This follows Damage Management Team Part VI, Part V, Part IV, Part III, Part II, and Part I…
We made our way down two consecutive hallways, and there were no traps, no monsters, nothing. It was eerie as all hell. Why would it bother me? Why would it matter? This is my workplace, dammit.
Just a walk in the park. Another day in the life. Typical.
It was the human, the dwarf, the hot goblin, and the silly half-human with the big feet behind me that was giving me the creeps.
Probably. Maybe.
Definitely.
It was their fault. Stupid adventurers trying to get dead, and I was temporarily stuck with them. I felt a wave of something deep in my gut. Like a specter of rationalization telling me that I should know better.
I ignored it. Instead, I reminded myself that we were on the first floor. Still. The density of trouble looking to murderize us would be low, but I had the pervasive sense that someone was staring me down. Watching me. Eyes burned into the back of my head.
It had to be one of them? The four of them following along behind me and my crew, quietly having their own topsider conversations. I tried to not listen, but small snippets floated unbidden to my ears and nestled gently into the fore of my thoughts. Which was like a thorn in my damn foot, with every step forward, it felt worse.
Let’s be honest here, goblins are not made to be good at small talk, and the three of us on Team Kelpie were proving it the best we could. Grunk had floated a meaningful look or two my way nevertheless, but I tried to ignore it. It was as if he was expecting me to… chat.
Gross. I rather ram my face onto the pointy part of a knife. (Repeatedly.)
An intrusive thought wandered in, slyly sidling up to the side of my brain. I wondered if it was Miki staring me down. That didn’t bother me nearly as much (perv). Stupid sexy witches (and by extension, mages). (Double perv.) Why? Why was that strange topsider gob bothering me so much? Why was she so hot? Why am I talking to myself with a horny inner monologue and ignoring that growing sense of dread deep in my gut, right next to my scarred liver?
Distractions, I sighed heavily. My mind was wandering when I should be paying attention to the new scent in the air.
My crew and I felt the stairs on the air before we saw them. It was a small change… the air moved differently when there were stairs nearby. Like the air was heavier around the stairs, exchanging air currents as if there was a bellows pumping deep in the belly of the Underfell. Some levels would be fast to traverse. Others would be much bigger, but the stairs could be counted on to be consistent because of the air flow.
A dungeon had to breathe. It was a body. Each part was a component of the whole. The stairs were part of the lungs. The air exchanged in vast loops, circulating the air and ensuring that the lower levels were just as healthy as the top ones. I suppose that made us Dungeon Management Teams like the healing parts of a body. We came in like rushing blood, formed a scab, and built up the body of the Underfell again when it had been injured.
Making it to level 55 could mean that the stairs had been close and Christoph’s previous party had been both fast and lucky. Which was interesting… How often did folks come in? How far did they make it? Was there a Dungeon Management team that tracked things? That was another interesting thought, there could be a bunch of Underfell residents that did nothing but track the progress and outcomes… probably a bunch of netherfaires in little tweed suits noting the comings and goings in large bound volumes and diminutive scratchy feather pens.
I chuckled at the thought.
“Did you come this way before?” I asked the knight. I glanced over my shoulder. He was not interacting with the others, and his eyes were straight ahead, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Ah, he was nervous. “…when you made it down to level 55?”
“No. I did not. This seems different,” he replied warily.
Grunk looked back with an air of deference. “It should look different. The layout shifts time to time.”
“It shifts?” Streya interjected suddenly, abandoning her other conversation with the dwarf. “How?”
“Portaling. Did you happen to notice how symmetric… and boring… each gateway is between rooms and hallways, but the doors in the rooms or hallways are of any design?” Grunk asked.
“Yes?” Fror admitted, even though he seemed hesitant. But he was a dwarf, he would have noticed. Dwarves are well known for their interior design skills. No seriously. They are adept at such things (no doilies though, dwarves hated doilies.)
“They swap them around as sections. There is a whole department for layout design. They have to manage the interconnectedness of it all. Its a big job. And that is why we do what we do. To minimize the amount of work for them,” Grunk explained.
“How so?” Streya said.
“Mostly repairs. Sometimes retrofits. But its mostly walking into a mess and fixing it. The better we do, the less has to be shifted about. Its all about the masonry.”
Christoph tapped his chin. “But then you could just tunnel straight down?”
Grunk barked a laugh. “Definitely not. We go where we are needed. I couldn’t dig straight down even if I wanted to. I mean… I could get started, but I would not make it very far. The underlying principles of the Underfell would stop me. We are contained by the boundaries of the this place, the same boundaries that prevent surface access outside of the entrances halls. The rules of this place are strict. That is why it works.”
