When the girls and Baxter reached the first floor, the girl started walking easier. The level floor made her a lot more confident. She stopped at the first trap hole and looked down into it. Baxter came over beside her and looked down into it also. The light from his collar penetrated down and showed the curved floor of the trap.

“Why’s it rounded like that?” she said.

“You land on it and probably bust your ankles,” Jake said. Somehow the coolness of the trap seems a little less when he was explaining it to the girl.

“Oh,” she said. “I could see that. My little brother used to make the bottom of the pit be a plunger. You hit it and it forced out a blade that would sever your leg if you missed your saving throw.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Jake.

“D&D,” said the girl. Jake thought he knew what she was talking about but didn’t want to expose his ignorance if he was wrong.

“Dungeons and Dragons,” she clarified. “It’s a game.”

“I know,” said Jake, only dissembling a little because that’s what he thought she meant. “I never played. My family was more into the outdoors and stuff. I played sports and did other stuff in high school. Debate and Soccer. Didn’t have time. You played though?”

“My brother Billy likes it, heck, he loves it. He’s got asthma really bad so he doesn’t get out of the house much. My mom and dad and I would play to keep him happy on weekends. He was the dungeon master.”

Of course, Jake perked up at that. “You mean he knows about this stuff? He designed dungeons?”

“He’s 10, right?” she answered.

“I know,” said Jake, reluctantly.

“Look it was a game, but yeah, he was pretty clever. It took a lot of thought for my mom, dad and I to survive one of his dungeons. And, don’t be thinking you can co-opt my brother into helping you design, well yourself. He’s 10!”

“You know, one of the things that Baxter and I noticed this past week, is that whenever he got in a fight, he’d recover 100% from the wounds he took?” Jake said.

“You mean ...” Hildi started.

“I don’t know, but maybe Billy can level up and leave his asthma behind. He might be able to have a normal childhood,” Jake finished.

“In an apocalypse,” said Hildi.

“One world,” Jake said. “We’ve gotta live in it.”

Hildi muttered a quiet “hmm,” but Jake could sense that the conversation had helped her.

They had stopped and the hallway stretched down in both directions. The dog’s collar only created a circle of light about two meters in diameter. The girl turned and tried to see something that differentiated the two ends. Evidently, not finding it, she said, “Which way?”

With the girl in the hallway, the place seemed much bigger and darker to Jake’s senses. The formerly jokey traps looked a lot less of a joke and more serious, holes that could easily take your life. Jake felt vaguely proud and at the same time kind of ashamed of himself.

“Go west,” he said. When the girl didn’t move, he said, “Follow Baxter.”

Baxter took off slowly heading toward the little room where he and Jake had first woken up.

“This is creepy,” said Hildi.

“It is, isn’t it?” said Jake. Some of the enthusiasm he felt must have leaked into his voice because the girl stopped and looked around, maybe a little panicked.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jake said. “I told you, urges! I’ve got it under control.”

“Better have, dungeon boy!” said Hildi, but she started following Baxter again. She walked down the hallway, staying exactly in the center between the gaping holes of the traps and the dark maws of the tunnel entrances to the rooms on each side.

When they got to the end of the hall, the room awaited them. Of course, the entrance was only a hole in the wall dug by Baxter. “Give me a second,” said Jake and then willed the remains of Baxter’s Red Meat Drumstick to disappear. Finally, it did and Jake got another notification:

A dungeon cleaner’s work is never done. Get some slimes. Experience gained.

Ability Gained

Dungeon Clean/Reset

Elemental Sphere: All

Range: Permanent

Damage: na

Cool Down: na

Duration: Permanent

Ability to remove debris from within dungeon bounds. This probably means bodies. Or in this case, leftover Loot Snacks. If the debris is new and the dungeon does not have a Loot pattern for it, the opportunity to create one will be offered.

He then bored a hole in the wall where Baxter’s hole used to be and said, “Come in”.

She did and Baxter trotted in beside her. Baxter began looking around for the missing snack. “I’ll make you another one, ok boy? I just didn’t want to freak her out with a large, bloody creature leg!”

