Sister Sister

Chapter 20

Once the raid began in earnest, I’d holed up in my chamber of machinations to monitor the hero party. An easy thing to do made complicated by the way raids gave me a migraine of sorts. Floating on my back and sipping Chaos Beverage, I felt a little better than I did when I was hovering anxiously. Something like the whispering of instinct told me I’d feel as good as I was going to If I was with my core, but I knew that wasn’t true.

The first time I’d experienced pain from an active raid it had been more severe but abated the further I got from my core. Now it seemed like either I was more firmly connected and couldn’t avoid it, or I needed to get further away than before. At least going by how bad it had felt when I was up at the bottom of the fifth stack.

It was hard to focus but I made myself and turned my attention back to the raid. Despite splitting up I watched both groups, keeping a screen open at the farmhouse so I could spy on the pair left behind. It was easy to do, for the most part, the only flaw that when I wasn’t looking at a display directly the sound dropped out. It left me playing catch up in real-time occasionally when I was trying to track conversations.

It stayed easy, right up until they entered the third stack boss room. I’d watched with ghoulish delight as they struggled only to witness them rally. I’d felt frustrated when it seemed certain they’d win, a frustration that metamorphosed into shock right when Reiner panicked. Calling for a retreat he’d thrown Andrea down as a sacrifice to buy himself time to escape. I’d felt an uncomfortable acidic tingle watching it happen, displeased that he was such a shit heel but happy for the points I’d receive because of it.

“What the fuck?” I shouted, my double-layered voice echoing off the walls of my chamber of machinations as I sat up. Henry dashed into the fray to save one of the heroes. I was too stunned to do more than watch as the other skeletons followed Henry’s lead to put Reiner down.

I’d been waiting for the heroes to die after seeing a few choice moments of torture carried out against the Lepsan woman for no discernible reason. Now I was confused and furious about how Reiner was being killed and it sent an odd jolt through me. Dancing, hobbies, free time sports, all of that was fine but I felt on an instinctive level that Henry shouldn’t have been capable of doing anything that violated the dungeon's best interest. My best interest.

Reiner LG +4

Lilian NG +3

The point notice was enough to distract me thanks to the stated alignments. I thought at best they’d end up on the neutral spectrum given what they’d done to Hetcha, the Lepsan woman. I didn’t really understand the logic behind it and felt conflicted as I looked over at the screen showing the pair at the farm. The Sage Mira had already removed Hetchas’ collar. Hetcha had wanted to leave immediately. Mira had insisted that they wait for Hetcha to recover move before they traveled.

A day later they were chatting while selecting horses to take for themselves from the farm. Watching them I checked their alignments and found the pair were both neutral good. Not an unexpected development but one that deepened my questions about the alignment system. With a sigh, I was about to turn my attention back to the main party when something happened.

Spell Interaction Warning: Remote Trigger

I’d never seen the pop up before and as I closed it, I was treated to a horrific sight. It looked like an explosion erupting from her chest. The gore almost had me closing the screen, but I managed to suppress the reflex. I couldn’t tell how it had happened, but something under her shirt had exploded. Hetcha had been caught in the blast and was laying on the ground a few feet from Mira.

Hetcha was in critical condition but Mira was dying, and I felt a jolt pass through me. I’d decided when I’d overheard their plan to run away together to help them out. Now I needed to make sure they lived long enough to do so. Floating up the levels at top speed wouldn’t be good enough and I decided to try something. Using the map, I touched my icon then drag it to the farmhouse.

A three-second counter appeared before the world smeared drunkenly and I found myself wanting to throw up next to the scene of gore. I used two potions, the stronger for Mira. I managed to save her in the nick of time though I couldn’t do anything about the hand and eye she’d lost for the moment. Hetcha wasn’t so badly hurt and I couldn’t do more without incurring some considerable mana costs since the raid was still active.

That it was still going felt a little off. There had only been one person left able to fight and she hadn’t looked in a condition to fight off multiple attackers. Not wanting to endure the nauseating feeling of moving myself I checked in on the map and was treated to an even stranger sight than the random explosion.

The skeletons had clustered around the back wall where I’d last seen Andrea crouching over Mina. The skeletons moved back suddenly, most heading for the mirror. They’re move revealed one of their rank kneeling in front of Andrea who’d taken up a protective stance in front of Mina. Her hands were bloody, and she had a wild look in her eyes, but she held the blade steady.

