5.6

Aaron

The stone in Aaron's hands pulsed a dim green glow along the left edge. He turned himself until the pulsing glow happened along the edge perpendicular to himself, checked that his cloak and sand mask sat as they should, and walked away from the ridge where Lena had opened a temporary portal into the mana wastes.

Buttercup stopped fighting her barding and the mask covering her face when the winds stirring this part of the wastes reached her.

«Easy, girl. It shouldn't be too long,» Aaron told her over their private G.C.

She did not deign to reply.

Aaron had three spatial storage devices on his person, a bag filled with food and odd devices Candy had made, another bag holding material samples, and the last a ring filled with depleted dungeon crystal, shaped into a variety of mana stones, the better to soak up any ambient mana that might harm either Aaron or Buttercup before they finished the first stage of their task.

He hoped they did not need to use any of the mana stones before reaching the back door into the raging dungeon.

The stone acting as his guide grew brighter over the course of an hour's walk. Lena had warned that she made her temporary portal for him as close to the unmanaged dungeon's as possible, but that wasn't a guarantee that he would find it "close".

During that time, the winds grew in intensity, fog rising with disorienting lights flashing through the low clouds. Buttercup walked pressed against Aaron's right side, a low growl rumbling through her chest.

What felt like another hour passed as they walked into the winds and the fog, the stone guiding their way lighting up ever brighter. Odd tingles made the muscles in Aaron's hands shake. He heeded the warning that the Lotrot corporals gave their newer soldiers, and pulled one of the mana stones out of his spatial ring, using it to cast a mobile version of the shield spell the delvers often practiced.

A few more steps, Buttercup slinking through the sands between his legs, and their guide stone abruptly stopped shining. Instead, it strained against his grasp, pulling Aaron forward.

*** *** ***

You have entered Dungeon Zone [Whispering Trees].

*** *** ***

Buttercup surged from her slinking spot, her roar ear-splitting at this proximity, and smacked a pygmy naga into the ground. Aaron watched its spear go flying, and hoped that he would be quick enough as he altered his spell into the more defensive [Shield] the delver Rangers used.

One spear got caught in his shield, the tip centimeters from his shoulder, but the rest clattered to the floor.

Well, crap. Aaron didn't think he would get any deeper into the dungeon than this. He twisted the guide stone until it came apart along a nearly unnoticeable seam. Inside, an inert Zone Control Core lay, looking like a quartz sculpture of a pentagonal star wrapped in silver, copper, and gold.

"This better work," Aaron said, even as he pushed through his private G.C. to the core. «[Activate]!» he commanded.

Light flared in the core.

A small, snakelike body struck Aaron's shield.

*** *** ***

You hold the contract of the only Zone Control Core within this zone. No arbiter is present. Do you wish to become the Zone Arbiter of the Dungeon Zone [Whispering Trees]? Y/N

*** *** ***

«Yes,» Aaron said.

Light filled his every sense, the taste of green harmonizing with the melody of yellows and oranges, while soothing blues washed over his skin. Colors he had no names for rolled over him, lifting his soul out of his flesh.

And then there was peace.

Left behind, the new structure core for [Whispering Trees] began by contracting every creature born of the dungeon. As it went about its work, Buttercup stood guard over the prone form of her human.

*~*~*

Candy

"We should have heard from him by now," Brad said.

"Mm-hmm," Candy agreed, pushing her own worries to the side.

Lena's voice echoed from the walls. "He's rather busy at the moment. The storm that dungeon's kicking up in the mana wastes may be easing up a lot, but it is still going."

"But what if he's got mana poisoning?" Brad asked.

Candy watched as Feltz, strangely on his best behavior, shaped a golem on the work bench she had made for guests. He was too focused on the golem to not be paying them attention.

Lena said, "If he had mana poisoning, or had come to any harm, he would have already been recalled here for healing. Its part of his contract. His soul gem is healthy and active, and so is Buttercup's."

"But—" Brad began again.

Candy laid her hand on his near wing. "Easy. You weren't here when we helped Lena with linking up [Priesley's Folly]. That had three of us working every waking moment, with multiple floors and structural support cores ready to soak the extra mana, and it still took about a week to wrap up. Aaron's got one core and himself. Have a little faith."

Brad rubbed his head and sighed. "I'm worried."

"Me, too, but Aaron knows how to holler if he needs help." If she said that often enough, maybe Candy would believe it, too.

