Soulforged Dungeoneer

I started to think relatively quickly that this phase of the boss fight wasn't intended to be more challenging than the last, exactly. The Administrator-cum-Sphynx had been losing levels, and her large body was no longer intended to be as deadly an instrument as the spider with high-level-boss-turned-monster-spears for legs. According to the standard rules, though, the second form had to be more dangerous somehow. It was an evolution of the boss fight, not a free ride.

Now, I mean, I'm not an idiot. The Sphynx in mythology--at least the popular mythology I'd inherited as an American, a world away from the places Sphynx statues were actually found--was a creature that asked riddles of people, and the Administrator had just made a point that Administrators were responsible for testing people. So I paused, grasping two spears in hand and two with my mind, and looked up at the massive creature. "So you're going to test me, then?"

The massive creature rolled its eyes. "Going to. Yes, because all this combat simulation is little more than a game." She started stalking in a circle around me, massive paws making little noise and leaving no sign in the nebulous starry sky of the boss arena as she passed. "But fine, and no cheating on this question. I want to know if you understand this: who is the true enemy of your people?"

The knee-jerk reaction to that was the Lord Beneath, but that was too easy, and besides, I'd already heard this one before. "Ourselves. If we become corrupted by power..."

The sphynx paused and turned up a paw, giving a "meh" gesture. "Close enough," she said. "I can count that as a success, if you answer this corollary question. What's the worst that could happen?"

I shivered, my mind immediately going to a bunch of psychotic godlike frat boys rampaging through the cosmos burning down nascent civilizations and... indulging themselves, in any horrific way they decided to. "Us winning if we shouldn't."

"Good enough," she decreed, and one of the four wings was plucked from her back, rose into the air, and lanced out at me like a spear. I had to dodge it, and in between blinks, as it landed, the Sphynx was gone, and I was faced with a boss I'd legitimately never faced--the one that had to be the end of this biome.

It was a large (compared to a normal human being, not compared to the Marionette) four-armed flaming giant, apparently named the [ Galactic Doomsday Incarnate ], and when it took the spear in-hand, it split into four, then sixteen different spears--one in each hand, and three shadowing each that was held. I guess, in principle, that spear's power was supposed to help me carry all the others spears, or else it was just a giant "fuck you" that would make using that spear even harder.

The giant gestured with two hands, and the six spears held in reserve for those hands fired off like crossbow bolts.

Now, I'd not been particularly distracted by the Sphynx bit. The... part about imagining the worst things humanity would do, if given godlike power, yes; that was distracting. But, it was easy enough to slip past a simple ranged attack, and when he immediately turned and used another spear to fire another three shots, dodging that was likewise easy.

I noticed as I approached that by the time I'd gotten back, the first two spears had "reloaded", and that was its own danger, but I also knew that I hadn't seen this boss' real danger, whatever that was. Granted, as far as I could tell, he was a floor boss and not a challenge boss; the Marionette was at least a bit of both. But, I wasn't eager to find out the hard way that this one would be, too.

In the end, a few dodges later I got completely into melee range, and then the Doomsday Incarnate jumped into the air, and I got an impression on what exactly the name meant, as all of a sudden, the sky filled with meteors--large, flaming rocks that were scattered all throughout the space, and one or two at a time started suddenly jerking into motion and flinging themselves at me. The smallest of the rocks were maybe head-sized, but the largest ones were at least the size of a small building.

And the Doomsday Incarnate remained floating there in the space, surrounded by rocks, grinning at me, and it gestured with those spears in its hands, each one continuing to shoot its three-shot "arrows" at me and then automatically reloading.

So it was pretty clear that the challenge--assuming I wasn't dumb enough to just try to dodge everything--was to get up there by jumping from rock to rock. Which might have been difficult for a person who could neither fly nor teleport, but also, I had yet to flex the special powers of my new spears.

It didn't take a whole lot of effort to push the Marionette's Spear into making me grow to the size of a small building, all of the spears growing with me, and I knew I could push it further. Instead of trying, I flexed the Vampiric Cloak to smash three larger spears directly into the Doomsday Incarnate, keeping one in hand just in case, then recall them and hit him again. It didn't take much to polish off that fight, and I returned with five spears and the overconfidence of someone who had the distinct impression that this fight was basically over.

The sphynx put her paws together like a contented cat. "It's kind of a cheat," she said, "but for personal reasons, I'm wondering. Do you really understand what I asked earlier?" She leaned forward. "Why do I envy and resent the fairies?"

The answer seemed clear to me, but the words were half out of my mouth when I felt Merry inside suddenly object and try to stop me.

"Because they were spirit--"

Stop! Suddenly, Merry exited my head and hovered next to me. That immediately made me nervous, and I wanted to say so, but she turned to me. "Jay," she said, "Do you remember the item I had you buy in the marketplace?"

