She shouted something, but she was outside my dungeon and blocked by mud, so I could hardly hear what she said. She was probably yelling about what a good job I was doing. She’d have to wait.
Hop!
Back on the pedestal point in my loot room, I had a choice to make.
Bolton was approaching from the core room, calling my name. “Core Beno?”
Maybe I had a plan. A shoddy one, but a lack of time meant shoddy plans.
“Tomlin!” I called. “Pull yourself together and get over here.”
I manipulated the loot chest so that it was the right way around. This left the tunnel mostly clear for the bogbadug to go through, but I quickly opened the chest lid.
I manipulated the spare essence leaf I’d taken from my core room so that it was waving in the air. “Essence? See? For you.”
The frog’s eyes bulged. Its tongue hung from its mouth, and saliva dripped from it.
I threw the leaf into the loot chest. The bogbadug dived in, and I quickly slammed the lid over it.
Just then, Tomlin ambled over tentatively, eyes darting around for any sign of the monster.
“Recovered your courage?” I asked him. “That’s nice timing.”
“Ah, Core Beno,” said a voice behind me.
I whispered to Tomlin. “The frog freak is in the chest. Sit on top of it. Don’t let it out. If it makes noise, pretend that it’s you who’s making it.”
I turned around to face Overseer Bolton, expecting the worst. After all, I had appealed against his decision. Overseers were a vain bunch, and they didn’t like their judgments being questioned by us lowly cores. I understood it why. After ascending to their third life, they had earned respect.
Overseer Bolton didn’t seem angry at me. He was smiling, and his eyes looked just as warm and kind as always. There was one difference, however.
“You shaved your head, Overseer Bolton. It looks great on you.”
“Yes, well, there comes a time when we must stop lying to ourselves. My hair was thinner than the bristles on a tavern boy’s broom. If you lie to yourself, who else will you lie to? Honesty begins from within.”
“I agree, integrity is paramount. I’ll just be a second, I need to check something.”
“Core Beno, I don’t have ti-”
I hopped to the pedestal in room three. “Vedetta,” I said. “Vedetta?”
I heard a muffled sound coming from the walls.
“If you can hear me, shut your mouth for a few minutes. I have an overseer here. When it’s clear, I’ll knock on the wall. Or Tomlin will, anyway. Got it? To summarize, shut up.”
Then I went back to my core room, where I found Bolton and Tomlin in conversation. Tomlin was sitting on the loot chest, trying to look natural and swinging his legs back and forth so that his heels were thumping the chest.
I realized he was doing this to keep in time with the bogbadug inside it, who was hammering to get out.
Great.
“You want to study, hmm?” said Bolton, smiling at Tomlin. “I admire an inquisitive mind, but you must always carry out your core’s tasks. I see that you’re a miner. Level three, eh? Perhaps you’ll come to love mining as a craft. And I mean craft, too. It isn’t just a job. There’s a craft to everything, if you open your mind enough to seek it out. Ah, Beno, you’re back.”
“Let’s go to the core room, Overseer.”
“I’d like to tour the rest of the dungeon.”
“I haven’t progressed much there since your last visit.”
“Ah, yes. The one where I wrongly issued a condemnation, yes? I’m glad you pointed that out to the overseers’ panel, Beno. I love to be corrected by them.”
For the first time ever, I picked up on a little hostility in Bolton’s voice. It made me sad. I understood I had probably pricked his ego, but my existence was on the line! His condemnation could have sunk me.
I could have apologized like I had planned, but I decided that he wouldn’t appreciate it. It would be drawing attention to it all. Better to move on.
“If you please, overseer, I have made great progress in my core room.”
“The essence vines? Yes, I saw they now cover two walls. The vines have connected at the corner of the walls, you know. Interesting, that one flame would turn the whole lot into a carpet of fire. One core, not naming names, has already wasted all his essence. Don’t be the second.”
“I have plans in place, Overseer.”
“Come on then, let’s take a walk.”
Overseer Bolton stood in front of the loot chest now. He wanted to walk down the tunnel and into the rest of my dungeon, but the chest was blocking it.
“Ahem,” he said, and made a polite cough.
Tomlin didn’t pick up on the hint. Or, he was following my orders to not get up from the chest lid. Either way, Bolton wasn’t happy. I wished I had unlocked the puzzle and traps part of the crafting list, because I could have added a lock to the chest.
“Core Beno, could you ask your kobold to move, please? Why is your loot chest there anyway? It is a strange placement.”
“I’m experimenting on the effects a chest’s placement can have.”
“Ah. Displacement theory. I remember when I first had that idea, I thought I was a visionary genius. Fine, Beno, we mustn’t disturb your experiments. Excuse me, chap.”
He smiled at Tomlin now, who gave a ridiculous smile back. Seriously, it was like he’d never smiled in his life and he was being asked to guess what it looked like.
Bolton stepped past him and walked down the tunnel toward room three, where I prayed to all the demons in the underworlds that he wouldn’t hear a little girl yelling through a mud wall.
When