Standing up the skeleton turned out to be Deidra Elise Sternum, one of the golden flame clerics. On the floor between her and the girls was a small anatomical heart-shaped vial of healing potion. Putting her hands up Deidra backed off, turning to retreat through the mirror. She wasn’t the last one out though, that was Henry, and he stopped to bow before leaving.

I could set treasures for Boss Encounters and spawn rates for random encounters, but certain items had a mind of their own. The light stone in the bats' cave hadn’t been my doing any more than the potion but it appeared none the less. As if utility equipment was outside of my control. The skeletons had encountered it first, but I’d been tinkering with settings then and uncertain of what was and wasn’t my doing.

Seeing the potion, the certainty that it wasn’t some obscure part of my settings crystalized. It had appeared somewhere and Deidra or one of the others had picked it up. Now it was being used to help adventures and I felt my enter body go cold and distant.

That I couldn’t control every aspect of the dungeon was a hard pill to swallow. My life depended on it and how it performed, the idea that it wasn’t fully mine was frightening. Even so, it was probably a function of the system that everyone dealt with. An impersonal rule at play that I would likely hate but couldn’t do anything about.

What Deidra was doing was a direct act of betrayal. She was saving an adventurer of her own volition. Something I felt on a basic level she should have been incapable of. Much like Henry shouldn’t have been able or even wanted to interfere in the fight earlier. I didn’t know how to process what I was seeing or know how to feel about it. It was like walking outside expecting a cheerful blue and finding the sky blood red. It was too much.

Yet, all it would take to stop it from happening was putting the item in inventory before the auburn-haired girl picked it up. Deidra’s action would come to nothing and I could deal with Henry just as simply. All it would take was a simple order to take no prisoners and end the fight. Then I’d just need to give Henry a standing direction not to ever do anything like it again.

My head hurt as I started the needed motions to put the potion in my inventory. I mean, I was literally standing over a pair of adventurers that I’d saved myself. If the skeletons had chosen to spare the girls then there was likely a good reason for it, one I should ask them about.

Yet if I did that, wouldn’t I just be encouraging them to think for themselves? They were monsters, pawns tied to the system and summoned to fulfill my needs. Did they really need any of the freedom I’d given them? If they were going to betray me then what was the point of any of the comforts I’d built or allowed them to accumulate.

I felt sick, worse than when I’d coughed up the boon. The thought didn’t feel like my own, but I couldn’t explain why. As I tried to refuse it ten arguments for it sprang to life from the pool of knowledge that made up my memories. Without memories of my own, personal decisions and feelings, I’d mostly cobbled together my views based on what I happened to think of first when considering a subject. There wasn’t any real sense of connection to an idea until after I’d made a decision.

A shiver ran through my body at the thought, I didn’t have an express reason for anything I did or refused to do. Was that something anyone would call a personality? Did I have one before I became a core? Or was the idea just something I’d made up to explain things to myself? I didn’t know and despite my resolve to just live as I was anxieties came crawling up from some corner of my mind to strangle me.

Despite the fact I didn’t need to breathe, I felt like I did and couldn’t. Chest hitching in mock motion my vision blurred and darkened, my last clear view was of Andrea giving Mina the potion. Around me, the world shattered. Fissures ran from the floor up the walls to the ceiling. Breaking away in shards it fell into a starry void.

Every part of me was in pain, worse than a raid migraine or even when I’d coughed up the boon. My form was hard to see in the darkness, but I thought I could just make out an outline. One that suggested I was seeing double. The trouble was that every time I saw it the pain intensified until with a feeling like peeling skin from a sunburn something sloughed off from my pseudo flesh.

I couldn’t see it clearly in the dark, save for a pair of burning red orbs.

“What the fuck?” she demanded her voice a double-layered pair of feminine voices that were a touch out of sync.

“What’s your name?” I asked, still in pain but not as much as before. I tried opening the system, but nothing happened.

“Why would I need such a thing?” she responded, and I sighed.

“I’m going to call you 24,” I informed 24 and received an irritated hiss in response.

“You needn't bother, you’ll be gone soon enough,” 24 said then jumped at me. In the dark, it was hard to figure out exactly what they were going for until their hands wrapped around my neck.

“I don’t breathe,” I informed her after a few minutes of instinctively trying to struggle out of her grip and failing. The feeling was uncomfortable, like a toddler trying to strangle me with a balloon wreath.

