Drip-Fed

The centre of the gargantuan structure was a confusing web of randomly assorted rooms, walls of uneven thickness, and staircases. The Death Knight followed a path only it knew, the four members of the party behind it.

A large chamber with an empty pool laid before a massive archway. The edges of the gate were broken, the hinges ripped out, the door itself long removed. Behind was a vast throne room. Eight pillars on each side rose a royal purple from a gleaming floor of polished, black marble. A massive chandelier below the ceiling illuminated the chamber with magical candles.

The pillars broke the room up into a central walkway and vast side areas. At the end of that walkway was a dais. Ten steps lead up to an enormous throne, forged from dark iron and gold. Purple cushions made it more comfortable for the woman seated in it.

Age prominently showed on her face. Anyone looking at her would make the estimation that she was in her late 60s, then looked at her pointy ears and adjusted that to her mid-300s. She had blueish grey skin, marking her as a dark elf, the prominent ruling race of the Sleeping Empire.

Said skin was only visible on her face. The rest of her was covered in an armour of illustrious make. Thick plates of Azurust covered her, each of the dark blue segments a masterpiece, shimmering with the magical power imbued into it. Titanium and platin lines were inlaid into the material, storing in them contingency spells that further empowered the whole of the bulky armour. It was so large that it made the already tall woman look like a giant with a small head.

“Jason!” she greeted the Death Knight, her voice booming despite her age. “And some adventurers you dragged in!”

“Jason?” Reysha couldn’t help but ask.

“A designation she has given me. You can use it, it doesn’t matter to me,” the undead monster replied. “By decree of the Necro Lord, I have once more come to verify our pact.”

“And I keep telling you that we do not need to do this every month,” the elf rested her face on the leather-wrapped knuckles of her right hand. “You’re a monster, not an idiot.”

“I prefer it this way,” the Death Knight stated. “An excuse to scan the lands for worthy individuals.”

“So, you consider these worthy?” The woman inspected the party with greater interest now. “Pretty interesting party at least. A Warrior, a Rogue with Noir, a Guardian Angel and whatever the Hellroots that Monk is.” She narrowed her eyes a little further. “Now that is very interesting, I actually don’t know what you are.”

Apexus clenched his jaw. Watching the woman rise from her throne was like following a tiger move up to a chicken. Panicking like him would get him nowhere, he knew that. The moment those green eyes had focused on him, the only way to leave their gaze was if she let him.

Each step down the dais reverberated in the floor. The sheer weight of the armour, concentrated into the dimensions of her soles, would have cracked the ground with every step, had it not been for the counteracting forces of magic. She approached, a figure two metres tall. Shorter than Apexus, but not by much and matching his width with her plate.

She grabbed Apexus by the arm. After fighting the Death Knight, he thought he had been reminded adequately on what it meant to be outclassed in strength. The woman shifted that idea completely, moving his arm like it was the limb of a doll she was playing with. She was still not quite as strong as the Deathhound, but she came close, very close.

“What are you?” she asked.

“I do not know,” the humanoid chimera answered honestly. “I can tell you what my constituent parts are, but the base and the whole are both clad in mystery.”

A dark eyebrow shot up, then the woman threw her head back and laughed. “A Monk is what you are!” she declared. “Makes me nostalgic to hear your waffling.” She squeezed his arm a little more. “That being said, you really are an oddity. Feels like you’re part slime, part human, but… no, you don’t make any sense at all. Is that metal in your arm?”

That she was capable of feeling that much by just holding one of his extremities surprised the humanoid chimera. “I carry it inside me because it is safer in cities,” he reported. After brief consideration, he moved the Mobile Estate key to the surface of his skin and showed it to the woman. He deemed that it was best to cooperate.

“Now that’s a rare trinket. Used to stay in one of those,” she hummed. “Exceptionally rare for your level – to the point of being impossible to get. Had a benefactor or are you a rich boy?”

“It was a parting gift of my teacher.”

For the first time, something other than mild amusement showed on the old elf’s face: genuine interest. What had been a set of curiosities before suddenly had the potential to be so much more. “That teacher wouldn’t happen to be Maltos, would it?” Apexus nodded and the smile on the woman’s face turned wry. “So he’s still alive, then?”

“His time is limited,” Apexus said. His arm almost broke when the woman squeezed it in surprised. She relaxed the grip the second she realized and took a step back.

“My name is Aliande of house Ashstream and I was the Warrior of the Golden Hand party,” she announced, voice booming and demanding. “You will explain everything to me!”

Apexus, gladly, did. It was a long tale to weave. In line with her curiosity, he began with how he had met Maltos, but the details of their relationship demanded that he looped back to earlier events a number of times.

By the end of the report, they had moved to an adjacent room. Only the Death Knight still stood, following the events as silent as the grave. Aliande sipped on a chalice filled with dark wine that a servant had brought in on her request. The party partook in some cold fruit juice.

