226, 1/2

The Pit loomed below like a scar upon Veird that someone had corralled behind battlements, fortresses, and half-made walls. It also kinda looked like a skate park, what with all the totally tubular half-pipes and gnarly grinding areas. Erick felt that the neighborhood kids back on Earth would have really loved to use it as a playground. He supposed that ‘as a playground’ was sort of what the adventurers and newly-named delvers had been doing with the place, too.

Professional play, with gold prizes and stiff competition in the form of man-eating coral eels.

So like. A professional skate park. One with prizes and tournaments.

And also a lot of yelling, apparently, now that Erick had told the very-worried people near him that he was going to solve it all, and make sure no one died in the process. They didn’t seem to believe him right now, but at least one of them was far beyond being scared of the ‘big bad Wizard’.

Aroido, one of 49, and the ‘Face’ of the Aroidos, yelled at the Archmage of the Regency, “We had it contained, Wiloza! And then you had to go get House Benevolence involved! I had it contained!”

He was probably having a mental breakdown right now. Erick glanced at Poi, and Poi gave a small nod, so Erick decided to just let the man have his breakdown. Perhaps he could get it all out of his system, for now, and Erick could get some good intel in the process.

Wiloza was not prepared for Aroido to turn his ire on her, though. Wiloza instantly declared, “I thought it would be a simple prognostication!”

That relationship there was obviously a complicated thing. Wiloza was the ‘human oversight’ for the dungeons, which was a rather normal position for a kingdom to have. But such an arrangement was usually a small group of people, with one person in charge and several underlings, and then one repro for each dungeon under the auspices of the kingdom. Storm’s Edge had it all wrong, with Wiloza being the only one in that ‘Head Dungeonmaster’ position, taking the place of the entire office of workers, and with all the Aroido, all repros, being the majority of the dungeon-oversight forces.

And that was it for their entire office staff. 50 people. One ‘in charge’, who was only there in case of emergency, and 49 others all doing whatever they wanted inside the dungeons.

Erick didn’t have the full story about all of that, but he would be getting the full story eventually, and he was getting quite a lot of sideways-information right now. It wasn’t like he needed to go anywhere at this very instant, either, for Quilatalap had closed off his dungeon, and he probably wasn’t ready for anyone to come knocking on the gate quite yet.

And so, Aroido had his mental breakdown.

Aroido raised his hands and flapped them around angrily as he yelled, “It’s never a simple prognostication! The very second you got them involved you put me and my brothers at risk!”

Wiloza scowled. “You put yourself at risk when you chose to threaten those two immortals.”

“I had it contained! I was—”

Okay. Erick had had enough of that particular lie. “You did not have it contained,” Erick said, and Aroido suddenly realized that Erick was here, and that maybe he shouldn’t be screaming like he was. As Aroido fell deeply silent and Wiloza professionally demurred, Erick continued, “And it was a simple prognostication. This prognostication of a coming storm is a big deal for you, but we have dealt with many different situations like this before now. We can solve this —all of us together— and none of us need be enemies, and no one needs to die.” He said to Aroido, “But if you think the Regency will actually harm you, then you need to relocate. If you and your brothers want [Reincarnation]s, then I can do that, but you will have to submit to the [Reincarnation] process.”

For one bright, shining moment after mentioning [Reincarnation], Aroido was thrilled. He saw a path forward for him and his brothers. And then reality crashed back into the forefront of his mind. He said, “They would never let us go. We know too much about the kingdom.”

“The option is there. Consider it.” Erick moved on, turning his sight back to the Pit. “What was the plan here? Leave the immortals’ dungeon alone? Attack it and breach the seal, and the dungeon beyond?”

Aroido said, “We have a plan for if the dungeons ever truly break. It involves contacting the Dungeoneer’s Guild down by Adventurer City. They were going to have some big elites come in and break the cores if they ever got out of control… Or if me and my brothers ever rebelled.”

Erick mentally looked to Poi, asking him to get that information.

Poi did not outwardly say or do anything, but a few more tendrils of thought flowed away from his head.

Meanwhile, Erick said, “I don’t get that. That last part.” Erick asked, “You’re the repro of the original Lord Aroido, yes? And your brothers are more copies of you. If they felt that you would ever actually rebel, then they never would have allowed that many of you to exist at once, yes? How many of you are there, anyway?” Erick pretended ignorance, “Ten? Twenty?”

