“We’ve got to warn them, get them out of here,” Matthew said, letting go of Rebecca and starting to rise.

“Stop!” Grabbing him, Rebecca tugged Matthew back down and into her arms again. “You can’t,” she argued lightly. “These people have nowhere else to go.”

“If they die here, they’re going to suffer torment beyond your imagining,” Matthew shivered. “It’s a fate much worse than just death, and that’s no exaggeration.”

“IF they die here,” Rebecca stressed. “At least here, they have a chance to survive. If they leave, they’re guaranteed to almost surely die.”

“Almost surely?” Matthew snorted, but allowed himself to bel pulled back down into her arms. “If they die here, they’ll absolutely certainly be tormented forever over it.”

“Well, how likely are they to die here today?” Rebecca prodded. “At least here they can find food, water, shelter for today. They were hungry, thirsty, and nothing more than a living sacrifice for the g-things before they came in here. They’re better in here today – while they’re still alive,” she emphasized. “Than they were outside yesterday. They at least need time to get their strength and hope back up before we destroy this place.”

“We can’t destroy it,” Matthew muttered gloomily. “It’s attuned to the human race and as humans, we can’t destroy it. We can’t pick it up and carry it out of her either. I had no clue this damn thing was this powerful, or this cursed, or we never would’ve claimed it to begin with.”

“Well…” Blushing, Rebecca tried not to think about how exactly she’d bled upon the crystal and claimed it. It wouldn’t have really mattered if they’d been going to destroy it; impaling herself upon it wasn’t exactly part of the game plan to begin with.

“Wait!” Blinking a few times, Rebecca suddenly looked worried. “We can’t destroy this or move this now? Right?”

“Right,” Matthew confirmed sullenly.

“So if any other creatures find this place…” Rebecca shivered slightly, not liking her own train of thought. “If they can sort out the curse on this crystal,” she continued hesitantly, “then they’ll start hunting every human anywhere near here, just to feed to this damn place.”

“Probably,” Matthew nodded, sounding even more depressed.

“Don’t these things draw powerful monsters to them somehow?” Rebecca asked, chewing on her lower lip.

“That’s the only thing that’s actually decent about this place,” Matthew answered, raising his head slightly to look at her. “Most dungeons have to pull magic from the surrounding area outside them to maintain themselves. Various creatures and players can sense those flows of magic and be drawn to follow them. The bigger the dungeon, the more the disruption and the more likely it is for something to notice it.”

“So we’re just screwed,” Rebecca mumbled, biting her lip hard enough to cause it to bleed again.

“Normally, we would be,” Matthew agreed, “but not in this case. The heart here is feeding on the souls of the dead. It’s not having to draw energy from the outside like normal.” Frowning slightly, he half shrugged. “I guess this would qualify as a ‘hidden dungeon’ in the world now.”

“Then we can’t give it up,” Rebecca decided. “If we do and something stumbled upon it, this place will become a massive outpost for whatever creature finds it, and if they’re not people friendly – and I don’t think we’d be lucky enough to have that happen for us – then this place turns into the world’s biggest human hunting center anywhere. If we could feed this place g-things to make it grow, and keep it from being sensed easily by anything outside, I’d hunt those things almost to extinction and kill them here. Heck, I’d even bring them here and breed them…”

“Which is probably what the young, healthy ones were being saved for back in the gym,” Matthew interrupted, scowling disgustedly.

“Probably,” Rebecca agreed, shivering slightly at the thought. “Jen wanted to wait for ‘true love’ before she was with someone. I wonder how long the g-things would’ve let her get away with that. She’d probably start popping out babies within a year I bet…” Trailing off into silence, Rebecca snuggled up to Matthew and the two simply say without saying anything for quite some time, each lost in their own thoughts and worries.

“Hey! It’s just you guys!” Laughing lightly, Jennifer slowly eased up towards Matthew and Rebecca, waving her hand in greeting. Still naked, she was dripping wet from crossing the river, but she didn’t seem to mind too badly. “This place is amazing! When the others told me they saw some figures in the distance, I was hoping it was you guys. Everyone was worried it was some more of those creatures, so they sent me out to deal with whatever it was. I’m happy it was just you two!”

Leaning close to Rebecca, Matthew gave her breast a squeeze and acted as if he was nibbling on her ear. Whispering softly so Jen couldn’t hear, he asked, “Do we tell her?”

