Dungeon 42

Inevitable Chaos

Chapter 114

Chris didn’t have much of a memory of when he was alive. At least not a particularly coherent one. Things would come and go in flashes of a variety of senses he didn’t exactly have anymore. Taste and smell, for instance, were gone. Touch was a little iffy, but basically still there and his sight was, if anything, improved. He’d have loved to be able to see perfectly in the dark when he was still properly fleshy.

Things like the taste of a stolen loaf of bread, the bite of a knife in his flesh, and other memories tended to be a little fuzzy for Chris. Despite that, he could have said with senseless clarity what his mother Lula and father Orry’s names were with absolute certainty. This despite never having known either, sold to a slaver before he could even recall who’d done the selling.

Felys Keig. The man who’d owned the brothel where his mother worked and died before he was a year old, had sold Chris. Like his parents' names, it was something he knew now in death he’d never known in life. Unlike his own name. That was a strange blank spot and it had always been there, even when he’d been summoned other times.

Normally Chris didn’t care much one way or the other about his weirdly clear knowledge of his past or dodgy memories. Every once in a while though, something about it would start boring into his bones, demanding his attention. Not wanting to dwell on the matter, he was heading for Aaron’s crypt-cum-lab. Not for a visit though, but rather because he’d noticed the other man in the library, which meant the normally well-guarded space would be his for the vandalizing.

“Christopher,” Henry said, in his particular Henry way. The one that sounded mild, even friendly, but portended a savage ass-beating if Chris didn’t abort whatever he was doing. How the ever-loving fuck the man managed to be shadow-silent, despite his class change was a mystery Chris dearly wanted the answer to. He did not enjoy anyone getting the drop on him, but especially not Henry.

“What?” Chris demanded. Playing innocent was something he’d given up on long before he died, so he didn’t bother with it in death.

“This isn’t the way to-to your crypt,” Henry said, leaning against the door of his own. They resided in separate halls and Chris’s was in the opposite direction.

“And?” Chris demanded. Henry didn’t reply, arms still lightly crossed over his chest. As if it didn’t matter if he needed to draw his sword anytime soon. Annoyingly, it probably wouldn’t matter from what Chris knew of his speed. Half the bloody time they fought he never saw anything but the blue energy trailing after the damned thing. Generally after it had already cut him in half. Assassins were not built for direct conflict.

“42 likes you, but you need to make a few friends in the ne-necropolis too, since you can't settle on a trade or art. She can’t drop everything she’s doing every time you need entertainment,” Henry said flatly.

“What? I’m not going to the palace! I’m gonna do Aaron a mischief!” Chris retorted, entirely offended.

“Which will have him throwing a t-tantrum and her punishing you,” Henry said easily.

“As if I’m the whore for her attention,” Chris spat. Predictably, the venom failed to find purchase. Distressingly few things ever seemed to actually get to Henry in a meaningful way. Far fewer than the barbs the man managed to lodge in Chris’s own mind. “Really, what even happened? Normally you're skulking around her at all hours. She finally get sick of you being a boring kiss-ass?”

Another failure Chris noted. Henry seemed amused if anything, which was the opposite of his intended effect. He’d thought it a sure bet, as Henry had obviously bollocksed up his courtship of 42 somehow.

“Too much a coward to defend yourself?” Chris asked, trying to bait the other man. Henry actually laughed at that. Temper getting the better of him, Chris reached for a dagger, but he was surprised to find that Henry’s hand was on the hilt of it, his eyes a bit brighter.

“Too old by half to flyte with a foul-mouthed child because he’s bored,” Henry said. Chris bristled at that, but the hand on his dagger reminded him of why he normally avoided Henry. It wasn’t fun to fight him, it was over too damned quickly and respawning was just a nuisance.

“Bastard,” Chris growled. A truly toothless insult between them, from what he understood about Henry.

“By circumstance of birth rather than manners, or lack thereof,” Henry said. He’d let go of Chris’s dagger, recrossing his arms as if they were having a friendly chat.