“Really,” I added, when she kept at it, my panic at having my neck touched gone. I still squirmed, not liking the feeling, but I knew I wasn’t in any danger.

“How am I supposed to kill you?” she asked, clearly confused and I felt a bit irritated myself now. Why would I tell her that even if I knew?

“Did someone say you were supposed to?” I asked, wondering what the hell was even going on. Idiot doppelganger out to murder you wasn’t all that scary when neither could muster up a slap harder than thrown cotton balls. There was the added issue of her not actually seeming to be a copy of me so much as another female DM.

“No, but what else should I do to a copy?” She said and I sighed again. Yep, I was not sensing a resemblance of any kind.

“Neat, and here I was worried you’d shave your goatee and the rest of the crew wouldn’t be able to tell us apart,” I said, wondering how to get out of whatever the hell was happening.

“Wow, couldn’t resist, could you? Nerd,” she spat at me and I felt a sting of anger followed by a realization.

“Takes a nerd to recognize the reference,” I shot back, and she surged forward to try and slap me. She succeeded and it felt weird when her hand struck my left orb, but otherwise nothing. Mad that I was unphased she backed off again and floated a bit away. I assumed to sulk. I took the opportunity to try and think my way out of whatever was happening. That devolved into sulking I wasn’t sure how much later. On top of not being able to get access to the system, my display didn’t show the time or any of the normal icons, just unresponsive glyphs.

“Were you the voice in my head back at the dungeon? The one saying all that shitty stuff about Henry and Deidra?” I asked when resentment faded and curious bloomed from boredom.

“What shitty stuff?” 24 asked, sounding about as enthusiastic as I did.

“That they shouldn’t think for themselves or have comfortable places to live,” I responded, trying and failing to dig the exact memory out of the glaze of pain that had tainted my brain at the time.

“Uhm, I guess. I kind of remember trying to stop them from disobeying before you went and fucked it up. Seriously, what kind of dungeon master would even want monsters that think in the first place?” 24 said though she didn’t sound sure until the last bit.

“So you don’t go insane from living in a hole in the ground surrounded by murder drones?” I offered. I heard a teeth sucking tch and there was a long pause.

“Just because the cage is comfortable doesn’t mean they’re free or have rights. You can still order them how you like. Why bother pretending to give a shit?” 24 asked, sounding bitter. I wanted to hit her back with a counter-argument right away, but I didn’t have one. Even if no one else recognized the majority of the monsters in the dungeon as sentient beings, I did.

It was part of the list of things I did my best not to think about on a day-to-day basis. The monsters weren’t in my dungeon by choice, they were there because I summoned them. I could usually assuage my conscience with the fact that the system didn’t give two shits about my views and was adding them to the store no matter what I did. That let me keep building with my occasional pangs of conscious invested in things like amenities rather than letting myself be drug down.

“Honestly? I just wouldn’t want to be treated poorly if I were in their place. I mean, we're not all that different. I’m basically the slave in charge, owner subject to an owner, whatever you want to go with. I belong to chaos and if I don’t do as they say, I get put down,” I admitted, the thought one I’d tried to push down even deeper. there was also the problem that I couldn't write my actions off on them fully. They hadn't given me any explicit orders out of 'get the points'. What I did to carry it out was on me, they just made the stakes life and death.

“Then you have a death wish, saving adventures and letting your mobs run amok,” 24 said unhappily, probably wishing I was already dead.

“What do you get out of thinking the opposite aside from being alone?” I asked, curious. I understood on a basic level that I wasn’t a good person nor particularly righteous. I was nice where I could be but the scale for that was a bit skewed in my case. I was a functional lower-tier god compared to the average NPC class and even most adventures if the current set was any indicator. Relative to what I could do, I had done very little.

Which, if I was being honest, was fine. Good? Certainly not. Evil? Not exactly. I found pleasure in things like decorating and design, but I wouldn’t have chosen to kill anyone if I could avoid it. Even the enslavement of the monsters was something I’d have done without if I could. By the same token though I hadn’t tried to refuse or come up with an alternative. Really, now that I was thinking about it, I probably could have just loaded my dungeon to the teeth with traps instead.

