There are legends that claim a dungeon’s core can grow large enough to split into a parent and child, that new dungeons are formed thus. These stories are entirely unsubstantiated, and no record exists of the number of dungeons ever increasing. It has only ever gone down. Some day, dungeons may be only legends themselves.


    <hr>


    Even though the memory-merge had ended, Jair was still gasping for breath like he’d run miles without stopping. As the intensity slowly faded, he was left drained and exhausted.


    Even disconnected, the memory of that hunger lingered.


    He’d been through just about everything the world had to offer at one time or another, and no withdrawal he’d ever experienced had been so all-consuming. Physically, mentally, but this was deeper and stronger than all of it combined.


    “I’ve been bound to a dungeon before, but it was nothing like that.” Even at its most extreme, Jair’s years sharing a soul with a dungeon didn’t come close to what Eythron had experienced. “I had no idea it was possible.”


    He had experienced something similar to the kind of pain that Eythron had, though not to the same extent. It wasn’t something you could get used to. After a while, anything physical could be overridden and disregarded. Magical was harder, since it was a layer deeper, but it too could be filtered out. The lifebody and physical mind controlled the majority of sensation, and could be deceived into ignoring it.


    But nothing could deceive the soul into ignoring what threatened it on an existential level. Being consumed by a dungeon was a slow torture. Inescapable, impossible to soften or ease. It could only be endured, again and again and again.


    “I have discovered things no one else knows.” Eythron’s eyes were haunted as he looked up, his voice low and hoarse. “Call me weak if you must, or selfish, but I swore to remain in the Oriad and every time I break that oath results in pain without benefit. With your power, I can return home. To aid you, I must shatter Meliarn to walk in Veor freely. If you must deny me this, then allow me to leave.”


    "What if you bind yourself fully to Meliarn? Sure, it would be extremely limiting, but perhaps a whole dungeon…"


    “You think I’m an idiot?” Eythron snorted disdainfully. "That was almost the first thing I tried. After the fall of Uraam, I sought out Zoress in hopes that the pieces could balance each other, but it would not accept me. Yet I could not leave. Without Uqiar, without Tireth, I would likely remain trapped there to this day."


    Jair waited.


    Eythron stared into the distance. “My fragment from Uraam was an accident, an unknown unplanned factor. Zoress was different. I didn’t know where to begin. I wasn’t an adventurer back then, I had no experience with fighting endless waves of monsters day after day. I was trained for duels, not frontline war. Every time I tried to leave, the hunger drew me back relentlessly. I couldn’t win. Couldn’t retreat. Only fight.”


    “Tireth?” Jair eventually asked, when Eythron didn’t continue. It was the only unfamiliar name, and he knew already that Uqiar couldn’t have been the one to change things. Uqiar had only come into Eythron''s life after he was already trapped in the cycle of trying to sustain Zoress.


    Eythron sighed heavily and nodded. “Tireth broke the core and left. I tried to follow him out, but even fragmented the dungeon screamed for me. I couldn’t leave and didn''t know what to do. Now, I know I could have timed my departure to match up with its pre-collapse, and knocked myself out for the minutes necessary for it to fully disperse, but at the time I couldn''t do even that."


    “So you stayed.”


    "Only my efforts kept Zoress''s empty shell from collapse. Slowed its collapse, anyway. And when my desperation outstripped my fear, I tore Zoress apart, searching for the answer. I repaired its core, fed it with my own soul, then shattered it and remade it and shattered it in a hundred different ways.”


    That was a level of dedication even Jair had to admire. No wonder Eythron’s soul was so strong and so deeply scarred.


    “I learned what the dungeon is, what it is made of, what it can be made into. Its creation, its destruction. And in the end, I found where its hunger resides. The precise contours of it. How to divide it out without bringing anything else along with it. And that’s when I finally consumed it."


    “Intentionally, or accidentally?”


    Eythron shook his head, eyes distant. "I don’t even remember. Did I always intend to take it, or did it draw itself to me? But adding a second dungeon’s remnant only made the hunger stronger. I have tried to correct it, but there is no satisfying it, a perpetual imbalance. Why fight a war I will lose every time?"


    “To see if you can win it.”


    “Not all of us can reverse the entire planet at will.”


    Jair laughed softly and nodded. They were silent for a time.


    After all of this, Jair had only one idea, and it was one he hesitated to commit to.


    But if it was the only way… "What if I took over Meliarn instead?"


    Eythron scoffed. "How would that help?"