“Ok,” said Baxter. “Jake owe! One snack!”

The girl looked around and then seemed to focus on the point that Jake started all his calculations from, the zero point on his cartesian coordinates. Jake felt oddly naked.

“Oh,” she said. “Is that you? You’re beautiful” and she started to walk towards him or at least his perspective.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” Jake cried. His voice may have been a little shrill. “That’s enough.”

Fortunately, she did stop, because Jake had felt a surge of panic and almost started screaming at Baxter to save him.

Baxter asked, “Jake OK?”

Jake stopped talking, stopped thinking, and took a moment. After a bit, he counted to five, then ten, and, only then felt capable of talking to anyone.

“You can see me?” he asked the girl. Baxter appeared to be listening too. For the first time, Jake realized that Baxter could hear everything that he’d been saying to the girl. He’d known it, it just hadn’t penetrated that everything he said to the girl, Baxter could hear. Also, that everything that he said to the dog, she couldn’t.

“Yes,” she said. “Didn’t you know?”

“Well, I can’t see myself and Baxter never mentioned it.”

“Baxter can talk?” she asked.

“Yes, not great. Two-word sentences, but we get by.”

“So, you two have been talking all along?”

“Hang on, you can see me?”

“Yes,” she said, pointing toward the exact spot Jake felt his perception started from. “I’m assuming that you are that giant, pink, diamond-looking stone in the wall.”

“Pink?” said Jake.

“Well, maybe red, reddish.”

“I’m pink?” said Jake. “What the hell, Bobs? You made me pink?” He received a notification then that had just one line of text on it.

Hee hee! Karma’s a bitch!

“Assholes!” Jake muttered. “No,” he said to the girl. “I didn’t know that I had a body. I assumed that I was the whole set of rooms.”

He thought about it for a bit. ‘That makes more sense, I guess,’ he thought. ‘It’s more in line with those web fictions that I read. Find the core, smash the core, goodbye dungeon. Find the core, capture the core, hello slave. Shit! Shit! Shit!’ He didn’t like his new circumstances. His world view had been picked up and been shaken radically.

“Do me a favor,” he said to the girl. “Stay on that side of the room, Ok?”

“Urges?” she asked and then said, “Of course” and settled in the corner as far from his body as she could.

“Yeah,” he said. “Big time. I almost lost it when you started towards me.”

“Jake Ok?” asked Baxter.

“Yeah, buddy. Just don’t let anything or anybody come to close to me, Ok?”

“Ok Jake,” said Baxter and settled down at the girl’s feet, conveniently between her and what Jake now knew was his body.

The girl reached out and began petting Baxter again, scratching his ears and stroking his back.

“Intimations of Immortality,” she said.

“Huh,” Jake answered.

“It’s this poem by Wordsworth. He’s looking at a field and suddenly realizes that he could die, will die. I had to do a paper on it. Something like that happen to you?”

“I guess,” Jake said. “I know I said quasi-immortal earlier, but I just got a hint about what the quasi meant.”

“So, your dog is a monster?” she said. Her hands never ceased petting Baxter though.

“Yes, I guess you’d call him that,” he said.

“Is he the only one you’ve got?” she asked.

He thought about the question for a bit, trying to figure out where the conversation was going and then decided to just answer. “I’ve got a rat upstairs that keeps watch on the room and a hawk outside that’s flying around, looking at the remains of Sapulpa.” He felt oddly defensive as if he should have done more. “I could make a bunch of monsters. Until just now, I didn’t feel the need.”

“Let me guess when I came in the room,” she said.

“Bingo!” he said.

“Yeah, my little bro loves dungeon stories. He’d tell me about them. One of the basic elements was the dungeon core. Is that what happened with you now?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “When you came in I felt really, really threatened. One of those urges you know.”

“Thanks for not killing me,” she said softly.

“I’m not going to lie, if you’d kept coming forward, I would have tried,” Jake said. “I don’t know that I could have stopped myself.”

“So, we’ve got two things that you want help with: Protect your family, Protect yourself. And I’m the same,” Hildi said. “Let’s do this.” And just like that, a notification appeared. This one was different. Jake could sense that Hildi could see it too.

