Saga of the Soul Dungeon

“No, I don’t understand the soul. I cannot begin to claim that. The soul is vast beyond description.

I can tell you about parts of the soul. I can tell you about what I have gleaned from searching, again and again, tiny pieces. About the tiny mastery I have claimed.

You can devote an entire life to understanding the soul, as I have, and it is a worthy pursuit. However, at the end of that life, while you will understand vastly more than you started with, you will still be a beginner with the soul.

Anyone who would tell you otherwise is a liar, ignorant, or worse, a fanatic.”

-Telethgra, Soul Sage

==Caden==

My tests had worn out my guests and they went off to their rooms to sleep. Hopefully they would sleep through the night without issue.

I had put off my meditation and had started to feel the strain. It was minor, but not something that I should allow to continue. And with my new enhancements to my soul skills it would be foolish to not explore.

I settled my mind, slowly settling deeper as I canceled out my perception of the world, focusing on the ever churning flow of water. I failed repeatedly. One of my guests would roll over or snort in their sleep and I would be jerked out of my descent. It reminded me of getting used to a new roommate.

Slowly I grew used to it and my meditation proceeded further, until finally the world was gone.

There, in front of me, was a binary star system. Two souls made of coruscating light tethered to each other, each inevitably bound to the other. And each slowly moved closer with glacial but implacable motion.

The same connections as last time strung out into the infinite void until they were lost to unknown destinations. These were joined by two new connections in the soul space, one each from Exsan and I. These went somewhere I recognized, for I could feel the touch of the Adar upon the bonds, though they still lost themselves into the surrounding nothingness.

The damage I had seen last time had faded even further; the scars were healing with surprising speed.

I wasn’t sure why I felt that the healing should be slower. Some innate understanding from my soul skills perhaps? Or maybe I just thought that something as powerful and intricate as the soul should take longer to heal. I wasn’t sure.

My sense of distance, like my sense of time, was skewed here.

Approaching my soul it felt as vast as the world, as vast as the star it resembled. And yet I felt it was tiny too. That it could condense to fit between atoms.

The surface of the soul was clearer this time. As I approached it, my soul became a vast infinite plain stretching in all directions. I could see something beneath it.

I approached the surface.

I am not sure what I expected to encounter at the surface. I thought that I might be able to rest upon its surface, or feel the nature of my soul. None of that happened. Instead I felt a sense of welcome and I slipped beneath it.

And suddenly there was more.

The infinite plain had transformed to an equally massive ceiling, though now I could faintly see that it curved back around to meet itself again far away.

The interior was a kaleidoscope of flashing images, sound, touch, smell, and all my senses together.

Worlds with giant cities made of gossamer strands and bridges of light. Vast trees that cradled worlds in their branches. A mind the size of entire worlds filled with lightning that flashed between neurons as large as comets. The music of ignorance fading to knowledge. An image of a person who was simultaneously in all parts of their life, the past and future overlaid in a ribbon of causality that looped back upon itself. The taste of a seed as it grew. A crystalline fractal grew, and shrunk, parts of the whole became the whole and then diminished, shifting, twisting, and reforming again.

For all the insanity, the chaotic mix that clanged against my every part, I understood what it meant. Not the whole, not even close to the whole, but I understood that this was a place of metaphor. This language was something truly universal. My soul was written in a language of meaning that transcended my previous understanding of language. I gained only the smallest fraction of understanding, but I knew I would forget almost all of that, because it was more than my mind was capable of holding.

Size, vastness, infinity, these concepts were repeatedly drawn to the forefront of my mind, but I knew that it was not what the language was truly saying. It was simply speaking in scales so far beyond my comprehension that I was overwhelmed. And my mind was already better at dealing with large scales than it had been when I was human. I could feel my capacity operating at maximum, but to the scales of this language, my increased capacity was less than a rounding error.

Gradually, a tiny part stood out to me. A tiny twig on a world tree, a single ray of light, a tiny fraction of a neuron, a single moment of life. It grew with my focus; it rose to meet me, or I descended, or both and neither.

I lost myself for a moment, and then I found myself again. I was on my knees.

Holy Shit! I had knees!

The space around me was white, or void, or not white but a shifting shimmering or all the colors and therefore, white, but not…

My head hurt trying to understand this place.

But how happy I was to have a head to hurt. And elbows and feet and hands, and eyes, and everything else, and… I was naked.

Right, well not sure what else I would expect.

In this place, whatever this place actually was, I was human. And apparently this place was far more stable that my meditation usually was. Actually my experience with the entire interior of my soul should have snapped me out of meditation from surprise alone.

A momentary desire to see myself passed through my head and then there was a mirror in front of me. It didn’t appear so much as feel like it was always there.

And yep, that was me. It was my old body.

Dark brown hair, dark blue eyes, and exactly 5’11”. It was, I was, my body was, damn... Weird to not really identify with this body actually being me. Regardless, my body had a slight gut, moderate amounts of dark hair, and various birth marks. Even a couple of scars from chicken pox, a burn, and a surgery were all there.

I was happy to see myself.

The mirror appeared when I wanted it, could I do other things here?

I imagined clothes and then I was wearing them.

I imagined a perfect burger. The thick and chewy bun, the spicy creamy sauce, the thick meat paddy that was a tiny bit rare. Crisp lettuce, sharp cheese, and salty sour pickles.

