Duelling Dungeons

“Well, well, well… I never thought they’d pull something like that off,” I muttered as I watched Sylvia die, taking the Sanctum’s secret weapon with them.

“Pull what off?” Bella asked frantically. “What did they do? I saw Luther and Sylvia get engulfed by the darkness, disappear for a minute, and then the darkness dissipated. What was in there?”

“An ancient Umbral dragon,” I replied. “I have no idea how the Sanctum convinced such a powerful and prideful creature to cooperate with them, but whenever someone exceeded the time limit, they summoned it to take care of them.”

“An ancient dragon?!?!” Bella exclaimed. “So that’s why they were able to overrun Indech and the rest of the Elder Woods so easily…” She stared at the wall display for several seconds before whipping back around and looking at me again. “Wait a minute! Why would they need a dragon to end a run? Couldn’t they just flood the dungeon in shadows and disconnect any adventure teams still inside when the time ran out?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head. “Maybe they thought disconnecting them would be too harsh, and they wanted to give them one last chance, no matter how minuscule that chance was. Or maybe this was a recent change to ensure that the mechanics worked during a duel. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to ask once the match is done.”

“Are you saying Luther and Sylvia managed to take down a dragon? Alone? What did you tell them to do?” Bella asked.

“That’s the thing, I didn’t tell them anything,” I said, turning back to the screen where Luther floated up to the end of the floor to claim it. Even though we had the display muted, I could tell the commentators were going crazy, trying to determine what had happened, how he’d ‘deactivated’ the Sanctum’s unique mechanic after it had already been activated. “I gave them some advice on how to take on Nor’Goth, but I figured that if we ran out of time, the Manor would suffer the same fate as the Elder Woods and get completely wiped out. Oh, I’m sure they’d do their best to put up a fight, but two bosses, two subbosses, and a handful of nearly depleted squads against a dragon obscured in magic? I didn’t think our chances were very good.”

“So, what happened?” Bella asked, cocking her head to the side. “How did Luther defeat it?”

“If I had to guess? He didn’t, Sylvia did,” I said. “She can use her blood magic to connect her life force with another person and either allow her innate healing factor to heal them both up, or fight them to the death and ensure the combat ends in a mutual knockout. Don’t get me wrong, both Luther and Sylvia are exceptional fighters, but against a dragon? They’d be hard-pressed to penetrate its scales, even with their enchanted equipment. They pulled off a victory; I just wish she didn’t have to sacrifice herself to achieve it.”

“Look who’s talking!” Kass exclaimed as she burst into the lounge where Bella and I had been sitting. She slithered over to the couch and looked me square in the eyes. “I go off to face Lyssa, at your suggestion, manage to pull off the win, and what’s the first thing I hear after leaving my projection room? You blew up the baths in order to drown Rogu and his team!”

“That’s not true,” I protested. “It was actually the gremlins who set off the explosives!”

“And I’m sure you didn’t come up with the idea, or encourage them in any way,” Kass replied.

“Uhhh… It may have been my idea,” I admitted. “I needed to buy enough time for you to defeat Lyssa. Voss was in no shape to fight, and I knew that once you came out victorious, Luther would resurrect Calliope and get everyone into fighting shape again. Exchanging my life for not only Rog, but his entire team seemed like a pretty good deal.”

“So you blew out my pool and flooded my entire floor?” Kass asked, with a raised eyebrow. “Do you have any idea how long it’ll take the Gremlins to fix everything?”

I frowned. “I thought that dungeon regenerated any damage it took after a match ended?”

“Minor damage, sure, but not major structural damage. In order for the projection system to work, there’s a series of crystal panels embedded in the walls and floors. If they’re damaged, that section becomes unusable until they’re replaced.”

“I didn’t know that…” I admitted, sinking back into the couch and trying to make myself as small as possible. “I guess that explains why no one else tried to weaponize the dungeon like that in any of the other matches.”

“Well, considering how competitive some of the dungeons are, I think it’s more likely that it just never occurred to anyone else before now,” Kass admitted, with a sigh. “The real question is, why didn’t you tell me what you were planning?”

“Because you would have tried to stop me,” I muttered.

“Of course I would have tried to stop you! It was a reckless maneuver. You didn’t even take a backup,” Kass said. “What would you have done if your trick hadn’t worked?”

“I would have run laps around your arena, forcing Rogu to chase me, while poking at him whenever I could. Out of all the floors in the entire dungeon, I think your arena is the best place for me to fight, besides my own. Forcing the enemy to jump between platforms in the middle of a deep pool? That’s something I can work with.”

“Then why didn’t you do the sensible thing and bring backup?” Kass asked.

“Because we didn’t have many forces left, and we were better off assigning them to other tasks, like defending Voss, or escorting either you or Luther,” I explained.

“Are you less important than either of us?” Kass asked, leaning back and crossing her arms.

“What? Of course not…” I replied. “I just…”

“Thought you could do it yourself?” Kass pushed. “Didn’t need help?” She sighed, “Talia, you’re a brilliant planner, but you need to learn to trust people a little bit more. Although it turned out well, blowing up part of my floor probably wasn’t the smartest solution. If you’d told us what you were up to, we may have been able to help you come up with an alternate solution. The baths have a ton of choke points that you could have taken advantage of. I could have swapped the Naiads off for another group, and left them with you…”

“That would have left you exposed to the miasma. Not an option,” I replied strongly.

“Really? We were two or three floors ahead at that point. Did you ever consider holding back and trying to force a stalemate?” Kass asked.

“If we did that, the dragon would have spawned and…” I paused.

“And we would have been in the same position,” Kass finished. “If Sylvia managed to pull off the same move, we would STILL have been ahead. As a matter of fact, we probably would have been in an even better position, because we wouldn’t have had to push through that buildup of miasma. Did you ever consider having us hold back

“I didn’t think we’d have a chance against the dragon,” I admitted. “So I thought pushing forward was the only option.”

“But Sylvia and Luther came up with a solution,” Kass said. “Which just goes to show that although you’re brilliant, you don’t think of everything. You should consult us more often.”

“You’re right,” I muttered.

“I’m glad you agree with me,” Kass said, leaning forward and ruffling my hair. “I’ll admit, your last stand sure was impressive. They keep replaying it on the playback channel. Although I do wish you’d been the one to set off the explosives, instead of letting the gremlins do it. We’re going to be hearing about their ‘heroic last stand’ for weeks, you know.”

“What are you talking about? The gremlins aren’t like that.” I said. “Sure, they wanted to be the ones to light the fuse; They were quite enthusiastic about it, actually, but they don’t care about the glory.”

Kass raised an Eyebrow. “Oh really?” she asked before slithering back to the door. She pulled it open, allowing us to hear what was going on outside.

There was a low murmur, and above it I could just make out Jenkins. “So there we were, facing off against a hundred enemies, and knowing that we didn’t have any chance, we did the only thing we could: make the ultimate sacrifice!”

Kass closed the door, cutting off Jenkins' embellished retelling mid-sentence and looking back at me.

“I’ll talk to them,” I said sheepishly. “I promise.”