"A Fairy Stole," I nodded. "A magic scarf with a few magical abilities on it. You were curious if it really--"

"It did," Merry interrupted. "Every item you absorb has had a dungeon ID buried somewhere inside of it, and the dungeon IDs are all really really high. This dungeon is, like, six hundred million? But the Fairy Stole had a dungeon ID that was in the double digits."

The sphynx made a growl that sounded like approval, but was also very much a reminder that we were in combat. "And your answer to my question is?"

Merry turned to look at her. "The original Fairy was a Dungeon Administrator, one of the original set that was born from a world's nightmares, but they became much more than that. If you envy them... the original might even still be here, somehow."

"Haha, an almost perfect answer." The sphynx chuckled, and I thought the noise was unpleasant. "Follow-up question. Do you know what you just did wrong?"

I felt my blood go cold, and Merry turned to look at me, but suddenly, it felt like she was so very far away. Though it was only inches, I know if I had tried to move my hand out to reach her, I know I would have hit only air.

"...I answered the question," Merry said. "Meaning I have to do the fight, not Jerry."

"Also correct," the Sphynx's mouth split wide with a grin, and only then did I really understand just how razer-sharp and pointed her teeth were.

Merry had been thinking about a lot of things for a very long time. Jerry wasn't a total idiot, but Merry wasn't really allowed to do much aside from think, so... it ended up being what she just, did, a lot of the time. She had tried flexing Jerry's skills, when he let her, and she tried to sense things going on outside as carefully as she could, but neither of those two abilities would help her survive a combat encounter without him.

It wasn't even just one, but two things that the sphynx threw at her--one feather, and the halo over her head. She bristled, wondering just why the Administrator was so bent on killing her, after having giving her as an egg to Jerry in the first place. However, in the moment the two items impacted her, she found herself entirely confused, even as the species IDs of the monsters registered to her.

She found herself sitting on a pillow, on a chair, across from the Administrator, who sat on the Lord of All Chairs, all within the Dread Gazebo. If it weren't for the fact that the gazebo itself floated in empty space and wasn't pretending to burn up in the atmosphere, they might have been right back where they started.

"I rarely get a chance to talk to someone like you," the Administrator said. "And in truth, I'm not allowed to. I'm sure you know what I mean."

"No leaks," acknowledged Merry, feeling around with her senses. The avatar before her had no direct connection to the real thing, as far as she could tell, and so she couldn't find any way to extract special information, either with or without the woman's permission.

"A disappointment to us both, of course," continued the woman, her long hair suddenly pulling itself away from her face and tying itself into a pair of pig tails. She gestured, and another set of tea appeared, one settling itself before Merry, and one going into her own hand. "On the other hand, the format of this particular fight gives us time." Merry wasn't sure what to think of a grown woman in pigtails sipping tea, but it made her uneasy. "Both the Lord and the Dread will only attack once they are woken from their slumber, but you must defeat them to escape."

"And you?" Merry pointed at the Administrator herself, who lacked a species ID at all, oddly enough.

"That would be telling," she replied with a wide smile--too wide for a human mouth--half-hidden behind her teacup.

Merry felt frustrated. "So, what, can you clarify things for me, too?"

"No," answered the puppet, immediately. "That restriction is specific to gods. Administrators can decide that you have earned something... or, that you haven't. Of course, there are specific rules about information, and specifically, in what circumstances you haven't earned an answer to a question that is important to the larger quest."

"So why are gods allowed to meet a fairy and Administrators aren't?"

"Mm," the woman hummed through a swallow of tea. "That is a boring answer that has to do with specifics, and it isn't relevant. Don't you have more urgent questions?" She patted the back of the chair she was sitting in, awkwardly, keeping a sly smile on her face as she did.

Right, because anything Merry learned would be useless if she died. Merry found herself starting to feel more afraid--a rarity, since she had a great deal of trust in Jerry--but pushed it down, recognizing it as a sort of natural magic, a defense mechanism to make her alert and prepared, which just happened to... not be as useful as her body thought. She tried to clear her thoughts, but the only thing she found there was Kalamitus' not-very-good lessons on how to use her Fairy power to affect dungeons.

"Yes," Merry said, suddenly, floating up off of the seat cushion and hovering in front of the woman. "May I watch you use whatever ability you used to teleport us here?"

For a moment, Merry was certain she could sense something malicious above the floor of wherever they were--but the malice didn't seem pointed at her. "It's a simple teleport trap," the Administrator said, and set up two traps linked to one another off to one side.

Merry had been watching. Although she had to burn her soul force--and that felt awful, for all that it didn't hurt, exactly-- just to peer 'above' the Dungeon, she saw something like a hand reach over and place something down, pressing a series of switches. She grabbed the switches, trying to intuit what had just been done, and as she felt around, nearly blind, her fingers found something that felt like a coin etched with an ID number. She reached to the other teleporter and found a similar coin with a different number.