Miki shook her head, “No, its reason the Wizardking is still alive. If you are going to aim for immortality, you can’t cock it up with a shoddy attempt.”
Her ears swayed back and forth and I felt like a perv again for even noticing. I focused on getting to the stairwell.
Their eyes finally adjusted enough or the feeble light from Miki’s staff did its part. Streya noticed first.
“Thank the Sky,” she huffed. “I was getting worried we were lost.”
“That is hilarious,” I grinned like a fool.
Her face changed. It was not funny to her in the least. Her lip turned upward at the corner, “Why?”
“Do you have any idea how hard it would be to get lost? This is not a maze. I mean there are floors and rooms with mazes on them… but you either go inward or outward. Up or down. You would have to be an idiot to go in circles. Daft, even.”
“We were wandering for days.” Streya’s tone dripped with danger.
I ignored it. “Well, good thing you found us then, huh?”
“Yes.” Her tone was contempt-ish. Contempt adjacent?
Maybe they changed the layout while the party had made their way forward. Oh, that would suck. And… wait… if they could change the layout? How would the design team know there were people inside the section? They wouldn’t, right? What if they do that to us? What if we cross the same hallway twice? Would we know? Would we even realize? We could get stuck in some eternal loop of stuckiness.
I felt an attack coming on. My fingers got all tingly. Stairs would not be dangerous, at least not yet? Traversal down should be trivial? Why would I need to be in front? What if the stairs moved? Why am I not where I am supposed to be? We will never get back. We were going to wander. In circles. Forever.
FOREVER. Stuck in the stuckiness!
I leaned against the wall, put my head down between my knees, and waved them all to continue on. They didn’t. They stopped and stared at me.
Fuckheads.
“Tell?” Grunk raised an eyebrow. He lowered his voice to a near whisper, “You having an attack?”
I couldn’t say anything, just nodded curtly. My jaw was clenched.
“Is something wrong?” Christoph said, sounding worried.
His armor was still far too shiny for this place. Absentmindedly another intrusive thought popped in (I should find some mud.)
The others looked on with concern on their faces? WTF. Omish was not among them. He was only staring me down like Grunk was. Blank faces and eyes laced with scrutiny, because they both knew. Omish had a flash of fear cross his features, but he quickly shifted back to a stone-faced expression that would make the elder Grunk proud. That flash of fear told me all that I needed to know, like something terrible was about to happen and there was nothing he could do about it. His helplessness was but a quickly dying ember. Mine was in the process of consuming me like a wildfire.
“Ah,” Grunk turned to face the tall knight, laying a hand on my neck and massaging gently. “Teller occasionally has… uh, heart problems.”
He was lying. And I knew the truthsayer would see right through it. She squinted heavily at me, as if trying to scrye my mind. She was probably just picking up curse words and the fuzziness of falling deeper into the ugly noise of a panic attack.
“Huh.” She muttered, then remained silent. That struck me as weird.
Grunk leaned in, lowering his voice to a whisper again, “Deep breathing, Tell. We can’t carry you out this time. You can’t give up. Stay with me.”
I tried. I tried so hard. I focused on my breathing, but it was like I was underwater and something large and heavy was pressing down on my chest. The darkness loomed at the corners of my vision, real darkness, the promise of unconsciousness. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. My hands were shaking, so hard in fact, that I nearly flung my gauntlet from my hand.
This is how Dink felt.
This is how Dink felt.
This is how Dink felt.
Suffocating in the dark. No one to save… is this what Dink felt? His last moments, in a crushing black void.
My breath caught, it hitched in my chest as if it was captured on an nvisible hook in the sea of my desperation. I was about to pass out. Fainting wouldn’t be so bad. At least I wouldn’t have to see their eyes. I wouldn’t feel the pressure of their gaze, their judgments, all the things that a simple goblin like me did not need. But I did feel bad for Grunk and Omish. They had lost Dink too. We were all there.
But it was different for me. And because of it, they were losing me in pieces.
“Tell!” Grunk whispered all the more harshly. “Stay with us.”
I felt Omish’s hand on my other shoulder.
“I c-c-c-Can’t… b-b-B-b-Breathe.” I stuttered unevenly. Heavily. My lips were stone. My chest was stone. Only my hands knew life. Rattling like caged animals sinking in the waves.
“Teller. Come on. Just breathe.” Omish whispered.
“Is your friend in need of medicine?” Christoph asked again. “Miki could try something? Streya?”
Streya leaned against the wall. “This is not something we can heal.”
