Chapter 97: to the Surface
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Chapter 97:Bubbling to the Surface
Delta watched with a hint of nervous energy as the door to the laboratory creaked closed behind them.
The open hall with many tiny connected hallways was a surprising space compared to the Silence pit but Delta used Doctor’s eyes to peer into the space. It was more like a dungeon in the most real sense. A place where people suffered, and that the sun never touched.
Delta paused... wait, that still sounded like most Dungeons of this world. Well, this place was like places where prisoners were sent when castles were common. Stone walls and drafty floors with hay spread over it to soak up odd spills or maybe have the odd worker just collapse for a power nap.
The hall itself was arched with statuesque pillars like twisted bone to hold the ceiling up above. The top of these pillars spread like roots. Delta had no idea if it was artistic or just how the material acted. It didn’t look like normal stone. Too white.
Her group moved forward. Gnashly and Jeb taking the lead. The hall was thankfully much more suited to their size. The gargoyles either used their shoulders as perches or like Dragon and Dozer, crawled along the ceiling, their stone claws making easy work and handholds of the fancy roots.
Jack was keeping back, making sure nothing got out.
Jeb stomped and the creatures that littered this place scattered.
They were like thick viscous black puddings. Bones and items sunk and rose out of their bodies.
It was like tiny swamps that had gotten bored and learned to move but... their bubbling slime made flesh erode and turn black on contact.
Not that Jeb or Gnashly even noticed.
Something Delta learned about Trolls in general was that their pain receptors never really... bothered to develop From an evolutionary perspective she guessed if the creature could just regenerate damage, pain wasn’t needed to tell them to stop being idiots.
Instead, evolution just made their skin thicker and walked away screaming in frustration at what she had just done.
The slimes mostly used something as a ‘face’. The common theme seemed to be skulls. Delta winced and guessed she knew what happened to the undead around here: they were stripped down and used as fancy accessories by these puddings.
A few of the pudding slimes used helmets or shields but the general foes used long dead eye sockets to glare at them. One of the puddings lashed out with a tentacle and a sword emerged from the slime.
It sunk into Jeb slightly before getting stuck. The pudding yanked and pulled with frustration while Jeb looked down.
“Free sword!” he cheered and stomped the pudding, which made a lot of things scatter across the floor.
“At least he’s having fun,” Delta sighed.
“Better the one who can fix himself up than us,” Doctor agreed. The gargoyles were neatly avoiding the puddings as best they could as their flesh would be exposed to the burning muck while not in their stone form.
Harder than it looked when the puddings could slime up the walls and give chase.
Doctor lashed out. Under his flapping cloak came a series of flasks. The bubbling solution broke on contact and spread fire across a few of the puddings.
Jack cheered in support as the combined efforts of Doctor’s oddly poisonous fluids and Jack’s bad habit made firebombs. Delta was surprised to learn each goyle had their own weapon, as it were.
Gargoyles... were actually very cool once Delta explored into their biology and powers. It took some explanation on Nu’s part but the idea was that each Gargoyle was unique. Their soul was formed and poured into a statue.
Usually they were considered religious creatures by proxy. Ambient faith for whatever god or goddess or thing or toaster (Delta was sure Nu was joking about that last one) would gather in a temple or church over time.
That energy would eventually leak into the building itself. Hence that weirdly nice but unearthly feeling such places could get if they were old enough. The side effect was that things would become empowered.
The water, the food, the beds, the toilets, and even the mops.
It also meant such fixtures such as statues and water drainage on the roof that had been carved into angelic or demonic looking creatures would also get that power. And like in most good stories with statues and magic... they came to life.
Now the issue was that each tiny feature and defect of said statue shaped what a gargoyle could and could not do.
Delta had a feeling that if her monster template hadn’t screwed up and gone wonky, her gargoyles would have been uniform and exactly the same in terms of powers and weapons until she learned to control the process.
But since Delta had accidentally broke a few tiny... not important things somehow, her gargoyles were each wildly different.
Delta had to reassure herself that the whole defective template thing was no big deal. No big deal at all.
