DUNGEON FILE 002:
"FATE'S GOT A SENSE OF HUMOR"
I thought once more of Mendell, that terrible cold indifference, just as satisfied to kill me in the end than not.
Perhaps I had wanted this, and I'm sure I deserved it, but the tender gravity of death and pain had only dawned on me in these final moments.
The world tilted; This would be my second death!
But then, I felt the ground beneath me give way, not in the manner I anticipated. My back should have broken. My ribs should have split open like a fruit on jagged stone, but the world had other plans.
With a soft, sick squelch, I landed. I stared down, half-terrified to confirm what I thought I had felt, and saw that I had landed on a bed of thin, white flowers, their delicate petals crushed under my weight.
A marsh. A field of half-flooded petals nestled in waterlogged grass and sponge-like soil. The delicate blooms were squeezed out beneath me, their white petals dimming half-submerged in the muddy murk as the weight of my aching body pressed into them.
The mud had worked its way into the folds of my gown as well, dampening the material and pulling it down with the force of my landing. The dress clung to my skin as the moisture of the bog squeezed out from beneath me, coating my back and legs in mud, the cotton fabric now heavy and soiled.
However, I hardly had time to process this when an arrogant laugh echoed above me. Upon hearing that grating thing, the fact that I had not died did not bring the relief I might have imagined.
"You truly believed you would die, didn't you?" Mendell cackled. He landed beside where I lay with an effortless roll, dusting himself off like this was all part of his plan.
Well yes, he must have known this marsh was here, that bastard.
"I do hope that disappointment does not weigh too heavily on you. You will experience plenty of death in due time."
"Nothing about this is at all amusing!"
"You're fine," he muttered, barely sparing a glance.
I was only able to gape at him. "You pushed me off a cliff!"
"And you're fine," he repeated as if that excused everything.
"You—what—why?! What is wrong with you?!"
He held up a hand, silencing me. "Plenty, but that is not the point. As you said before, you'd be dead if I wanted you dead. But I do not wish for it, so stop whining. It was merely a lesson so you would learn not to take things for granted, an effective one at that. Come on."
I had no choice but to follow Mendell, who had already turned away from me, moving forward without hesitation, and more than once I felt myself slipping as I struggled to maintain my balance on the waterlogged grasses and jagged rocks.
Of course I understood there was a certain 'kindness' in Mendell's attempt in trying to make light of terrible things, enough to prevent me from panicking over this situation for a second or third time.
I still didn't find it amusing.
I didn't understand his intentions behind the 'good deed', much less if he was good at all. For a split second, under the sarcasm, I thought I saw... something else. Recognition? No, couldn't be. Why would this asshole know anything about me?
Maybe he thought he was being helpful in some twisted, knightly fashion. Or maybe he just enjoyed making people suffer in manageable doses. Honestly, it was hard to tell.
Part of me wanted to figure this whole "curse" shit all out slowly. Gently. At my own pace, even if it was technically ungrateful of me to wish that it might have happened without his help…
After dragging myself out of the muck, I pressed on, my soaked gown clinging to every inch of me like a shroud.
The marsh gave way to unfamiliar terrain—It was more like a muddy, flat rocky expanse of what looked to me like tide pools now. The air was damp and cool, with a faint smell of salt and brine.
As we continued walking, the terrain began to slope downwards, and the tide pools became more numerous and larger in size. Hundreds of them, massive, spanning across the entire floor of the ravine. Suddenly, a flash of light in my vision:
[THE SUNKEN RAVINE]
LOW RISK
—Huh?
The Sunken Ravine? So that's what this region of the Dungeon must be called. It was a [Mark]ing spell. A territorial declaration burned directly into my field of vision: arcane, archaic, and unmistakably real.
Ancient explorers once used these (long before order on the Continent was formalized) to name wild, uncharted regions. Carving the land's identity into the air itself, so that any wanderer would know where they stood. It was cleaner than a map, and more permanent than a wooden sign.
In a way, it makes sense: What kind of sign would hold up in this sort of environment? The letters could fade, the wood might rot, and only Gods know if they even have wood down here. It is pleasant to know there is some semblance of order here, in their own archaic way.
Strange, though.
Who had cast this one?
I'm surprised someone has taken the time to [Mark] and name the places in this Dungeon.
As the we rounded a bend in the path, something glinted in the distance. Half-submerged in a pool of brackish water stood a creature unlike anything I had ever seen back above.
A nautilus-like beast, about three feet tall, curled in on itself at the center of the shallow pool. Two dark eyes twisted out from stalks nestled among scores of tentacles extruding from a hard shell.
