Saga of the Soul Dungeon

“One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting the forces that made it.”

—Mark Twain

==Caden==

As the waves of knowledge washed over me, I found myself in the depths. Above me was my normal consciousness, while my soul glittered with ethereal beauty below.

The surface was unreachable for the moment.

Vast concepts rose from the depths like breaching icebergs, even as grammar and words howled in gales across the surface, leaving frozen trails of knowledge that clung to the blocky concepts in lines of hoarfrost. Webs of knowledge hung in glittering curtains as they connected the concepts with words and context, forming the vast interconnected network that made up a language.

Two languages, actually. Each forming connections to different concepts in their own unique patterns.

When I focused, I could see my knowledge of English, a vast web strung between innumerable concepts and memories. Faint wisps of other languages, German, Japanese, Spanish, Latin, and more left ghostly trails of connection. And between them all, the two new ones grew like vines.

I focused on what I could see for a time, but I found no success in altering or even better understanding the process.

With the surface unreachable, there were no issues with holding my concentration. I couldn’t leave the soul space, even when I tried. I suspected that without my soul meditation skill, I would be completely insensate. For now, this was where I would be.

I didn’t mind. This space was as timeless as it had always been.

I could feel a vague sense of Exsan’s presence. Like me, he was beneath the surface. He had been beneath the surface for a while now. His absorption of English and my own knowledge proving more than sufficient to push him under while he learned.

Yet, even with my conscious mind buried, I could still think clearly here. I even knew why.

When my body had died, my soul had continued to function without issue. And that was what I really was.

Even with an almost physical representation of my soul down below, I was my soul. It was confusing to think of entering my soul, which was actually me, but at this level things didn’t seem to need to make sense. I knew I wasn’t able to comprehend the true reality of my soul, anyway. Everything here was made of symbols and abstractions.

Certainly what I had seen in my soul before was more metaphor than reality. Or perhaps something that was more real than reality; something that needed to dumb itself down to fit in the tiny box of the worldview and understanding that I normally inhabited.

Unlike so much I had seen in the system, my soul actually felt sufficiently complicated to function as everything that it was supposed to be: A place to hold all my memories, to store my previous forms, to generate mana, and probably far more.

I felt like I didn’t understand anything about what my soul really was.

Had anyone on Earth been able to meditate deep enough to see it? My experiences with meditation made me wonder if the monks of various religions had been onto something.

I was a bit worried about why the old man had died, and what was would happen while I submerged here. However, there were nothing I could do about it except worry, and that would be no use to anyone.

For now, I just let it go.

With nothing else to occupy me, I slowly drifted down toward my soul.

My soul and Exsan’s grew larger, their shifting and glittering surfaces as beautiful as ever.

They were properly joining now. The mechanical precision of Exsan’s soul embracing the open edges of my own. A fusion of the organic and the machine. A cybernetic soul.

I drifted far enough down to touch the edge of my soul and, moments later, I had slipped within.

==Zidaun==

The light of the sun glittered in rainbow shafts between the leaves of a giant tree.

The door opened into a large open space. Around the perimeter stone rose in pillars capped with arching supports. Above, stone rose up in a continuous curving hollow cylinder encompassing the entire space, before it gave way to a dome of crystal. A wall of stone was between each pair of columns, and each wall contained a boss monster carved in low relief.

Some of the boss monsters were recognizable, the silver fish monster they had just defeated, a moss groomer, and others. Others we hadn’t encountered at all, presumably from the other paths.

The space was a flat meadow of short green grass. In the middle, a giant tree perched its roots over a small stone building. The building was almost completely hidden, overcome by the roots. Only a door, immediately in front of them, was clearly visible.

The tree continued upwards, and its trunk pierced through the dome, the crystal flush against its trunk. The arching boughs spread out far enough that the entire dome was a mix of sun and shade. The beams of sunlight that passed between the leaves hit the glittering crystal of the dome, which was faceted like an enormous gem. Waves of rainbow reflections glittered across the dome with the slightest movement, matching the prismatic beams of light that swept across the stone and ground with the fluttering of the leaves.

Below the dome, small groups of crystal hung at varying heights, suspended on thin lines. A faint breeze blew through the dome, making the crystals shiver and chime against one another in gentle notes, even as they cast off whirling beams of light when they intercepted the rays from above.