She relaxed, no longer burning her soul force, and concentrated. She wasn't entirely positive, but she felt sure she could substitute Jerry's ID on the coin...

"If you run away or bring in extra help, there will be a penalty," warned the Administrator.

Merry paused, thinking, then looked back over at the Administrator.

"This is why you did it, isn't it?"

The Administrator raised her eyes.

"Why you made all the spears he's collecting have the same ID number. They're a single item, just not finished yet."

"That's not why," she said, gesturing at the teapot so that it would come and refill her cup. "But I did have that in mind when I set this trap for you."

Merry took a deep (but very small, objectively speaking) breath, and burned her soul just a touch, to send a message to Jerry. Then, again, to modify the ID on one of the teleporters, and then she pulled.

A pile of five spears appeared on the teleporter trap.

"I am so jealous of you," said the Administrator, and all the false levity had fallen away. "You are free, you have him, you get to see the world... and you're smart, and not just smart..."

Merry laid one hand on the Doomsday Incarnate's spear, and all the other spears fell into her control--as was the whole point of that weapon. With it, she brought the Marionette spear to her other hand, and with a very carefully twisted command, Merry's fairy body grew to be the same size as Jerry's own. But, unlike when Jerry had just used them, she insisted the spears didn't grow, so now they were proportional to her own.

It felt weird. Jerry hadn't mentioned if it felt weird to be bigger, temporarily, but then... he was a being consumed by what was in front of him. Merry flexed her hands, feeling weirdly like they were brand new, some kind of thing she had never even experienced before, and not just a new version of something familiar. There was so much more involved with being large, things that were not possible, or important, when she was small. Or was it more than that?

"You're still quite lacking in stats," warned the Administrator, but Merry didn't need to hear it. With the Doomsday spear, she pulled on the Caesarian spear, with its larger attack power, and jammed it into the chair that she had been sitting on, across from the Administrator. Attacking a harmless chair, of course, woke the Lord of All Chairs, and Merry immediately felt cold.

The chair that the Administrator was sitting in suddenly grew teeth, and the teeth closed over the avatar's body, gold and wood hammering together with enough force to spray the false body's fluids and guts in every direction. Suddenly, the form swirled, no longer looking anything like a chair, and became a big golden cage that leaked blood from between closely-spaced golden bars, a half-smashed skull visible through a more birdcage-like arrangement in its face, the skin only vaguely resembling the form of the woman that had just been sitting in it.

The Lord of All Chairs jumped into the air and attempted to smash Merry, but for all that she could tell, objectively, that what had just happened was disgusting, she didn't have a squick reflex, or at least not for human blood and guts. Jerry might have, but he also had more than enough experience to dodge the attack that was definitely a lot faster than anything Merry was prepared to deal with on her own.

Fortunately, she didn't exactly have to. She jammed hard on the Harpsichord Marionette's charm ability, which only momentarily slowed the Chair and made the dodge easier, then slammed the other three spears into it one after another into it. She felt a sort of rising tension that she wasn't entirely sure what to do about, only to realize a second later that it had to be from the Gazebo.

Merry had only Jerry's thoughts about this 'dread gazebo' to go by, but he was quite clear that it was an old joke about a terrifying monster that could rampage and kill players--and that it was the structure she was currently within. If it was anything like the Lord of All Chairs, being inside it was... unwise. So she pulled the spears with her and flew out of the gazebo, and the Lord of All Chairs followed, roaring and spitting blood and viscera. However... while Merry wasn't a Dungeoneer and didn't have an engine of her own to power her through, the weapons--tools of the Dungeon--were willing to just work. A robot could have wielded one, and done damage.

Granted, they were very weak--she knew from the inside just how much power was added to items based on Jerry's skills, including Assassination, all of which she lacked--but all she really had to do was avoid getting hit and deal damage. And living in Jerry's head had gotten her as close as she could possibly come to direct experience in exactly this kind of fight, against overwhelming odds and with any small hit liable to be her last.

Strike, watch, then move; strike, watch, then move. Merry let her thoughts fall into Jerry's own patterns, even if she had to force them into the right order. Here, look: he's going to leap. It did. The trajectory is fixed, with only a little wiggle room for him to control it. Based on his stats, I'll be safe... here. She was quickly in position, and flung her spears again. It will take him a moment to turn, most likely. Another strike, maybe two, but be ready to move. Be ready to move, be ready--now, move.

Seconds of combat turned into a minute, and Merry felt herself becoming tired, feeling ashamed that she lacked the endurance of her... her brother. Jerry had said they were siblings, and she... she didn't see any reason to be on any other side than his. She was a fairy, sure, and fairies might be against him some day, but he had and would again give her whatever he could, freely. He considered it a weird thought, but he held firmly to it: the two had become family.

