Duelling Dungeons

The rest of lunch passed in a blur. Part of it was that we didn’t discuss anything important; we just made small talk and talked about local news. The other part was that, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get my brain to shut down.

I wandered out of the cafeteria in a daze. Even though I wanted to work on something productive, I knew that if I sat down to do paperwork, I’d eventually end up giving in to temptation and jotting down a few notes about the prospective changes coming to the dungeon. Once that happened, I’d eventually expand my notes to include others, extrapolate on synergies, and before long, I’d end up with a complete blown dungeon defense plan.

I shook my head. That wasn’t going to happen; I was going to do my best to keep my promise to Kass. I just needed a distraction.

“Feel like getting some exercise, George?” I asked.

The big spider jumped, backing away from the wall relief that he’d been busy probing, trying to pry it off the wall. I never understood why he always defaulted to prying at the wall ornamentation when he was bored. It was a bad habit, and one that I’d been unable to get him to stop. Thankfully, the walls around here were reinforced with magic, making it impossible for him to damage anything.

Once he was certain that I wasn’t going to yell at him, George threw up his forelegs and started bouncing from side to side, purring the entire time.

“Yeah, I thought you’d like that,” I muttered. “Let’s head to the Ballroom.”

As the two of us crossed the Atrium, I caught sight of a couple of Anthophilans as they emerged from the Greenhouse projection wing. The bee girls were whispering to themselves and giggling. As soon as I saw them, my brain started extrapolating how strong their evolved form might be based on Bea, how their role might change, and who I could pair them with.

I pinched myself, using the jolt of pain to interrupt my own train of thought and refocus. Now wasn’t the time for planning.

There were eight sets of double doors along the far wall of the atrium, and I made a beeline for the one that had the etched brass plaque that read ‘Ballroom’. I held the door open just long enough for George to step through before I let the door fall closed behind me.

The two of us walked down the dark slate hallway, past several small rooms containing a number of lounging chairs and a couple of pens, each with a large crystal canopy. These little miracles of technology were what made the dungeon runs actually feasible. Instead of risking life and limb in a blood match, everyone used projection chairs to create a magical clone in the combat area for participants to control. It perfectly recreated everyone’s physique, equipment, and even allowed people to channel their magic through the clone. When your clone received the equivalent of mortal damage, it simply dissolved, and you’d wake up back in the projection chair.

There was a separate wing of projection equipment for each floor, customized for the staff who worked there. Here, we had chairs with an ethereal presence, so the spectral dancers working in the ballroom could rest comfortably, while in the bath wing, they had baths for the various aquatic races.

Since we didn’t have a match or practice scheduled for the day, all the chairs were empty, and the area was quiet. George and I strolled past them all, moving instead to the room at the far end of the hallway.

Beyond the glazed glass door was a modest office with two desks, two projection chairs, and a projection booth. Both desks were piled high with tablets. Mine contained all the research I’d done on the other dungeons, and plans I’d made for our matches, while Bella’s were all broadcast tablets so that she could watch multiple dungeon matches at once.

Honestly, Bella was the best subboss that I could have ever asked for. Although she didn’t like doing research, she had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of most dungeons and adventurers, due to a near-obsessive need to watch every match she could.

As my eyes passed over my own desk, they paused, ever so slightly, on the stack of tablets. My fingers twitched as I fought to reach out and start taking notes, but I managed to turn away. Notes later!

George scrabbled into his pen, which was little more than a recessed section of the floor with a blanket in it, stomped about to find a comfortable position, then immediately started whining at me.

“Alright, alright, I get it,” I muttered, walking over to him. “I’ll see you inside.”

I lowered the crystal canopy that had been hanging over his spot, and when it got low enough, it locked into position and began to glow. George immediately went still as his conscious mind was transmitted to the dungeon.

Once he was secured, I grabbed my glaive from the weapon rack at the back of the room and settled into my chair. Usually, I’d change into my combat outfit and put vambraces on my spider legs, but since this wasn’t an official practice, I wasn’t going to bother.

After lowering the canopy and locking it into place, there was a sudden flash, and suddenly I found myself somewhere else.

The ballroom was a colossal, cavernous room that simultaneously gave the impression of opulence and abandonment. The left wall was covered in massive arched windows that ran from floor to ceiling and were framed by red velvet drapes, while the right wall featured huge murals, surrounded by marble and ivory reliefs. Gold candelabras were dotted around the area, providing light at ground level, but obscuring the ceiling in gloom. All this was covered in a layer of dust and cobwebs.

I wish I could have taken credit for the set design, but this was how the Ballroom was set up when I first arrived several months ago. I didn’t see a point in making changes to the basic layout, so I only made minor tweaks to my boss's arena.

I strode across the space, heading towards the orchestral stage at the far end. The orchestra didn’t get involved in the fighting, but they still had an important part to play. They set the pace for both the staff and me once someone reached my area.

Most of the floor was covered by a massive marble inlay design featuring a lot of browns, greys, and gold, but right before the orchestral stage, this pattern changed to a simpler checkerboard pattern of alternating dark and light grey tiles. This was my boss's arena.

George was sprinting back and forth across the space, jumping occasionally and bringing his entire weight down on one of the three-foot-wide square tiles.

“You can’t open the trap doors that way, you know that,” I snorted, drawing his attention. “They only open when the arena is activated.”

My fuzzy friend bounced up and down on the tile a couple more times before finally turning toward me, raising his front legs, and hissing.

“A challenge, is it?” I laughed. “Have it your way.”

I skipped to the front of the stage and depressed the hidden switch, triggering the boss fight. The lights in the ballroom went out, and a handful of different colored spotlights illuminated the tiles. After a beat, a pre-recorded song started to play.

George immediately charged across the area, barreling towards me. Before he could make it all the way, the lights flashed, white lights turned yellow, yellow turned red, and tiles that were previously lit by red lights fell away. Undeterred, George hurled himself across the pit that had opened in the floor in front of him.

“Too impatient,” I declared in a sing-song voice as I pranced out of the spider’s path and tapped him lightly on the side with the haft of my weapon. “That’s one to me.”

The spider huffed and skittered off using the side of the stage to avoid the nearest pits and gain some distance. As he did, the lights changed, the open pits slammed closed, and white lights shone down on them while the others all rotated again.

“You can do better than that!” I called as he retreated.

Once he got a decent distance away, he twirled on the spot and started jumping from side to side. The big spider bounced from tile to tile, landing perfectly within the boundaries of each before leaping off again. When he landed on a red tile, but bounced off before it flipped open again, I raised an eyebrow. His timing was getting much better.

As he approached, I couldn’t help but notice that his attack pattern was similar to how Chelsea moved, bounding back and forth as she approached her prey. Charlotte’s form had to be much larger than her daughter’s, but I could imagine that she approached her prey in a similar…

I was thrown out of my musings and off my feet by George delivering a monstrous headbutt to my midsection. I bounced wildly, flailing with all my limbs as I tried to regain my feet, which I did, just as the pattern changed and the red tile below me fell away.

My stomach jumped all the way into my throat as I plummeted downwards for several long seconds, falling into the endless abyss under my stage. When the darkness closed in around me, there was a flash of light, and I woke up back in my chair in the office.

I blinked. I’d never been so distracted that I’d been defeated by my own mechanic before. As I reached up to reconnect to the dungeon, I had another thought, one that made me groan.

“George is going to be totally insufferable after this.”