A Demon's Core

I am pleased to see all of my imps return safely, even though I was expecting it, as I am sure either Violet or Rose would have contacted me if anything had gone wrong. While waiting for them as they make their way up the stairs, I feel a strange presence with them, something I cannot identify, though I do not get a sense of danger from it. I move to the stairs to try to get a glimpse of whatever it is as it goes past. It seems to be moving along with the imps, but I cannot see anything with them and even though it is moving in and out of my domain as it ascends the stairs, I am not getting any mana from it.

I think something is following you, but I do not know what it is. I inform Rose

‘Violet and River brought something back. I didn’t say anything because they wanted it to be a surprise,’ she replied.

I wait for them in the hallway and observe them as they enter. I still cannot see the thing, but when I focus on its location, it seems like it is following Violet so closely that it would have to be clinging to her and I realise it must be inside her backpack.

I follow them into the core room when Violet joyfully announces that she has found more brooms, holding her newest acquisitions above her head.

That is excellent and I would love to see them later, but right now I am more interested in what you have in your backpack.

Violet grins and puts her brooms on the floor before carefully removing her backpack and placing it down. River quickly approaches, bouncing with excitement as Violet pulls the zipper open. She reaches her hands in only to quickly pull them back with a screech.

“It bit me,” she complains, looking at her now bleeding finger. River looks down into the bag and frowns.

“Hey, no biting,” she commands.

Are you alright?

“Yes, I’m fine. It only hurts a little,” Violet says.

“There’s nothing to worry about, imps are immune to their venom,” Rose says, taking Violet’s hand in her own to heal the wound.

This creature is venomous?

“Only a little, but it won’t harm us,” she insists.

It may not harm you, but what about Igneous and the hellhounds?

Rose pauses and her brow furrows.

“I hadn’t considered that. But I don’t think it’s potent enough to actually be dangerous to such large creatures…maybe.”

River quickly reaches into the backpack and extracts the creature within, finally revealing it to be a lizard. The little creature struggles at first, but relaxes once it was placed on the floor, tilting its head to one side, then to the other while occasionally poking out its tongue. River fawns over the lizard while some other imps came over to see what she had brought.

You took one of the lizards from the dungeon?

“Yes, River wanted to keep it and I thought you might like to see what they look like up close,” Rose explains.

Being a dungeon creature might be why it did not suffer the effects of entering and exiting my domain earlier. Perhaps dungeon creatures are also not affected by other dungeons? Did you know that would be the case?

“I had a hunch. None of us were affected when we left the river dungeon so I assumed it would be the same for the lizard here.”

If you had been wrong, it might not have survived coming up the stairs.

“Well it’s a good thing I was right then,” she says with a smug grin.

How did you know imps are immune to their venom or that they even are venomous?

“Because they came from our world. They’re called ‘river skulks’ and are a common sight along the shores of rivers and lakes so we’re quite familiar with them. They’re also quite tasty, though I doubt River will let anyone eat this one.”

And the guardian is the same?

“Besides the size and colour, yes,” she confirms.

But you did not notice before that it was also a river skulk?

“They don’t naturally grow so large. That,” she gestures to the lizard River brought back, “is their normal size. We also didn’t know about guardians the first time we saw it, so I didn’t make the connection, I suppose,” Rose explains.

That is understandable.

I am not too surprised that the lizards also came from the same place as the imps, but what is surprising is the size disparity between the normal river skulks and the guardian. I still have not seen the guardian for myself, of course, but if the imp’s description of it is accurate, it is truly gargantuan compared to the others of its kind. I cannot help but wonder how many resurrections it had to go through to grow so large.

If the humans have known about the dungeon for years, then they have likely had many encounters with its guardian, giving it plenty of opportunities to grow, though I have no idea how much bigger it got with each death. I try to imagine my own guardians growing to similar proportions, compared to their peers, and find it hard to picture. Rose and Violet would probably be too big to fit in the building anymore and Noctis might actually be as large as a building herself. I hope they never get that big, I think I quite like them at their current size.

How does the venom of the guardian compare to that of the regular river skulks, I wonder. Obviously, the quantity would be greater, but what of the potency? If that was also increased, would my imps still be immune to it? Given the apparent lack of hostility from the other dungeon’s creatures, it is possible that I may never have to find out. It does make me question though, is it perhaps normal for dungeon creatures to simply not be hostile towards each other, even when they are from different dungeons?

