A Soldier's Life

Chapter 147: The Elven Children

“It is beautiful,” Maveith noted. He was staring at the ceiling. The flowing river of lights and silvery flashes might be beautiful if you didn’t know you were in a dungeon that was trying to kill you.

“Yes, Maveith, it is.” I couldn’t get angry with the goliath as our teamwork was going to be important in getting through this. “What do you know about shape changers? That is what is down this corridor,” I pointed.

Maveith moved painfully to look down the corridor. It looked to go for maybe a hundred feet before opening into a room. Maveith considered my question, “Many creatures can change shape. Doppelgangers are the most common in cities. I have never met one, at least not one I was aware of.”

“The elves wrote that they were extremely dangerous. Can you fight?” I asked my friend, and he affectionately rubbed the head of his hammer on his belt.

“Can we wait a day? I should regain movement and feeling in my leg by then,” Maveith said, rubbing at his hip.

I nodded as waiting made sense, it would be suicide to rush through the dungeon. “I will go scout. Have you ever been in a dungeon?” Maveith shook his head no. “Well, my experience is limited, but so far, I learned that if you don’t enter the rooms where the monsters are, they cannot attack you.”

Maveith nodded, “I heard a lot of dungeons have dangerous traps between rooms, and there were also some rooms that were safe to stay in.” Great. That was all we needed, traps. I hoped Maveith had not just jinxed us for mentioning it.

“I will be careful. Wait here, and I will be back in a few minutes,” I stood, adjusted the small round shield, and drew my black blade. I proceeded down the corridor to the room, doing my best to remain silent. I counted my steps, one hundred and six, probably the length of a football field. It made me worry just how large this dungeon might actually be.

The light got brighter as I approached the room. It was a large room with a green carpet of moss and bushes dotting the floor. The bushes had blue-green leaves and dark blue berries. Movement caught my eye in the room, and I was speechless. A young elf child stood, perhaps only ten years old by human standards. She said something in elvish that I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to catch. Another elf child stood on the other side of the chamber, this one a male and looked to be about the same age. Both were dressed in rags.

The elf girl added, “We have been trapped in the dungeon for so very long.” Both children had large, blue, innocent-looking eyes, and I immediately felt pity for them.

I was still developing my elvish, so I took my time in responding. “You can come with me. The exit is down this corridor,” I indicated behind me. I already knew these were the creatures in the warning written on the wall.

“Really!?” The female said excitedly. “Can you come and help us carry our treasure out? You can have some for saving us.” I almost wanted to laugh at the obvious trap. “What is this treasure?” I asked. They just wanted me to enter the room so they could attack me. I paused, considering maybe these shape changers had sapience?

There were two exits from their room. I pointed at the other corridors, “Where do those lead?”

The boy pointed at the one, “That one leads to a big, mean red bear.” He pointed at the other corridor, “That is where we get our treasure. We can show you if you want.” I will admit the elven children in their rags looked innocent and convincing. Maybe the elves of Caelora were fooled by the act. I knew no one had entered the dungeon in fifteen hundred years, so still being children was impossible. Also, the warning on the wall helped.

The children kept trying to lure me inside the chamber as I examined the mossy floor. Was there a danger there as well? Were those berries good to eat? I wished the Scholar or even Konstantin was here. Did I just wish for Konstantin? Well, his ability to know if something was safe to eat anyway. The elven girl started to approach cautiously, almost like I was the monster. She stopped ten feet from me, well within my range. I remained calm and unthreatening.

“If you don’t want our treasure, maybe you want something else?” She said provocatively. I aligned a box over her head and attempted to move it into my dimensional space. I let out a small smile as I used my dimensional storage.

I woke on the ground moments later with a splitting headache. The two elf children standing at the entrance, evil smirks on their faces. “Look at the poor soldier boy,” the girl said. “Did he hurt himself?”

“He tried something and failed. He is a failure,” the boy mocked me. I stood slowly, my aether barely recovered from bottoming out. The weird thing was that the shape changer had not resisted my attempt. It was like my ability had rebounded at the entrance to the room. I backed away from the smirking monsters.

Thinking about what just happened, I was making a wild guess. The monsters could not leave the room. So, if you have a ranged weapon or spell, you could kill the creatures from the doorway. I needed to test my theory further. I waited until my aether recovered and removed a bow and a single arrow from my storage. The two children’s eyes went wide, not in surprise but mocking merriment. I aimed at the girl and fired. My aim was true, but the arrow lost all momentum at the door and just fell into the room softly.

