Wandering Dungeon

Ugh! Did someone get the number of that bus? Garrett groaned. He looked around and saw only darkness. Garrett instinctively knew that only pure emptiness surrounded him. What happened? Where am I? He said as pain spiked through whatever was considered to be a brain for a floating ball of energy.

"Your core was shattered." Replied a deep voice from everywhere and nowhere. "I'm a little surprised that you didn't survive a longer Garrett."

"Who are you?" Garrett yelled into the nothingness. "Where are you?"

"Oh, I apologize. Let me just change up the scenery real quick."

The darkness faded and was soon replaced with a room about twenty feet on each side. Shelves full of books in various sizes and colors lined the walls. Garrett didn't recognize any of the symbols on them. A wooden table surrounded by six chairs sat in the center of the room. On top of it sat a couple more books, a large map, some small people shaped figures, and a couple of odd shaped metal bottles.

"There we go, that's better." An older gentleman appeared in one of the chairs. He had short cropped black hair with some white showing through and a small beard to match. He was dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt with a dragon facing off against a party of adventurers printed on it. "Good to see you again my friend even though the I wish it was under better circumstances."

"Who are you and what is all this stuff?" Garrett continued to look around amazed at the items around him. Some of them felt familiar but he couldn't understand why or how.

The older man looked at Garrett with worry and sighed. "I guess more of your memories were locked away than I thought." He waved his hand toward Garrett and images crashed through Garrett's mind paralyzing him.

A few minutes passed as the knowledge and memories flooded Garrett's mind. He looked over at the older man. "George? " He said remembering the older man. "What are you doing here?"

George threw his head back with a throaty laugh. "I'm glad to see you remember me now. Before I answer your question, let me ask you. What do you remember before waking up here?“

“I remember a couple of adventurers exploring my dungeon then shattering my core.” Garrett gasped. “Am I dead?”

“In a way, but what I meant was what do you remember before waking up as a dungeon core?”

Garrett focused on all the new memories floating through his mind and managed to grab a hold of a one of him and a few of his friends driving in a car. “I remember being in a car with some friends. We were on our way to a gaming convention I believe. You weren’t there because you said you had some important business to take care of. The rest is a bit fuzzy.”

“I guess people don’t really remember their deaths, I’ll have to remember that.”

“Wait, I died? What about the others?”

“Yes, you and your friends died when you were going through a tunnel. A gas tanker crashed near the middle causing people to slam on their brakes. No one got hurt and even the truck driver came out alive, until someone crashed into a car near the entrance of the tunnel while texting on their phone. I swear people on your world are just inventing new ways to kill themselves. Anyway, the tanker caught on fire but the tunnel lacked proper ventilation and emergency tunnels due to a shady construction company cutting corners and you all died from smoke inhalation."

Garrett floated there with his metaphorical jaw glued to the floor. "Alright." Garrett shook himself out of his surprise. "Let me get this straight. You are not from our world, my friends and I died in a traffic accident, and then I woke up as a dungeon core." Sudden flashes of books and anime appeared in Garrett's mind. "That means I reincarnated in a new world. So that makes you what, the god of chaos or something?"

"Yes to you reincarnating, yes to me being a god, and no to the god of chaos who technically doesn't exist."

"How does a god technically not exist?"

"The god that people call the god of chaos is actually the god of probability. He calculates various futures based on several millions of variables and steers the world away from destruction by using the smallest nudges that, by the time something happens to someone, it seems like a random happenstance. He's very serious and honestly quite boring, always muttering to himself and fiddling with that absurd abacus of his. Maybe I should introduce him to your world and their computers."

"In the stories I'm familiar with people always get reincarnated because of the god of chaos or a goddess of some sort, and since you don't look like a goddess then what are you the god of?"

"History. Tradition. Stories. Take your pick. Pretty much anything passed down through the spoken or written word." George waved his hand emphasizing the bookshelves around them.

