard. Or perhaps girl? She looked pretty young. I would put her in her late teens. Like the boy, she was another laoi, but her hair was deep purple and bound into a long but messy braid.
“What are you supposed to be?” she called down. “Some trick to lure down children? We’re not so foolish as that!”
“I’m not the one trying to trick people,” I retorted. “Do you honestly think I’d believe a bunch of children are living on a random island in the middle of the Dungeon? And not even in the tutorial?”
She scowled back at me. “We’re not living here. We’re trapped here, thank you. Three days, now.”
Three days? Hmm…
“You wouldn’t happen to all be from the same town, would you?” It was hard to be sure about the timing. What with my meeting with Bline, having been swallowed, and the recent torpor, I had lost a lot of time. But it might have been possible.
“Maybe,” she called back cautiously. “What would you know about it, Mr. Not-a-Trick?”
“Some,” I admitted.
I had no idea how it would be possible. We had been swallowed by entirely different Mouths, after all. Then again, I was sorely lacking in any sort of rulebook for this place.
“If you’re who I think you are, I know the name of the town. And I can describe the Mouth that swallowed it. I was on the other side of the lake at the time.”
“So what?” Mik shouted back. He was hanging precariously over the edge by using the older girl’s firm grip on his arm to keep from falling. “Everybody knows those things! You could still be a monster! Show me your teeth!”
“Hush, Mik,” the older girl admonished him before pulling him back again. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Does so!” he protested. “My mother always said to watch out for people with sharp teeth.”
She harrumphed. “Your mother’s bucket only came halfway up the well. I’ve met plenty of the kinds with sharp teeth.”
“Don’t you talk about my mother!” he screamed shrilly, then aimed a brutal kick to the older girl’s shin.
She barely even flinched. She merely stood there while the boy ran off in a huff.
After a moment, a softer voice said, “That was mean, Lynnria. She only died a few months ago.”
Lynnria lifted her chin defiantly. “He’ll get over it.”
The other girl—if it was a girl, I could not see from below—did not reply. But I did just barely hear some footsteps trailing off.
“So… Lynnria, is it?” I called.
I had not wanted to interrupt—that had sounded like a whole lot of none-of-my-business—but while they were talking, I had taken note of her outfit. It seemed purposely made to allow for freedom of movement, and she was wearing a set of thick leather pads about her knees and elbows. Most telling, though, was the bright red armband tied around her bicep.
I waited until she was looking back at me before continuing. “You’re a game-ball player, I take it?”
Her face cracked for a moment into a pleased smile, and she squatted down. “Never heard of a monster that knew about game-ball. But if you’re of the kinds, I’ve never seen your like before.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I drawled out. “But I’m no monster. I’m a Quester.”
“Yeah? What’s your name, then?” she called back.
“Donum.”
“Just Donum?” she asked. “No Clan?”
I winced, then let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m… technically a Clan-head. And the Clan is named after me.”
“So… what? You’re Donum Donum?”
I hesitated before sucking in a quick breath. “I prefer Donum of the Clan Donum.” Then I nodded. She would not have heard of Highlander, so I could get away with the reference.
“No one calls you that,” she accused immediately.
True. Not that I would admit that to some kid.
“Look, are you going to let me up there or not?”
She shrugged. “It’s not like I have a rope. What do you even want up here anyway? And don’t say you’re here to rescue us. I know better than to believe that. Where did you come from? Have you seen any of the others from town?”
I held up my hands. “Okay, let’s keep to one question at a time.”
“Now you know what it feels like,” Mia whispered in my ear. I had not noticed her return. “She’s kind of cute though, don’t you think? Maybe you could make her into one of your allies.”
“Hush,” I whispered. “She’s just a kid. I would never—“
“What?” Lynnria called.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly. “I was just about to say that you lot are the first I’ve seen of the townsfolk. I didn’t even know it was possible to run into you. I came from…” I paused to point off to sea, but I could not make out the door from here. What with the currents pushing me along during my swim, I was not even sure where it should be. “Well, you may not believe this, but there was this… door? Kind of… hovering in the air.”
