Dungeon Core: Bugged Ascension

~Blade.

He’s walking back to the estates, basking in the afterglow of consummating a new relationship. He’s learned a lot from the last ones and has chosen one with ambition and drive. Perhaps one even strong enough to truly step into his world, to walk beside him on his lonely path.

He takes another breath of the token she bequeathed him after they cleaned up from their latest interlude- when his whole world suddenly becomes pain. The rage floods him as he lunges out of the crater his body has been driven into, Axe in hand and shoved into the chest of the creature he has by the throat, positions reversed as he embeds their back in the stone.

He blinks down at the proud smile on his mother’s face before her countenance shifts into her trademark inhuman grin. Despite his crushing grip she stage whispers to him, like she’s sharing a secret, “Midas woke early. There’s going to be a WAR upon Dragons. The old bastard has finally noticed the tarnished rot amongst his people.”

He can only stand and back away in horror, at the message, and at how his mother has started to squirm and writhe in pleasure at the thought of it all, “This one is going to be so Huge!” Her eyes flash with ecstasy before focusing on his once more, “Aren’t you just so happy that Famine has finally decided to properly court our Kingdom? She’s brought a selection of mates for me to choose from and now This? I am truly Blessed.”

She lifts herself up, like a puppet by its strings, out of the shaped recess he slammed her into on the side of the crater she created when she crashed into him. Calm now, she turns and walks away, motioning distractedly with one hand, “Just, uh, tell folks to prepare or whatever. I’m going to go forge a new weapon to commemorate the occasion.”

He just stands there in shock. A distant part of him answers or brushes aside the questions of the investigators and repair crew that show up because of the damage to the enchanted road. Most of him however is busy dealing with the feedback from actually managing to draw blood from his mother with the Axe.

Rather than raging and growling and snapping at the world, as it has done for all the decades he’s known it. A constant background noise he’s had to suppress over the last month as his mother’s interest has necessitated him continuing to carry it. Now, there is only a choir singing in his soul, evoking beauty and peace, bringing forth memories of previous lovers and highlighting his latest attempt at fulfillment.

The music suddenly cuts off, startling him from his daze as he finds his other hand held in hers. She raises it to her lips for a kiss, as questions tumble from him, “What- When did you get here- Why?”

There is a steel backing her gentle smile, her gaze fixed on his own, “Lady War made an announcement, so I went looking for you. I heard there was an altercation out here, and I found you still here. Lost in a trance.”

He glances down at his other hand, each tendon, muscle and bone showcased in grotesque relief as his grip upon the Axe’s handle is tight enough to mold iron. He finds that he can’t seem to release it and while he can move his arm, he can’t actually feel his hand anymore.

Still somewhat in shock, he whispers, “Now’s probably a bad time to be with me.”

She responds by threading her arms under his as she leans into a chaste hug while standing on her tiptoes to plant a chaste kiss upon his lips, “There will never be a ‘good’ time to be with someone, Blade. You asked if I wanted you to remember me, but I’m starting to see what you really wanted… Someone to know, you. Well, I’m still here. Teach me.”

Finally coming more fully back to himself, confusion flashes on his face, “But there’s going to be a Wa-“ she shushes him with another longer, deeper and significantly less chaste rebuttal.

When she has to stop for breath, she’s being held in his arms and smiling up at him, “A war means even dungeon delvers can be drafted as soldiers. One of this scope means many lives will be lost.” Her smile becomes far more complex as she pauses, “I’ll be doing my part, regardless of what you choose here Blade. But with your help-” she hops up and wraps her legs around him, “I know I can save more lives.”

With her lips pressed against his ear she whispers, “I could even make more lives. If you stayed,” with that final statement she leans back in his arms and searches his face for a moment. She then leans back in and gives him a last kiss, “But I won’t force you, Blade…”

Her hands braced on his shoulders, she unwraps her legs to drop down, but his hands catch her, a clattering of wood and metal upon stone unnoticed by either of them. His voice thick with need of so many failures and years of searches, “Stay. I’ll stay. I’ll teach you. Train you.” He presses them together more tightly, “Everything.”

She shares another thorough kiss with him before tapping his shoulder, “Good. Now, we’ve both got our duties to attend to. All of this? Will need to wait for later. We’ll make our own ‘good’ time to start our new joint project later.”

