Essence: A Divine Dungeon Anthology, page 1
ESSENCE
A DIVINE DUNGEON Anthology
Dakota Krout
James Auwaerter
Ryan Ball
Rohan Hublikar
Raymond Johnson
Alexis Keane
Dennis Vanderkerken
Steven Willden
© 2019 Mountaindale Press. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by US copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Newsletter
Lion Start
Legacy of Thunder
Flight of the Glitterflit
Splat!
The Spirit Dungeon
Hidden Lantern
Butcher Boy
Axiom
Afterword
About Mountaindale Press
Mountaindale Press Titles
GameLit and LitRPG
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all of the people that were excited to be a part of this process. There were a ton of amazing entries for this anthology, thank you all so much for jumping on board!
The stories in this book are from some very talented new writers, and I am very excited that I will be able to continue working with a few of them!
To the reader, thank you so much for the amazing enthusiasm you bring! We couldn’t do this without you!
-Dakota Krout
Newsletter
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Lion Start
By: Rohan Hublikar
Chapter One
“Your tea, milord.”
Garron held the tray out, bowing his head. For a long moment, the rattling of the cups shaking in their saucers was the only sound in the room. Then the weight lifted, and he lowered his arms with a little breath of relief. Today was a bad day. He bowed a little deeper, feeling his bones creak with the motion and turned to go.
“Hold on, Gar.” At the familiar voice, Garron felt a little smile creep on to his face…He smoothed it away.
“Yes, milord?” He hated how his voice sounded like an old man’s, but he couldn't keep the rasp out today. And coughing would just make it worse.
“You don’t sound too good today."
Garron looked up, straight into a pair of dark eyes framed by a face furrowed in concern. Andros had just hit his growth, and he looked like someone had taken the slightly pudgy boy Garron had known since birth and stretched him out until he was a lanky teenager. Long, black hair fell to his shoulders, and at the moment, it was matted with sweat and stuck close to his scalp, but even when it was dry, it always seemed messy to Garron. His mother had done a better job of cutting it.
“Do you want some of my tea?”
Before Garron could reply, the other person in the room spoke in a quiet voice that sent a shiver down Garron’s spine.
“Don’t be foolish, boy. That’s Essence-infused. No sense wasting it on a fishy.”
Garron remembered when Lord Tet used to sit in this room with Andros. He’d been a busy man, powerful and important, but he’d never said an unkind word to Garron. Or scared him. The same couldn’t be said of Jackson.
After a moment of silence, Andros spoke again, a controlled rage creeping into his voice. “He needs it more than I do. I’ll be fine, but he–”
“Wouldn’t appreciate the gift he was wasting.” Jackson’s eyes flickered to Garron again, and his chest tightened. He’d never quite understood why, but Jackson had never liked him. When Lord Tet had left to go fight in the war and Jackson had become Andros’ guardian as well as captain of the guard, it had gotten worse.
“It would still…”
“Not another word, boy. Just drink the infernal tea so you can get back to training. I want you on the verge of the C-ranks when your father returns. And you.” Once again, his eyes rested on Garron, and this time, Garron could barely hold back a cough. Jackson kept his hair cropped close to his skull, though Garron had never seen his mother or anyone else cut it. It always had a singed look to it, as though he’d burned off the bits he didn’t want instead of cutting them, but otherwise, his face seemed like a harder version of Andros’, all sharp lines and deep shadows, the jaw just a little too long for the face. “Get going.”
Garron bowed again, panic making him forget the pain. He hurried off.
“I’ll have to have a word with Lord Tet about him. He’s distracting you, but perhaps I won’t need to, if…”
He made it out of the room, closing the door with a sigh of relief. It quickly turned into a cough and then a hack, and before he knew it, he was on the floor. It only lasted for a minute or so, which was better than that morning’s fit, but he still grimaced as he struggled to his feet. Jackson’s scrutiny was always a trial, but seeing Andros was almost enough to make up for it. He was almost sure that Hila had sent him to deliver the tea just so he could see his friend, and he was grateful to her for it. Especially since it felt like he didn’t have many more opportunities left.
Stop being dramatic. Garron grunted, clearing his throat, and he shook his head. No matter how bad his illness was getting, he knew for certain that failing to get back to Hila in time would kill him faster. He started shuffling down the halls of the manor, heading to the kitchen.
Chapter Two
“Took you long enough, didn’t it?” the plump woman shouted over from the other side of the kitchen, her hands still working at chopping herbs as she looked over at Garron.
“You wanted me to spill the tea?” Garron smiled a little as he said the words, but he managed to keep his voice stern enough to match the cook’s. Still, he couldn’t manage to be as loud as the snort she let loose at his words.
“You’re quick enough to swipe rolls from my oven, aren’t you?”
