The light of the dungeon core pulsed and glowed, bathing the cold stone office and its lone balding occupant in its cool, unnatural light.

The Dungeon Warden was weary of the sight. He let out a sigh and continued to half-heartedly pick at his bowl of stewed gnoll meat, occasionally hesitating to stare directly into the hovering core’s eerie palpitating glow. Once upon a time, its fluctuations had fascinated him. But back then, its power had filled him with awe, not the resentment that currently welled up in the pit of his stomach, as his glare burrowed into its luminous, circular form. He’d been gifted the cheat codes for creation, the tool with which to build, or destroy, anything he so desired, provided his tinkering remained confined within the heart of the dungeon. He’d been a Dungeon Master. And this was his dungeon’s core.

But that was long ago, and the master was retired. Now, only the warden remained.

He still possessed the same tools of office. The keys to creation were his alone to wield, and they still begged for his attention, just as they always had. But the game’s new purpose strangled the creativity he had once so freely exerted upon this world. He had the freedom to achieve nothing, his hands tied with bureaucracy, his imagination crippled by his growing feeling of apathy. He was no longer staring into a fountain of life: he was staring into the abyss.

Without warning, the core gave off a distinct pulse of energy. The dungeon warden had long ago learned how to read the mute, glowing thing, conditioning his own mind to interpret its seemingly random pulses and beats. The damned thing was making an announcement. And that was all he fucking needed.

From what he could decipher, four more avatars were being forged by the game: puppets for yet another pack of wolves who’d been caught by the shepherds, and been stripped of their sheep’s clothing as punishment. Before long, the overprivileged parcels of pixels would be mewing at him like little lost lambs, contaminating his caverns with their delusions of superiority, despite their new status as artificial artificial intelligence.

“Selfish fucking humans,” he finally spat, tossing his bowl of meaty slop across the room. “Why can’t they just have the decency to format themselves?”

He got to his feet, reluctantly approaching the core.

“They’ll be the death of me,” he grumbled. “And fuck that pompous prick Siriso for not calling ahead to let me know there are more prisoners on the way. Does he think I have time to chase down every scrap of abandonware he tosses into the void?”

The glowing core didn’t reply. It knew the question was rhetorical, having heard the same rant just about every time a new prisoner arrived. And new prisoners were arriving with alarming frequency.

The Dungeon Warden threw his arms in the air, let out an exasperated roar, and turned to open a drawer in his desk. From it, he pulled a tightly bound piece of sackcloth, and from that, a crimson summoning crystal. It was an angular quartz, about six inches in length with edges that came to a sharp point at each end. The dungeon keeper quietly regarded it, its multifaceted shape reflecting the light of the core as he turned the item of power in his hand. He allowed his mind to drift to a darker place, imagining just how easily he could force the magically infused gemstone into his own vulnerable eye socket. How he longed to pierce his feeble avatar, allowing his code to escape the flawed facsimile of the human form he was bound to. Oh, how he ached to return to the bodyless existence that was the data-flow.

“Except you’d only fucking respawn me right back into my office, wouldn’t you?” he yelled at the glowing core, pointing the crystal accusingly.

He stormed over to the glowing mass, then spat on it. It didn’t respond, pulsing calmly as it continued to throw its light across the room.

The warden gritted his teeth, resigned himself to his duties, and thrust his empty hand against the core, using its link to their surroundings to connect his own weary mind to the dungeon. Every conquered area of the underground prison was immediately opened up to him, and at a level the dungeon’s more mundane occupants could barely even hope to comprehend. He was sensing everything, as if they were his subjects, and he was their painfully underwhelmed god. He could hear the inane chatter in every cell. He could taste the stale air in the depths of the deepest corridors. He could feel the icy cool of the frost giants lair. Smell the concentrated death energy that hung in the air of the necromancer’s wing. Eventually, he succeeded in channeling out such noise, locating and focusing on the area that demanded his attention: the spawning point.