“You’re far from the first students of Maltos that came through here. Usually they just bring me the news that he’s alive and well,” she said. “Sounds like you’re his last student.”

“He continues to teach,” Apexus assured.

“He will try to, but there’s a difference and we both know it.” Aliande emptied the chalice, then held the empty container out to the side. The servant hastened over with a pitcher and poured the precious liquid. How expensive it was did not even register to the retired adventurer. “Can’t say I find your origin orthodox, but Maltos only ever made one mistake. I doubt you’ll be his second one.”

“If I may ask, what is this one mistake you speak of?” Aclysia inquired.

Aliande looked forlornly into her cup. “Maltos has the special gift of knowing what the proper decision was in any given moment,” she told all of them. “It was why all of us followed him. Us in the party, then us in the Chapter of the Divine Hand. Whether it was the easy decision to return the money to people it had been stolen from or the hard decision to withhold aid from a world that we could not save without taking catastrophic losses, he knew what to do. Never have I met anyone with even half as much virtue.”

For a solid few seconds, she paused, swirling the cup in her hand.

“For all of that, his mistake was being just… too good at it all. None of us noticed that the difficult decisions were weighing him down until the day he announced he would retire. We couldn’t convince him to keep going, to strive for divinity as he deserved. He had missed the death of his wife and whatever letter his son left him broke his resolve. After that, our entire organization crumbled bit by bit.”

“And you chose to retire here of all places?” Reysha asked.

“I like the quiet and the occasional scraps,” she pointed at the Death Knight. “I killed him like 20 times.”

“31 times,” the Death Knight corrected.

“Besides, it’s a place of nice memories where people can easily find me.”

“So… you decided to build the giant palace on top of some place you liked or…?” Korith wondered.

“Build…? Does this place look build to you?” Aliande tilted her head, a wide grin on her face. “With what stone? What engineers do you think went all the way out here to put together a structure this enormous? For what people?”

“Then where did it come from?” Apexus wondered.

“It’s a Dungeon – or it was,” Aliande answered. “Never heard of Overkilling?”

Apexus looked to Korith and Reysha first. The two had formal education when it came to Dungeons, but neither knew what Aliande was talking about. Aclysia was similarly out of the loop. Therefore, he shook his head.

“Guess you’re too weak to have considered it.” Aliande took another sip from her chalice. “This used to be part of the Necro Lord’s territory. The throne room was the boss room. Together, we camped in it for several weeks, killing the boss on spawn over and over again. If you do that for long enough, eventually the Dungeon throws a hissy-fit and spawns a completely overcharged version of the boss to get rid of you. If you kill that as well, the Dungeon shuts down – we call that an Overkill.”

 “Huh,” Korith took in that information. Eyes sparkling, she then asked, “There must be a lot of loot in that, right?”

“None whatsoever,” Aliande shattered the kobold’s hope with a broad grin. “With the Dungeon, the loot distribution shuts down. All you’ll find is empty chests.”

“Then why go through the hassle?” Reysha wondered.

“Because it makes the land safer,” Aliande answered. “Because we did that, we now have Stallious and a soft border that his kind…” she pointed at the Death Knight. “…respects.”

“We will retake this Dungeon if it ever is vacated,” the monster added.

“Interesting,” Apexus commented. There was much to the way that Adventurers and their targets interacted that he did not understand yet.

“Out of interest,” Aliande once more swirled the liquid in her chalice. “Why do you think the gods test us with violence first and foremost?”

“Because risking one’s life in the line of ambition cannot be faked,” the Monk presented his answer. It wasn’t his final one nor the one he had first held. It was a constant question that he reflected on regularly. For now, that response was good enough for him. “Physical effort is the expression of the self.”

“A good answer… I hope you make it far.” Aliande downed her second cup of wine, then stood up. “I take it you want to go to Trauma then?”

Aclysia tilted her head, they had not divulged the reason why they had made the journey yet. “How do you know?”

“The only reason why anyone would come out here is to get some training that’s different from killing bugs all day. I’ll warn you, the Trauma Dungeon is a pain. We out levelled it by 30 at the time and I still don’t want to go back in there. Not because it’s extra dangerous, it’s just an unpleasant place.”

Apexus also stood up. Reysha and Aclysia followed suit immediately, while Korith downed the rest of the free fruit juice first. “We have a Quest to go there.”

Aliande smirked. “To retrieve a panacea, is that it?”

A stoic nod was half of Apexus’ response. “I heard that my teacher also did it. Is that true?”

“It is – and that is all I will say on the matter. Such things are best experienced in person. Now, come along.” Aliande gestured for them to follow. “I’ll arrange the passage for you. It’s the least I can do for the stories you told me.”