Dungeons Just Want to Have Fun

The dungeon was locked up in the fort’s basement. They’d found it when they were looting the place and had left it alone, although Kelsey had taken the iron gates that locked it off once she realised they could be detached from their hinges.

Now they approached with Kelsey carrying Elara in her arms. Knowing he needed to practice with this sort of thing, Anton activated his Mana Sight and looked at the dungeon entrance in a way he’d never bothered to do for the dungeon he’d grown up with.

He could see the demarcation between the dungeon and the outside world. A thin eggshell of magic, it offered no resistance to Kelsey’s entrance, swirling around her like water and then reforming. The faintest touch of mana escaped as it did, dispersing behind her like smoke.

Anton followed Kelsey, creating his own puff of escaped mana. Once he was inside, he could see a faint residue of mana all around. It seemed to be disturbed by his presence, small distortions rippled away from him. What effect that had, he couldn’t say.

After some roughly carved steps down, the passageway extended on, sloping gently downwards. It looked like a natural cave, the walls rounded as if carved by water. The tunnel was, however, completely dry.

“Let's just go in until we see some monsters,” Kelsey said. “Then we’ll leave Elara and back off.”

“I still don’t like this,” Anton protested.

“If you’ve got another workable idea, I’m listening,” Kelsey said. “Just think of it as being part of the cycle of— oh, hello.”

“What?” Anton said, but Kelsey was looking at a patch of thin air.

“You must be the dungeon’s fairy,” she said. “Do you know Mel? Hey don’t—”

She grinned at Anton. “She handled that about as well as Mel did, when she found out that Suliel can see her.”

“Suliel can see Mel?” Anton asked, confused.

“Yeah, I think it’s due to the link we have,” Kelsey said. “Though why I can see this dungeon’s fairy… I was hoping that I’d feel some sort of connection that we could talk through, but no luck so far.”

“You can’t talk through the fairy?”

“I could, if she hadn’t taken off.” Kelsey shook her head. “Maybe she’ll get over it.”

“So you came down here not knowing whether you’d even be able to talk to the dungeon?”

“Worst case, I can just say stuff and she’ll hear me. It would be nice to have some feedback though.”

They only had to take a few more steps before Anton could hear the shuffling of monsters. Frowning at his lapse, he quickly drew Chainbreaker.

“Don’t charge them,” Kelsey warned. “It won’t be a problem if we kill a few, but that’s not what we’re here for.”

“I don’t want to drop my guard before we come up against unknown monsters,” Anton replied, his eyes intent on the corridor up ahead.

“Geez, they’re only going to be level two, Kelsey told him. “I have doubts they’ll be able to finish off Elara here.”

At that moment, the monsters came out of a side passage that branched up ahead. They were small, less than half Anton’s size. Their elongated faces were scaled, and they carried daggers, holding them as if they were swords.

“Ah. Kobolds,” Kelsey said disparagingly. “Well, it’s a choice.”

Ignoring the small humanoid lizards’ approach, she took a few more steps forward and then laid Elara on the ground. She was more gentle with the action than Anton had expected.

“Right, and one more parting gift,” she said. A crate appeared under her outstretched hand. “Let’s back off.”

Despite Kelsey’s doubts, the kobolds did not have any difficulty in driving their rusty knives into Elara’s unconscious body. It delayed them, though, long enough for the pair to back away, and then get out of the dungeon entirely. It took all of Anton’s willpower to not rush in and try and save her.

“We’ll need to give her a bit of time to process all that,” Kelsey said. “Particularly if she really is just a child in terms of development.”

“How long?” Anton asked curtly. Kelsey glanced at him but didn’t say anything about it.

“About a minute, if they’re on the ball. We’ll give them that long, just to see if they are.”

Anton nodded. The minute passed in awkward silence.

When they returned to the tunnel, the box and Elara were gone, with not even bloodstains remaining.

“Good, good. Nice hustle,” Kelsey said. “But we’re not done yet. Why don’t you boot that fairy up here, so we can talk?”

The dungeon sent kobolds instead. Just like before, they charged up the passageway, waving their knives furiously. This time though, Anton didn’t hold back.

Three swings, three severed heads, three small bodies slumped to the floor. Kobolds moved faster than zombies and probably didn’t need to be decapitated like zombies did, but that was how Anton had been trained.

“Don’t make me come down there,” Kelsey threatened the ceiling. “I’ll— ah, there we are. Mel says hi. Do you want to tell me your name?”

Kelsey was talking to the air again, so Anton settled down, trying not to listen too closely to the one-sided conversation. It took a long time for Kelsey to explain that she was a dungeon, and longer still to explain the change in this dungeon’s circumstances.

Then she got to the gift.

“Is that really a good idea?” Anton asked with alarm. “I thought you said explosives were dangerous!”

“That’s kinda the point,” Kelsey said. “I’m not sure if it will work, but it should prove a nice surprise for those core-stealing bastards.”

“But you said she was a child!” Anton’s knowledge of explosives was, at this point, entirely theoretical. But Kelsey’s warnings had been graphic and detailed.

