“There were some troubles in my retirement. I meant to retire a few hundred years ago, but the emperor at the time—that buffoon Solaris—refused to allow it. Said I was too ‘paramount to the empire’ and thus was not allowed to stop working. I just wanted out of the military, so I proposed a boyish dream of mine. I became an explorer of sorts for a time. After the our expedition, Solaris pulled the job offering and shoved me back into the military. Solaris’ death and Zeph’s ascension is the best thing that could ever have happened to the empire. And you can quote me on that."
—Archmage of the Mind Thalor, A Comment To His Apprentice Garrik, 9089th Year of the Age of Immortality, Thirtythird Day of Greenspire
Standing before the dungeon entrance, Sage, Zeph, and Elli stared hopefully at the wispy cracks in reality. To the side, the Monolith stood proud, a towering beacon left over from a civilization long gone. What it did, what it was used for, what happened to the people who built it—all were questions that plagued even the most curious historians from 45,000 years ago.
As much as Zeph and Sage would love to solve the mystery, a long lost friend was waiting.
Sage hovered forward, the wisps of the dungeon licking his metaphysical glowing mana skin as they drifted from the cracks in reality. The cracks alluded to a hidden place, and the wisps danced around their fractures and fissures before fading away. They felt like nothing, they were simply off gassing mana rebounded from the dungeon’s ambient pull.
This was all simple stuff, taught by the greatest dungeoneers the Vale College of Magedom had to offer and long absorbed by Sage and Zeph.
And it was all wrong.
Off gassing mana? Ambient pull? The idea that dungeons were mindless mana creations.
All of it. All of it was wrong.
Sage was a mana construct not too dissimilar to a dungeon. The truth should’ve been obvious in retrospect.
Pushing his body out slightly, Sage connected the mana that he was made of to the mana that made up the dungeon entrance. It was the technique he called “scanning,” and was his bread and butter tool for studying the material world as an immaterial creation. But while this technique usually relied on a trove of information to parse through, dungeons were always a blind spot.
Previously, he thought it was the sheer amount of mana needed to create a dungeon interfering with his own, in contrast, limited mana. Evidently he was wrong. No, Sage’s scanning failed because he lacked the theory and, for lack of a better term, “algorithm” to parse a dungeon’s information.
45,000 years ago, technology was different. It was mundane, it was magical. It was runic inscriptions tied to simple machines. Mechanical gears without so much as an ounce of understanding. There were no physicists, no engineers. Sure, some studied math and science, but most dealt in magical means.
There was no reason to study the material world when magic could alter the material world in unimaginable ways. Why care about gravity when a spell could simply remove or reverse it?
Algorithms. Computers. Coding. It was a new world to Sage, and boy was it everything he dreamed of. These last few days working with Cole to reverse engineer Magemeds’ imprint and profile scanner was eye opening. There was a vast sea of information out there, information he had no access to without a proper scanning algorithm.
He floated closer to the dungeon entrance. And now that he had a proper algorithm, it was time to evolve himself. Not physically or emotionally, but by way of sheer unrestrained ingenuity and passion!
A quiet cackle escaped him. It soon turned into a booming storm. With this algorithm, he was all powerful! An information gathering fiend with the data processing speed to match! With this dungeon, he would take his earned title of—
“Sage you good?”
Sage spun and found Elli and Zeph staring at him with their eyebrows up. He gave a loose, embarrassing chuckle. “Uh, yeah. Lost in my head a little. Sorry.”
“Uh huh,” Zeph said. “You weren’t relishing in your own preserved glory again, were you?”
Sage turned an impish pink. “No…”
Zeph rolled his eyes. “Can you save it for after you save the day, and we have Noct back?”
“Fine! But you better buy me a cake or something.”
“You can’t even eat—” Zeph cut himself off. It didn’t matter. “Fine. I’ll buy you a cake or something.”
“Oh goodie!” Sage turned back to the dungeon. “Let’s get this show started!”
His mana interfaced with the dungeon’s and information poured in. The algorithm parsed it all and soon created a data set. Categories, filters, room for improvement, Sage saw and understood everything, idly streaming the data into a souped-up laptop attached to a satellite phone.
The computer and satphone were both custom jobs, retrofitted with parts procured by Butler Edgar at the behest of Cole. She, an AI with, frankly, unknown limitations, deemed the computer and phone the best option they had, given the time constraints, commercial sales, and the remoteness of the jungle.
