Friendly Fyre: Chapter 3 - Pact

“Is it too late to, ah, uninitiate a pact?” I ask. 

[Dungeon Core abilities interfaced,] Echo says. [Pact formation complete.]

I take that as a no. 

Even now, that sense of vastness I’d felt is rapidly fading. The Dungeon Core just appears to be a stone. Granted, a very excitable stone that seems eager to get to work, but certainly not some other-dimensional bottomless well of darkness. I almost believe it was just my imagination, though the strangeness of this world has shown me that anything seems possible. 

I suppose it’s too late regardless. 

The Dungeon Core nudges my mind, silently begging for its promised mana. 

“Alright, alright,” I say. “Now, I don’t have much. And if I keep speaking with you, I’ll need to hold onto at least a little bit of it. So we need to nail down the parameters of my request now, before we lose the ability to communicate. Understand?”

The stone practically vibrates with excitement beneath my hand. Yes. It understands. It will rip this cave apart. 

“No!” I object. “Uh, no, not like that. Here, let me think.”

Instead of trying to describe with words, I focus on an image of what I want: the fallen stones in the passage being pushed out of the way. Being able to walk out of the still intact cave. Minimal disruption. 

The Core considers this. Yes, it supposes it could do that. Not nearly as fun, though. 

I snort. “Well so long as you’re having fun, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?” I shake my head. “Alright. Now how do I give you access to my mana?”

Instead of an explanation, I feel a mental ping. A request, almost like a tug of a current, ushering me forward. Hesitantly, I allow myself to be pulled along. 

[Mana transfer initiated,] Echo reports. 

It takes all my willpower to not stop the transfer. I can feel the energy flowing away from me, and while I don’t notice that I’m particularly weaker or more tired as a result, the sensation is still distinctly unsettling. But if I want out of this cave, I need to follow through on our agreement. 

I wait until my mana reserves dip below 10%, then I mentally pull away from the Dungeon Core.

[Mana transfer complete,] Echo says. 

[Mana: 7/200]

[Psionic Touch Level up! At Level 2, Psionic Touch mana cost is reduced to 1 mana per 10 seconds. Spell evolution available! Psionic Link: form a permanent connection between two minds, allowing the individuals to communicate at will. Mana cost: 150]

That’s interesting. A one time cost to prevent future mana drain would be much more efficient. But I don’t have enough magic to use Psionic Link even if I wanted to. And frankly, I’m not sure I want to. That previous peek behind the Dungeon Core’s curtain was unsettling, and it would be rash of me to permanently fix such an unknown entity to my mind.

Of course, I’d just formed a pact with the thing, so who am I to talk?

It will take me hours to recover my mana anyway. Plenty of time to decide how I want this relationship to develop in the long term. For now, I only have another minute left to continue talking with the Dungeon Core before Psionic Touch expires. And speaking of which…

Yes! The Dungeon Core rejoices. Energy. Finally! Now it will—No, wait… Not enough! Not nearly enough. Pathetic amount of mana. So pitiful. Shameful. Well, it must work with what it has. 

I breathe out a laugh. “Rude.”

The Core ignores me, too focused on what it wants to do next. First, extraction. It can’t stay here. It needs a new lair. Better lair. It needs to tap into a larger energy source. Where? Searching. Deep…. Deeper…

(Every thought is accompanied with the flash of an image or abstract impression. Stones, veins in the rocks, a network of caves and passages.)

The Core is disappointed. No, it can’t reach. Ah, why doesn’t it have more mana to work with? Such a sorry excuse for a pact… Okay, mobility first—

[Mana Expired,] Echo says. [Psionic Touch ended.]

And just like that, the Core’s presence vanishes from my mind. It certainly wasn’t impressed with my mana reserves, that much is clear. And what was all that about lairs and veins of energy? It’s getting off track. But without any mana to communicate, I can’t redirect it now. Hesitantly, I remove my hand from the stone. I’ll just have to hope the Core will do as I intended even without my mental direction.

A sound in the dark scratches at my ears, driving a shiver down my back. It’s coming from the ground in front of me—a shifting of pebbles and stone, I think. Very likely the Dungeon Core moving the earth around it, but being unable to witness what’s happening is more than a little unsettling. I Check my mana: still at 0/200. It should only take another 30 seconds or so to gain 1 point back, at which point I’ll be able to light a Spark. In the meantime, there’s nothing but blackness and the faint scratching of stone on stone. 

While I wait, my mind wanders back to my Stats. It’s so strange to have everything about me labeled like some plane model in a textbook. A phoenix harpy? It sounds absurd. And yet, there’s something else in that stat block that catches my eye—something I hadn’t had much of a chance to process before now. 

“Echo,” I say. “What does this Role stat mean?”

