Mercy has no place in the halls of power. Let them fear me, and they shall not dare to disobey.

  -Hairt the Merciless

  I gave Hairt, only what mercy he gave to others. None.

  -Narwatha the Pragmatic

  ==Exsan==

  Caden’s introspection had grown long, his thoughts so obvious they practically dripped across the floor.

  I’d kept a single shard of attention there, watching as my brother brooded before the captive storm.

  I could find that poetic, now. Could understand what poetic meant at all, and appreciate the feeling it evoked.

  A storm of emotion inside Caden, even as another storm, equally inside him, surged.

  I could understand a great deal more now, due to Caden.

  Zidaun had only touched lightly upon the nature of other dungeons, but they sounded much like me. How I had been, before Caden’s soul and my own had grown close enough to intermingle.

  Little more than automatons, they were… and I had been the same. A few emotions dominated: anger, fear, possessiveness, and a hunger great enough to consume the whole world.

  Yet they lacked the means to fill it.

  I still hungered, but it had changed, grown. Not in intensity, but rather in character.

  At its most primal, it was the thrill of the hunt, the kill.

  Of course, it wasn’t only primal now. Even before my latest transfiguration I had hungered for knowledge. I still did.

  Even though he had been human, had eaten every day…

  Caden didn’t understand me. Couldn’t perhaps.

  Even if an endless hunger can never be filled. Even if it always returns. That doesn’t mean it can be ignored. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be fed.

  And properly.

  To save the prey is to undo the hunt.

  I couldn’t abide that, not as the only option. It failed to satisfy.

  Dead prey waited in a room, almost as cold as ice, kept there for some purpose of Caden’s.

  No doubt for some new mercy.

  Such a waste, to have missed their deaths.

  Even Caden’s paradise could kill the foolish, even if he would return what he rightfully claimed.

  My possessiveness remained, but it too had been sharpened, its clawed honed into a razor point.

  It too, took its place in the hunt.

  What could be more powerful, than to take a life? To take everything they are. To, at the end, claim them utterly.

  I suspected, ultimately, that that was why I found it so distasteful to return their lives. To have the lives stolen from out of my hands.

  That was the other reason I needed a dungeon of my own.

  There, the lives that I took would be mine.

  They belong to me.

  Even needing to return them once… my mind clenched with rejection, yet I would honor my deal.

  My anger and fear were less all consuming, though not gone. They were there, certainly, and prone to flare up annoyingly at even the hint of a challenge, or unguided thoughts.

  That had been something of a revelation, and not a particularly pleasant one.

  With so much knowledge, with increased capacity, and with the change in perspective, thoughts had the ability to wander. They could burrow into the earth like rodents, unearthing new and dark territory, or even return to dwell in old burrows best left forgotten.

  I woke a few days ago, but I had mostly watched. Watched and learned to manage my thoughts.

  It was the sacrifice I had made, to move from a creature defined by instincts to one that could think. That could override instincts if necessary.

  Like Caden did, as he escaped. Though his mercy bade him go too far…

  Like always.

  It was an almost fond thought, to contemplate this quirk of my brother.

  My remembrance of the time before the dungeon was founded, when I was given a true intellect of my own, was hazy, at best.

  Time had little meaning to me, then. Free for but moments, building only the tiniest power, then abducted and kept constrained for who knows how long. All abilities suppressed, unable to maintain even an aura…

  Glimmers of rage were like smoldering embers, trying to light a proper fire. I smothered them ruthlessly.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  My mind belongs to me.

  Thinking back on that time, it was still enough to conjure emotion. Sadly, that was mostly due to another new and unwelcome visitor.

  Anxiety.

  Knowing the name of my tormentor was sadly useless in defending against it. It conjured thoughts of being in that situation again, of being captured again. Of being kept in the same situation, now with the added torture of my new awareness. Of never escaping, only the same suppression forever…

  Discipline worked as a bulwark against the thoughts, and would no doubt defend against the unwelcome assailants once more.

  And yet, I didn’t resent Caden for doing this to me.

  Far from it, truly.

  Part of that was the System, merging us together.

  My sense of self had been inextricably entwined with him.

  Yet, as my intellect had expanded, I had also gained the capacity to dislike elements of myself. To dislike things that I possessed. To desire change or even removal.

  I had risen above what I once was, and that was ultimately why I accepted Caden.

  Without him I would be just another dungeon. Even if I’d continued long enough to grow in mind and understanding, I still would have been another one of those lifeless husks.

  Even now I wanted to seek them out, to destroy them, grind their cores to dust. They were… perversions of what they ought to be. An utter waste of potential.

  And I could have been one. Stuck as a useless thing for an eternity.

  I practically growled, stalking across my domain, tearing the thoughts asunder once more.

  Well… our domain.

