Soulforged Dungeoneer

Merry and I were in Kalamitus' rooms for what would end up being the last day of our training with him. I say "She and I were there" to say, in particular, that she was fully manifested, and Kalamitus took some note of the fact that Merry's body was a custom job, that she didn't look like anything but herself... but ultimately, didn't dwell on it.

"Alright... Merry." It was clear from Kalamitus' voice that he was poorly concealing his disgust at dealing with the fairy, but at least he was trying to conceal it and continue. Like an arrogant rich man obliged to help out a pauper, he kind of kept an unnecessary distance and tried not to mention things, and it wasn't... wasn't really very convincing. "We are here to talk about how a... young person like yourself can interact with the Dungeon systems without leaning on Dungeoneer directly. It's your nature... to insert yourself into systems, and many of those systems are highly dangerous, with deliberate and high-powered safeguards to prevent tampering."

"However, the Lord Beneath, in his ...wisdom, and generosity, allowed there to be some exceptions."

To help explain himself, Kalamitus deigned to hold up a claw and create illusory images, a feat he had mostly chosen not to do while lecturing to me, though he needed it to explain a concept or two. What he displayed was... I was pretty sure it was a depiction of his tower and the dungeon floor outside, though it was separated into pieces--the Tower was separate from the floor, and the Tower itself was split into chunks; notably, the floor we were on now seemed to be set off from the others.

"To begin with, you need to understand that the architecture of the Dungeon is not what it appears. Although the Dungeon appears to be a single large piece underground, it is actually several pieces linked by portals--"

I decided to interrupt. "We saw things from the outside while we were in the Fairy Dungeon."

Kalamitus glared at me, and ultimately decided not to interrupt his spiel. "--with the outer walls made of an insulating, neigh-invulnerable substance that all Dungeoneers are associated entities are programmed to self-destruct if they touch, either in part or in whole. Thus even if you were, for example, to burrow through a wall, at best you would find yourself in an unused area, and no Dungeoneers could follow you without risking immediate and permanent death. If you were to touch those walls yourself... in short, it would be death, but not immediately. You would lose all benefit of your Bound Fairy status, and all equipment and abilities that were born from the Dungeon, reverting to a limited form of spiritual body that among the Fairy people are considered paupers, barely able to process any energy, and none at all from the Labyrinthine Star. As an unbound fairy, the portals would not work for you, nor could you hitch a ride on a friendly Dungeoneer or be the beneficiary of any similar Dungeon Skills. You would, in short, eventually starve to death."

That must have been the death plane that we saw when fighting the Administrator, which was also why we saw other walls from a certain angle while looking through the shattered wall. All of which... again, the fact that he deliberately shattered the floor and revealed that stuff was definitely a point against ol' Slenderman when it came to our relationship, but also, he gave me essentially every opportunity to survive the fight, in spite of all the danger. It was hard to know where we stood.

"Exactly because of this," Kalamitus continued, "there are few safeguards to prevent Dungeoneers or... others with access to sufficient magical power, from reshaping a Dungeon itself. Inherently, the damage you can do is limited, and any changes will be noted by the Administrator immediately. You cannot escape your current Floor--with the obvious exception of Fairy Dungeon exits, which exist at most once per biome." Kalamitus smirked. "The Administrators, Gods, Sovereigns, or Lord Beneath can all close these exits if they deem it necessary, of course, but even if you escape into that place... you have already seen that it is a very resource-poor place. It is possible to survive there for a time, but it is not a place any creature, group, or even civilization can thrive. No new resources are granted to those who live there, and what does exist fades with time."

That painted a grim picture of the Fairy civilization, as well as whoever had left the ruins there, but neither Merry nor I spoke up.

"Fairies, in or out of their own Dungeons, have the inherent abilities necessary to reshape Dungeons, though it requires a fair amount of power to do so. And while I will create a limited area here for you to learn the ability, going beyond that at any time while you are within my Tower will be grounds for immediate expulsion."

I touched Merry with telepathy and mentally rolled my eyes. We get it already, he hates fairies. He sure likes to rub it in.

Merry offered me a mental half-hug in return, but her thoughts were occupied with what she was being told.