Something I could still do but wouldn’t free any of the monsters. They’d just rot in my inventory and if I found a way to sell them back to the store, they’d just be bought by someone else. Freeing them wasn’t an option, and even if it was, I honestly wouldn’t have. For all the monsters, aside possibly from the moles and bats, it would have been a pretty terrible idea.

The bats and moles along with the insect mobs would probably stay put or pick a non-dungeon section of the local hills to move to and live. They were intelligent but still essentially local animals. The same couldn’t be said for the flame elemental hounds or skeletons. The hounds would burn everything around them before perishing from cold. If I could get them back to their natural environment that would change but for the moment it wasn’t an option.

Then there were the skeletons. Christopher had been the first one to express a desire to fight adventures to me, but he hadn’t been the last. Once league set up began, they’d all expressed the idea in one form or another and been relieved to have come combat added into their routine. How exactly they would react to a civilian population I couldn’t be sure, and I wasn’t interested in finding out. Particularly given the level of devastation they could wreak with the upgrades I’d given them.

Pretty nice of me to not want to do that, but it didn’t change anything. I still profited from enslaved monsters and the death of sentient beings, the better they were the more points I got.

“Is that something that matters? Not being alone, getting something from being a DM?” 24 asked and for the first time, I felt like she wasn’t angry which was odd.

“I…Thinks so. For me at least. I think I used to be human, but I don’t remember any of the personal stuff about it. So, I kind of just decide stuff like that as it happens,” I admitted. Maybe I’d hated slavery as a human, maybe I’d just been aware of it, but the me that now existed certainly hated it. As much for personal as economic or philosophical reasons. Maybe my situation wasn’t quite the same, but I felt enough of a similarity to despise it being done to others.

“Your pretty fucking shallow, you know that, right?” 24 fired back at me and I shrugged. Probably, but I couldn’t really do anything about it. My entire world had shifted violently, and I’d lost every bit of data that would have normally anchored a personality. That I still had one was something of a minor miracle.

“What have you got that gives you so much depth? Memories of the past?” I asked, annoyed again. Even if she was right, she was just being an asshole at the point. Forgive me for just getting on with my life instead of ruminating on things I had no way of doing anything about.

“What good would they do? It’s your fucking empathy that landed us in this mess in the first place,” 24 said and I looked back to where she was, just catching how her orbs lit up brighter than before for a moment before she turned her back on me.

“So, you know what’s going on?” I said, trying and failing not to sound smug. Nothing like a little girl talk to bait someone into oversharing.

“The system tried to delete you. I should have been the one left in the dungeon. Instead, you refused to let me manifest and now were both…wherever this is,” 24 said and my mental image of her updated with the evil goatee. Yep, incompetent doppelganger.

“Do not make a Christmas Carol joke!” 24 added, shouting the demand.

“Patrick Stuart or the Muppets version?” I asked innocently.

“Why would you even ask, the Muppets- Oh fuck you!” 24 said, orbs brightening in rage.

“Seriously, if you know all the same stuff why are you so… different?” I asked, just narrowly avoiding saying ‘humorless’.

“I am what you will be when your weakness is gone,” 24 spat.

“My sense of humor is a weakness?” I asked, not understanding the math on that one.

“Everything about you. Those monsters you're so concerned about? They’re only like that because you assumed they would be. Other GM’s get proper, what did you call them? Murder drones? Obedient and programmable monsters, you got a fucking circus that I’ll have to sort out,” 24 sounded annoyed but not angry and I felt like I’d had cold water dumped on me. My perception changed something in the dungeon. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but it was to my knowledge the most profound instance and I hadn’t even known it.

24 continued her rant and I did my best to nod at proper intervals while ignoring her. Now that I was less confused by the situation and aware of what was at stake, I decided to try something.

“Inventory,” I thought and a strange glyph appeared but nothing else. I’d half expected it and tried focusing, remembering what it looked like and the general contents. It wobbled into existence, only to wobble out again before I could do anything, and I wasn’t able to get it open a second time.

“Boon,” Was my plan B and I imagined the stone down to the last detail of how it had felt coming up. This time a red warning box I couldn’t read flashed into being, but I ignored it, focusing on the stone. There was a sharp resistance but in the next moment, the stone was in my hands. I held it tightly to hide its light from 24. It burned to hold it but after recent events, my pain tolerance was not something to be underestimated.

“24?” I cut her off mid-rant, but she quieted, seemingly curious about what I’d say. I wondered she’d feel if she knew I hadn’t been listening.

