Chapter 14
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Notes: There are several.
Listen, Bullfrog is a really cool bunch of people, and I'm sure they don't mind the extra advertising that I'm giving them in the writing of this fic. ::looks hopeful:: They own Dungeon Keeper and I, sadly, do not.
I'm a weird monkey who really likes the idea of two guys together in a relationship. It's my story, and I can put slash in it if I want to. So there. ::sticks out tongue:: Consider yourself warned and stuff.
If you haven't yet, read the first chapter now.
For a glossary of terms and concepts, as well as a map of this Realm, go to this address: http://dragonnest.freeservers.com/fics/dungeonviewshelp.html
Even though the game is not mine, the story (including many original concepts in it) is, and I would appreciate it if you did not use it without my permission. Ask and ye shall probably be allowed to archive.
As always, I'd like to thank my wonderful beta reader, Vagabond.
Pronunciation Key:
Kaelay: [KAY-lay]
Seiat: [SAY-aht]
Tarkasas: [Tar-KAH-sas]
Ramasha: [Ra-MAH-sha]
Mortagui: [Mor-tah-GUY]
Evain: [Eh-VAIN]
Jensor: [ZHEN-soar]
Seeleth: [SEE-leth]
I think that's all, so on with the fic!
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Kaelay
Kaelay.
Evain? What is he doing here? I'm rather busy at the moment. Must I deal with this now? Yes, what is it? I snap.
I have important news. There seems to have been a... He hesitates. Well... a signal of some sort broadcasted from the green dungeon.
I stop what I am doing and turn my attention to him. This could be very important.
What kind of signal?
It was... He sounds very unsure of himself. Apparently he notices this too, for he immediately gathers himself and starts over, more confidently this time. I am not entirely certain, as I do not have much experience with spells like these, but it seemed to be an open call to a specific audience. Mortagui sent it back through the North-west quadrant of this Realm. I don't believe he knows that I'm there, so he felt it was safe and away from you.
Fool should have used a Sight of Evil spell, I mutter. Go on. What is your assessment of the probable reason for this sending?
Well, as I've said, I lack the experience to judge it very accurately, and it went by too quickly for me to decode it. But it seemed to me that he may be calling for reinforcements. Possibly an ally of some sort.
An ally? It didn't seem to me that Mortagui was allied with another Darkness, and a Minor Keeper would most likely not bother in a war against a Darkness. Especially not to help a bumbling fool like Mortagui. That clown deserves to be crushed. He won't hold up under the law of survival.
Is there anything you would like me to do, Keeper Kaelay? Evain asks. The boy is smart enough not to comment on my ranting, but to stay focused. Good for him.
Not right now Evain. Stay with the original plan. There's not much we can do until we learn what sort of allies he has. To be safe though, assume that it is another Darkness. We need to close up the Realm Border here. That way we won't have to worry about reinforcements anyway. Anything that attacks can be dealt with as soon as it arrives, and before it has a chance to settle in here.
Thank you Kaelay. That is wise. I shall return to my task.
He departs, leaving me with a new set of doubts and worries. What in the Underrealm is Mortagui doing? There must be some way of finding out...
Ah! Ramasha. The Angel may have had his memory erased, but with luck, it won't have been all of it. Maybe he can tell me about this supposed ally that Mortagui has.
I will find him right away. I'd rather not have to deal with this crushing pressure of not knowing. Things seem to be getting steadily worse, and it would be nice to have one less thing bothering me.
Seiat
As I travel back through the dungeon proper, I don't find Tarkasas like I was hoping. I do however find someone else.
My trip to the Treasury takes me right through the Hatchery. There I am fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it) enough to run into the very cause of these problems.
The Angel. Ramasha.
Somehow I think that it would be a Bad Idea to confront him right now, but you know what? I'm going to do it anyway. It needs to be done.
"Ramasha?" I say in my best Talking-to-Bigger-Creatures Voice.
He turns to look for who could be calling his name, confused at first when he doesn't see anyone. When he finally looks down, his eyes widen a little. "You. You're that Imp that I met in Mortagui's dungeon."
I nod, prepared to say something, but he beats me to it.
"I suppose I should thank you," he says slightly grudgingly. "After all, it's because of you that I'm here."
So this mess is all my fault after all. Oh well. I guess that means that it's all the more my responsibility to fix it.
"Why did you run from there in the first place? Or did he kick you out?" I ask.
A look that I can barely describe passes across his face. It seems to be some combination of emotions so thick that I hesitate to wonder what could cause so many at once. Finally he says, "I don't feel like explaining myself to you just now, Imp."
Of course not. You traitorous worm. "Listen," I say harshly, "you need to stay away from Tarkasas. You're poisoning him! Every time he's with you he gets so depressed. Tarkasas was a good guy and you tainted him! You're trying to make him like you! How could you do that to someone like Tarkasas? He's a good person! A good person!" I find to my extreme embarrassment that I'm shouting. Lucky for me we're the only two creatures in the Hatchery.