“Is it working?” Elli asked, drawing closer to the laptop.
The screen showed diagnostic data, pure green text that bound and pitted against one another for the integrated development environment’s dominance. Tabs flickered, code overwrote itself, files opened and closed at the speed of a gnat’s wings. Cole and Sage worked in tandem to absorb everything the dungeon gave, and Magemeds’ reworked algorithm took care of the rest.
The laptop screen snapped off, then back on. The code and green text was gone, replaced with ASCII video. Text, numbers, and special characters worked together, moving like a low framerate animation. A picture formed, a sand dune made entirely of yellows “S”s. The camera flew overhead, drawing Ss across the screen. Occasionally a blip of brown “M” would appear and disappear, monsters—their exact location within the dungeon.
They were mapping it.
“That just won’t do,” Sage said to Cole. “We need pixel rendering, not ASCII.”
Cole’s response came from the satphone, her voice robotic and mostly monotone, “Redirecting a subroutine. ETA fourteen seconds.”
The laptop sputtered and squealed, aftermarket fans kicking into high voltage. They whined, their ball bearings overloaded. The ASCII video hitched and morphed, turning to animated low-quality drawings before hitching again and turning high definition.
“Wow!” Elli said.
Zeph inched closer, watching a video of inside the dungeon. Sand dunes for as far the eye could see, monsters occasionally dotting the landscape. An oasis over there, a cactus over here. The video skipped ahead, directly to the ravine that led into the earth. Zeph recognized it instantly, along with the traps and monsters that always seemed to be waiting for them.
It was a perfect recreation of what was inside the dungeon.
“You’ve outdone yourself this time, Sage,” Zeph said. “And you, Cole. Thanks for keeping Sage inline.”
Sage made a choking sound. “Me, inline? How dare you!”
Cole’s voice came over the speaker. “I had to talk him down from trying to interface with the monster and take over its body.”
“C-can you do that?” Elli asked, eyes wide.
“Dunno,” Sage mumbled, “but I wasn’t even allowed to try!”
“For the best,” Zeph said.
“That’s what I thought,” Cole added.
Almost as one, everyone turned their attention back to the laptop screen. The picture flickered and a monster turned into a corpse.
Elli frowned.
The perspective continued down the cave, deeper and deeper. More monster corpses were strewn about, long dead. A small campsite was left abandoned, cold soup and jerky collecting dust.
“That was our camp,” Elli said. “Is this—”
“This is the only other ‘active’ instance,” Sage said. “The one your mom is in.” The mapping continued, and that was when they found her.
Noct.
She was older than Sage or Zeph remembered. Graying hair tightly pulled behind her ears. She stood with her weight on her right leg as her left always bothered her, no matter how much healing magic she received. She wore tired clothing; a modernish variety made from thick leather paddings and metal rivets. Combat wear, the best the time period had to offer.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
She stood at a stone podium, moving sliding scales around like it was a control panel. She suddenly frowned and increased her working pace. Her frown turned dark, and she turned to yell at someone behind her. The video was silent.
“’Run. Out of the dungeon,’” Elli said, following her mother’s lips. Noct panicked, and Elli said her words without the fear. “I’ll hold it here. You wait for your father. He’ll know what to do.’”
Noct was screaming and panicked. Magic came to her call and a glow encased her and—the video flipped and Noct was suddenly calm, standing idly, and working on the scales. It was the time paradox, a localized loop. She was the cause of the loop, that much was obvious. A last ditch effort to save herself from whatever was coming.
They watched a few more times before Elli said, “I don’t remember what ‘it’ was.”
“I doubt you ever learned,” Zeph whispered tenderly. “Noct knew you were mind-altered, remember? She didn’t share details with you on purpose.”
She limply nodded.
“She’s alive,” Zeph continued, “and now we have confirmation.”
“I know… It’s just…” Tears welled and fell, dotting the jungle floor like meteors on the moon.
He pulled her into a hug. “I know.” It was barely a whisper. “I know.”
***
“Found it,” Sage said. “And, uh, you’re not going to like where it is.”
Sage and Cole had worked nonstop, parsing the data and building the map. All in all, it took a few hours to find the core. The video on the laptop pushed in, highlighting a golden orb about the size of a boulder. Made entirely of crystallized mana, the core shimmered in the sun and danced in the sand.
