Saga of the Soul Dungeon

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.

-Loren Eiseley

==Exsan==

Exsan was lost in meditation. The thoughts had come sweeping in, faster and faster. He had found himself adrift between, and then below, icebergs of thought. He had sunk into the sea, drifting deep under the surface. He could feel the thoughts crystallizing over head. A new landscape forming a new perspective. Words, meanings, all of these wash over him. For now he was patient, simply waiting for it to end, drifting in gentle currents above where a gleaming sphere and cube orbited in the darkness. Soon he would wake, remade.

==Sevso==

Below, where the waves crashed against the shore in froths of spray and slush, the water was acting odd. A small section of water didn’t crash against the beach so much as pour. The waves mostly behaved as normal there, but they didn’t produce any froth, instead letting out large bubbles of captured air in gloopy exhalations. Where the water hit the beach it didn’t splash, instead spreading out like a ball of jelly had fallen and hit the floor. Except the water was just as fluid as before, and it would then retreat back down the beach as the mass all rejoined the water of the ocean.

Gnaeus peered over the edge, looking down at the beach.

“Oh,” he said, his eyebrows rising. “Good catch. There must be an elemental fountain under the waves somewhere. I’ll report it for you when we get to the next city. You’ll probably make more money from this than you would for reporting a dungeon. They are quite rare, and often hard to notice.”

Gnaeus looked intently down to the beach and then looked sideways at the cliff-sides.

“Not surprised nobody noticed it before now,” he said. “The only reason it is even noticeable now is because Freeze has gone on so long. Plus you need to be right here to see that little inlet.”

He quirked his eyebrow at me and gave a crooked smile.

“A bit of a lucky find, you might say,” he said.

My stomach lurched a little.

“You think my title made it happen?” I said, my voice shook just a tiny bit.

“It probably helped,” he said, “but try not to worry about it too much. It happened because you like looking at the ocean, so when there was something worth seeing you were more likely to see it. If you liked sitting and watching the snow on the hills, you might have seen something different. It isn’t making you do anything, or be anything, you don’t want to. It is just helping your efforts to be more productive.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll try not to worry about it.”

I swallowed, feeling a growing sense of thirst. I grabbed a canteen and took a drink. The thirst didn’t get any better. I looked down to the sea below, feeling my thirst intensify.

Oh…

“Looks like the dungeon really wants some of that special water down there,” I said. “Anyway to get some?”

Gnaeus hummed.

“I suppose,” he said. “I should have some anchors and some ropes. Always good things to have on hand.”

He pulled out a few hundred feet of rope, muttering to himself as he looked down at the cliff. He knotted up sections of the rope every few feet.

“You’re the one who wants it,” he said, “so you get to be the one who grabs it.”

“Here,” he said, as he pulled out a small glass jar from his storage. “You can grab me a sample in exchange for lending you the rope and anchors.”

“I,” I started to object, but changed my mind, “ah, okay sure.”

Not like objecting would help me at all. I did need the rope.

“Where are the anchors?” I said.

He pulled two small discs from his storage. He pulled up one end of the rope and pushed it against one of the discs. After he concentrated for a moment he took his hands away. The disc and a small section the rope remained frozen in the air, unmoving.

I stared at it, and Gnaeus chuckled.

“It’s a spacial anchor.” He said, and patted the storage pouch at his waist. “l learned how to make them even before I made this bag. I was able to make much smaller ones afterward though. Doesn’t effect the air, or living things. However, even if that cliff crumbles away this little section of rope isn’t going to move.”

He pulled out another section of rope from his bag.

“This,” he said, as he crooked a finger for me to come closer, “will make a harness that will attach to the other one. If you start moving too fast, like falling, it will make the harness stop. It will also stick you in midair, and I will need to come rescue you; don’t do that.”

He started to tie the rope around my body. He looped under and around both thighs, creating multiple loops for more surface area. From there he went up and around my chest, looping the rope upon itself in intricate knots.

“There, that should work,” he said. “Even if you do get stuck in the air for a while it shouldn’t cut off circulation to anything important. Done any rope-work before, boy?”

“Ah,” I said. “No, no I haven’t.”

“Something to teach you then,” he said, nodding. “It’s an essential skill for dungeon delving. Lots of uses for rope. Climbing, building a bridge, traps, bringing down monsters. Things like that.”

He winked at me.

“Also useful in the bedroom,” he said.

My mind blanked for a moment, before it started trying to provide images that I didn’t want to see.

“FAR too much information, old man!” I shouted.

Gnaeus laughed uproariously.

“Some, ha, some things you only get to do, ha, as an old man,” He wheezed out.

He wiped away the tears forming in his eyes, the same way I wished I could wipe away the images formed in my brain.

“Glad you find it so funny,” I muttered.

“I do,” he said brightly with a large smile. “I really do.”

He slapped the disc on the completed harness and it stuck in place.

“There you go,” he said, as he tossed the large knotted rope off the side of the cliff. “Well, get going.”

