Soulforged Dungeoneer

I was only a little nervous the next time I ended up going to visit Kalamitus. I suppose I'd figured that I'd seen the worst of what the dragon god had in store for me, and in retrospect, I suppose so. Unfortunately, the worst being over didn't mean that it was all over.

There was a strange air when I was let into his chambers, and the wyrm god was kind of hovering in an upright pile, like a snake in motion seen from above but vertical and not moving much. He was, without a doubt, paying close attention to me from the moment I walked in, and I wasn't exactly sure what was on his mind.

"Jerry... good to see you again. I have good news, and a little bad news." The dragon didn't break his posture much, instead cycling his snake body in midair through its back and forth curves just a bit before settling. "The good news is that I think I can get you the training you deserve, if from a rather unusual source. Though none of the people living on your planet have quite the experience you need, I've confirmed that one of the Gods had some experience with something very similar before being promoted. As a favor to me, they would be willing to give you personal training."

I frowned, not entirely sure what it took for a person to be promoted to godhood, but didn't press on the issue.

"The bad news Jerry, and I want to preface this with saying that I very much didn't want it to be this way..." Kalamitus' head tilted just slightly as he hovered in midair, and I wondered what exactly he was hiding. "...is that under our existing deal I have no reason and no incentive to help you whatsoever. The deal simply does not cover skills that did not exist at the time the deal was written."

That got my heart catching in my chest. Herman had been insistent when we were making the contract that the deal would not be open-ended; that had been fine for me, because I was afraid of Kalamitus cheating me, but some of the skills I'd requested training for--specifically, Telekinesis and Stealth--had been shattered to make my new ones.

"I would like--" I started, but the dragon interrupted me.

"And before you start, Jerry, and I understand this will seem very unfortunate to you," the Dragon straightened again. "As you are Fool's Marked, I am under no obligation to provide you with an Arbiter. I could explain exactly why that is... but I'm also not obliged to. In fact based on some interpretations of the Lord Beneath's rules, especially under the circumstances, there is a very strong suggestion that I should not."

I felt myself growing cold. Merry, somewhere in the back of my head, was reviewing the contract built into a quest that Herman had arranged for us, but given the discussions we'd had then... I had little hope that she would find a loophole.

"That said, Jerry," the Dungeon God's voice was, I noted, very level, as though he was trying to sound very academic about the whole thing. I suppose that was his best attempt at being professional. "I am willing to provide a supplemental contract for a very small favor. Not, I assure you, an open-ended one." Kalamitus looked down as though reading something, which he well might have been, but not anything I could see or sense. "It is not my intention that I will gain anything by this contract, so much as making sure that a particular decision does not go against me. Nor will it harm you, your fairy, or anyone else that I'm aware of you being... positively associated with."

I blinked, the wording of that sentence feeling like political doublespeak of the highest order. "But you won't tell me in advance what it is."

"I can say with complete honesty, Jerry, that I'm forbidden by the System from revealing that information prior to the moment when I will call in the favor. It isn't my desire to be cagey about this, and I believe that if I were to tell you what it was, you would agree. At the moment, Jerry, it is all I can do to say that you should trust me."

Oh, well, when he put it that way. I closed my eyes and sought out Merry, who was looking over the contract Quest. She spared some attention for me, but I could tell she was studying it as closely as she could. The contract seems pretty cut and dry, she said. The only wiggle room is that the Telekinesis skill mentioned in the contract was replaced by some kind of error text, probably because we destroyed it. It feels like in order for the language of the contract to be specific, they somehow referenced the skill... but they didn't do that for any of the others, including Stealth. I guess because your copy of Telekinesis was special? She shook her head, and looked away from the data feed she was studying, or whatever. I'm sorry, Jay. I didn't know that what I did--

That's enough. I don't want to get into that. In truth, I was starting to get a little bit pissed off. The Skill was powerful, I guess, but it had been a lot of trouble, and it was feeling like it only got more and more stupid as time went on. Merry's inspiration in getting me to build a new skill from scratch out of the pieces in the middle of combat was amazing in the sense that she had figured out how it worked under duress and essentially on her own... and I suppose my own ability to accomplish that was its own impressive thing, but if we're honest, it was reckless and stupid and at every turn, I was being reminded of that. We just have to deal with what we have.

