There was a brief debate about what their next course of action should be, but in the end, all four heroes knew that it was in their best interests to give the Keeper as little extra time to prepare his, her, or its defenses as they could manage. Gabriel's detection spell had been their only means of finding gates without first digging up the entire area, and with that magic apparently on the fritz and not even a rumor of a portal existing on the marsh - so Harald assured them - there was no real point in wasting time with a search when they could just break into the dungeon the old-fashioned way instead.
Deferring to the superior mining experience of their dwarven colleague, Kol, the heroes fell back about a quarter-mile from the outer edge of the contaminated area before breaking out the enchanted dwarven picks that Mercy had supplied them with. Even in the hands of an unskilled laborer, the things ate through dirt and loose stone like rats through cheese, and they had the very convenient secondary feature of teleporting away the debris they produced, so that their wielders could focus purely on digging. Working in shifts, the tersely-spoken dwarf estimated that they'd reach dungeon depth within two days, and the complex itself a few hours after that. Gabriel suggested asking the locals for help, to speed up the digging, but he was quickly voted down by his allies.
"The second we break through, we're in a potential battlefield," Aron said between swings of his pick, "and that's no place for a bunch of peasants who've never even seen a proper weapon before."
"Besides," Lynn added, "if they did some of the work, they'd probably expect a cut of the loot, too. I don't know about you guys, but I don't like the idea of risking my life just so somebody else can come along and claim the gold without shedding a drop of their own blood."
Kol grunted his agreement.
"Charity is a virtue," Gabriel reminded his allies.
"Gonna give 'em your share, then, preacher man?"
"Er, well... I do have tithes to meet, you understand..."
Lynn smirked. "Sure we do."
"Less talking," Kol said shortly. "More digging."
As it happened, the heroic quartet's mercenary ambitions were badly misplaced, for the meagre handful of coins in their pouches - the remnants of their advance payment from Mercy - represented more gold than could be found in Mercury's entire dungeon complex.
Being broke was a very rare situation for a Dungeon Keeper, and usually a very fatal one, for gold was the literal lifeblood of a Keeper's underworld empire. Quite aside from its mundane uses in paying minions, funding research, and bribing weak-willed enemies, the precious metal's mystical properties made it an ideal catalyst for the alchemical reactions within a Dungeon Heart, out of which a Keeper's entire domain was born. It took several hundred coins' worth of gold to produce even the simplest of a Dungeon Heart's pre-templated chambers, and without that wealth, a Keeper could do little more than create Imps, claim empty territory, and pray to the Dark Gods that he went undiscovered by anything stronger than a giant fly.
At least, this was what the copy of Dungeon Hearts for Dummies sitting on the Mercury Computer's harddrive had claimed. Ami had discovered that the truth, at least with regards to her Heart, was a bit more complicated.
Much like their dwarvencrafted counterparts, the magical picks wielded by Imps had the helpful property of teleporting the loose earth they excavated away from the digging site, while causing most metals (precious or merely useful) within that given mass to coalesce into conveniently-sized chunks of ore. While only the dwarves knew what became of the material their mining tools dismissed in this manner, the Imps' picks were linked directly to the Dungeon Heart that created them, "feeding" it a steady supply of dirt and whatever other matter they happened to be wielded against. Once within the artifact, that matter was broken down into its basic chemical elements, which were separated out from one another and either stored away or immediately reassembled into whatever new compounds the Keeper required. The same process occurred when the mixed-metal ores were introduced to the Heart for processing, and sooner or later, everything a Dungeon Heart consumed was put to work in the dungeon it maintained.
After several days of monitoring her Heart and conducting small-scale experiments at conjuring matter, Mercury was quite certain that the artifact could, in fact, operate entirely without gold - it would simply be grossly inefficient, requiring on the order of ten times as much mana as normal.
Fortunately for Mercury, mana was the one thing she had in abundance - that, and water - so her lack of gold was not an insurmountable obstacle. She just had to be careful.
