The Newt and Demon

Alex had very particular tastes when it came to crowns. Theo wasn’t shocked by that fact. What gave him pause was the amount of vendors in his town selling crowns. He hadn’t seen people walking around with crowns. Ever. Not in all his time in Iaredin had he seen anyone wearing a crown. He was certain Hanan had a crown, but he hardly wore it. Yet there the vendors were, selling more crowns than any person would reasonably suspect.

“Why exactly is this one so expensive?” Theo asked, gesturing to one crown.

The elven merchant gave Theo a nasty look. “Because this is no mere crown, dronon. This is a mythril crown done in the Veostian style. A style that is now extinct.”

“Kinda looks like crap,” Alex said, speaking exclusively into Theo’s mind. “Oh! Let’s go look at that dwarf’s crowns!”

Theo waved the merchant off, heading to a stall run by a dwarf. Not only were the crowns cheaper here, they looked cooler. Instead of the elegant designs of the Veostian crowns, those here were cut from blocky forms. Looking back at the shape of Alex’s weird dragon-goose head, he wasn’t sure if anything would fit her.

“Do you have anything that would fit a five-thousand-pound dragon-goose?” Theo asked, looking over the assortment of crowns. Unsurprisingly, the gold ones weren’t the most expensive ones. There were many made from various alloys, most of which the alchemist had never heard of.

The dwarf behind the counter puffed his chest out, swelling with excitement. “Each crown we produce comes with a resizing enchantment. So long as your feathered horror is moderately sapient, it can wear one.”

“I am extremely sapient,” Alex said, flapping with excitement. Several items blew over in nearby stalls.

“Do you also sell strings so I can tie it onto her head?” Theo asked.

“Ah-hah!” the dwarf said, pointing a finger into the air. “We can also bind the crown to her, activating our Magnetism enchantment. It won’t fall off no matter how hard she tries.”

“Go on, then,” Theo said, nodding to the table of crowns. “Pick whichever you like.”

“I like the Dragoniron ones,” Alex said, poking her bill at a few. They were made from the mixture of iron and mythril, most with gems set into the front. Broken Tusk produced that metal here, but they didn’t have crowns. Well, Throk could make a crown if he tried hard enough, but that wasn’t the point.

“You can only have one,” Theo said.

Alex took a bit to decide. Theo didn’t care, since he was waiting for her cloak to be completed. She eventually settled on one that was more round than the others with green gems set into the face. The alchemist forked over the money for both the crown and the ritual required to bind it to the dragon-goose. It wasn’t nearly as expensive as he thought, only costing about as much as he paid for common seed cores.

“There she is!” the dwarf said, placing the crown onto Alex’s head. Both the dwarf and Theo watched as the crown resized itself on her head. “Give it a try. Bet you can’t shake it off.”

Alex wiggled her neck, tossing her head to other side and looking like a crazed serpent. A few balls of fire shot forth from her mouth, all firing harmlessly into the air. When she was done, she flapped with excitement. Much to the displeasure of those around the dragon-goose. “I love it!” she shouted, more fire pouring from her mouth.

“Excellent work,” Theo said, nodding to the dwarf.

The dwarf bowed his head. “Thank you for the business.”

Theo and Alex wandered through the market. He knew Alex was already pleased with how things had gone, but there was no harm walking around for a while. Both stopped when Tresk sent a mental message through the Tara’hek.

“Absolutely vile,” Tresk groaned. “The inside of the dungeon is all messed up.”

“How?” Theo asked, opening his administration interface. He planned to transcribe the information for his administrators to see.

But instead of waiting for Tresk to respond, Theo simply saw through her eyes. He went from standing in the market to sneaking in the shadows. The ground beneath her feet was goopy, almost like sucking mud the way it clung to her boots. The landscape around her was weird, seeming to roll into the distance with no logical order. Crags, hills, and towers loomed all around her. The only thing they had in common was that they were all covered in a foul-smelling goop.

“Yeah, see what I’m saying?” Tresk asked, sensing that Theo had moved his vision to her.

She lingered on the spot for some time, watching as something moved above. It took Theo quite a while to figure out what he was looking at. But when he did determine what it was, he felt his heart beat quicker, eventually hammering against his ribcage. Tresk might not have been freaking out, but he was willing to do enough for the both of them.

“What the hell was that?” Theo asked.

“Oh, the giant doom beast? I call him Frank,” Tresk responded.

Frank wasn’t a good name for the creature. He watched as a monster loomed overhead. It wasn’t as though it clung to a cavern ceiling above her. No, the dungeon appeared as though it was in an outdoor area. What he saw was a thing the size of Broken Tusk, floating through the air as though swimming through water. It had some semblance of a structure, but not enough to be consistent. The best he could think was that it looked like a giant whale with a bunch of flippers and even more spikes coming from its body.

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“I hate Frank,” Theo said, feeling the mental urge to withdraw his sight. “What Level is it?”

“Dunno, but I just watched it destroy a giant tower earlier. So, there’s no way I'm fighting it.”

Theo did his best to understand the scale of Frank overhead. As he considered their next move. He assumed his normal sight and opened his administrative interface. After adding an important note to the top of their important notes, he opened another section of the interface to send an alliance-wide message.

[Theo]: Please consult with Alise AND Aarok if you have questions about the dungeons. Until we figure out what’s going on, no one will be permitted to run any dungeon.

“That’ll make a few people mad,” Sarisa said, laughing at Theo.

Turning to meet her gaze, Theo shrugged. “I’m not sure you understand how bad it is in there,” he said.

