“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”

- Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

==POV: Zidaun==

The ground behind us rose up into a pedestal, which caused us to swivel and enter combat ready stances. The pedestal had four crystal discs, each attached to a necklace of thin steel links.

We eased out of combat positions and tested the items cautiously.

It came as no surprise that they were magical, but none of our varied identification skills gave any indication of danger. The small discs simply showed up as:

Identification Amulet

Unique – Dungeon Bound – Immune to theft – Binding

I was immune to most mental effects, so I tried one on first. As far as I could tell there was no effect, other than the faintest feeling of mana moving for a tiny moment. It stopped almost immediately. I waited, but nothing happened. I checked my status, but nothing had changed.

“I detected a tiny bit of mana when I put it on, but it stopped right away. I am not detecting anything more and my status doesn’t show any effects.”

“Okay, sounds good, I will just do a few diagnostics.” Firi said.

He cast a few spells and I felt them wash over me. I could see their vague outlines through my connection to the dungeon.

“You are clean as far as I can tell.”

The others put on their amulets in turn. We checked for issues before and after putting on each one, but none appeared.

When the last amulet was removed from the pedestal it receded into the floor. A thin line of light lit up in the floor and showed a path that lead away from the door and back toward the buildings. From there it split into smaller paths leading to doors that each lead into a narrow building.

One line pulsed repeatedly and lead to the large central building.

Gurek’s eyebrows raised, “Does this dungeon feel really… organized to anyone else?”

“More than just organized.” Inda said. “It gave us everything we needed, not just to survive, but be comfortable. Well… except food. It even provided places for us to comfortably relieve ourselves. And look at that road. We didn’t take it, because we need to explore this entire area thoroughly, but I bet it leads right back to where we are staying.”

I hedged, “You are probably right. This dungeon is certainly atypical.”

Gurek shook his head and gestured to the line. “And it is obvious where it wants us to go next.”

This dungeon was unusual, but unlike my companions, I knew that that dungeons could be far more intelligent than people ever suspected. At least I hoped no one suspected. Though this one was certainly going to provide people with a massive clue. And this one definitely was awakened. If it hadn’t reached full awakening I would chew bark.

“It actually reminds me of an Adar dungeon I went through once.” said Inda, “I visited Mespar with some family.”

“Yes,” I said with some surprise,” it reminds me of home too. I had no idea you visited one of our dungeons, most are closed to outsiders. We do guide dungeons into being more organized, and a little easier for us to use. Perhaps we helped to design this one long ago.” I knew that this was more than just unlikely. If an Adar had bonded to this dungeon, we would all have known when it reawakened.

Firi sighed, “Well, what next?”

“Same as usual,” I said, “we cannot get a peek into the dungeon, anyway, so we will scout everything else and do a proper workup. For now that means we finish our sweep of the walls. Then we explore the rest of the interior. After that we will see if we can do what the dungeon wants.”

Part of me was uncomfortable delaying when the dungeon obviously had expectations, but my duty to my race included a need to continue in my role. The dungeon probably wouldn’t care anyway, as long as we got to it. Their sense of time was strange.

Gurek just sighed, but I could guess what he was thinking. He was always impatient with protocol. I just smiled faintly and we continued on our way.

Our journey resumed its course along the wall. We encountered even more statues, and we passed back through the layer of glimmering trees, but nothing else was different. Eventually we made our way back to the road and encountered our first change.

There was a building identical to the one that we stayed in. It was on the wrong side of the wall though, and the road here led to a blank wall. I could sense an empty tunnel behind the wall, however. After we determined that the building was in fact identical, and just as unlootable, we continued on.

A few minutes later we finally saw a change in the omnipresent Jormungandr statue that had accompanied us along the entire wall. A massive head of stone looked down at us. It was a nightmare of bone and scales. Its eyes had high arched ridges sheltering ominous glowing green irises around inky slitted pupils.

The tail of the stone beast was clamped between razor sharp bloodstained teeth a foot long and it disappeared further into the darkness of the throat. At the front of its mouth two sets of massive fangs passed each other, protruding beyond its mouth and resting over its scaly skin.

“Right, if we see any sign of something like that I am leaving.” Gurek said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” I said, “if anything like that is in there we are all leaving. They won’t get many reports out of our corpses, after all.”

Firi touched his heart and forehead in a brief prayer, and Gurek and Inda followed suit. I didn’t. My religion was a little different after all. And I had a prayer later that I needed to perform. I had been putting it off… I wasn’t sure I wanted what it would bring me. I had only been able to delay because I could think of no harm it could do to wait.