“As a Doctor... lying to yourself is unhealthy,” Doctor said airily and another couple puddings went up in flame, exploding with more loot.
“If it was that bad, Sis would have told me,” she argued.The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.
Doctor’s silence was heavy.
--
In a deep desert, a series of ten or so white gleaming towers stood, with sealed tunnels that arched up between the towers to connect them. The land around the towers was lush with a series of oases. Nearby, a bustling city of towers that tried to impersonate the white towers had been built.
It was connected to the towers with several roads and aqueducts and its people moved on with their lives, unaware of the being that controlled the towers screeching to herself.
Dejen stared down at the things before her. She was on her 70th floor. A very important floor. It ended with a zero! It was damn important, and this? This was not what she needed to deal with right now.
Her towers reached to the stars. The glowing white spires of beauty and treasure to lure in those from miles around. Dejen refused to bury herself into the dirt like some mole...
Many of her lower floors were occupied and facing threats.
She had spent a pretty amount of Rainbow Gems to make her bosses respawn within an hour... her lower floors were wonderful.
Lackluster and somewhat primitive in her early attempts but the sheer charm of them, her fumbles and success were a past... a story... and Dejen didn’t have the heart to change them. Her future was ever higher, and here she was climbing.
Her first monsters, after months of stockpiling and waiting to buy her new floor, the seventh tower rising by another 100 meters to show she had done just that. Her monster choice was new... exciting.
The Sister had always given her interesting choices. Sand scarred assassin clan... the Thunder Scorpions... or the Mimic Cacti.
“We need something more deadly than Sin Choir Dust,” Doctor responded to the scene in that same calm tone.
Delta, however, could feel his agitation on his tools being outdone. Delta looked around but the science scene in the hall was either being used as weapons by the slimes or turned to dust long ago. She was beginning to panic when Jeb belly flopped and black slime went everywhere. At his side was a meat cleaver, a tenderiser, and a large jug corked with a simple brown lid.
That cherry red jug sloshed with something familiar.
It was bad... but could it be that bad?
“Jeb! Give Doctor your Troll soup!” Delta yelled and the troll didn't even look as he chucked the container across the room. Doctor leapt and what was a jug for Jeb was a barrel for Doctor.
He slid a few feet back, gasping as he tried to slow down the projectile. He was now quite a bit away from the cauldron and he began to stomp forward. Delta yelled a warning , as if sensing something was up, the puddings began to gather around Doctor like a plague of locusts. They lashed out with tentacles and knives. The downside was that Doctor couldn’t progress and defended himself by turning to stone.
Vanguard was there like a vengeful angel. His weapons cleared a path forward which Doctor took without slowing down.
The panic in the slimes seem to rise and a few began to blob together into some horrid wave of trash and acid. Dragon responded by swooping down in a storm of fire. The light and the dark clashed, sending flaming bits of pudding everywhere but the hole left behind was used by Doctor to rush deeper.
The cauldron was working overtime, shaking and hissing as it spat out puddings like no tomorrow.
“You can do it!” Delta cheered. The oncoming wave was torn apart, squished, and blown away by Gnashly, Jeb, and Dozer. Doctor was so near that he burst into a sprint.
Delta felt Doctor’s mind go crazy, he never felt more alive. The moment of victory was near but at the last moment, a pudding that had no items and no weapons rose out of a crack and tripped Doctor. He face planted, almost breaking his beak mask right off. Delta cried out as Jeb’s brew bounced and rolled away.
The slimes didn’t touch it but made the path to the jug a nightmare of acid and bladed weapons.
“Damn it all. I’ll make them regret that,” Doctor hissed, his foot crushing the slime that had tripped him. The numbers flowing from the cauldron and the side rooms was staggering.
The air became fouler as the slimes gave off noxious fumes. Delta had little doubt a normal person would have their lungs scorched trying to breathe in here. The walls moved like water as the slimes ran out of room on the ground and began to claim the high ground.
This was... this was a nightmare.
And what was worse that they hadn’t breeched the inner sanctum of the lab yet. That cauldron kept spitting out more and Delta had a horrible feeling she had started it up like a long dormant auto-factory.