    "It''s afraid of you, right? And that fear incites your hunger. But Mercurios has no interest in you, so you could walk freely within his territory. Correct?"


    "It''s not quite that simple. With Mercurios, the hunger comes slower, but over time it does return."


    "We shouldn''t need more than a few weeks. I know how to sever myself from a dungeon. Not a fun process, but it''s something I''ve done before and I can do again. If I take over Meliarn, we don''t have to destroy it. You can temper your hunger and I’ll still have it available."


    "Being dungeon-locked won''t distract you from your own war?"


    "It will. But I can bear the pull of a full dungeon better than you can resist the twin hunger of your fragments. I''d rather not, but if it''s the only way I''m going to get your help, then it''s worth it."


    Eythron watched him through narrowed eyes. "And when this is done, you will give me Meliarn?"


    "What use will it be to you? You tried adding a piece from another dungeon already."


    "I tried adding the hunger. This time, I want the creation. Even if they cannot balance one another, it will aid me in my other goals. I never planned to hunt dungeons, but since I’m here I may as well benefit from it. I''m only here because I was tricked into it and kidnapped by my Resh’aesyi. That will not happen again."


    Jair didn’t recognize the term, but it was clearly the counterpart to Uqiar’s Ty’esi honorific for Eythron. The ‘aesyi’ would be ‘much beloved’, but the ‘Resh’ prefix was one Jair had never heard used before. And he’d lived among and studied with beastkin for several years. They rarely shared their secrets willingly with kinless like himself, but enough repetitions could stack those rarities into a pretty clear picture.


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    But the specifics of Eythron’s relationship with Uqiar weren’t the priority at the moment.


    To conquer a dungeon and overwrite its control involved more than reaching its core. Before contacting the core and being accepted as an avatar, an invader needed to systematically clear every area in succession—secret rooms, hidden back passageways, and all.


    If they were going to do this, they had a lot of work to do.


    Jair nodded. "It''s a deal. Let''s get clearing monsters."


    <hr>


    Until now, Jair would have said he knew Meliarn pretty thoroughly. But having Eythron with him now revealed whole new sections that had been obscured from normal vision and that he’d overlooked in his wall-testing runs.


    Eythron''s ability to see the world as their framework of light betrayed walls that were not walls and hallways that were not hallways.


    They did not fall for a single one of Meliarn''s traps as they advanced relentlessly.


    The two men fought side by side, just as they had so many other times in so many futures.


    They cut their way through every sort of monster that Meliarn could throw at them, everything from simple reproductions of Veori native wildlife to mutated versions combined with one another or adding different traits.


    From monsters the likes of which hadn''t been seen since before the Erosion to entirely made up creatures that Meliarn had devised on its own, bizarre amalgamations of claw and scale and countless other parts.


    He didn''t need to look further than that to know that several beastkin had met their end here. A dungeon could only work with what it had absorbed at some point, only reproduce materials it knew inside and out.


    ‘Materials’ here meaning creatures. People. Jair didn''t want to guess whether it had killed one or a thousand. Dungeons were ravenous destroyers.


    Since beastkin had dozens or even hundreds of distinct ancestors, even a single beastkin could give a dungeon countless possible traits to work with once it unraveled the creature''s genetics.


    They cleared another twenty rooms, another layer, and pressed on further and deeper. Days passed. Weeks. They rested and continued on, fought and won and continued on.


    "You''re sure you want to do this?" Eythron asked as they finally finished clearing the final top floor avatar fight—Cyanyan, a water goddess in the shape of a scaled cat. “There’s no guarantee it will help anything.”


    If there were any other way to stop Sekir, Jair would not hesitate to let Eythron shatter and consume Meliarn on sheer principle. But with a soul as slippery as Sekir''s, the only way to pin in place was for him to enter a place where he could not leave intangibly.


    Kill Sekir anywhere outside a dungeon’s domain, and the man would just pop up again in a new body a few days later.


    Jair needed Meliarn and he wanted Eythron’s help. He could see no intersection of those that didn''t include him taking on the dungeon''s control. "Are you actually trying to discourage me from doing something insane and dangerous?”


    The item rewards for this fight appeared, a pair of magical water bottles that would never empty so long as they remained inside the dungeon.


    “I’m unused to having strangers sacrifice themselves in my stead. It is an unfamiliar sensation which I do not entirely enjoy." Eythron grabbed his bottle and immediately started drinking, then looked disappointed. "It makes me wonder what I''ve done for you that you would care so much."


    "Maelstrom, for one thing. Its description may not bear your name, but its substance has always been yours. I am merely the hand that shapes it, yours is the mind that guides."