“Oh, neat! You mean like the crystal?” she exclaimed.
“Crystal?”
“Yeah, it’s in the middle of the island.” She stood to point inland excitedly. “Come on, I’ll show you. If you really are a Quester, maybe you can get it to talk to you!”
Then she ran off.
About three seconds later, she reappeared, looking sheepish. “Sorry. I get ahead of myself sometimes.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“How were you planning on getting up here, then?” she asked. “Are you any good at climbing?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “But I have an idea. Give me a few minutes.”
Then, more quietly, I murmured, “Mia, I think I’m ready to spend that skill point.”
Seleroan
Hey there, folks!
I had a little fun with today's chapter. Got a buddy of mine to knock up a worn and beat up stat sheet for me. I thought it was a nice touch.
Hope you guys are enjoying the holidays. See you next time!
And be sure to stop by the Patreon for all those lovely advanced chapters (and monetary love).
I jerked upright and frantically began looking myself over—then sighed in relief. I had the same long but thick fingers, my nails were wide and mercifully flat, my arms were hairy as ever, and my chest remained lean and unpadded. And when I ran a hand over my cheeks, I found the same beard as when I had fallen asleep. Then, with a degree of hesitation, I checked down under, but that seemed…
I paused to lift my kilt up for a closer look, and my lips pursed in consideration. I was not at full mast, so it was difficult to tell whether there was any real difference. But I was definitely hanging a bit lower than normal. Then again, the morning sun on this lonely little stretch of beach was comfortably warm.
I gave my head a quick shake to stop my focusing on unimportant things. Then I noticed a swishing sensation in my ear and, on instinct, I began thumping the heel of my hand just behind it to release the water. For an instant, I had the brief recollection of seeing an error message to that effect, and my eyebrows knitted together.
I had never been one to take dreams all that seriously. I mean… they were just dreams. They had no bearing on the real world beyond reflecting your stress level or general state of mind. Still, that had been one of the strangest I had ever had—particularly toward the end. And it was so lucid! I had felt aware and in control of myself through the whole of it.
Why had Bline been in my reflection? Was I Her? Or was She me? Why had I started growing claws? I had felt that pain. Very clearly. I had been changing. And rapidly. With a thoughtful expression, I ran my tongue over my teeth. Same as always.
Calmer now, I decided to dismiss it. I was being silly. Lucid or not, it was still just a dream. I was fine.
Well now, wait a minute. I was in torpor though, wasn’t I? I nodded. I had been forced under before I could distribute my stats. There had been that weird message about… personality quarantine?
With the possible exception of that Boundary trial fiasco, I had never had a dream during torpor that I could remember. I mean, I never remembered much of my dreams per se, but I was at least aware of having them. There had been many times I had awoken with the memory of some oddity or other fading into the background of my subconscious. But never after torpor.
No, torpor was quite different. It was like being… switched off. Dead. Neither conscious nor subconscious. And when I woke from it, it was always a sudden thing. I had never felt groggy nor in any way tired afterward. But this time?
I sucked in a breath and slowly let it out again. I needed to talk to Bline. Or barring that, at least look over my stats. If there was any substance to that dream at all, that would tell the tale. And I really hoped it was all a product of my overactive imagination. I did not want to think of what that living membrane might represent.
“Lady Bline,” I called, “if you’re not still angry, I would very much like to look at my stat page. Please?”
A moment later, there was the customary chime followed shortly by a thump and the sound of a bell rolling along the ground. Then a tiny little voice sounded in my ear.
“Damn it all! How am I supposed to walk with—ugh!” There were some scrabbling sounds, and I distinctly heard some paper rustling. Then a loud rip. “Ah, crap. Uh… just a second, Donum.”
A few seconds of silence followed, then I heard what had to be a length of tape pulling off a roll and some smoothing sounds.
“Ok… shoot! Where did that bloody—Ah, here we go.”
I sat completely nonplussed for about a minute—not the least of which because my stat sheet looked like it had been folded up, crumpled, and taped but because I could distinctly see a delicate pair of clawed hands holding it up along the edges. Moreover, when I actually began looking it over, it was clear the page had changed a lot since the last time I had looked at it.
