Lisette Part 2 (Patreon)

They emerged to the sound of screams. Five humans and a dwarf fought two Preying Mantis the size of horses. The mantis blocked attacks with their armored forelimbs while powerful jaws snapped incoming weapons in half, causing a warrior to swear in frustration even as another weapon appeared in his hand.

Lisette nodded. Travelers, then. While the gnomes themselves could use a bit of the spatial magic that allowed them to place large objects, such as books, into smaller storage items, their abilities were extremely limited. Travelers, on the other hand, could store almost anything they could pick up in spaces smaller than Lisette’s hat. They could also return from death, which made putting them through the Dungeon extremely entertaining.

While the modern form of dungeon was unchanging, the ancient Dungeons had altered to suit each visitor. The Atheneum Dungeon was a place of riddles and challenges, and the form of those challenges shifted. When a Native, someone spawned in their world, entered the Dungeon, the challenges had to be achievable. If their need was small, the challenge was equally small, while if the need was great, a mistake could lead to their death. Still, success was always a genuine possibility for them.

Travelers, however, could die. They could die over and over again, and their requests were almost always ridiculously unbalanced. ‘How do I get a God-level weapon?’ ‘How do I slay a God?’ ‘How do I get a million gold?’ ‘How do I hold a wave upon the sand?’

Lisette snorted to herself as she edged around the outside of the battle, neatly avoiding the flying head of the dwarf, which the second Mantis had snipped off the man while he was focused on the first insect. If the Travelers would learn to ask reasonable questions, they wouldn’t keep getting killed. After all, just because there had to be a possibility of success didn’t mean that possibility had to be greater than .0001%.

Motes of light swirled up from the dwarf’s body, mostly vanishing into the rocky ceiling above. The Mantis who had slain the dwarf absorbed a few, as well, and Lisette herself caught one, since she was close by. She felt a minute shiver run over her skin, a feeling that was somewhere between pleasant and irritating, and she shrugged her shoulders against it.

Some of the gnomes actually volunteered to help in the challenges in order to gain more of this Essence, on which the Dungeon and its inhabitants fed, but Lisette was satisfied with the passive growth she got just from living inside an active Dungeon. She wouldn’t be here voluntarily and - she ducked beneath a wild swing that nearly took out her hat - didn’t understand why she was here now.

Glancing back, she saw that the flying snake was still hovering easily in the air behind her. The aerial gore and human-bits almost seemed to swerve in mid-air in order to miss her snow-white scales, and the serpent seemed completely unconcerned by the massacre surrounding them.

Lisette absorbed three more Essence-motes before the battle ended, and as the last one sank through her skin, a soft silver shimmer surrounded her.

You have gained a level in [Book Binding]! It is now level 72.

Well, that was pointless. Essence helped improve whatever Skills or Spells had been used in the battle that produced the Essence. If a Dungeon Resident absorbed the Essence passively, it spread out, giving an equal, though minute, amount of experience to all of their abilities. Apparently, [Book Binding] had been close to leveling, though she could already bind nearly any book she cared to lay her hand to.

She sighed, making a face as she edged around a particularly large pool of sanguine fluid. Her slippers were new, and matched her hat, so she hoped she wouldn’t find a stain on them later. Once she was certain she was out of the way of the farthest flung droplets of gore, she looked up.

Seeing the two Mantis still standing there, compound eyes fixed on her, she lifted her hands, motioned to them. “Shoo! Go on home.”

Instead of obeying, the closest one leaned slowly toward her. As the triangular head, which was larger than her torso, came within reach, she gave in. Reaching out, she gingerly patted it in a spot that didn’t appear to have any blood on it.

“Yes, you did a good job,” she said.

Clicking its jaws in satisfaction, it stood up, and the second Preying Mantis came in to receive its own approving pats. When both insects were satisfied, they turned to a side passage and skittered away, their feet clicking on the stone.

Lisette shook her head. “It was so much easier when the monsters in the basement just tried to eat us.”

Looking back, she saw that the snake was watching her with a disturbing intensity, and she shrugged, feeling strangely awkward. “It was usually Sewer Rats, back in Bright, though the Cockroaches and Greater Booklice were annoying as well. I mean, I don’t mind that the creatures are on our side now, but it’s like having giant, carnivorous wolf-pups lying on my feet. I’m not old enough to remember the original Dungeon, and I still have a hard time believing they won’t turn on us.”

And now she was talking to a snake. A divine snake who spoke the language of the Gods, yes, but still a glorified noodle with wings.

“Well,” Lisette said, shaking it off. “Let’s see why we’re here, eh? Usually, each group of supplicants exists in their own private version of the Dungeon, so we really shouldn’t have appeared while they were still alive. Unless, of course, they have something-”

Her eyes caught on an object on the ground, and she leaned over to pick it up. It glimmered with a soft green light, meaning [Perception] believed it was something she wanted or needed. It appeared to be a pouch belonging to one of the fallen Travelers, who rarely dropped items, thanks to their magical inventory. Still, sometimes they were foolish enough to bring unsecured items inside when they challenged the Dungeon, and those items were either absorbed by the Dungeon itself, or taken by a Resident.

Turning the pouch over, she shook it, and an unexpectedly large stream of things fell out. Several poured off the side of her palm, bouncing to the ground, where they shimmered and vanished. Three stayed in her hand, however, and she used [Examine] on them.

