The night is cool and tranquil. The darkness of the corridors is intermittently broken by the light of the lanterns hanging from the waists of the patrolling guards. The soldiers also keep watch over the outer courtyard, making their rounds atop the rustic wall that encompasses the castle. Temporary wooden platforms have been erected against the wall, allowing them to climb up and peer over. For now, the efforts of the laborers and architects are focused on finishing the repairs to the great outer wall.
Jimbo phases through the walls and steps out into the courtyard. He looks to his right and watches a pair of soldiers disappear around the curve of one of the castle towers. He has studied the guards' routine; he pinpointed a corner of the wall where they tend to pass every seven minutes—a timeframe he deemed more than sufficient for his experiment.
Upon getting too close to the corner, an invisible force pulls him back. The area of influence, like an aquamarine dome of energy, becomes visible to Jim, showing him that his movement limit is about thirty meters from the wall.
Wasting no time, he begins to summon.
Caveman (Miner) summoned.
Primitive Skeleton (Miner) summoned.
The two beings appear with an electric blue glow, similar to the color of the dungeon crystal. Jimbo worries the brightness might draw attention; he quickly scans the surroundings and confirms that the guards continue patrolling normally.
Jim turns his attention back to the minions. They are different from the base summons; they possess the miner specialization because they are based on the minions he trained to scavenge through the rock, which is why each appears holding a primitive pickaxe. The caveman slouches while scratching his waist; the skeleton stands upright and vigilant.
«You, walk over there and then come back,» Jim tells the human.
The caveman moves forward, dragging the pickaxe and tearing up chunks of grass with it. He crosses the boundary of the Dungeon, and Jimbo immediately perceives a strange sensation, because outside the limit, the caveman ceased to be his.
The primitive man frowns. He shifts his gaze between the wall and the castle, as if unable to decide which way to keep walking.
«Come back, let's go,» he orders.
The caveman yawns and scratches a buttock.
Jimbo repeats the order, but it seems the primitive man has stopped listening to him altogether.
Jimbo spawns a mango. With a small blue flash, the fruit pops out of thin air and bounces on the grass. This catches the caveman's attention, drawing him back inside the Dungeon, and then Jim, with his control regained, makes him disappear.
«I need to figure out how to solve this obedience problem,» he mutters before turning his attention to the skeleton and giving it the same order he gave the caveman.
The undead sets off, stepping out of the dungeon, and Jim once again feels detached from his creation, but that strangeness vanishes when the skeleton returns without a single sign of rebellion. It is almost like a robot.
«I feel like I'm missing something.»
Undead seem to be the most reliable summons, but from what he remembers of Kard10k, the perfect unit doesn't exist.
«Of course, this isn't a video game. I doubt there's some admin monitoring life and making sure everything stays balanced.»
Jimbo could order a group of skeletons to go mine on the outskirts and then return, knowing they would follow the command, but he has no idea what would happen if a person got in their way or tried to interact with them.
«For now, humans seem like the safest race to me. I just have to teach them to obey, even if they're outside my domain.»
Jim makes the skeleton disappear and considers the experiment concluded.
While this occurs, a pale figure distances itself from the citadel and slips out beyond the outer wall.
A grayish hue weathers her skin and straight hair, and a dark stain taints the back of her deerskin tunic. When she descends through the mine, the slaves mistake her for a ghost and, whispering prayers to their gods, back away from her, allowing her to delve deeper down the wooden bridges and ladders that slope ever further into the underground.
Down in the Underdark, the shadows are thicker than on the surface, yet the woman makes her way as if her gaze were immune to the blindness of the gloom. She is never disturbed, for the creatures that spot her instinctively sense that there is something sinister about her.
City-of-Thorns, the tower-city, rises vertically with its forty stories towering like mountains, its bulbous peak crowned by a hundred sharp, spear-like thorns. Four days of constant walking, without sleep or sustenance, it took the pale woman to arrive there. A few dark elf patrols discovered her and closed in for an ambush, but they drew back upon seeing the blackness contaminating her lips and the contour of her mouth, reminiscent of necrosis.
The sentinels guarding the colossal double doors of City-of-Thorns also saw those black lips, and they knew what manner of necromancy it was, as well as its origin. They granted her passage, and the undead roamed the streets unbothered until reaching the doors of Moonsong's palace-estate.
