Chapter 19 Dungeons

I woke disoriented. My eyes burned and it hurt to open them and look around. Familiar markers in my surroundings made it clear I was back at Callem’s in our training house. A bed had been made up in the lower room near the table for me. I tried to sit up but felt weak and my skin was on fire. It reminded me of the time I went to the beach with some friends and fell asleep in the sun for 5 hours without sunscreen. I worked myself into a sitting position. Well, I wasn’t dead which was a positive. I heard the sounds of sword practice outside and Callem’s voice giving corrections and suggestions.

My stomach growled at me indicating it needed filling. I stood and tried walking but my right knee was very stiff and I had to force it to bend even though it protested. I went into the cold cellar and started slicing off a slab of smoked ham, grabbed two good-sized blocks of hard cheese, six apples, a jar of apple butter, and a jug of chilled water to wash it down. Getting back up the stairs was a chore in its own right.

I took a seat at the dining table and started to fill my protesting stomach. My mind was fuzzy on the details. I had been forced into an alley…I was mugged…beaten…I started to get flashes of scenes. That fucking red-headed boy from the city. I tried to recall his name but it wouldn’t come. Then I remembered he had an older brother. The city guardsman! Shit! The memories suddenly locked into place sequentially and I recalled the encounter and the gang taking my purse and backpack.

I went through stages, awareness, an adrenaline rush, anger, dispersion of rage, and finally calm reflection. My first thought was I had almost died twice in the last few weeks. Twice! And I was 12! I was supposed to have a luxurious new life here and I was nothing but a punching bag. I was having regrets about my ability selections. I mean there were some pretty ridiculously powered tier 7 abilities, and I choose metal mage? I had just skimmed that list so long ago but I should have chosen wiser options. The apples were now just cores with most of the apple butter gone with them so I started on the ham and cheese, stacking them together.

Well, I could become a powerful mage if what Callem had said was true. I stood and started pacing to work out my muscles and the protesting knee. My skin was tight and burned a bit and on inspection, I could still see some bruising. I detoured to the one mirror in the house and saw my face intact with some yellow-blue bruising. Well, at least I wasn’t disfigured. I remembered hearing bones cracking during the pummeling, I shivered in a wave of phantom pain at the memory.

My thoughts returned to my own survival and hopefully prosperity. Spells. I needed spells, tier 2 lightning spells are preferred but tier 2 or tier 3 healing spells would be ok…I stopped in stride and looked within myself. The mend flesh spell was there! It took me a while to feel it out and figure out its evolutions. It had two evolutions. The first was a self-diagnostic. It let me use the spell to look at my person for injuries. The second evolution allowed the spell to target other soft tissue beyond blood vessels and skin. This second was actually the most common first evolution of the spell and the most useful according to my book.

I scrambled up the ladder to my loft. Everything was there as well as the book I had bought, The Complexities of Aether Creationism, A Qualitative Comparison of Dungeon and Mortal Spellcraft. It was stained with dried blood. I ignored it for now and grabbed the mend flesh spell book and sat on the bed to read for a bit. Evolutions occurred at spell levels 1,2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19 and 23. It took a mage on average 20 years to reach level 23 of a tier 1 spell with regular casting and studying. Well, I had a massive aether core so I assumed it wouldn’t take me nearly that long. I paged through the book as I wanted to reference the spell form that I wanted for the next evolution; diagnose other. It was another common evolution but I wanted to have the evolution clear in my head so I studied it. It was less than an hour before the door opened and Gareth came in to check on me.

He scanned the room and quickly found me in my loft, “Stormy! Up and about I see!” He was grinning. “You shouldn’t go getting into scraps without me. It hurts my feelings you know!”

I retorted with sarcasm lacing my words, “Next time I am against ten to one odds I will be sure to invite you!” How many had there been in that alley? At least seven I think, maybe eight. “So how long have I been out of it?” I asked and started making my way down the ladder.

“Callem had you under a sleeping draft to let you rest. It has been just under a day. No need to worry. The healer in the city did good work according to Callem. Antal’s bone-shaping ability finished the work the healer in town couldn’t do because he ran out of aether. Antal did have some issues with your kneecap. Said it might be stiff for a while as the tendons are not quite correct.” Gareth sat down all sweaty and finished off the remaining ham, cheese, and jug of water.

Callem walked through the door saying, “Is our slumbering vigilante awake?” He was obviously joking and he knew I was awake since Gareth and I had not been talking quietly. “So Storme we can discuss the incident when you feel up to it. For now, your parents have given me wardship over you. You will not leave the farm without my permission.” I was shocked to hear that but not overly disappointed. I was about to mention Freya when Callem beat me to it, “Your sister will visit two consecutive days every month.” I sighed, content with that information.