For a moment, I simply stood and absorbed the sight and sounds. Knowing the dungeon’s appreciation for beauty, quiet worship bloomed in my heart. The others seemed to be transfixed in a similar manner, struck by the interplay of light and shadow and sound.

No beast came out; nothing charged them. By now I expected there might never be. Not when the dungeon offered something like this. It would ruin the artistry of the presentation to cut it short with combat before the observers were ready.

I didn’t doubt that there would be something to fight as soon as we entered, however.

Into that moment of stillness, the dungeon offered the last piece of art.

A large bird stepped around from behind the tree, though to call it merely a bird does it a disservice. In the rainbow light it was hard to tell where creature began and the light ended.

It had no wings or neck, instead being almost a ball four feet across with feet that lifted it two feet off the ground and a long sinuous tail. Light shattered against it in fractured beams, flashing iridescent as its feathers caught the light. Each feather gleamed like crystal and came in arrays of vivid color. Feathers burned with combinations of fiery reds and oranges, while others faded into the shadows in dusky purple and midnight blues until they caught the light like clouds in a fading sunset.

Its long tail hosted feathers of increasing length until, finally, the end of the tail held a narrow plume of rainbow feathers. The tail feathers were each two feet long and gleamed with wickedly sharp edges.

Its beak and legs glimmered like aged and burnished bronze. The talons on its feet were crystalline, catching the light as it slowly stepped forward. The one eye I could see was the black of polished onyx. A spot of perfect dark amidst the riotous display.

It had become clear that the arena and this beast had been made for each other. Whether Caden had designed the monster for the arena, or the arena for the monster, I couldn’t say, but each echoed the grandeur of the other. I had expected the boss to only show when we stepped in, but it had come gently to emphasize and embody the art with its presence.

The beast continued to walk slowly around the arena, seemingly content to ignore us until we entered. I was loathe to disrupt the scene, so I didn’t, that fell to Inda instead. She nudged me gently.

I turned to look at her with a gentle smile, and smiled back. Either she had nudged the others too, or they had noticed our interaction, because Gurek and Firi each smiled as our eyes met, each of us enjoying the moment, even if it was starting to fade.

Firi reached out and squeezed my hand.

I cleared my throat gently.

“Right, we have a job to do.”

It would be a shame to kill something so beautiful, but I was sure it would do its best to kill us once we entered. It would fulfill its purpose and then the dungeon would spawn another one.

I took a brief moment to identify it.

Mirage Dancer

Monstrous

Level 17

“Level 17,” I said.

The moment was gone, so I stepped to the side, allowing Gurek to enter first.

As soon as we entered the room the mirage dancer turned to face us, with the focused intensity of an apex predator. Mana began to swirl around it.

“Mana!” I shouted.

The form of the boss monster blurred. Its rainbow feathers blended even more into the shifting light. In moments the boss shifted out of focus, turning into a shifting haze of light. It was unclear exactly where it was now, its position now a glittering rainbow of possibilities. I wouldn’t be able to tell its exact position until in entered range of my senses.

With a monster like this, it was best to remain defensive, and let it come to you, unless we wanted to blanket the area it was in with massive attacks. We could certainly kill it, but we actually needed to learn what it could do.

“Defensive formation, diamond,” I said. “Going to do a blind fight for testing. Keep things to about level 15.”

We shifted like the trained adventurers that we were. I went to the left side behind Gurek while Inda was at my right. Firi stayed behind the two of us. Firi’s magic settled over us, a faintly glimmering barrier of light flush against our skin. I withdrew my mana sense, losing a sense of the world around me.

The rainbow mirage came forward us, streaks of light swirled in a shifting mosaic of colors and impressions. Images of feathers, eyes, beaks, and talons, appeared and disappeared at random within the cloud of light.

Gurek readied his swords before him, his own barrier of defensive energy primed and ready.

The blur abruptly jolted forward faster, faint impressions in the grass were all we had to work with. Gurek kept one sword diagonal in a defensive position while the other lashed out.

Crystalline chimes sounded as his sword hit and glanced off the side of the monster, getting no more than a glancing blow. A whistling chime sounded out and Gurek grunted as another chime rang out as his sword was pushed back for a moment, his boots digging into the grass below.