“Why did the system wait until that instance to try to overwrite me?” I asked thought I felt like I had an idea. This might be my only chance to ask.

“Because it was the first time where we resonated a little.” 24 said, looking down unhappily, like a kid who had to admit to something unpleasant.

“Because I was mad about Deidra,” I acknowledged, and she nodded. It might have only been for a moment, but I had been upset about the skeletons acting on their own. The warning I couldn’t read was flashing but I ignored it.

“You know, instead of thinking of ourselves as original and copy, or old and better version, I think we should just say were sisters. I mean, we're not that similar, but you know. We kind of are,” I said, not feeling bad about what I was about to do but wanting to part on slightly better terms than hatred.

“Whatever,” 24 said and I took that as a reluctant yes.

“Activate, I ask a boon, turn on, hello?” I started thinking of possible activations for the boon but nothing worked. Frustrated I decided to try something drastic and put up to where a mouth would normally be. Since it was likely from a God of communication, I figured that was a good place. Next up would be my ear but it would be harder to hide that from 24. I felt a gross sensation as my pseudo flesh tore apart painlessly to reveal a maw into which the stone fell.

“This is a first,” Steve’s voice sounded in my head and I felt elated despite trying to cope with the sensation of having a tongue.

“Please help! I’m lost somewhere space looking,” I wasn’t sure if the stone connected me to him because he was best able to help, or if it was because he was the only one I could think of who might be able to.

“Hang on – Oh you’re in the-,” Steve said before the connection broke. In my mouth, the stone turned to fragments that slid painfully down my throat. I gaged but nothing came up. Poking at my new mouth I found it was pretty standard as long as you ignored that the cheeks were thready in spots and would show teeth when I opened it. When it was closed though it felt solid which was odd in its own right.

“You figured something out, didn’t you?” 24 asked, sounding dejected.

Before I could say anything, the world blurred, and I found myself laying across Steve’s lap while he looked down at me in surprise.

“Hi,” I said, not sure what else to say as I tried to reorient my brain.

“Hi,” He replied, giving a little wave.

Realizing I should move I was glad that I was essentially boneless and floated off him. Righting myself I did a quick inspection, curious if I’d find anything new. The rest of me looked and felt the same.

“Oh, right, thanks for the save.” I realized I hadn’t thanked Steve a couple beats late but he nodded without seeming to mind.

“Glad you’re alright…Not sure how you ended up in the recycle bin but I’ll get it sorted out,” Steve said then seemed about to type something to I surged forward to stop him. It felt odd when I spread my hand out over this keyboard and his hand collided with my own. It wasn’t that it felt that much different from skin, though it did, it was just the sense of actual physical contact. Sure, it was like an airless void in the shape of a hand closing on mine, but it had the weight I’d have associated with normal hands touching.

“Uhm, something wrong?” Steve asked clearly confused by my move. It took a second to think of what I wanted to say again. It had been a while since I’d felt anything so concretely.

“The system tried to overwrite me and made another DM I named 24. She’s probably still in there,” I said, remembering why I’d been concerned. I didn’t want her to take over my dungeon, or have one of her own, but I also didn’t feel right about leaving her to rot in that void all alone. Isolation did fucked up things to a mind.

“Oh…that shouldn’t have happened. I’ll look into it and try to resolve the matter quickly,” Steve assured me but I felt like his attention was on the problem more than me. I felt a little slighted but I suppoused that was how IT issues were. Once you knew what was wrong, you wanted to get to work.

“Thanks, though I get the impression that to the system my surviving was the glitch, not her,” I said, happy that he helped me but still uncomfortable with the idea that the system might have it out for me.

“Hm? Oh, no, the systems don’t have an automatic mechanism for anything like that. Things like your invite happen occasionally, but this had to have been initiated by someone,” Steve said, looking at me directly again. I probably should have focused on the part about it being an assassination attempt and not a feature of the system but I didn’t.

“My invite?” I asked, not really sure what would constitute an error in that case.

“Well, the people there issued to meet specific criteria. Criteria you certainly don’t. It was originally meant for your passenger and he had completed two of the initial stages to qualify but it glitched and became an open invitation when it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to meet the kill quota,” Steve said and I blinked.

“When did it figure that out?” I asked, wondering what had changed so significantly as to disqualify him after getting past two rounds.

“When he got in your car,” Steve said and I felt like I could see a smirk.