The Dungeon

There were not as many monsters on the other side of the gate as Taylor feared. He could see a few large elk monsters in the distance, but nothing immediately around the gate. He camouflaged himself and Airwalked higher to get a better view. According to Balhadra, he was on the frontier between Wenfold and Estfold, on the Wenfold side. If he floated high enough, he might be able to see the mountain range that gave the province its name, far to the south. But that would be counterproductive. He was more interested in what was nearby.

Long-grass prairie, as far as the eye could see. A shadow lay on the land, as if a cloud stood between the grass and the sun. According to Taylor's books and Balhadra, any living thing within the shadowed area would either monstrify, or sicken and die. They claimed it was mana with the "corruption" attribute. Whatever it was, it was definitely having an effect. Native grasses were dying, and something else was taking their place. He would have plenty of time later to examine the area in detail. For now, he was getting a sense of its shape and size.

Taylor's conversation with the proctors had been … interesting. They had the same concerns as Saria, but never accused him of harboring ill intent. Saria's endorsement and his own behavior were enough to make him worth considering as an ally instead of killing him. Besides, his presence was an unheard-of opportunity, and they were too eager to draft him. They assumed he was on board with whatever plan they came up with.

They weren't wrong. Of course he wanted to close the vent that threatened Twilight, but he would have liked to have been asked. He made one attempt at some token resistance, a complaint about how they were taking advantage of a stranger, a mere child of ten, without considering his feelings on the matter. All three proctors smirked, not believing him for a second.

"You're here, and you're already fighting. Are you saying you don't want to summon an army and assault a dungeon?"

"I'm not saying that," he muttered. In fact, he wanted very much to summon an army and assault a dungeon. Who in their right mind wouldn't? If they had done those things without him, he would have felt left out.

"Good. No more muttering."

He found a good spot, well into the interior of the corrupted area and on a slight rise, without any monsters nearby. Taylor touched down and performed his second summoning, with a new invocation. One that had been the subject of hours of practice and negotiation.

It started with a magically enforced silence, as if the area had become a black hole for sound. The deafening lasted for a few seconds, only to be struck by a noise. The chord's attack shattered the silence with its blow, a first portentious note of an opera dedicated to war. A thin beam of light descended from the sky and hit the ground, rapidly expanding until it was a pillar several feet wide. The pillar vanished in an instant, leaving behind four figures: The Army of Lightness, plus Saria.

"Classes," said Jalil, ears waving side-to-side.

A coterie of improbably large prairie dogs stood on their hind legs to look above the tall grass, curious about the commotion. Taylor didn't want his team getting distracted while monsters were near. "Ignore classes for now and choose later."

"I'm taking Arcane Archer," Jalil declared.

"Ooh! What's Mana Warrior!" Tanya looked like a child who had just discovered birthdays, cake, and presents all at once.

"What else do you have?" asked Premi.

"Boring stuff. Mana Warrior has a path for sneak attack. Mystical powers and extra damage!" The striped bear spirit squealed in delight. "You belong to me, now!"

"Seriously?" Taylor eyed the giant prairie dogs, wondering if they were carnivorous. Not all monstrified animals were terrors, but one couldn't be sure just by looking at them. Cute monsters could still kill, and these were living in a corrupted zone.

"Let them have this." Saria patted him on the arm. "They've waited a long time."

"I know, but some of us can die out here."

"We can handle this. You take care of your part."

Taylor's part was to let the Army of Lightness protect him while he performed another summoning. Naturally, this involved another invocation. A far longer one. Taylor cast the spell, then amplified his voice enough to be heard for at least a quarter mile in all directions.

"From the darkest regions beneath the most ancient mountains comes a force of never-before-imaged power. Behold, its right hand is the Sword of the South, the Matriarch of Magma, Ba-a-alha-a-adra-a-a! Mark well its left hand! You know her as the Ironwood Mistress, the infamous Dryad of Disaster, Ra-a-a-ami-i-tha! A-a-and in the center, counting one hundred and seven spirits strong, the body of our Dire Division, I give you the Awful, the Valorous, A-a-a-a-army O-o-o-o-of Da-a-a-a-arkn-e-ess!"

Taylor's mana dropped like a rock. Threatening black mist rose from the ground, writhed, formed into shapes, then congealed into a hundred fantastic figures: the second and third shifts of Defense Post Nineteen.

While Taylor was busy, the Army Of Lightness engaged a flight of falcons drawn to the commotion. The prairie dogs were nowhere to be seen, and were probably hiding in their holes.

