Chapter 92: 5.16 – What Lies Beneath

Robin slipped on a pile of loose coin and almost fell. He windmilled his arms and managed to regain his balance. He quickly waved away the concerned faces of his party members.

‘I’m fine! Just some loose coin. Not a mimic!’ he called to them.

Ruprecht’s laughter brayed in his ears.

‘You’ll not be laughing once we find the secret doors to the other three caverns here in the centre of this labyrinth,’ Robin said. ‘Quickly. We need a plan. I can only stall so long. What do you want?’

A regular supply of not-too-bright adventurers, I suppose. I don’t love that I need them, but I do. At least, I haven’t been able to find another way to grow, and I need to keep growing. Gyrfalcon will eventually find me and it’ll be war. There’s not enough space for two living dungeons beneath your city.

‘You’re not going to get the stupid ones, I’m afraid. The Guildmagister himself is after your core. I don’t know why, but I can swear to you that it’s the truth.’

Robin bent down and picked up a handful of coin to sift through it.

‘You’ve faked your death, and that will fool some people for a while, but the Guildmagister has access to powerful divinations. He’s eventually going to be back, with a much stronger team. Him or someone else. I got the impression a lot of people were looking to find you.’

If it is true what you say, perhaps I should remain ‘shattered’ for the present and build up my strength against an eventual assault.

‘How good a fake was the exploding copy of your core? I could take fragments back, feed the story of your destruction to Zahn. He won’t look for what he doesn’t think is around. That should buy you a bit of time, at least.’

And in exchange for this kindness?

‘Give us some of the good stuff. I know you’re hiding it around here somewhere. Or if you have a way for us to talk and exchange information that is faster than speaking, I’d take that. I’d prefer answers over gold, really, but I think gold is faster and easier right now. Especially if we’re going to keep your secret.’

Robin wasn’t sure why he was feeling a kinship with the dungeon, working toward keeping its secrets. Maybe it was the shared fondness for shapeshifting and traps; maybe it was the connection to his old world and the chance to speak English again with someone who understood it properly, not through a spell or other trick. But he did. He liked Ruprecht, oddly.

Perhaps this is a way. Let me ask—consult one of my stores of lore.

Robin rummaged through some more coin. He didn’t have long to wait. The party was still doing the same, as Drev was preparing himself to cast his divination spell as efficiently as he could.

Honestly you would think Savra would have some tips that might help him.

I’ll need your consent, but I can draw your mind into a shared dreamspace with mine. It will be expensive in terms of the energies required, as you are not one of my minions, but it is possible. Unless you’d like to agree to a contract with me…?

‘Let’s see where the night takes us first. I don’t like signing things I haven’t read, and I expect we lack the time to properly negotiate that kind of relationship right now.’

But you consent to the shared dream? It will be as if you dozed off only for a moment in the waking world. Not even long enough to fall over.

‘Yes. You have my enthusiastic consent. Let’s get freaky.’

Between one blink and the next, Robin found himself in a surreal double of the room he was already in. Wait, no. There was a subtle difference to this one. It was more perfectly circular.

Ah. This had to be a mental reconstruction of the room Ruprecht was in. Robin knew there were more of them.

He said as much.

Yes, yes. Gold star for observation.

Even in the dream realm Ruprecht’s voice still reverberated from his gemstone form.

Robin did a quick turn around the cavern, committing several details to memory just in case they were an exact reflection of Ruprecht’s cavern in the waking world.

‘This is a dream?’ he asked, trying to cover what he was actually doing. ‘It feels strangely real. But there’s a definite purple tint to everything I didn’t expect. Aren’t you not supposed to be able to dream in colour?’

Maybe in whatever world you come from. Possibly whichever world I come from as well. I don’t remember. I only have fragments, really.

‘That’s too bad. It must be tough.’

I think it’s intended to make things easier. I can see it being hard to adapt to this new form if there were too many memories of how delicious apple pie was, for example.

‘That is not a problem I’m facing. I have plenty of memories. Some of them even help enhance my skills in this world. I don’t have to regret having them. Or forget what apple pie tastes like,’ Robin said, before muttering, ‘Thank Rhyth.’

Rhyth? Why do I know that name?