There was artwork that grew more and more prominent as we got closer to the wall beneath the giant serpent’s head. It was a picture of a tree. It had deep green leaves and had bright red fruit. Identification gave us nothing meaningful.

The rest of our trip around the wall proceeded without any further incident. We arrived back at our original entrance tunnel and then went back to base camp. After that we resumed searching through the grotto. It was mostly empty. The only new thing we found were six fountains, each of which had a pillar of stone in the middle rising upward and out of sight. I could feel the water moving downward through them, so I assumed they connected to the ceiling far overhead. Otherwise, all was darkness, a road with lights, and statues until we reached the arc of trees that cut one part of the cavern off from another.

All the other routes were explored, so we took our time in investigating the buildings. Since the central building had a pulsating trail of light leading to it, we went with that first.

The basalt exterior blended into the starlight background until we were quite close and then resolved into hexagonal basalt columns that were rough and contained flecks of glowing colors. The door of black stone was almost indistinguishable from the stone around it. The path that lead up to it, and the presence of a handle, equally black and made of metal with a black finish, however, made it easy enough to find.

We prepared ourselves, but we still blinked at the blinding light that emerged as we opened the door. In contrast to the grotto, the building’s interior was as bright as daylight, and the walls were a polished grey granite. There was no single point source for the light, it was reflected off the ceiling from hidden alcoves overhead.

The building was a large cube in form. Along each side wall were statues of men and women. They were firmly embedded in a solid wall of perfectly clear crystal. Each statue had various objects in or above their hands, which were held in front of them as though they were offering the contents. With the objects and statues embedded in the crystal, however, it was obvious that they were not for meant to be taken, and were relatively safe from being stolen.

The objects themselves varied widely. One statue held a scroll and a book, both of which had unknown symbols. The language was apparently English, which I wrote down, but it gave me no other information. The next held a steel dagger pinched between his thumb and forefinger and looked to be examining the blade closely. After that a lady held bolts of silk in varying colors, then the next statue was a man doing the same with linen. The rest of the objects were just as varied. Handfuls of seeds, a handful of various coins, a person with a plate mouse and plate rat in cages, a blooming flower, rods of various metals, ores, gems, sorcerer’s silver, objects of both raw and carved wood, and more.

And, at the back of the room, lay a raised dais of black marble threaded with amethyst. A large ruby bowl was inset into the marble, which glowed with its own light. Above, set into the wall, was a black crystal that appeared to be a smaller replica of a dungeon core. This one had the shape of a spike or extended diamond.

When I identified the marble platform I could feel my blood leave my face. I felt like I had been slapped in the face for putting off my duty.

“The Altar of Sacrifice and Obligation,” I said hoarsely.

Firi gave me a worried look, but I just smiled faintly and shook my head. This was not something for outsiders.

Inda had been pacing through the room like the rest of us.

“An altar? I wonder what it wants sacrificed?” she said.

Gurek was looking at a pile of gems in various simple cuts. He gestured to an arm broadly at the statues contents.

“Do you think these are the rewards for making one?”

Firi shook his head.

“I doubt it,” he said, “unless it thinks we want a plate mouse for some reason?”

I chuckled. “Hard to say for sure. Dungeons can be like that sometimes. I think it is more likely that these are examples of what constitutes an acceptable sacrifice.”

Inda nodded as she looked around again.

“There are quite a few different items here.” She said, “They seem almost random. I think…” she trailed off for a moment, “I think it might accept almost anything. I am not sure what kind of reward it will give, but we should find out for our report anyway. We have plenty of nonessential things we could give it. And they will replace anything we use for the mission.”

The rest of us nodded at her. After a quick discussion we all pulled out a few items.

I started us off with something simple and pulled out a single copper coin which I placed in the bowl. The coin dissolved and a small clear disc, about the size of a large coin itself, materialized above the bowl and then clinked into it with a faint crystalline chime.

I pulled the disc out. It had a symbol I didn’t recognize on the front, but the back held a phoenix. I inspected it.

“It is a [Token of Life and Prosperity: 1]. It cannot be stolen or looted, but it can be given away.”

For now we didn’t bother with more speculation. I put another copper coin into the bowl, but it simply rested there. I took the coin back out and Inda put a copper coin of her own into the bowl. Nothing happened.

“Okay, looks like it only wanted one of those. Let’s move on.” The others just nodded.

I took a strip of dried fruit and put it into the bowl. The fruit dissolved and I felt a tiny surge of mana, but nothing appeared. I looked at the token I had already been given. It now read [Token of Life and Prosperity: 4.] The unknown symbol on the front had changed as well. I showed the others.

