Dungeons and Daggers

Rook dodged behind a grocer’s cart as an arrow whizzed by his ear. That was the closest one yet! He stood again and sprinted on, the guards chasing him immediately. FUCKFUCKFUCK! How had he not seen that the chest he’d tried to open bore the crest of the archduke? How had he not seen the guard turning the corner?

THUD!

Another arrow hit the side of a market stall. People screamed and began to panic. The chaos would normally have provided him a chance to escape, but the archduke’s guards didn’t care about random paupers dying. A woman cried out briefly before her body collapsed to the dirty road.

Thalathorn was merely a small market town, but Rook knew it well. The archduke’s men spent most of their time in the capital city. That was the one advantage he had.

He sprinted from the marketplace and down a narrow alley. It led to the edge of town, and the woodlands beyond. Hopefully, he could lose his pursuers there.

The next arrow caught him as he broke from the street. It nicked his cheek. Blood burned across his face as Rook dove towards the nearest tree. He knew this area. Magic had twisted the woodlands near Thalathorn. Their paths wound in untraceable ways. Animals and plants grew deformed and dangerous. Even the landscape could change with the weather. With luck the archduke’s guards wouldn’t follow him here.

It was luck he didn’t have.

Bushes grabbed at him as he ran past, their twigs and branches clawing at his clothing like talons. A weed twisted on the ground ahead of him, gripping his ankle as he sprinted past. Rook crashed to the forest floor, pain lancing through his arms as he tried to cushion his fall. He could hear the guards getting closer now. Hounds howled and bayed their eagerness for blood. He drew his sword and slashed at the thick plant trying to hold him down.

A moment later he was up and running again, blood seeping from cuts and scratches. He glanced back as the sounds of the dogs got louder. The ground before him fell away. He slipped. Tumbled. Head over heels, he rolled down the hill. Dizziness and nausea flooded his mind as he plummeted into a hole. A second later he hit the ground hard.

Somewhere high above him, the dogs were still hunting him. Their angry sounds barely penetrated the painful fog that passed for his conscious thoughts. His mind fixated on how pretty the sun looked through the canopy of the giant trees stretching to the sky. A butterfly landed on his nose before taking off again. He followed it with his eyes, smiling as it settled on the wall of the cliff he’d fallen from.

Everything had a calm, ethereal feel to it. Well, everything except his body. Rook decided he’d really appreciate it if that would stop hurting. His back, legs and arms protested that his eyes and feet should have been paying more attention. The soft dirt beneath him didn’t seem to have lessened the impact of the fall much either. The pain in his limbs was nothing compared to the pounding in his head, though. Maybe if he lay still for a while his body would forgive him.

These weren’t normal thoughts. He should be afraid. Yet the chase seemed as relevant to him as the meal he’d eaten two days ago. It was firmly in the past and no longer important. Surely if they’d seen him fall they’d ignore him and if they found evidence of it they’d assume the worst.

Somewhere nearby, he heard a strange noise. Rook listened hard. There it was again: metal on rock. He turned his head and saw a cave in the cliff face. It was slightly taller than a man and largely hidden by the undergrowth. If nothing else, it might offer him shelter and a place to hide for a while. Besides, he was curious as to what the sound was.

Slowly, regretting every movement, Rook pushed himself to his feet. Nothing seemed broken. His legs worked, even if they only just complied with his demand to stay upright. His arms and hands worked too. They protested viciously every time he used them, but at least he could do so. He studied himself closely. His already ragged tunic and cloak had been torn in his tumble. Beneath he saw scrapes and grazes. There was blood, but much less than he expected. Wiping it away with filthy hands, he realized he wasn’t truly hurt. Or at least, nothing seemed actually broken. He’d survived worse before.

The throbbing in his head increased as he pulled a hand through his matted black hair. It came away wet and he realized he’d underestimated the impact of the fall. Blood from the back of the head was bad. He wasn’t a healer but even he knew that.

Darkness tried to enclose him as he staggered towards the cave, sword in hand in case he had to fight. Not that he felt capable of that right then.

The cave itself was cold and dry. The ache in his joints began to subside as soon as he set foot within. Rook belonged here; he could feel it. It was a strange sensation of well-being, one he’d never experienced before. He reached for his head to check how bad the bleeding was. It was drying already.