“… 49,” Aroido said, after much self-wrestling.

“A larger amount than expected.” Erick said, “That’s a non-insubstantial number to add to my usual monthly [Reincarnation] list. But it’s doable. I want you to really consider that option, Aroido, if they’re really going to kill you. House Benevolence doesn’t abide by the murder of uncooperative repros just because they’re uncooperative. It’s usually the grabbing of power and becoming a plague upon the land which makes us and the Core Delvers of the Dungeoneer Guild decide to end a dungeon core. Even after the debacle of the Freedom Dungeon over at the Freelands we only executed a few people, and almost none of them were dungeon-born.”

Aroido looked mollified, for now. His stance was back to normal. He had never allowed his tears to fall, but it had been a close call. His voice was even, as he said, “Thank you, Wizard Flatt. If you do not mind, I would like to speak a bit on the true situation unfolding here, pledge myself to House Benevolence, and then go get my brothers and help end this horror happening right now however we are able. And then we’ll move on, or whatever you decide needs to happen.”

Wiloza was saddened by Aroido’s change of allegiance, which surprised Erick a little bit, but not really. Erick had almost expected Wiloza to be angry at him, but the elderly archmage surprised him with her compassion.

Erick wasn’t ready to accept Aroido into his House yet, though. “It’s not quite that easy to become a member of my House these days, but your enthusiasm is noted, and marked. I suspect what’s going to happen here, at Storm’s Edge, is that I’m going to enter into a joint dungeon-creation endeavor with the Regency. That means a lot of things, but it also means that there might be places for you here at the Pit. I’ll probably ask Quilatalap to get involved here, too, in order to properly run the dungeon. That will happen either alongside Vanya and Soltic, or without them. I’ve yet to even ask Quilatalap about all this, so he might say no.”

Wiloza paled at the mention of Quilatalap, but she also saw this as a maybe-good-thing. She would withhold judgment until she needed to judge.

Through a pale expression, Aroido lied, “That would be an absolutely wonderful option, Wizard Flatt.”

“As I said, such a joint operation would mean many things, all of which will be decided later, if the Regency is even up for it.” Erick said, “Now, please give me your true order of events, starting from the first moment you heard of Vanya and Soltic. If you have the capability to do it through a memory [Telepathy] packet, then that’s good, too. You can give that to my man Poi, here.”

Aroido faltered. He wasn’t that good with [Telepathy], then? Not a whole lot of people were, but… That was surprising, too. Aroido was capable enough to have a Force Domain, but not capable enough to do well-made [Telepathy] packets?

Something was going on there.

Wiloza spoke up, “I can give that information packet for I was there for most of the interactions with Miss Silver and Mister Cross, which is obviously a call out of the Silver Cross of Koyabez, but I admit that I was unable to find them inside any Church of Peace registry.”

Erick’s eyebrows raised at that statement. Wiloza was the second person to bring that naming scheme up. He kinda wanted to kick himself for calling themselves ‘Silver Cross’, for that was obviously a code name. Sometimes, apparently, he could still be dumb.

Poi did not smile or laugh at all, for he was more controlled than that, but Erick could tell that he was laughing inside.

Aroido, fully embarrassed and hiding it, blurted out, “I prayed to Koyabez not half an hour ago, and he deigned to give me a message through the Script saying that I should have trusted Soltic and Vanya more than I did.” Aroido looked to Erick. “I fear I have messed this up, and this is all going to get dumped on me.”

Ah. Good ‘ol Koyabez.

Erick hadn’t spoken to him in a while.

Erick said, “Let’s not worry about that right now. Wiloza. The packet.”

Wiloza sent a packet of information to Poi.

Poi pulled it apart, and then handed it to Erick.

There was little there that Erick didn’t already know, though it was odd seeing Vanya and Soltic from Wiloza’s perspective, as Vanya gave her presentation. Wiloza’s information packet was colored with her utter disgust of the whole affair, for she wished that people would leave the dungeons well enough alone. So what if they were breaking all the time? Big deal. If people simply left Aroido well enough alone, then the dungeons would work well enough on their own. Who needed a Grand Dungeon, anyway? No one. Grand Dungeons were nonsense, anyway; monster lures and killing zones were good enough.