Soul Bond (Equality - Greater)

Two beings wish to enter into a soul bond willingly. In return for the other’s help they promise to:

Find and protect the other being’s family Protect the other being.

Benefits:

Beings can communicate with each other at a distance Beings can communicate with each other’s servants or companions Beings can receive help in the form of mana or qi transfers once per day. Amount transferred can not exceed transferee’s maximum limits.

At higher levels of bonding, additional benefits may accrue.

Penalties

Bondies in violation of the bond will lose one mana point or stamina point per day until death or the violation is repaired.

Agree to be bound Deny bound

Jake only thought about it for about ten seconds or so. He thought about some of the words on the agreement, the penalty seemed pretty harsh. Like there’s a word for dungeons with no mana: jewelry. And he wasn’t sure about the word Greater either. Did that mean that there was a Lesser? Maybe that might be better. But then he thought about his family. They were close and might need him, they might need him now and this girl was the only one that he could talk to. He wanted to plan, to take time to think about it, maybe they could discuss the options, come up with a better agreement, but he didn’t like the way the girl crouched in the corner of the room, eyes suspiciously wide. He didn’t know the kind of courage that it took for an eighteen-year-old girl to offer a contract to a room that had a bad history with her family, but judging by the way her eyes were moving, that courage was about used up, so he said, “Option A” and the menu vanished and he felt a searing pain around the edges of what he now knew was his gem.

Of course, he got another notification.

Good job boy. Soul Bond Formed. Experience earned.

“Ow! Shit!” he heard Hildi say. Somehow Jake could sense what smelled like burnt flesh. She was cupping the inner part of her wrist and looking pissed at him.

“Ow! Bastard!” she shouted at his core.

“Jake hurt? Girl hurt?” Baxter said.

At Baxter’s voice, Hildi’s eyes snapped down to the dog lying at her feet. “Wow! He talks,” she said. “I know you mentioned it, but wow!”

“Girl hear?” asked Baxter.

“Yes,” said Hildi, “I can hear you know.”

“Good!” said Baxter. “Jake,” and then stopped. Jake felt he was going to complain about him, but he wasn’t 100% sure.

“Hey, I hurt too!” said Jake. “It felt like I was branded.”

“Yes,” said Hildi, holding up her slim, white wrist. “It looks like I was.” On the inner part of her wrist was a black ideograph that Jake somehow knew represented the bond with him. On the surface of his gem, along the edge, there was now an ideograph that represented the bond he now held with her. Both looked a little similar and both shared characteristics with the Chinese character for home, but there was a depth and purity to the symbols that wasn’t in the Chinese. The mark on her wrist was about the size of a dime, the mark on Jake’s core was quite a bit smaller. He also discovered another one, that represented the bond with Baxter on his gem as well. He wondered where Baxter was branded.

“Try thinking to me,” Jake said.

“Like this?” she thought back at him. “What should I think?”

“I heard you,” Jake said. “I just wanted to test that we didn’t have to talk to communicate. If you’re outside or whatever and need to tell me something, you just need to think it, Ok?”

“Oh, that’s handy?” she said.

“Does it work with Baxter too?” she must have thought, because Baxter said, “Yes! Hear girl!”

‘Huh,’ Jake thought. ‘Do I want to tell them that thinking creates a private conversation? No, I don’t,’ he thought. ‘Let them figure it out!’ But judging from the looks on the girl and the dog's faces they must have already figured it out. And were talking about him. ’

“Can you use a bow?” asked Jake.

“What?” asked Hildi.

“Can you use a bow?” asked Jake. “I can make things. I can make you a bow, or armor, or a crossbow, a knife, a sword? What do you want me to make for you? You are going to need to go outside, I want to make it safer for you. And Baxter can go with you.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, “but Baxter isn’t going to be much use, I think.”

“Well, that’s not his only size,” Jake said.

“Yes!” said Baxter. “Baxter bigger. But scary!”

“How much bigger,” she said.

“About the size of a black rhino,” said Jake. “So,... big!”

“Wow!” she said. “That is scary. Did he change to make me feel safer?”

