I had to crane my neck to look into the face that stared down at me. She squatted and rested elbows on knees, claws nearly scraping the floor. Even like this, the top of my head barely reached her chin. I swear she hadn’t seemed so large as a statue.
She was eerily and inhumanly beautiful, distressingly so in her nakedness. Blood-red hair fell down her shoulders in a molten cascade that brushed the floor. Wide red eyes, a narrow, pinched nose, and thin lips completed a face that was too feral to be human but still gorgeous.
There was something regal in her bearing, and yet so primal that I had to flinch back from her gaze. Cold sweat drenched my back.
“You don’t speak the tongue, human?” she asked and her voice was warm honey in my ear. She purred and my knees trembled.
It was hard not to stare at her fangs when she spoke. Those were not so pretty.
“I… err… Hi,” I managed to mumble out.
I could feel my heart all the way into the back of my throat. This must be how a field mouse feels when the owl swoops overhead.
Her eyes narrowed to red slits.
“Why was I awoken?” She leaned closer, gaze as impenetrable as a cat’s. “Do you serve She Who Hungers? Did your mistress send you to trouble me? Has she forgotten her oaths?”
My mouth answered before my brain had time to process her words. “Who?” I shook my head, trying to clear away the shock of finding someone intelligent in the dungeon. “I have no idea who that is.”
She smiled, but the grim rictus did not climb all the way up to her eyes. They remained narrowed and suspicious.
“You stink of her, little liar. This was not the agreement. I was to sleep, never to wake, never to feel again.”
A lump formed in my throat and I had to force it down. Her fingers straightened and her claws reached all the way to the stone floor. She was scratching at the gap between flagstones, the sound like that of whetstone on blade.
“Why do you lie to me, little one?”
“I’m not lying,” I blurted out. My cheeks flushed. “I really don’t know anyone by that title. I’m just here to… to…” Why was I there? It was hard to think when faced with someone that looked at you as if you were to be their next meal. “I’m just here to fix the dungeon.”
The look of suspicion was replaced by one of shock, then of fury. “She’s reduced my domain to a dungeon?!”
“I… don’t know?” I answered honestly. “I’ve no idea what’s going on, really. I’m just the guy trying to fix things.” Oh, how many times I’ve said those exact words. A universe away and I still relied on ol’ faithful there to get me out of trouble and to be left alone to do what I needed to. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are. My name’s Klaus. What’s yours?” It seemed the reasonable thing to ask.
It’s not a good idea to tell a giant woman that you don’t know who she is. Anger twisted her lips into a ferocious snarls. She drew herself up to her full height, head brushing the tall ceiling, hair aflame.
“You stink of her lies, little human. But she’s not here to protect you.”
I hid behind my shield best I could as she took the first step towards me.
“Do you dare claim ignorance of me? You dare claim ignorance of my name?”
The temperature in the room dropped by a few degrees that moment and it became painfully clear I’d made a huge mistake.
“Lady, I honestly have no idea who you are.” Again, my mouth took over before my better sense got to the controls. “I’m really sorry.”
‘Oh, now I remember. You’re that goddess of beauty.’ I could’ve said that, if I hadn’t stuck my foot in my mouth. ‘You’ve never been forgotten. I’m just terrible with names and would hate to spoil yours.’ Or that. Any-fucking-thing would’ve been better than the naked truth.
“My name is Melenith of the Silver Vale. First of the Andars, last of the Mordon Dynasty. Heir to the Black Throne. Mother to the Twelve Princes. She who wakes the Sun!” She snarled the words. “She left me be forgotten?!”
I was pretty sure I wouldn’t remember all that mouthful aside from the first part: Melenith. It was a pretty name. For a heartbeat, she seemed far less frightening now that I could tie a name to her. But only for a heartbeat.
“Kneel, mortal.”
Really? Of all things?
Normally, sure, I’d do that. Maybe it would’ve even disarmed the situation before things got well out of hand.
However…
“Yeah, no.” I tightened my grip on shield and sword. “Not doing that, Melenith. I need to get to that altar there and shut down whatever’s going on here. I’d appreciate it if you got out of my way so I can do my job. I’ve friends depending on this.”
