And I barely knew anything about how the dungeon worked or what its overall function was.
And, to top all of it off, I had just threatened someone who, to the best of my knowledge, wasn’t trying to hurt me. The day just kept getting weirder and my mental state was slipping.
I hadn’t realised before how tired I was. The exhaustion and manic energy had just crept up on me.
“You met the guardian, I take it?” Methol asked, smile never leaving her lips. “She was cognisant of herself?”
I nodded slowly, still holding my sword up, feeling more than a little silly over my reaction, but unwilling to back down yet.
“That’s strange,” Methol said, not paying any attention to the weapon wavering near her general throat area.
I meekly lowered the sword.
“She was hurt and she helped me clear the corruption,” I said. “She’s mourning her people now.”
Methol arched an eyebrow at that and reached a hand up to scratch Ever. The creature scowled at the attention but didn’t move away from her hand.
“You’re still a couple insight levels too low for me to discuss this with you,” Methol began. “I’ll try to explain, but you’ll have to take some things at face value I’m afraid.”
Ever perked up and got ready to say something. Eternity spoke before it.
“You may brief him in proper detail,” the dragon said as it settled back on my shoulder. “Please respect protocol where advisable. Otherwise, I authorise information sharing up to level four, with regards to dungeons.”
“On what grounds?” Ever hissed. “You’re not even fully formed yet.”
Eternity answered something but I couldn’t hear a word of it. Then Ever answered something and Eternity reacted with a plume of smoke from its nostrils. I dug a finger in my ears.
Was… Eternity arguing with itself? That, of course, provided Ever was the same kind of companion to Methol as Eternity was to me. Another note for the Weird Shit file, since I’d been ignoring it for the whole of ten minutes.
“My point stands,” my little dragon said, tone dismissive. “Proceed, Methol.”
I turned my head and stared at my companion, as confused as I’d ever felt in my life.
My entire interface was flashing in my view, notifications atop other notifications vying for my attention. My head throbbed. And Eternity was acting fucking weird.
“A bit much, aren’t they?” Methol asked. Her voice reflected the smile on her lips, and some compassion. “Wait until you meet Tiamat’s dew drop. Silence has a mouth on her that would make your ears bleed if she ever went off at you. Watching her and Ever argue is like staring at the sun.”
I shook my head and leaned against the half-ruined wall of the well.
“I have no idea what you just said, and I have no idea who Tiamat is. Just… tell me about Melenith.”
It was her turn to look confused. Her ears were extremely expressive as they dipped while her brow creased. “Is Melenith the guardian? Did I understand that right?”
“Yes, she’s the guardian you tried to deactivate. I think. Didn’t see anyone else in there.”
She blinked twice. Then tapped her black lips with a finger and the tip of her tongue poked out between her lips. I took the time to study her.
Methol looked like an elf out of a fantasy game. Tall, slender, beautiful. Raven-haired and amber-eyed. If she were a darker shade of blue, I could probably compare her to a drow from Salvatore’s novels. Or were those purple?! Regardless, she had, of course, the knife-shaped ears too, and they were about a palm long each.
She shared Melenith’s backward bend of the legs. If I were to wax poetically, I’d say she was built to outrun anything on two legs. Had that general shape that promised explosive speed.
“If you’ve got questions about me, do ask. It’s less uncomfortable than being stared at,” Methol said with good cheer. “If you don’t have questions, tell me if this Melenith offered you her name on her own.”
I snapped out of my staring and felt my face grow hot. “I… err, sorry. Wasn’t… Well, was. Just never met someone like you.”
“Not many have on this world. And they don’t all stare.” She sighed. “Now, about the guardian?”
“Ah, yeah. She gave me her name when I didn’t know it. And she also gave a bunch of titles.”
“Did you ask her for them?”
“No.”
“Well, that changes a few things.” She ran a hand through her long hair and shook off some dust from the road. “You see, a guardian is rarely anything more than a construct of the dungeon. They generally don’t speak, or even differentiate between friend or foe. The dungeon pulls on its core memories to build a guardian, but doesn’t imbue it with any will or personality. If this one is as you say, then she is a manifestation, and will need to be convinced to go back to sleep.”
“Why?”
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I mean, really… why? It was such an odd thing to say. Convince a manifestation of a godling to go back to sleep. Why? What did that even mean?
Methol chose to answer with her own question. “Do you know what a node is? Aside from the obvious?”
“I have no fucking clue. I thought I knew what to expect from the previous village.” I waved vaguely into the well, where the portal still swirled. “Clearly, I had no fucking clue what I was getting myself into.”
She gave me a friendly smile and a shrug. “We all learn as we go. Nothing to be ashamed in that. You’ve…”
There’s a thing some people do when they don’t want to tell you something difficult. They breathe differently and look at you in that infuriating, pitying way that seems far too smug for what it’s trying to convey.
Her pitying look got my blood boiling in that long moment of hesitation.
“I’ve what, then?” I snapped. “Fucked up? Not thought things through? Acted—”
“You’ve arrived beneath the eaves of an unlucky star,” Methol said, making a placating gesture with her hand. “You’ve more bad luck than most.”
I only leaned back and scowled.
“And what’s that fucking mean?” I was angry for getting angry, and getting angrier for not understanding anything.
“Right, let’s start from the top and work our way in, shall we?” She gave away her smiles easily. They made dimples in her cheeks. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t remain pissed off at her. “So, nodes. They serve several functions in any given area, and I can’t talk about most.”
She inclined her head towards where Ever and Eternity had moved to sit together on the ground. They seemed to be speaking to one another, but without any sound.
Crystal and Tusk had huddled together and were now asleep. Blessed be those that can sleep anywhere and at any time.