Rebecca arced her back and stretched out half across the back and moaned a low “nooooo” as reply.

“Geeze! Get a room you perverts!” Half snorting, Jennifer marched over, shook the water out of her hair, splatting the both of them, and then flopped down on the ground and yawned. “I heard and saw enough of that last night to last me for a lifetime.”

Frowning, Matthew slowly eased up and then sat cross-legged staring at her. “Last night? What happened last night?” Breathing rapidly, Rebecca moaned a few gentle whimpers of unsustained pleasure and then she slowly sat up and pouted.

“It was weird,” Jennifer replied, once again trying to stifle a yawn. “At first it was Bossman and Kayla, which was incredibly embarrassing I thought, but soon it was spreading to everyone it seemed. I guess being cooped up in the gym, being hungry, scared, and thirsty, everyone just went a little wild at the taste of the good life here.

“The crystals were shining bright over head, twinkling like stars. Everyone had gotten a full stomach, and I suppose me walking around naked had aroused the boys. Bossman approached Kayla and the two of them got all hot and steamy before wandering off together behind the bushes. After that, Kayla’s wild moans and groans seemed to rouse everyone else and then next thing I know people were pairing off and heading behind different little shrubs and trees and going at it like jackrabbits in heat!”

Blushing brightly, Jennifer shook her head slightly and then shrugged. “I don’t know how long they kept at it last night – I got the hell out of there and slept over on the island with the big crystal – but I can tell you, everyone slept dang late this morning.”

“Shit.” Cussing quietly, Matthew got up and paced a circle around the two girls. “I bet they were influenced by this place.”

“This place? How?” Jennifer asked, looking around worriedly.

“The crystal in the center here is what’s known as a dungeon heart,” Matthew explained, flopping back down behind Rebecca and pulling her back up tight against his chest. “They normally provide food, shelter, water, and other resources – all good things to make them quite desirable and coveted.”

Taking a deep breath, Matthew paused and took time to slowly wrap his arms around Rebecca’s shoulders and then cup her breasts in each hand. “This heart is cursed however.” Sighing deeply, he slowly shook his head from side to side. “This seems to be one of the greatest dungeon paradises that I’ve ever even heard of – limitless food, water, shelter, air, resources... It’s perfect...”

When he trailed off into silence for a few moments, Jennifer nervously fidgeted, changing the way she was sitting several times. Cross-legged, then on her butt, then on her knees, and then cross-legged again. Finally, not being able to contain herself any longer, she hesitantly spoke up. “Except? That’s the type of statement that’s always followed by an ‘except’,” she said.

“Except,” Matthew sighed, frowning deeply as he stared out at the small crystal-covered island covered in the center of the lake. “Except this crystal feeds on the souls of humans when they die. The gibberlings were sacrificing people to this place to help it grow and it seems to have developed a taste for human spirits…”

“If you die here, the crystal will consume your soul and you’ll suffer ages of torment before you’re consumed completely and erased from existence,” Rebecca finished, chewing on her lower lip again.

Jennifer looked first at one of them and then at the other, frowning as if she didn’t want to believe them. Swallowing down a lump in her throat, she finally turned and stared nervously at the island where the crystal was still glowing brightly, like a late afternoon sun. “And...” Swallowing once more, she slowly turned back around to look at both Matthew and Rebecca, before asking quietly, “How’s that lead to things like last night?”

No one spoke for several moments as they sat and simply stared at each other’s worried faces. It was Matthew who finally broke the silence. Shrugging his shoulders, Matthew pulled Rebecca even tighter against him, gripping her breasts hard enough to make her wince, before he finally sighed and answered.

“When we came in here, this place was filled with an ungodly number of gibberlings,” Matthew told Jennifer reluctantly. “I thought it was weird as hell at the time, but I had no idea what was causing it. Gibberlings don’t have males and females like humans do – they’re fae and a completely different species. I don’t know the most about their mating habits, but what I do know seems to indicate that they give birth to some type of egg thing – think of the old tale of babies coming from a cabbage pack, and you’re on the right track, I think.

