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dastardly-imbecile · 5 months

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Not the Dungeon pt. 3

I've accepted i'm continuing this.

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His gaze snaps to the person in front of him, still laid out upon the bed. For a moment, they are a thin white creature marveling over a stone cube, and then they are a dark priest trying to comprehend the speech of crows, and finally the flicker of a knight, eyes wide, forgotten words spilling frantically from his lips.

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Flashback episode?

Wordcount: ~2500

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Rudimer is standing in the grand hallway of a palace. Around him, marble columns do the work of giants, holding up a ceiling splashed in vivid murals, old saints and prophets conjoining and copulating in cracked glory.

“Rudimer!” Calls a voice from behind, jovial and perhaps touched by too much wine. Tonight is the night of his promotion, of a sort—no longer is he a mere knight, one cog in the wheel of thousands, but instead he is a Captain.

Of the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger no less, an ominous name if he’s ever heard it. He turns, already knowing who he will see—Seril, brother, who throws a heavy arm around his shoulders. “What are you doing away from the party? We’re all celebrating you.”

“I don’t know,” he admits, placing a hand upon his brother’s. “Is it not all an elaborate excuse to drink?”

“Yes,” he admits, but surges ahead, “and that applies to you as well.”

“I cannot afford it. I’m setting out tomorrow.”

More than that, his true goal was to make it to the library. Find out what this dungeon truly is—for the sixth sense inside him, honed from years or battle, says that it is not all of what it seems.

“We will miss both you and the stick up your arse,” Seril remarks fondly, and Rudimer musts a half-smile.

“Me as well.”

Tomorrow, he will leave, and after that, he will see what these dungeons truly contain.

***

Rudimer is sitting in the darkness of his office, watching the snow fall in gentle flurries outside. It is a stark contrast to the rust on his blackened walls—he tried his best to clean this room out when he arrived, but he swears that every morning they have redirtied themselves.

Briefly, he remembers chucking snowballs with Seril as young boys, or running through the wilds around the palace, all carpeted in plush white, and there is the urge to stand and take a moment in the snow—but that is quickly quashed.

Too many things to do, too many things he cannot afford to lose. If he catches a chill, then there is little medicine to help him fight his way through, if he ruins a bit of his armor, it will not be until spring that he can request a new shipment.

A flurry of papers on his desk. All unread, but for the letter sitting apart from the rest. Seril’s. Inquiring of his health, of the dungeon’s health, whether it has loosened him up a bit—he has half-written a dozen replies, but nothing he pens down feels right. Can he really say that when he sleeps, the space behind his eyelids feels darker than it used to? Tell him that when he ventures into the deeper cells, the prisoners press against their bars and tell him how his great-great-grandchildren will die?

That two days ago, a man crucified himself, spilled his intestines into the shape of something he does not know, but couldn’t bear to look at for too long. That priests file in with two black-robed children and come out with only one, and yet he never finds a body.

But he cannot sit agonizing over this forever, not when there is so much to do. So, once again, he grabs a quill and a blank sheet of parchment and scrawls something out.

All is well, Seril. Life is more difficult than anticipated, but I believe I can do something here. I miss you and the palace as well.

After a brief hesitation, he puts the quill down. It is short, but it has to do. He has not the time for anything else. Not with a dungeonful of strangeness to manage.

***

Rudimer is stalking through dark corridors with a sword in his hand, hunting. Lately, strange creatures have been coming up from the depths—little chittering things with many teeth and many eyes and many limbs. He doesn’t know where they come from, but he doesn’t care to find out either.

Days ago, a request came through to transfer the mercenary captain deeper. The blonde man who does not seem to have succumbed to the quick insanity that takes most prisoners—despite the violence that Trotur seems to revel in inflicting. He could barely walk when Rudimer ushered him out of his cell, passed him to two other guards to take deep, deep down.

Mostly because he was too scared to go himself.

For good reason too, he’s sure, because only one of those guards returned. When he asked about the fate of the other one, all he received was a vague shrug, one scarred arm pointing towards the ground below.

