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  [colpse]Chapter Two Hundred and Two - Heart of Darkness

  Squeezing into the hole that Buster had created was a bit hard. We had to go i a time, with Carrot leading the charge, aer ing in st.

  I had wondered why we didn’t just break through the walls, but it seemed as though they were literally feet thid entirely made of sto made sense, for a castle. Not that I knew much about castles and the like.

  We found a long, narrow corridor oher side, one mostly taken up by the root, but it still had enough room on the sides for us to walk, though not shoulder-to-shoulder.

  “Carrot, I haven’t seen this core before, where is it?” Momma asked.

  Carrot pointed out ahead. “Down there. There’s a sort of round room, and on one side there’s the core room, and oher’s this door that has a portal out of the dungeon.”

  Momma nodded. “Very well, lead ahead Carrot. Little ones, stay in the tre. Buster, the rear.”

  Our formation mostly set, we took off down the corridor. I s the air. Part of it smelled like dirt and grass, as if... well, as if someone had just unrooted a few pnts, then scattered the fresh dirt around. It wasn’t a bad smell. Uhat though, so faint that I had a hard time sniffing it out, was that tangy, wrong smell that I was ing to associate with the mana Momma kept mentioning.

  The root pulsed, and all of us paused, breaths held as we waited for something to happen.

  “I think we should sider moving faster,” Momma said. “Avoid toug the root, keep yic to yourself.”

  We picked up the pace, but there wasly room to start running ht, not when the passage twisted and turned, strig us through narros rown with roots and pte-like leaves. It was cramped enough to give a bun custrophobia.

  Finally, we reached an opening and stumbled inte circur room. It had vaulted ceilings, with nine arches reag up to the middle where a big delier hung. Between each arch was a huge painting, a fresco for each of the nine floors of the dungeon. The entrahe mausoleum, the foggy forest, they were all represented.

  The tre of the room was cut in half by the root, with smaller ones rag around the room and curling up around the pilrs on the side and climbing up towards the paintings above. There were more seeds here, some of them bigger than those we’d seen in the boss room.

  “Peter, destroy the seeds,” Momma ordered.

  While Peter jumped to it, she turo the rest of us.

  “I feel the core from here. Could you all wait here for a moment? I will go and i it with Carrot.”

  Quest Updated!Trim the Cruel!You have reached the core, and the tre of this Evil Root! Destroy one, or both.

  “I’m ing with you,” I said.

  Momma hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  I shook my head right back. “I’m ing,” I said.

  “Cores are dangerous,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “But I have to see it. I... I want to see what you do. If you save this ohen maybe we do what you did and save others. And if you have to destroy it, then I think we should all know about it.”

  Bastion’s head whipped around to look at me, but he didn’t say anything.

  “No, Broccoli,” Momma said.

  I pouted. “Gosh, I wish I could get Miss Menu to share this with all of you,” I said. “It would make things easier.”

  “Share what?” Carrot asked. “And, uh, who’s Miss Menu?”

  “That’s what Broccoli calls the World’s call to a,” Amaryllis said. “Did your quest for this dungeon ge?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Pardon me,” Bastion said. “But you have a quest. And you didn’t inform us?”

  I blinked. “I mean, we were heading here anyway,” I said.

  “Even if that’s the case...” Bastion sighed. “We would likely have done a lot more to guard you had we known. The protocols... not that you would care, of course.” His brow pinched and I had the impression he was fighting off something of a headache.

  I really did feel bad for him. “I care,” I said. “rotocols?”

  Amaryllis was the oo answer. “The World doesn’t just give out quests like a priest handing out alms. Most won’t ever receive one. In fact, most will never meet someone who has had a quest. They appear, at times, to those in the right pces and the right times. Never when it es to political matters, but to prevent disaster aroy creatures that are harming the world... well, if you’re near su event, you might receive a quest.”

  “It’s protocol in Sylphfree that anyone who receives a quest has it verified by those in authority, and ohat’s dohey are assisted as best they be,” Bastion said. “One doesn’t just ighe will of the World.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, the World be pretty nagging sometimes. I guess it makes sehat you wouldn’t ig.”

  Bastion looked a little exasperated. “No, no, it wouldn’t do to ighat,” he said.

  “Never got a quest before,” Carrot said. “What’s that like?”

  “Uh,” I said. “Not much? Just kinda pops up sometimes. Hasn’t really ged anything. No real rewards either.”

  “I would still rather have you stay,” Momma said. “But if you insist. The rest of you, could you form a cordon? If things g, it would be best if everybun here were ready to act.”

  I skipped over to Momma and Carrot, following them towards the back of the room and to a small corridor splitting off to the side. That’s also where the root went, though for some reason it wasn’t blog the whole path again.

  “It’s ‘cause that’s against the rules,” Carrot said.

  “Huh?”

  “You were looking at the root with a puzzled expression,” she said. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure that you were asking yourself about the passage and why it isn’t blocked. It’s because dungeons don’t like it when you ge them up. Adding walls and blog paths.”