To my surprise, Ramasha looks stricken. Could it be he was actually listening to what I was saying? Maybe I've underestimated him.
"Excuse me," he says quietly, not looking down at me. Without another word he takes off through a door and into the Temple. I don't follow him. I have work to do and besides, what more is there to say?
But I really should talk to Tarkasas. He's blinded by the Angel's beauty (even I have to admit that he's beautiful), and can't be trusted to make reasonable judgements. He needs to be warned. But later.
I heft my pickaxe and the bag of gold I'm carrying and head for the Treasury.
Tarkasas
I enter the Casino not quite knowing what to expect. This Dungeon surprises me at every turn. It's amazing how well-built it is. Evain has managed to fit a great deal in a small amount of space. It is impressive.
I decide to get myself involved in a card game. Troll poker, maybe. It seems to be the best way to integrate myself into the crowd here.
Sure enough, a Troll sitting next to me looks at me curiously and speaks. "Hey stranger," she says, "I haven't seen you around here before. You new?"
I shake my head. "Only to this Dungeon. I come from Kaelay's, across the way." I gesture vaguely in the direction of my own Dungeon.
Her eyes widen for a moment, and she smiles brightly. "'S 'at so? Well Handsome, luck must be with you. You've just met the best guide in all of Evain's Dungeons. I know everyone. Name's Seeleth." She sticks out her hand to me and I shake it. She has a very firm grip.
"Tarkasas," I say. "Charmed."
She looks around, apparently dissatisfied with our surroundings. "Come on," she says, "let's get out of here." I have no choice but to follow her. After all, I'm not going to alienate the first potential friend I've met in this Dungeon.
As we walk, I notice something else amazing. "Evain has Maidens?" I ask incredulously. Not that Maidens themselves are odd. We have a few in our Dungeon. It's just incredibly rare to see a Keeper with them when he is so new to the realm.
Seeleth nods. "Of course. They're good fighters. Evain always makes it a point to try and get some."
'Plus a great intimidation factor', I think, but don't voice it. Seeleth is as good as her word and leads me on through the dungeon, introducing me to many of the creatures as we go past. It seems to me that she not only knows everyone here, but also knows something about everyone here.
"-she's the biggest flirt, a real man-killer. Not always literally. And that fly over there, you see him? No, the other one. The one with the uneven wingspan. Yeah him. He's the leader of the head scouting group. And that Warlock over there. The laziest creature in all the Underrealm. Quite a drinker too. Over there is Tellian, he's the second-highest level Vampire in the dungeon. He'd be higher, except that he had to resurrect himself twice in that nasty fight with a giant. Who, incidentally, is now in our Dungeon, but he's not in this Realm. That Skeleton near the door is Crisan. He's my friend Ella's -she's a Bile Demon- latest ex. The girl on his arm is-"
Needless to say, I'm not really paying much attention to what she's saying. Although I have spent the last five minutes or so marvelling at the fact that she seems not to need to breathe at all. I am contemplating the likelihood of there being a Tentacle somewhere in her ancestry when a piece of her monologue catches my attention.
"-more than he's letting on, quite honestly. Still, we don't get messages in the Dungeon that often, so maybe it's possible that he couldn't trace it. Although I don't see why not, as there was a Fuchsia signal a while back that was going White and if anything would be hard to trace that would. But that was around the time when Keethast was the Head Librarian and you know that no one researches like a Dragon, so of course the spells were in high availability. Boy, I remember old Keethast. An Imp-scorcher that one. Shame what happened to him, really. I mean, I suppose that it could have happened to anyone, but it would have been nice if some bit of his body had remained intact so that we could at least bury-"
"I'm sorry," I interrupt, "what was that about a message?"
Seemingly thrilled that I'm finally taking an interest in what she's saying, my guide immediately goes back to the requested subject. "Oh yeah. There was a message through here a few days ago. That green fellow to the North sent it. My friend Kristan -she's a Dark Elf, you know- was on duty when it passed over and she told me all about it. She recorded its spell signature like she was supposed to, 'cause that's standard procedure as you probably know, and sent it along to Evain. Now Evain tried to trace it... I assume you know what a trace is?"
I nod. A trace is a spell that Keepers use to find out who sent a message, as well as who will receive it. It can also tell what the message says if it's not encoded.
"Well anyway, he ran a trace and all he came up with was that it came from the green dungeon. Now I think it's strange that he didn't know where it was going because he's done this before when it was an open message to anyone White! And you know how hard the White signal is to detect, so it makes no sense that he wouldn't be able to tell for anything else, or even White again. No sense at all. So anyway, I think he's holding back. I think he actually knows what it is, but he's not telling anyone. He's weird like that. Most of the time he doesn't even tell his own creatures what he's doing unless he thinks it's important that we know. But oh well. He's a good Keeper, you know?"