“It changed the one it already gave me instead of giving me a new one. It reads four instead of one now. I think the symbol might be numbers. I probably shouldn’t get all of… whatever this reward is anyway. Even if it is transferable, there is only one token right now.”

I stepped back and sketched out the first symbol it had shown me and then what it read now, labeling each with a number.

“I’m not sure if that is actually a problem,” Gurek said. He pointed to the sides. “Looks like that coin would fit right into one of those.”

To each side of the altar were two columns. Each was about waist high at the front and then angled sharply back and upward until it met the wall. The angled face of each had three holes. They were shallow, and had an image of the phoenix depressed into each one. The holes on each were in a triangular pattern. On the left side the triangle pointed down and a narrow groove connected each of the upper holes to the lower one. The right side had the same pattern, but inverted.

“It does look like the tokens go there,” Firi said. “Not sure if we are supposed to get the reward there, or they can be used to combine and separate the tokens.”

We each examined them for a moment and Inda asked a question.

“Should we read these top-down or the reverse?”

I shrugged. “No way to tell without trying.”

I was closer to the left column so I put the crystal token in the bottom slot of that one. Nothing. The other two slots didn’t do anything either. I brushed past Firi as I walked to the other side and ignored the prickling sensation I got from feeling his warmth. I pressed it into the top of the right side.

There was a faint click as the token aligned itself perfectly with the indent. It dissolved away and was replaced with two identical tokens in the bottom slots. Each had a new symbol and identified as having a value of two. I noted the symbol.

“Looks like it works,” Gurek muttered.

I gave a low hum of agreement.

“If we continue we should discover how it deals with larger numbers later. In the mean time...”

I went back to the left side, though this time Firi had moved a little farther back, and pushed the two new tokens into the top slots. They combined and left me with a token that read four again.

Since it didn’t seem to matter who gave the items I ended up doing all the ‘sacrifices’ we had chosen. Some of the items were expensive, but we would be able to swear under a truth spell that we had used it to learn more about the dungeon. Well the others would. A truth spell wouldn’t do anything to me.

It was hard to determine exactly what the dungeon valued. A small section of dried meat gave five, a piece of cloth three, a nut gave three as well. A handful of edible seeds gave nine. An attempt to give more of those seeds gave nothing. A silver piece and gold piece each gave one, though the dungeon dissolved them and then gave them back. A cut sapphire was also returned after it was absorbed, though it gave two.

The return of the coins and gems was puzzling for a little while, until we spotted the gems on display had changed. Some of them were now in the same style of cut that we had offered. When we offered another gem with a different style of cut the same thing happened, and more gems shifted appearance.

The dungeon had returned the coins and gems because it was paying for the information of their shapes, rather than paying for the gem or metals itself, which it already had.

Other items also puzzled us for a while, the large amount of nine given for the seeds. Eventually we pieced together that the dungeon was looking for a total amount. The dungeon would give three points for any relatively unchanged material from a plant. We gave it more nuts as well as fruit and other preserved grains, etc… Each item given would cap out at nine points total. We gave it more dried meat and that capped out at fifteen.

Another scrap of the same cloth was ignored, though it gave another three points for a different type. Apparently they didn’t count the same way as plants. We were not sure why.

Eventually we gave a great deal more to the dungeon. Little pieces of every basic material that we had on us were given. Pieces of cloth, fur, food, tools, and more. And since the dungeon had shown a tendency to take items more than once, each item was offered multiple times. Once we had given samples of everything we had plenty of spares for, Gurek spoke up.

“Do we want to offer something a little more valuable?”

“What were you thinking?” Firi said.

Gurek pulled out a heat stone. “I don’t see anything magical in here except the lights.” He glanced at the various items, “It might give quite a few… whatever the reward is, and we do have extra of the various stones, just in case.”

“Sure,” Inda said, “as long as we don’t suddenly find ourselves needing them. That would be… unfortunate.”

“You taste for understatement continues to amuse… someone I’m sure,” Firi said. He received an elbow to his stomach in response, which he largely ignored. I doubted he even felt it through his armor.

“Actually,” I said, “if none of you mind, I would prefer to do my prayers first.” I pointed to the altar and the depiction of the dungeon core above it. “This is an ideal location.”

They were familiar enough with my routine prayers at each location. Usually I would do them at the first safe zone we encountered. However, this entire dungeon had been a safe zone, so it had felt safe enough to wait. However, the altar had reminded me rather forcefully of my duty. As the others stepped out I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath. It was time to talk with the dungeon.