“She’ll be fine, as long as she keeps them away from her core,” Kelsey said dismissively and went back to telling Jes how to trigger a detonator. From the sound of it, Kelsey wasn’t relying on the explosives she supplied, confident that the dungeon would be able to make its own using magic.

Another pack of kobolds arrived during the discussion, making for a welcome distraction for Anton.

Then Kelsey was waving the empty air goodbye, and they exited the dungeon, leaving Anton’s doubts behind them.

“How’s everything been going up here?” Kelsey asked Aris.

“Oh, fine,” Aris replied “I think we’re ready to go, but I’m not sure that everyone is going to be able to make the trip back in one day.”

“No worries,” Kelsey said. “I’ve been thinking about that, and working on the solution!”

She led them all out into the courtyard.

“Unfortunately, my Inventory space isn’t big enough to do this in one go,” she said. “So some assembly will be required.”

With those words, she made a strangely shaped metal box appear on the ground.

“You should be able to lift this, Anton, can you give it a go? Just from here,” she said. Anton shrugged and complied, lifting up the front of the box so she could attach some wheels to it. Then the back, so the entire contraption could rest on the oddly bulbous wheels.

“Now we attach the cabin…” Kelsey muttered as she went about her business. The work proceeded quickly, as every part and tool she needed appeared in her hand or at her feet. Soon, she had assembled two more strange carts, clearly intended to be towed behind the original device. They were narrower than the carts Anton was used to, with two rows of seats facing away from each other.

“These are a variant of the trolleys we’re using to cart stuff around Kirido,” Kelsey confided to Anton. “All aboard!” she called out to the group. “Next train to Rused, leaving now!”

With a bit more chivvying, everyone got aboard the vehicle. Aris had to ride on the trailers, while Anton got the dubious honour of riding in the front with Kelsey.

“But how does it go?” he asked. He’d already figured out that Kelsey wasn’t going to magic horses—undead or otherwise—out of the air to pull it.

“It’s a kind of magic,” Kelsey said. She pushed a button and a horn sounded out of nowhere. “Toot toot!” she called. Then she pushed a pedal with her foot, and the train started moving.

Anton already knew it wasn’t magic. He could see magic, and he couldn’t see this.

“How?” he asked again.

“I know, right?” Kelsey laughed as they picked up speed. “Magnets! How do they even work!” Soon they were moving as fast as a galloping horse, but so smoothly and silently that they could still talk easily. The Elitran road was better than the ones they had back home, but the strange wheels seemed to eat up every bump on the road, turning it into a gentle nudge.

Eventually, Kelsey’s delight in the fact of their own motion eased, and she thought to respond to Anton more seriously.

“Really,” she said, “It’s just like a water pump, or a lever. There are certain physical principles, which, if you know what they are, you can leverage to do stuff.”

“That makes no sense,” Anton complained.

“Well… you know about levers, right? When you jam your sword into a lock to open it. That uses a physical principle that allows you to apply more force than you otherwise would. In this case, to my poor locks.”

Anton rolled his eyes. “You use a dagger, not a sword,” he said, “But all right.”

“In this case, the principle is that if you have a magnet in a rotating electrical field, it provides a mechanical force that you can use to turn a wheel,” Kelsey said, as if that explained everything.

“I don’t know what any of those things are.”

“A wheel?” Kelsey asked raising her eyebrows.

“I know what a wheel is,” Anton said, “But an electikal field? A magnet?”

“Electrical,” Kelsey corrected. “Electricity is what lightning is made of, and magnets are what makes a compass work. But all you really need to know is that both of them are in there.” She pointed at the box in front of them. “Doing work for us.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Kelsey shrugged. “This sort of knowledge… it’s built on other knowledge, brick by brick. That’s why it would take too long to explain. All you need to know is: Pedal makes train go faster.”

She twitched her foot, adding a bit of speed.

“Button makes toot toot sound,” she said, sounding the horn again.

“And wheel changes the direction.” She didn’t demonstrate this one, but Anton had already figured out the connection.

“What if I wanted to spend the time to learn all this?” Anton asked.

“You could, but you’d have to take time away from adventuring,” Kelsey pointed out. “I don’t want to Obi-Wan Kenobi you, but we really do need you grinding levels as fast as you can.”

“Obi-Wan Kenobi?” Anton asked despite himself. Kelsey grinned, and then put on a distressed expression.

“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope!” she said, raising the pitch of her voice. Then she laughed at the expression on his face.

“That doesn’t explain anything!”

“Fine.” Kelsey rolled her eyes. “Obi-Wan was a guy, and he was the only hope for a particular princess, just like you are the only hope for Chiea. Does that spell it out for you?”

“So I’m like this Obi-Wan guy, is what you’re saying.”

“Yeah. But I didn’t want to put a bunch of pressure on you, is all. Breaking these slaves out, chasing after those merchants on the mainland… it's a big ask but we can take it one step at a time. One level at a time.”

Anton stared forward down the road.

“Did Obi-Wan ever have to kill some smugglers, just so they would keep quiet about what he was doing?”

“Oh sure,” Kelsey said. “He was killing criminals all the damn time.’