They would keep being produced and Delta wasn’t sure how she would begin to fix this.
Inside, she began to feel like a slime was crawling around her heart. It burned and every second felt like a dark morbid understanding that she might be in over her head here.
She opened her mouth... to say something? To call her friends back? To yell in frustration and fear?
She didn’t know. Delta wouldn’t be given the chance to find out as the jug rolled forward on it’s side like a barrel out of a comedy movie. Jack the Kobold on the top.
“Move it or lose it sisters! Remember me?! I FRIGGIN REMEMBER YOU! TODAY WILL BE THE DAY-” he hollered and screamed as the barrel crushed the slimes, the burning muck hiss on Jack’s feet as the jug spun around and around.
Nothing could stop him.
Jack let the jug fly over the edge, himself still on it.
“-THE DAY YOU ALMOST CAUGHT MAD BURNING JACK KOBOLD AND FRRRRIEEEENNNDS! ” he yelled with mad glee and the jug, the kobold, and several trapped slimes on the jug crashed into the cauldron, the cork on the jug flying off.
The thick brown liquid seeped into it and the cauldron began to give off a high keening noise. The Troll soup, Jack’s mad laugh, and the jug itself sank and the cauldron began to crack, dark light seeping out between the stone fissures.
“SHE’S GONNA BLOW!” Delta screamed. Her monsters ran as all the black puddings had gone stark still, shaking in time with the cauldron.
Jeb and Gnashly formed a trollish shield around the goyles as the cauldron gave one last shriek and the whole room shook.
Delta felt it ripple through her body.
Her whole Dungeon was shaking.
---
Seth paused as the trees and rocks shook fiercely for a moment. The Queen and her subjects became a noise of furious buzzing.
“Mother...” Inchy whispered. Renny took the bird and passed it to Seth.
“Renny! Where you going?” Seth called. The Mime didn’t answer, funnily enough.
“He’s going downstairs. Momma needs help,” Inchy said quietly. Seth looked at the bird.
“I could go?” he offered. Inchy looked up before shaking his little feathered head. He hopped to Seth’s shoulder.
“We gotta have faith. Renny is strong! And you gotta finish the tour! That was my job! To give you the tour,” Inchy said. The bird must have been worried because it didn’t even pun once.
Faith?
Seth felt the tremors stop and honestly knew he couldn’t offer faith. The best he could do was trust.
So he put on his best smile and let Inchy lead him onwards. His senses flickered... his mind being brushed gently by a stroke of magic.
An assurance... a promise. The hot smoky aftertaste told him that Quiss was already heading to check things out.
The concern and softness in the embers of Quiss’ magic would surprise most people but Seth knew the man had the deepest warmth for those he cared about.
Seth smiled, relaxing truly as he felt Quiss move on to follow Renny.
Between those two? Perhaps he could have a little faith.
---
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Chapter 97:Bubbling to the Surface
Delta watched with a hint of nervous energy as the door to the laboratory creaked closed behind them.
The open hall with many tiny connected hallways was a surprising space compared to the Silence pit but Delta used Doctor’s eyes to peer into the space. It was more like a dungeon in the most real sense. A place where people suffered, and that the sun never touched.
Delta paused... wait, that still sounded like most Dungeons of this world. Well, this place was like places where prisoners were sent when castles were common. Stone walls and drafty floors with hay spread over it to soak up odd spills or maybe have the odd worker just collapse for a power nap.
The hall itself was arched with statuesque pillars like twisted bone to hold the ceiling up above. The top of these pillars spread like roots. Delta had no idea if it was artistic or just how the material acted. It didn’t look like normal stone. Too white.
Her group moved forward. Gnashly and Jeb taking the lead. The hall was thankfully much more suited to their size. The gargoyles either used their shoulders as perches or like Dragon and Dozer, crawled along the ceiling, their stone claws making easy work and handholds of the fancy roots.
Jack was keeping back, making sure nothing got out.
Jeb stomped and the creatures that littered this place scattered.
They were like thick viscous black puddings. Bones and items sunk and rose out of their bodies.
