《Vermin's Loneliness》 Chapter One: Vermins Myth Vermin watched in silence as the ground swallowed her work. Sometimes, Vermin deliberately left her art unfinished. This was not one of those times. Her dungeon, Vermin felt, lived and breathed. It had taste. And it had good taste. In fact, she would swear that it had her taste. It never speaks. It only judges, and consumes, and devours, and rejects, wordlessly, indifferently, fairly, cruelly, unilater-.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Vermin calmed herself. She could always tell when the dungeon would ignore her work. It starts off as a sense of unease as its features begin to form under her fingers, but the discomfort intensified as the cycle draws to close until by the time it ends, she already has a premonition of the sentence. The cycle just ended before she was ready. If she had more time, Vermin knew that she could convince the dungeon. But, then again, it was right. As it was, Vermin¡¯s work this time was inadequate. Incomplete. She only had herself to blame. Sickly green arced through the air, and smashed into the earth. Too late, Vermin. It¡¯s already gone. You don¡¯t even have the right to destroy your own work, Vermin, you worthless piece of¨C Vermin calmed herself. She would try again next cycle. Chapter Two: Familiar Patterns Does a dungeon serve its monsters, or does its monsters serve the dungeon? I wonder if the delvers know that in the dungeons, they are guests invited by such nebulous, capricious hosts. Vermin grimaced at the taste of copper in the air characteristic of ends of cycles. What delvers don¡¯t realise is that they are guests to an intelligent host. Overstay their welcome, and ¡­ the consequences can be ugly. Vermin shook her head. Clearly not. The corpses of monsters and adventurers were long swallowed by the earth, leaving only bloodstains and the lingering stench of death. Wispier facsimiles of Vermin stood silently along the labyrinthine hallways, their shadowy black hands stained in blood. Like you aren¡¯t a facsimile of lif- It was a cruel joke that the dungeon workers were made in her image, tasked with the tasks requiring a more delicate touch than maws of earth: clearing the blood stains, reshaping the statues, polishing the patterned tiles. Never hungry, never dissatisfied, never worried. Ephemeral. Right now, the other dungeon monsters would be clawing their way to hunt, enthused by the loosening of domain restrictions, and eager for evaluation and evolution. If Vermin paused to spread her senses, she would hear the sound of distant fighting. She didn¡¯t. Vermin took her time patrolling the dungeon. She finds it helps to consider her previous work, their imperfections and their charms. She noted the corridor that would eventually branch into the core room. She took the path that led deeper. She would visit the core, but later. There¡¯s a moment, of end and beginning, as the orb transitions from one cycle to the next that works as an abyssal muse. Not yet though, the transition just began, and, she had something more important to visit first. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Vermin reached one of the dungeon¡¯s less known halls, lesser known, firstly because it is deeper than the core, so the dungeon denies delvers from getting close, but secondly, because Vermin marks it with her mana and tracks the delvers down as they try to leave with its trace. It was just as she remembered it. A beautiful piece, her best. In a sense, she considered it an a priori part of her being, memories of before she was born. Engravings on the wall showed looming figures, each grand and sublime but each in their own way, some vague, some distinct. A priest who saw it might recognise it for what it was: a court of Gods. When Vermin was first born, she knew only three things; firstly, that she was owned by the dungeon, and that meant she protected the dimly green core; secondly, that she was not supposed to be; and thirdly, that she was Vermin. The soft murmurs of the Gods told her so, their overlapping figures carved into her memory. And it looked ¨C felt ¨C just like this. At different times, the piece means different things to Vermin. Today, it served as a reminder. The dungeon was right. She knew it was. Her work this cycle did not deserve to be preserved for time immemorial. Not like this. She basked in its presence. It gave her a sense of relief. As Vermin moved towards the core room, she found herself frowning at a shade along the way. Maybe next cycle she should turn away from her more aesthetic endeavors, and pursue a more functional project. For a moment, decorated blades, thematic pitfalls, and arcing wires flashed through her mind. She would meditate on it later. And then she saw the dungeon core. Undulating waves of green swirled around its perfect sphere, its glow rhythmically waxing and waning in the darkness like some eerie heart. It was large, suspended in the middle of the ornate room, rotating slower and slower. And then, finally, it stopped. Vermin¡¯s dungeon is of an infernal affinity, and in an abstract sense, that made it eternally hungry, eternally lonely. For a moment Vermin saw that in the dungeon. It is rare for an old dungeon to grant a monster intelligence and autonomy. It is rarer for an old dungeon to let one see its core. The silence broke, and Vermin felt the earth shift beneath her. Now, the dungeon will be deeper, its depths darker. For a moment, Vermin pitied the delvers. And then she remembered what she was. It broke her just a little more. Chapter Three: What makes a Sacred Land? What makes a sacred land? The answer is laughably simple to those who know. It¡¯s Holy affinity. A sacred land has Holy affinity. And the presence of Holy affinity, means that it is a sacred land. What then is a sacred land deprived of Holy affinity? Or a land, which has the potential to host Holy affinity, but doesn¡¯t? A target, apparently. The Cleric waited outside the abyssal dungeon. The transition was coming to an end. The dungeon would have grown, but it would also expose a period of weakness. He had two missions. The first was from the Ecclesiarchy: find again the dungeon¡¯s core and return to the surface alive to report the path. The second was of a more personal nature: to ignore the core, and to die. He visited the Gods in his dreams. They stood looming, stone-faced, and encircled him with silence. And he heard them, saw them. This was omens unlike any other, yet alike every other in the most important way: Grace born from dirt, Purity from the most unlikeliest of hands. Some pilgrims had to die. He fingered a coppery coin and prayed.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. That did not mean that they had to die in meaningless ways. It was common among the mundane philosophers to see phenomena in time, interwoven by cause and effect. The Cleric¡¯s epiphany many years ago, was what this really meant, for all chance to be providence, for all to move with the blessing of divine intelligence. If the Gods were there at the beginning, at every beginning, and will be there at every end, then the divine must therefore be out of the river of time, unmoved, yet in time, moving. Only in birth and death, when mortal souls leave the grips of time, can they truly reach the Gods. That was when he abandoned the texts, and moved to the coin. The world needed a preacher among the wretched, and the wretched preacher needed the world. And the coin, his symbol, was his proof: it carried with it traces of sacred lands, the same ones the Cleric travelled, like the coin. It was a faint echo, but a fragment of the divine is all he needs to work in-the-world. Workers of miracles were otherwise bound as hosts to their marked sites. That hall-of-dreams was built on direct witness, the Cleric was sure of it. It possessed that divine origin, of memories disconnected from time. In his past explorations, he has found various other works that might have been astonishing in their own right, works one would expect to find in a church instead of hidden in murderous depths, but they pale as imitations of the imagination, tainted by marks of history. It showed in the features of Mesophian innovation, or the various symbols and gestures profligated to the uneducated rabble. Whatever monstrous artist clearly was groping in the dark, trying to reconstruct a forgotten memory on popular word-of-mouth alone. The Cleric paused at the thought. What a tragic waste of the poor people that were those mouths. If only the artist knew. Devoted, but fundamentally mundane artworks, when instead the artist should be looking within for the touch of the Gods. The Cleric would find that hall-of-dreams, and Vermin would learn just how very lucky she was a sufficiently high level priest has yet to reach her hall.