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Throne Room, The Voice’s Manse, Atlantis
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“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lady,” the old man bowed as I watched from Kata’s eyes. At the same time, the guildmaster’s family stood clustered behind him. “My name is Beatram Losat, I’m your dear guildmistress’s grandfather.” The room was empty of all but the six of us, and enchanted against eavesdroppers.
“So you’re the man responsible for my island being colonized, then?” I asked, leaning back and raising one of Kata’s eyebrows. “It’d been a very long time since I’d last seen humans, and I was unsurprised to find you hadn’t changed at all.” The man only shrugged at my words, with a careless smile.
“We are what we are,” Beatram answered as he nodded serenely. “Unfortunately, the lessons of the past are often discarded, lost and forgotten, leading to them being made again, and again. Those of us old enough to remember those lessons are often dismissed as ‘cookey old men’ who should make way for younger men to make the decisions.” I scoffed and rolled my eyes.
“More fool them; age and experience trumps all, especially when the being isn’t affected by the turning of the seasons, as I am,” I responded, before leaning forward and steepling Kata’s fingers. “What brings you before me, Guildmaster Losat? Fleeing the crusaders on the continent? Do you seek shelter from the coming storm?”
“All of the above and more, Creator, though I must admit I have resigned my post,” the former guildmaster answered. “I was already on the outs with the Guild, and my not passing on critical information about your august self was, apparently, a step too far.”
“You…” Layla, who had been standing back with her aunt, uncle and lover, stepped forward. “But grandfather, why?”
“Because I saw what you saw, Layla,” the old man answered, turning to face his granddaughter. “The Creator is a most unique existence, and as one more informed than most about dungeons, that should be saying something.” With that, he turned back to face me, squaring his shoulders and rising from his hunch to his full height. “No dungeon on record has had a layout like yours. No dungeon on record has contracted with manabeings for their defences. No dungeon on record has ever enforced a claim on the surface as a ruler without a master and protected their inhabitants, as you do. No dungeon on record has created a sapient species not hellsbent on the destruction of humanity and all our works.”
With each claim, my interest grew. The old guildmaster had likely been finding as many records as he could since my discovery, all for his granddaughter. Such filial loyalty was rare. “I am aware of my nature, Mr Losat. More than that, I am aware of why I am the way I am. What I’m interested in is what your conclusions are.”
“Before I answer, may I ask one question?” Beatram asked, respectful, but with steel in his voice.
“You may.”
“Exactly how old, in days, weeks, months and years, were you when Captain Eli Hart discovered your island?”
There was a pause, broken by growing chuckles that turned to laughter. A genuine belly laugh. My laugh.
“Finally, someone asking the right questions!” I answered with a broad, sharp-toothed grin. “I was discovered a mere two months and three days after I first awoke on my Island.”
Beatram Losat’s eyes glinted while the four behind him let out exclaimations of shock.
“But, you said you were ancient!” Layla accused, pointing her arm out at Kata with rage written across her face. “You lied!”
“I did no such thing, you just weren’t specific enough, and at the time I had decided to keep up the Illusion,” I answered frankly to the blind, albino woman. She was vibrating in anger. “You all came to the conclusion I was ancient all on your own, as well as being a Lost dungeon. I merely didn’t correct you, and used the ambiguity in your questions to reinforce the idea.”
“But the hands… the lights…” Layla grasped. “They existed before you were found! How did you know what hands were well enough to sculpt like that? How did you sculpt ANYTHING!? You should have been a baby dungeon for years yet!”
“Mr Losat, I believe I would like to hear your theory,” I said instead of answering, looking down at the ex-guildmaster again.
“Well, as I said, I consider myself the foremost expert on dungeons in the world,” he answered, bringing his left hand up to rub his bare, wrinkly chin. At the same time, he leaned against his staff with his right hand. “I have studied your kind for nearly a century, and interviewed more than a dozen cores capable of speech. I know your growth rate, learning rate and the instincts you fall back on intimately. When you exceeded all of my metrics, I knew you were special. A dungeon without a master, but with the capability, inventiveness and adaptability of one? Unprecedented.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“And?” I prompted, waving Kata’s hand in a circle impatiently. “Your conclusion?”
“There are two options: you are either a human soul within a dungeon core, or a dungeon core born with the full memories of a human, who thinks it is one,” he stated, bluntly. “I know not how, I know not when, but no other explanation fits. I have talked to dungeons, and talking to you has been as different an experience as it could possibly be.”
The room was silent after his declaration, and I weighed how to answer carefully.
“I suppose neither of us will figure out which of the two it is,” I decided to say, all but confirming his theory. More gasps rang out from the peanut gallery. “It’s been an experience, either way. Dungeon Cores see the world so differently from humans; I was surprised there wasn’t more disphoria. But whichever answer turns out to be correct, I can confirm I have a soul, one far more mature than the size of my core would have suggested at my ‘birth’.”
Behind the victoriously grinning Beatram, Layla, somehow, paled further. Then collapsed in a dead faint.