It was like tiny swamps that had gotten bored and learned to move but... their bubbling slime made flesh erode and turn black on contact.
Not that Jeb or Gnashly even noticed.
Something Delta learned about Trolls in general was that their pain receptors never really... bothered to develop From an evolutionary perspective she guessed if the creature could just regenerate damage, pain wasn’t needed to tell them to stop being idiots.
Instead, evolution just made their skin thicker and walked away screaming in frustration at what she had just done.
The slimes mostly used something as a ‘face’. The common theme seemed to be skulls. Delta winced and guessed she knew what happened to the undead around here: they were stripped down and used as fancy accessories by these puddings.
A few of the pudding slimes used helmets or shields but the general foes used long dead eye sockets to glare at them. One of the puddings lashed out with a tentacle and a sword emerged from the slime.
It sunk into Jeb slightly before getting stuck. The pudding yanked and pulled with frustration while Jeb looked down.
“Free sword!” he cheered and stomped the pudding, which made a lot of things scatter across the floor.
“At least he’s having fun,” Delta sighed.
“Better the one who can fix himself up than us,” Doctor agreed. The gargoyles were neatly avoiding the puddings as best they could as their flesh would be exposed to the burning muck while not in their stone form.
Harder than it looked when the puddings could slime up the walls and give chase.
Doctor lashed out. Under his flapping cloak came a series of flasks. The bubbling solution broke on contact and spread fire across a few of the puddings.
Jack cheered in support as the combined efforts of Doctor’s oddly poisonous fluids and Jack’s bad habit made firebombs. Delta was surprised to learn each goyle had their own weapon, as it were.
Gargoyles... were actually very cool once Delta explored into their biology and powers. It took some explanation on Nu’s part but the idea was that each Gargoyle was unique. Their soul was formed and poured into a statue.
Usually they were considered religious creatures by proxy. Ambient faith for whatever god or goddess or thing or toaster (Delta was sure Nu was joking about that last one) would gather in a temple or church over time.
That energy would eventually leak into the building itself. Hence that weirdly nice but unearthly feeling such places could get if they were old enough. The side effect was that things would become empowered.
The water, the food, the beds, the toilets, and even the mops.
It also meant such fixtures such as statues and water drainage on the roof that had been carved into angelic or demonic looking creatures would also get that power. And like in most good stories with statues and magic... they came to life.
Now the issue was that each tiny feature and defect of said statue shaped what a gargoyle could and could not do.
Delta had a feeling that if her monster template hadn’t screwed up and gone wonky, her gargoyles would have been uniform and exactly the same in terms of powers and weapons until she learned to control the process.
But since Delta had accidentally broke a few tiny... not important things somehow, her gargoyles were each wildly different.
Delta had to reassure herself that the whole defective template thing was no big deal. No big deal at all.
“As a Doctor... lying to yourself is unhealthy,” Doctor said airily and another couple puddings went up in flame, exploding with more loot.
“If it was that bad, Sis would have told me,” she argued.The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.
Doctor’s silence was heavy.
--
In a deep desert, a series of ten or so white gleaming towers stood, with sealed tunnels that arched up between the towers to connect them. The land around the towers was lush with a series of oases. Nearby, a bustling city of towers that tried to impersonate the white towers had been built.
It was connected to the towers with several roads and aqueducts and its people moved on with their lives, unaware of the being that controlled the towers screeching to herself.
Dejen stared down at the things before her. She was on her 70th floor. A very important floor. It ended with a zero! It was damn important, and this? This was not what she needed to deal with right now.
Her towers reached to the stars. The glowing white spires of beauty and treasure to lure in those from miles around. Dejen refused to bury herself into the dirt like some mole...
Many of her lower floors were occupied and facing threats.
She had spent a pretty amount of Rainbow Gems to make her bosses respawn within an hour... her lower floors were wonderful.
Lackluster and somewhat primitive in her early attempts but the sheer charm of them, her fumbles and success were a past... a story... and Dejen didn’t have the heart to change them. Her future was ever higher, and here she was climbing.