He felt the cold stone of the somber, windowless room. The heat from the flame at the room’s center, as it burned brightly to symbolize rebirth. To his dismay, what he didn’t sense, was life.

“For fuck’s sake,” he cried, abruptly pulling his hand away.

The Dungeon Warden raised the summoning crystal to his face, and again, considered driving it through his only weak spot. But instead, he lowered it slightly, bringing it to his lips. He muttered a few indecipherable words under his breath. They were from the old language, the code spoken back when the game still had its original purpose. The item was from the days he now pined for, but understood to be dead and buried. The summoning crystal glowed, giving off a red, opaque smoke. After a few moments, a face began to form in the smoke, bringing order to swirling chaos. The form was inhuman in its dimensions, overly gaunt, angular, and with two tiny horns jutting from its oversized forehead.

“General G’rrak.” began the dungeon warden, addressing it by its username.

The smoky face flinched in response, frantically looking in both directions with more eyes than most players could ever hope, or want, to possess. G’rrak wasn’t used to being infected with spyware, magical or otherwise.

“Stop looking for me, you crimson mass of demon-shit.” continued the caller. “I’m communicating with you by crystal.”

Realizing that the voice was in his head, the demon immediately stood to attention, saluting his absent superior.

“Why are there no troops stationed near spawning pyre C?” the speaker continued. “What happened to M’keel?”

The face in the smoke was frozen with fear. It took a moment to compose itself, then finally managed to let a few words slip through its row of inhuman, jagged teeth.

“H-he’s ah… off on maternity leave at the moment, oh great one.”

The dungeon keeper palmed his face with his remaining free hand and shook his balding head. Gods above, he thought to himself. The demon has been here for almost a year, yet still I have to put up with his meat-monkey terminology.

“Are you still there, oh great one? I ah, can’t hear you anymore. Perhaps it’s because we’re so far underground, you’re probably getting poor reception-”

“He’s breeding,” spat the exasperated Dungeon Warden, cutting off the demon mid-sentence. “All demons spawn new sires when they reach boss level. Before long, he’ll have an entire brood of low-level monsters bound to his avatar. It is a glorious moment of ascension for one so low. One that we do not refer to as ‘maternity leave’.”

“But it’s the same thing, innit?” protested the confused demon. Spawning minions had never particularly appealed to him, reasoning that he had enough of the little bastards IRL.

The dungeon warden sighed. He didn’t have time to argue such trivialities with a lower quality piece of code, a counterfeit AI in a pixel puppet, no less. Damn the humans for infecting his server. And damn those running this program for forcing him to enlist the ‘demonic’ players as guards in the first place.

“Look, never mind all that. We have four freshly minted souls on their way. They’ve just selected their avatars, and Siriso has taken them into his realm for processing. The bastard is efficient, if nothing else, so they’ll probably be here any minute, provided they all survive the experience. Someone has to be at the spawn point to clamp them in chains before they start wandering off and causing trouble. My guards are stretched to their limits already, so please, tell me you have someone in C wing we can use to keep an eye on them.”

G’rrak thought about this for a moment. Eventually, he said: “You know, I think S’kragg might still be in C wing. He likes to watch the amazons work out between shifts-”

“Then what are you waiting for? Tell the lazy fuck to stop tugging his horns and get his unholy ass down there.”

“Will do, oh mighty Dungeon Warden,” replied an incredibly nervous G’rrak, saluting as he spoke.

His head hastily twisted and turned in every possible direction, as if searching for some hidden camera. The Dungeon Warden Rolled his eyes.

“I’ll tell him there’s fresh meat on the way,” he continued. “That should put a little pep in his hooves.”

“Just be sure to brief him before he gets there. If that greedy bastard eats anyone that he’s not supposed to, again, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

G’rrak swallowed hard. He’d known the warden long enough to understand one very important fact: demon or not, when you piss off a former Dungeon Master, there’ll be hell to pay.