The shell itself was a dense spiraling carapace of iridescent colors that shifted like oil on water—pale blues, greens, and purples shimmering in the light.
"...Is that something I should be worried about?" I inquired.
Mendell barely glanced at it. "Lustrous Nautilus. You should ignore it, the [Essence] drop is so low they're practically worthless. You'd get far more farming descenders in the cells."
"Farming? You really must stop talking about killing people so casually! And you keep saying such weird things and not elaborating. I only intended to know if that 'Lustrous Nautilus' would attack if we got too close, that's all!"
He waved a hand. "Oh, I don't know. I reckon it would."
"That's hardly helpful!!"
"I mean, if you trip and fall into its pool, I suppose we'll find out."
"Then maybe slow down?! I'm literally slipping on every other step!"
He didn't slow down. If anything, the bastard picked up his pace. "Would you prefer I carry you? I could throw you over my shoulder like a sack of grain. I expect it would be more dignified than watching you stumble about."
"A sack of grain!?"
"Perhaps like a pail of water, if you find that a more apt comparison."
"I believe I can suddenly walk just fine…"
Despite my indignation, I couldn't help but feel a strange warmth creep into my chest. If I were to be honest, standing at the edge of the cliff earlier, I had truly believed that death would be my escape. I wanted it. I embraced it. But I didn't die. And worse... I realized I didn't want to.
Even now, stripped of dignity, soaked in rot, forced to keep up with a sociopathic man-child with a superiority complex, I found myself living. Against my will, yes—but undeniably alive. What was there left to desire, after all, if even the end was denied to me?
Pain would not absolve me, and surrender would not release me.
There was only the terrible obligation of continuing.
And while I hesitated to give Mendell any credit—for anything ever—it was undeniable that being hurled off a cliff granted me a kind of clarity. A terrifying, muddy clarity. I'm hesitant to show gratefulness for it. He's still terrible, after all, and has managed to accomplish nothing other than to make me greatly uncomfortable.
Even so, perhaps it wouldn't kill me to perhaps offer some thanks…
"Mendell, I—"
"You might wanna move."
"...Huh?"
CRACK.
A sound like cracking bone echoed through the ravine. I turned—And stared into the spiraling, ink-ringed maw of the Lustrous Nautilus. Tentacles flared out wildly like barbed whips.
I stepped back from the thing instinctively, but my boot slipped on the slick stone of the rock pool. A tendril shot out from the beast's shell, striking the wall beside me with a thunderous smack and stirring up the dust and debris.
"Back! Get back!" I shrieked at the thing.
It didn't listen, of course.
The creature's tentacles lashed out again, one slamming into the ground beside me with enough force to make the stone tremble. Another struck the wall, narrowly missing. Its massive maw within the tentacles gaped, a tendril-like tongue slithering out from the center of the shell's opening with a wet sound.
This was it.
My actual second death!
For real this time!
But then a silver bolt flew through the air, striking the creature's shell with a deafening thwack. It screeched, recoiling into the shallow pool and flailing its tentacles fiercely at the blow. Another bolt followed, this time piercing its underbelly. The nautilus faltered, though it was still yet to fall. A final bolt struck the beast, this time pinning it to the wall like a grotesque butterfly of sludge. Its limbs spasmed once… then fell still.
"Oh my Gods, the sheer terror of it all! I almost broke a sweat rescuing you from...that," Mendell broke out into a giggle.
I blinked at the now-oozing corpse of the Lustrous Nautilus. "In my defense," I managed, trying to sound even a little dignified, "my skills lie in… other fields. Why would I know anything about something so... so unladylike as fighting?"
"Hm." Mendell tilted his head. "Unladylike, huh? Ahh... I'd nearly forgotten how rigid and traditional the Obsidian Empire is with gender roles and who-does-what. You poor thing. I'm certain you've never even held a sword."
"Huh? Rigid?! That isn't it at all! Men and women serve differently, but no role is considered lesser. And that order has worked quite well for us. For centuries, even."
"It hasn't served you well even more than a step outside of it. I wouldn't consider fighting skills 'unladylike' at all, honestly! You'd be surprised at how many women here could beat my ass… Far more than I would like to admit, actually…"
A woman, capable of besting someone like Mendell?
I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to imagine the scene: some towering, muscular woman slamming Mendell face-first into the mud like a sack of maize while he flailed in vain.
I failed.
To me, a woman's talent was best used in noble, civil pursuits—matters of trade, household management, textiles, and governance. Our domain was no less demanding than the battlefield. This idea that a woman must be made like a man to be considered strong is absurd.