Her first monsters, after months of stockpiling and waiting to buy her new floor, the seventh tower rising by another 100 meters to show she had done just that. Her monster choice was new... exciting.
The Sister had always given her interesting choices. Sand scarred assassin clan... the Thunder Scorpions... or the Mimic Cacti.
“We need something more deadly than Sin Choir Dust,” Doctor responded to the scene in that same calm tone.
Delta, however, could feel his agitation on his tools being outdone. Delta looked around but the science scene in the hall was either being used as weapons by the slimes or turned to dust long ago. She was beginning to panic when Jeb belly flopped and black slime went everywhere. At his side was a meat cleaver, a tenderiser, and a large jug corked with a simple brown lid.
That cherry red jug sloshed with something familiar.
It was bad... but could it be that bad?
“Jeb! Give Doctor your Troll soup!” Delta yelled and the troll didn't even look as he chucked the container across the room. Doctor leapt and what was a jug for Jeb was a barrel for Doctor.
He slid a few feet back, gasping as he tried to slow down the projectile. He was now quite a bit away from the cauldron and he began to stomp forward. Delta yelled a warning , as if sensing something was up, the puddings began to gather around Doctor like a plague of locusts. They lashed out with tentacles and knives. The downside was that Doctor couldn’t progress and defended himself by turning to stone.
Vanguard was there like a vengeful angel. His weapons cleared a path forward which Doctor took without slowing down.
The panic in the slimes seem to rise and a few began to blob together into some horrid wave of trash and acid. Dragon responded by swooping down in a storm of fire. The light and the dark clashed, sending flaming bits of pudding everywhere but the hole left behind was used by Doctor to rush deeper.
The cauldron was working overtime, shaking and hissing as it spat out puddings like no tomorrow.
“You can do it!” Delta cheered. The oncoming wave was torn apart, squished, and blown away by Gnashly, Jeb, and Dozer. Doctor was so near that he burst into a sprint.
Delta felt Doctor’s mind go crazy, he never felt more alive. The moment of victory was near but at the last moment, a pudding that had no items and no weapons rose out of a crack and tripped Doctor. He face planted, almost breaking his beak mask right off. Delta cried out as Jeb’s brew bounced and rolled away.
The slimes didn’t touch it but made the path to the jug a nightmare of acid and bladed weapons.
“Damn it all. I’ll make them regret that,” Doctor hissed, his foot crushing the slime that had tripped him. The numbers flowing from the cauldron and the side rooms was staggering.
The air became fouler as the slimes gave off noxious fumes. Delta had little doubt a normal person would have their lungs scorched trying to breathe in here. The walls moved like water as the slimes ran out of room on the ground and began to claim the high ground.
This was... this was a nightmare.
And what was worse that they hadn’t breeched the inner sanctum of the lab yet. That cauldron kept spitting out more and Delta had a horrible feeling she had started it up like a long dormant auto-factory.
They would keep being produced and Delta wasn’t sure how she would begin to fix this.
Inside, she began to feel like a slime was crawling around her heart. It burned and every second felt like a dark morbid understanding that she might be in over her head here.
She opened her mouth... to say something? To call her friends back? To yell in frustration and fear?
She didn’t know. Delta wouldn’t be given the chance to find out as the jug rolled forward on it’s side like a barrel out of a comedy movie. Jack the Kobold on the top.
“Move it or lose it sisters! Remember me?! I FRIGGIN REMEMBER YOU! TODAY WILL BE THE DAY-” he hollered and screamed as the barrel crushed the slimes, the burning muck hiss on Jack’s feet as the jug spun around and around.
Nothing could stop him.
Jack let the jug fly over the edge, himself still on it.
“-THE DAY YOU ALMOST CAUGHT MAD BURNING JACK KOBOLD AND FRRRRIEEEENNNDS! ” he yelled with mad glee and the jug, the kobold, and several trapped slimes on the jug crashed into the cauldron, the cork on the jug flying off.
The thick brown liquid seeped into it and the cauldron began to give off a high keening noise. The Troll soup, Jack’s mad laugh, and the jug itself sank and the cauldron began to crack, dark light seeping out between the stone fissures.