"Sounds like you would be very busy since history is always happening. So why come to our world?"

"Because very little of the history of this world actually gets written down, and the majority of what is passed on verbally is just housewives gossiping. It gets very boring." George sighed. "When I found your world I was amazed at all the history and stories that had been written down. I spent a few decades just sitting in libraries throughout your world amazed at the sheer amount of books your people had made. I even brought over the god of knowledge one day to show him. Last I saw of him he was fascinated by books on macramé."

"I guess that makes sense, from what little I saw of the adventurers it looks like this is a world ruled by magic and might, but that doesn't explain why you were hanging out and playing Dungeons and Dragons with us."

George chuckled. "I guess you forgot about the part where I said I was the god of spoken stories as well as written ones. When I found out about tabletop role playing games I was dumbfounded. You were just inventing histories of worlds that you didn't know wether they existed or not, and you were placing yourselves into that history. I had never seen anything like it."

"So people in your world don't make up stories?"

"No. They either don't have the time because they are working, or they are illiterate. Besides, they don't need to make up stories of magic and monsters when it is an everyday occurrence and the level of technology is around what would be the medieval period in your world, so the mere idea of computers or cars or even electric lights is unfathomable."

"I'm glad we could introduce you to that experience then, but why did you reincarnate just me then?" Garrett said sadly. "Is there a limit to how many people can be brought over?" Garrett perked up from a thought. "Or did they survive and it was just me that died?"

"I'm sorry to tell you Garrett but your friends did die in that tunnel as well." Garrett slowly floated down onto a chair as if he was sitting down. "But, I was able to bring them over as well." George reached over and picked up a small wooden box, placed it on the table, and opened it revealing seven indentations. "I did have to follow the rules set by the council of gods so I placed your soul into a dungeon core and theirs into monster cores. I was inspired for their unique cores by the rune stones we used for the tabletop games we would play." Garrett shot back up excited at the prospect of seeing his friends again, but then remembered that his core had been shattered and slowly floated back down to the chair. George noticed this and asked. "What's wrong Garrett? I thought you would relish this opportunity."

"I'm glad my friends are alive and get to experience this world but I'm sad that I won't get to see them since my core was shattered."

"Come now Garrett. What kind of gamer doesn't keep around a spare set of dice or five." With a flourish of his hand George was holding a twenty side die that looked like Garrett's old core but seemed to have small runes floating through it.

Garrett's joy soared at getting to experience this new world again and possibly getting to see his friends again but a thought occurred to him. "Before I go back can I ask a couple of questions that have been bugging me?"

"I don't see why not." George replied.

"Why did I lose all my memories and why can't I summon monsters or make items?

"Well, when I brought the souls of you and your friends over there were some rules I had to follow. Most of them pertained to you as a dungeon core. Souls have migrated here every so often for centuries. In the beginning the gods allowed them to keep their memories from their past life but they would inevitably have issues. Either they would die slowly because they didn't want to challenge or kill those that went into their dungeons, or they would go mad and attempt to destroy everything around them outside of their dungeon.

"So the gods decided that all those reborn as dungeons, whether from our world or not, would have their memories wiped clean and a dungeon guide would be assigned to help them learn about this world and to guard against the dungeon running wild."

"Are you going to get in trouble since you gave me back my memories?"

"This is just me bringing you back from the dead. Since you were already a dungeon it shouldn't be a problem. As for your monster and item problem, as a game master yourself I think you will appreciate if I leave a few mysteries for you to discover. After all, facing the unknown with your friends is half the fun of those tabletop games we used to play. Now let's try this again Garrett and remember, you might still be a dungeon master, but you also get to be a player."

The core in his hand grew brighter. Its light encompassed the room and blinded Garrett. Garrett tried to call out that he had more questions, but he fell into darkness before he could utter a word.

With Garrett's soul successfully stored inside his new dungeon core, George rolled it across the table and onto the map. "Goodbye my friend and good luck."