I make some sort of non-committal answer. I don't like what I've just been told. Evain is holding back information... I wonder if Kaelay even knows about the message? I'll have to tell her. Evain betraying us would be a bigger problem than even Mortagui. Evain is a great Keeper, and no mistake.
I shake my head, resolving to learn more. Looking around, I see that we have come to the Lair. It is late, and many creatures (those who don't choose to be nocturnal, that is) are getting ready to sleep. Even as I watch, a Spider scuttles into the room and heads towards his cave. Reaching it, he slinks inside, his body disappearing in the blackness until only his glowing red eyes remain, pulsing slowly in rhythm with his heart.
At first it doesn't register in my mind that we've stopped moving. When it finally does, I look over to Seeleth to see why, only to find her looking up at me.
"Wha-" I start to say, only to find myself being pressed up against the wall and kissed mercilessly.
She's shorter than I am, so she has to stand on her tiptoes, and yet I still can't push her away. Not for lack of trying. Trolls tend to be a lot stronger than they look, for all that they are cowards in battle. I notice out of the corner of my eye that her arm muscles are quite huge from all the manufacturing she's done. Unfortunately for me.
So I'm forced to wait until she pulls back before trying to reason with her.
"H-hey! Stop that!" I splutter. This is quite undignified.
She cackles. "What's wrong handsome? You know you can't get warts from kissing a Troll. That's just an old myth."
For the first time I notice how many warts she has. And how many teeth she's missing. And how very little I like the green shade of Troll skin.
"N-no," I manage. "It's just that... I have someone back at my own Dungeon who I'm very attached to, so I'd rather you didn't... um... do things like that."
She cackles again and winks before getting in a last hefty grope. She pulls back. "Ah well, it was worth a try. Come on, let me show you the Combat Pit."
I follow her, pleased that she's being reasonable. We spend the rest of the evening touring the dungeon, and in the end I know a lot more about Evain and his Dungeon (and his campaigns, and his creatures, and his hobbies, and his astral projection, and his favorite reading material, and many others things which do not bear mentioning) than I did before. All in all the day was a great success. But I think it's time that I return home. I need to make my report and I am eager to see Ramasha again.
Ramasha
Could what that Imp said be true? Is it possible that I'm tainting Tarkasas' goodness?
Of course, goodness is all a relative term down here, but Tarkasas has it. Not the weak sort of goodness that the White Folk have, but a strength of character. A pure heart. How could I ever think that I might be able to touch that?
Maybe the Imp was right. Maybe I should stay away from him. I don't want to. I'm in love with him, I know I am. But... could I ever forgive myself if I spoiled Tarkasas with the blackness that is all that exists inside of me? After all, I am dirty. I have been touched, used, and no amount of bathing in the Temple waters could cleanse me. Do I have any right to be with Tarkasas when this is all that I have to offer him? He deserves better than me.
Maybe coming here was a mistake. Maybe I should have stayed with Mortagui. At least then this darkness would have been contained. Something that he inflicted on me and I kept from the others. And what now that I've left him? Have I forced this duty upon some other wretched pitiful creature? Is there someone else trying to hold back the darkness now?
I hope for their sake that they do a better job than I.
I kneel at the Temple waters, offering a quick prayer to the Gods. Communion with them always makes me feel a bit better. "Gods?" I ask them, "what would you have me do? Is this a trial you put before me? Can you not give me a sign if I am to follow my heart or my mind? Must this be the punishment that I receive for deserting my Keeper?"
The Gods remain silent, as they usually do. Someone else however, does not.
Ramasha.
Kaelay. Her mind voice envelops me, making me feel safe, protected, wanted, loved. Are you loyal? it seems to ask. Yes. Yes my Mistress, always loyal.
"Y-yes Kaelay?" I hurry to reply. Was she listening to me?
I know you are having memory problems- her voice holds an equal amount of both pity and suspicion. No my Queen! Please, I am telling you the truth! -but if you would try to remember, I need to know if Mortagui had any old allies that he might call on.
"No," I answer immediately.
Quite quick to reply there. What makes you so sure?
"With all due respect Lady," I say as humbly as I know how, "Mortagui has never been one to campaign much, and those times he did were never successful. There were numerous alliances with other Keepers, but they were all broken, usually very quickly. He is not... what one would call popular, my Lady."
She seems to take this in and mull it over. That fits with what I know of him. But still. You are sure that there's no one that he might be contacting for backup?
There is a slight twinge of pain behind my temples, but I ignore it. "Yes my Lady," I say, "I am quite sure."
Oh God, that was hideous. Take me back.
or
Oh God, that was hideous. Let me complain to the author.