Chapter 128: Mind of Man

Chapter 128: Mind of Man

Her world had changed.

Veresai hissed, tail lashing, as she abandoned the corpse and the madness in its wake. The invader with her power to disappear from attacks like they hadn't existed was infuriating in a way she hadn't experienced, and that was before the Voice Below had told her just how she had been only a distraction. A chance for the other invader, the one with the mind, to escape.

But before she'd even understood that, before she'd ground her fangs into the frustration and ripped it to marrow and bone, the Voice Below had said words to the stone her home was carved from, and titled it.

Not Naming, not the mind-opening power-giving awareness-making thing she cradled close to her connected soul, but another. Teeth, though her floor had already had fangs. Sharpness where there had once been fragility.

Her world had changed. There was something different, something in the air, something in the tunnels. Still her horde spread, bringing her knowledge of those outer edges, but there was something else in her floor, claiming a greater power than her. It moved the halls, shifted the stone, hollowed understanding from what had once been a map of perfection within her mind. Danger, yes, but danger not from herdanger from something else. An insult. A goddess, it was called, in response to the titling; something of softness and tendrils, like a spider's silk, but thoroughly unwelcome.

Her world had changed.

But if her world had changed, then she would change to beat it.

Veresai inclined her head, silver light spilling from her crown; her horde shuddered and raced for her unspoken command, slithering off in search of food or information. Anything to keep them from falling to her fangs in failure. She hissed, a soft and pressing sound, and flicked her forked tonguestill mana sat on the air, heavy and unwelcome, both from the goddess and the corpse. A corpse that had fed her, filled her channels with power well beyond anything lesser rats and crawling bugs could obtain, a fire and a fury she hadn't tasted since the last battle with humans where she had ground victory from their bones.

But this body was not the only invader. It was just the only corpse.

Veresai looked to the back of her sheltered home, where the tunnels moved, but too slowly to stop who had escaped.

The man. The human, the invader, the one who had spoken mind-to-mind with her, who had ripped understanding from her and slunk through the shadows to flee; he hadn't been like the woman, simplistic in her attacks. No. He had been familiar, in ways she didn't appreciate, with a mouth of mana and mind of madness. Infuriating.

But though Veresai was loath to admit it, she knew that he had been powerful. Not more than her, considering she had chased him away and he had abandoned his underling just to die at her fangs rather than face her himself, but powerful still. Something she hadn't quite understood.

So she hissed another command to her horde, vitriolic obedience embedded into melded minds, and turned back to her den. All fled before her, clearing the path with silent fear, as she preferred it. There was no victory that could not be claimed from obedience.

Even the horned serpent, who was her as she had been before, without Name or soul or new heights, knew not to upset her. Oh, Veresai would not have been so subservient then, even against an empress serpent; but that was why she had been chosen to be Named, and not this upstart. Veresai would allow her to live for now. There would have to be someone to claim these wretched little halls eventually, when she descended to new lands. Particularly with the goddess kicking around and trying to claim her power was what made this land dangerous.

It wasn't.

But in the back of the den, wrapped around moss and the gentle trickle of water from stone overhead, was a bodynot yet a corpse, though it had very nearly been one, but cloaked in deep scarlet scales and slitted eyes, it had been spared.

Kriya, the serpent-born invader, snake made human, human made snake.

She was asleep even now, the Voice Below pouring soothing mana over her eyes, keeping them closed and breath soft. An odd thing, this creature, with all the beautiful elegance of scales dressed up in the garish legs and limbs of humans. A hood at least, that could snap open in wide crimson blotches and fangs behind a strange fleshy mouth.

But asleep. She had been asleep since the attack that brought her, since Veresai had ripped her mind to shreds in an attempt to control her, and been forced to lay her to sleep instead.

Since Veresai had attempted to control her, and given someone else the task. Someone who had not yet succeeded.

As she approached, horns held high and four eyes narrowed, another presence flinched and coiled in on himself. The crowned cobra, deep grey-blue scales, turned to face her with cautious eyes.

Veresai hissed, curved fangs dripping venom. Insults and acrimony bled through her psionic power.

With fragile obedience, the crowned cobra fled from her presence, head bowed and hood tucked to his sides. Failure. He hadn't unlocked the secrets of the serpent-born, had barely done anything, just curled around her still body and hissed frustrations into her uncaring face. No healing, no evolution, no nothing. If he didn't find another way to prove himself, she would eat him, and soon.

She had chosen him for his strength, and he had not delivered. That was on him.

