Jake began to focus on the girl’s breathing. Feeling the air going in and out of her chest. He could see her breathing, he just attempted to follow it with his mind. In and out. The girl kept petting Baxter and listening for the men outside. She was smart enough to realize that just because they said they were leaving, didn’t mean that they actually were.

Just like when he’d first done this with Baxter, he started to feel the air rushing into her lungs, passing through the trachea, filing the bronchi, the bronchioles, even feeling the air filling the alveoli, oxygenating the blood, feeling the blood circulation throughout her body, the blood oxygen exchange with the cells. After a while, he felt something else besides blood moving through the girl, a shimmer and as he noticed it, he thought ‘so that’s her mana’, but then let the thought go, waiting for something else. After a while, he noticed gold energy too that was circulating through the girl. Unlike the mana which seemed focused more in the chest and head, this energy pooled in her belly, down below her belly button. Of course, then he got a notification:

A little pervy, but Ok, if that’s what it takes. Experience gained.

Ability Gained

Qi Sense

Elemental Sphere: All

Range: Within dungeon bounds

Damage: na

Cool Down: na

Duration: Permanent

Ability to sense Qi. Qi appears as a golden fluid or gas. Despite Qi abilities having elemental affinities, Qi is. It does not take on elemental attributes. Qi comes from a universal source, fills the dantian and meridians of Qi practitioners and when released through abilities, returns to the source in an endless and everlasting cycle. Qi practitioners renew this source with every breath they take. Every living thing has a Qi reservoir and pathways. Only Qi practitioners can use them.

‘Thanks Bobs,’ Jake thought. ‘Especially for the pervy comment … and breaking my concentration, ‘cause now I get to start all over.’

The girl looked up at the mouth of the tunnel and seemed ready to start to leave.

“Baxter, growl!” Jake said. “And look out the tunnel!”

Baxter growled and then pointed his head toward the tunnel’s mouth.

“What’s up, boy?” the girl said. “Can you see anything? What’s got you upset?” She settled back down and began petting Baxter again.

“Good job, boy!” Jake said.

Baxter’s eyes lidded and he seemed about to fall asleep, “Good fingers!”

Jake smiled at his dog’s easy acceptance of the girl and then began focusing on her breathing again. It happened quicker this time. He focused and followed her breath. He found and dismissed both the mana and the Qi pools in the girl from his mind. Instead, he concentrated on the glabella point in the girl. For some reason, he remembered the region between the eyebrows and above the nose’s name. He even remembered that the Chinese acupoint that resided there, the Yin Tang point. Supposedly it corresponded to the “third eye.” Jake wasn’t sure how, but he needed the girl to see him, to be able to communicate with him. He focused there, trying to break through, trying to communicate with the young woman. He thought that any spot known as the third eye had to have some power.

He pressed against the spot with all his might. Not using mana or Qi, just pure intention.

The girl blinked several times, then scratched at the region, running her index finger over her eyebrows and stroking the bridge of her nose.

Jake thought, ‘Almost, she must almost be sensing something.”

The girl shivered and drew Baxter closer to her. “Is it cold in here to you, boy? Hmm?” she said.

Jake powered on, not sure what he was doing, but trying to communicate with her. ‘Girl! Girl! Listen to me! Girl!’ he kept saying and thinking, focusing on the point of the girl’s forehead.

The girl shivered again.

“Girl, Girl! Listen! Girl!” Jake said again and again. It almost had become a chant.

The girl began blinking rapidly. Her eyes began to tear and she murmured to the dog, “I don’t feel so well, Baxter. I’ve got a headache now!”

“Jake hurt? Hurt friend?” asked Baxter.

Jake didn’t respond. He could sense that he was almost penetrating some kind of barrier that separated the two of them, girl and dungeon. He really focused on the spot, focused on breaking through. He was mentally shouting, “Girl Listen.”

“Jake hurt? Stop!” asked Baxter and then barked. The bark was full-sized, not a little dachshund-sized bark, but a Baxter-sized bark.