From what Erick was now seeing, Wiloza was changing her mind on that most recent opinion, due to all this ‘nonsense’ happening all around the Regency right now. Her hope at the end of all this is for a dungeon that no one needs to worry about anymore; however they get there is fine by her. She just wanted less danger in her life. That’s why she became an archmage in the first place; in order to have the power to make the world safer for everyone all around her.

After pretending to take a moment longer to understand what he was seeing, Erick said, “That was informative. Now, before I give you two some orders, and then I go down to the dungeon, is there anything else major that I need to know about? Something that you don’t tell others. Something that seems to be missing from this information packet, Wiloza.” He looked to Aroido. “Something having to do with Gold Taker, the ‘archmage octopus’ that keeps your dungeons mana-positive.”

Wiloza stilled. And then she relaxed. She was ready for anything. But she did not speak.

Aroido sighed a little, then prepared to disappoint Erick, as he said, “Gold Taker is Everbless.”

Erick nodded. “Thank you for coming clean about that, too. Now that we’re all—”

“You’re immune to the intervention, too?!” Aroido exclaimed. And then his eyes went wide. “Ah. Pardon my outburst. Uh. Wizard Flatt.”

Erick bushed over that outburst, saying, “I am immune to a great many things, as most Wizards are.”

Aroido suddenly had half of a thought.

Erick realized what that thought was right before Aroido could fully form that thought. Perhaps he shouldn’t have made a link between Wizards and immunity to magic, but he wouldn’t [Return] in a social situation like this. He had just fucked up a little bit, as yes, Aroido paled, and yes, he put a few things together that he probably shouldn’t be putting together—

“I think Soltic might be a Wizard,” Aroido said, very seriously.

“No!” Wiloza shouted, her voice full of sudden despair.

“It fits!” Aroido said, “He’s immune to the intervention, too!”

Erick ended the conversation with a wave, saying, “Then the fact that you’re still alive is proof enough that whatever happened here was not meant to harm you, so I urge both of you to put away preconceived notions about Wizards and what might be lying in wait, and relax a fraction. Anyway! Aroido, at my side. Wiloza, here with Poi, on the battlements. You two should converse about the happenings here, and know that I’m watching.” He summoned and stepped onto a Platform, and then he looked to Aroido. “With me.”

Poi stood strongly, as ordered. Wiloza glanced to Poi, and then gave a courtly nod.

And Aroido walked forward, onto Erick’s Platform spell, softly saying, “He might be a Wizard.”

“Aye; he might be a Wizard,” Erick said, as he lifted the Platform into the air and began moving down into the Pit. He aimed for the black disk hanging in the air; the locked Dungeon #6. “Or he might just be someone Called by Sininindi in order to do a job.”

Looking a little sheepish, Aroido said, “… You are probably correct.” And then he added, “If they should open the door… I might have angered them a great deal. But I… Uh…” His voice trailed off as he tried to decide what to say, but he had nothing else.

“Don’t worry about it,” Erick said, “We don’t have nearly enough laws to protect repros yet, or at least not enough to deal with the various situations that arise from their creation. Culture is similarly backed up with problems and ways of handling the introduction of completely new people, directly into the world. I’m sure, in time, that ‘a repro’ will likely become just another thing that a person is, and not a reason to kill them, or otherwise. The shadelings are still having a lot of problems, all of them alongside the same veins as all the new repros of the world. Personally, I empathize that it must be terrifying waking up and being both yourself, and something else entirely. You probably had a lot of issues in the beginning— Probably still have a lot of issues, if you feel that the Regency will kill you for whatever failure happened today.”

Aroido breathed calmly, but Erick’s words were hitting him hard. He was not going to have an emotional response right now, though; he decided. And then he began to spill, “We’re not actually all repros of Aroido. That’s part of the problem. Aroido died— He was murdered years ago. And we’re all sort of… Copies of copies. It’s been difficult. We’ve had dungeon breaks before, all the time, for every fool and their sister thinks they know how to make it all work well, but all they do is try to kill us and then they fuck up the dungeons in the process. It’s only ever since Everbless began helping to keep the dungeons in mana that we stopped breaking all the time.”

They reached the floor of the Pit. Erick dispersed the platform underfoot, and both him and Aroido dropped a centimeter to the ground.

Aroido continued to say, “Everbless will show up when he feels like it. He’s always…” Aroido shook his head. “Aroido died, and we repros had to work overtime to keep the dungeons afloat, and after a few breaks killed the majority of our elder brothers, we had to repro ourselves, so… Thus began a chain of events that ended up with all of us being repros of repros and… Personality drift, and all that.”