I glanced up at her, my eyes blurring and the edges of sight pulling in towards my consciousness. Smug? No. Certain. She looked certain about something. As if she had made up her half-breed mind.
“Guys?” Miki’s voice elevated up in pitch mid-word.
Christoph’s hand went to his sword handle, “Miki?”
“We need to back away from Teller. Ummm, like now.” Miki’s eyes were wide and she pointed a small finger my way.
Like all the others, my eyes followed the invisible line she traced in space, extending from the tip of her finger to my hand. My gauntlet hand. It was glowing. Pulsing. The pulsing was speeding up. My brain finally (FINALLY) kicked in, and the panic was forcibly shoved backwards as my first rational thought jumped to the fore.
Hex cores pulsed. When they were priming. Priming to do something huge. Like implode. Or explode. The variations were limited.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
I stood upright, and tried to push and pull my hand free so we could all run. My EPG was latched on? My fingers could flex, and I could straighten them out, but I could not pull my hand free. The pulsing continued to speed up.
I finally managed, “I can’t get it off.”
“All of you should run,” Grunk said. He grabbed the flared edges of my gauntlet with both hands, put his foot against the wall and pulled with all of his might. I just went tumbling. He looked at the adventurers and lingered on Omish. “You ALL need to run. Go with them Om. I will be right behind you.”
“Tell?” Omish tried.
“Do what he says, Om.”
Omish nodded, and then grabbed the knight’s hand and pulled him towards the others, herding them all like a small green herding dog. His ears flopped as he padded along behind the other three, pulling the knight as a child pulling his father’s hand would. Christoph looked conflicted, but he allowed it.
“You should go too, Grunk.” I said. My voice was calm as death.
The pulsing was nearly constant. When it was solid bright white, the illumination would precede the growth of immense force that would turn into a pressure wave that would blow into bits whatever was nearby, rendering them to their constituent parts and hallowing out the stairwell into a spherical crater that the next damage management team would have to repair. Hex cores explosions were violent on a scale that very few understood.
Because anyone that could be a witness to the power unleashed never lived to tell their tale.
“Oh, now you are back with us, huh?” Grunk grinned with one side of his toothy smile.
“Sorry. I can’t control it, old man.”
“I know. I know.” Grunk nodded.
I didn’t know if he was talking about my panic attacks or the gauntlet.
Grunk yanked on my arm again. “You haven’t grieved him properly, you know. -Dink.”
“Mmmm.”
He yanked again resulting in nothing happening, again. He sighed, “I think we are going to die.”
“Run.” I breathed deep and resolved myself to my fate. I would feel nothing.
The pulsing reached its crescendo.
And then it was silent.
There was no boom.
There was no boom?
I opened my eyes (when did I close my eyes?), and Grunk met my own and then down to my gauntlet in apparent surprise. That made two of us.
“Huh,” He muttered.
“Yeah,” I affirmed.
My hand moved upwards of its own accord and I felt three of my fingers curl over. My palm was facing me, and my lone index finger waggled at me.
“Are you doing that?” Grunk asked warily.
“No. Most definitely not.”
My gauntlet was admonishing me like a parent would a child? What?
“I think my gauntlet is not my gauntlet anymore,” I muttered dumbly.
“Yeah no shit,” Grunk scoffed. “I think that was obvious when it did its little spider act in the dubndub. Miki said it was radiating mana. Only living things…”
“I know. Maybe keep it between us for now?”
“Sure. But you need to be careful with that thing. Maybe have Miki look at it?”
I felt a wave of outright rejection. “Why would I need to do that?”
Grunk laid his hand on my shoulder again. “She is a mage, Tell. Come on, you know as well as I do that she is the best person to help figure it out. And better or worse, our trailer is hitched to their horse for the time being.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
“Good lad. Curious… can you take your hand out now?”
I set my gauntlet into the palm of my other, and like I had countless times, slid my hand free. My gauntlet appeared to be off, but I had a feeling that turning it off and on was something that I was no longer in control of. No more than anyone could to me. I slid my hand back in, and the hex cores rumbled back to humming life without me thumbing any of the controls.
It was as if it was telling me what I had already figured out. I patted the back of the gauntlet. “Yeah I know.”
“Who are you talking to?” Grunk raised an eyebrow.
I shrugged. “Manners might matter.”
Grunk laughed, a deep rolling laugh that I did not hear often enough. “How strange this is. Alright! Let’s catch up to the others. They are probably at the bottom of the stairs wondering why their ears still work.”
I waved for him to go ahead, but he gently pushed my shoulder.
“Not this time,” Grunk demurred. “You first.”
I obliged.