First off, I noticed ‘Claimed by Ahnbe’ had been added to my signs, and while that was not surprising given all that had happened with the Shepherdess, it did bear some consideration. Why was it a sign? Was that like a title? Some kind of… achievement I had unlocked? And if so, what did Marked by the Watcher mean? It had always been there, so I had not given it too much thought. But if it was in the same category as Ahnbe’s mess, then there was the distinct possibility it was having some sort of effect on me.
Meanwhile, my stats were looking a little off. I knew for a fact my Toughness had been at 10, and I was fairly certain I had left my Wisdom sitting at 13. So for them to have both improved by the one point was in line with the dream. But I distinctly recalled that my Charisma had been one lower than Wisdom. For it to be 14 now would mean it had improved by two whole points!
How in the hell…?
That should not have been possible. For one, I had never been able to improve a stat by more than one point per Layer. For another, since all of those stats were over 10, they each cost two points per increase. I had just gained the equivalent of eight stat points worth of attributes. Two Layer’s worth!
More, for some strange reason, Charisma itself had been marked in bold. And now that I noticed the detail, I could see that Strength, Toughness, and Wisdom all had a bit of a mark underneath them. What is that supposed to mean?
As I sat pondering, I could not help but recall that horrific thing growing over the consoles in my mind… dimension? The main body of it had been around Charisma, and there had been significant outgrowths over those three stats. And coincidentally—or perhaps rather the opposite of that—those were the same stats Ahnbe had indicated I should work on.
It had been a while—my memory was far from perfect—but I could still recall the pop-up which had spawned just before She had dismissed me. To satisfy Her, I needed Strength. To withstand Her, I needed Toughness. To see Her, I needed Wisdom. And in return… let me see. How did it go? Something like… my flesh would be sculpted to please Her?
That sounded pretty close. And it was enough to cobble together a working theory as to what was going on. I could have been wrong—I would need to experiment a little—but I was assuming that as long as I invested into one of those three stats, I would also gain a point in Charisma. Which was nuts!
I was about to start fooling around with my latest batch of stat points, just to confirm, when I noticed something else. Both Manic Force and Breadth had gone through the roof!
“What the fuck, Bline?” I exclaimed. “How by the starry Eye did my Manic stats shoot up ten whole points overnight?”
“Go fuck yourself, that’s how!” she yelled back. Then she pulled the stat sheet down slightly and shot me an apologetic look. And as my eyes slowly widened, she pulled it further down, allowing me to see the rest of her.
It was immediately obvious that she had changed a great deal since last I had seen her. First off, her eyes had gained a tinge of red along the outside edges of her irises. And not only her eyes, her hair, once a simple, wavy brunette, had also begun blending into red along the tips. It was as if it had been bundled up and lightly dipped into a vat of red ink—but a much darker shade than Jax’s.
Beyond that, I could not help but notice the little pair of narrow and somewhat spindly-looking horns poking out of her hair. And like her hair, they were a brownish black, except there was a strange bark-like texture to them. Then, of course, her ears were now poking out sharply from the sides of her head. I do not know what they had looked like before, but they had to have been small enough to escape my attention. Not so any longer.
Oddly enough, I could not see any of her lower body. However this worked, there was some sort of limitation on the viewing window. She was mostly transparent, after all.
She cleared her throat.
“Sorry. For swearing at you, I mean. Questions, you know. And uh… we may have… sort of… forgotten about updating those. Briefly.” She grimaced. “Also, not Bline. Not anymore.”
I sat back. As usual, I only had about a thousand questions I needed to ask all at once. “Uhm… consider me confused.”
She nodded in understanding. “Noted.” Then she pulled the sheet back up to cover her face again. Though, her claw drifted down and tapped at yet another detail I had missed. Right under the bit indicating my lilim slots, there was a new entry.
Faen: 1
I had to give my head a vigorous shake on seeing that.
“Bline… not Bline… whoever you are! I need to know what is going on.”