Callem sat in one of the chairs at the table. “So Storme you have had quite a bit of healing done and it will take you two of three days of gorging to replenish your body’s stores.” He held up a hand to stop my question, “No potions. I do have the restoratives but they are not needed. So for the next three days after stretching, we will work on one of the texts.”

Gareth butted into our conversation, “Can it be the Dungeoneering book!?” His excitement was palpable. Callem had a sour look on his face that he erased quickly.

“I suppose we can work on that book. Everyone needs to know the basics about dungeons. That reminds me Storme. I already told Gareth. Wynna will be staying here for a while.” Callem’s face was unreadable and he held back his body language as well. I knew those two were getting it on or at the very least getting along. I smirked and Callem continued, “She will be helping with your book lessons in the evening and will be preparing lunch for all of us.” Well, that was great news, one thing off my plate so to speak, I was no longer being responsible for lunch. It looked like dinner was still my domain though. “Ennet has purchased a house in Hen’s Hollow and will be moving her business there.” Callem read my confused look, “Wynna is retiring. At least she doesn't plan to entertain any new clients.”

Callem stood and walked toward the door. He looked over his shoulder at us, “You have an hour to bathe before lunch and then we will begin on the books. Storme you smell like you crawled out of a latrine!” I sniffed myself and that was definitely not an understatement. Callem finished his chiding before closing the door behind him with the final word, “With Wynna in my house personal hygiene will need to be improved around here!”

Gareth and I locked eyes and laughed. Generally, we were the cleaner and better smelling of the three of us. Gareth spoke, “About time we delved into that dungeoneering book. He was always putting it off.” I started to speak but he cut me off, “I know his son died in a dungeon but that doesn’t mean we would. Not that I plan to try my luck anytime soon.” Gareth had been inching toward the door and then sprinted out yelling, “Race you to the stream!”

I still was moving very gingerly but made an effort to catch him. I was pretty sure he slowed down just enough to let me think I had a chance to catch him. I dove in while still dressed while he was removing his clothes. I figured my clothes needed washing anyway. “I win!” I yelled as my head emerged. Gareth was on the shore half undressed with his mouth agape.

“Well, that is just not fair.” He stated sullenly. His grin quickly appeared though as he ran full tilt and did a cannonball right next to me. When the water settled we both relaxed and Gareth asked, “So Strome it was those kids you pointed out to me before, wasn't it?”

“Yeah.” I sighed heavily, “but it’s not good. He has a brother or maybe it was his father in the city guard.” There was silence between us as I scrubbed my clothes near one of the short waterfalls nearby. “We need to bid our time Gareth,” I finally said. “We will even the score. Hell, they took all my coins too and there were a few platinum in there. If they see me alive again I don't expect the encounter will be pleasant.” I finished clothes washing and put on just undergarments that were still wet. “I think it is good we are here. We are learning from the best and I should be able to work on my spells. I am going to need more spells though. I can’t leave according to Callem but you can. Would you be up for making a trip to the capital in a few weeks?”

Gareth’s eyes lit up. “Hell yes Stormy!” Walking back we started planning his trip to the capital. After he got there he would buy some fine clothes to have the bearing of a noble with wealth and then go to a magic shop, drop a few platinum coins on some spell books and return. It was a simple plan.

We changed into better evening clothes in our lofts when we returned and went to the farmhouse. Lunch was laid out, a hearty pea soup, grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon, two pitchers of fruit juice, and some baked breaded fish. Forgetting our manners in front of Wynna we dug in. I was a little off pace as I had stuffed my stomach just over an hour ago but I still managed to consume quite the volume of food. The fish was a bit dry but other than that everything was good.

Satiated we sat in the ‘new’ living room. Four large plush couches surrounded a large square coffee table. Wynna was already redecorating Callem's house. “So boys I have never taught before but I like to think of myself as fairly well-read. What we will do is read a chapter and then discuss what you read as a group.” She handed me and Gareth the book and I read the title, The Basics of Understanding Dungeon Ecology. Wynna continued, “Most of the knowledge in these two books is from two old adventurers, Mundu Aetherseeker and Jamath the Traveler. Mundu had a high tier ability that allowed him to commune with dungeons. Some say he could talk to dungeons but since he lived more than 20,000 years ago I don’t know if legend had surpassed reality. Jamath had a powerful ability for navigation and location sensing. He could enter a dungeon portal and know exactly how far he had traveled and from which direction. So with that primer boys, let's start on the first chapter.”