I might explain why the hellhounds have been able to form such a close bond with the imps, even though they seem like the kind of creatures who, under normal circumstances, would see imps as prey. It is obvious that a dungeon can affect the minds of creatures connected to it, this may be one of those effects.

Next time the humans visit, I should ask them about how the dungeon’s creatures react to them. Though I will have to be careful to do so in a way that does not clue them into the fact that we searched for and actually found the river dungeon.

I spend quite a while observing the lizard they brought back, but aside from noting its appearance, I am not able to learn much more about it. Whenever it is not being carried around by River, it does not seem to do anything; it hardly even moves. Rose does tell me a little more about them though. They are amphibious and their normal hunting strategy involves burying themselves in the mud and waiting for something to come close, before lunging at their prey, biting them and not letting go until it stops moving.

While that is interesting, I am concerned about how well it will be able to survive here when we do not have a lot of water or mud in this building. But River insisted that she would take care of it so I just have to trust her and if it does not work out, that will be an important lesson for her.

The lesson comes sooner than I expect though. She takes the lizard with her to the river to play the next day and returns in tears. Seeing her like that, Violet rushes over and attempts to comfort her but she is inconsolable. Violet tries to ask her what happened, but her sister’s response is completely unintelligible. Luckily, Aster is able to offer an explanation.

“She took lizard friend to river. Let it go in the water, it swim away. Didn’t come back. She tried chasing, but it swims much faster. Now it’s gone,” he reports.

That is unfortunate, but also probably for the best that it returns to its home.

I have run out of bedrooms for new imps, the last few that I summoned have started doubling up in the bedrooms. It has not been an issue though, even a single bed is big enough for multiple imps to share without having to touch each other, not that that would even bother them anyway. It seems Rose was right when she said that imps would rather be crowded inside my dungeon than find their own beds outside of it. The next imp I plan to summon soon will bring the total to seventeen. I wonder what the normal size for an imp pack is, so I ask Rose.

“My old pack had twenty-two before I…became separated from them. But the numbers did fluctuate occasionally, mostly when the wanderers visited,” Rose remarks.

Who are ‘the wanderers’?

“Nomadic packs. They travel all over instead of settling in one place. Their packs were usually larger, I think. They would share stories of their travels and sometimes bring interesting things to trade from other places”

Why would these wanderers visiting affect the size of your pack?

“When two packs meet, it’s not uncommon for them to trade members. Some of the wanderers decide to settle and some of those who’ve been in one place for a while take the opportunity to travel.”

Did you ever travel with wanderers?

“No…Maybe I would have, eventually, but I never got the chance,” she laments.

Maybe you still can one day. There is a whole world out there that imps have yet to explore.

“I’ve no doubt some will want to do just that at some point, but I won’t be one of them.”

Why not?

“My place is here, protecting everyone,” she insists.

I wish I could say that we will be safe one day and it will not be necessary for her to protect everyone forever, but with the humans and now the vak as well, it would be irresponsible of me to make such a claim.

I might need to think about making a plan on what to do if we do eventually have to deal with the vak. The humans, I believe, should be easy to avoid simply by leaving town and hiding, but the vak might not be so easy to evade. The human’s only interest in us seems to be because they want my core, but the vak will not be so simple. William did imply that they want dungeon cores as well, but they also have a problem with imps so I cannot imagine them being too thrilled about seeing imps with a core in their possession.

Unfortunately, I do not know enough about them to imagine how they will respond to such a situation. I can only hope that if it comes to it, they will be satisfied with only taking my core and my imps will be able to escape.

It may be quite some time before that becomes an issue though as they are focused on the humans for now. Ideally, it would be best if we can keep them from learning about us for as long as possible; which is another reason for us to leave the city. If the vak are trying to exterminate the humans, then it would be better for us to not be near them.

But I doubt we could hide forever, especially if the vak win their war. Once the humans are gone, they will claim this land as their own. When that happens, is there anywhere we could go where we truly could not be found? I doubt it; it is inevitable that they would discover us eventually.

What other option do we have? Maybe we could try helping the humans, but what could we even do? What assistance could we realistically offer? Could one dungeon, and the creatures it summons, really have that much of an impact on the outcome of an entire war?

Even if we could make a difference, then what? If we could somehow help the humans attain victory instead, would we really be better off? While there are humans who seem reasonable, we know there are others who cannot be trusted and would do us harm if given the chance. How can we be sure the humans will not simply turn on us when we are no longer useful to them.

Maybe I am overthinking things and I hope that is the case, but I fear we are stuck in a situation with no good options available to us.