“No, you don’t,” she retorted quickly from behind the stat screen. “You merely wish to know. Whether I explain or not, you have no means of changing what has already come to pass.”
“Fine,” I replied through my gritted teeth. It was already difficult enough to dance around the prohibition on questions without also dealing with her mile-wide pedantic streak. “Please explain. If you are not Bline anymore, then I have some… concerns about what that might imply.”
“Really?” she returned, poking her head up again. She was sporting a mischievous look. “What concerns?”
“Well, let’s count them off, shall we? And do please consider these rhetorical, since you’re so sensitive,” I began. “I think it’s a little worrying that the Lady of Power’s name has abruptly changed for no apparent reason. Does that mean She doesn’t exist anymore? What the shit is that going to mean for the world? Would it even still function? And yet here you are. With claws and horns. And sharp teeth. Don’t think I didn’t notice those! How is that possible? And what the ever-loving fuck do you mean, you forgot to update my Manic stats?”
She began to grin. “Mostly good questions. However.” She tapped that word again. Faen.
I frowned. “You’re saying… you’re a Faen?”
She did not reply save to nod. She had an expectant look on her face—like she wanted me to puzzle something out.
“Goddesses are Faen…s?” Do you add an ‘s’ for the plural? No, that doesn’t sound right.
She scowled at me.
“Bad question. Okay,” I murmured. “So, then Goddesses can… become Faen?”
She gasped in surprise, then gave an excited little hop. “Oh, you’re so close!”
Uhm… Whatever I was supposed to get from that, it was clear she was a Faen now. “Well, then I guess… uh… if you’re not Bline… anymore?”
She nodded expectantly.
Encouraged, I continued, “Then I don’t know what to call you.”
“Oh! Hold on, I was prepared for this part,” she exclaimed, then hastily began folding up my stat sheet again. A moment later, she held up a new sign—this one mercifully undamaged.
| Wonder of wonders. Through unknown means, you have spawned a Faen of your very own. What is its name? |
I blinked in utter confusion. “I’ve… spawned you? What in the—“
“Never mind that part,” she interrupted, then began tapping at the last sentence.
I opened my mouth… then closed it. And sighed. “Why you insist on referring to people as it is beyond me, but… fine. Uh. I don’t know. What do you want to be called?”
“Cram it up your ass, cunt!” she yelled. Then she slapped a hand over her mouth and blushed scarlet. After a moment, she delicately cleared her throat. “Apologies… my curse seems to have… mutated. A bit. What I… meant to say was that’s for you to decide.”
I did not reply immediately. I had been struck by an unfamiliar emotion, so I could not immediately put words to it. But it was similar to… cute? Which was weird. I mean, a person does not usually come off as ‘cute’ while swearing a blue-streak. Must be hanging out with Jax too much.
I clicked my tongue. “Right. Well, let’s see then… I guess you should start with the naming conventions just to avoid my having to guess at them.”
She turned her head to one side and, with an aloof sort of expression, began inspecting her claws. “I would imagine them quite similar to others you have discovered.”
There was a beat of silence, then she flicked her eyes to my own. And rather deliberately, she began running her tongue over her fangs. It was… kind of sexy, actually. Whether she had meant it that way or not.
I shook my head to dispel the thought. I had no idea why, but she was sending me very clear non-verbal hints. But given the features she was drawing my attention to, I had a pretty good idea as to what she was getting at.
“Okay, that’s clear enough. I really do wish you’d drop whatever game it is you’re playing, though,” I complained. “Things would be so much easier if you’d just explain yourself.”
She expelled a long-suffering sigh before turning to me fully. “Tell me this, alien.” She paused to smirk at me. “Oh, yes. We—or I suppose I should say ‘She’ now. Anyway, you were certainly heard despite the state you left us… Her in, and I am still working through the implications. But never mind. Do the goddesses of your world have a habit of explaining themselves to mortals?”
I frowned. That slip—if it had been one—had actually revealed quite a lot. Bline… probably still existed. But separate to the individual in front of me, despite them sharing a face.