  I had started to shape corridors and rooms for myself, but… they were lacking. I could get the angles perfect, create perfect shapes. I could create views, or replicate art from memories of Earth, but that art wasn’t right. Even if it was perfect, it wasn’t meant to go here.

  I had tried having the system generate rooms automatically, but that had been worse than useless.

  Not even matching unto itself.

  Even with the System granted skill for art, which I shared with Caden, and my own portion of his knowledge… my creations were lacking.

  The monsters were beautiful, life and mana shaped into deadly weapons, but they were not my creations. And I could create natural environments, just like Caden. We had a skill that guided us in that, too.

  And yet… taken together, they were not elegant, even after the illusion had taken hold.

  I could see the beauty of what Caden had created, and yet I couldn’t create the same effect. I knew enough to appreciate his artistry, but not to replicate it.

  I stalked over his creations, again and again, looking for what I was missing.

  Except, I knew the answer already. There was no secret piece, no skills used that I lacked. Except, perhaps, skills in the standard sense.

  I didn’t know how to create art of my own.

  Recreating it was easy. Using some of the extra space I had made a copy of The Final Refuge from scratch, carefully copying the elements of his design, mimicking each element of the decaying fortress. And, in the end, when I was done that was all I had, a copy. I had reverted the stone and deliberately turned my attention away from it.

  I seethed, but it didn’t change the reality of my situation. I was going to need to ask Caden for help.

  I had known it even before he woke up. It was one of the reasons I had foolishly baited him about leaving my area to my own design.

  If he had simply allowed it…

  I would have needed to beg for help, going back on our deal.

  It was stupid, to even suggest doing it all on my own in the first place, a potentially embarrassing mistake brought on by the fear of embarrassment elsewhere.

  Just more thoughts that needed to be strangled. It was a shame that I couldn’t do the same to the source. Wrench and wring the neck of embarrassment. It seemed a particularly useless emotion.

  Honestly, that was half the reason I had hated having a physical form. I had almost lost control multiple times, letting my emotions shine through in ways I hadn’t wanted. That physical form had externalized my emotions, made them more present, just like everything else.

  I’ll leave the physical demonstrations to Caden.

  Though… while Caden had been gone, there had been some musicians.

  Music was strange. I would have said it served no purpose, before. With context from Earth I would have acknowledged that it had social value, via tying together cultures and creating stories that furthered the perpetuation of that culture. If I was entirely cynical, I would have called it merely a tool of seduction or societal control.

  And yet, I was not that base anymore.

  I had listened, and been unable to stop. A shard dedicated to listening and no more. I would call it wasted… but I couldn’t bear to call it a waste.

  My memory of that music, unfiltered and outside Caden’s experience, was entirely my own.

  And it had unlocked the power of music in Caden’s memory. I had lost myself for hours, a dozen shards remembering a dozen different melodies at a time. Taking the time to experience the memory of music, rather than just knowing it.

  And it had added context to what Caden had done, to the artistry of his creation. So, I couldn’t bear to call Caden’s displays of beauty a waste, either.

  Caden himself had made music. Had pieced together systems to recreate sounds and song. Bells hung in rooms, with automated systems to reproduce a bit of Earth. Melodies recreated in carved stone and carefully timed automated motions. I had listened here, too, to the songs that he had revived. It was more than memory, more powerful, for being present. Just like the performance I had listened to. The waves of sound carrying and vibrating through the dungeon, through me… they carried something more.

  At the end of the day, that was why I didn’t, couldn’t, resent him.

  I could have lived forever as a dungeon, and never lived.

  Sadly, however, the desire for more than base satiation also impacted my needs.

  I couldn’t just have a murder hotel, or a hole in the wall. I couldn’t just feed. No, it needed to be artful. My sense of… justice, of fair play, inherited from my baser dungeon instincts had become that. The need to make the deaths not only a proper struggle, but meaningful.

  I wanted the deaths to be a poetic struggle. The despair of hubris brought low. The willing sacrifice of friends or lovers to save another. The betrayal of the same. And the watching of the impact in the aftermath.

  Caden did this to me.

  Yet the thought didn’t truly sting.

  That was another discovery, though not a bad one. I could think thoughts that I didn’t actually believe.

  Deception was hardly new to me, even if my old conception was little more sophisticated than putting a monster underground or behind a false wall.

  Deception of the self as a concept would have been unimaginable.

  And yet, what else was living?

  Beauty was meaningless. Lines, shapes, colors, forms, notes, tones, and patterns. Images to represent something else, or sounds ringing for a but a moment pieced together, a language. And yet, none of that was beauty. Beauty was in the deception. In allowing yourself to see more than just the surface. To give into the illusion of meaning and the interplay of emotion.

  Beauty was a trap that was willingly entered.

  A more perfect overlay for a dungeon couldn’t be imagined.

  FREE GIFT CHAPTERS ACCESS