The girl screamed a little, looked in surprise at the dog and heard a voice yelling “Girl Listen” all at the same time.

“What?” she yelled.

And Jake got a notification.

Well, we’ll be damned. Not really. But Surprise! Surprise! Surprise. Experience gained.

Ability Gained

Dungeon Bond

Elemental Sphere: All

Range: Permenant

Damage: na

Cool Down: na

Duration: Permanent

Ability to form a dungeon bond with a willing participant. Dungeon bonds are formed between a dungeon and a sapient being. There are many levels to the bonds and the bond’s strength varies with the level of the bond.

“Hello,” said Jake.

The girl shot back against the wall with an audible thunk and looked at Baxter terrified.

“No,” Jake said. “I’m not the dog. And I do not wish to harm you!”

“Who is this?” asked the girl. “Who is in my head?”

“Be calm,” said Jake, trying on his best yoga instructor voice. “I am not the dog, I do not wish to harm you. I am Jake.”

“Jake?” asked the girl.

“Yes, that is my name. What’s yours?” Although he already knew it, he figured that it’d keep the conversation going. Plus it would be a little weird if he knew her name already.

“Hildi” she answered. “Hildi Brown. Wait, wait, Jake? The voice in my head is named Jake?”

Jake was thinking that this conversation could be going better. It hadn’t completely gone off the rails yet, but it looked like it might be headed that way.”

“Yes,” answered Jake after a pause, unsure about what else to say.

“And you’re not the dog?” asked Hildi.

“No,” said Jake. “Do you want me to have the dog bark while I talk to you?”

“Uh, what would that prove?” asked Hildi.

It had been a while since Jake had talked to a woman. The last one that he’d talked to was the barista of the coffee shop on Sunday morning when he was ordering his typical “Double double with a shot of Expresso.” That conversation had gone Ok. He’d come to the counter, said his order, she’d smiled, said, “Hi Jake.” He’d responded appropriately with, “Hi Chrissie,” that being the name she wore on her name tag. He’d also been coming here for a couple of years and knew her. Then he’d paid and left to the corner of the shop where he’d started reading the Sunday Times.

There were no problems. Words said, transaction completed. His point was that he didn’t think he had a problem communicating with women. He was less sure of that now. He decided to start again.

“Be calm,” said Jake, again with his best yoga instructor voice. “I am not the dog, I do not wish to harm you. I am Jake.”

“You’ve said that,” she helpfully pointed out.

“Yes,” said Baxter. “You said.”

“I’m Jake,” he said after a few moments of silence.

“Yes, I’m aware,” she said. “The voice in my head is Jake.”

There was a pause and then she added, “and you’re not either the dog or going to harm me.”

Jake thought about this for a second, then said, “Yes.”

There was another pause then. Then the girl said to Baxter. “You’re Baxter, not Jake.”

Baxter smiled one of his canine grins and then rolled over and offered her his belly to be scratched.

“Ok,” she said. “Good that you’re not Jake. Because I’m not sure I’m ready to scratch the belly of a dog I’m talking too.” And with that, she started to scratch Baxter on his belly. This went on for a few minutes, the girl scratching the dog, Jake watching the girl and the dog. Finally, the girl looked up and said, “So, Jake, not the dog… what are you? Where are you?”

Jake had to think about that for a while. He didn’t want to scare her, but dungeons really didn’t have a good reputation. He tried to ameliorate the reputation by saying, “I’m a collection of rooms, I guess.”

“So, you’re Mighty Max’s then? Somehow, the building came alive?” she asked.

“Well, I’m not Mighty Max,” Jake said. His mother had always stressed that when talking to a girl you had to begin like you wanted to continue. He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t mind temporizing a little bit.

“So, you’re not this building, but you’re some other building. Maybe the sheds outside?” she asked.

“Well, no,” he said. At this point he didn’t know what to say, so he said, “I’m actually underneath here.”