[Every user is assigned a Role,] Echo replies. [The user must fulfill the role requirements.]

Well that tells me very little. 

“And my role is… The Dark Lord?” I ask, skeptical. 

[Affirmative.]

“What are the requirements for that role?”

[The Dark Lord must defend her kingdom.]

Vague. And vaguely ominous. No one called The Dark Lord has ever ended up being one of the good guys. 

“I don’t suppose there’s room to negotiate a new role?” I ask.

[Negative.]

Of course not. Yet another aspect of my predicament it seems I have no control over. Well, I’ll just have to roll with it for now. It probably doesn’t mean anything… right?

I wait a few more minutes, as long as my patience can handle in the ringing dark, then I cast Spark once more. 

The earth around the Dungeon Core has come alive. What once was solid stone has now become sand and loose pebbles, all strangely cubic as if diced by a laser cutter. The ground is shifting, pushing upward, forcing the Core and all the jewel’s circuit-like tendrils from the earth. Seeing what it’s trying to do, I decide to help out. I dig my hands into the now-loose rubble and pull upwards. The bits of stone cascade away between my fingers, leaving just the Dungeon Core dangling dozens of ruby-red stone roots, like fossilized veins leading away from a heart. 

I reactivate Psionic Touch, and the mental deluge of its thoughts starts once more.

From the flurry of excitement, recognition, and eagerness that floods through me, it seems happy to realize I’m back. I saved it some mana by assisting in prying it from the ground. Now it can focus on finding a suitable new lair—

“No,” I hurriedly interrupt, watching my mana start to tick back toward zero far too quickly. “The passage. Clear the passage.” My impression of the Dungeon Core is gradually shifting to something like a toddler hyped up on sugar. This is going to be like herding cats. 

Disappointed, the Core relents, and I can feel its attention shift. It plunges into its own memories, and like getting caught in a pocket of differential pressure, I’m briefly dragged in with it. It’s been in this chamber a long time. Once great, its area of influence shrunk to just this cavern, then its immediate surroundings, then nothing. After its mana was depleted, cut off from its source, it became stuck. It spent decades—centuries—trying to grow, reach out, find a new vein of magical ore it could tap into for power. But it only managed these meager few inches of geological growth. Now, though. Now…

Sand hisses away from the collapsed passage. I hastily step back, fire in one hand, gem in the other. Bits and pieces of the rock slide down the face of the collapsed wall, all shaped in perfect cubes of various sizes. The rubble spills into the room around my feet and I retreat even further in alarm. How much did the Core need to clear out? What if it ends up filling the cavern with sand before I can find a way out? 

My alarm seems to make it through to the Core, as it flickers with a new idea. 

Don’t worry. It will make a hole! Then the room won’t fill with sand. 

Its thoughts are accompanied by images of giant crevasses splitting open the floor flitting through my mind. This does little to ease my alarm. 

Wait, I think. I don’t think that’s a good—

Something cracks behind me like a gunshot. My ears are suddenly muted and ringing. I’m hardly able to make out the hiss of sand still falling from the collapsed passage. But now there’s a giant crack bisecting the room, and it’s zig zagging right toward me. 

The Dungeon Core sends me a mental impression of something along the line of oops.

[Mana depleted. Psionic Touch expired.]

I leap off to the side, scattering bones and flapping my wings to keep upright as the ground gives way. The sand—and skeletons—pour through the gaping hole in the floor, quickly vanishing out of sight. The crack reaches the collapsed passageway and then stops. 

For a moment. 

The boulders groan. A puff of dust escapes the passage as the stones shift, jolting downward. Then, all at once, they vanish through the floor in a rockslide. The chamber shakes with the waterfall of crashing boulders, first grating against each other and the floor, then more distantly shattering like bombshells somewhere far beneath us. 

“Stop!” I shout over the calamity, even though I’m no longer using Psionic Touch. “That’s enough!”

But the Dungeon Core had already stopped. The distant echo of cascading stones rumble through the cavern for another minute more, gradually growing fainter and fainter until finally all hint of the rockslide has faded away. 

I wait until my pounding heart has stopped threatening to hammer out of my chest, which also gives me some time to recover a few points of mana. Once I’ve sufficiently recovered from nearly experiencing my second heart attack of the day, I reestablish a Psionic Touch.

The Core happily greets me. Sadly, it’s used up all the mana I gave it. But! Didn’t it do so well at clearing out the tunnel?

I glance toward said tunnel. A cloud of dirt obscures the entrance. The fissure that’s running through the room leads straight up toward the tunnel, so I pick myself up and carefully make my way over, gauging the slope and sturdiness of the ground with every step. I stop a few feet away. 

The dust clears to reveal a dark, empty tunnel. Sure enough, it’s empty, just as the Dungeon Core insists. But there’s also a giant shaft running through the passage floor, effectively halving the width of the tunnel and creating a cliff on one side. The remaining ledge is only a few feet wide. 