‘Furious’ doesn’t begin to describe the thunderous look that crossed Melenith’s face. I swear I could see veins thicken and throb on her forehead. The room temperature dropped. And her hair freaking shone. Not glistened, but shone, like an ember ready to catch the flame.
She took a halting step forward, palms turned towards me, fingers curled into talons. Violence brewed in the air and built up like a storm. I took a step sideways, as if to circle her, in reality trying to get closer to the altar dais.
“Your death will be long and painful, little puppet. I will decorate the walls of this prison with your entrails and wear your skin as gloves.” Melenith showed me all those pretty black teeth of hers. A pink sinuous tongue flashed over them as she crouched.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I felt every muscle in my body tense for the fight. I wasn’t going to activate any skill until I knew exactly what she could do.
“I’d really rather no fight you,” I said, gripping the shield as tight as I could, ready for a blow. “I’m sorry if I offended you, but I’m new here.” I tried not to imagine in any detail what she’d just promised.
I spoke mostly to buy time as we circled wearily, the altar coming closer and closer. She moved with the grace of a tiger that knew it had its prey within reach, slithering past columns, eyes always on me. Her hair was now the colour of live flame and it drifted around her in a loose halo. While the room grew colder, her presence smouldered.
“When I arrived on Oresstria, Eternity said there aren’t any gods or masters here.” One step back, closer to the dais. “If you’ve a complaint, take it up with it.”
Melenith paused in her quiet stalking, eyes widening, then narrowing again into suspicious slits. “So you do serve She Who Hungers, little puppet. Your lies will not save you. Oresstria doesn’t exist. It was all a lie fed to my people.”
This got weird fast. “We are on Oresstria,” I countered, not daring to raise my head above the shield’s rim. “That’s what Eternity said. That’s what everyone I’ve met said.” I wasn’t sure that was true. I don’t think any of the iepurrans had mentioned the name of the world.
“Oresstria is a myth. She’s promised me I would finally rest on that world of myth, but I see nothing to confirm it.” She made a wet clicking noise with her teeth. “I do not rest, little puppet. I have been awakened. I have been betrayed and imprisoned. Your lies do not sway me.”
I tried to think through what she was saying, my pulse racing. It was all as nonsensical as finding a bloody giant sword in a closed off mine in a dungeon under an ant village. I couldn’t understand any of it. “You were a statue when I came in. What… changed that?”
Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups, but maybe I was on to something? Melenith hesitated for a moment. Torchlight reflected in her dark eyes and they seemed to flicker, taking in the room and its rows of benches.
“I exchanged oaths with She Who Hungers on the Plain of Narre, before the eyes of all my faithful. I gave her my world in exchange for safety and eternal rest.” A snarl followed the words, somehow twisting into a low growl of anguish. “Then I woke here, alone in this room, locked in a place from which I cannot even leave.”
“How long ago?” I asked, though that was stupid. How would she keep time? “How long since you woke up?”
“Less than a bell.”
It had been maybe thirty minutes since I’d killed the spiders. Maybe a bit more. Hard to keep track of things, but was reasonably certain it couldn’t have been an hour. So, maybe she’d been awoken when I got the key to the core?
Unless there was some other way out of the temple room, then she was completely stuck. Both doors were far too small for her stature. The only reason she’d be in the room was if she was meant to guard it.
But now she was talking, so I seized the moment, trying to learn more.
“You’re in a dungeon, on Oresstria. Swear on red. I only need to access the core and purge the corruption.” Another step back. This time she didn’t follow, just watched me from besides a column. “If you let me open the core, maybe we’ll both learn something. Please? We don’t have to fight. I’ve been fighting since I came in here.”
A thought occurred to me, remembering Eternity’s words. A dungeon could spawn a guardian. I’d assumed that meant some kind of construct, like the mechabear. But Melenith didn’t show any sign of anything mechanical on her. She was completely flesh and blood, and there wasn’t much of her left to the imagination.
“Maybe you’re supposed to be this place’s guardian? Maybe that’s why you were awoken?” I tried. “The dungeon is corrupted. I’m here to help.”
“I have been made into a seed.” Her voice slowed and became little more than a whisper as her eyes unfocused. The fiery strands of hair lost their glow and dropped over her shoulders. “I have been made into a seed, but have yet to bloom. The promise was indeed kept.”