But behind him, tucked in the gentle embrace of her den, was the serpent-born, and all the potential that still simmered under her skin. Veresai slithered closer, coiling around the body she dwarfed in size and power and might; but Kriya had one thing she did not, which was healing. The source of this content nov(el)bi((n))

Her horde was little more than extensions of her grand will, bodies for problems and eyes for sight, but they died, and they died quickly. Precious few had evolved, and she couldn't risk harming herself in such brutish combat that so many invaders enjoyed; she needed her horde to throw themselves at problems, and they needed to be alive to do so. She'd seen the little human's potential so long ago, when she had first claimed her life and tried to control her.

The Voice Below had not taken and Named this serpent-born for her, changed it to her side like the male human before. It had disrespected her in the most irritating way that she couldn't combat, because there was no mind there to slip her thrall around, no body for her horde to sink their fangs into. And she did, to her own conniption, still appreciate the Voice Belowit had made and Named her, even if it hadn't given her this serpent-born.

But that didn't mean she couldn't take it herself.

Before, she had attempted to do this like she had with her serpents. Dive into their minds, take their eyes, make them extensions of her enormous willthis one was serpent-born, so surely it would work the same. But it hadn't, and the Voice Below had told her to stop. It wouldn't work.

But perhaps though she was serpent-born, she was still human.

And that invader, the man of mind, had shown her that humans could not be controlled through mana alonethey needed words.

Veresai was not one to suffer failure. That was for those lesser, those who scuttled and scurried in the shadows, who clawed for any power that the world would give them. Those that did not fight for it. Those that did not claim it.

If her psionic power alone would not be enough, then she could do more.

So she coiled around the serpent-born, iridescent blue scales pressed to crimson, and lowered her great head until she near touched the human's face. Her horns lit up, silver light splashing over the den, great and demonstrable, power above power; for this world was hers. It was not the Voice's, not the goddess', not the invadersit was hers, and all things were hers, and she would make it so.

And what she wanted, she got.

Awake, Veresai hissed, in the ancient tune of the beat that pulsed alongside her soul, in the words of mana more than speech. Awake. Become mine.

And, shuddering, Kriya awoke.

-

Ealdhere fought the truly incredible desire to flee back to his room under weight of this conversation. The Darlington family had been one of the elders in Abhaln, of course, with power and treasuries to matchbut he had been far from the one to stand at the vanguard. A third son was taught entendre and fineries and cutting words disguised with crumpets and extravagant meals, yes, but he wasn't expected to use them.

And he certainly wasn't expected to have to be the one frontmanning missives such as this.

"I am sorry," he said again, like he could just keep saying it and one day it would actually be accepted. "But I can't offer you anything else. What you collected has already died."

The man with the giant ancestry frowned, a delicate thing on his brutish face. He stood there, arms tucked behind his back, a bandage still wrapping up his arm from the holes the thorns had impaled through his palm. He'd been in the first group to emerge from the dungeon, two members when three had entered, and he'd brought with him a branch from one of the odd mangroves, and knowledge besides. A very extraordinary find.

Unfortunately, an extraordinary find didn't mean much when Ealdhere couldn't pay how he wanted, and instead how Lluc commanded him to.

"I apologize," Rordan said, stiffly. He was unerringly polite, even if something in his eyes said he didn't wish to be, which honestly made it worseEaldhere had never been one to insult others, and he rather felt like he was grinding this soft-spoken man under his heel, even if he could snap Ealdhere in half over his knee. "But I discovered for you its diet, and obtained a sample as well."

A sample that was now little more than a stick of greenwood, dead and dying. Deprived from its tree, it had died surprisingly quickly, even after dining on Rordan's blood. Which. Fascinating, truly, and what had led to Ealdhere making a fine breakthrough on the seedling he tended in his personal rooms, but still not enough for Lluc to offer the Adventuring Guild's coffers.

But the mangrove.

The neusangoj mangrovoj, the delicate sapling that had grown significantly less delicate once he'd learned just why it came with white leaves and no particular requirement of sun. He'd named it, as the Scholar who had the right, and he'd named it with a kind of old pain. It should have been merely sangonoj mangrovoj.

Neusangoj, instead, in memory of Neusthe kind, gentle soul with dryadic hair and a propensity for quiet stories in late night relaxations. He'd barely known her, and when he closed his eyes, all he saw was her corpse, sprawled over the moss-covered floor of the dungeon, eyes wide and scarlet haloed around her head. Dead for a dead man's mission. Little more than gold greasing palms and the idea of extravagant adventure.