During her first day as a Keeper, Mercury addressed her basic need for shelter by having the Dungeon Heart create what its pre-programmed building templates identified as a "Keeper's Sanctum." This chamber took the form of study-slash-bedroom with attached bath and water closet, appointed with furnishings and upholstery that looked as though they'd been fashioned by the hands of master craftsmen, despite having been reprocessed from long-rotted plants and animal carcasses. With the Sanctum established and water available in endless supply, Mercury dealt with her food requirements by creating a Hatchery, which her computer claimed was a chamber where a neutral organic "feed" produced by the Heart was ingested by chicken-shaped magical constructs, which after a time - about three days - became organic enough to be used as a food source for truly living creatures.
Instead of room full of chickens, the Dungeon Heart created a pool of fish.
This was the latest - and most obvious - in a series of clues telling Mercury that there were consequences to using her powerfully water-aspected mana to conjure things from the Dungeon Heart, beyond everything looking like it was made of ice and snow. When she tried later that week to create a Hatchery using only the mana that her Dungeon Heart was absorbing from her claimed territory, she got the default chicken coop - which she kept, welcoming the addition of chicken and eggs to her limited menu. (Mercury also made a mental note to look into the possibility of creating a greenhouse, a hydroponic garden, or at least a mushroom farm at a later date, for some added, non-carnivorous dietary variety.)
The only other types of dungeon chambers Mercury was currently able to build were Lairs, Treasuries, Libraries, and Training Rooms. She'd built one of each, but with the exception of the Library, it was mostly for the sheer novelty of having them; without gold, she couldn't have afforded to hire any minions, even if she'd managed to find and claim one of the Underworld portals through which the creatures traveled to answer a Keeper's call for servants.
In all honesty, Mercury wasn't sure if she wanted to find one of the gateways. An Idiot's Guide to Dungeon Keeping - now available in her Library in paperback form, along with copies of every other book or text file she'd ever read, and transcripts of quite a few other things besides - had provided a list of typical dungeon minions, and it read like a who's who and what's that of the kind of creatures the Senshi were supposed to hunt down and dust. Undead Skeletons, power-mad Warlocks, assorted demons, vampires - Mercury could scarcely imagine having to work with such entities, and she doubted they'd be thrilled about signing on with a Keeper that didn't serve any of their Dark Gods. Recruiting help from the Overworld, though the more palatable choice to her sensibilities, was likely to prove just as awkward on ideological grounds, and even if she could find beings on either side willing to work for her, claiming a portal would present a hole in her defenses, through which those beings uninclined to support her could enter her domain largely at will.
No, Mercury had decided that, before she considered hiring any help, she needed to more fully explore what the combination of a Dungeon Heart and her Senshi powers allowed her to do, and to find a way to secure a portal against unwanted intrusions - or at least to make the latter very difficult and expensive for those involved. Both options required research and experimentation, which meant that she'd been splitting her waking hours between the Library, the Training Room, and some of the otherwise empty chambers dug out by her Imps - now two-score strong. The combination of intense academic research and physical activity served another useful purpose, keeping Ami busy enough by day to avoid thinking about how lonely she was, and tired enough at night to sleep without dreaming of home, her mother, and her friends.
Sometimes, at least. At other times... well, by the fourth day of her isolation, Ami had been forced to admit that there was no point in talking to her Imps, apart from giving orders. While they were significantly smarter than their predecessors, that intelligence was mechanical, geared towards the use of tools and the performance of their duties; trying to carry on a conversation with one was about as productive as discussing quantum physics with a two-year-old. On the eighth day, Ami was shocked to realize that she'd been toying with the idea of thawing out the Horned Reaper, just for the sake of having someone around she could talk to.
"At this rate," she mused aloud, "I wonder how I'll react when someone finally tries to invade the dungeon."
"We're in!"
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(Posted Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:28)
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