I had studied the art of debate, the histories of kings and courts, the weaving of tapestries and even the delicate intricacies of estate accounting. I could balance a budget to within five cacao beans.
Was that not enough?
Well... perhaps knowing how to stab something in the face might have come in handy at this exact moment.
"Fine," I relented, exhaling sharply. "I suppose I can see why, in a terrible and barbaric cesspool such as this Dungeon, women might be forced to pick up a sword now and then. But surely that's not the case elsewhere. Tell me, Mendell—where are you from? No civilized kingdom I've heard of trains their noble daughters like a warrior."
Mendell stared at me as if I'd grown a second head. "I'm going to ignore the layer cake of assumptions in that statement," he muttered half-heartedly, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"Hmph."
"Alright… It doesn't much matter where I came from," he continues. "I was born in the Silver Country, but, it's rather irrelevant. I traveled across many places on the Continent, and I did spend a considerable amount of my life on the topworld in the Obsidian Empire. I believe that makes me qualified to give my opinions on its society enough."
"Really? You've been to my home country? What did you think of it?"
Mendell tilted his head, suddenly seeming… genuinely uncomfortable. "Well, it's not my favorite…"
"What? But it's so wonderful!"
"...Tch. It's the place where I was executed for the first time, as a child. Your government is the reason I ended up here."
Oh.
For a moment, the conversation had been so pleasant, I nearly forgot Mendell (and everyone else who could be here…) had been thrown into this dreadful pit for a reason.
And whatever sin had brought him to the gallows... it had been deemed awful enough to justify tossing his corpse into the Great Well.
I couldn't even begin to fathom what Mendell had done to earn that fate, considering how remorseless he is now. It must have been something truly heartless.
He spoke of his 'death' and time down here with a weariness that felt older than he looked. But there was also this strange undercurrent, like he was measuring time against... something else. Something specific he wasn't saying.
I glanced at him. For just a heartbeat, the moment after mentioning the fact he died, he looked almost... ashamed?
"I see," I cleared my throat and looked away. "About that. Just what did you do to get killed, exactly?"
"Oh, please. Didn't you hear me say I was a child? What could I have possibly done?" he scoffed, waving a hand as if brushing off an old tale. "The Obsidian Empire is amongst the most lax countries on the Continent when it comes to condemning people to the Great Well. I could have sneezed wrong and been labeled contagious—off to the Well with me! Who knows? Frankly, it's all quite a fucked system in the first place."
"It matters quite a lot, actually! Even a child, no—especially a child—Must have done something truly heartless to have been sent to be executed. Even if they were as lax as you say, I certainly don't believe our rulers were carelessly killing off children without reason! They're protected in our country!"
Mendell narrowed his eyes, his smile cold.
"Oh? And yet you, Lady Noble, likely amongst the most protected in that Kingdom, are down here with me. Funny how that works."
I narrowed my eyes in turn at the comment,
"They even branded you," he continued, tapping his finger against the mark on my upper back—the Mark of the Snake. "You must've done something far worse than I did. Or would you rather believe the Empire is perfectly just, except in your case?"
His mention of my humiliating mark caused me to squirm.
"Don't look at that!"
"Now who's being shady here?"
"Hmph!"
He knows about that Mark of the Snake stuff? How embarrassing… Not to mention it was weirdly specific knowledge for someone supposedly executed years ago.
"Hmph. If you truly believed that my people are so bad, then why have you saved me?" I muttered, barely able to keep the tremble from my voice. "Twice, no less. If I'm so unworthy… why bother?"
"Please just be grateful you're not suffering what the other people in my cells go through. Isn't that enough? I'd highly recommend you stop pushing that before I change my mind."
He was right again, in a way.
I was alive. Breathing. Thinking. Complaining, even.
Gratitude is a venom of its own, you know. A parasite that eats away at your pride. I didn't want to feel grateful to a man I couldn't trust. A man who admitted—smiling no less—to being a "Hunter" of humans. But here I was, owing him more than I could repay. I would have actually quite wished Mendell stopped doing such confusing good deeds.
I shouldn't trust him, nor anyone, according to all the logic I've learned about this place and him in the past ten minutes, and therefore I wouldn't. As the Obsidian saying went, "A mind that accepts everything believes nothing", after all.
It's not that I was afraid of death anymore; There was nothing it could take from me that it had not already the day I was condemned. I was terrified of the men who reveled in it. For what purpose Mendell would do what he does was something I couldn't imagine. Perhaps being in this place for long enough does something terrible to the soul, rotting it, turning men into monsters with pretty armor and silver tongues.
