Chapter Twenty-One
Jack’s eye sockets lost their flames, and he collapsed in a heap on the dungeon floor. “I’m starting to think he hasn’t been leveling his intelligence and wisdom at all,” Vester observed with a shake of his head. “It’s kind of embarrassing to see him fall for this stuff over and over.”
“Never question the stupidity of your foes,” Reve said. She and Kora had moved to stand between Jack and everyone else. “I’ve found that they have a distressing tendency to start using their brains right when you start counting on them to have none.”
“How do we handle him?” Kora asked. She was studying Jack, her ears flat to her hair, and her tails were twitching: a clear sign she was ready to leap into violence at a moment’s notice. “If he truly cannot be killed, he is a significant threat.”
“He is,” Vester agreed. The Nightmare Weaver’s eyes went to the heavy pillars around them.
The stone columns weren’t so high that they were reaching the cavern ceiling, not in this area of the dungeon, but each of them rivaled a sequoia in thickness, and some surpassed even redwoods in height.
“Do you think we could knock those pillars down?”
Kora and Reve turned to look where he was. “They’re not indestructible,” Reve said immediately. “The airship broke two of them when it crashed.”
“It’ll take a lot of force to crack their foundations,” Kora added, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“But I imagine if we dropped enough stone on top of the bastard, it would take him a long time to dig his way out from under them.” Her milky eyes turned on Vester for a moment, and he could almost hear her worrying about a similar fate for him.
“Fortunately I can teleport,” he reminded her. “I’m not sure if Jack’s stealth skill has an intangible component—if it does then this might not work—but it’s the best plan we have at the moment.”
Reve began the process by gathering all the loose stones and boulders, telekinetically lifting them, and dropping them in place over Jack.
The Labyrinth Ward wouldn’t break from having stones crash onto it and hurt those trapped inside—Vester had watched Skylar’s golems kill helpless dungeon monsters time and again.
They let the heavy blocks drop onto Jack, shattering his bones and armor the best they could.
Ripper went to work, pounding away at the foundation of one of the pillars. The golem’s serrated tentacles weren’t designed for breaking rock, but they were sharp enough to do the job. Since the puppet would never grow tired, it meant that block would come down eventually.
Kora and Li Ra, meanwhile, attuned their weapons to acid and started cutting away at another pillar.
The bubbling shots from Li Ra’s pistols came at a steady rhythm, the vibrant-green impacts hissing while they carved pits into the stone.
Each time the oni created a starting divot, Kora would lunge and slam her acid-covered blade into the hole with a twist, widening it.
Vester knew they’d need to replace that sword after this, and if it took too long Li Ra would have to do serious maintenance on her guns, but the two of them were making steady progress.
It would probably take an hour for either column to get whittled to the point Reve could hit it hard enough to collapse, so Vester turned and moved to where Rachel was sitting next to Kimmy.
A quick glance confirmed that Davis was still channeling energy into Denny, while Krysta took a short nap.
She’d started a large pot of stew boiling, and Vester saw she’d stuck one of her heat-activated timers into it.
They were an odd combination of thermometer and whistle that let out a noise when the water reached the right temperature.
The fun part was they weren’t even enchanted; they just had heat-conducting stems that lead to an exchangeable top.
The top screwed on, and each held a fluid that boiled at a different point.
When the fluid boiled, the steam came out the whistle and alerted the cook.
Krysta brewed her own temperature fluids as part of her alchemy.
“You’re going to bury him?” Rachel asked, looking up from Kimmy to stare in Vester’s direction.
“We can’t kill him, we’re definitely not going to drag him around with us as a prisoner, and we can’t just leave him to his own devices,” Vester said with a shrug.
“Burying him under a mountain of stone seems like the simplest course of action. If we had a large pit full of acid, I’d say throw him in and hope for the best, but we’re working with what we have right now. ”
“There has to be a way to kill him,” Kimmy rasped. It was one of the first times Vester had heard the felid speak, and it took him a second to realize she had a pleasant voice. “He shouldn’t be allowed near anyone, especially women.”
Oh… Vester thought. He glanced from Kimmy to Jack, then grimaced.
“I’d offer to let you take some shots at him while he’s helpless,” Vester began, “but we’ve already started dropping rocks on him, so it’d be a waste to dig him out.
