Nick Vandran - Lord of Monsters

And yet…

What was left for him in Valfast? The guards would be on high alert and the local authorities would likely be notified. Elena’s husband might have even taken the matter to the Crown. He couldn’t show his face anywhere near the capital, and that meant starting over with nothing.

Why not start over someplace where literally no one knew him? He could build a new version of himself here from the ground up; be whatever he wished to be. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and those had to be worth any cost.

He looked over at the crystal, its shimmering surface seeming to call to him with a low hum.

“Fine. I agree to your terms.”

“I knew you were a smart one,” she said, reaching up to caress his face with those inhuman nails. Keaton turned away from her. “Now, do you see that gauntlet?”

He looked in the direction she indicated, finding the scorch marks where the dungeon lord had once been. His body was gone, disappearing without Keaton even realizing it. Only the gauntlet he wore remained, the gnarled creation black as night and detailed to look like a semi-skeletal hand.

“Put that on and touch the crystal. Then sit upon the throne and accept your new position… Dungeon Lord Keaton.”

Keaton approached the gauntlet with suspicion, the relic looking every bit as evil as he assumed a dungeon lord’s equipment would. He’d heard tale of cursed items that afflicted their owner with all manner of awful thing, but he hadn’t really believed it. Everything — even an inanimate object — was linked to Anima, but Anima itself was a purely neutral force. It was what people did with it that made it bad or good.

Same tool, different outcome.

With that in mind — and because he’d already gotten himself in this deep — Keaton bent to retrieve the gauntlet. Some part of him still braced for the worst, despite his skepticism. A lifetime of living around superstitious people would do that to a person.

Nothing happened, though. There was no burning sensation licking flames up his arm. His fingers didn’t begin to black and decay before his eyes. He didn’t suddenly feel a maniacal, homicidal urge to rush out and kill the first innocent he saw.

The only thing that registered was surprise at just how light the gauntlet was. It looked like solid obsidian carved away to reveal pearlstone beneath. By that reasoning, Keaton should have barely been able to lift it, but it was easy to hoist off the ground and examine.

When he did, more words scrawled across his consciousness.

The Lord’s Hand

This item, when worn by an attuned dungeon lord, allows the wearer to interact directly with the Dungeon Crystal.

At least the daemon hadn’t been lying about that. He glanced back to the crystal only to find her gone, the scent of cardamom that clung to her now absent from the chamber.

It was as much a comfort as it was something liable to throw Keaton into another panic. He focused on the former, though, and undid the straps of the gauntlet, fitting it over his forearm.

Looking at it on the ground, he hadn’t been sure it would fit. The old dungeon lord’s arms were more toned than his, and they looked a bit shorter than Keaton’s, as well. But the moment he secured the straps and tightened the gauntlet, it reformed to fit him perfectly.

Again he waited, and again nothing terrible happened. He flexed his fingers, watching how the encased pearlstone glimmered in the firelight, truly looking for all the world like a skeletal hand. It was a little disconcerting, but Keaton imagined he’d get used to it in time.

Moving over to the crystal, he hesitated just a moment before lifting his hand. Like last time, he felt something surge into him from the crystal. Only unlike before, it wasn’t overwhelming his senses; pounding through his veins like a desperate rush of blood.

It spread across the gauntlet, channeling into the metal where Keaton watched a pulse of red energy dance across the obsidian surface, scattering like diffuse light at the edges before it was gone completely.

That was… an experience. I don’t feel more powerful, though—

Before he’d even completed the thought, Keaton felt his consciousness being pulled away from his body. Darkness crept in, seeping inward from the corners, and for once he didn’t panic. Body, mind, and spirit all seemed to be in a stasis, suspended in time.

Slowly that darkness filled with a rough hexagonal shape, a glowing red circle at its center, a black square toward the top. It took him a moment to realize he was seeing a simplified version of this very room from above, with a large expanse of hazy gray radiating outward from that chamber before meeting black.

Current Location: Crystal Chamber

Chamber Strength: 40/100

Minions Present: 0

Lieutenants Present: 0

Current Resource Production: 0

Current Resource Drain: 0

The words appeared over what Keaton realized was a map. They lingered only as long as it took for him to read them, then faded away. A surge of excitement broke through his conscious mind. There was so much he could see now; so much information just here for him to use as he wished.

The question was, what did it mean? And what did he do with it?

The daemon was gone, and Keaton didn’t want to rely on her “advice” any more than he had to. The only person who might have known had run off in a bid for the freedom she’d obviously been denied, so it was on him to figure it out.

First thing was first: He needed to see what he was working with this.

“Where’s the rest of the dungeon?” he asked aloud, hoping that might work.

His view of the map shifted, panning across the gray areas. Keaton squinted, trying to see past the fog that clouded the map, but it was impossible.

“Why can’t I see the rest of it? Where are the other chambers?”

Active Chambers: 1

Inactive Chambers: 9

Inactive? How could a chamber be active or inactive? Maybe it had to do with the crystal’s reach, but it seemed strange that he couldn’t at least see the rest of this cave. He’d ducked into a room on his way here. That should be active, right?

The crystal’s Anima didn’t seem inclined to answer questions so much as display relevant information, though, so Keaton decided to poke around until he stumbled on something useful.

“Show me more information,” he said aloud, hoping those words would get him what he wanted.

Anima was, at its core, a logical force. It didn’t care about emotion or morality or anything beyond parsing out the information it was given and returning something in exchange. Manipulators were just masters of feeding the right information to Anima to coax it into doing what they wanted.

Keaton had to learn to do the same thing, and somehow, he didn’t think his introductory class more than a decade ago was going to help.

Fortunately, his instincts did. His view changed, a long list appearing before him that included the information he’d first seen as well as some additional things, specifically a few that caught his eye:

Minions Assigned Tasks: 0/0

Drones Assigned Tasks: 0/4

Current Tasks: None.

Tasks Available: Excavating, Building, Harvesting, Planting, Crafting, Repurposing

Drones. He could guess at the use of such things, but where were they? The crystal said he had four, and he hadn’t seen another person — or creature — since the dragonkin left.

“Where are my drones?”

His view shifted again, his consciousness pulled down as if being dragged through the center of the earth. He saw them there, curled up asleep amidst the rocks. They almost looked cute, if he could ignore their twisted black horns, long thin bodies, and tapered, mole-like noses. …And the bony limbs with visible veins beneath thin red skin, long thick claws shaped like tiny shovels, and lashing tails with a serrated edge at the end.