“SHE’S GONNA BLOW!” Delta screamed. Her monsters ran as all the black puddings had gone stark still, shaking in time with the cauldron.
Jeb and Gnashly formed a trollish shield around the goyles as the cauldron gave one last shriek and the whole room shook.
Delta felt it ripple through her body.
Her whole Dungeon was shaking.
---
Seth paused as the trees and rocks shook fiercely for a moment. The Queen and her subjects became a noise of furious buzzing.
“Mother...” Inchy whispered. Renny took the bird and passed it to Seth.
“Renny! Where you going?” Seth called. The Mime didn’t answer, funnily enough.
“He’s going downstairs. Momma needs help,” Inchy said quietly. Seth looked at the bird.
“I could go?” he offered. Inchy looked up before shaking his little feathered head. He hopped to Seth’s shoulder.
“We gotta have faith. Renny is strong! And you gotta finish the tour! That was my job! To give you the tour,” Inchy said. The bird must have been worried because it didn’t even pun once.
Faith?
Seth felt the tremors stop and honestly knew he couldn’t offer faith. The best he could do was trust.
So he put on his best smile and let Inchy lead him onwards. His senses flickered... his mind being brushed gently by a stroke of magic.
An assurance... a promise. The hot smoky aftertaste told him that Quiss was already heading to check things out.
The concern and softness in the embers of Quiss’ magic would surprise most people but Seth knew the man had the deepest warmth for those he cared about.
Seth smiled, relaxing truly as he felt Quiss move on to follow Renny.
Between those two? Perhaps he could have a little faith.
---
Chapter 97:Bubbling to the SurfaceDelta watched with a hint of nervous energy as the door to the laboratory creaked closed behind them.The open hall with many tiny connected hallways was a surprising space compared to the Silence pit but Delta used Doctor's eyes to peer into the space. It was more like a dungeon in the most real sense. A place where people suffered, and that the sun never touched.Delta paused... wait, that still sounded like most Dungeons of this world. Well, this place was like places where prisoners were sent when castles were common. Stone walls and drafty floors with hay spread over it to soak up odd spills or maybe have the odd worker just collapse for a power nap.The hall itself was arched with statuesque pillars like twisted bone to hold the ceiling up above. The top of these pillars spread like roots. Delta had no idea if it was artistic or just how the material acted. It didn't look like normal stone. Too white.Her group moved forward. Gnashly and Jeb taking the lead. The hall was thankfully much more suited to their size. The gargoyles either used their shoulders as perches or like Dragon and Dozer, crawled along the ceiling, their stone claws making easy work and handholds of the fancy roots.Jack was keeping back, making sure nothing got out.Jeb stomped and the creatures that littered this place scattered.They were like thick viscous black puddings. Bones and items sunk and rose out of their bodies.It was like tiny swamps that had gotten bored and learned to move but... their bubbling slime made flesh erode and turn black on contact.Not that Jeb or Gnashly even noticed.Something Delta learned about Trolls in general was that their pain receptors never really... bothered to develop From an evolutionary perspective she guessed if the creature could just regenerate damage, pain wasn't needed to tell them to stop being idiots.Instead, evolution just made their skin thicker and walked away screaming in frustration at what she had just done.The slimes mostly used something as a face'. The common theme seemed to be skulls. Delta winced and guessed she knew what happened to the undead around here: they were stripped down and used as fancy accessories by these puddings.A few of the pudding slimes used helmets or shields but the general foes used long dead eye sockets to glare at them. One of the puddings lashed out with a tentacle and a sword emerged from the slime.It sunk into Jeb slightly before getting stuck. The pudding yanked and pulled with frustration while Jeb looked down.Free sword! he cheered and stomped the pudding, which made a lot of things scatter across the floor.At least he's having fun, Delta sighed.Better the one who can fix himself up than us, Doctor agreed. The gargoyles were neatly avoiding the puddings as best they could as their flesh would be exposed to the burning muck while not in their stone form.Harder than it looked when the puddings could slime up the walls and give chase.Doctor lashed out. Under his flapping cloak came a series of flasks. The bubbling solution broke on