“One role for a node is to regulate mana and distribute it within its area of influence.” Methol pointed towards the village’s gate. “You’ve seen how the vegetation around this place is dead and rotted. That’s a direct result of the node not operating properly. However, another role, and of more import to us, is storage of memories, especially of long-lost civilisations. And prisons for their gods.”
I blinked. Zero to a thousand in a handful of words.
Gods?
“Gods?!” I asked, the word echoing in my head. “Like… smite ye infidels and the like? Biblical sense gods?”
“I don’t know that word,” Methol said. “And I don’t believe it’s a similar thing regardless. A dungeon core is a prison for the idea of what would’ve once have been a god. Containment and sanctuary and dream, all in one. They sleep and they dream and they are happy and left alone to care for what was theirs and what grows around their node. Power source and containment both. Do you understand?”
Like Hell I did. It was one thing to react to the craziness down there in the heat of the moment, and quite another to face it in the light of day, taught by someone who seemed almost bored of the subject. Gods. I couldn’t help a thought of Earth’s gods, of Zeus and Odin, Allah and Ra, and everyone else in all those extended pantheons.
Methol’s words… suggested those beings might’ve been real…
And that was a little too much to handle in the moment. I let myself slip down the wall’s ruin until I ended up on my arse, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders again. I don’t remember ever feeling as tired as I did in that moment, as wrung out, and full of questions.
Gods… I would’ve laughed but the memory of tears on Melenith’s face withered my humour. I couldn’t laugh at her, even if her existence—as per Methol’s description—contradicted all the beliefs I’ve built up in over thirty years of life.
Then again, so did Eternity. I looked at dragon and rabbit-thing sitting together. Now they were arguing, though still in perfect silence. If Methol was like me, and Ever was like Eternity, why was Eternity talking to itself?!
Fuck, was I ever tired. I felt sore and stretched out, like I hadn’t slept in days and been working non-stop. My mouth watered at the random thought of a steaming mug of black coffee.
“I miss coffee.” I rested my arms on my knees and felt like going to sleep there and then. “Why am I so tired?”
Processing the gods bit was the hard part right then. It was absurd. And I knew it was absurd.
Because of fucking Eternity! AI-thing—was it even an AI?—that saved me from a car crash to bring me to an alien world with rabbit people on them. I…
I was having a sort of panic attack. I recognised my pulse going haywire, and my sweat sliding down my back, and the taste of cotton in my mouth, and the shivers.
Why?!
“That would be your support harness slowing down,” Methol said as she tapped on the dungeon interface. “Just rest. It feels a little like dying. I’d say not to worry, but you seem the kind that won’t listen.”
“My what?”
It was hard to breathe. My chest grew tight. My hands cold. If I hadn’t sat down, I would’ve fallen, seeing how the world was spinning up under me.
Eternity came to perch on my shoulder. “Gaining your second insight level demonstrates your survival capabilities. I am reducing the assistance that I’m offering.”
“What assistance?” I blurted out, teeth chattering. “You don’t do anything.”
Methol swiped closed the interface then came and lowered herself into a sitting position next to me.
“I find that company is generally welcomed at this moment,” she said, quietly. “We might be strangers, Klaus, but this is an experience we share.”
Ever hopped over and onto her lap, settling down with a few grumbles.
If I would’ve had an aerial view of the scene, it would’ve made for fabulous cinema drama. We were two strangers, sitting on our asses next to a well, surrounded by a blanket of sleeping ant-people.
“Your companion is just now beginning to bond to you,” Methol said as I fought to stay awake, fall asleep, fidget, and sit still, all at once.
My heart ran as if I were being chased by the bloody deviants again. Next to her, however, I felt safe, and was panicking over it.
“You might think Eternity hasn’t been looking out for you, but…” She hesitated. “Did you feel as if you might’ve survived some things you probably shouldn’t have? Up until now, I mean?”
Damn right I did. I almost constantly attributed that to luck and being too stubborn to die. I thought back to the spores, the headcrabs, the deviants, even the furnars in the dungeon. I really shouldn’t have lived through a lot of those things. My stomach grumbled unhappily, as if the potion I’d drunk had worn out.
To Methol, I nodded slowly, forcing my head to not shudder.
“Felt as if you always have that little bit extra will that pulls you through?”
Again, I nodded, a growing suspicion beginning to form. Eternity shuffled on my shoulder.
“Well, that was your support harness. Eternity’s had a hand on your shoulder this whole time, bracing you when you’d fall, giving you that little bit of help that you needed to pull through. Now she’s taken her hand away and set her gaze upon you.” Methol shuffled a bit closer, her eyes staring off into nowhere.
She made me uncomfortable. We’d only just met and she was right in my personal space, acting as if she knew everything about me. I wanted to pull away, but was shivering too much to even move.
“Frankly, Klaus,” she went on, eyes unfocused, “looking at your status report, I’m surprised you’ve survived as long as you did, support harness or not.”
I blinked. Then gaped.
“My what?!”
Methol gestured at the air, as if she wanted to show me something.
“Your survival assessment. I gotta say, if it were Tiamat here instead of me, he’d be laughing himself sick at the kind of insanity you’ve been pulling. It’s a wonder Eternity’s even managed to keep you alive as long as she has.”
“Excuse me?”
Methol ignored me and instead turned to look at the dragon on my shoulder.
“I will say this with utmost confidence, little dew drop: I believe your assessment is off by an order of magnitude.”
“I am beginning to reassess my original estimate, yes,” Eternity said.
“Will the two of you explain what the fuck you’re on about?” I snapped, feeling as if I were in a room with adults ignoring me as a child. It riled me straight out of my torpor. “What assessment? And what does it say?”
“I cannot say.” Methol and Eternity answered almost in perfect sync.
“I just believe it’s wrong,” Methol followed up.