It was also in a nest of bones.
A bird’s nest.
“Of course it’s there,” Zeph muttered. He gritted his teeth and thought. Birds, even a dungeon recreation, were likely above him. Had he killed dungeon birds before? Yes, with a small army of archmages standing behind him. With limited imprints and only Elli and Sage? No, he didn’t think so.
“Are we going to fight it?” Elli asked. “As much as I want to see Mom again, I’d like to do it alive.”
“What kind of bird is it?”
Sage changed the view on the laptop, showing off the sleeping monster. It was more worm than bird, a mile long, and with a dozen thick chitin wings sprouted from its plated armor-like scales. It was curled, situated directly around the dungeon core like it was an electric heater in winter. Darkness radiated off its wide body, leeching into the sand and toying with the bones that made up its bed.
Sage changed the view again, and a small deer, made entirely of bone and only bone, paced up and down the nest’s edge. It was on watch, protecting the nest while its master slept.
“Necromantic deathbird, great,” Elli mumbled.
“That’s no ordinary deathbird,” Zeph said, voice barely a whisper. “That’s Xheratuial the Deathbird, Sky Harbor her name.”
Sage moved closer to the screen. “We saw her fight something once, before we were emperors. They evacuated the nearest six cities in case she decided she liked the bloodlust and wanted to continue.”
“The sky was black with her magic for a week.”
Elli frowned and took another look at the monitor. “That’s not Xheratuial.”
“Sky Harbor her name,” Zeph whispered for himself and Sage. Some superstitions never died.
“Its not the real Xheratuial, Sky Harbor her name, but a dungeon version of her,” Sage said.
“No—I mean, Xheratuial was one of the first to die from the Void. We all saw her corpse, every immortal I knew journeyed to see it with their own eyes. We couldn’t believe it back then.” Elli pointed at the screen. “That bird does not look like Xheratuial the Deathbird.”
“Sky Harbor her name,” Sage muttered.
“What do you mean?” Zeph asked. “That’s most definitely a copy of her. Sure, her wings and body aren’t the correct length, but the worm-like body and symmetry? It’s her.”
This version of Xheratuial looked like it had done battle against another bird and survived. She was war torn, ripped and shredded, regrown and healed. She was half the length of the real Xheratuial, like her lower half had been sundered at her midriff and forgotten about.
Elli shook her head. “The Xheratuial I saw the corpse of was—”
“Sky harbor—”
“Can you stop that!?” she snapped. “Tradition is one thing, but the birds are gone! You can’t draw their ire, if there’s no one to disrespect.”
Sage said, “The wind carries all to the birds.”
“The birds are all dead.”
“Touché.”
Elli sighed and restarted her point. “The corpse of the Xheratuial I saw was more feathered and smaller. Don’t get me wrong, she was still huge, but not long. Not worm-like.”
“No, no, no, that can’t be right. Not unless the Void glued on feathers and chopped her body to smaller pieces,” Sage said.
Zeph crossed his arm. Something funky was going on. He peered at his daughter’s forehead—something funky was going on in her mind. “Keep describing the corpse you saw.”
Elli shifted uneasily. “Not a happy memory. A lot of friends took that trip with me.”
“Please, Ellisandra,” he said softly.
She weakly nodded and said, “The corpse was killed in the middle of nowhere. A single coin-sized hole through its brain killed her. She was giant, not long. Red and brown feathered and painted with bone ash. Through her beak she had three runic inscribed bone piercings, and dozens of bound effigies tied into her feathers… Why are you looking at me like that?”
Zeph instantly stopped staring and put away his frown. “Because we recognize the description.”
“Indeed, we do,” Sage said, projecting a picture from his own memory. It was the bird Elli just described, a hulking figure against a blue sky. It was closer to a griffin than a worm, and with the resilience of a shaman mystic rather than a necromantic skeletal ward.
“That’s her!” Elli said.
“Sejistria of the Ash Talon.” Zeph forced himself to not say the superstition. “Not Xheratuial the Deathbird.”
“No…” Elli’s voice tinged on haunted. “That’s not right. That can’t… You two are messing with me, right?”
“We’re not. This is another memory issue. Calm yourself and think back slowly.”