I opened my text, Chapter 1 Dungeon Portals. I quickly read the twenty-page chapter. Dungeon portals were an archway engraved with standardized symbols throughout the sphere. Apparently, Mundu was footnoted as having translated all of the symbols. Each dungeon had twelve standard symbols. The first was the number of people allowed in at one time. This could range from one to twenty-three. Once the dungeon cap was met the dungeon could not be entered by any others. If the cap had been reached then all entrants had to leave before the dungeon would reset as well. So you couldn’t effectively swap members of a dive team unless everyone exited the dungeon. It was unlikely a dungeon could become locked by someone living in a dungeon because the longer you stayed in a dungeon the harder it tried to kill you…well, there was a passage from Mundu that said if you stopped making consistent progress it would try harder and harder to kill you anyway.

The second symbol was the relative difficulty of a dungeon, from one to seven. The difficulty was relative to the preparedness of the dungeon dive team. If you knew what to expect and prepared for it you would be mostly fine.

The third symbol was the number of challenge monsters to overcome the dungeon. From the description, I equated this to how many levels a dungeon had.

The fourth through sixth symbols described the terrain or terrains inside the dungeon.

The seventh to ninth symbols described the types of natural resources that could be found within. These were types of plants, various metals, etc...

The tenth symbol denoted the dungeon's age, usually over 100,000 years.

The eleventh symbol was the grand prize for defeating all the challenge monsters within. The was usually a dungeon-created magic item, a certain spell book, or a valuable item like a violet aether crystal. This symbol could change if a party claimed the prize.

The twelfth symbol was fluid and showed how many people were currently challenging a dungeon and if there was space for any more.

Those were the twelve common symbols every dungeon had. Mundu noted there was sometimes a thirteenth symbol but since it was rare to see it it was not included in this book of basic knowledge.

Gareth finished reading shortly after me and we started the discussion. Callem was more knowledgeable than Wynna on dungeons so he trumped input on our questions for this chapter. Gareth wanted to know how big a dungeon dive team was typical. Callem said most dungeons ranged from four to seven divers allowed.  So most adventuring teams had six to eight members. All the dungeon entrances on the Skyholme islands had limits between five and seven challengers.

I was mostly curious about resources and Wynna said there was a chapter covering that aspect so she delayed answering the question. We both were curious about dungeon ages, how old did they get? Wynna fielded this question. The oldest dungeon was noted at 370,000 years old. A dungeon evolved every 20 to 50 thousand years. When it reached maturity at tier 7 difficulty it would have some unique prize at its final boss monster that would incorporate its core essence. This powerful artifact, once removed from the dungeon, would collapse the dungeon forever. The space from the collapsed dungeon would allow for new dungeons to form within the sphere.

Wynna put a halt to questions and told us it was time for the next chapter. It was called Chapter 2 Dungeon Size and Terrain. I was a little surprised to learn a dungeon could be anywhere from a few hundred feet up to a few thousand miles! I mean the size of planet earth, that just sounded ridiculous. The terrain also was so varied it sounded mystical, traveling from desert to a glacier in just a few steps. We finished reading and Wynna expanded on the text.

The dungeons themselves were in a massive aether ley line matrix inside the shell of the world sphere. These ley lines were 3800 miles in diameter (6100 km), their diameter had been confirmed by dozens of independent researchers over the millennia. The ley lines can not be penetrated from the outside. Anyone who has tried had died from aether backlash, a defense mechanism that effectively burns away all material in a large swath area where a serious attack comes from. The dungeon entrances portal people inside the ley lines to complete trials. She had called them trials because that is what many songs called them she explained. Most people thought of dungeons as places to be exploited for resources and aether crystals.

My first question was how thick was the shell of the sphere. Wynna smiled at my question, she said between 14,000 and 20,000 miles depending on where you were. My mind was spinning a bit. I had not been fantastic at physics in my old life but shouldn’t gravity be crushing us like zits? I didn’t voice this question. Gareth was asking about how someone dug down to the aether lines. Callem answered his inquiry. There were 23 passages through the sphere shell to the outer sphere. The really powerful nations controlled these gateways that measure a few thousand miles across. They were transit highways for resources gathered within the sphere to be sold to Dark World civilizations and the rest of the galaxy. Wait, Callem knew there was more out there than just the sphere? Gareth was pounding Callem with questions about life outside of the sphere until he silenced him. Callem said today’s lessons were about dungeons, not the expanse of the sphere or what lay beyond.

Chapter 3 of the book was all about resources. The book detailed that anything in a dungeon was real and as long as you could carry it out you could keep it. The natural resources depended on the environment. Monster harvesting, lumber, herbs, metals, rocks… I asked about bringing a cart and Callem and Wynna laughed together. No, the dungeon wouldn’t allow that due to its ‘sense of fairness.’ Enterprising adventures could build devices inside a dungeon to help transport more materials out though. Any transport device bigger than a backpack brought into a dungeon though was made useless or destroyed by the dungeon during the transition through the portal.