Looking Henry’s outfit over, Chris was displeased to note it was one of the plain working ones. One of his few ways of getting back at Henry for anything was fucking up his clothes, the fancier the better. He typically only wore the nice ones around 42, which added a layer of difficulty.

“Well, fuck off. I’m just getting my Graveman book back from Egide,” Chris lied. Egide Greenhand was a halfling who’d had the good sense to take the assassin class. Chris liked him well enough, but he was just the first person he could think of who lived in the direction he’d been headed. He never lent his books to anyone, though he didn’t mind 42 putting copies in the library for others. At least of the less interesting ones. Some, like his Alphabet of Poisons book and Good Night Moon, he liked having entirely to himself.

“C-Chris, I respect you taking the t-time to learn to read, but you might try moving on to more en-en-enlightening works,” Henry said, words having a hint of grumble to them. It took Chris a moment to place what could be the cause. He’d nearly forgotten how weird Henry could get about mentions of the Graveman. What a delightful thing for the man to so kindly remind him of.

“Right-oh,” Chris said. He flipped Henry “the bird” as 42 called holding the middle finger aloft. One of many charming things she’d taught him, only to curse herself for in regret afterwards. He had no idea what sort of world she was from really, but going by how educated she was he felt she had to have been a noble lady of some kind. A world where a noble lady could teach all the most foul-mouthed of dock workers he knew a swear or two and it was normal, was a world he’d like to see. It sounded fun.

By the time Chris managed to infiltrate Aaron’s lab, he was in such a good mood his heart wasn’t really in it anymore. The man was annoying, but he didn’t go out of his way to be rude to Chris or even show his skull too often. After rifling through anything that looked interesting but not making much of a mess, Chris found a blank bit of wall to draw a three foot cock on in chalk.

Looking at his own handy work Chris fussed with it a bit until he felt it conveyed the feeling he was going for. He followed that up by walking around and drawing other cocks all over Aaron’s work, though only in the blank spots.

Chris didn’t understand any of what was written. He did, however, know obsession when he looked at it. Playful defacement would get Aaron mad, actually spoiling his work might land him with a proper curse on him. A turn of events even he wasn’t interested in.

One thing stood out, however. A set of neatly chalked symbols unlike the other writing. Chris wasn’t sure, but thought they might be runes, the odd glyphs some people used to write with rather than more familiar letters. What made something a rune rather than a letter though, he had no idea.

Instead of studying them Chris turned away, already bored with his activity as his mind turned toward how to get back at Henry once more. On his way out though, something caught his eye.

Sitting on a side table was a crystal bottle that looked like it would fit in Chris’s palm. It sparkled a bit in the light of the magic stones lighting the room. Getting close enough to look at it properly, he found it was shaped like a kind of stylized wave. It was pretty, and the contents were a bright liquid in a kind of sparkling blue that cast a dappled light all around the bottle.

It was probably a potion of some kind, but Chris didn’t know anything about them. Curious, he picked the bottle up and tried to drink the contents. Normal liquids would just splash to the ground, but 42’s magic chaos stuff in a can was something he could actually drink and he enjoyed that. It stood to reason that he might be able to drink potions as well. Or some of them maybe, the elemental one she’d sent him hadn’t worked out.

Tipping the bottle back, Chris felt a slide of liquid similar to the feeling he’d experienced when he was alive. Whatever was in the bottle, he could drink it. Finishing it in one pull, he put it back on the table and waited a moment, wondering if anything would happen.

Normally when he drank chaos, Chris just got to enjoy the feeling and a brief return of a sense of taste. It was nice enough, but it would have been fun for something to happen. A small eternity passed and the bottle refilled itself but that was all. Odd, but not really of interest to him.

“This place sucks donkey dick, let's go somewhere fun,” a tiny blue lady made of water suggested. Chris looked at her, blinking slowly. She glowed a bit like the potion and was all of a foot tall.

“Yeah, fuck this,” Chris agreed and set off following the water woman.