Chapter 9 - You Want My Body - The Traveling Dungeon (Patreon)

It says something about my life that I was surprised to suddenly remember losing a one-sided argument with myself—courtesy of one of my other me’s. Worse, I honestly did lose the argument. The other me was right about all the things I had been avoiding and why. I could have been a bit nicer to myself about the way I argued about it, but then, I might not have gotten the point. I was stubborn with myself like that.

Shaking my head in annoyance, I glanced around the Hall of the Gods. I could already tell that I was far too energetic to fit in with the rest of the gods. Mostly, they watched the mortal world and occasionally used Essence to interfere—a blessing here, a curse there, a whisper or a command. The most direct action most would take was guiding their empowered agents to act. The exception was Denda, who spent as much time bouncing around the mortal world as she did talking to the other gods. The difference was pretty stark.

It took me almost an hour of silently watching the gods as they prodded the human world before I realized that I could see everything they did. All I had to do was watch the Essence passing through the dimensional barrier. In contrast, they were blind to what the others were doing. I felt a bit like a call center manager watching employees trying to work their phone lists. Yes, sir! For only ten easy payments of twenty prayers a day, you too can have the latest shiny new blessing! Well, to be fair, they weren’t that bad, but it felt like it. 

“Dale?”

I jerked out of my thoughts and turned to face Coldona. Her looks were mainly human in shape, chitinous in places still, but she was steadily shifting to look more and more like my dungeon creation. Flashing her a smile, I rose. Half-standing, I blinked, then turned to look at my chair and tried to remember when I sat down. I was snarking to myself about call-center employees then… Shaking my head again, I turned back to face Coldona. I knew what had happened. This was less a place, and more a state of mind shoved into dimensional space. My own mental state had a strong effect here.

“Dale?” Coldona asked me, her face shifting into a look of concern that looked odd on a face with small tusks and slightly slitted pupils.

Nodding, I straightened and stopped thinking about the world and focused on Coldona. “Yeah, sorry. Just a bit distracted,” I said while glancing around, “I’m still not used to the way things work here.”

Coldona smiled and nodded, but her smile flattened out as she looked away from me. 

“Dale, I, uh…” Coldona started then visibly changed her mind before continuing, “…have you shaped a room for yourself here?” she asked.

It was pretty apparent that Coldona wanted to talk to me about something else. Still, I decided to accept the change of subject since she seemed so uncomfortable.

“Not yet, how do I…?” I asked while looking around.

Bouncing on her feet, Coldona pointed me to the back corner of the conceptual space, away from the rest of the gods. Something shifted, and a door into a hallway became obvious. The link between wanting the doorway and it appearing was apparent to my divine senses, as clear as the color red had been to my human eyes. Still, I hadn’t noticed until it was drawn to my attention. Walking through the hallway, we passed doors marked with symbols: a book, a tree, a dagger, the shadow of a man stretched out on the ground. Each seemed clearly mapped to one of the gods and made me think of what symbol I would take for myself. Coldona stopped nervously in front of a plain, unmarked door.

At my raised eyebrow, Coldona blushed and shrugged to my unasked question. “I’m still not sure what my new symbol should be. I used to have just a dungeon stone, but I haven’t decided yet. I’m thinking of focusing on just Challenges and pushing away the domain of Dungeons.”

For a moment, I felt rage clog my throat and scream at me to rip into her for stealing my power then casting it aside. Despite the sudden surge of emotion, I didn’t move or react. I remained calm on the outside, placid almost. In my human body, rage made me flush; my jaw would clench, teeth grinding, and hands would flex. Emotion was a visceral, physical reaction. For a dungeon core, it was more intellectual. A god would likely have yelled or threatened, plotted, or acted out. Despite my anger, neither part of my new nature wanted to physically strike at Coldona. Anger would provoke plots, plans, and power moves. It didn’t induce violence or physical responses. That said, I took a deep calming breath that I likely didn’t need and let my anger drain away. Despite what my divine instincts screamed, she had done the right thing.

Coldona hadn’t missed my response, but she didn’t mention it. After my calming breath, she opened the door and stepped into her room. The change from a conceptual place to a more physical one was fascinating in itself. The boundary of this more mental than physical world shifted into a place of length, width, and depth. It was still a pale imitation of the real world. The rolled-up dimensions were missing, and even the more prominent, harder-to-reach directions were missing. Despite the lacking dimensions, it would have been familiar if unsettling to my past human self.