Of course, that this entity shared Bline’s face was not particularly surprising. I had witnessed Her self-copying abilities first hand, and it made sense for Her to have something like that. How else was She supposed to service the needs of the people of this world? I had assumed She had been using Faen, but apparently not.
So then, if this being was—or had been—a copy of Bline, why did she now have lilim-like features? All of the other ones had looked exactly like the original… if lesser. Something about this was different in some as-yet-undefined way.
Although, if I were to take into account the whole ‘personality quarantine’ thing, that might help explain it. Going from the wording, this entity could very well have been some aspect of Bline that had been forcibly cut away then discarded. Like a cancer. And if goddesses could become Faen—or something in that ballpark—then I could assume that act had given birth to the entity before me.
Somehow.
So why is she suddenly my problem? I had no answer to that, nor could I logic my way to an answer. Not yet, anyway. I needed more information. It might explain the horns, though. Something about my Class might have caused the change once she was attached.
In any case, there were a lot of ways to go about replying to her question depending on one’s cultural background. However, if a person was at all honest with oneself, the answer arrived at would always end up the same.
“No,” I admitted eventually. “As far as I’m aware, no… deities communicate with us at all. We pretty much have to figure everything out for ourselves.”
“Hmm… not at all? That’s a bit much. Though, it might be entertaining for the first few centuries,” she mused aloud before turning her attention back. “But it makes my point rather well, I think. You should be more than satisfied with whatever hints I deign provide you.”
“Fine,” I growled. “Maybe you’d be satisfied if I deigned provide you with the name, Vex?” That would have been so very appropriate.
She quickly held up another sign and smirked.
| Rejected |
My eyebrows lifted automatically in surprise. “You actually came prepared for that?”
“Die in fire,” she chirped happily.
*****
Eventually, we settled on the name, Mia.
The entity formerly known as Bline… or maybe a part of Bline? I still was not sure. Anyway, she was quick to inform me that it meant ‘beloved’ in a variety of languages she had never heard spoken aloud, so she was excited by how foreign and exotic it sounded. I had wanted to reject the name on hearing that, but she had gotten so weirdly hysterical about the whole thing that I had eventually relented.
I had picked it because it was an acronym for ‘missing in action.’ And I felt that was appropriate enough given what I suspected about her origin. Plus, my limited knowledge of Latin had run dry of fitting three-letter words.
In any case, I had decided to begin exploring the island. Despite having been dropped into the middle of the ocean, I had little doubt that I was still in the Dungeon. Somehow. And I suspected there was something here I needed to find.
That and I was pretty much done with talking to Mia. Despite being my Faen—whatever that implied—her refusal to be straight-forward with me made it all but pointless to continue. Though, if I were being honest with myself, I would have admitted it was mostly a decision borne out of frustration.
That did not stop her, though.
“Have you given any thought to your next skill purchase?”
She was not visible at the moment, having disappeared along with her signs.
“Why?” I asked absently, my attention diverted up the side of the craggy rock face before me.
I was not particularly enthusiastic about climbing yet another obstacle, this one far more daunting than the last, but the thing seemed to stretch almost uniformly in both directions as a barrier between me and the center of the island. And I had a feeling that whatever I was looking for would not be on the beach.
That would have been too convenient.
“Is that still your job?”
“My tits are your job!” She cleared her throat in embarrassment. “Sorry. I didn’t uh… Yes. The Lady has mmmph—“
I paused, distracted from my attempts at finding a potential path upward. “What? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I said yes, Donum. That is the… a role I will fulfill for you.”
“Oh.”
I had been thinking that—given this new paradigm—she might have lost her powers as a goddess, but it seemed not. Or at the very least, she was still able to perform her duties for me. So she was not totally useless.
Sighing, I squatted down and stared at the sand at my feet. It had mostly solidified near the cliff side, what with the tall grasses and palm-like trees scattered about, but there were still some loose patches here and there. While I pondered how to go about scaling the cliff—perhaps by constructing a rudimentary ladder out of the local vegetation—I began to idly doodle with my finger.
“Donum… what exactly do you think you’re doing?” Mia asked after a moment.
I shrugged. “I dunno. Just think…ing?”