How far he'd come, from the man who had left the Darlington Manor with feathers in his cap and dreams of writing papers on things unknown, when he'd studied Viejabran and marveled at the curiosities of Calaratan natives. When they had been little more than elements in some greater story.

Neus had died, and he had lived, and he would remember her, in any way he could. Her and Steshe and Jorge, caught and bloodied, dead and unburied.

Neusangoj mangrovoj.

"I understand," Ealdhere said, and gods, he did, he really did. "And I wish I could pay you morebut my hands are tied. You'll have to collect more samples and keep them alive long enough for me to replant them before I can give a true discovery's boon."

Technically, the discovery's boon should go to him, the first one to bring a mangrove out of the dungeon and name it, but Scholars rarely earned that honour, considering it was expected of their position. And Lluc would certainly never give him anything he could use to free himself from this well-appointed prison.

Too big to be one of the many serpents he'd heard of, with edges lining the sides and an odd, curved tip instead of a more jagged point. Still distinctly reptilian, but not the red of the kobolds or the sea-green of the dragon he'd heard so many stories of. Something else.

"From a crocodilian," Ghasavlk explained, something vaguely proud in his voice. "This is just a scaleI have the corpse waiting in the cove."

Hells be damned.

"The one in the third floor," Ealdhere said, eyes wide. "You killed it?"

Ghasavlk nodded. "I did."

It had been killed before, back in the original delve that ended in so much more blood than life, but that had been with fifty people charging into the depths; this was merely two people, and depending on where Syalia had died, it might have even been one. A feat well above a normal adventurer.

Ealdhere kept blinking. A full corpse to study, rather than fragmented memories stitched together from those who had seen its decapitated body and fled out the next second; he could create a full understanding of it, of what he had never heard more than stories about, even at home. Utterly fascinating.

"I have more collected pieces," Ghasavlk said, still bland, still open. "But these are the most interesting. The others I will give back at the Guild."

Interesting. Certainly a way to put it. Ealdhere brushed a finger over the crocodilian's scale, the ridges on its edge, and the curled legs of the mysterious spider; all parts of some greater mystery, of puzzling out just where this dungeon put its strength and what it had made it from. "You've discovered more than I could have imagined," he said, because it was well true. "What did you find on the lower floors?"

The ones unknown, the ones untested.

Ghasavlk hummed, drumming his fingers on the table. The barkeep still hadn't approached them, though she'd gathered two pints, an elven ancestry keeping long, jagged ears pinned flat to her skull. More people were looking at them, befuddled, recognition and suspicion warring in equal measure. Decidedly unpleasant.

"It has Chosens," Ghasavlk said, with an odd intention in the wordmore than typical emphasis, something personal. And considering Ealdhere had grown up around dungeons, tamed though they might be, and he had never heard of the term Chosens, that was something else. He would piece together the vague idea, that they were made Guardians by a dungeon, given power and prestige

But Chosen. A peculiar phrase. Maybe that was what they called them in chlagh?

"At least two," Ghasavlk continued. "A serpent and a lizard. One psionic, one draconic."

Hells, he'd encountered two Guardians and lived to tell the tale? A rare kind of adventurer indeed. Ealdhere blinked. "How powerful?"

"Exceedingly so. The psionic serpent combatted my own abilities. The draconic lizard fought with water and mist." Something in Ghasavlk's jaw tightenednot one fond of discussing his own weakness, considering by how he talked about both as if they were still alive, not like he had managed to kill them. Ealdhere stored that. "But easy to distract. Not guided by a firm hand."

Curious. Curious, curious, curious. So very many things about this dungeon were.

"The lizard lived lower than the fifth floor," Ghasavlk said. "But it was within a room engraved with draconic runes, and it had an intelligence not befitting its power."

Draconicthat led more credence to how the dungeon formed, though Ealdhere had never quite figured out whether that was supposed to be public knowledge. It seemed rather blatant to himVarcs Bilaro had killed a dragon, and some months later, a dungeon had sprouted from where its corpse had landed. Surely obvious, no? But still some people marveled and wondered at where it could have come from.

"Goodness," Ealdhere murmured, drumming on the table. "If it is already that powerful, I don't wish to imagine how strong it will get with time."

The man across from him seemed to agree, if how his jaw tightened further said anything. He'd been truly threatened by it, then. That might have something to do with a counter to his own power, though Ealdhere didn't know what his attunement was, but just as likely that anything to give a Gold pause was something they didn't necessarily want still kicking.