She tossed the words over her shoulder as she swept the herbs from her cutting board into a waiting pot, stirring with one hand as the other felt at a passing tray of sweetbreads. She gave the man carrying the tray, a new hire, a nod, which he barely acknowledged as he continued on to the cooling racks. Garron caught the hint of a smile playing around her lips. The man was going to do well in Hila’s kitchen. The smile was replaced by a scowl as she looked up at Garron for a moment.
“Jenny didn’t make enough for seconds, you know.” Oh, right. The rolls.
“I need to keep my strength up!” Garron put on a piteous expression, making a show of coughing into his arm. He managed to hold a real one back but only just.
His acting was only met with another snort. “Well, boy, you know what’ll really keep your strength up?”
“Stew?” It did smell good.
“Exercise. Why don’t you go on and see if those boys out in the east wing need help?”
“But don’t you need a taste tester? I have a very developed palate, you–”
“Work on developing those noodle arms instead, why don’t you?” Ouch.
“Hah! You’d better get going before she gets nasty, Gar!” Jameson called from his station where he was expertly breaking down and deboning a large fish for the night’s dinner.
Garron suddenly remembered that there were at least a half dozen other people going in and out of the kitchen and considered whether or not he’d want to engage in a public sparring match with Hila.
“I’ll see you all later then. Bye!”
Jameson’s laughter followed him out of the kitchen, but Garron was still smiling. It vanished as he moved away from the kitchen and back into the claustrophobic halls of the Tet estate. He always breathed a little easier in the kitchen, though honestly, he did the best outside. He didn’t really mind going out to the east quarter for that reason, though there was precious little he’d be able to do.
“Hey there, Garron.”
Garron looked up into a pair of tired eyes, crinkled in a weary smile. The man had his guard uniform on, sword belted at the waist, but Garron could see that his tunic was stained with a viscous fluid.
“Hi, Ulysses. You’ve got something on your tunic.” He gestured to the spot.
Ulysses brought a hand up to the spot, then winced as it touched the fluid. “Oh, right.”
Tiredly, he reached for his sword and pulled out a little, embroidered handkerchief from between the crossguard and sheath. It was already stained with the fluid, and Ulysses spent a fruitless moment dabbing at the stuff on his tunic before Garron handed him his own cloth. “How’s Myra?”
“Thanks.” He took over the cloth with a sigh. “She’s doing well, I think. Her stomach was bothering her a bit, though, and she won’t stop crying.”
The last words were said with the sort of frustrated despair that Garron had only ever seen from new parents. Not that there were many in the estate, but there had been a few lower ranked guards like Ulysses—as wel l as kitchen staff or houseworkers—who’d come in and out, sometimes bringing families with them.
“That’s rough.” Garron patted his shoulder… the one not stained by baby vomit.
“Thanks, but Mylena’s got it worse. I can’t really complain. Just wish I didn’t have to pull night watch, on top of–”
“Ulysses! Break time’s up. Get back to post!” Garron winced at the voice booming down the hallway. Abyss.
“Oh, you.” As the man drew closer, Garron felt his chest tighten slightly like it did when he was around Jackson. In some ways, Lars was worse. Bigger than Ulysses, built like a block of stone, and loud to boot, and for some reason, every time he looked at Garron, his face showed distaste, as though Garron’s face was painful to look at. Garron didn’t think he was particularly handsome, but he wasn’t that ugly. “Shouldn’t you be doing something useful instead of standing around freeloading? You’ve got to earn your keep, you know.”
Garron didn’t point out that, like most of the senior guards, Lars did very little other than sit around ‘gardening’ or ‘cultivating’ or whatever they called it. He thought Hila did more real work than any ten of them combined.
“I’ll get go–”
“I mean, not that you can really do anything worth keeping you around, but the boy won’t let us kick you out.” Lars’ voice was edging toward spiteful now. “And after you spent all that time getting a world-class training with him for free, for no good reason.”
Right, I’m so lucky. Garron barely remembered the ‘training’ Lars had talked about, but it hadn’t seemed that exciting to him. He’d been Andros’ sparring partner and done most of his exercises with him as well, but when Lord Tet went away, Jackson had refused to include him. Of course, his illness came in soon after that, rendering the point moot. He took a deep breath, trying to cool his annoyance. Then his breath caught in his chest, and he let out a hacking cough and another until he was doubled over, only on his feet because Ulysses was supporting him.
“You alright there? Do you need water or anything?”
Garron couldn’t respond with anything but a cough, but Lars cut in over the noise, sounding even more disgusted than before, “Just get back to your post. Isn’t like water’s going to help him anyway.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be right there.”
Lars grunted, and Garron could hear the sound of his heavy footstep moving away even as he coughed. Ulysses still stayed until the fit died down, for which Garron was grateful, but he couldn’t help being preoccupied with the knowing tinge to Lars’ last comment.