The sound came again, clearer this time in the stillness of the cave. It was the clink of chain scraping stone. He gripped his sword and stepped onwards.

“Please, m-master. I’m sorry.”

As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw an elf kneeling next to the cave wall. A thick iron chain led from the rocks to a sturdy collar around her neck. He’d seen elves before, of course. They were common in the capital, though a little less so in the country towns where he survived. They were beautiful, quick, and very smart. Maybe not more intelligent than humans, but they certainly had ways with magic most humans didn’t. This one was different though. Her eyes were red, her hair shocking white, and her skin… her skin was dark charcoal grey, close to absolute blackness.

And she was naked.

He could make out blood and bruises on her body in the eerie twilight of the cave. Some injuries were new, one or two still wet with blood. Then there were faded bruises and old scars. They marked her body with clear signs of years of abuse.

“P-please don’t h-hurt me, m-master…” she pleaded.

The elf raised her hands towards him as if to placate him. She pressed her body tight against the rock face behind her.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Rook said.

She looked at his sword, fearful skepticism lining her pretty face. He slid it into its scabbard and showed her his empty hands.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“L-L-Lupa, Master,” she said.

He’d heard that word before, though he struggled to place it. It wasn’t a name. It was an epithet. He remembered the arrogant snarl on the face of the baroness as she struck down an elf who had been trying to seduce her. He’d never known what it meant, but seeing this naked, bound woman before him he could guess it was disgusting.

“No,” he said. “Your name.”

“Lupa, Master.”

“That’s not a…”

Rook stopped himself. It was pointless arguing with her; she was adamant about the fact that Lupa was her name. Whoever had hurt her also seemed to have destroyed her identity, or at least made it too frightening to use her actual name.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” he asked, changing tack. “I’m not a master of anything, let alone yours.”

“Y-you’re a dungeon maker, Master.”

“A what?”

“A dungeon maker, Master.”

Her brows knitted as she stared at him.

“I’m don’t know what you mean, but I’m just Rook. And I’ve never made a dungeon in my life. I’ve escaped a couple!”

She shrugged.

“You’re a dungeon maker, Master. It’s why you found this entrance.”

“Entrance?” Rook looked around the cave. It was small. Even in the semi-darkness he could see the back wall. This was a mere hole in the cliff; it didn’t lead anywhere.

“To the dungeon, Master.”

He looked at her, trying to work out what she was talking about. Could she see what he couldn’t? She was an elf, after all, even if a strange one. He turned and tried to survey the cave more carefully. When he focused, he did feel a difference. It wasn’t a dungeon, or even a passage. No, it was all rock and dirt, but there was potential. He felt an itch behind his eyeballs. Nothing was there, but something COULD be.

“Lupa…” he tasted the word as he used it, hating the sourness of its implication. “What IS a dungeon? I know the archduke has one beneath his castle in the capital, but that’s not what you mean, is it?”

“I don’t know, Master—”

He raised his hand to stop her. “Rook.”

She paused. “I… I don’t know, Master Rook—”

“Just Rook. Go on.”

“Just… Rook?”

“Yes.”

“But you are a dungeon maker.”

“Call me Rook,” he repeated.

“Umm… all right. I don’t know. I’ve never been to a place called ‘The Capital’. My mistress has a dungeon beneath her keep, but that’s for prisoners. It’s not her real dungeon. That’s under the riverbank.”

Rook thought hard. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d come across a word meaning two different things, but he still didn’t understand what she was talking about. He tried to study the cave again, to see if he could work out what he was sensing, but all he could feel was the possibility that things could be different, as if the earth itself was inviting him to reform it. Words appeared in his mind, clear as if they were written in front of him.

Level gained: Awareness level 1.

You now have a basic passive awareness of unseen aspects of people, places and things.

“AARGH!” he screamed as they faded again.

“Master?”

“What was that?”

“What was what, Master?”

She’d gone right back to that title.

“I’m not your Master,” he said. “It’s Rook.”

“I’m sorry, Master Rook.”

“No ‘master’, just my name. Please. I saw a message about gaining level 1 awareness. Then it went away.”

“Level 1, M— Rook?” She seemed uncertain. “That can’t be right. Even a goblin has level 1. A Master should be at least 100.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

As he looked at her, deep in thought, he saw words again.

Lupa. Level 1 drow. Magical poverty.

“It happened again!” he said. “This time it was you. It said something about a level 1 drow…?”