The first was a Minor Ring of Light. Useless to a gnome, who had [Darkvision], but not a completely worthless item, in spite of the fact that it only produced a dim, eighteen inch sphere of illumination. The Dungeon already knew how to create these, however, so it wouldn’t mind if she kept it to give her little cousins as a toy.

The second was a Pretty Rock, which was, in fact, completely useless as anything but a paperweight. Still, she had plenty of paper to weight, so she tucked it into her pouch with the ring, turning her attention to the third item.

Greater Buttercup  - This yellow flower only grows near gold deposits. Its glossy petals contain small amounts of the valuable metal, making them useful in several crafting recipes. Mildly poisonous to most races. Weight - 20 grams. Rarity - Uncommon. Value - 5 Gold. Native region - multiple.

Lisette could focus on any of the underlined parts of the item description and access any information the Atheneum Library had on those topics, but that was a rabbit hole she didn’t have time for at the moment. Still, she plucked three petals before dropping the rest of the flower on the floor, where it shimmered and vanished. The snake only needed two petals for her quest, but the other would be enough to allow Lisette to follow up on the details later. After all, all knowledge was valuable to someone.

She tucked one petal into her pouch, and held the other two up between her fingers to show the hovering serpent. “Now we only need the acorn,” she said, and the snake hissed, bobbing its head in satisfaction.

“Now, where to go next,” Lisette muttered, looking down the halls leading away from them. Because the Dungeon was constantly shifting, there was no way to memorize its passages. Still, the Residents had ways of telling…

Reaching out, she touched a deep gouge in the rock wall. To inexperienced eyes, it probably looked like a weapon had missed its intended mark and scraped the stone, but her sensitive fingers traced a series of bumps at the bottom of the crevice. She certainly wasn’t the most experienced gnome when it came to wandering the Dungeon, since she preferred her adventures recorded on parchment rather than personally experienced, but she still knew how to read the clues the Dungeon left for its people.

When she found the mark that meant traps, she dismissed the right-hand passage as an option. While a Resident couldn’t trigger a trap accidentally, the poison, blades, acid, deep pits, and other deadly things contained in such devices could still be lethal if one wasn’t careful. Better to avoid them. Besides, the ‘Growth’ sigil leading to the left was more promising anyway.

Motioning to the snake, she moved off down the passage, watching carefully for any more marks that might serve as a warning or guide. The path was long and winding, and twice tunnels branched off, one morphing into a hall that would have been appropriate to a castle, while the other led to a yawning chasm criss-crossed with ropes and sticky webs.

Each time, the Growth sigil led them past, and at last a glowing fungus began to appear on the walls, followed by luminescent moss, and then a few small, white flowers. These Lisette carefully avoided, well aware that a simple touch would cause them to emit a soporific pollen that would send anyone who breathed it into a deep sleep. If they were unlucky enough to fall on a patch of moss, they would be nothing but bones long before the effects of the pollen could wear off.

Three times, a BONG rang through the Dungeon, audible only to the Residents, announcing that a new supplicant had arrived. Lisette’s teeth ground audibly as she wondered who was manning her desk. Someone had to take the requests, and explain the rules and the challenges to the supplicants, and if it wasn’t Lisette, was it Magda? Verso? Desdemona?

She thought she would wear her teeth to nubs before they found the acorn, but finally, finally, they emerged into a wide, open cavern. A brilliant light shone down from the arched ceiling, illuminating what looked like a forest that might be found in any number of places on the surface. The flora and fauna here, of course, were rarely as benign as an inexperienced adventurer might assume, however, and Lisette kept a wary eye out as she stepped onto the springy grass.

The snake, however, had no such inhibitions. Wings humming, the serpent darted forward, circling up into the ‘sky’ like she’d been freed of some oppressive weight. A loud screech echoed down from above, and a patch of darkness separated itself from the nearly invisible ceiling.

Lisette froze in indecision. The Head Librarian had promised the snake assistance in her quest, had even told Lisette to aid the creature ‘in whatever way necessary’, but was she supposed to interfere in a direct conflict? Fighting beside a supplicant against a creature of the Dungeon went against everything Lisette had ever learned about being a Resident. If whatever sentience lay within the Dungeon decided Lisette had betrayed it, it could even turn on her, or, worse, excise her. Losing her home after so many years of searching for it would be beyond heartbreaking.

Then the snake began to glow. No, not just glow, but shine. The creature emitted light far more brilliant than any Lisette had seen, even when she was still a surface-dweller. It was white, but also red and blue and green and colors Lisette had never even imagined. There was no name for that shade of pink - or was it orange? - and Lisette wondered if there was a book that might tell her what a cross between coquelicot and zaffre was called.

The light touched the mobile blot of darkness, and the darkness cried out. Not a hunting call, not this time, but not exactly pain either. It veered away, inky wings flapping, and vanished back up into the distance, to whatever roost or nest it had in the camouflaged ceiling.

The coruscation surrounding the serpent died down, and it hissed triumphantly after its temporary foe, then circled back down toward Lisette. She stared into its gem-like eyes, and said, “So, Caulobact tree?”

The diamond head nodded, a forked pink tongue flickered in approval, and they headed for the woods.