He wouldn’t be able to feel it while his mind is in the trap anyway. ”
Could he? Vester realized he had no idea if people could feel what their bodies experienced while trapped in the mind-maze. Maybe when he shows up again I’ll ask him about it. For posterity. And after that, we can figure out how to give him his own Pit of Despair.
Kimmy’s eyes were locked on Vester now, and her tail tip was flicking from side to side.
Vester noted her ears were pinned back, and tension was visible…
well, everywhere. Kimmy wasn’t wearing much in the way of intact clothing, and he saw rippling muscle bunching up wherever her skin showed.
“What?” he finally asked, when she hadn’t spoken or moved after several long, awkward moments.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked bluntly. “Why didn’t you kill any of us? Emma’s been trying to get us to murder you for months now, Jack’s tried several times, and they all showed up to confront you without me a few days ago. Why are you sparing us?”
“Did Rachel not tell you that Denny is my twin brother?” Vester asked in turn.
“In case you didn’t know, I’m from Earth, I’m not a psychopath, and I’m also not in the habit of just murdering people for being dicks.
” Vester paused, then jerked a thumb in Jack’s direction.
“Exceptions made for that guy, he’s an entire bag of dicks, not just one, and I’m choosing to take that personally. ”
Rachel’s mouth dropped half-open, while Kimmy blinked in shock.
Vester raised one eyebrow. “What? I know Denny hasn’t remembered I existed, and Jack talked shit about me, but being a slacker on Earth and having issues with my brother doesn’t make me a lunatic.
I love my twin, and if it wasn’t for all the curses I had piled on me when I was reincarnated here, I’d have sought you all out.
Hell, we all landed in that damned temple at the same time. ”
Rachel’s eyes grew wider, to the point Vester could see the whites surrounding her iris—which was a bit freaky—and she gasped.
“That intruder!” she nearly shouted. “When we first arrived at the palace, someone came right after us! The guards grabbed us and dragged us out of the room. The High Priestess tried to make it sound like a demon had tried to follow us to Ordinal. That was you?”
“Yup,” Vester replied, dropping down to squat near them.
His hands wrapped around Trickster’s Cane and he rubbed a thumb against the engraved knob.
“They cut off my head, stabbed me repeatedly, set me on fire, and tried to divine smite me out of existence. I got better. Then Tomlin kicked his way into the palace and told them he was taking me with him. Your High Priestess backed off real quick, and I ended up working for the Adventurer’s Guild. ”
“You’re lucky,” Kimmy snarled with such loathing in her voice that Vester could almost see it.
“Those bastards shackled me the moment we got somewhere private. They told the others that ‘beastkin’ and ‘demihumans’ had instincts that made them dangerous. Then they made us show them our Grimoires and started giving us specific instructions on what skills to take.”
Rachel looked ashamed, her hand extending to rub up and down Kimmy’s back slowly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “We wanted—”
“I know,” Kimmy interrupted. “You and Davis did your best to make me feel human, but Denny couldn’t seem to see how they treated me, and Emma bought everything they told her.
She’d delusional though. We both know that.
She thinks Peace is some saint from Earth and that she’ll go to heaven so long as she does everything she’s told. ”
It was Vester’s turn to grimace. He wasn’t one to judge someone for who they worshiped…
except when they made that someone else’s problem.
He’d hoped it wasn’t that bad. “Is Denny like that too? I know Peace is messing with Denny’s head.
There’s no way he wouldn’t have registered my name if she wasn’t.
But is he…” Vester took a deep breath and forced himself to ask the question: “Is Denny intentionally doing harm because Peace tells him to?”
“I don’t think so,” Rachel answered, shaking her head.
“It’s more like he’s in a fog. Denny will start to worry about something, then gets distracted, and suddenly it’s like he forgot whatever was bothering him.
It’s happened to me a few times, mostly around you, but nothing like what happens to Denny.
When we were fighting on the front and the army was going town-to-town behind us, it was like Denny was barely aware of the world.
He could focus on the threat right in front of us and on trying to be nice to all of us, but the details of what we were doing? It was all just a haze.”
“He’s not as bad when we’re in the dungeon,” Kimmy noted.