She dropped to her butt and subconsciously pulled her prayer beads from her mage robes, finding comfort in pushing the beads between her fingers. On her shoulder, Dusty the moth chittered in her ear, and the rest of the flock scurried around her skin, massaging her nicely. She didn’t force trying to remember and allowed it to come back naturally.
“Oh,” was all she said.
“Why would someone want to hide Sejistria’s death behind a mass-mind altering event?” Zeph quietly asked.
“They didn’t,” Sage said. “Someone wanted to keep Xheratuial’s life a secret. Elli keeps saying all the birds are dead, and until now we had no reason to think otherwise.” He moved closer to the screen. “I think we just found otherwise.”
From the satphone, Cole spoke up for the first time in a while, “While I find the details of this conversation interesting, I must press the reminder that everything on the screen is of the dungeon. Not in the dungeon.”
Sage hissed. “That’s right… Wait! No, that’s not true! We found Noct easily enough, and she’s not of the dungeon but rather in it.” He changed the viewed instance of the dungeon, finding a fresh one. “See? That’s not the same bird!”
And it wasn’t. Sage was right. Solo dungeons were instanced, meaning that unless everyone entered at the same time, they would never find each other inside. They were, for all intents and purposes, in separate—but the same—dungeons.
Noct was in one instance.
Elli, Zeph, and Sage were in another whenever they entered.
And Xheratuial was in one of her own.
The dungeon bird they felt the presence of whenever they entered the dungeon was a hulking vulture the size of a whale. It grazed on rotted monsters and buried itself up to its head in the sand.
“That complicates things,” Zeph said. “Even if we kill the dungeon bird and drain the dungeon of mana with the core, Noct and Xheratuial will be released at the same time.”
“We’ll die almost instantly, in other words,” Sage grimly said.
Elli slowly opened and closed her mouth. She had something to say but, well, it was ridiculous. It had to be said, however. “Actually, we may not.”
“Explain?”
“Once the Void was recognized as a threat, the immortals started a coalition. Most immortals were involved, the not insane ones I mean.”
Zeph saw where this was going and didn’t like it. “Birds aren’t insane.”
It was true. Some birds claimed their territory and ruled it like an emperor; others left the locals alone for annual sacrifices and gifts. One was even known to help weak wayward youngsters, providing them with unnatural magical relics from its own personal treasure trove. Some of those youngsters grew up to conquer nation-states with their relics.
Most other birds killed everything above a certain level of intelligence.
“I don’t know if Xheratuial was ever part of the coalition, but I know she was sympathetic to the cause. We may be able to negotiate with her.” Elli looked at her father. “She’ll want to speak to the ‘Great Emperor Zeph and Sage Valeborne.’”
They stared at her.
“Right?” she asked meekly. “Please say ‘right.’”
Sage floated closer. “How sure are you that she was sympathetic to the cause? Because five minutes ago you didn’t remember she was not dead.”
Elli swallowed, then stiffened her spine and swallowed her unease. “Completely sure. The coalition had everyone involved. Friends, enemies. I remember people talking about Xheratuial like she was a simple soldier against the Void.”
“Then why did someone hide her from your memory?” Zeph asked. “The likely scenario is that Xheratuial did it herself and/or is working with the Void.”
Elli stood and brushed herself off. She took a moment to herself: checking on Dusty and the other moths and pacing around.
She eventually turned to her father and Sage and said with complete confidence, “It wasn’t Xheratuial that mind-altered me. She was an enemy to the Void and a friend to the coalition.”
Zeph stared into her eyes for a long, long moment. One was pretty and the other was a gross goat iris. But at this moment, they were both hardened and serious. No time for beauty on the battlefield, no time for grossness when Noct was at stake.
“Okay,” he said. “I trust you.”
Elli nodded gravely, releasing a tight breath of air. “Thank you.”
Sage floated between them. “As much as I like this moment of father-daughter time, I just thought about something else. We destroy the dungeon, and what happens? Noct and Xheratuial are released, right? Parley with a bird and hope we don’t die?”
“Correct?” Zeph asked.
Darkly, Sage then asked, “Then what happens to whatever Noct has locked in a time paradox with her? Because whatever it is, I can’t find any data from the dungeon scan.”
The laptop screen changed back to Noct’s short time loop, pausing on the moment she cast the time spell. Golden light consumed her, shrouding whatever she was fearful of.
“Oh, right. That might be an issue,” Elli said.