Callem then brought up the point of aether-infused ingredients. Plants, metals, and rocks in more powerful dungeons had aether laced into their makeup. This made them extremely valuable for alchemists, enchanters, and in magitech devices. His own tobacco plants were from a dungeon and even retained a slight aether property. Most aetheric seeds brought out of a dungeon were sterile but every once in a while you got lucky. The conversation lasted a while about environmental treasures. Some cities in the lower lands lived completely off the harvest of a single dungeon.

Wynna soon had us move to chapter 4, aether crystals. Both me and Gareth had heard of aether crystals and knew they only came from dungeons. I read the chapter twice to make sure I understood. Aether crystals were found inside monsters in a dungeon. A sort of prize you got for defeating the foe. There were also aether crystal deposits in some dungeons that could be mined. These dungeons that had aether crystal mines were highly sought after. Aether crystals came in seven grades or tiers. The first three grades red, orange, and yellow were the lowest. The amount of aether they contained tripled each grade. So orange contained three times that of red and yellow nine times that of red.

These low-tier crystals were used mostly in enchanting, they were ground up into a powder and mixed with metals to inscribe runes. The crystals also varied in size, from the size of a grain of rice and up to the size of a basketball. The three-fold increase in capacity held true for the next three grades, green, blue, and indigo. These crystals had a much larger capacity and were extremely durable compared to the first three tiers.

They were mostly used as batteries for magic devices. The red, orange, and yellow became brittle after a few recharges. Inside the sphere, the crystals recharged naturally from the ambient aether. There was a skill that could be learned that allowed a mage to draw aether directly from a crystal or charge a crystal with their own aether. However, the higher the tier crystal the harder the resistance to move aether in both directions. That is why higher-tiered crystals were used in enchanting batteries. The mid-tier crystals could hold a lot more aether and generally lasted thousands of recharges before breaking down. The final aether crystals, blue, indigo, and violet were virtually indestructible by normal means. These were the crystals used to power the strongest magitech devices and also skyships and starships.

A violet aether crystal could contain 729 times the amount of aether as a red crystal of similar size. Wynna said if we had trouble remembering the grade scale think of a rainbow. I flashed back to high school, ROY-G-BIV. Huh…was magic and science linked somehow? Gareth was already into his questions. He wanted to know what type of crystals and how big they were, and which came from which monster. Neither Callem nor Wynna had complete answers for him.

I asked about the value of aether crystals. It varied according to Wynna. Red, orange and yellow were not that valuable in the grand scheme but orange was five times as valued as red, and yellow was twenty-five times the value of red. So essentially each tier was 5 times as valuable as the last. After those three basic crystals, the value skyrocketed. Aether crystals were a universal currency in the cities in the sphere. They were also the largest export through the passages to the Dark World and the universe beyond Callem mentioned.

Wynna explained what she knew about aether from her readings. The sun at the center of the sphere generated the aether and that aether was harvested in the ley lines. Very little aether escaped the sphere. If a mage lived on the outside of the sphere he or she would find his aether core regeneration greatly diminished. The further the mage traveled from the sphere the slower the regeneration was. It would never reach zero but what might take a day in the sphere might take a year to accumulate on another planet far from the sphere. She had read some old adventurers' tales that detailed men and women traveling far away and the frustrations they encountered in the thin aether environments in other star systems.

It was getting late and we still had three chapters to go so Wynna said we would finish the text over the next few days. We had a cold dinner of sausage and buttered bread for dinner as no one had cooked. Gareth took his copy of the Dungeon book to read in his loft.

While Gareth was reading about dungeons I did my aether core exercises and produced two platinum coins. I needed to start filling my purse again. I would need some gold later to complete them but this was fine for now. I had some aether in reserve so I started working my mend flesh spell. First I used the diagnostic and found lots of lingering injuries. Mostly strained tendons and capillaries were still being repaired. I was surprised how little aether I needed to completely heal everything. I found everything that needed attention including my troubled knee and healed myself completely. Of course, I was hungry again and snuck down for a snack. Gareth joined me and said, “Storme I want to try out a dungeon sometime.” He had a serious look on his face.

“Gareth after we finish our academy we can try diving.” He grinned happily I was on board. Gareth slapped me on the shoulder before tossing a handful of nuts in his mouth. Well maybe I could avoid another life-or-death moment for at least 10 years, that was how long it would be until we graduated from the academy. Sleep was welcome in my flotilla of pillows.