Proctors Balhadra and Ramitha took charge of their shifts, and the assault on the corrupted lands began. They weren't a proper army: more like a team of independent teams. Proctors did little fighting themselves, preferring to command their shifts the best they could. Although the teams followed orders, there was little sense of control over the battlefield. Sometimes, teams chased after a group of monsters without telling anyone what they were doing, then ran into trouble and couldn't call for help. Other times, teams were killed and the proctors wouldn't hear about it for half an hour. Not all engagements were reported.

In spite of those issues, their side had major advantages: the army's size and the temporary nature of "death". Spirits were mostly present in Aarden, but their souls stayed in Twilight. When their physical forms were destroyed, they reappeared in Twilight exactly as they had been before, with the addition of their payout.

Taylor's role was to drink potions, recover his mana, and re-summon spirits who were killed. For the sake of their present engagement, the spirits agreed he could use an identical ritual for each of them. He had to blow a referee's whistle, loudly announce that a player's penalty phase had ended and they were allowed back on the field. He then summoned them by name and title. A ghostly butler traveled between him and the proctors, keeping a prioritized list of the fallen for Taylor to resurrect.

The hunting spirits found and fought wolves, insects, worms, plants, elk, birds, and monstrified versions of everything else that lived in the area. The first time Taylor saw a proctor fight, he was grateful they decided to treat him as an ally. A large section of prairie turf had animated into a grass monster and stomped out three teams of fighters before Balhadra could get to it. The old elf morphed into an elf-shaped white-hot fire and incinerated the grass monster. Taylor decided then and there to be more polite to all the proctors.

The corrupted area was hundreds of acres, and it took most of the day to clear it and the immediate vicinity. There was no telling how many monsters had wandered further away, but the army wasn't here to track them all down. They were here to solve the root of the problem, at the center of the corrupted land.

From up close, the central feature looked like a sixty-foot-tall chunk of rock, roughly cubic, thrust up from deep beneath the ground. The stone was white with splashes of orange and had one deep fissure running horizontally and many more running vertically. It was easy to imagine stonecutters had been there, cracking seams into the stone, preparing blocks. The edges were sharp, as if whatever geological process had pushed it to the surface had happened recently.

Most of the army kept its distance while scouts explored the rock, looking for a way in. Taylor could feel intense mana stirring there, and he was sure it was the center of the entire disturbance. Balhadra and Ramitha agreed and asked him to stay away until more was known. Dungeons always had entrances. How else were manabeasts supposed to get out? How else would dungeons invite prey in?

Taylor, guarded by Saria and the Army of Lightness, tried to build his mana by meditating. Best estimate, he was only a third full. Partly that was due to the many "resurrections" he had to perform, but it was mainly due to the immense drain of sustaining over a hundred summons at a time. He had to focus to gain any mana at all. He even deployed something he had been playing with recently, a kind of barrier that absorbed ambient mana. It helped some, but it was a poor match for the mana in the area.

It turned out they were all wrong about the dungeon. The center of the corrupted area was something else, and it was angry. Their first clue was when the ground started rolling beneath their feet. Hands and arms sprouted from the ground around the rock and pressed on the ground, as a giant figure heaved its body out of the earth several yards at a time. The rock they could see was only the tip of the monster, a small fraction of its mass. It crushed a scouting party incidentally while getting most of its thick torso onto the surface. A knee followed, then the legs as it pulled itself out of the ground. When the monster finally stood, Taylor lost himself in the scale of it. He had once killed a wyvern that was a hundred feet long. This was easily taller and several times heavier. The sight of it, and some invisible pressure coming from it, made Taylor want to vomit and flee at the same time.

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The giant exploded. A wave of boulders flew in all directions, crushing most of the army. Too late, Taylor realized he was within range. Premi stood in front of him, wings spread, her pelican head turned aside so he could see one large yellow eye.

"Run!" she shouted. Her Bastion Final Defense skill deflected the incoming rocks, but she was pulverized and her remains turned to smoke.

The surviving spirits tried to attack it, but the giant hardly noticed. "Don't worry about us," Saria shouted over the clamor. "Just run."

Taylor climbed with Airwalk and camouflaged himself. The battle was a losing one; that much was obvious after the first few seconds. The giant stomped and swatted at the intruders as if they were bothersome insects, indifferent to reprisals. The only people who could stand against it were the proctors, and only briefly. Balhadra had become a creature of white-hot fire again, heating the giant's foot until it glowed, but the giant didn't seem to mind. Ramitha attempted to trip and bind it with vines as thick as ancient oaks, but it simply walked through them.

The giant went around stomping on things, and the surviving spirits did their best to stay out of the way. Orangeatang climbed up to its shoulder and rode it for a while, and tried to clobber its lumpy head, but the giant swatted him like a mosquito — with predictable results.