“So, you’re a collection of rooms underground, is that it?” she asked.

“Pretty much,” Jake said.

“A dungeon then?” she asked.

“I guess, well maybe?” Jake said. “The Bobs said so.”

“Who are the Bobs?” she asked.

“They are the ones behind the menus. You get the blue menu’s don’t you?” Jake asked. He was glad that he didn’t have his old human body at this point because he would have been sweating up a storm.

“I just got some blue screens that said ‘Welcome to the Apocalypse’ and then said that they were making a bunch of changes and yadda yadda. Billy, my little brother, was freaking out, my mom and dad were somewhere in either Puerto Rico or the Bahamas on vacation, so I just closed them and kind of tried to maintain for my bro. It sounds like I missed some stuff. Like talking rooms. And,” she looked down at Baxter and said, “suspiciously friendly dogs!”

“Don’t worry about him,” Jake said. “He’s really that friendly. At least if you’re not a monster. But yeah, you’ve missed some shit! And so did I. By the way, did you have a sister that graduated in 2014?”

“Yes, my older sister Pattie. She’s graduated from Santa Clara this year. She is, well, I guess was, interning in San Francisco right now. She called and said she’d try to make it home. But that’s over 1700 miles. I haven’t heard from her since. Or my parents.”

“I thought I recognized the hair. Ok, this is probably going to freak you out, but well, I dated her,” said Jake.

“What?” said Hildi.

“Yea, we went out for a while.”

“How does a room date my sister?” Hildi asked.

“Obviously, I wasn’t always a room!” Jake said. “I mean a dungeon. I was a man. I lived here, went to Sand Springs High School. My name is Jake Silvestre.”

“Oh my god!” said Hildi. “You were a jerk to my sister.”

Jake thought back, winced, and had to admit he had kind of been a jerk to Pattie. “Admitted,” he said. “I was a little bit full of myself back then.”

“You know she cried and was depressed for months after you dumped her?” Hildi said.

“I know. I was wrong. I’m sorry.” Jake said.

The girl started looking at the tunnel’s mouth as if she might want to chance what was out there rather than stay talking to him. “Look, I meant it when I said I was sorry,” Jake said. “First girl at Princeton dumped me so hard, I almost broke. After that, I changed. I did. And I’m sorry for what I did to your sister. If she were here, I’d tell her that. I’d even try to make it up to her.”

There followed a long quiet spell. Jake quit talking trying to give her some space to deal with the situation she was in. He didn’t want to push her out into the arms of the men who were probably waiting for her outside. While he was waiting, he studied the tunnel. It was not as smooth as the corridors he’d made. It looked worked like clay that had been molded by big hands. The tunnel was made out of reddish sandstone. There were also little bits of stone and rock in Baxter’s tunnels. He didn’t remove all of the stone when he dug it out. The edges and the sides of the tunnel were slightly blackened as if burnt. The light from Baxter’s collar formed a yellow blue pool around the crouching girl and dog.

Finally, Hildi said, “How’d you wind up here?”

“I died,” said Jake.

“Oh my god,” said Hildi. “Really? Bright white lights? The whole bit?”

“Well, I woke up in an office with a god named Bob telling me I could be recycled or become, well, what I am now,” said Jake.

“And Baxter?” she asked.

“He was in the office too. According to Bob, we’re karmically bound or something,” Jake answered.

She reached over and started petting Baxter, scratching his belly, but then had a thought and jerked back her hand, “Baxter was a dog, before, right?”

Jake laughed and said, “Pet freely, he was a dog!”

“Oh, thank god,” Hildi said. “For an instant, I thought I might be scratching some frat boy’s belly!” Again silence settled in but it was a more companionable silence. The dog scooted on his back closer to the girl’s magic fingers, his dachshund legs waving in the air. She laughed at the sight of the little dog’s wiggling path closer to her. Jake did too. Even Baxter seemed to have a grin on his face. “So, what else is in here?” she finally asked.