It appeared and I took a bite.

Damn it!

It was utterly and completely tasteless. My imagination produced more flavor than what I was tasting. It might as well have been made out of air. No… air actually produced a smell for me now when I absorbed it. It was more tasteless than air. I tried for a while longer but eventually gave up.

I tried some other things, seeing if I could use this place to actually achieve anything. Honestly, having a space where I could be my old self would help me no matter what. If I could use this place to get some real sleep it would be even better. I had hoped for more, but I was not going to complain about what I had got.

Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. I could imagine books I had read, but the covers were blurry. They were imperfect memories and that reflected in their appearance. The words inside… were not really there. Instead I would open one and receive an impression of what the book was about. They were essentially summaries that my mind used to represent what I remembered.

The mirror had similar flaws around the edges when I looked at it carefully, my clothes had a tendency to fuzz out details as well.

The only thing that was truly real here was my body. Well… as real as this space actually was. My body was covered in details that I didn’t really remember, but that felt right.

I sighed.

Well… hopefully I could get back here. Actually, my first concern, hopefully I could get out of here.

As that thought occurred to me a door appeared. It stood upright and completely ignored the fact that it was anchored into nothing.

I opened it but I only saw blackness within.

Well... here goes.

I stepped through.

My body fell to the floor next to my core. The stone and air were both cold against my bare skin.

==Exsan==

I had felt Caden retreat into the half-awareness of meditation, even as my thoughts grew.

In more than one way, in fact. An irony that I could only now appreciate.

I was focused on growth. It was one of my strongest desires, a motivation to delve deeper. To become wider, stronger, to become more.

My thoughts dwelt on this even as I grew the dungeon. The long tendril of aura stretched out into the far distance even as I matched it with an open corridor of stone. Soon my second entrance would be complete.

And my thoughts were also literally growing.

It was not something that I had understood, originally. Not something that I had desired. I had been confused at Caden’s desire for knowledge. And his insistence that I grow and change and learn.

I had listened though. I was always listening, even before I understood what that really meant.

Caden told me that we were connected, and shared what he had seen when he delved deep into the most fundamental part of ourselves. So I knew my mind was growing, and why.

Language was at the core of it. New thoughts had become possible as I learned the words to express them. The words were more than letters or sound, they were packages of concepts and meaning. By learning a word, and questioning it, exploring it, it led to more.

Some ideas were simple. I understood them before I knew the words. Eat, kill, grow, die. They were old ideas that had been a part of me from the beginning. New ideas came constantly creeping in. Familiar concepts, but more nuanced. Anger, vengeance, exchange, control.

And past that so many ideas that were completely new. I could plan now. Truly plan, and add that to the acts my instincts directed. I could see branching paths of possibilities, and even understand that I could not see all of them. I could plan for the fact that I would be ignorant.

I could not fully account for Caden. I knew this.

Even with the words, the concepts, I didn’t understand why they mattered to him. I didn’t understand mercy, but I did see how Caden planned around his own nature to make a compromise.

I had even begun to the see the value in this. Caden’s thoughts were different. He build elegant traps and places to hold and soothe the adventurer’s who had come.

And mana. Caden had figured that out somehow. An infinite supply that flowed forever. If it wasn’t for that, the adventurers would be providing slightly more of that too. Though now it didn’t matter either way. The cost to maintain a space for them was utterly unimportant.

However, what might come of this?

Was Caden right?

Would the dungeon become host to a swarm of adventurers? Thousands or more entering the dungeon and then leaving again. I didn’t know, but I was starting to see potential.

Regardless, I could count on some things.

Greed.

It was such a beautiful familiar idea. It was the lure of the bait that had always been my tool. However, now I understood it. How the shiny useless things became power and sustenance. How it became growth.

My entire existence was shaped around greed. That one idea meant that people would return over and over again. Gorging themselves on what they needed to grow.

And some of them would be stupid, and trade away life for greed, and then they would never leave.

And those who were smarter, but still could not resist the lure? Well, they could be harvested many times.

I… was growing smarter. I could feel it.

I could even understand that Caden considered me stupid. I agreed with him. Knowledge was how to understand the world, and for now I was ignorant. However, I grew smarter every day as the ideas flowed slowly into me, moment by moment.

My hunger had grown. I craved the same things I had always craved, but now I desired more. I wanted to know more. I wanted to see all the ways I could kill. How many creatures I could make. I wanted it all.

And a part of me still smoldered with vengeance. Tam, whoever he really was, had trapped us both. He wanted to study us. I understood his desire for understanding now, but I still resented it, that he had dared to trap me. I knew that I would almost certainly never have revenge, but I craved it anyway.

My ambitions as a dungeon had flourished as I knew what I could be greedy for.

Still, I was a dungeon, and with my slow infinite patience I expanded my reach out towards the people I knew were waiting for me. Soon, very soon, I would reach them.

A ripple spread through the dungeon’s aura from the core as I felt Caden’s consciousness snap back awake from its doze.

A rising curiosity directed my attention there.

What had Caden done now?

==Zidaun==

I snapped awake, the bed around me was warm. My body protested being awake as I stretched out my senses. I had felt something. Dreamlike the feeling slipped away from me. Perhaps it had been a dream after all.

I waited a few minutes, sleep slowly sinking back over my eyes, and I went back to sleep and dreamed.