“Yes.”

Rook waited for her to expand on that, but no explanation came. He rubbed his eyes, sighing deeply. They were from two different worlds. Not simply different social circles. He could work with that. He’d always prided himself on his adaptability. He had even charmed his way into one of the baroness’s balls several months ago. No. The difference between what he knew and what Lupa knew had far less overlap than a noble and a vagrant thief. Worse, she expected him to already know everything.

“Lupa,” he said. “I don’t understand anything that’s going on. You say I’m a master, a dungeon maker, but I have never even heard of that. I’ve lived my whole life as a thief, a cutpurse. You’re going to have to help me understand.”

“You don’t know anything?”

“No. For instance, what is a drow? What is level 1? What is magical poverty?”

She shifted uneasily, rattling her chain. He reached for the pack of lockpicks at his belt and stepped forward. She flinched as he drew near, staring at his sword.

“It okay, Lupa. I’m not going to harm you, just get rid of that collar. I’m not leaving you fastened to a damn cave wall any longer.”

He knelt beside her and examined the lock. It seemed simple enough, the kind of single tumbler mechanical lock people used for the most inconsequential of their possessions. He took hold of her neck to keep her still and felt her trembling beneath his fingers.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Lupa,” he said. “I want to take this off. That’s all.”

“Why?”

“Because you should never have been collared in the first place.”

“But… that was my Mistress’s right.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

His fingers turned and twisted the pick inside the keyhole. It only took a moment for him to open the lock. The collar clattered to the ground.

Level gained: Lockpicking level 10

You now find simple locks trivial to pick. More complex locks may still cause problems.

“It happened again!” he said. “It said I gained a lockpicking skill.”

Lupa nodded. “Well, you did free me, Master.”

“Rook.”

“Rook, sorry. Surely you’ve seen levels before? Everyone has them.”

“They do? That’s news to me. How come I’ve never heard of them before?”

“I don’t know, Rook,” she said. “Unless… You said you gained awareness level 1, right?”

He nodded.

“Can it be? Don’t humans normally have awareness? Do you not see things the way minions and dungeon makers do?”

“I guess not. Okay, so skills have levels, but it said you’re a level 1 drow. What does that mean?”

“I’m only a simple drow girl,” she said. “When my Mistress summoned me she should have got one of my more powerful sisters, but she got me instead. That’s why she hated me. I’m useless.”

She looked down at the ground. Her cheeks darkened further to pitch black. Rook thought about that and assumed she was blushing, that that was the equivalent of a reddening. He lifted her jaw with one finger to make her look at him, but she averted her eyes. He let go, not wanting to upset her.

“You’re not useless, Lupa. Nobody is. And nobody should have beaten you either.”

“Why not, Rook? I’m a slave.”

“A slave?”

“Yes.” She gave him an incredulous look again. “You know, like any dungeon minion. Whether you’re a goblin or a dragon, you’re a slave to your Master.”

He was beginning to hate these so-called dungeon makers, even before he really knew much about them. Nothing excused making someone else a slave. Even the archduke wouldn’t do that. Unless, of course, he was a dungeon maker too and did it privately.

“Not anymore,” he said. “Look, your Mistress abandoned you, right? So she gave you up. And I found you. So doesn’t that mean I own you?”

Lupa thought for a moment before speaking. “I think so, Master. She left me here a couple of hours ago. She’s never done that before.”

“Not Master,” he said. “Never Master. My name’s Rook and if I own you then I set you free. You can leave any time you want, though I’d really like it if you’d stay and help me understand things.”

“Free? What is free?”

Different worlds indeed, he thought.

“Free means nobody owns you anymore. You own yourself. You get to decide what you want to do.”

“But why would you do that?”

“Because slavery’s wrong.”

“It’s natural.”

The words twisted in his gut. Anger and hatred burned in him for a world that would make someone believe that.

“Not to me, and if I’m a dungeon maker, then not in my dungeon… if I ever make one.”

He got that look from her again and felt like an infant trying to understand an adult conversation.

“But your dungeon is right here, Rook. You just have to build it.”

“How is it here if I have to build it?”

“You sensed it. Beyond that wall. That area belongs to you, but you have to make the rooms and the tunnels. Well, you have to tell your minions to make them from your designs.”

“I don’t have any minions,” Rook said, wondering how complex this whole thing was going to be.