"So how long exactly have you been down here?" I asked, the words leaving my mouth before I realized how invasive they might sound.
Mendell glanced at me, his gaze sharpening. "A good question. I'd have to remember the specifics… Let's see…" He began tapping his fingers on the nearby stone ledge, counting silently. "I was executed around the 38th day of the Spring season. Now that would make me… 30 years old. Thus I've been in the Dungeon for 16 years now. How interesting, now that you've brought it up! It does feel like a lot longer, in a way…"
"How interesting… And—"
"—Wait. Step aside, if you would, Aya," he abruptly asked.
I looked aside, and realized I had been standing next to the splayed form of the Lustrous Nautilus splattered across the wall. I swear that thing was still moving, somehow.
"Yes, my apologies," I replied and acted in accordance, though I was certainly confused. What did he intend to do with that disgusting thing?
It was clearly quite dead.
Mendell's movements were practicedly swift as he approached the corpse of the beast. Although dead, the nautilus writhed in pain, tentacles snapping wildly from muscle memory, but he approached apathetically nonetheless, not at all put off by the sight.
He drew his estoc, the blade gleaming under the dim light, and crouched to the fallen shell's level on the cave wall. With rapidly precise slashes of his estoc, he sliced through the nautilus's tentacles and threw them into a sack on the side of his armor.
The creature's muscles writhed and threshed but it couldn't retaliate in a meaningful way. Moments later, it fell still at last, black blood pooling around it from the cracked shell before dissolving into a misty substance and wafting into the air. Mendell stood over the creature, wiping his sword's blade clean of blood.
He didn't look towards me as he spoke again, his tone still curt and unchanged:
"The Lustrous Nautilus's [Essence] is mine, by the way. I killed it, after all, even if it's not much—So don't expect me to share any, even if you need it."
I frowned. "[Essence]? You've mentioned that quite a few times now, and I still don't get what the deal with it is…"
He suddenly turned, hands still deep in the beast guts, and gave me that same baffled stare as before, the same as when I asked him where he was from. "...Oh, you… You're serious then? All your life above, and you've never… What, you've never even leveled your skills? Literally anything related to the [System]? My, I knew women in the Obsidian Empire were sheltered, but I had no clue it was that bad…!"
"Sheltered? Is this like another fighting thing, and you're being judgemental because I've said there's no need for people like me to learn anything about combat again? If so, it's a rather unhelpful comment!"
"It's not…" Mendell sighed and rolled his eyes, as if he were explaining the simplest thing ever. I'm sure it was in his mind. "It's not just a fighting thing, no. Take a look at the Lustrous Nautilus." The cracked shell had been spewing inky black mist into the ravine air for some time, which Mendell had his face nauseatingly close to.
"Ew…"
"This is life [Essence]. You have it in your body, as do all living things. You got to see it when the curse healed your wound from grabbing my sword's blade, too. When you kill anything, you absorb its [Essence] to exchange it for power and skill later on via the world's [System]."
"I see… It's that gross black stuff," I repeated, gesturing at the fallen nautilus uncomfortably. "Is it… is it like a currency?"
"You could call it that, in a way. [Essence] is the currency for skills of this world in general, sure. It is earned through killing to level up and become stronger. The stronger the creature, the more [Essence] it yields… Did you truly never learn this on the topworld?"
"No! Noble ladies don't need to kill things! Is it really so surprising I don't care for violence? Power gained in such a way, if you must take another life, well… That's deplorable!"
"I should probably tell you…" Mendell's expression suddenly tilted to become more sly. "Humans, not just beasts, can be killed for their [Essence], as well. And they have quite a lot compared to mere Dungeon beasts! So simple to take care of, too. Particularly the fresh ones who don't know any better, much like yourself! If you're ever in need, I could show you around the rest of the cells…"
My heart suddenly churned within my chest, eyes wide in realization. "You asshole!" I bristled. "That's why you take people's bodies to those cells? So you can kill them and inhale that disgusting stuff? And you intended to do that to me?"
"That's kind of what being a Hunter means, yes… If someone calls themselves a Hunter, like myself, it simply means we have no qualms about killing humans as opposed to those to restrict themselves to only beasts." He nodded his head with confidence.
"When people die in the Dungeon, their bodies dissolve into [Essence], of course. But as opposed to the topworld, the Dungeon's curse ensures their bodies make a full recovery after mending the damage back together. Which means they can be killed for [Essence] again upon fully waking up. And again, and again, and—"
"You're a real piece of shit, you know that? I knew there was something wrong with you! How could you do that, inflict so much pain on people and ensuring they have no escape for your own gain?"