“Yes,” I say with a grimace. “You did great.”

I hold my Spark over the crevasse, but the light is quickly swallowed by the dark. I don’t even have enough mana to drop a Blaze down there and see how far it might fall. I guess I’ll just have to try not to slip—or I’ll get to find out how effective these wings really are. 

Unfortunately, the ledge in the tunnel is on the opposite side of the fissure as me. At its narrowest point, the crack is a little over three feet wide. Physically, an easy space to jump—I could practically step over it if I stretch far enough—but it’s something rather different mentally when you know one misstep or crumbling block of stone will lead to your untimely demise. 

Well, maybe not untimely. I’ve already died once today.

“Okay,” I say, glancing down at the Dungeon Core. “If I’m going to do this, it would sure help to have my hands free.” Unfortunately, I have a lack of pockets—or any sort of clothes for that matter. 

But the Core seems to understand. It can take many useful forms. 

Images flit through my mind of the Dungeon Core’s rocky veins reshaping into an intricate stone lattice to form a crown, with the jewel at its center. 

“Useful,” I acknowledge. “But a crown might fall off. “How about…” 

I picture a bracelet instead, woven about my forearm like a bracer, skin tight so it can’t accidentally slip off. 

The Dungeon Core examines the design and happily agrees. It likes trying new shapes. It’s been a long time since it’s gotten to change its form. It can only reform once per pact, and it’s been a long time since it’s had a pact. A very long time. 

“Wait,” I say. The tendrils of stone twitch, then come alive, snapping around my wrist. I can’t help but flinch as it does so, jerking my arm away as if to dislodge it. The veins of stone lace around my arm, settling the stone on the back of my wrist, then just as quickly become inert once more. “What do you mean you can only reform once per pact?”

[Form Change complete,] Echo says. 

“Er, can it change forms again?” I ask Echo, since the Dungeon Core doesn’t seem capable of—or interested in—explaining. “Can I get it off?”

[Negative,] Echo says. [Until a new pact is formed, this form of the Core will remain unchanged.]

I grimace. I should have seen that one coming. Well, I guess I really don’t have to worry about losing it now. Next time, I’ll ask more clarifying questions in advance.

Seeing my mana hit 1/200, I deactivate Psionic Touch once more, so I can keep my Spark going. This really is getting inconvenient. Perhaps I’ll commit to that Psionic Link after all. In the meantime, however, I’ll just have to flick the spell on and off as needed, and as my mana allows.

I look back at the crevasse with a sigh. The stone stuck to my arm is the least of my worries right now. At least with Psionic Touch off, it can’t say anything to distract me. 

“I suppose there’s nothing for it.” I back up a few steps, then take a running jump, giving my wings a good—pointless—flap as I do, and soar over the crack. I effortlessly land on the other side, scattering a half disintegrated skeleton. 

Oh. Well that was far easier than I’d made it out to be in my head. 

I watch my feet—claws?—as I slowly pick my way along the tunnel’s ledge. I’d never been the spelunking type. Air was more my domain. Caves are just so claustrophobic. Cold and dark and damp. I pause, brushing my hand against the wall. It’s rough and dry here, likely from the rocks that had been shaved away. But if I could find a damp area of the cave, that might be my salvation. Now that I’m out of that first cave, finding water will be my top priority.

The tunnel goes on for a minute more, longer than I had expected. The end is marked by a wall of black that my Spark can’t penetrate. Cautiously, I step out the end. The Core’s fissure has tapered off into a gap only a handspan wide, but it continues on into the darkness ahead of me. I lift my light to try to survey my surroundings. I’m in another cavern, I think. But judging by the echoes of my footsteps, this one is much more massive. 

“This may be a problem,” I mumble to myself. I can’t wander aimlessly about these caverns. Aside from getting lost, it’s simply an inefficiency I can’t afford. If I end up heading down tunnels that loop back on themselves, would I even know? I need to explore as much of this place as possible in the hopes of finding a way out—or at least some water—but without a map or way to track my pathing, there’s no way to be systematic about it. 

[Map available,] Echo suddenly speaks up. 

I pause. “I’m sorry, what?”

[Map available,] she repeats. 

I frown. “You’ve had a map available all this time and I’m just learning about it now?”

[Negative,] Echo says. [Map Interface unlocked upon Pact formation.]

“Oh,” I say, mollified. “I see. Sorry I doubted you, Echo.” 

This must be one of the Dungeon Core “tools” she said I would gain access to. “Alright. Let’s see it then.” 