“Oh,” said Lupa. “Well, I could help you. I know ‘dig.’”

“Dig? You mean you know how to use a shovel?”

“No, Rook. The spell. It’s a level 1 earth spell. When you recruit some goblins, they can dig naturally with their claws, but I use magic.”

“Wait,” he said, remembering the information he gained on her. “It said you’re magically impoverished.”

She bowed her head and paused. When she spoke again her voice sounded weak, ashamed. “Yes. Drow are normally really powerful, but I only know ‘dig.’”

Something was gnawing at his mind, a thought that hadn’t settled yet. The iron chain caught his attention.

“Wait, if you can dig, why didn’t you free yourself?”

She heaved her shoulders in an emphatic shrug. “Nobody told me to. Besides, you can’t cast spells when you’re touched by iron.”

“Nobody told you to? Lupa! You’d been left here to die. At least, I assume so from the way you were chained up. What were you going to do, starve?”

“Umm… yes?”

“NO! Lupa, you can’t do that. That’s crazy!”

“Sorry, Rook.”

“You’re not the one who should be sorry,” he said. “But I promise you that your old Mistress will be if I ever have anything to say about it.”

Rook was feeling much better. His head felt fine. The various scrapes on his limbs and torso had disappeared too. Perhaps even more peculiar, his clothes, long since gone ragged with continual wear, were stitching themselves together. It was strange. He’d been feeling better since he reached the cave. Every step deeper within made him stronger.

He stood and made his way over to the rear wall where the sense of the unknown had affected him the most. Even in that movement, he felt his strength returning. Laying his hands against the rock, he felt for what lay beyond. There was nothing. Somehow, he could feel that the dirt and bedrock went all the way back under the town itself.

Level gained: Awareness level 2.

You can now sense important locations within your own dungeon area, though you will not know what they are until you reach them.

“Whoa!”

He stepped back as a wave of pressure hit him. It wasn’t coming from within himself, but from the earth of his supposed dungeon. He could sense several areas, spread out across what must be hundreds of acres. Most seemed to be long and thick smears, but there were some bright points too. One, fairly close, felt more insistent than all the others put together.

“What is it, Rook?” asked Lupa.

He jerked, startled by her voice from beside him. He hadn’t even heard her stand.

“You scared me,” he said, laughing nervously.

“I’m sorry. You seemed to be focused and I didn’t want to interrupt. What happened?”

“I got more awareness and suddenly I could feel areas ahead of us… strange points of pressure and shades of light and dark. Energy, I guess. Some kind of force, anyway.”

She nodded. “Yes, they’ll be other possible entrances, gold and mana crystal seams.”

“Gold? There’s gold in there?”

“Yes, some.”

“Can you dig it out?”

“No, dig is only good for dirt and some kinds of rock. You’ll need goblins or dark dwarves for mining.”

This was getting too complicated, and that meant getting the treasure would have to wait. He still had some coins in his pouch.

“There was one place that felt really intense, more important than anywhere else. What was that?”

”It’s your hearth.”

“My what?”

“Your hearth,” she said. “You know. The place of your dungeon most tied to you.”

She paused and looked at him.

“It’s close, isn’t it?” she said. “I can tell because all your wounds are gone, and you look taller, stronger.”

“That’s a thing?”

She tittered, as if he were a foolish child. “Of course, Rook. It’s your spiritual home, your heart, your soul. As long as it stands, it will heal you.”

Rook felt dizzy, overwhelmed. He pressed his arms against the cave wall, leaning on them for balance. This was all too much to take in. How long had this been open to him? And why the hell hadn’t he found it sooner? There’d been a number of times in his life this would have been useful, he remembered sourly. The time the guard lionesses of the Church of Passionflame had savaged him, for instance. He’d almost died that day.

He turned to look at her once more, her form barely more than a silhouette in the near darkness. One thing was clear, though: she was still naked.

“Where are your clothes?” he asked.

“Clothes? I’m a minion, a slave. Why would I have clothes?”

He hung his head. Of course. It couldn’t be that her Mistress had allowed her any form of dignity at all, could it? She’d been turned into a slave, given a name that was an insult, and kept nude. He took off his cloak quickly and handed it over to her.

“Put this on,” he said. “At least it will let you cover yourself.”

She grasped the garment, but kept it at arm’s length.