The elf girl walked forward, picked up the arrow, and touched the sharp tip. “I don’t think he wants to play with us,” she said, locking eyes with me. She blinked, and her blue eyes went completely yellow before they were back to blue in the next blink. I started backing up as the two started laughing in a musical tone. I returned to find Maveith sitting against the wall. Several empty bags were nearby him from the elven rations I had given him.

Maveith handed me a half-full bottle of wine, “What did you find, Eryk?”

“Two demon tricksters were masquerading as children,” I said, sitting down next to him. “They are blocking us from exploring further in the labyrinth, so we will have to deal with them. But that is a problem for tomorrow.” I finished the half bottle of wine and relieved myself along one of the walls. We set up our bedrolls just to the left of the exit of the dungeon. We were going to have to trust that we were safe in the entry room.

I placed the amulet around my neck and told Maveith I was going into the dreamscape. He acknowledged my words before falling asleep himself. Maveith was too exhausted to even ask to join me.

Entering the dreamscape, I was in the entry room as normal. I walked to the scorpion room, where I had stashed everything and everyone. I silenced the people and went to my bookshelf. I added a dozen of the elven books I had not gotten to yet and then pulled a book on aether shaping. During my time in the dungeon, I would focus on my magic, hoping to find magic essences in here eventually. Learning a displacement spell form was a waste of time, and I didn’t have spell form manuals for my other high affinities.

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Oscar sat in my lap while I studied, seeing we would not play. I spent eight hours inside the dreamscape going through the aether shaping and channeling exercises that I learned Damian, the healer, back during legion training before exiting. The practice inside the dreamscape was always more effective, and I made progress in my control of the aether, even though I was fairly sure my shaping had already been maxed. My limiting factor was my aether-shaping attribute.

Maveith was still sleeping when I exited, his breathing hoarse but deep. I needed to get him a healing potion. My aether was over half recovered, and I stood. There was no point hiding things now. We were going to be dependent on each other. I pulled out the elven tablet table. I was cleaning it when Maveith stirred and woke. He looked confused at the table, “Where did that come from?”

“I picked it up in the undercity. Have you never seen one before? It is a tablet reader,” I said nonchalantly. Maveith’s brow was furrowed, and he was perplexed. I could see his mind working on the problem, and he came to the correct conclusion. “Your dimensional space is much bigger than everyone thinks!”

“Bingo!”

“Bingo?” Maveith replied, once again confused and trying to puzzle out the meaning.

“Don’t worry about it, Maveith. I wanted to show you this to prove my dimensional space is slightly bigger than you thought,” I indicated the table.

Maveith inspected the table, “I have seen them before, but I have never used one.” His fingers ran across the displays. This table had everything, all attributes and all the affinities. But from my understanding, it was keyed to the elven race.

“Maveith, you just need to channel a tiny bit of aether in here,” I pointed to the handprint on the right side of the device. “The results will come out in elven numerals, but I will read them to you,” I encouraged him. I was also curious about what his readings would be. Maveith placed his hand and forced his aether into the device. Nothing happened. Maybe it had been damaged and didn’t work.

“I think I need to hold the other side of the table as well,” Maveith guessed. There was no handprint on the other side of the table, though.

“Try it and use a little more aether this time,” I encouraged him.

Maveith gripped the edge of the table and placed his hand again. A heartbeat later, the table was illuminated in a soft glow, and numbers filled in after the eleven scripts on the table.

His readings confirmed it was keyed to elven physiology. Maveith had two potentials past one hundred, where one hundred should have been the maximum. Well, that was how it worked on a human tablet anyway. I started reading off the numbers for Maveith.

When I finished, I explained to him, “Unless you fortified your stats with essences, they may have dropped while we starved in the city. It looks like Earth is the only spell form you can learn.” Maveith could shape stone, so he had already learned his one spell form.

“I have never consumed an essence,” he replied in his deep voice. “I feel really weak and have lost a lot of weight since we entered the library. Can we check again when I am healthy and fit?”

“Sure thing, Maveith. Now, I need you to understand the size of my dimensional space is a secret. Can you keep that secret for me?” I said seriously.

It didn’t take long for Maveith to nod, “I understand, Eryk. What about you? Are you going to use the device?” Maveith questioned.

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