I didn’t bother to respond.

I strode over to the edge of the cliff and looked down. It looked much farther down now that I knew I was going to be climbing over the edge. I tried not to let myself think about it. I kept the rope in my hands as I sat down, and then slowly slipped over the edge.

I swung in the air, slowly letting myself down hand over hand. My feet caught on the knots and helped provide extra leverage. As I was descending I could see the shells embedded into the face of the cliff. Now that they were this close I could feel a familiar desire to grab some.

You have got to be kidding me.

I looked down. A section of the cliff stuck out a little bit below. I would try to grab a sample there.

A few more minutes of careful movement and I was in easy reach of the cliff. I wrapped one arm around a knot in the rope, letting it rest in my elbow. Then I leaned over and grabbed at some of the closed shells that were attached to the cliff. It took a minute of heaving this way and that before a rocky section broke off, complete with some shells.

I tried to store it, but it wouldn’t enter. Apparently the stupid animals were still alive in their shells. I didn’t scream in frustration. I just tucked the stone away and continued my descent.

When I got to the bottom the waves lapped along the shore, a few feet out in most places. There were more shells in the cliff here, though they looked like a different species. I had a desire to acquire them too.

I didn’t bother to grumble. I just grabbed the knife from my belt. Fortunately, I had eaten a number of shellfish already. Gnaeus had shown me how to shuck them. A few minutes later and I had shucked samples from both types. After that they died and went into storage without any issues.

I walked down the narrow aisle formed between the sea and the cliff. Occasionally I would grab a shell, washed up seaweed, and anything else that I felt like I should. Soon the water burbled strangely nearby. The noises were distinctly different than anywhere else.

I grabbed the small jar. I started to lower it under the water. The water bent around it instead of breaking the surface. I plunged it under the water and the water finally parted. The air in the jar escaped as a single large bubble, and I raised the jar back out of the water. Or I tried to.

A strand of the water was connected to the jar. It refused to let go until the jar was well out of the water, before the entire section of water dropped whole back into the ocean. I closed the jar and shook it. The water inside was strange. It moved just as freely as normal water, but it didn’t spread out. The bubble of air still trapped inside never broke into smaller bubbles. I put the jar away.

I was briefly tempted to put the jar into storage, but I suspected Gnaeus would just hand me another jar and send me down again.

I sighed and plunged my hands into the water.

The water felt strange. It wasn’t… wet. It molded up against my hands, but I didn’t feel it trying to soak into everything the way that I expected. I shrugged off the strange feeling, and pulled on the water.

The water swirled as streams of it flowed into my storage, forming a small whirlpool around my hands. My thirst slowly diminished. By the time I was done, I was fairly certain that I had more water in my storage than anything else. I hoped the dungeon had some way to separate all of this.

I moved back to the rope and slowly climbed upwards. This time I didn’t feel any sudden need to stop and collect samples. Tired, but triumphant, I finally reached the top and pulled myself over.

I wasn’t as tired as I had been immediately after arriving at camp, but it was close. I soon lay on the ground, panting lightly.

After I was done I handed off the jar to Gnaeus. He took off the harness and put it back into his storage. He had at least kept himself busy by setting up camp. An emblem glowed, with heat and light, at the center of camp in a fire-pit.

I sat by it, enjoying the warmth. Gnaeus was examining the jar, turning it this way and that.

“What is that exactly, anyway?” I said.

“Elemental water,” he said, sounding distracted. “Has a decent saturation.”

“Yeah,” I said, “obviously it’s water. What does the elemental part mean?”

He looked up at me, his focus moving from the jar in his hand.

“Ah, no. That is not…” he said, before pausing. “Well, yes, it is water. However, it is infused with elemental water.”

He must have seen my confusion.

“Things can be infused with different types of elemental energy,” he said. “Just because it is water doesn’t mean it cannot be infused with something else. It could have been infused with elemental fire, or earth, or any of the other elements. I was fairly sure it was water infused though, because of how it was acting.”

“What exactly is it doing to the water?” I said, “It behaves so strangely.”

“It vastly increased the surface tension,” he said. He continued after he saw my quizzical stare and my mouth start to open. “It… makes the water want to stick to other water more. Makes it harder to separate or break the surface.

“Different elements have different effects. Elemental light or darkness are easy, they glow or absorb light. Those are the easiest elemental fountains to find. If it had been earth the water would have been thick like mud. If there had been enough elemental earth it would have made the water as solid as stone, it naturally acts to strengthen things. You saw what the water did. Fire makes solid substances act like clay, or thicker liquids act more like water. There are various effects, and quite a few more elements. The really weird things happen when something is infused with multiple elements. That can produce effects that have nothing to do with what either would normally do.”

“Regardless, I’m hungry,” He said. “I saw you harvested a few shellfish down by the shore. Why don’t you go back down and grab a few handfuls for dinner.”

I made a rude gesture at him, and he just laughed.

I ended up going down to grab more for the evil bastard.