He releases her from his smoldering grip and sets her down. Her flushed face and eager grin blind him as she leans down to pick up a fallen item.

There is the briefest moment of understanding that crystalizes in him just before her fingers touch that ancient wooden handle. He doesn’t even have enough time for a single beat of his heart to grant him the speed to stop her. His world shatters as he witnesses that delicate, beautiful hand, make contact with the Axe.

Then she stands back up and presses it against him. His hands grab hold of the handle before she releases it to his grasp and then she sashays away with a wink. Totally unharmed.

He looks down stunned at the weapon in his hands. The blade flat against his chest instead of sunken into him. The handle, once coarse and intrinsically violent enough to shred flesh from bone with a touch, now pristine, smooth except when you want to hold it securely. He wonders on it in silence for the several minutes it takes him to make his way home.

When he arrives back at the estate, he seeks out and finds his mother in her workshop. Hard at work at her forge, crafting some new instrument to fulfill her purpose, “Mum?” She hmms in acknowledgement while she keeps working, “I think there might be something wrong with the Axe.”

She looks back at him standing in the doorway before letting out a hearty laugh, turning back to her work, “No you silly boy. You’ve just finally made it your own. I knew you were a special one. Did you know it took Bulwark more than a century before he was able to make the shield I crafted for him, fully his? Look at you, it only took, what, 53 years to beat me and satiate its thirst. Congratulations.”

Glancing between the Axe and his mother, “You mean… the hunger, the rage, the blood, all of that was just, what, some kind of test?”

Only able to see her in profile, he’s happy that he only catches the edge of her grin, “Not a test dear boy. A Challenge! When’s the last time you visited your siblings, eh? Because I see them every day. Each and every one of them I hold close to my heart.”

The grin morphs into a truly terrifying visage, thankfully directed away from him as he holds his ground through sheer force of will as a cataclysm of violence and power are unleashed with each swing of the forge hammer, “I never forget nor abandon any of my children. No matter what those fools and petty bastards might say. I love them all, and I HATE! When they are taken from ME.”

Her face smooths out and she turns with the kind smile of a simple mother towards him, “I do my best to raise you right. Raise you strong. But stepping beyond the realm of mere Legends is impossible for most people, regardless of the circumstances. No matter how much I try.” She turns back to the forge, “So, I build Artifacts for you. To give you a piece of me to carry with you, to keep you safe, to drive you to finding your own Myth.”

She pauses in her work, hammer raised but unswung, “There is something coming, my son. Pestilence’s return, Famine’s proposal, whispers from Death, Midas cleaning house… There are too many Players waking and moving in the world right now. It is absolutely the wrong time to have a kid. But you’ve finally mastered your Blade, and all your brothers and sisters have moved on, long buried.”

She drives down the hammer with a deafening blow, “Time waits for nothing, not even War. You must always build whatever you can with your own hands, your own choices. Remember that.”

He walks the few, yet heavy steps between them as the hammer rises and falls. He hugs his mother’s back and kisses her cheek, giving her the soldier’s dignity of ignoring the streams of tears, “If the Axe is truly mine, then I think it means Family now. I’ve met someone special. She just picked it up and handed it to me.”

He hooks the Axe onto one of the multitude of weapon clips that adorn his mother’s outfit, “If you’re going to be alone in here, I want you to hold onto it for me. If the Kingdom’s Blade is going to been seen around in such times, it would probably be too complicated to explain the change. People prefer consistency, and if I walk around with the Saber, I think it will offer them some comfort.”

As he turns to leave, “I love you, Mum. I miss them too. If he’s not already on his way, I’ll make sure Bulwark comes down and pays you a visit.”

Taking one last look around the workshop, he sees all the various weapons, armors, shields, amulets, rings… A host of markers with seemingly little rhyme or reason for their presence. But he knows that grouping of eight, with two empty spaces on the wall, one sized for the weapon he fastened to her and the other…

Even just counting them all hurts his soul.

As he strides up to his armory to change his gear over to his Saber, he unsheathes the blade and draws a finger along the flat of it. A resonant, calming hum echoes in the room from the memento, “Together forever, brother. Thank you for saving me.”