“Do I have to, Rook?”

He sighed. He’d worn the same clothes for a month or more, changing only when he managed to steal replacements. Even though he bathed in the river when he could, he had to admit both he and his clothing were rank. It was one of the many costs of living on the streets. Maybe, if what she’d said about this place was true, they could dig out some kind of washing room or pool.

“I’m sorry it stinks,” he said. “I’ll head back to Thalathorn and steal a dress for you, but for now, yes. That’s all I can offer.”

“If you insist, Master,” she said.

That again. “Rook, Lupa. I’m not your master.”

“But you’re forcing me to wear clothes.”

“What?”

He grasped her by the shoulder and held her steady as he stared at her.

“What do you mean, forcing you? Everyone wears clothes. It’s NORMAL. It’s what you do.”

“Not for a minion,” she said.

She was looking away from him again, as if afraid to meet his gaze even when they could barely see each other. He let go of her quickly, not wanting to upset her.

She seemed to want to be naked. The very thought of being dressed appeared to revolt her. This was crazy, but that had been true of almost everything she’d said about herself. Rook considered the conversation carefully. He’d been trying to treat her the same as he would anyone else, but he had to accept that he’d never met anyone like her before. She was... a minion? He settled on the easier word, refusing to accept that she was a slave.

“You don’t want to wear anything, do you?”

“No… why would I?”

He’d been doing it wrong. He’d been forcing his assumptions on her, not asking her about her reality. It seemed almost nothing he’d learned from living in the normal world was relevant down here. Not for her and, going by what happened to his wounds and his clothes, not for him either.

Wounds.

That was the other thing.

His were recovering, but Lupa was still injured.

“Why isn’t the dungeon healing you, Lupa? Does it only do that to me?”

“No, Rook,” she said. “Your minions benefit from being close to the dungeon hearth too.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m not your minion. You set me free. I guess I might be able to heal in my Mistress’s, but probably not since she abandoned me. I’m not really hers either.”

“But it doesn’t just work on me; it works on my clothes too!”

“Yes, Rook. It’s your dungeon. It fixes what belongs to you. I don’t.”

“You’re telling me that you’d be healed if you were my slave, but not now because I don’t own you?”

“Well, yes. What’s wrong, Rook? You don’t seem to be understanding any of this.”

That question was too limited. Everything about this was wrong. Some of it was morally obscene, some of it didn’t make sense. At least, not according to what he’d seen before.

There had to be a way to make the dungeon look after Lupa too, without making her his slave. Surely.

“What if you’re my worker, but not my slave?”

“Worker? What does that mean?”

She wouldn’t know, would she? Not if she’d been a slave in a dungeon all her life. How long even was that? She said her mistress had summoned her, but did that mean she’d been brought here from somewhere else, that she was created by magic, or something else? He had no way of knowing.

“Well, it’s similar to a slave in a sense. I tell you what to do and you do it, but I pay you. You can refuse or leave any time you want.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

She wouldn’t, he realized. If all she knew was slavery, then no relationship he could bring from his world would fit into the one she knew any more than hers made sense to him. No, he needed to think about this differently.

“Okay,” he said at last. “How about this? I make you my minion, my slave, but there are special rules. You can let me know if I tell you to do things that you don’t want to do. And you advise me about things I don’t understand or don’t see. Oh, and if you ever want to leave you tell me and I’ll let you go.”

“You’re being strange, Rook,” she said timidly. “I wouldn’t want to do any of that."

“But would it WORK?” he asked. “Would that be enough?”

“I think so. I’d still be your minion.”

“Okay, then that’s what we’ll do. I take you as my minion,” he announced, hoping whatever magic was at work here would accept that statement as a formal claiming and mark her as belonging to him. “Now, I need a break. I’m going to head to the Wayside Tavern and see if I can get something for us to eat and drink. I’m gonna have to be careful, so I might be a while. Can you maybe dig a path to that hearth place you mentioned? I think it’s about a hundred yards ahead, then twenty left. That’s where I felt the biggest spike in my awareness.”

“I can do that, Rook,” she said. “And thank you. I already feel better.”

When Rook returns he will discover Lupa has found a special treasure for him that will help him with his dungeon. I'm opening a vote for the type it is to you (all of these will come into play over time)...

1 vote · Closes Oct 14, 2026, 11:34 AM (6 days from now)

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