contact and spread fire across a few of the puddings.Jack cheered in support as the combined efforts of Doctor's oddly poisonous fluids and Jack's bad habit made firebombs. Delta was surprised to learn each goyle had their own weapon, as it were.Gargoyles... were actually very cool once Delta explored into their biology and powers. It took some explanation on Nu's part but the idea was that each Gargoyle was unique. Their soul was formed and poured into a statue.Usually they were considered religious creatures by proxy. Ambient faith for whatever god or goddess or thing or toaster Delta was sure Nu was joking about that last one would gather in a temple or church over time.That energy would eventually leak into the building itself. Hence that weirdly nice but unearthly feeling such places could get if they were old enough. The side effect was that things would become empowered.The water, the food, the beds, the toilets, and even the mops.It also meant such fixtures such as statues and water drainage on the roof that had been carved into angelic or demonic looking creatures would also get that power. And like in most good stories with statues and magic... they came to life.Now the issue was that each tiny feature and defect of said statue shaped what a gargoyle could and could not do.Delta had a feeling that if her monster template hadn't screwed up and gone wonky, her gargoyles would have been uniform and exactly the same in terms of powers and weapons until she learned to control the process.But since Delta had accidentally broke a few tiny... not important things somehow, her gargoyles were each wildly different.Delta had to reassure herself that the whole defective template thing was no big deal. No big deal at all.As a Doctor... lying to yourself is unhealthy, Doctor said airily and another couple puddings went up in flame, exploding with more loot.If it was that bad, Sis would have told me, she argued.The roots of this story extend from novell bin origin.Doctor's silence was heavy.--In a deep desert, a series of ten or so white gleaming towers stood, with sealed tunnels that arched up between the towers to connect them. The land around the towers was lush with a series of oases. Nearby, a bustling city of towers that tried to impersonate the white towers had been built.It was connected to the towers with several roads and aqueducts and its people moved on with their lives, unaware of the being that controlled the towers screeching to herself.Dejen stared down at the things before her. She was on her 70th floor. A very important floor. It ended with a zero! It was damn important, and this? This was not what she needed to deal with right now.Her towers reached to the stars. The glowing white spires of beauty and treasure to lure in those from miles around. Dejen refused to bury herself into the dirt like some mole...Many of her lower floors were occupied and facing threats.She had spent a pretty amount of Rainbow Gems to make her bosses respawn within an hour... her lower floors were wonderful.Lackluster and somewhat primitive in her early attempts but the sheer charm of them, her fumbles and success were a past... a story... and Dejen didn't have the heart to change them. Her future was ever higher, and here she was climbing.Her first monsters, after months of stockpiling and waiting to buy her new floor, the seventh tower rising by another 100 meters to show she had done just that. Her monster choice was new... exciting.The Sister had always given her interesting choices. Sand scarred assassin clan... the Thunder Scorpions... or the Mimic Cacti.We need something more deadly than Sin Choir Dust, Doctor responded to the scene in that same calm tone.Delta, however, could feel his agitation on his tools being outdone. Delta looked around but the science scene in the hall was either being used as weapons by the slimes or turned to dust long ago. She was beginning to panic when Jeb belly flopped and black slime went everywhere. At his side was a meat cleaver, a tenderiser, and a large jug corked with a simple brown lid.That cherry red jug sloshed with something familiar.It was bad... but could it be that bad?Jeb! Give Doctor your Troll soup! Delta yelled and the troll didn't even look as he chucked the container across the room. Doctor leapt and what was a jug for Jeb was a barrel for Doctor.He slid a few feet back, gasping as he tried to slow down the projectile. He was now quite a bit away from the cauldron and he began to stomp forward. Delta yelled a warning , as if sensing something was up, the puddings began to gather around Doctor like a plague of locusts. They lashed out with tentacles and knives. The downside was that