Tanya, Jalil, and Saria stood well back from the fray. Jalil launched arrows at it, and Saria shot chunks of ice, but neither had an effect. Tanya, unable to do anything constructive, shouted taunts at it. The one favorable aspect of the situation was Taylor's mana: it started growing again.

Experimentally, Taylor tried Dragon Shot. He shouted a warning at his teammates to clear away, then launched a tungsten carbide dart as large as he was at the giant, then Airwalked away at full speed. The attack hit center mass and dislodged tons of stone, but for all its potency, it amounted to a small wound against a creature with no discernible anatomy. The giant's response was immediate and deadly: it sent a stream of boulders perfectly aimed at the origin of the attack. If Taylor hadn't moved, he would have died.

He floated higher, summoned a plane of force to sit on, and watched. If Dragon Shot barely left a mark, none of his usual force spells would work at all. Slip wouldn't do anything: the giant's feet sank into the ground, giving it leverage to move around. He couldn't produce a fire as hot as Balhadra could, and he didn't have any mind-altering magic. Even if he did, it was doubtful it would work on a corrupted rock elemental, or stone giant, or whatever this thing was.

He drifted to the ground and used his referee whistle to recall "Premi the Impenetrable."

"Let the proctors know I'm alive, then ask them to run the giant in circles for a while. Then come back." She left with a running start, transitioning to an awkward takeoff, then soaring on an impressive wingspan. She was back in a few minutes, with the ghost butler trailing behind her.

The butler handed him a list. "The proctors want you to recall these spirits. And, if I may quote them, what is the strange magician thinking?"

"Everyone has to use unnecessary adjectives," he grumbled, but recalled the five names on the list handed to him. How did an insubstantial being carry around a piece of paper? Taylor added it to his growing list of minor mysteries.

"Tell them I have a gravity spell I can use, but I need time to rebuild my mana."

"Making it heavier won't hurt it," argued Premi. "We're talking stone born in heat and pressure."

"This thing is hard, but it's brittle. How does a crow open a hard nut?" Premi and the ghost butler understood immediately. "There's an exposed ridge of rock, a few miles south. That's where I need him, in thirty minutes." Taylor pointed, in case they forgot which way was south.

After the butler left, and the resummoned spirits rejoined the fight, Premi looked ready to rejoin the Army of Lightness.

"I need you to stand on its head."

"Pardon me, but you want me to what?" She wagged her bill, either from irritation or confusion. He couldn't tell which.

"I want you to fly over to that monster, land on its head, and not do anything."

She looked at him with one round yellow eye while she watched the monster with her other. "Why?"

"So I'll know if I can stand there without getting squashed like Orangeatang."

Premi took flight without responding, her white cloak fluttering behind her. Taylor watched her circle above the giant's faceless head, approach it from behind, and land squarely on top. The giant kept walking, while the huge bird rocked to the motion and preened her feathers. Scattered attacks from the ground annoyed the giant enough to chase the ground units with its ponderous steps, but it never paid any heed to the spirit on its pate. After a few minutes riding the giant elemental, she flew back to him.

"That was weird. What now?"

"You can rejoin the Lightness. Have fun. You know where I'm going to be. I have to prepare something first."

Once he was alone, he sacrificed a handful of silver coins to shape a magic circle. To do it right, it should have been much larger and made of tempered silver, but Taylor had to work with what was on hand. They couldn't expect to keep a massive elemental distracted indefinitely.

That done, he Airwalked to the elemental and landed as lightly as he knew how. He laid the circle on top of the monster's head, bending it to match the uneven surface, and stuck it there with a spell. That was the scariest moment: he feared the giant would notice the spell and try to swat him, but the arms and legs kept swinging as the elemental walked. Occasionally, it paused to stomp at something. Its hands ripped up chunks of earth, leaving divots in the prairie the size of houses, and hurled them at its persecutors. But it ignored Taylor.

The remnants of the Army of Darkness led the giant in a long circle and, finally, to the ridge. For a moment, it looked like they would be trapped there, easy prey for the giant. But when it bent down to grab handfuls of earth to throw, it couldn't reach the ground. The ground was too far away.

Levitating a giant earth elemental was a good news / bad news situation. The good news was that gravity magic took the same amount of effort regardless of an item's mass. The bad news was that the effort required was related to the volume affected, and the earth elemental was huge. Also, he hadn't had a lot of time to plan this attack, and he didn't know the math, except in a general way. He was only a third-full of mana and wasn't properly equipped — So, more bad news than good news.