    "Sacrificing your soul by binding yourself to a dungeon does not seem equivalent payment for a few weapon designs.” Eythron regarded him with suspicion. “Some materials and blueprints? Compared to this?"


    “No. It is not merely that, it is the centuries we spent together working out those formulas and blueprints. It is the understanding you gave me about myself and my class. I was a newly reforged when we first met, and you taught me every step of the way. How to rework my reforging, the steps of preparation necessary before I could undertake my ascension, and what the different materials were capable of. Without you, I would not be here."


    Eythron stared at him very seriously. "Life for life, soul for soul? That''s very old-fashioned of you. I approve." And that was the last he said on it.


    Another time, as they rested halfway through the third floor, Jair dared broach a topic he’d been quietly obsessing over since the day he’d learned about Uqiar’s history with Eythron in Zoress.


    "Did you create Uqiar?"


    Eythron blinked open one eye to lazily glance in Jair''s direction. "Do I look like I''m capable of fathering something with that much fur?"


    "I didn''t say fathering."


    Eythron''s other eye opened and he squinted at Jair suspiciously. "Why do you ask?"


    "You''re a dungeon."


    "No I''m not."


    "You are, at least partially."


    Eythron scoffed. "Haven''t you been paying attention? I have a dungeon’s hunger, not its creation."


    "Then why does he have an identical twin running around on the moons trying to conquer the world?” Jair pressed. “A twin he knows nothing about?"


    "He doesn''t have a twin."


    "So what does he have? If it''s not a twin and it''s not a copy—"


    "It is a copy. But there''s not only two of them. And I didn''t create them."


    "Who did?"


    "He did."


    "They''re his children?"


    "No." Eythron sighed and leaned back, eyes closing again. "You remember when I sliced Meliarn into pieces? Zoress didn''t break nearly as neatly. I took its hunger, and Uqiar absorbed its creation. But he was a child. He didn''t understand why his parents were gone. He kept trying to bring them back. But a dungeon''s creation, it can only make what it knows, and all he knew was himself."


    “Dungeon creatures can’t leave their dungeon.”


    "True. And of the countless copies Uqiar spawned in those first years, most did not survive. But just as I am not a true dungeon, neither is Uqiar. Some of his copies couldn''t live even within Zoress. Others were perfectly fine to be elsewhere. Most were off in one way or another. But... I think I know the one you''ve encountered. He''s the one who took Zoress''s destruction. The keypoint of its final collapse.”


    “A creation of a false dungeon with a portion of the dungeon’s fragmented power?” It certainly explained a few things. The Beastlord’s affinity for monstrous creatures. The bent for destruction and unwillingness to compromise. The lack of a personal name.


    The hunger for souls.


    So few natural creatures consumed souls. Even vampires didn’t eat your soul, only rewrote it in their own image. He should have guessed it would be related to a dungeon.


    "Protecting Uqiar from that collapse took everything I had,” Eythron continued. “Until now, I assumed the imitations all died with Zoress. Perhaps I could have learned more if I searched. I think I was afraid to know the answer. My hunger is terrifying enough." His voice went low, regretful. "If a creature with a dungeon''s destruction but none of its restraints were to survive? I can''t imagine."


    "I can. Or, rather, I don''t need to imagine. I''ve lived it."


    The plains of Celsin, death and ash. The Beastlord''s assault on Mount Sanctum, the last pure manaforge left in the world.


    The absolute latest he could possibly delay before committing. Ascension was supposed to be done after decades of attunement post-reforging, not three rushed years, but if he left it any longer the manaforges of the world would be obliterated and his best chance gone forever.


    "I''m sorry."


    "What?" Jair''s head whipped around. Had he heard that right? Eythron, apologizing?


    "This Beastlord of yours is, in the end, my fault. So if there''s any way I can help you better prepare, I will do it. But I have one condition."


    "What’s the condition?"


    "Don''t tell Uqiar. He''ll blame himself if he finds out. Let him think it was a lost twin or his evil uncle or... whatever nonsense explanation he comes up with for himself. If he wants to blame me, let him. But don''t let him blame himself.”


    “I understand.”


    Eythron gripped Jair''s arm. “He was a child with power far beyond what anyone should have to bear, grieving and grasping for any sanctuary. The fact that it resulted in untold destruction is not his doing. I am the one who refused to do what should have been done."


    Jair smiled. "Yes, master. Thank you. I will keep your secret."


    "I''m not your master."


    "You have been. And you always will be."


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