“Normally, they’re not that hugely reproductive of a species. Like the rest of the fae, they normally wouldn’t pop out a babe but once every dozen years or more,” Matthew explained, clutching Rebecca tightly against him. For once, she simply gritted her teeth and said not a word about how he was crushing her or bruising her breasts. She was too interested in what he was saying to interrupt and a few bruises were much less important to her right now than her curiosity and worry.

“I think,” Matthew paused for a moment, taking a long breath to make certain he’d organized his thoughts to say what he wanted properly. “I think, this place encourages reproductive behavior,” he finally admitted. “In the gibberlings, it encouraged them to mate so they’d have more offspring and could roam farther and wider to bring it back people. For the people here, it’s encouraging them to reproduce so they’ll have more children who can die here and feed it.”

“I think this place is affecting the people here, for its own twisted purpose,” Matthew finished, frowning heavily and crushing Rebecca’s breasts so hard she groaned and quivered slightly from the pain.

“Do you want to ease up there a bit, sweetie?” She asked, tapping his hand with her own, as small tears trickled down her cheeks.

“Sorry.” Letting go suddenly, Matthew stood up and turned his back to the girls, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his side and trembled slightly. Looking down, Rebecca gently rubbed her hands across her red and blue bosoms and tried to massage the ache down to a dull throb.

“It sounds almost like this place is alive,” Jennifer whispered, hugging herself and shivering. “Almost like some sort of carnivorous plant, it lures prey in to itself and then slowly eats them while they’re in a drunken stupor and can’t do anything about it.” Suddenly looking determined, she boldly exclaimed, “We have to destroy this place!”

“We can’t,” Rebecca answered, after Matthew didn’t. Glancing back, he was still standing with his back to both of them and staring out towards the exit, almost as if he was contemplating just walking away from it all. Half afraid that he might, Rebecca slowly eased up, walked over, pressed her chest against his back, and wrapped her arms around him. She couldn’t help but think that a sharp ache in her chest from leaning up against him was better than the idea of him walking away and leaving them behind to try to sort this mess out alone.

“This place is now attuned to humans. We can’t destroy it, leave with the crystal, or do any of those things,” Rebecca told Jennifer, burying her face against Matthew’s back.

“Then we’ve got to get the people away from this place!” Jennifer demanded, turning to stare back across the river to the other side, where the others were building shelters at.

“We can’t do that either,” Matthew answered, reaching down to rub Rebecca’s arms with his hands. “If people abandon this place, some other creature will move in here and claim this place. Can you imagine a race of goblins taking this over and the havoc they’d cause with an enhancement to their already rapid breeding rates and an endless supply of food and water to support them? They’d swarm across the land in such a plague that even dragons would tremble at their numbers…”

“…and they’d collect every human they came across to bring back here to either breed for them, or sacrifice so they could continue to grow this place and their endless army,” Rebecca interrupted, finishing.

“Then… Then what the hell are we going to do?” Jennifer asked, trembling slightly as she considered all the options.

“There’s only one thing we can do,” Matthew whispered grimly. “We have to let the people stay here and never tell them about what happens here. Some might die here, and suffer an eternal obliteration, but that’s a small price compared what would happen if some other creature moved in here and began to actively go out and hunt humans and drag them back here.”

“For better or worse,” Matthew admitted reluctantly, “this place is going to become a seat of power for whichever race controls it. Food. Water. Shelter. Fast birthrates. Other resources in the walls like coals, ores, and gemstones. And only one small entrance which hides itself and has to be defended. It’s a true Eden that all would want control over.

“Unfortunately for humans,” Matthew continued, half chuckling with sarcastic laughter, “all those benefits are going to come with the most horrendous of costs – torment of their eternal souls, leading to eventual nothingness.”

“The only thing is,” Rebecca finished quietly, clutching on tightly to Matthew’s back; pain in her chest all but forgotten now. “It’s better than any other alternative, since there’s no way for us to destroy this place. Heaven help us all,” she whispered, “we’ve got to help defend this place and keep it from falling into some other race’s hands. The human race might end up totally doomed if we don’t.”

Looking pale, Jennifer blinked several times and shook her head as if to try and deny it. “There’s no other way, is there?” She whispered dejectedly, before suddenly leaning forward and spraying chunks of fruit and berries everywhere.

Suddenly Rebecca was glad that she hadn’t had anything for breakfast yet that morning, while Matthew stood silent, staring off into nothing, lost in his own brooding thoughts.