Everything goes that way eventually. There is a strange gravity inside these dungeons that pulls all things intangibly downwards instead of physically, whether that be sanity, health, or strength of mind.

He has done his best to stay strong, but in his lowest moments—when he finally allows himself to succumb to sleep—he has been hearing the soft sounds of clicking, of pattering, of movement in the dark. Small creatures, many of them, beady little eyes blinking-blinking-blinking.

If he looks at the walls for too long, then he can almost see them again.

He thinks they are birds, maybe.

***

He is walking into the center of a town he cannot imagine existing, surrounded by creatures small as children and thin as winter, watching him with wide saucer eyes. In his hands, watched ardently and eagerly, is a small gray cube, disproportionately heavy for how small it is.

The guards are dying of starvation and suicide alike, but even then, there has not been enough supplies. He has stopped rationing food for the prisoners—but they simply grow thinner and thinner instead of dying.

This deep, he can almost hear the cawing of crows, the flutter of a thousand wings echoing behind every step. It makes him jumpy, but he stills the hand upon his sword—he’s well aware that the only reason he is allowed down here at all is the cube in his hands, and he was lucky enough to have been able to strike a bargain furthermore.

Two sacks of unidentifiable rations. Told to him in broken speech, barely understandable, to be food, weapons, clothes. The food, these creatures grow themselves, but the rest is what they’ve taken from the dead that decorate their village.

Does not matter. He hands the cube to the largest, strongest monster, taking the supplies swiftly in the same breath. It takes his left hand a moment to close—recently, it has been growing numb, stiff and hard to control.

For a split second, he is on high alert, gauging whether they will turn on him after all, but none even spare him a glance anymore. All are surrounding their leader, clamoring eagerly for the cube, thin fingers reaching like a child’s for fruit upon a tree too tall.

Quickly, he leaves, not willing to overstay his welcome. The guards he passes are near-catatonic, staring blankly into empty space. Most have grown larger in this time, despite lack of food, for it’s not the organic blossoming of muscle or fat—but instead the swelling of their limbs, strange tumorous growths sprouting from hard flesh.

The prisoners are worse, purely because they are all too aware, and he must dodge the thin hands that snake through their bars and attempt to gouge out his eyes, try to rip the armor off his body. They speak in tongues as well, and though he can’t understand a single thing, he somehow knows that they refer to Gods and rituals and deities floating in the primordial mire beyond reality.

As he is depositing the scant supplies earned from this foray, he catches sight of a window. Strange. Somehow, despite the presumed abundance of windows, he cannot remember the last time he saw morning light.

For a split second, he considers going outside. Taking a walk—distancing himself from the dungeons, at least for a while.

The notion vanishes just as quickly. Too much left in here to leave. If he walks out, he will never return—he will keep going until his legs give out, or the wolves get him, or somehow, miraculously, he makes it back to some semblance of civilization.

He cannot go. Not until he has finished whatever job he was sent here, originally, to do.

He cannot remember exactly what it is.

He will remember.

But he cannot.

He cannot.

***

He is crouched upon his cot, knees pressed up to his chest, trying to silence the flurry inside his head. There are whispers, and there is birdsong, and there are strong beaks scraping the last of his brain from the crevices of his skull.

When he closes his eyes, it does not help. When he drives his fingers into his skin, bites his tongue so hard that it feels like it might bleed, it does not help. He cannot remember what he has been doing. He cannot remember the last time he ate, drank, stood.

Upon his desk, the glint of an inkwell catches his attention. There is something important there—and then, as he forces himself to rise, he finally sees the paper set neatly to the side. Seril’s. That of weeks ago, perhaps months—they wrote regularly in the beginning, he’s sure, but the spaces between have grown larger and larger.

With dirty hands—when was the last time he washed them?—he grabs the paper, scans it fervently. Nothing important. Seril has found a nice woman, she is with child, all is well, all is fine, he is not stuck here in this cursed dungeon, he cannot fathom a single iota of his experience.