*~*~*

Aaron

Orderly. He liked that word. He liked that feeling better, he decided, absently adjusting soil here and strengthening a burrow there. Life filled him, with one life in particular standing out.

That life was the first one bound to him, and it was not pleased. This distressed him, so he focused his attention on the rope of mana linking them together.

Buttercup. That was her name. Feline. Dire cat. Elegant predator, playful, warm.

He … what was he, again? Aaron? Aaron, human. Traveler. He was Aaron, and he had a brother, Rob. And a dire cat friend. A friend who was not happy.

Aaron followed the mana rope to Buttercup and discovered her pacing back and forth beside a body. His body. Seeing the pale skin and the face reflected back at him in the mirror for the past twenty years cleared his mind.

«Buttercup?» he said first, testing if she could still hear him.

Her head whipped around, and she nosed the body on the ground beside her.

«?» She still had no language, but the emotions of her happiness and confusion at hearing from him came through their G.C. very easily.

He felt nothing, no sensation, when her poking at that body caused it to rock on the floor. He forced himself to get past the hair raising wrongness of it, and examined his human body.

It was still breathing.

*** *** ***

The body you are attempting to possess is incapable of handling all of the mana states a Zone Arbiter must handle. Your attempt at possession fails.

*** *** ***

«Well, how do I fix that?» Aaron snapped back at the Tapestry announcement.

*** *** ***

Zone Arbiters may form physical avatars so long as the avatar is both mobile and able to handle all states of mana.

*** *** ***

«Well, what do I have that can do that?» Aaron asked.

*** *** ***

No patterns meet search parameters.

*** *** ***

Oh, crap.

*~*~*

The diminutive nagas that had ambushed Aaron and Buttercup proved to be monstrous sapients, and the only creatures in the whole of the [Whispering Trees] dungeon with opposable thumbs. Aaron directed them to turn out the spatial bags he had brought along.

The food and many of the trinkets Candy had included fascinated the nagas, but their presence had no effect on the dungeon's ability to break down the patterns. He found that he already had most of the food patterns, but the trinkets gave him techniques. Unfortunately, none of them were telekinesis.

«Alrighty, guys, I want you to carry that body with you deeper into the dungeon, and the rock beside it, too,» he instructed the pygmies.

The largest of the naga grunted at the others, and they began laying their spears on the ground beside Aaron's human body. With effort, they leveraged the him-that-used-to-be onto the spears, then set the zone control core on top of Aaron's barely stirring chest, and used the spears as an impromptu stretcher.

When they reached an area that felt about right to Aaron, he stopped the procession and had the nagas back away. Buttercup took more convincing, but even she heeded him. Aaron got a firm image in his mind of what he wanted to happen, and the stone pillar he thought of surged out of the ground, only to suddenly stop growing as his surprise knocked the image out of his grasp.

That was trippy. And the feeling! How did Lena hand over the actual shaping of her dungeon to all of her auxiliary cores if the use of that power felt this right?

Wait. Wasn't he supposed to call Lena when he got to a certain point? What was that point again?

First, he was going to finish securing his body and zone core. This time prepared for the environment to react to his will, Aaron began by forming a crystal sphere around the top of his pillar. He made sure to leave room for air and mana to circulate through the crystal. For now, he wanted the crystal walls to resemble a rough sphere, lots of jagged pieces. When he was satisfied, he finished raising the pillar up into the pseudo sky of his dungeon.

Next, he called up the zone management screens.

*** *** ***

Zone Designation: Whispering Trees

Zone Arbiter Title: Arbiter

Zone Nature: Simple

MPP: 54788 / 62350

MPR: 9860

MPC: 9891

*** *** ***

The structural statistics for the dungeon didn't come in a nice menu format, but more like an innate understanding, the way Aaron in his body had known where his toes were, or been able to grasp his hands behind his head. [Whispering Trees] sprawled over 31 square kilometers, with hills and valleys and a stone sky embedded with light emitting crystals. Over 16,000 insect species, 3,000 animal species, and 4,000 plant species resided in his domain. Even as he took stock, the number of monster species declined below 1,000 as the new types of chimeras and mutations created in the high mana density of the out of control dungeon died off, too biologically unstable to survive without intervention.

Aaron spawned several more auxiliary zone control cores, slaving them to the master structure core Lena had given him. Distributed computing sounded like a good thing as the numbers snuck up on him, full of the names of each type of creature and plant he could summon with a whim.