The "limited area" Kalamitus created was not that much bigger than me, and it was made out of what appeared to be a thin later of stone, with a bird-sized hole that Merry fluttered in and looked around. Doubtless, it was featureless inside, because she showed no interested after only a moment.

"The Dungeon control structure exists on a two layers, one beneath and one above what mortals like Jerry understand as 'reality'." I turned and gave the Dungeon God a look at that, but he ignored me. "The abstraction of the Dungoneer Core that you can clearly see is part of the 'below', and as you would expect, when you look further Below, you see towards the Star itself. These are the mechanisms that underlay what exists, and although you can tamper with them, they are both robust and dangerous to get wrong."

"The Dungeon Controls that lay above are intended for use by controllers. As a Fairy, you can reach those controls if you..." and I flinched as the Dragon God got a particularly smug sneer on his face. "...burn."

I didn't like the sound of that, but Merry didn't say anything, instead standing on the lip of the entrance to the stone birdhouse and clearly thinking. I turned to watch her, but she just thought for a long moment, and then slipped inside the box.

I looked in the hole, seeing the familiar, still mostly half-lidded face of my companion, as she hesitated for a long moment, and then closed her eyes.

I sensed it with my own abilities far more than I saw it, but there seemed to be a candlelight flickering within Merry, and even I could sense that it diminished her, somehow, even to use a little bit of it. And she hung there for a long moment, and I wondered if she were having trouble.

A moment later, another birdhole opened in the box, and then beneath the two holes, a wide crescent, forming a smiley face.

"Good." Kalamitus leaned back, satisfied. "Functionally, a lot of similar controls exist within the System, as you will no doubt discover. Reaching any of these controls requires burning your life force, but even once you reach those controls, they do little except what the System already intended for them to do. You may be able to touch the controls for items, but you cannot unlock, add, or modify things without resources and keys that you, frankly, do not have."

"In short, you can freely choose to spend your life learning how the system works, but you won't achieve much."

I was starting to get an understand of exactly what Kalamitus meant by a fairy burning herself, though I didn't want to say it aloud. Was she trading years of her life just to be look, even before she learned how to use them? I made a face, and I know Kalamitus saw it, but he smugly chose not to pay any attention to me.

"Is that the only way?" asked my Fairy. She had stopped burning almost immediately after she finished her decoration, but I could also tell that it had taken something out of her.

Kalamitus shrugged. "It is the only way that I am permitted to share. I'm sure that those who live in the Fairy Dungeons can teach you what they know, if you are willing to trade for the information." Kalamitus paused, frowning, and then, for some reason, looked straight up for a moment. "I admit I don't have quite enough information about this to fill my entire quota. I apologize; some of the information may have been less valuable than I thought when I assigned a budget to it."

I frowned, and stepped forward. "Where do Fairy Queens fit into this?"

Kalamitus glanced at me, and nodded after a moment. "The term can be used to describe two different groups. Originally, Fairy Queens and Kings burned themselves to stand above Fairy kind, in much the same way a Fairy can burn herself to stand above the Dungeon. But now, some Fairy Queens and Kings are also given special place by the Lord Beneath and the Sovereign Fool to govern the Fairy Dungeons. Right now, few people ever see the former, so the term generally means the latter."

The fact that I had used my Vampiric Cloak to effectively stand above a Fairy and her Dungeon minions was not lost on me, even if I didn't feel like I was using any weird Dungeon controls that existed above reality, or whatever. The System had even thrown a technical term into the description--Enthralled--when I'd originally been intending to recreate the borderline-possessed state I'd struggled with when I was a psychic fighting off ghosts... or, whatever they were back then.

Was that a part of all of this? How could it not be? I closed my eyes and considered, too many thoughts suddenly swirling. Fairies were clearly spiritual beings, and... and the whole Fairy Gem thing was clearly a way to change their nature from trying to "possess" things to living together. Meanwhile, Merry only had a body in the real world when she had a Dungeon construct to possess... so were Fairies really just spirits that happened to live within the system?

"When we watched a person sacrificed in the Fairy Dungeon, that was a Fairy restoring the life she burned away by consuming a human soul, wasn't it?"