I pulled my finger away from the sand and stared. For some reason, I had started to sketch out what I could remember of that bizarre alien math outlined in Moisture. I had only managed the one symbol—one of the bigger, reoccurring ones—and I still had no clue what it meant.
But it had started to glow.
“Uhm… is it supposed to be doing that?”
“I’m going to ignore that question, you fuckwit! Ass munch!” The percussive sounds of her rapidly slapping her own cheeks reverberated in my ear for a moment. “Damn it, Donum! You know that sets me off. Now, erase that before it explodes.” While I hastily complied, she sighed. “How could you possibly know that symbol, anyway?”
I shrugged. “It was in one of those Word-books in the main room. Next to the desk? No idea what it means, though.”
“Of course, you don’t have any idea what—wait, books?”
Abruptly, there was the screeching sound of a microphone distorting, then I distinctly heard footsteps rushing off into the distance.
I waited for a few moments, but she had gone silent.
“Well, that certainly set a bee under her bonnet.”
It had been accidental, but I had been meaning to ask about that, anyway. And it was a fairly decent way of broaching the subject given Mia’s reticence to discuss things I did not already know. However, now that it was on the table, there was the possibility something interesting might come of it.
Plus, she had already let the one thing slip. If I drew a certain shape, it would explode. How useful that would be was yet to be determined. I would need to figure out just how powerful the explosion would be and how long I would have after drawing it before the reaction would occur. There were probably other variables too, but for the time being I now had a potential flameless alternative to my Detonating Sap. It even came prepackaged with a timer.
And that was cool! It made me feel all wizardy inside.
“Hey! Are you a monster?”
I blinked in surprise as the child-like voice intruded on my thoughts and glanced up. There was a little head with a shock of green hair poking over the side of the cliff, staring down at me.
“No,” I called back. “Are you?”
A few moments of hushed whispering floated down before whomever this was answered.
“That’s a dumb question,” the child retorted. “Are you dumb?”
I chuckled at the brutal frankness. “Sometimes. But I don’t think it’s so dumb. This is the Dungeon. You could be another Faen trying to play a trick on me.”
“I’m not a Faen,” the apparent boy-child shouted. “I’m a laoi!”
“I doubt that,” I called back.
I did, too. Arx had explained to me back when we had first met that people who had never been in the Dungeon before went to the tutorial for their first time. There was no way I would just happen to meet an uninitiated child in here. Something else was going on.
“You look like you’re just a kid. Do you even have a Class?”
“I’m not a kid!” the boy shouted indignantly. “I’m eight years old!”
“He’s right, though,” another voice sounded faintly from above. This one sounded a bit higher-pitched. “You don’t have a Class, Mik.”
“So?!” Mik retorted over his shoulder. “Neither do you, Gweyir.”
“What are you two doing?” yet another voice shouted. This one was distinctly female. And adult. “Come away from there before you fall.”
“Aw, Lynnria,” Mik complained. “We weren’t going to fall. We were just talking to the dumb monster-guy.”
“Yeah, still not a monster,” I shouted, folding my arms. I considered refuting the dumb part too, but I had a feeling that would just make things worse.
A moment later, another head poked over the side. This one was no doubt the woman I had heard. Or perhaps girl? She looked pretty young. I would put her in her late teens. Like the boy, she was another laoi, but her hair was deep purple and bound into a long but messy braid.
“What are you supposed to be?” she called down. “Some trick to lure down children? We’re not so foolish as that!”
“I’m not the one trying to trick people,” I retorted. “Do you honestly think I’d believe a bunch of children are living on a random island in the middle of the Dungeon? And not even in the tutorial?”
She scowled back at me. “We’re not living here. We’re trapped here, thank you. Three days, now.”
Three days? Hmm…
“You wouldn’t happen to all be from the same town, would you?” It was hard to be sure about the timing. What with my meeting with Bline, having been swallowed, and the recent torpor, I had lost a lot of time. But it might have been possible.
“Maybe,” she called back cautiously. “What would you know about it, Mr. Not-a-Trick?”
“Some,” I admitted.