Despite being out of his body, Aaron realized he had a headache when it eased with each of the new cores that came online. The pressure of the species names, and the hordes of individuals within each species, shifted from him to the new cores, and so he spawned more cores to better handle that pressure.

With that seen to, Aaron decided to get in touch with Lena. He reached for the link that had become second nature to him over the past months. «Hey, Lena?»

«Welcome, new Dungeon Master,» the dry voice of a computer golem greeted him. «Assessing development of your dungeon … Congratulations! Your dungeon is stable! Warning! Your mana pool is nearly full! Spend mana to reduce your pool! Recommended safe operating levels are between 25 and 60%.»

«Whatever. Put me through to Lena, please,» Aaron said, the "please" an automatic politeness driven into him by his father.

«Request not recognized.»

What the hell? Aaron's patience grew thin. Why wasn't Lena answering? Wasn't he still contracted — oh.

That was why. His contract had shifted from the Employee contract to the one they put together for the Dungeon Masters yet to come, and that changed the way he connected to Lena's Guardian Communication channels.

«Requesting access to communicate with Design Lead Lena Weston and Employee Candice Sterling.» Hopefully he remembered the format correctly.

«Identify dungeon and dungeon master,» the golem responded.

«[Whispering Trees], Aaron Felding.»

«Prior authorization recorded. Channel updating.»

Following that, Aaron had just enough time to register a pleasant sense of musical humming over the channel before Lena said, «Aaron! How are you doing? Are you okay? Do you need anything?»

«I'm … here. As for needing something, well, have you figured out how to get into a body yet?» he asked.

«… What happened?»

Aaron filled her in on what he knew. She kept silent for several moments afterward, the kind of silence that held deep concentration.

«Your body, your human body, is still breathing? And the Tapestry called your instinctive move to be in your body an attempt at possession?» she eventually asked, her words coming slow, deliberate.

«Yeah,» Aaron told her.

«That's a piece of the puzzle I hadn't gotten,» she admitted. «I think that might give me a new angle to try out. Otherwise, how are you doing?»

«Otherwise?» he asked, incredulous.

Lena's voice held a hard edge. «Otherwise. If I can suck it up cold then you can deal with becoming incorporeal with all the warning you got from living with me.» Her tone softened. «It sucks, Aaron. It sucks big, fat sour apples, but we can dwell on what we can't do anything about or we can focus on what we can do. Action is the only way I've been able to deal. So. How are you doing with the things I can help you with?»

Aaron realized he wanted to argue. He wanted someone to blame, and as convenient as it would be to blame Lena, it would not change the fact that she was right. He had been there, actively helping her look for a way to incorporate, and hearing from Lena the same restriction about using mana states that he had just gotten smacked with by the system.

He set his resentments aside to deal with later, and went through the state of his dungeon. Lena's questions helped him get a better idea of the state of his dungeon, like a doctor asking about seemingly unrelated things that none the less link up for a picture of overall health.

«Okay. You seem to be in a good position once you put up your safeguards for your core and your body. I think I'm going to have to go post World War II Japan here soon and kick out the guild reps who are trying to sneak controls into the DMs guild yet to be. On the bright side, we've gotten several more candidates that I'm comfortable with. I'll update them with your experiences, see if they're still interested. Candy's working on putting together a pattern exchange. Until then, patterns will have to be sent by courier in memory stones. Let's see … I think that's it on our side. Oh, and Candy's been very stoic for the past two weeks. You should probably talk with your girlfriend here soon.»

«Wait. Two weeks?» Aaron asked, his burst of resentment over being the guinea pig for installing hand picked dungeon masters smothered by the surprise at how long he had been out of things. The resentment had everything to do with his shock at how that had turned out, and a part of him knew that, and knew he had volunteered for it. Maybe Rob had been right about smart people don't volunteer?

«Yeah. Fifteen sunsets, to be more precise, and fifteen sunrises, too.»

«Crap! How's Rob taken it?»

«Better than Candy,» Lena opined. «But he's also been more vocal in his worry, too. The mana storm around your dungeon's back door entrance did start calming down within a day of your departure. The way it's been deescalating since is the only reason we've waited to send anyone to check on you. Oh, and you need to give your consent for Rob and Jason to contact you, too, same as you just did for me and Candy.»

«Right. On that. Talk later?» Aaron said, even as he reached for that computer golem.