It didn’t look like she wanted to be forgiving, but she seemed determined to be honest. “Killing dungeon monsters doesn’t seem to cause him to drift the way he does on the surface.
Maybe whatever is controlling him is weaker in here, or maybe it’s because dungeon monsters are fake.
” Kimmy shrugged and her tail lashed once before falling still again.
“It’s harder for the gods to interact with us in here,” Vester said.
Then he paused, rocking his hand back and forth like a tilting boat.
“Sort of. There are special rules for the dimensional areas dungeons occupy. In some spots the gods have more freedom, and in others they’ve got tighter restraints.
It’s easier for them to issue Quests and give rewards. ”
“How do you know that?” Rachel demanded—not rudely, but eager. The girl’s expression said she wanted to learn everything she could. “Are you in contact with any of the gods? Peace visits Emma, but…”
“But Emma can’t be trusted to relay questions for us, or give us the answers honestly,” Kimmy said, picking up where the mousy brunette trailed off. “Emma just nods and smiles, and after that initial appearance, Peace refused to come down if anyone but Emma and Denny were present. We’re unworthy.”
Vester didn’t blame Kimmy for her obvious hatred of the way she’d been treated. She had died, been reborn in a foreign body, immediately been shackled and told she was no better than an animal, and then trained to do tricks for people who thought she was a beast.
I wonder if I’d have struggled as much if I hadn’t been reborn an elf, he thought.
Non designed my appearance herself. The Adventurer’s Guild couldn’t care less what my race is, and they’ve got strict policies against discrimination.
They don’t try to force anyone to get along, but they definitely punish people who start shit.
He sent a silent prayer of thanks, then tilted his head. “You girls want to meet a goddess?” he asked on a whim. “I can perform a quick ritual and see if Non can shed some light on this situation.”
“Non?” Rachel echoed, clearly confused. “Who is—wait, Chaos?” she blurted. “You have a ritual to summon Chaos at will?”
“I mean… technically, yeah,” Vester said.
He straightened up from where he’d squatted and backed up to start scratching the ritual circle in the mossy cavern floor.
Trickster’s Cane shifted to sprout a crystal tip that carved through the rock without issue.
“She’s Goddess of Chaos—or Goddess of Change, to Li Ra’s people.
But to me she’s Non, my long-distance girlfriend. ”
“Girlfriend?” Rachel gasped in a choked-off voice. “You’re dating a goddess? How the hell did that happen?”
It happened because Non has the right kind of daddy issues, Vester joked to himself, though he carefully refrained from thinking it outside the quietest parts of her mind.
Gah, that’s not so funny now that I’ve met her dad.
That guy is terrifying. He didn’t even do anything scary, it was just the presence that radiated off of him.
It was like he was the only thing that was real in that space… even I felt transparent.
“Non likes my sass,” Vester offered with a crooked smile.
“When I appeared before the gods and they started debating what to do with me, I told them to fuck off and not blame me for their screwup. They didn’t appreciate my opinions, but Non thought I was funny.
Next thing I know she’s given me a chance to survive their curses and I’m the Avatar of Chaos.
If not for her, I’d be something like Jack now. Dead but undead.”
Kimmy and Rachel exchanged glances, and Vester couldn’t help but feel they were thinking some less-than-flattering thoughts. He chose to let that go while he focused on engraving the ritual that would let him summon Non.
“You know, you guys fucked up my Quest,” he pointed out with amusement. “I was supposed to summon Non in front of the blood elflings, and you went and killed them all. Now I’m going to have to wait until I make it to the damned city before I can complete it.”
“You’re… still going to the city?” Rachel asked, looking baffled. “After all that’s happened?”
Vester met her gaze, then shrugged. “Look, I get that finding out I’m Denny’s brother makes this a huge moment for you, but I’ve known who all of you are since I arrived here.
I’ve run into you lot several times, fought, and beaten you all repeatedly.
The only reason to change my plans right now would be if Denny remembers me and needs my help.
But I don’t think that’ll happen with all of Peace’s bullshit.
The only chance I have at breaking Denny free is a Quest or divine intervention.
Either way, talking to Non and then continuing on is the most-likely path. ”
With that explanation out of the way, Vester sat down on his ritual and started channeling mana.