"Oh come on. Pain is incidental. Morality is an affectation of the topworld. It holds no weight in a place where death is meaningless."
"Death is never meaningless. Pain is never meaningless!" I exhaled sharply.
A life should not be spent like fuel, I think to myself in horror, consumed and discarded when nothing remains.
And yet, this is apparently what men have been doing all the time on the topworld, and I cannot even escape it down here. What kind of fucked up [System] is this?
Now I feel that as 'sheltered' as I may have been, my education in life at least taught me this much: The justifications are endless and the same everywhere. War, industry, all these endless thirsts for power, all poor excuses as to why terrible men can think of themselves as right.
In every case, however, the truth is simpler—some have decided that others are less than human, and so they are treated as such. I looked at Mendell now with indifference, taking him for what he told me he was: a cutthroat opportunist.
I nearly had the urge then and there to run and go away, and have nothing more to do with anyone who had pride in naming themselves a 'Hunter', and their cruel apathy.
There is something profoundly inhuman about treating people like livestock, slaughtering them over and over for one's own ends, something I fear greatly…
"You stand here, condemning me, but you know well enough that the moment you turn away, you will be swallowed by something worse. Something that does not even grant you the decency of an explanation before tearing you apart."
I narrowed my eyes. "That isn't an excuse for what you do."
"Perhaps it isn't," he shrugged. "It's not a choice I relish, unlike some, but it's… It's the hand I've been dealt. Aya, at least have faith to follow me to this one final place; Go wherever the hell you want afterwards, but I assure you that if you stay in the Sunken Ravine, you'll be here quite a while." Mendell watched me, waiting, neither pressing nor dissuading me from whatever conclusion I would reach.
He had no need to. The choice had already been made for me by the nature of this place.
I despised the notion of owing him anything. I despised the thought of needing him; Yet my circumstances did not allow for pride. I could leave him, wander aimlessly, and inevitably fall into the hands of another who would see me as nothing more than a resource to be harvested—
If he wanted me to have such a fate, he could have easily done so a thousand times over by this point.
Or I could remain, endure his contemptible nature, and learn how to navigate this wretched world in which I had found myself.
"Do I have a choice?"
"Ayauhcihuatl… You're already trapped here, and I'm not the one imprisoning you. There's nowhere to go but down, quite literally."
"You're full of shit," I spat, trying to regain some semblance of control, but Mendell just gave me a wry smile. "If the Topworld could somehow know people were alive down here… My father, or the Emperor, anyone, don't you think they'd do something? There are literally holes to the surface in the ceiling of the ravine. I mean, it must be possible, someone could climb up—"
Mendell gave me a look as if I'd just told a terrible joke.
"Good luck with that. Truly, you should go ahead and try! What do you believe will happen when you singlehandedly climb 10,000 meters and leave the boundaries of the curse, which is the only thing holding your rotten body from becoming a mound of putrid flesh again? You'd die instantly, or at best, maybe your remaining sludge of a body would hopefully fall back in to give you a second chance."
"That's not what I—…! Pft. I get it. Fine," I muttered, looking away. "But you can't say it's impossible. I'll figure something out myself, and there has to be a way to alert the Topworld about everything down here! And just... don't talk to me so harshly like that again."
I meant what I had said. There must be something, a protection spell, a counter, a way to send out a message…
"I'll follow you," I continued, my voice steady despite the knot in my throat. "But don't mistake this for trust! I know what you are, and I won't forget it."
"Fair enough," Mendell said, turning on his heel, small smile forced back upon his face instantaneously. It seemed he wanted to say something else, but that sadness stayed only in his eyes. "Try to keep up, then."
I turned toward the endless cliffsides of the ravine and stared into it. A bottomless maw. My grave. My cradle.
"No," I whispered to the ravine as we passed. "No, you don't get to keep me."
I spat into the abyss. Mendell stared pitifully towards me.
"You hear me, Gods? Kingdoms? Bastards? You don't get to keep me! You can brand me, bury me, tear out my voice, but I will climb with broken legs and raw hands, and I will reach the surface!"
I yelled again, breathless. "I'll go home."
Of course, I knew there was no home. They took it from me. Still, I clung to the lie:
If there is a surface, I will reach it.
If there are laws, I will defeat them.
If there is a curse, I will break it.
If there are Gods who created this [System],
I will spit in their faces too!