The dreamscape shuddered and twisted around them. Suddenly, Robin found himself floating in an endless void next to Ruprecht’s dreamform. Flashes of light flickered in the darkness, less like stars than the little golden spots you see when you close your eyes too long after looking out on a bright sunny day.

Suddenly one was plucked from the half-seen swirl and pulled up and out of sight. Robin and Ruprecht were drawn right along with it, forcibly silent witnesses. They found themselves in a white room, with a white desk and a white chair and a figure in a black robe, wearing white gloves and a grey, expressionless mask.

The mote of light flared and suddenly a man was sitting in the chair across from the robed figure.

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‘What—how did I get here?’ the man asked.

‘That’s me!’ That’s me!

Robin and Ruprecht—invisible and, apparently, inaudible to the two people in the room—had spoken at the same time.

‘Wait. What?’ Wait. What?

Again they managed unintentional unison.

I remember this. Do you remember this?

‘No. I don’t remember this. But that’s my face, my body, I even have—had—a shirt like that!’

You don’t look that much like me! Do you?

‘I think being reduced to a rhombus has skewed your perception. Look closely now that you can see us side by side.’ Robin drifted over to float next to the seated figure.

I suppose, yes. The resemblance is there. But how?

‘Alternate selves from universes running in very close parallel? But how did we both end up in the same magical world? What are you doing there?’

‘What am I doing here?’ Memory-Ruprecht echoed Robin’s question.

‘You died,’ the robed figure said. ‘Your soul was drawn outside of time and space as part of the journey to your next incarnation, and in passing you were found worthy of a special one. You’re to become a living dungeon. It’s a great honour. Not many of these slots open up, and most that do are sponsored by living deities or other powers of a similar level hoping to find an easier way to exert their will on the mortal plane. The one you match with, however, was sponsored by Rhyth, a lost god of illusions and patron of shadows, shapeshifters, and various sneaky things. You’re lucky! You won’t even have a god looming over your shoulder urging you to enact some sort of agenda for them.’

‘Wait, what happened to the last dungeon that had the slot? If it’s open now, and wasn’t before, that means—’

‘Your guide will fill you in,’ the robed figure said brusquely. ‘Now, I need you to—’

I remember all of this.

‘I don’t. So it probably is you. But it’s strange. We look so alike. And we’ve both got a connection to Rhyth? That can’t be a coincidence.’

It does seem unlikely. But I don’t have anything else to add. Even this memory is only a fragment. I didn’t even recall it until you mentioned that name.

‘Maybe there’s more in your memory waiting to be unlocked. Maybe there’s something locked in mine as well. How would I even know?’

The memory faded back to the dream-cavern.

If we are to find out, we will both need to survive. And perhaps enter into a more formal alliance. There is something connecting us. I can feel it. Whether it’s a good or a bad or simply a neutral thing I cannot say.

‘I’ve got a good feeling about it, but my judgement isn’t always the most reliable,’ Robin admitted. He reached out to prod one of the nearby artefacts. He could feel it, but only distantly, as in—you guessed it—a dream.

An alliance then?

‘I think I can agree to that. It’ll be fun pulling one over on the Guildmagister. Provided I survive the experience. And who wouldn’t want a friend who could, eventually, make anything a person could want?’

I am not your personal factory. Let us establish that right now.

‘I would never dream of taking advantage like that!’ Not technically a lie. Robin wouldn’t dream of it. He’d plan how to do it. Fairly and equitably, of course. What was friendship if not taking mutual advantage of one another?

They quickly hashed out the details of their alliance. The benefits of being in a dream realm was that they could conjure parchment and write out drafts and go back and forth until they had a workable agreement.

Once that was out of the way it was time to plan. It was becoming clearer and clearer that they would have to work together to find more answers. A game of questions alone wasn’t going to satisfy either of them anymore.

And for them to work together, Ruprecht needed to survive.

So Robin needed to come up with a plan that got his party a nice payday, concealed Ruprecht’s continued existence, and—actually, Ruprecht was going to take care of the communications. Robin just had to make sure he got the correct share of the treasure.

Easy peasey.

I think that is as much as we can accomplish here. If we tarry any longer, your sleeping form will collapse to the ground. Time is under extreme dilation here but it is still passing.

Right. He wasn’t short with furry feet (though he supposed he could be, if he shifted) but it was definitely time to get tricksy.

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