Erick nodded a little, in understanding. “That’s been tough for you, because now they don’t think you’re real people anymore.”

“Yes! Exactly!” Aroido backed up. “They’re nice enough to us but… Those in the know don’t treat us well at all. It’s the little things. And… Sorry. You’re busy right now. I just needed to say this because… I mishandled the entire situation with Miss Silver and Mister Cross.”

Erick nodded. And then he walked over to the giant black disk sitting in the air, like a swirl of darkness five meters across, its bottom-most edge hovering a handspan above the flat ground. It was the entrance to dungeon 6, and it was closed, but it actually wasn’t closed at all. With a bit of mana sense, Erick watched as mana naturally flowed into the darkness. It was an anemic, slow sort of flow; the sign of an unhealthy dungeon with most of its inhabitants dead and gone.

Quilatalap was probably faking that flow somehow, though, to throw off everyone out here who might be watching.

With a quick conjuring of Force and Benevolence, Erick created a bright white staff with a knotted head. It was just a normal sort of conjuring, but one didn’t go knocking on dungeon gates with their bare hands.

Aroido had been standing four meters away from the black [Gate], but at Erick’s conjuring, he rapidly retreated, only stopping when he was a good fifteen meters away.

Erick waited for him to stop retreating, and when he did, Erick pulled back for a good strike, and then he struck the [Gate]. The staff touched darkness, and was halted. Not a single sound came from that action. Not a fraction of the black air of the [Gate] was disturbed. Erick pulled back his staff, and darkness clung to the head, like he had stuck the staff into black gum. That blackness snapped off when he pulled far enough away.

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Erick used an actual [Strike] the second time, empowering his weapon to hit as hard as it possibly could, based on the angle of his attack, the object he was hitting, and a bunch of other factors governed by how the Script made that particular form of magic work.

The staff hit the dungeon [Gate] and the darkness flexed, a dull gonging sound filling the air.

Erick pulled back and hit the darkness twice more. Twice more the air sounded with a dull gong.

And then he stepped backward.

He waited.

After a moment of nothing, Aroido spoke up, “I don’t think she’s going to open the [Gate] for a polite knock.”

“I’m polite unless tested otherwise.” Erick added, “And I can wait.”

Four silent minutes later…

“I’m going to knock again,” Erick said, right before he knocked again, this time much harder. “They probably heard it that ti—”

The black disk swelled open like a bubble rapidly popping, leaving behind a hole in the world, revealing a half-decayed army on the other side.

A regimented horde of undead stood upon a vast stone plain, each of them wearing black armor and standing with a spear at their sides. All of them were in various states of decay, but most looked like they could last for at least one or two good battles. The general at the head of the army looked like he could last a whole campaign, though. He was a gargantuan man made of solid bone, twice as large as the rest, wearing black armor accented in gold. His spear was more of a halberd, and his eyes glowed with red light.

It was a thoroughly impressive and terrifying sight to Aroido, who exclaimed, “HOLY FUCK A NECROMANCER!” and then he backpedaled as fast as he could, casting some spells to [Fly] away.

To anyone not experienced with these sorts of things, and to many people who did have experience with these things, Aroido’s response was normal.

Necromancers were nothing too scary to Erick, though, and especially given how little time ‘Vanya’ had to prepare. Necromancers were rather horrific to go up against when they were truly prepared. That was one of the reasons that assaulting the Fractured Citadels of Quintlan was a near-impossible endeavor.

When a Necromancer didn’t have time to prepare, you ended up with this; a rather ragtag-looking army, propped up by quick-cast spellwork that could only really offer physical protection, and not the magical protection that an undead army truly needed.

Quilatalap could have done a lot better given how much time he had had, but ‘Vanya’ wasn’t going to go that hard, for she had to keep her head down a little bit, or else people would know who she was. There were probably some real heavy-hitters hiding in the back, waiting to respond if they needed to respond, but these guys were nothing special… Except maybe the guy in front.

There were a lot of different ways to tell that this army was nothing special. The main one was the easiest to see; Their armor. It looked real, but it wasn’t. All of that armor was conjured on all of them, instead of real, and since it was not real, it was not enchanted. And since it was not enchanted, it could not prevent the easiest way for one to win against a necromancer.