“The tunnel you’re in winds about a bit, but stops in a corridor about 20 meters below you. The corridor runs pretty much straight east and west and has a bunch of rooms that open into it. There’s a whole bunch of traps down there.”

“Traps?” she asked.

“Yeah, traps,” Jake said. “It’s kind of hard to be a dungeon. I have urges that I didn’t have when I was human.”

“Really? Urges? You’re going with that?” and then she laughed.

Jake laughed too but said, “No, seriously. I told myself I wouldn’t be a murder pit, but the first chance I got, I built a trap. My mother would not be happy.”

“I’ve met your mom!” said Hildi. “I wouldn’t want to make her unhappy!” They both laughed a bit more and the tension that they were under decreased even more. “Anything else?” she asked.

“Well, I started a second floor, but I haven’t finished it yet. Hell, I’ve barely gotten started on it. It’s going to be huge. A full kilometer-sized cave. I’m going to have plants, hell, trees down there. It will be like a forest.”

“And monsters, I suppose?” asked Hildi.

“Yeah,” said Jake. “It’s like I’ve got two sides of my personality. One side wants to, well, kill people, the other wants to make sure my family is Ok.” That statement sat there in the conversational space for a while, untouched.

Finally, Hildi looked up from where she was petting Baxter and asked, “So, why did you talk to me? What do you want me to do for you? I mean you could have talked to the men too.”

Jake thought about this. He knew he wasn’t slick enough to pretend that he didn’t need her for something. She was a pretty sharp girl, well, young woman. “Ok,” he finally said, “but this has got to be a two-way street. If we are going to talk, we need to both talk. I need you to do some stuff, nothing bad, but what do you need me to do for you? What can a, and I’m quoting here, ‘semi-autonomous, quasi-divine helper for a transition problem’ do for you?

The quiet was long enough this time that Baxter asked, “Say wrong?”

“I don’t think so boy,” Jake said. “I think she’s got a lot of stuff to work through. Figure out what she wants. You know, like when we met the Bobs for the first time.”

“I need Billy safe!” she finally said. “He’s my younger brother. He’s 10. What do you need?”

“I want my family safe,” he answered. “I can reach with my monster’s about 1000 meters on the surface. At least right now that’s my limit. My family’s house is beyond that. My hawk can’t see it. I want them here, closer, where I can hopefully watch over them.”

“Will you watch over Billy too?” she asked.

“Is that what you’re asking?” Jake asked back.

“Are you a genie?” she asked. “Do I only get one ask or are we going to work together?”

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “You remember when I said I have urges?” He could see her nod her head.

Then she spoke up, and said, “Sorry, yes, I do.”

“It’s Ok, I can see you in the tunnel,” he said. Hildi started to say something and then he could see her decide to hold the questions back for now. “I just got an ability notification that says, I can form Dungeon Bonds. I don’t know what they are yet, but here’s the description of the ability,” and then he read her the description again.

Ability to form a dungeon bond with a willing participant. Dungeon bonds are formed between a dungeon and a sapient being. There are multiple levels to the bonds and the bond’s strength varies with the level of the bond.

“That’s what you got to go on? That’s it?” Hildi asked.

“You hear that Bobs? Even a human thinks your descriptions suck!” he shouted.

“Um, Jake, try not to get the new gods pissed at me, would you?” she said and then followed it up with an “Oh wow!”

“What?” said Jake reluctantly. “What oh wow!”

“I just got a screen that says my intelligence and wisdom increased by one,” said Hildi.

Somehow Jake exercised great restraint and didn’t tell the Bobs what he was feeling right then. “That’s great,” he mumbled. “Really great.” He paused and then got over it. “Why don’t you come downstairs and we’ll talk some more about bonds and try to figure out how to enter one if we decide to, Ok?”

She nodded her head and began following Baxter down the tunnel towards Jake’s first floor.

“Baxter,” Jake said.

“Yes,” Baxter answered.

“We got to work on this one. If she’s gonna survive, she needs to get a lot less trusting!”