Chapter Thirty-Three

Sharing Emotions

Dev looked the place over and decided it was time to tidy up. He concentrated and the coins vanished. He then restored the cavern to its pre-melted state. It required minimal effort and he saw no reason to leave his home in a state of disarray. He realized that as a dragon he would have been uncomfortable resting in a room that wasn’t stocked with gold and gems. Now, he was a dungeon, and he needed some sort of order. And that was how he knew he was getting back to normal; by his decidedly undragonlike behavior.

Dev felt a pang of remorse. Was he turning his back on who he used to be? What was he really? Was he a dragon that had become a core, a core that used to be a dragon, or just a core and nothing more? He knew that last part wasn’t correct, but he didn’t want to feed his vanity any more than he had to; he knew that as a dragon he’d been something special, and as cores went, he was unique. Dev was a lot of things, but a simple core wasn’t one of them.

He knew one thing, he had to do something about his personality traits dominating him, and walling them off wasn’t going to do it. He had come so far, figuring out how the universe ran, and how to gather the energies that dungeons employed as they grew. All of his work had nearly been undone because he had a lapse of character. The worst part was that he wasn’t just putting himself at risk, but he’d also nearly been the end of Toot. A boon companion if ever there was one. Toot who had come with him, he suspected, more out of a sense of sympathy rather than one to experience life. The tutorial had broken his entire bit of routine the moment that he actually responded to Dev and spoke instead of using his “pre-recorded” or “Reading from a Script” voice.

Toot and he had awakened at almost the same time. Maybe it was the power of his soul, or maybe it was the fact that the Overseers were weakening for the first time; the point was that it didn’t matter what had brought them together, they had needed one another and responded. Their initial dialogue was stilted and wonky because they had just come into awareness, and as they went from trying to find a path to forging one, they had created a bond that was so strong that if one of them sneezed the other one wiped his own nose. Figuratively, of course.

Some people, he knew by the few memories he had from the humans who had died, regretted the things they had done and tried to start somewhere new. Some buried their issues, and others faced them head-on. He and Toot were going to have to try all three. Dev had a plan, and that plan was risky. By the end of tonight, he would either be rid of the personality flaws or he would be back to acting like a dragon full-time. Goulcrest was their fresh start. Dev was going to have to face himself and slay the metaphoric dragon, and then he was going to have to bury it forever.

“Say,” Dev said to Toot, “You never did tell me how you won the heart of this lady friend of yours. I mean, I understand why you were attracted to her, but not how the feelings were reciprocated.” Dev asked this to distract Toot, as he began working on his plan. The less nervous Toot was the easier things would go.

“Her name,” Toot said with a sigh, “Is Nix, and she is a special lady. It turns out that she’s an empath; that’s a race of humans who can sense and occasionally manipulate the emotions of others. “Both times that I met her I was in the throes of your lustful side, and she felt my overwhelming attraction to her.” He walked over and scratched his back on the wall. “So, she knew how I felt, and could sense that even though I am dangerous that I was safe to be around.”

“I’m surprised that she didn’t sense all that fear that you are cycling.” Dev knew that while he had drained the majority from his companion, the man had been forcing open his channels and strengthening the power of the fear to an unheard-of degree. Just a spark of the juice coursing through his channels would be enough to send Goulcrest into a panic. Toot had only one chakra point open so far, which made his achievement all the more impressive.

“She did, but she recognized that it was fear that belonged to other people. I think she might believe me to have a connection to emotions in a manner similar to her.” Toot frowned, “Probably break her heart when she finds out what I really am.” He looked at Dev’s core intently, “It was not my intention to deceive or mislead her.”

“Who says that you have to do either?” Dev asked him with a smile in his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” the core stressed, “That you are too quick to give up. Do you like this woman?”

“I would have been attracted to her even if you hadn’t influenced me,” Toot confessed. “Now? After last night? Let’s just say that it is more than a passing fancy.”

“Great! I have an upgrade for you,” Dev said excitedly. “Just hold still. I’m pretty sure this is going to hurt.” Then the core began to alter the core in Toot’s chest but stopped when he realized what he was doing. “Is it all right that I modify you a little bit so that you can cultivate other emotions besides fear? You’ll have to build separate channels for each emotion, and I can’t imagine how hard it will be to cycle them all independently from one another, but I think that as my emissary to the town you will be in a position to influence others to feel different emotions. It doesn’t have to be all fear. Laugh, love, and lament on occasion. You can’t relish the sweet without the bitter.”

Toot’s jaw dropped open. He was going to be the universe’s first completely emotional cultivator. Dev could see that there was no way that he was going to say no.

“Can I make a suggestion?” Toot inquired.

“Always,” Dev replied.

“Place a stone in each of my chakra points, all seven of them. That will let me build separate channel lines without entangling them so much. I don’t even need them unlocked. I can work on that on my own, but it will help me manage things much better.” Toot said as he thumped his chest where the fear core was currently in place.

“Any particular place you want certain emotions to placed?” Dev could see the logic behind Toot’s thoughts. It also stood to reason that certain emotions would belong in body-specific points.

“Serenity is an emotion and an awareness. It should go at the crown point. I want to see the world with happy eyes, so the core of joy should rest in my third-eye area. The fear core belongs in my throat, you might not remember from when you were alive, but when you are afraid your throat closes up making it difficult to breathe.” Dev’s friend scratched behind his ear as he thought, “Love and hate, which are two sides of the same coin, should naturally go around the heart. Anger should be found in the gut or solar plexus, sadness is sacral, and hope should be the base of all emotional experiences, and so I would like it placed at the root.”

“That is well thought out for someone working on the fly,” Dev commented.

“I was a tutorial program,” Toot said with a wink.

“You ready then?” Dev didn’t want to just spring it on the man.

“You realize that once this is done it cannot be undone?”

Toot nodded, “Just like becoming a vampire,” Toot laughed.

“I thought you were a we-,” Dev stopped himself.

“What’s wrong?” Toot could feel the tension in the air. He knew something was wrong.

“Some sort of commotion on the edge of town. A big guy is about to kill Chozen. He’s threatening the town with utter destruction. Pretty much an average day in Goulcrest. You would not believe the murder rate in this town,” Dev said. “Ofph! Our favorite clerk just got decapitated. Ah,” he said with a hint of satisfaction, “his head just bounced into town. Hold on. I’m going to grab it.”

Toot crossed his arms and waited patiently for Dev to do what he had to. He raised an eyebrow as a thought crossed his mind.

“I hate to interrupt, but if you take his head put a randomized one back in its place. We can use Chozen to keep an eye on the mayor.” Toot was somber as his realization told him that things were going to get messy really fast.

“Good idea, Dev replied. “Just in time too, the dust was beginning to settle, but no one saw anything.”

“Excellent. Do you want to deal with that, or continue what we were doing?” Toot was willing to defer getting an upgrade if it meant protecting the town, aka his dungeon.

“We have time, although we are now on a timer of sorts. The big guy, name is Chibot,” Dev said as he scanned Chozen’s memories, “Started a countdown before he attacks the town. There’s a lot more to it, and I’ll explain it all later, but it's nothing to worry about for the nonce.”

“Very well,” Toot said, “I’m ready when you are.”