Nevertheless, whether it was through arrogance, boundless optimism, or extreme competence, Taylor felt good about his plan.

Using his makeshift magic circle as a focus point, he surrounded the elemental with a reversed gravity field. Together, they accelerated into the air. He didn't care about how fast they were rising, but he cared very much about the cost in mana. Reversing natural gravity was cheaper than adding his own, but various first- and second-order energy losses reduced the effect to one-third of normal downward acceleration. And that was fine. The speed going up wasn't what mattered.

Among the many details Taylor didn't know about Aarden was the exact pull of gravity on this planet and the average air pressure. Consequently, he couldn't know the terminal velocity of falling granite. So, he guessed. He rode his makeshift elemental elevator to an altitude of roughly three thousand feet, then cut the flow of mana. The giant slowed, then stalled. For a moment, he was weightless. The elemental beneath him flailed its arms and legs.

Their rise had been relatively gentle, but their fall wasn't. The first several seconds were intense, like being on a runaway horse that kept going faster and faster. While they plummeted, Taylor worked against the force to reshape a few letters in his magic circle. Soon, the wind resistance started pushing back hard enough to reduce their acceleration.

That's when Taylor dumped most of his mana into the revised circle, adding gravity. Normally, he would want to measure the effect, but under the circumstances, he had no intention of sticking around to find out how long it lasted. He bailed out of his makeshift meteorite and used a wide barrier, shaped like a shallow bowl, to slow his descent. He stood on his falling platform, while the giant received a hard push for the last several seconds of its flight and fell away from him. Taylor had a moment to admire his work as the giant shrank into the distance.

What happens when a magical rock the size of a hill gets dropped onto a bigger, mundane rock? Taylor had not adequately considered that question. Perhaps the answer was unknowable in advance. After all, how often did it happen? Taylor had certainly never done it before. The giant's appendages broke into thousands of pieces, shattered and scattered over the ridgeline, mingled with the native rock crushed by the fall. Its torso broke into three massive sections. To Taylor's surprise, its body was hollow, with a hint of something shiny within, a flash of crystalline interior.

Pure, chaotic mana exploded from the giant's body in a shockwave beyond most people's senses. To Taylor, the dome of raw magic was blinding. As the leading edge of the shockwave closed in on him, time slowed. The barrier he used for slow falling, meant only to provide wind resistance, would be vaporized.

Big, unstructured mana events were hazardous. He had already burned an arm practically down to the bone during his fight with Prater. There were some spells that could incinerate a caster or, worse, destroy their soul while leaving their body relatively intact. Mana crushing was a legitimate combat technique and could destroy an enemy's heart. He didn't have nearly enough mana to defend against what was coming.

Fortunately, his combat flow had kicked in. Taylor had all kinds of time.

With his last dregs of mana, Taylor disbanded the barrier and created a mana-catching one instead, barely big enough to cover himself. When the mana hit him, Taylor felt burned and frozen at the same time as the shockwave passed over him, and its energy was shoved into him in a long, unendurable pulse.

His world turned white with pain. Magic seared his nerves and filled him until his body was too full, but the pressure wouldn't stop. Magicians had a system of nerves and channels related to mana, and Taylor's expanded past the breaking point to accommodate the power he was taking in. He wasn't ready for this. He was years away from this kind of forging. It could kill him, or worse, make him unable to use magic.

I am not going to die here. I've barely started.

Taylor dumped all the mana he could into healing himself. It was the roughest, most unkind sort of healing, so unstructured it was little more than a magical wish. The rapid healing drained his physical reserves and doubled his pain. He would have screamed if he could, but he lacked the breath.

Time and normal sight came back to him as he passed through the shockwave, only a few hundred feet from the ground, and traveling far too fast. Taylor tossed down layers of his slow-falling shield, building a magical crumple zone to catch him. When the outermost layer hit the ground, he collapsed to his knees as the deceleration hit. The barriers cumbled, and the vicious deceleration flattened him against the innermost one. When his last barrier broke, he landed hard, on his side, but the pain was nothing compared to what he'd just been through.

Taylor climbed painfully to his feet and looked up, feeling small against the wreckage on the ridgeline. The giant lay above him, in a giant-sized notch, its crystalline innards exposed in layers of agate, quartz, and an obscene amount of mana crystal. A loose scree of mingled rock was tumbling down the hill. All around, the prairie grass lay flat for hundreds of yards, pointing away from the elemental. Such a significant magical event was bound to draw attention, no matter how far away the nearest town was.

There was an awful lot of salvage to take before the authorities arrived, and Taylor wasn't about to clean all this up on his own. After a suitable break, he started summoning the armies.

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