Jay...

I opened my eyes to look up at Kalamitus. The whole situation stank, but nothing stank more than this unspoken request. A very, very large part of me just wanted to say yes and be done with it, but that instinct was the whole damn reason why I had brought in Herman in the first place. I wasn't a person comfortable with having an argument, especially when the other party held all the cards, or at least a very good hand of them.

My thoughts drifted to the Skill, and the footnote left by the Sovereign Fool in its... terse description. Yeah, well, fuck you too, asshole. A bit of sass from someone who was doing work to help me, when I was being ungrateful and grouchy, even if it was only in my own mind. I wouldn't have been quite so rude in person--I had no reason to think that he could read my mind, at the time--but even having said that, sure, okay, I was being an asshole, if you could read my mind.

But if people expected better from me in my own goddamn mind when I'm a nobody being pushed around my asshole powers that be, I could very well expect better of those goddamn powers that be.

"No," I told the dragon god.

All the motion in the wyrm's body stilled. "No?"

"No, I don't trust you." My heart started beating faster. I wasn't prepared to have an argument like this. "I didn't trust you the first time, and I don't trust you now. I don't know if you're allowed to lie to me about these things--I might even believe you can't, or that you aren't lying. But I don't trust you. You were willing to manipulate me--"

"Jerry..."

I didn't like the idea of talking over a god, but I forced myself to, even as the fear that started working its way through me interfered with my ability to think straight. I found myself looking mostly down at the ground, unwilling or unable to raise my head and look at him for the moment. "--and didn't tell me what I needed to know, and now you're refusing to call an arbiter just because you don't need to, all so you can get some unspecified favor--"

"I told you I can't..."

"--and all you can say is that I should trust you?" I finally forced myself to look up, not because I was comfortable doing that but as almost an act of theatrics. "If I can trust you, then there should be reason to allow an Arbiter. If I can trust you--"

"Enough." Kalamitus' voice was sudden and loud, and he seemed to have pushed himself out of whatever trance he'd been in that required him to be upright and professional-seeming, and he sprawled forward and out like he usually did. "I should have known you would be like this; fine. I'm obliged by our contract to provide you with guidance about your class and a few skills that you either already have, or can get trivially. I am under no obligation to train you in Telekinesis, your... Cloak thing, or whatever that unnamed skill is. As long as you won't agree to my terms, I won't assist you with any of those things. And frankly, if you get yourself killed for your obstinance, I won't grieve for you."

That made me feel a little gross. I mean... yes, I'd stood up to authority before, especially in the prison, but mostly when they were doing something that was wrong and, especially, violent. This was being pressured into a deal, and though it didn't feel right to accept, turning it down so forcefully also felt like I was being a jackass.

In any event, Kalamitus took the opportunity to start lecturing me in a passive-aggressive manner, as though as long as he told me thing, it counted for the contract and he didn't give a damn if I was distracted and didn't listen. Some of that was particularly useful--stuff about how to assume more direct control over Stealth, for instance, and in particular, some clarity about the depths of Skill Sage.

Some of what he was trying to explain was better understood with demonstrations, or at least data packets smuggled to Merry, but those were apparently not in the offing.

I won't go into all the specifics here, in part because we ended up doing about five days worth of lectures more or less back to back, save for two breaks where he told me he had other godly business to attend to. I will say that the guidance was useful, and in particular, he told me some useful information about rebuilding my Class that I imagine few people on the planet had ever gotten, and some particular information that I'd requested about martial arts and how, they imagined, it was likely Bo was going to use his Skill and Cultivation together to fight.