The Chairian Lord turned to her again, and Merry felt her control over the spears slipping as her mind grew increasingly weary. She was doing very little damage, and while she could have survived this with an infinite source of power, maybe... she didn't have what he did.

From nowhere, or from far away, Merry felt a touch on her mind, like Jerry was there, but very faint. She could tell that he was incredibly calm, perhaps meditating. Jay?

Hey, Merry. And then, although he fumbled with it, Merry could tell he was trying to transfer over mana, somehow, and Merry, just for a moment, grabbed at it, biting into that source with a fanged part of her soul, like a starving vampire, and for a moment, her soul pulled.

What came over the link... wasn't entirely mana. Merry flinched at a flavor like boiling meat in her mind, and she felt the fire within her brighten just a touch. But... that was...

Merry just barely managed to get out of the way of the Lord of All Chairs as it made a punch at her, a punch that Merry could admit was definitely slower than it should have been. Was the Administrator being nice to her, like it had been to Jerry? Even so, it could have been death, and she knew it. Still, her thoughts were on the taste that she had taken of Jerry. It was revolting, but not... not in taste, not really. Some part of her recognized the taste as food, and desired it.

Except that meat carried the distinct flavor of a person she cared about. Of damned near the only person she cared about.

Merry let the spear in her hand drop entirely out of her grasp. In front of her, the chair paused, turning slowly towards her, and then suddenly accelerated at her. But Merry now understood something, intuitively. She hadn't had to 'eat', before, and if she was going to do that again, she damned well wasn't going to do it to Jerry. But this thing?

Merry's wings flicked forward just a touch, and Merry burned her essence, not to reach above the dungeon, but to reach what was in front of her. The Chairian stumbled, but not because she had done it any damage. Instead she reached out to the other so-called lifeform, the blood sacrifice that had awakened it: the Administrator's fake avatar.

She pulled on the avatar's body with a violence that she immediately hated herself for, and the pulped bones and viscera trapped in the chair's shell vanished into smoke. It tasted empty, soulless, and it didn't refresh her inner flame--but it did provide her with mana, and more than that, she could tell that it weakened the Chair substantially. And frankly, it felt a lot better than tasting a living thing again.

It didn't stop the Chair, but it did bring Merry back from her exhaustion, and she was able to recall the spears and pound the chair again for a bit. When she felt herself on the edge, she reached out, trying to rip a piece of the Chairian without turning the whole thing to ash, because she was pretty sure that whatever power she was using, the Dungeon didn't want to accept it as a legitimate ability. If she defeated the thing with that, she might not get the reward. And also... she had inherited some of Jerry's pride, and she could accept that.

An arm of the bloody wooden monstrosity vanished, and its level and maximum health lowered. Merry smiled grimly to herself, and continued.

A couple more rounds later, Merry was feeling like she had started to lose her sanity, but technically, from a certain point of view, she had defeated the Lord of All Chairs in straight combat. The spear it left behind--a spear that had been a part of its structure--had holes in it, but Merry didn't care, grabbing it with the Doomsday Spear's control power. Once she had it, it became a part of the same item as the rest, and the holes glitched themselves out of existence, although the result left the item as a whole feeling... a little off.

Merry ignored that for now and focused on the Dread Gazebo. It simmered there, like a half-awake thing, and Merry could tell it was glaring at her. She moved over, feeling its fury raise as she got close, and stopped short of it, lining up the spears and sitting on them, trying to reach out to Jerry again.

Whatever it took for the two of them to connect, it was mostly on his side, as far as she could tell. Merry?

Jay! Did I hurt you?

There was a pause. Yeah, a bit. I feel like...

Yeah, don't tell me, it was awful enough on my side. Merry sent him the mental equivalent of a hug, and she could feel him warming up a little. I got the chair fight and the gazebo, and I beat the chair so far.

On your own? Jerry's mental voice sounded incredibly impressed. I wish I was there to see that.

You don't, Merry said, feeling embarrassed. Right now I'm tired, and I'm not sure how to renew myself...

If you need me to do that again...

Don't, Merry replied, firmly. It felt like... like I was eating you, bro. Straight up eating you. I don't want to feel like that again.

Okay. Can I pass you a potion or something, with whatever you did before?

Merry paused, thinking. I don't think so? I need to know the item ID to call it someplace, and that's not something you can see.

You can't teach me?

Merry sat there for a minute. It's a really long and complicated string of symbols, she said, finally. If I didn't keep a mental copy of the one for the spears, there's no way we could have done this.

I can't come and help?

The--hair chick said I couldn't leave and you couldn't join me.

Jerry chuckled at her description. What was the exact wording? Could we just swap places?

Merry blinked, considered that for a long minute, and then began to smile. Maybe!