Like Echo’s Stats, an image appears superimposed over my vision. At first it appears like a ball with a tail sticking off of it. It takes a moment to realize I can mentally zoom in on the image and rotate it at will. It takes that reorientation to realize what I’m looking at: a three dimensional visualization of the places we’ve been so far. The ball—or hemisphere, now that I can rotate it—is the cavern I started in, while the wavy tail is the tunnel I took out. Now I’m standing in a new area. Experimentally, a walk a couple paces to my right. The map similarly illuminates, tracing my new path. I see. It’s a map that’s only revealed to me as I explore it. Not the most efficient way to travel, but at least it gives me reference points, and I’ll know if I ever end up retracing my steps. In that case…

I turn Psionic Touch back on, just for the company. “Now, we walk.” 

It doesn’t know what that means. It is just a rock.

Guided only by my Spark of light and the Map Interface of a sentient bracelet, I strike out into the caverns.

“Do you know if there’s water anywhere in here?” I ask I walk. “An underground river or pool?

Water? Its thoughts spiral around that concept for a second. It doesn’t remember water. It was a long time ago that it knew water. Now it knows only stone. Earth. Rocks. Pebbles. Dust. Boulders—

“Alright, alright,” I say, cutting it off. “I get the picture.”

Looks like I’ll be on my own as far as trying to find water and food goes. Perhaps it would be capable of searching for such things if I could provide it more mana. I Check my mana at the thought: [2/200]. At this rate, it will take another six hours to fully regenerate my mana. Then again, I have nothing but time. 

I walk for hours. Sometimes the way slopes down, and sometimes up. Sometimes the cave narrows to a small passageway, and sometimes it’s large caverns. The ways split, and they converge. They occasionally twist into passages too tight to continue. Sometimes there’s giant holes and chasms that my light can’t reach into, or passages halfway blocked with loose, dusty stone I expect came from the Core’s earlier rockslide. The walls have become moist, which I count as a good sign, but there’s not enough accumulated to quench my growing thirst. I know I should be able to go for days without water, but the exertion of my exploration isn’t helping. Each step I take carves out more of the Map on the Dungeon Core’s display, but without having any real destination, it’s just a tangled yarn of paths. I try to ignore my mounting concern. It’s early, yet. 

A faint sound makes me come to an abrupt halt. This whole time, the only noises I’ve encountered are the echoes of my own footsteps. And, I guess, Echo’s occasional status update. And the Core’s incoherent babbling. 

But this is something physical, some source of sound that’s not coming from me. I tip my head, straining my ears, as I try to make it out. 

Silence rings through the dark. Had I imagined it? A pebble I’d kicked just to hear it clattering down some crack in the stone? No. I’m sure it was something organic. A sigh, or whisper, or…

The grunt breaks through the silence. Excited, I hurry ahead, pausing before the passage I swear I can hear the sound coming from. Now, don’t get too overeager, I have to remind myself. It could be a wild animal. Something dangerous. And I’m just as likely to provide a food source to it as it is to me. But this is my first indication of any signs of life, and that’s an opportunity I can’t pass up. 

I wait at the passage, weighing my options. My mana has finished recovering, which tells me I’ve already been wandering these caverns aimlessly for far too long. But that also means I have Blaze at my disposal. And if it’s a creature that can be reasoned with, I might be able to try Psionic Touch. Apart from those two things, I don’t seem to have many other tools at my disposal. The passage is dark and long enough to swallow the light of my Spark. It would be wiser to snuff it out so as not to alert the creature of my approach, but then I’d be walking blind, and given the uneven floor and countless holes, that would be unlikely to play in my favor. Perhaps I could—

A single word, quiet and strained, interrupts my thoughts as it echoes down the passage.

“Fuck.”

It’s a person! I’m not alone in here. Granted, perhaps not a friendly person, but at least someone who I can talk to. Someone who can help navigate me out of this maze, for better or worse. I press ahead, my Spark raised before me. As I approach, I can make out the scuffs of something hard against stone and more heavy breathing and muttered swears. 

“Hello?” I call. 

The sounds stop. Slightly more cautiously, I continue on in the same direction. As I turn a corner in the cave, my light spills over a small cavern. It takes me several moments to parse what I’m looking at. 

The space is small, only a dozen feet across. The opposite wall is not a wall at all, in fact, and actually appears to be a carved, artificial tunnel, though it’s half caved in with boulders. And between that tunnel and me, pressed against the fallen rocks, is a person. 

Or… a spider?

A black, seven-foot-tall spider, with the torso of a human extending from where its head should be. Metal armor decorates its—her?—arms, legs, and chest, while long dark hair cascaded down around her shoulders. Her face almost appears human: she has two ears, a nose, a mouth, and eyes. 

That is, eight eyes. 

“Um, hello,” I say after a moment, trying not to let any preconceived biases toward eight-limbed arachnids color my impression. “I don’t suppose you have a map?”