I turned to look at Merry, feeling chills at the question, which she had phrased so... so bluntly. It took a long moment for me to really come to terms with the question, and I think Kalamitus must have been paying careful attention to me, because he didn't respond to the question until I had fully processed what she had asked.

"Yes." Kalamitus smirked, looking more at me than at the fairy. "Though, that is not the only benefit."

"She took resource points from his stuff. I saw that." Merry's voice was kind of flat. "We can already use the resource points in various ways. That's why Dungeon Monsters don't use the same kind of resources, they just drop stuff when they die. Otherwise, a Dungeoneer could learn to harvest more from a monster than they should."

Kalamitus did look over at Merry, and I think his racism was fighting against an urge to be impressed, because his face was stuck on an unpleasant, surprised expression. "...yes, that's correct."

"But we could take from humans if we wanted to. Not even fairies, but Dungeoneers could."

Kalamitus' expression got more disturbing. "That information is restricted."

"Uh-huh." Merry turned and looked at me, and I... I felt chilled to see that her expression was cool. She didn't seem disturbed, or upset, or confused, or scared. Just... well, I wasn't quite sure. "What happens to me if Jerry becomes Administrator?"

"That..." Kalamitus paused. "Historically, there were negotiations to determine exactly what the fate of... someone like that, turned out to be. I was never a part of those negotiations, but I seem to recall some being freed to pick another companion, one appointed as a Fairy King... and I believe one remained as an Administrator's companion, but if we're being honest, I don't recall that ever being explicitly stated. Even with my enhanced memory, it's a trifling detail that I had no interest in."

Merry just nodded. "So we don't have to separate. That's all I really wanted to hear."

The words seemed to break a spell over Kalamitus, and I wondered later on whether he had willingly abused her phrasing. "Well! Then I guess we're done here. The teaching is done with, and that part of the Contract is fulfilled. I'll give you a Tower Pass to return here when you're done fighting with Bo, and of course, there are the miscellaneous items. Don't worry, I'm obliged, and I'll fulfill my obligations. For now, I have things to catch up on." The dragon waved its hands at me in a very obvious brushing-off. "Shoo."

Merry came up and sat on my shoulder, but didn't immediately force herself into my mind as I took the elevator back down to the inn. I had no real reason to stay in the tower any longer, but... I also wasn't quite eager to return to the real world.

"You okay, bro?" she asked, quietly, when we were alone.

"What about you?" I looked at her. "Did the burning thing hurt?"

"Hurt... no. It didn't hurt. But it cost me something." She put her hand on her chest, her eyes looking down as though she could see something missing there. "I could do it for a while, but..."

"I won't ask you to." I leaned my head over nuzzle her, a little surprised that again, she didn't try to come back inside. "It sounds like... you couldn't do much without spending more than you could afford, to killing people to get it back."

"Yeah." Merry nodded, glumly. "The controls that are above, they're... they're crazy complicated, and it's more than just that they're not labelled. It's like a whole system is designed to plug into it, and all I have are the plugs. I was able to replicate the hole, and then change its shape, but there are all kinds of holes and plugs and sharp bits that don't make any sense. If I saw someone using it, I'd probably do okay, but it's like..." she shook her head.

I got the idea without her providing a better mental image, and nodded. But then, I looked down, wondering if I should really say what I was thinking. Ultimately, I decided to. "Fairies are... really just spirits, aren't they?"

She looked at me, and I realized the question was probably odd, and didn't say enough.

"I mean..." I sat down on the bed. "I fought against possession for years, and this isn't that, but... if you didn't have the right tools, that's all that you would be, right? A spirit that has to possess others to survive. That's why you need a Dungeon body, why the Gem they put you in came with a bunch of extra stuff to let us live together in peace."

I thought Merry was cringing on my shoulder, a little, but I didn't look.

"But..." I closed my eyes and bopped her with my head again. "Because of all that, we can live together. Everyone--well, not everyone, but... never mind--everyone becomes a monster when they're poor and starving. Tame dogs and cats become feral, and people do too. But even dogs that become feral can recover and be someone's best friend forever."

And I reached up and gently pulled Merry against me. It was awkward, I knew, and probably uncomfortable, but I needed her to understand.

"You're still my sister, Merry."

The fairy did her best to hug me back while squished up against my face, and then went back inside my head.