When Garron finally walked out and around the estate to the east quarter, he was met with the sounds of stone grinding and men shouting. The construction work being done to build the new wing was frankly incredible. Jackson had hired a stonemason, a carpenter, and a few specialist builders for the task, but that meant much of the brute labor had to be done by the estate staff, including Garron himself.
He walked up as close as he dared to the construction site, where a pair of burly men were pulling a huge block of stone into place along the growing wall, scraping away imperfections and creating smooth joints in the process.
“Hey there, boy. You here to help?”
A man holding a stone tablet and a scrap of paper came over to him, eyes calculating. Garron liked the man, who called himself an ‘engineer.’ He claimed to have learned his trade from dwarves, though Garron wasn’t sure he believed that, but he had to admit that the anchored pulley system that the man had built next to the wall was nothing short of amazing. Even now, there was only one sullen guardsman manning the rope which, after looping around a series of pulley wheels, held up the stone that was being added to the wall.
“Hm, why don’t you go over and help out that fellow on the pulley rope? He says he can handle it, but an engineer always plans for the worst case. Remember that, boy.” He tapped a nose, smudging it with dirt, before walking back to the wall.
Garron privately thought that ’engineer’ was probably a made-up word, but he agreed in principle. The thing was, even if he wasn’t exactly sure how Joris, the guardsman currently holding the rope, was managing to lift all that weight by himself, he was certain that his contribution would change absolutely nothing if something went wrong; although Joris was just as disdainful of Garron as most of the senior guards, he was at least quiet, and Garron found that being outside was helping his coughing a little. He managed not to have another fit for the rest of the day as he helped with the construction.
Chapter Three
“Gar.”
Garron blinked sleepily, turning over on his pallet and nestling into the covers.
“Gar.”
Something solid nudged him, and his eyes opened. He shot up and knocked his head into what felt like a set of teeth. Owww.
“Whoops, sorry about that. You okay? Never mind, we have to go!”
Garron finally managed to struggle out of his covers and stand. He took a deep breath and noted with relief that it went in and out easily. Today was good, then. Now, what was going on? He couldn’t see much of anything in the darkness, but he thought he recognized the voice.
“Andy?”
“Not so loud!” Andros’ ‘whisper’ was quite a bit louder than Garron’s normal speaking voice, but he ignored that.
“What are you doing here?”
A hand landed on his shoulder. “I’m here to save you, Gar. We have to go—now. I’ll explain when we’re clear.” Apparently, Andros had also given up on whispering.
Garron sighed and began pulling on his boots. He didn’t have a prayer of stopping whatever scheme this was. “Andy, if you’d just said it, we could have been on our way by now, whatever this is.”
Silence. Then, “I’ve stolen some money and important supplies from the family repository. We have to leave and get you to a dungeon so you can swallow a Beast Core to fix your cultivation base, or else you’re going to die in a week or two.”
A cold feeling came over Garron. Most of that had gone straight over his head, but two things stuck. The first was that Garron was dying. A deaf, blind, old man with a drinking problem could have told him that one. But the second…
“You stole something from the repository?”
“No time!”
The hand on his shoulder gripped him with a strength that seemed out of proportion for Andros’ size, and suddenly, he was in the hallway, stumbling along behind a shadowy figure, too startled to protest.
They were moving surprisingly quickly. Garron half expected a coughing fit to overcome him, but today seemed like a really good day. Except for the whole ‘risking his life and possibly the life of his best friend’ thing, but Garron knew all about appreciating small favors.
They took three turns, Garron moving under his own power but struggling to keep up with Andros. They were almost to the south exit now, the one Hila and the other cooks used for picking up raw ingredients. The kitchen felt eerie to him, barely illuminated and dead silent as it was, but they were through it in a flash. Only two more turns and…
“Hey! Who’s tha–” The voice cut off with a choking sound, but Garron noticed that it had sounded… muted somehow. Almost like he was hearing it through a wall or something. There was a dull thud as a dark figure collapsed to the ground.
“Sorry, Ulysses,” Andros whispered, tugging Garron along behind him. “You’ll be fine tomorrow.”
They moved past the still huddle of shadows, and Garron grimaced. What are we doing?
“Andy, why…?”
“Trust me. We have to do this. Now, come on. If Ulysses was there already, we must have missed our window. Thank celestial it was him on duty tonight. I wouldn’t have wanted to run into Lars.”
They made it to the exit, a large door set into a stone frame with a worn, brass handle sticking out. Andros grabbed the handle. Garron opened his mouth to tell him that it was locked, but before he could, there was a stirring of wind and a click. The door opened, and the sweet scent of the open air filled the room. And the chill.
“Andy, I don’t have a cloak or–”
“I’ve got all that ready. We just have to get to it. I’m sorry.” He did sound sorry, but he still pulled Garron through the doorway and on to the paved patio around the entrance. Garron sighed, only rasping a little, and moved to the path that would lead to the gate of the estate. Andros’ hand stopped him.