I had no idea how it would be possible. We had been swallowed by entirely different Mouths, after all. Then again, I was sorely lacking in any sort of rulebook for this place.
“If you’re who I think you are, I know the name of the town. And I can describe the Mouth that swallowed it. I was on the other side of the lake at the time.”
“So what?” Mik shouted back. He was hanging precariously over the edge by using the older girl’s firm grip on his arm to keep from falling. “Everybody knows those things! You could still be a monster! Show me your teeth!”
“Hush, Mik,” the older girl admonished him before pulling him back again. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Does so!” he protested. “My mother always said to watch out for people with sharp teeth.”
She harrumphed. “Your mother’s bucket only came halfway up the well. I’ve met plenty of the kinds with sharp teeth.”
“Don’t you talk about my mother!” he screamed shrilly, then aimed a brutal kick to the older girl’s shin.
She barely even flinched. She merely stood there while the boy ran off in a huff.
After a moment, a softer voice said, “That was mean, Lynnria. She only died a few months ago.”
Lynnria lifted her chin defiantly. “He’ll get over it.”
The other girl—if it was a girl, I could not see from below—did not reply. But I did just barely hear some footsteps trailing off.
“So… Lynnria, is it?” I called.
I had not wanted to interrupt—that had sounded like a whole lot of none-of-my-business—but while they were talking, I had taken note of her outfit. It seemed purposely made to allow for freedom of movement, and she was wearing a set of thick leather pads about her knees and elbows. Most telling, though, was the bright red armband tied around her bicep.
I waited until she was looking back at me before continuing. “You’re a game-ball player, I take it?”
Her face cracked for a moment into a pleased smile, and she squatted down. “Never heard of a monster that knew about game-ball. But if you’re of the kinds, I’ve never seen your like before.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I drawled out. “But I’m no monster. I’m a Quester.”
“Yeah? What’s your name, then?” she called back.
“Donum.”
“Just Donum?” she asked. “No Clan?”
I winced, then let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’m… technically a Clan-head. And the Clan is named after me.”
“So… what? You’re Donum Donum?”
I hesitated before sucking in a quick breath. “I prefer Donum of the Clan Donum.” Then I nodded. She would not have heard of Highlander, so I could get away with the reference.
“No one calls you that,” she accused immediately.
True. Not that I would admit that to some kid.
“Look, are you going to let me up there or not?”
She shrugged. “It’s not like I have a rope. What do you even want up here anyway? And don’t say you’re here to rescue us. I know better than to believe that. Where did you come from? Have you seen any of the others from town?”
I held up my hands. “Okay, let’s keep to one question at a time.”
“Now you know what it feels like,” Mia whispered in my ear. I had not noticed her return. “She’s kind of cute though, don’t you think? Maybe you could make her into one of your allies.”
“Hush,” I whispered. “She’s just a kid. I would never—“
“What?” Lynnria called.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly. “I was just about to say that you lot are the first I’ve seen of the townsfolk. I didn’t even know it was possible to run into you. I came from…” I paused to point off to sea, but I could not make out the door from here. What with the currents pushing me along during my swim, I was not even sure where it should be. “Well, you may not believe this, but there was this… door? Kind of… hovering in the air.”
“Oh, neat! You mean like the crystal?” she exclaimed.
“Crystal?”
“Yeah, it’s in the middle of the island.” She stood to point inland excitedly. “Come on, I’ll show you. If you really are a Quester, maybe you can get it to talk to you!”
Then she ran off.
About three seconds later, she reappeared, looking sheepish. “Sorry. I get ahead of myself sometimes.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“How were you planning on getting up here, then?” she asked. “Are you any good at climbing?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “But I have an idea. Give me a few minutes.”
Then, more quietly, I murmured, “Mia, I think I’m ready to spend that skill point.”
Seleroan
Hey there, folks!
I had a little fun with today's chapter. Got a buddy of mine to knock up a worn and beat up stat sheet for me. I thought it was a nice touch.
Hope you guys are enjoying the holidays. See you next time!
And be sure to stop by the Patreon for all those lovely advanced chapters (and monetary love).