She burst forward, steps far more certain than before. I damn near had a heart attack and almost activated both [BULWARK] and [ADRENALINE SURGE]. But she went by me, eyes on the bloody altar, my presence ignored. I gasped for air the moment she was past, feeling my heart on the cusp of bursting.
“Come and open my core, if that’s why you’re here,” she commanded. “I must know if my people are preserved.”
“What?” I hesitated for a moment, looking at her back. She crossed the room in a handful of strides, feet silent on the cobbles. If this was a ruse, I couldn’t fathom the shape of it. “What do you mean your core?”
She made an impatient noise and beckoned me forward. I tentatively obeyed this time, advancing towards her with my shield protecting my eyes.
“You use the word dungeon,” Melenith said, words tumbling out of her faster. “This is not such a thing. This place is my gestalt.”
“Eternity calls it a node. My interface says it’s a dungeon.” I moved to keep the altar between her and me. “I understand it’s a kind of mana pump.”
The look of incomprehension on her face suggested the analogy was lost on her. Still, we were speaking about the same thing, just from different corners of the map.
I tried a different tact, “What does a gestalt do?”
She sneered my way, impatient, claws tapping on the stone. Their sound was metallic and horribly sharp. “Open the core, puppet. Touch any inside, and I will kill you.”
“Just here to clear corruption,” I assured her and drew out the keycard from my pocket. At least the giant scary woman didn’t seem like she wanted to disembowel me anymore.
I slid the key into the slot carved in the altar and it puffed to golden glitter. Nothing happened for a moment. Then the whole dais shook with a sound like rolling boulders crashing against one another. The altar sunk into the floor. Both myself and Melenith jumped back from the sudden hole in the floor, watching the whole thing disappearing from sight down a black shaft. A set of rungs were dug into one side, a crude ladder headed down.
I’d missed my ride down, it seemed.
“Guess I’m taking the ladder,” I said.
Heading down into the underground, again, felt like the very last thing in the world I’d like to do, right next to eating Crystal’s cooking again. I still had a lot of questions for Melenith, but didn’t want to test her patience.
Blackness erupted out from the shaft, a geyser of inky-black something that shot almost as high as the ceiling.
Vines burst from the hole , black and armed with hooked thorns. They boiled out into the room, a shifting, squirming tide of promised violence.
I stumbled back from the sudden burst of plant life, lost my balance, and fell down the stairs.
Melenith screamed. I heard it as if through a dream as I fell on my shield, head spinning, stars dancing in my sight. I blinked them away and fought to get back up.
She was atop the stairs, clawing at a bundle of vines that had grabbed her right arm and right leg. Her hair was aflame again. She took a deep breath, then spat out a long stream of orange fire straight over her assailant. Strands caught flame and shuddered, burning to ashes as they squirmed.
The vines did not let her go. Her backwash of overheated air struck me like a hammer blow and made the air around me unbreathable.
She got dragged down to her knees by the thing attached to her. I tried to rush up, but was met by my own barrage of questing tendrils. Melenith screamed, the sound shrill and painful, as a cluster of the things stabbed into her lower back. Blood spurted to the floor and pooled on the smooth steps.
On my feet with sword in hand, I let out my own panic-driven battle cry, and took the stairs two at a time, swinging at those bits that made grabs for me. Where my blade touched them, they shattered like porcelain.
Before I reached the top of the dais to hack at the vines impaling Melenith, she turned lightning-quick and slashed with her free hand. At me! I just barely managed to get the shield up in time to block the blow.
It almost lifted me off my feet, enchantment and all. I slid back down several steps, [SURE STEP] keeping my feet under me.
And then I saw what the vines did to Melenith. Acid scorched the back of my teeth. The meat on her arm and leg was being ripped away, dragged off bone in thick, leather-like dripping strips of muscle and tendon.
Where the black coils wrapped around the flayed limbs, chrome shone in the torchlight. Melenith screamed, the sound like nothing a throat should ever produce, and was remade. Chrome claws shone on the end of a chrome arm, more blade than limb, as sharp and as shining as any freshly forged sword. Her leg was little more than a spring with actuators attached. It hissed as she moved.
Tears streaked down her cheeks. Her teeth were bared. For a heartbeat I entertained the hope that she’d move as heavily as the bear.
She came at me like a bullet. One moment she was atop the stairs, the next her sword descended right on my head.