The Dungeon Child

I stare into Thesis and Theory's many eyes. "I trust you all know your roles?"

They both give me a nod. Back at the house, I'm waiting for the Mother to return from wherever it is she goes during the day. To be completely honest, I'd never put any thought into it.

Regardless, I'm rehearsing how exactly I'm going to tell her what and who I am. While my bravery should be limitless, I nevertheless remain unnervingly nervous regarding this specific topic.

It's not as though I replaced her son, insofar as I know. I can still recall with relative clarity the moment of my own birth, visceral as an occasion as it'd been. Naturally, there remains a chance that my soul or dungeon equivalent intervened with whatever mechanism organizes souls and entangled with Jason's body.

But that doesn't seem quite right. For all sakes and purposes, I am indeed Jason, but my mind is very much Argus. I'd never put much thought towards the potential schism between soul and body, for no greater reason then that there was no schism to begin with. I was relatively at home in this body, clumsy and ineffective as it was. I wouldn't have improved it so much if I'd thought it was useless.

Granted, I suppose it would technically be possible to reconfigure the human body into something both powerful and efficent, but it certainly wouldn't fit anywhere in nature in this world.

On the other hand, with Richter gone, all I need to do now is improve my dungeon further, find whatever lackeys he might have leftover, and then world ownership would cleanly fall to me. I sincerely doubt the country would resort to the nuclear weapons that proved so devastating in the wars described on Dillon's Internet on someone such as myself until it was far too late to even use them as a final resort.

I sense the door downstairs open, and hurriedly shoo Theory and Thesis into the tunnels. Straightening the striped shirt and loose shorts, I take a deep breath and sit down.

This is going to get complicated quickly, I can already feel it.

The Mother stays on the first floor for a strangely long time, and I can't help but begin fidgeting. It's bad enough that I'm coming clean about my existence. Can't she just make it easier on me and hurry on up?

The door finally opens, and I prepare my first statement before realizing that something is most assuredly not right with the Mother. Her eyes are noticably redder than usual, and she looks more tired than I've ever seen her.

Kneeling on the soft floor of my room, she pulls the hair out of her face and takes a deep breath. "Jason... I need to tell something that might... hurt. I know you're very brave, but..."

She takes another breath, and then another. I'm rapidly growing more worried about whatever news she's about to deliver. Did Charlie say something to the school?

"Frank - your father is..." She trails off again, pausing for a moment. I instinctively put my hand on her knee. I wish Theory and Thesis could be present to comfort her in the same way, but they will be able to soon.

Composing herself, the Mother finishes in one breath, "Your father isn't coming back."

"Pops isn't coming back?" I think about it for a moment. I'm a lot less surprised than I thought I would be. Thrown by the subject, yes. Surprised, no.

The Mother shakes her head. "No, he isn't. He - he didn't leave because you did anything wrong, Jason."

I frown slightly, trying to figure out the train of thought leading to that conclusion. "I know. Did he run away with the babysitter?"

The Mother's expression freezes for a second. "What babysitter?"

I can see my eyes narrow through the dungeon vision. It's an entirely involuntary reaction, albeit an accurate one granted the circumstances. "Pops told me he hired a babysitter some time ago. I'm not a baby, so I wasn't sure why she was in the house. She was dressed strangely."

The Mother's face goes through a complex series of emotions which I've never seen before, settling on a neutral mask. "It's going to be okay, honey." Leaning forward, she wraps her arms around me in a hug. A hug I take full comfort in. As terrible as the timing might be, I doubt I'll be able to muster the courage to do this later.

"Mother," I begin carefully, "I have something to tell you."

She sits back, her eyes sad. "What is it?"

I take a deep breath of my own. "I'm a dungeon."

She doesn't react for a worryingly long time, and then frowns. It's an expression of abject confusion, not anger or dissapointment. "What?"

It's difficult not to squirm. "I'm a dungeon."

The Mother stares at me for a full ten seconds, and I suddenly realize that we both have very little idea what the other is talking about.

Taking a deep breath, I call Thesis and Theory forth from the floor. Theory had to build a particularly large hole to accomodate for Thesis' relatively new girth, but they both fit through.

The Mother sucks a sharp breath through her teeth as Thesis crawls into my lap, Theory taking her usual perch atop my head. Before she can say anything, I tell the Mother, "Do you remember Thesis? My first spider?" I rest my palm on Thesis' head, and she relaxes in my lap. "I enhanced her before Pops threw her away. She made it back all on her own from there. Theory-" I move my hand up to Theory, drawing the Mother's attention. "-was different. A different kind of spider. So she had to be changed differently."

The Mother's expression is intense. Terrifyingly intense. "What are you talking about?"

With a thought, I change the contents of the room. I turn the soft foam over the floor into hardwood, carrying Theory's trapdoors across. The walls ripple in a sudden wave of white paint and plaster, and the ceiling fan flattens upward. The Mother's eyes widen, and she grabs my hand, but she doesn't panic.

All things considered, she's handling this shockingly well.

Finally, she looks down at me. "Are you doing this?"

I nod again, and pull my dungeon core out from beneath the bed. It floats over, red tendrils of mana flicking outward and connecting with the ground before snapping back into itself. "This is my secondary core. It's... it's still a part of me, just not organic. Think of it like an extra arm."

Watching the shifting core, the Mother shifts her attention back to me. She's silent for a long moment.

After far longer than I'm comfortable with, she asks, "Are you really Jason?"

I answer immediately. "Yes."

"How do I know?"

Her voice breaks on the last word, and I flinch. Resolutely, I continue onward. "I remember being born."

The Mother's eyes fill with barely restrained tears. "You remember being..."

She turns her back away from me for a moment, and it takes a shocking amount of willpower not to ask her to turn around. I had no idea how she would react to this revelation, and the news regarding Pops only made it worse.

I did make a note to find him later, though. There were things that needed to be done. Perhaps death wouldn't be out of the question, since he'd left on his own terms.

"Tell me the truth." My attention snaps back to the Mother as she turns to face me. Both her voice and her eyes are steeled. "Are you really my son?"

I still don't hesitate. "Yes."

Before she can ask another question, I continue, "I've given it a lot of thought. I don't know why I'm like this - why I'm a human and a dungeon at the same time. But I know with adamant certainty that you are the most important person in my life." Next to myself, a tiny part of me adds. I push it away for the time being. "I don't know who or what I am, but I know that you're my Mother."

A much larger part of me wants to cry. I expertly avoid doing so, ignoring the dampness on my face. "I'm your son." After a moment, I hesitantly add, "...Mom."

That last word seems to break whatever thread of will had been holding Mom up, and she bursts into tears, wrapping me in a hug. I return the hug less stiffly than I've ever done in my life, and I can feel both of my spiders quietly move away.

"We're going to be okay." Mom whispers into my ear, and I nod.

"We definitely are."

The world itself will bow for Mom's safety.