«Sure,» Lena said, amusement in her voice as she let the connection fade.

As soon as the golem noted his request to speak with Rob and Jason, Rob's voice rang in his mind. «Dude! What's your state?»

«Chagrined. Was I really out of things for two weeks?» Aaron asked.

Rob's voice conveyed caution. «You don't know?»

«Nope. I lost my sense of self with all the work needed to get my dungeon in order.» Aaron decided against sharing his new disembodied state for the moment. «It took Buttercup's poking for me to even remember my name. I think … naw, I know Lena and me are going to need help staying grounded in the here and now. All of my senses are different, and, much as I disagree with how she handled things, I can get how Lena feels like the Studio is her body now. The walls, water, dirt, the plants and every contracted creature in [Whispering Trees] feels like an extension of me. With the creatures, it's a little weird, like my heart beat or my breathing, stuff that I can influence a lot, but not really stop. The structure feels more like my muscles and bones, only different. I don't know how to say it. How are you and Jace doing?»

Rob accepted the change of topic. For the moment. «Our guide says we're within a day of Port Sala, which is another of the Free Cities. Gorgons seem to have an interesting reputation, even if their gaze doesn't turn people to stone. We've gotten some strange looks for sparring with her.»

They spoke for a while longer, and all that time Aaron found himself getting distracted by the needs of his dungeon and the worry of how Candy would take, well, everything.

Rob finally released the G.C. Aaron gave himself a moment to psych himself up, and reached out for Candy.

«Hey,» she said, her voice determinedly neutral.

Oh, crap! Aaron thought. «You okay? This a bad time? I … got caught up in the same kind of building funk we went through, only … I'm sorry.»

«What do you have to be sorry for?» Candy asked, her voice even more dispassionate.

«Whatever has you sounding like that,» Aaron answered.

«But you are not at fault,» Candy answered, a touch of … irritation(?) coloring her words.

«Lena told me I've been out of it for two weeks. That's way too long to not even say hello. I mean, I didn't even realize it was more than a few minutes, but you still have every right to be upset at not hearing from me for that long.»

The impression of Candy blowing out a tightly held breath came over the G.C. «Again, you aren't at fault. Shit happens.»

«But you're upset and I want to do something to take that away. I don't want to cause you worry or grief, baby.»

Candy spoke before he could frame the words for his next thought. «Aaron, the only way that's going to happen is if I don't care about you. You want us to have a thing that's more than just friends then you have to get used to that. Hell, I'd still be upset if we were just friends! But I'm not upset at you! Unless you want me to be. I can go there if you keep trying to apologize for shit that isn't your fault.»

Aaron, wisely, took the clue-by-four and dropped that. «Yes, dear,» he said, pretending to be outrageously meek.

The feeling of Candy's laughter welcomed his reply before it turned into something more hesitant. Not neutral, though. «What happened? With taking over the dungeon?»

Aaron tried to give her the short version, but she stopped him.

«No, give me as many details as you can. Tell me the story of it,» she requested. Aaron could feel that she needed to engage her analytical side, so he set about giving her as expanded a long version as he could without embellishing anything. Candy could enjoy a good yarn only when she knew to expect braggadocio, distortions, and outright lies.

At the end of it, Candy asked, «Possession, huh? Are you able to pull up your body's [Status] separate from your dungeon self's?»

He tried it, but found that his status remained the same, down to listing his species as Human (Traveler). He had no [Status] screen for his human body.

«Can you make a human body and put a soul gem in it?» Candy asked when he shared his results.

«Nope, no pattern for humans or for soul gems,» he said. «I do have Aware racial patterns for Elves (Jungle) and Xyline (Feline), as well as Gorgons and Drakes.»

«Drakes? Why does that ring a bell? Are they dragon-like?» Candy asked.

Aaron shared his amusement. «Nope. They're duck people, much the same as cat-folk and bear-kin.»

«Okay, well, I'll pinch Lena to try this out, then. What's your dungeon look like?»

With that, Candy's voice brightened, and the worst of Aaron's worries lifted from his shoulders.

They talked until Candy grew tired, covering the things Aaron wanted to make with his dungeon and the projects Candy and Brad were working on. He felt more hopeful after saying good night.

*** *** ***

Zone Designation: Whispering Trees

Zone Arbiter Title: Arbiter

Zone Nature: Simple

MPP: 49887 / 62350

MPR: 9860

MPC: 9925

*** *** ***