Doctor couldn't progress and defended himself by turning to stone.Vanguard was there like a vengeful angel. His weapons cleared a path forward which Doctor took without slowing down.The panic in the slimes seem to rise and a few began to blob together into some horrid wave of trash and acid. Dragon responded by swooping down in a storm of fire. The light and the dark clashed, sending flaming bits of pudding everywhere but the hole left behind was used by Doctor to rush deeper.The cauldron was working overtime, shaking and hissing as it spat out puddings like no tomorrow.You can do it! Delta cheered. The oncoming wave was torn apart, squished, and blown away by Gnashly, Jeb, and Dozer. Doctor was so near that he burst into a sprint.Delta felt Doctor's mind go crazy, he never felt more alive. The moment of victory was near but at the last moment, a pudding that had no items and no weapons rose out of a crack and tripped Doctor. He face planted, almost breaking his beak mask right off. Delta cried out as Jeb's brew bounced and rolled away.The slimes didn't touch it but made the path to the jug a nightmare of acid and bladed weapons.Damn it all. I'll make them regret that, Doctor hissed, his foot crushing the slime that had tripped him. The numbers flowing from the cauldron and the side rooms was staggering.The air became fouler as the slimes gave off noxious fumes. Delta had little doubt a normal person would have their lungs scorched trying to breathe in here. The walls moved like water as the slimes ran out of room on the ground and began to claim the high ground.This was... this was a nightmare.And what was worse that they hadn't breeched the inner sanctum of the lab yet. That cauldron kept spitting out more and Delta had a horrible feeling she had started it up like a long dormant auto-factory.They would keep being produced and Delta wasn't sure how she would begin to fix this.Inside, she began to feel like a slime was crawling around her heart. It burned and every second felt like a dark morbid understanding that she might be in over her head here.She opened her mouth... to say something? To call her friends back? To yell in frustration and fear?She didn't know. Delta wouldn't be given the chance to find out as the jug rolled forward on it's side like a barrel out of a comedy movie. Jack the Kobold on the top.Move it or lose it sisters! Remember me?! I FRIGGIN REMEMBER YOU! TODAY WILL BE THE DAY- he hollered and screamed as the barrel crushed the slimes, the burning muck hiss on Jack's feet as the jug spun around and around.Nothing could stop him.Jack let the jug fly over the edge, himself still on it.-THE DAY YOU ALMOST CAUGHT MAD BURNING JACK KOBOLD AND FRRRRIEEEENNNDS! he yelled with mad glee and the jug, the kobold, and several trapped slimes on the jug crashed into the cauldron, the cork on the jug flying off.The thick brown liquid seeped into it and the cauldron began to give off a high keening noise. The Troll soup, Jack's mad laugh, and the jug itself sank and the cauldron began to crack, dark light seeping out between the stone fissures.SHE'S GONNA BLOW! Delta screamed. Her monsters ran as all the black puddings had gone stark still, shaking in time with the cauldron.Jeb and Gnashly formed a trollish shield around the goyles as the cauldron gave one last shriek and the whole room shook.Delta felt it ripple through her body.Her whole Dungeon was shaking.---Seth paused as the trees and rocks shook fiercely for a moment. The Queen and her subjects became a noise of furious buzzing.Mother... Inchy whispered. Renny took the bird and passed it to Seth.Renny! Where you going? Seth called. The Mime didn't answer, funnily enough.He's going downstairs. Momma needs help, Inchy said quietly. Seth looked at the bird.I could go? he offered. Inchy looked up before shaking his little feathered head. He hopped to Seth's shoulder.We gotta have faith. Renny is strong! And you gotta finish the tour! That was my job! To give you the tour, Inchy said. The bird must have been worried because it didn't even pun once.Faith?Seth felt the tremors stop and honestly knew he couldn't offer faith. The best he could do was trust.So he put on his best smile and let Inchy lead him onwards. His senses flickered... his mind being brushed gently by a stroke of magic.An assurance... a promise. The hot smoky aftertaste told him that Quiss was already heading to check things out.The concern and softness in the embers of Quiss' magic would surprise most people but Seth knew the man had the deepest warmth for those he cared about.Seth smiled, relaxing truly as he felt Quiss move on to follow Renny.Between those two? Perhaps he could have a little faith.---