“Perhaps we should take this conversation somewhere more private,” I continued, standing up and descending the steps of the throne. “Isid, Jerrard, Felin, would you mind taking care of Layla? Mr Losat and I have much to discuss.”
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The Voice’s Office, The Voice’s Manse, Atlantis
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Beatram Losat followed the scaled woman into her office and sat on the comfortably plush chair offered to him with a nod. The Voice poured a kettle into a pair of cups set on a metal tray, tea if Beatram wasn’t mistaken. “Thank you,” he said, accepting the cup and inhaling the fragrances. “So, I’ve heard from my granddaughter, daughter and son-in-law about your plan to hide Atlantis’s population in the dungeon. What kind of protections would they be under? What stops the crusaders, templars and heroes from finding them down there?”
“The copy of Atlantis I’ve built is protected by redirection, SEP, and Invisibility enchantments,” the Creator said, through his Voice. Beatram wondered what the woman thought about the dungeon speaking through her as he did. “Anyone not keyed into the wards would see a bare patch of water and conclude it wasn’t worth sailing through. If they tried, despite that, the redirection enchantment would turn them so they end up sailing around it. Anyone within the wards will not see the other islands in the archipelago, merely endless seas as they do now. Outwardly, there would be little disruption to their lives.”
“SEP?” Beatram prompted as he took a sip of the scalding liquid. Ah! His favourite blend!
“Someone Else’s Problem,” the Creator answered, bringing the cup to his Voice’s lips and taking a sip of their own. “It makes an area seem uninteresting; people’s eyes will glaze over, look straight past it, or conclude that whatever is there isn’t their problem to deal with.”
“Such an enchantment sounds incredibly powerful.” Beatram responded, thoughtfully.”Why not use it to protect yourself, or your creations?”
“Who says I don’t?” the Creator answered, with an upturn of their fanged grin. “The delvers have yet to discover any of my monsters’ spawning grounds, yes?”
“Good point,” Beatram conceded, shifting in his chair and sighing as he sank into the cushions again. “Some other matter prevents you from using it everywhere, then?”
“If I were to overuse it, people would start to notice when they repeatedly found an area uninteresting for no reason,” the Creator explained with a wave of his Voice’s hand. “Besides that, if I used it to, say, disguise or hide the floor’s exit, the guilders would find some other way; perhaps one more destructive than I’d prefer. It’s the same with not having a physical exit. A clear path for progression keeps them on the path of least resistance, a path crafted by me, and a predictable one.”
“Yes, that does make sense,” Beatram said, pausing to take another sip. “You are being remarkably more willing to share than I had expected.”
“I feel that, at this point, you and your family are all as ‘on my side’ as you could possibly be,” the Creator shared, putting their teacup down. “Even if you don’t worship me as other humans do, my enemies are your enemies, by dint of your previous associations with me. As I explained in the throne room, age brings wisdom. You are probably the oldest person on the island, and anything you are willing to share would be eagerly received. Despite being a dungeon, I know little in general about my kind.”
“Well, as you should already know, Dungeons are incredibly slow to age and mature; by dint of your immortality, you have far more time to learn and grow than humans do. Unable to defend yourselves physically, your instincts prioritized self-defence in the only way you could: subverting, controlling, and empowering other creatures. You put as much distance between yourselves and the surface as possible to make your defences as numerous and powerful as possible. Traps and even the most basic of architecture aren’t something you find in any dungeon younger than Mature, or without a Master. Mature dungeons have absorbed enough knowledge from the guilders they killed to understand that there are other ways to defend yourselves.”
The Voice’s body nodded slowly, frowning and seemingly deep in thought. “I knew or theorised as much,” the Creator answered, after a minute of thinking. Beatram filled the time with another sip of tea. “It explains much of why you guilders assumed I was old. I remember overhearing that my monsters were too uniform; I assume they thought they were all individually mutated beasts?”
“That is all young dungeons can produce,” Beatram answered with a nod. “They pull so little mana from the atmosphere that they must carefully ration it. At the Baby stage, most have one powerful mana-mutant and three to a dozen less-powerful ones. Those numbers increase as their ages do, and their mana income increases.”
“So my income was abnormal then,” the Creator mumbled to themselves, before speaking up. “I was able to enhance coin-sized crabs into proper monsters within a couple of weeks, as well as accelerate their breeding cycles and development. By the time I was discovered, the Crabs as you know them today were mostly complete. I later automated their empowerment and fully established their breeding rate and cycle. They’re self-regulating, now.”
“Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.” Beatram breathed, theories and ideas rushing through his brain. “While this has all been extremely informative, I did have another purpose to accomplish here today, besides confirming my theories.”
“Oh? And what would that be?” the Creator seemed curious, their Voice leaning forward eagerly.
“To facilitate an introduction,” Beatram replied, a knowing glint in his eye. “You see, the crystal atop my staff is a Dungeon Core. Her name is Polish, and she would like to meet you.”
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