Moonsong reposes in a circular bathing pool, the curves of her bare breasts emerging above the warm water drawn from subterranean springs. She is not alone; two of her husbands accompany her to offer massages, idle chatter, or pleasure, depending upon what she demands.
A third husband interrupts the bath, and Moonsong assumes it must be a matter of grave import; otherwise, she would be forced to chastise him. The husband, a handsome and slender dark elf like many others, allows the undead priestess to enter and position herself in the center of the chamber.
Moonsong furrows her brow at the sight of her.
"My loathsome younger sister yet lives and sends us word. How well I fared, believing myself an only child."
Moonsong makes a dismissive gesture with her hand, bidding her third husband to proceed.
All are privy to the sorcery wielded by Shadowkiss. The magic of kisses penetrates deep into the heart, even that of the dead; it evokes passion and devours secrets, and in Moonsong's estimation, it is a craft meant for whores and harlots, hence her disdain for it. But Shadowkiss possessed naught of the musical talent she herself held; she was forced to forsake their mother's instruction and resign herself to the teachings of their sire, who was a purveyor of the pleasure houses.
The third husband draws a deep breath to stave off his instinctual revulsion, frames the corpse's visage between his hands, and kisses it. Five seconds later, the body of Lacrimosa's priestess collapses into the inert cadaver it was destined to be, and a gleam of newfound knowledge flickers within the husband's eyes.
The tidings: Shadowkiss is alive and well. She is gathering intelligence, prepared to sabotage the human kingdom from within should the need arise.
"She harbors a young human she might exploit," the husband continues to report. "His name is Harris."
The revelation causes a smirk to grace Moonsong's lips.
"Humanity is rife with traitors. Mayhap they are not so different from our own kind after all."
A week remains until the Feast of Saint Valentine. Within the citadel, an air of jubilation is already palpable. Floral wreaths are hung from the dwellings, and pink pennants are strung across the alleyways. On multiple thoroughfares, traveling theaters with hand and string puppets dramatize poems and legends, and though the tales may vary, ranging from the rescue of a princess to the breaking of a curse, the answer to them all is the same: Love is the key.
The spirit of the Saint Valentine's festivities has also infected the castle, where bleachers and pavilions have been erected for upcoming jousts and melees for the warriors, both afoot and on horseback. Betwixt soldiers and serving maids, plans for the days of revelry are avidly discussed. Everyone is thrilled, and to Jimbo—who had never known love up close outside of visual novels—it stopped being amusing as it was in days past and started to become downright irritating.
But he understood that his displeasure surely stemmed from jealousy.
«Maybe there are female dungeon cores out there.»
Note: Dungeon cores lack sex or gender.
Jimbo groans inwardly and returns to the underground.
The darkness and silence of his domain felt soothing, but he wouldn't stick around to relax. After multiple attempts, he had managed to create the ideal caveman miner specimen, and now he just needed to show it off. He sought out Hilda, finding her overseeing the construction of the lists for the jousts; the laborers were covering the courtyard grass with straw and sand, hammering in the wooden tilt to divide the battlefield.
"I am deeply occupied," the captain responds dryly.
«What I have to show you is really, really important! Seriously, you'll like it.»
Jimbo insists until Hilda sighs and yields. They return to the castle interior and descend to the dungeon's tropical garden, taking the shortcut, though it diverges into the corridor where the group of cavemen is waiting.
Dowmy is amongst the burly men, leaping and hovering, wielding a bone scepter topped with a skull and leather ribbons that, when shaken, rattles like a viper's tail. The cavemen pale and flee from the little imp as if she were a dreadful monster. One particularly large and muscular caveman throws himself to the ground and buries his face in the dirt.
Hilda arches a brow at the spectacle, uncertain whether to think Jimbo has lost his wits, or if he now wishes to keep a mummer's menagerie within his dungeon.
Jim asks Dowmy to stop. The imp halts, nods, and hides the scepter behind her back.
Jim hurries to give Hilda a demonstration. He commands the cavemen to begin mining, and they, with their strong arms, line up and start chipping away at the stone almost as if it were sand beneath their pickaxes, extracting chunks of ivory that they carefully pile up.
Hilda widens her single eye.
«Today's the last day the city-states gave to negotiate over the slaves, right? Well, I have a proposal for your king too.»