  “But the one over in the boss room was blocked,” I said.

  Carrot nodded. “Yep, it sure was.”

  I didn’t quite uand, but maybe it didn’t matter. I had a whole bunch more things w me. “Momma? How are you going to get rid of the root?”

  Momma didn’t answer for a while. “I don’t know,” she said. “I have some talent with magic, but I’m beginning to fear that this may be beyond me. I’ve always found that there is ohod that always works with weeds. I just hope it works here too.”

  I swallowed. Momma sounded... resigned but determined. It was actually a little scary. “We break the core,” I said. “I’ve... the World told me to do that before, for another iion, and we do it here too.”

  Carrot winced, but Momma didn’t seem to so much as flinch. “If we must,” she said. “I’ll take the burden.”

  “Momma!” Carrot said. “You ’t.”

  “Huh?” I asked.

  Momma smiled down at me and patted my helmeted head. “To the people of Dirt, there is no sier than the one we are sidering now. The reward for that sin is a bea of temptation upon your head. The punishment is, iably, death.”

  “But, you're the boss of Hopsalot, ’t you--” I began.

  Momma ughed. “They wouldn’t kill me. Silly little bun. No no, they would exile me, perhaps, or maybe nothing would e of it. I’m quite old already, you know, set in my ways. Hopsalot’s cil of elders... why, I’ve raised a number of them. I’d like to see them try to meddle in my affairs.” She harrumphed. “But no, it would only cause me a lot of trouble, and perhaps I’d have some suspis cast upon me for some time, but that’s all.”

  “Suspis?” I repeated.

  “That’s ‘cause everyohinks that someohat broke a core has to be some sort of evil person, a big old plotting vilin,” Carrot said.

  Oh no! Had that quest made me take a step onto the path of viliny? I didn’t want to be a vilin. I wouldn’t look good in spandex. I shook my head and cast aside the silly thought. “That’s dumb,” I decred.

  Carrot ughed. “Lots of things are.”

  “Focus, buns,” Momma said. We were at the core’s entrance.

  Each core room I’d seen was different, ahey all followed the same principles. A small-ish room, with some space set out in the tre.

  This one had walls of the same stone as the castle and the walls that separated each floor, with some nice pilrs to the side holding up a domed roof. In the tre, on a plush bed atop a meter-tall pilr, was a faintly glowing ball.

  The dungeon core wasn’t alone, of course. All around it, grasping onto the walls and pilrs, and with dozens of tendrils all around the core, was the root.

  “It’s everywhere,” I said as I looked in. The floors, the ceiling, they all have a thick mat of roots, with little sprouts stig out of them that had sharp little leaves. The leaves were all twisted so that their ft side was towards the core, like sunflowers chasing the sun.

  “It is,” Momma agreed.

  She stepped in and took a deep breath. “There’s magic here, lots of it, but less than what you’d expect from a dungeon core room, especially one from a dungeon as rge as this one.”

  I followed after her tingles rag ay body. “Yeah,” I said. My mana was filling up fast, I knew. I’d o vent it soon, but then, there might be a good reason for that soon.

  Momma found one piece of the root that wasn’t ected to the rest and ya up. Her arm came down, edge-first, and chopped into it with a dull th. “Strong,” she said.

  “I was never able to hurt a root,” I said. “I was surprised when Buster managed. Maybe I try ing them?”

  “Hmm. Perhaps we’ll sider our options first?” Momma asked. She leaned up to the root and ied it from much closer. “It’s mana-heavy. No, that’s not expressive enough to describe this. We’re taking in dozens of points of mana every minute here. This root has been taking more, and for... perhaps weeks. Most beings would bust, their will would twist and the magic, as votile as it be, would act out that will.”

  “Like, thinking of fire, then making some without trying?” I asked.

  “Something like that. The more mana you have, the easier it is to cast a spell. Now imagine having thousands upon thousands of points, then thinking about a fireball. It would practically cast itself, though, without the form and refi of a skill or a spell, it would just be will pushed into votile mana. It’s why it’s uo remain in a core’s room.”

  “I see,” I said. That did sound awful.

  “We should step out, before we absorb too much mana,” Momma said.

  The three of us gathered just outside the door, and Momma crossed her arms. “Ideas?”

  “Could we starve it?” Carrot asked. “Use up all the mana?”

  “All the mana a dungeon core produces? I... that’s possible, but pnts don’t die instantly when starved of water. I doubt this root would merely wither away. The amount of mana to be moved too, is incredible, and it would just be going into this chamber.” Momma gestured to the roots. “Uhere’s a way to eject it out of the dungeon, I ’t see it being feasible.”

  “What about herbicide?” I asked.

  “I don’t think we have anything strong enough,” Momma said.

  I nodded, “Yeah, but what about like... mana that the root doesn’t like? We feed it a bunch of anti-pnt-aspect mana.”

  Momma looked between me and the core room. “Well, it’s worth trying.”

  ***

  RavensDagger

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