Smooth white slate tiles stretched out to polished granite walls. A fresco of combatants slaughtering a wave of monsters covered the ceiling. Humans, orcs, kobolds, dwarves, cat people, and something like a centaur formed from a scaley human and a turtle, along with many more, were each fighting bravely against a churning mass of disturbing and malformed monsters. The room was spacious and empty, besides a door across the room and a pair of couches facing each other across a low table. The room more closely resembled a waiting room modeled in a Greco-Roman style than it did a living room.

Passing around the closer couch, Coldona plopped onto the far couch facing me, then straightened with a blush. With another mental shrug, I joined her on the closer seat then casually looked around the room. Coldona was silent, worrying at her top lip while she watched me silently examine the mosaic on the ceiling. What I had taken to be a painted fresco was actually carefully inlaid colored stones. Each was cut to exacting standards to fit with only a hairline where they met. When my obvious investigation was over, Coldona spoke.

“Usually, Denda is the one who explains how to make a room, but I thought that with your Domain, you would be able to figure it out yourself when you knew you could,” she said with a smile.

To that, I only nodded as I watched Coldona fidget. She obviously had more on her mind than my own room, but she just as obviously was trying to work herself up to it.

“I can see how it works, though the transition of the door back there is interesting. It gives me some ideas of how I can use that,” I said while giving Coldona a friendly smile and hoping to coax things out of her. When she didn’t say anything else, I continued. “Until I felt your room here, I hadn’t realized that Sandra had created the conceptual space back there. Her mental signature is all over it.”

Coldona gave me a look of surprise before leaning forward, “Really? How can you tell?” she asked, then shook her head as she raised her hand.

“Wait, no. That isn’t important.…alright. I’m sorry, I’ve been trying to work out how to ask this, but I usually ask Denda to help. Only, she said I need to come out of my shell now that I don’t have one anymore,” Coldona said in a rush while almost flapping her hands in distress. It was honestly kind of cute how childish such a large woman with tusks could act - in a weirdly disturbing way.

“I kind of figured you wanted to ask me something. I promise I won’t get upset with you for just asking,” I said with as calm a voice as I could manage. I owed Coldona. I had basically played merry havoc with her image. While it worked out well, it had been pretty presumptuous of me. Everything had worked out, but it could have gone very wrong. Someone could argue I owed Denda as well, but I was far less willing to agree. Instead of dealing with how I felt about the short manipulative goddess, I transferred some of my good feelings to Coldona instead. Fair? No, but it was realistic, and I was just self-aware enough to know I was doing it.

Taking a big breath at my announcement, Coldona breathed out as she clasped her hands in her lap. Idly, I noticed her short but pointed and sharp nails.

“I want to focus on my Domain of Challenge like I told you. Right now, most of my worshippers are nasty cultists and crazies, all except one small town on a remote island. Those are all that worship me. Until you! Now, a lot more people know me, but only recently has anyone reasonable started worshipping me. I changed my paintings in your dungeon slightly,” she said, and I instantly checked. I realized that the caption of ‘Coldona’ was now ‘Coldona - Goddess of Challenges.’

I was a bit peeved that she had changed the title of my work without asking, and more so that I hadn’t noticed the change due to the use of Essence. It was becoming clear that I was far more vulnerable to divine efforts inside my dungeon than I was as my divine avatar. Turning my attention back to Coldona, I listened as she continued.

“-but that isn’t enough. Well, it is. The Orcs, most of them, refuse to worship anyone. Right now, most of them are arguing about picking me as their chosen goddess! Which is great!” she said before clenching her hands in her lap and looking down and away from me.

“But, you want something else from me. What is it?” I asked.

Looking up at me through the bangs of her hair, Coldona gave me a set of puppy-dog eyes ruined by the sharp tusks and the slightly slitted pupils.

“I would like you to make another entrance into your dungeon, like you have to your pocket crossroad world, and turn it into a temple to me. A temple of Challenge, for the Orcs,” Coldona said with a wince.

I stared at her, befuddled for a moment, then said with a deadpan voice, “You want me to turn part of my dungeon, my body, into a temple to you?”

To this, Coldona simply nodded silently while refusing to meet my eyes.

Staring up at the ceiling, I rubbed my hands over my face in exasperation as I tried to look at every side of this complication.

“Why?” I asked without looking down, my hands moving from rubbing my face to my temples. My head didn’t hurt, it likely couldn’t hurt as a god, but I still felt like it should.

“The dungeon door is associated with me. So, if you made another door like it and made it clearly dedicated to me, then it would pretty obviously be a miracle. I don’t have the Essence for it, I’m recovering now, but it’s close. This could really help me.”

Looking back at the nervous goddess wringing her hands, I smiled then chuckled.

“Fine. You can use my body, but it's going to cost you,” I said.

A pout still works even with tusks.