"And I sensed someone within," Ghasavlk said, fingers knotting together. "Sleeping, I believe. But on the fourth floor, within the serpent's den."

What?

"What?" Ealdhere asked.

Ghasavlk turned to him. "A person," he repeated, like that had been the confusing part of the sentence. "Someone within the fourth floor. I did not encounter them, only sensed their presence."

Ealdhere was rather grateful they hadn't been brought ale yet, because he would have dropped his. "There's a human in there?"

A pale reflection of confusion flicked over his face. "Does that change so much?"

"This changes everything," Ealdhere says, bemused. "Why, either they're there willingly, or they've been takenbut that's a human mind within the dungeon! Likely someone we need to rescue, if they haven't been killed the moment you sensed themI shudder to imagine what could have happened to them. What the dungeon could have learned from them."

Ghasavlk went very still.

"A human mind," he repeated, quiet. "Do you believe the dungeon might have taken one?"

Ealdhere blinked. "If you sensed one within, then yes?" He tapped the crocodilian's scale. "It clearly has creatures powerful enough to combat the majority of those who invade it, considering no one has claimed its core yet, and obtaining multiple gods to patron its floors means it has an intelligence we can't ignore. If it already has the wherewithal to create Guardians, then it could take a human, either to study or use as bargaining."

He paused. Swallowed his own words. Pondered them.

The dungeon was intelligent.

That was easy enough to tell, because of course it wasit had created living lands capable of both defending itself and thriving, becoming more than they had been shaped for, and done whatever ritual was required to create Guardians. It had survived some weeks of daily raids and seemed to only be growing stronger, digging deeper, further than they could even sense.

But it was intelligent.

The dungeon in Abhaln had been little more than an extension of will from the family who held its core. High Lord Thiago's dungeon was similar, a stripped beast of power and death. Unclaimed dungeons were either claimed or killed, with very few in betweenand those that never lived long enough to savour it.

In Calarata, it hadn't been claimed yet. It hadn't been killed.

It was alive, and it was moving, and it was intelligent.

Ealdhere's hand curled around the crocodilian's scale.

To be an Adventuring Guild's Scholar was to be one who studied a dungeon, who pierced through its mysteries to find its creatures and their uses, what could be created from its spoils. That had been what he had been charged with, what he was expected to carry out; what Lluc held over his neck like a sharpened blade. Even now, as soon as he finished playing dress-up for whatever Ghasavlk wanted the public to see him for, he would go back to the Guild and begin mapping out the fourth floor, creating more detailed documents on the creatures within for adventurers to defeat and harvest.

But he was not just facing new wonders within a dungeon. He was facing a dungeon itself.

Something that no one had ever had the chance to study, because they were always defanged first.

Something new.

"Yes," his mouth said, filling the silence as his mind raced like a horse free of its bridle. "Yes, I believe there may be someone trapped within the dungeon. I believe Lluc will be very interested in that."

Ghasavlk looked at him, brows flicking togetherbut Ealdhere was Unranked. A petty noble caged by a pirate's orders, little more than a researcher on a chain, and he was hardly deserving of suspicion; he smiled, open, curious, the same face he had worn for the past weeks. Ghasavlk's expression faded back to apathy.

Ealdhere stayed smiling. Stayed unsuspicious.

His mind flew.

There was someone within the dungeon, likely unwillingly, but they were still aliveand they had been alive for, at the very least, a day, if they were from the previous invaders a day before Ghasavlk's delve. For a dungeon that had the power to end a Gold, it wasn't from a lack of ability to kill them, which meant they were alive for a reason, which meant the dungeon had reasoning, and it was something that had a consciousness, however alien or draconic it was.

It was something entirely, entirely new.

And Ealdhere wanted to know more.

Well. He likely wouldn't be allowed in the dungeon again, not if that would give him the chance to slip the chains Lluc was so determined to keep on him, but there were people who could.

And there had been that man, anciently powerful with scales crawling over his face, that had seemed remarkably interested in forging a truce. A connection, between Guild and Market, who had been in that wretched cavern with Lluc's brand of cruelty and the towering guard of the Dread Crew.

Ealdhere had things he needed to investigate, things that couldn't be found with Lluc's eyes watching him with the feverity of a water-sick beast. Things that would aid the Guild, yes, but more than creatures and ideas and strategies. They were things to do with lives, lives that Calarata seemed so content to ignore, to cast aside as little more than costs to be paid or a thing to be caged and bound for power. Things Ealdhere cared for still.

Perhaps it was time he reached out to Gonal.