There is a scrap of dirtied paper upon the ground, but it is the only one he can find, so it will have to do. When he grabs at the quill, his hand—so rough, so uncoordinated, it is as if he cannot move his fingers individually anymore, but the entire arm is instead an odd, stiff mass—knocks the inkwell off the desk. Now, limited to one dip of ink, but there are only a few words he needs to say.

seril i require help these dungeons are full of crows plea

The quill runs out of ink before he finishes, but it is all the words he needed to say.

Except, there’s something missing. It takes a long moment of staring at the paper to realize.

It is missing a signature.

Well. He has no ink left to write it, and besides, when he imagines penning it down, he realizes that he does not exactly remember what it looks like. What name he would use.

He finds her lower in the dungeons, drawing out a sigil in what’s probably blood. A dark priest, skin and hair both sickly white, clad in the robes that are customary for her kind. He does not know when she entered, but somehow, he knew where to find her—the only person who could deliver his message. The only person in this entire dungeon who is any modicum of sane.

Besides him, of course.

She looks up at him when he approaches, lip curling in confusion.

“...Captain?” she guesses, putting a hand into her pocket and grasping some hidden weapon inside. He smiles, to try and placate her, but it doesn’t seem to work, so instead he launches into instructions.

She cocks her head, brow lowering. Does she not understand? They are simple words, or at least he thinks they are, but when he attempts to concentrate on what he is saying, all he hears are the guttural rumbles and screeches of something that cannot conceive human speech.

Sharply, he shuts his mouth, and simply shoves the paper into her hand, points towards an approximation of the entrance.

Finally, she gets it. Looks down. “...Seril?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but settles on nodding a moment later. The memory of how to mold his tongue around comprehension seems to have somewhat, somehow, escaped him.

“Deliver this?”

Another nod.

“I know of him,” she says shortly, and then returns to drawing out her ritual, which he takes as a confirmation of the task.

Seril will come, he’s sure of it. He will come, and he will stand inside the dungeon and find patterns in the blood and hear the chirping of crows and neither of them will be alone anymore.

***

He is standing behind a thick stone wall, listening to the footsteps on the other side. How he found himself here is not entirely clear in his mind, nor is the wooden apparatus where a left arm should be, nor is the strange heft of his head.

“...happened,” comes a thread of muffled conversation, “I cannot imagine. Do you think he is dead?”

“He cannot be dead.” This voice is sharp, impassioned. Familiar?

Is it familiar?

“Of course,” comes the other, now softer, placating.

The crows chatter and caw and talk amongst themselves. It is a long moment before they come to a conclusion.

Forward. Bludgeon. Intruders.

Intruders. He raises an arm and slams it against the wall, even as he remembers a single name.

Seril.

It must have been his own, back when names still mattered. Nothing that has use to think of now.

He wonders, briefly, why it is only now that it’s come back to him, and it doesn’t feel exactly right as his former moniker, but then it slips away in the lieu of blood.

***

He is all that, and he is none of that, and he is a man-no-longer that tries to catch memories in his hands like water.

“Rudimer?”

Slowly, hesitantly, he nods.

“What happened?” they breathe, looking at him in what he cannot tell is marvel or pity. For a moment, all that he has newly remembered attempts to push its way out of his heavy beak, but it will not be in any understandable configuration. “Do you… have you been here, all this time?”

Nod.

“Can you leave?”

Now, he hesitates. No, logic dictates, but he has never actually tried. Still, though, he does not think he’s the sort of creature that could survive in the world, not without the dungeon’s lifeblood coursing through his veins.

At his nonanswer, there is another question.

“...Do you want to?”

His beak is dipping down, and at first it is because of the weight of gravity, but then he is lifting up, dropping again.

Nod, one more time.

#fear and hunger #funger #f&h #crow mauler #crow mauler x reader #x reader #x gn reader #back in my funger era #no longer ironic i think

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