For a brief moment, the mirage dancer came back into perfect focus. Its tail was pressed up against Gurek’s sword, the bird whirling in mid air, using the force of its twirling body to whip its razor sharp tail around. The mirage dancer began to fade again as it pushed out with its tail, straitening out to regain distance.

Into that moment, Inda’s dagger lashed out, striking against the ball of its body. The dagger only penetrated a few inches with a sound of cracking and crashing crystal clinking. The bird made its first sound, letting out a pure high note, like a tone of perfect crystal, loud and resonant. The boss finished disappearing and the dagger flew out of its whirling cloud, not firming embedded enough to stay in its rapidly moving body.

I had sent up a spear of stone, but the bird had sidestepped it with contemptuous ease. Since we were defending, I sent up additional spikes, surrounding us with a haphazard forest of sharp stone edges.

The blurring images returned toward us, now marred with fragmented images of blood.

It moved between the spikes without issue, gracefully leaving them undisturbed as it attacked again. Its bladed tail snapped into focus again as Gurek interposed his sword as best he could. The razor edge slipped slightly past to cut against the barrier of light, leaving a faint gleaming scar in its perfection. Prepared for the strike, Gurek’s other sword stabbed out as he lunged forward, pushing his defensive sword to the side to deflect absorbing the bosses moment. Briefly stalled in midair, the boss took the sword into its body, the sword piercing a half a foot into the flesh.

Inda and I both took the time to add injuries of our own. The nearest stone spike shifted at the base whipping the hard stone into back section of the bird. Two daggers, thrown with greater force than the last one each penetrated into the body, each going in up to the hilt.

The boss cried out again, even higher than last time. Its voice was so high and pure that some of the crystals hanging in the air resonated with the sound for a moment, drawing it out into a lingering note even as the monstrous bird faded out of view once again, reforming into an even bloodier mirage now showing hints of the dagger’s hilts among everything else.

The boss’s tactics didn’t vary, and it came springing out of the mirage, again and again. Even knowing how it would attack, small glimmering scars built up on Gurek’s barrier.

However, in exchange, sword strikes, daggers, and gleaming stone struck against the boss in an ongoing cascade of crashing crystal, leaving its feathers cracked and its body littered with wounds seeping red with blood.

By the end, the mirage was a whirlpool of blood red mixed with hints of other colors.

It came it to attack again, the mirage now wobbling erratically, and this time its attack was weak, revealing the boss as it heaved for breathe, no longer bothering to cry out when it received wounds. Gurek pierced its eye with his sword, the boss no longer swift enough to deflect with its beak or feathers.

The boss shuddered for a moment before it collapsed, a last gasp of air wheezing out.

We slowly relaxed as the boss dissolved away.

“How bad is the damage, Gurek?” I asked.

“Firi’s barrier got the worst of it, but I will have a few wounds in a second as I let them go through.” he replied.

Firi came up from behind me, touching Gurek as his hands began to glow with light.

“Okay, go ahead,” Firi said.

Lines of red appeared and began beading with blood, mostly on Gurek’s arms, though a couple stray slashed had reached the side of his face. A couple strands of hair were suddenly cut and blew free in the light breeze. Even as they appeared, however, the wounds began to close. Each glowed with light, the red blood lighting up like garnet jewels in the sun, before the blood faded and the wounds were gone.

Firi smiled, “There we go.”

“Thanks Firi,” Gurek said.

“So what would you recommend, Gurek?” I asked.

“If they have good armor, the team’s bulwark should be fine. Steel armor is what I would recommend as a minimum. Even that might end up pretty damaged.

“The boss only has one trick, but it’s a good one. If the party has a sensor they should be fine, too. We restricted ourselves to level 15, and it was a potentially dangerous fight. Area attacks or magics to remove the illusion would make the fight much simpler as well. If most parties aren’t careful, however, the bulwark will go down. After that? Most parties will get wiped.”

It matched my own analysis, but it was best to have confirmation. The boss was simple, but simple didn’t mean easy. The boss was fast, armored, and difficult to pin down.

“Okay, party level recommendation at seventeen then, to match the boss?” I asked.

The others nodded and Inda made a note on her map.

We stepped forward, the boss having dissolved away already, and headed to the door at the base of the giant tree. It yawned open to greet us as we approached.