Jake thought about that and then decided to tell the truth, “Yes, we figured, well, I figured that you’d panic if Baxter came up to you in his full-size shape. He’s a sweetheart, but he’s a big boy!”

“Smart!” she said. “So, I need to get back to Billy and then check on your family. I don’t know if you know it, but the world has got a lot bigger. I used to live about five minutes walk from QT and here. Now, I’m about 12 kilometers away. Instead of five minutes to get here, it took me almost 2 and a half hours. I used to run track at high school, I would have graduated this spring, so I’m pretty clear on how long it took me and how long it was.”

“How do you know the time? And why did you want to go to QT” he asked.

“Say ‘time’,” she said.

Jake did and in the corner of his vision, a digital (at least it looked like a digital clock to him) appeared saying 014:23:13. After a second, it faded away. Jake did this a few more times and sure enough, the seconds displayed had changed.

Then she said, “say, ‘date’, and the following appeared Vitaday, 1/7/1.

“What’s Vitaday,” Jake asked.

“It’s the new calendar. It started over on year one, and we now have eight days of the week, named:

Ignisday, Aquaday, Teraday, Caeliday, Luxday, Tenebrisday, Vitaday, and Quietusday.

“You mean, wow, things have changed,” he said.

“Tell me about it, we now have three moons, one’s green, the other’s a rose color,” she said.

“So, are the months different, they must be,” Jake said.

“Yes, they got changed too,” she said and then recited their names.

Quietus, Vita, Tenebris, Lux, Chao, Ordo, Terra, Caeli, Aqua, Ignis, Malum, Bonum

“So, we’re in the equivalent of January,” he said looking at his date one more time. “Is it cold outside?” asked Jake.

“No,” she said. “Although it’s cooler than it was pre-Apocalypse. And, to answer your question about QT, we needed food.”

“Ok,” he said. “Good to know. Wow! I mean, wow!” Jake was still amazed at the amount of change the Bobs had inflicted on the world.

“Pretty amazing, huh? Although I guess a stone in the ground doesn’t get out much!” she said. Judging by her face, she was a little appalled with what she’d just said and she rushed out with, “I’m sorry, that came out meaner than I intended.”

“No,” Jake said. “You’re right. I just figured out I was in Oklahoma today.”

“What do you mean,” she said. “Where else would you be?”

“The last memory I had of being alive was holding my shin on a sidewalk in New York City. I was late for work. May 1st of 2018.”

“Oh my god,” she said. “Your mom thinks you’re dead!”

“Yeah, I guess I died about a month ago. I woke up, in this room when the apocalypse started. All the tunnels and rooms you see, I dug!”

“Baxter tunnel!” said Baxter.

“Except for the tunnel to the surface, Baxter dug that one out,” Jake added.

“You’ve been busy,” Hildi said. “You both have.” She smiled at the rock that Jack now knew was his body.

“Ok, what do you need from me?” Jake said.

“I can’t use a bow, I mean I’ve shot one before in Girl Scouts, but that was at least 10 years ago. So can you make me a crossbow, some bolts, some leather armor and a couple of knives?”

“That’s oddly specific,” Jake said.

“Well, it’s what my rogue character used in the last D&D game we played. Of course, all that stuff was magic, but I won’t ask for that.”

“Ok,” Jake said. “That will probably take some mana. Do you have mana that you could share?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “How could I tell?”

“Hah!” said Jake. “Rock in a hole knows more than you. Say ‘Status’.”

She did and from the look on her face, she must have been surprised by the result. Jake had a thought and said, “Say ‘Share status with Jake’.”

She did and Jake could see her status screen.

Status

Name

Hildi Brown

Level

0

Class(es)

?

Titles: First Bonded!

Attributes

0

Skill Points

0

Strength

17

Intelligence

19

Dexterity

18

Wisdom

18

Agility

19

Perception

7

Constitution

16

Charisma

17

Vitality

16

Luck

19

AC

6

Health:

60

Mana:

38

Qi:

38

Stamina:

50

“Wow!” Hildi said, enthusiastically.

“Wow!” Jake said, much less so.