Theo was thankful that he didn’t need to send Tresca a message to retreat. At first, he had been concerned that she wouldn’t be able to find the exit, but a few moments later, she appeared right next to him. Despite her bravado, she had been slightly shaken by the encounter, and he couldn’t blame her.

“Well, that was messed up,” Tresk said.

“We’re going to need more information for Aarok,” Tresk said, “How is the entrance? Were there any other monsters?”

“Do you remember those weird goblins that came out of the dungeons? Those mutated ones?” Tresk asked. “It was like that, except a bunch of different creatures, and I’m pretty sure they were all over the level range.”

It didn’t take long for Theo to get notifications from his administration interface. People from the administration team were asking him what was going on. Of course, this meant another meeting with them, but it couldn’t be helped. But he didn’t need to make his way to the town hall. Alise found him on the street, pulling him aside to ask what was happening.He explained the situation as best he could, although he found it difficult to describe the kinds of monsters they were dealing with. All he needed to relay was that the dungeons were messed up and nobody should go inside them.

“That works for me, I guess,” Alise said. “Although I’d rather have more information, I’m sure Aarok is going to be upset or excited. It’s hard to tell with him.”

Theo found it hard not to think about the monster in the mines. But just because he had never seen a monster like that didn’t mean that it was caused by the void and energy he had unleashed on the world. Well, it might not have been a great idea to bring so many space elves. It needed to happen if they ever wanted to leave. Only when those elves were gone from the floating chunk in the void could they finally bring the shards back.

Since those shards were the only thing holding the place together, it wouldn’t be a good idea to remove them before it was time.

It wasn't long before Aarok found the impromptu meeting in the streets. He had apparently left the adventurer's guild in search of Theo and his strange message to the entire Alliance. He approached with the normal swagger of a half-ogre, placing his hands on his hips as though he were a stern father ready to discipline his errant archduke.

"You'll have to explain this really slowly for me," Aarok said, giving Theo a concerned look. "You're aware I have a team in another dungeon, right?"

"We only have to worry about the Hills dungeon for now," Theo said, nodding to his friend. "It's the only one at level -1."

Aarok’s eyes went slightly wide, but not wide enough for a normal person to register his shock. As always, he was stoic about these kinds of things. Holding it inside to put on a brave face as a commander. "You need to get better about bringing me in on these things," he said.

"We just figured it out," Tresk said, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "Theo just put out the alert. Come on guys, get with it."

“And I didn’t even describe the full extent of that thing you saw. What did you call him? Frank?” Theo asked, shaking his head. “Well, it looked like a giant whale floating in the sky, roughly the size of the town, maybe even as large as the alliance.”

Alise gave Theo a stern look. "This is because of the elves, isn't it?" she asked, shaking her head. "How dangerous is this exactly? Should we be more concerned?"

“We should all be running and screaming,” Theo said, shaking his head. “But because we are apparently in charge, we're going to keep our cool and make sure everybody else doesn't panic.”

“Do you have a good reason why nobody can enter the dungeons?” Aarok asked. “Or is this just a precautionary thing? Can I send scouting teams? How much do you know that you’re not sharing?”

Theo looked to Tresk for guidance. She shrugged.

“The area was pretty dangerous when I entered,” Tresk said. “I think the biggest problem is going to be the monsters within being at such weird levels. They could either be level 1 or 100. It would be impossible to tell what a person would get when they entered.”

"Did you fight a level 100 monster?" Aarok asked, leveling his gaze with Tresk.

"A few," she said with a shrug, "but there weren't enough to overwhelm me, not when I drew on Theo's power."

"As concerning as this is," Theo said, doing his best to placate the group. "I don't think we have the manpower to send scouting teams."

"We could send stealthers," Tresk offered, with a half-hearted shrug. “They had a hard time detecting me. I don't think they have properly developed senses, and the monsters seem more like aberrations that just flail around.”

The consensus was flip-flopping before Theo's eyes. He wanted to heed caution, but maybe scouting was the best idea. Anyway, what was Tress going to do with her free time? She was bored, and he was pretty certain Alex could follow her into the dungeon. Although, with a goose's massive appearance, it might be impossible for her to remain stealthed.

“I need to leave this problem with you guys,” Leo said, gesturing to both Aarok and Tresk. “I don’t think it’s for me to decide what we do. If you guys think it’s a good idea to scout, then do it. Just be safe.”

“Just be safe,” Tresk said with a laugh. “After the stunt we just pulled, You want me to be safe? We dove off a cliff, Theo.”

“Yes, well, the cliff is hardly a problem for us. A city-sized whale, on the other hand, could pose an issue.” Theo kneaded his temples, trying to find relief from the mounting headache. “You two sort it out. This isn’t my specialty.”

"We'll work on it," Aarok said, nodding his head. "Come on, Tresk, we have some planning to do."

Theo watched them go, not envying the task that lay in for them. While it was true that the dungeons might be dangerous, they had to do something about them. They weren’t nearly close enough to solving the space health problem to just leave the planet, and he was fairly certain that they were stuck there until the very end. There were rules about taking mortals to the Ascendant Realms. Rules that wouldn't be broken until the world was ready to be reset. The gods were clear on that, at least.

But approaching the end of the world meant there were just more things for him to do. One thing he had neglected for quite some time was the favor of the gods. Without that favor, he would have to leave all the things he had built behind. And as time went on, he realized how much energy he had invested—literal energy held in the seed, town, and kingdom cores of the place.

Looking at the sun overhead, he didn't have the energy to visit the heavens. The place where the system called home was cold, cold enough to pierce through his coat. He'd rather stay down here, where, even in autumn—a thing they called the season of death here—it was quite warm. That warmth had become a comfort, and he didn't want to give it up for the day. Better just spend his time at the Newt and Demon.