Most of it was recited very dryly, though as time went on, he definitely lowered his spite levels by a lot. Part of that had to with the fact that he was clearly multitasking part of the time, speaking to me while clearly paying attention to something else, with short periods where he was probably talking to someone else as well, but I didn't hear it, and Merry didn't intercept anything. I suppose that helped him regain a sense of normalcy, even if he still didn't appreciate our continuing, untrusting relationship.

We ended up our conversation (if you want to call it that) on the second-to-last day by coming back to the Soulforged class and his general advice on it.

"...under the circumstances, you already have a lot more experience with the particulars that I do, but I can say with some clarity that you haven't really understood what the class is." Kalamitus, as he had been, was just kind of rambling, though now he had my attention. "Class abilities aren't less malleable than skills; they're intended to me more so. Given that the very name and nature of your class is manifesting items out of nothing, I would have expected you to realize that you don't really need a template, but I suppose that is too much to ask..."

I started to ask a question but stopped. Kalamitus had answered some questions, but tersely. He was getting better about being too much of an asshole, but he was... he was still an asshole, and as I debated what question I should interrupt with, he was already moving on, forcing me to set the questions aside and listen.

"...without a template won't come with enhancement bonuses, or bonuses of any kind, really, but there are no shortage of ways within the system and adjacent to it, to invest an item with new abilities by spending various pieces and parts of your budget along with a correct application of will..."

And there it was. After having gotten used to the incredible bulk of the Executioner's Blade, I almost certainly didn't need such a big, ugly, awkward weapon. If I got Enhancement Sage to the point where I could transfer normal attack bonuses, or if I was willing to gamble with breaking items apart and recombining them, I could apply those bonuses to an item with the size and shape that I imagined. I frowned, though, my mind both trying to process that thought and also keep up with Kalamitus; that hardly qualified as a big enough understanding for him to say that I don't understand the class itself. Did it?

"...variants of items that are compressed or expanded should, eventually, be second nature to you, with commensurately greater mana usage if you make a particularly large item..."

Ah... well, maybe the class was more flexible than even I'd thought, though I was still not particularly high-level. I did my best to take notes, as I had been doing.

"...one thing I don't seem to note in your choice of items is that the flexibility of a weapon customization class comes in the inherent form of some weapons; even given Dungeoneer abilities, sometimes a polearm or axe is better than a sword, to say nothing of various kinds of shields and armor. Honestly, I don't even see any decent ranged weapons in your selection. What are you doing, just throwing that stupid two-handed sword around the battlefield?" Kalamitus snorted disdainfully. "The ability to replicate anything, but your item statistics say you stick with your preferred weapon and almost nothing else."

I... I admit that one hurt. Like, okay... yes? But also, I was mastering the weapon, or trying to. Again, I wasn't even level 100, and had been in the dungeon for not very long overall, and he was suggesting that I should have mastered several weapons by this time? I didn't think that was fair.

It isn't, said Merry, in my defense. You haven't had time yet; you will.

I nodded mentally at her, but Kalamitus had moved on and was railing about how I had wasted class points on a customization option because I wasn't willing or able to figure out how to force the things to spawn in a similar fashion with willpower alone. And again, that seemed more like the kind of criticism you should level at someone a few hundred levels higher than me, while at the same time, I couldn't declare that he was quite wrong.

It was a little while later that he, with a grouchy huff, stopped talking and turned to me. "That's most of what I owe you. Next time you come we'll talk about your fairy, so be prepared for that to be a conversation that you are not particularly a part of."

Honestly, after everything, I had to hope that Merry would have a better time of these talks than I had. But given Kalamitus' earlier racism against the fae, I wasn't quite sure I could count on it, either. Instead of answering, I just smiled and nodded and retreated to try to pull together all of the scattered and rambling advice I'd been given, as I did at the end of each day.

Useful, but... it would have been better if he was actually on my side, I think. Still... I had to believe that turning down his unknown bargain was better in the long term. I just didn't trust him, and if anything, this hissy fit he was throwing only made me feel like I was right not to. Who's to say he wouldn't have been exactly as brusque and unhelpful if I'd accepted the offer?