Anima: A Divine Dungeon Series (Artorian's Archives Book 6) Read online

  Anima

  Artorian’s Archives Book Six

  Dennis Vanderkerken

  Dakota Krout

  Copyright © 2020 by Mountaindale Press

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Newsletter

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Afterword

  About Dennis Vanderkerken

  About Dakota Krout

  About Mountaindale Press

  Mountaindale Press Titles

  Appendix

  Acknowledgments

  From Dennis:

  There are many people who have made this book possible. First is Dakota himself, for without whom this entire series would never have come about. In addition to letting me write in his universe, he has taken it upon himself to edit and keep straight all the madness for which I am responsible, with resulting hilarity therein.

  A thank you to my late grandfather, after whom a significant chunk of Artorian’s personality is indebted. He was a man of mighty strides, and is missed dearly.

  A special thank you to my parents, for being ever supportive in my odd endeavors, Mountaindale Press for being a fantastic publisher, Jess for keeping us all on task, and all the fans of Artorian’s Archives, Divine Dungeon, and Completionist Chronicles who are responsible for the popularity for this to come to pass. May your affinity channels be strong, and plentiful!

  Last of all, thank you. Thank you for picking this up and giving it a read. Anima is the continuation of a multi-book series, and I dearly hope you will enjoy them as the story keeps progressing. Artorian’s Archives may start before Divine Dungeon, but don’t worry! It’s going all the way past the end of Completionist Chronicles! So if you liked this, keep an eye out for more things from Mountaindale Press!

  Newsletter

  Don’t miss out on future releases! Sign up for the Mountaindale Press newsletter to stay up to date. And as always, thank you for your support! You are the reason we’re able to bring these stories to life.

  Prologue

  “Barry the Devourer?” Dawn tasted the words, rolling them around in her mouth while peering at the domed stained-glass ceiling. “Sounds like a narcissistic title. Who is this and why should I care? We have a handful of other S-rankers that we are solidly keeping under. Why point out this one?”

  Tatum made the inner circle chair creak by leaning backwards. It threatened to break, but there were backups for if that happened… again. He bit his thumb, trying to think of how best to convey this cod of a conversation—as it was exceedingly fishy—without breaking down into a seven-hour sermon. Luckily for the hoarder of knowledge in all things occult and obscure, their dungeon overlord wasn’t going to let anyone else complain about that slippery fish first.

  “He tried to eat me! Abyss-near succeeded too!” A fuming Cale broke up through the floor in haste, an ethereal multi-tool in the form of a wrench held tight in his hand as his human form fully ejected from the cracked open crevice. He stamped over and slid into his inner circle chair right away. “That beast of an S-ranker had a personal statue devoted to him due to the misery he caused me, from before we all lived in the Soul Space. That hungry hippo ate my entire original third floor! Greedy High Elf glutton. I’m still offended.”

  Dawn felt a smirk crawl onto her lips. “Because he was a glutton, and that’s your thing? Mr. Sipping on Planet-Sized Essence on the daily. Or because he caused that horrible thing we all hate, called ‘setbacks’?”

  Cale furiously dropped his heavy wrench onto the table. “Both! Plus he’s an insufferable… is there a layer of expletives? I need all of them for this guy. Xenocide too, I guess, but especially this guy!”

  Tatum thought about it, then just nodded. Cale’s face snapped to him with disbelief. There was a layer of expletives? “You’re joking.”

  The old Master copied Dawn’s smirk, and nonchalantly shrugged. “Incarnate, get those chains off, and go look. It’s a whole wide world, layered like a delicious, endless cream cake. I mean I’m sure there’s edges and ends, but not that I’ve found while in the double-S ranks. Speaking of, so we do have other Incarnates in stasis? I was convinced Dawn and I were the only ones. Save for Barry.”

  Cale made an unpleasant sound, waving his hands. “Not all of the Incarnates I have a direct deal with are people I like. Or feel I can talk to. The methods with which they would help me might classify as… malicious compliance? They would help because of the deal. Though the results would cause those lovely setbacks we hate so much. So while they are here, I have… conveniently forgotten to give them a body to reside in, save for an orb in a box that provides no sensory data and doesn’t allow for Essence or Mana movements. Why are we talking about this nail in my coffin?”

  “Precautions.” Tatum cut to the chase. “It was odd to me, since we made both our deals with what was essentially our dying breaths. I’m here. He’s not. Your deal, unless ours are different, requires you to let people live in your Soul Space before letting them out when you’re able. Not letting Barry ‘live’ for lack of better specification, is going to stress that oath.”

  Cale shrugged. “It’ll be fi~i~ine! It’s not like I can reasonably provide you a body yet that stays… stable. No need to rush. Heck, even as an S-ranker, I might not be able to properly support Barry, so it’s on the backburner. He doesn’t need to be around.”

  Tatum crossed his arms, his face a displeased scowl. “Maybe. Eventually, you will reach the double-S ranks, and then by your own admission you will need to let him live. Same for the others. I don’t look forward to that day.”

  Cale adjusted uncomfortably. It was just too soon to talk about this. “It’ll be fine! You’ll all be much more powerful, we will probably have some systems in place or something. We’ll have plenty of people. What’s the worst that could
happen? Now, I really do need to get back to pylon patching. Toodles!”

  The dungeon’s chair reformed in a snap and straightened, sending him sliding down into an evacuation tube that opened wide below him. He slid off with a liberated *wheeee*!

  Dawn bit her thumb this time. “He’s getting bored faster. Those spurts of mania are all that’s keeping him focused at times. Since even the dungeon is up in arms about this ‘Barry,’ I’ll see if I can’t find the spare time for some kind of contingency plan, though I really can’t say I understand what I’m dealing with. Variety among Incarnates is nothing to laugh at, and it’s not like we have the convenient Ascendant scale to measure things by.”

  Tatum sank back into his chair like a sad potato. “Cal isn’t going to take this seriously until it’s far too late. As, unfortunately, he’s right. It’s too soon for this talk. Especially if he can keep the problematic S-rankers under wraps. Still, even I only know about Barry. There’s others? When and how did these deals get made? I’m the master of all knowledge obscure and facts forgotten. This is my field!”

  Dawn pointed at his arm, and upon inspection, Tatum groaned louder. The damaging cracks were forming already. “Abyss. Again? I swear I can’t do anything without going up like a badly-tuned Gnomish contraption on overcharge.”

  She nodded with a barely noticeable sigh. “Are you keeping count of the craters you’ve made on Hel? Never mind. Why don’t we just level? Tell me about Barry. I’ll tell you about… the other problems. We have plenty of time before the moot starts, as we’re here far too early. Because you’re right: Cal didn’t bring them in. Guess who else has a big Soul Space they can hide things in.”

  Tatum squeezed his hands together in agitation, his slump unmoved as he grumbled out the realization. “Eternium.”

  Chapter One

  “What do you mean, ‘if we stay awake too long, we die’? That is not an amusing joke.” Queen Marie, decked in her usual impenetrable full plate, crossed her arms in further defiance as muttering and unpleasant chatter went around the table. Her usual aura lay heavy, but the inner circle was one of the places where that just didn’t matter. To anyone.

  “I have a Queendom to run. I already shirk away from my normal needs for sleep, and my schedule is full. I don’t even have time to work on my techniques. Now you want me to take multi-year breaks? I won’t have a society to come back to! No! I will not stop mid-progress just to start over every time I wake up. That is not the path to a civilization of Glory.”

  Odin sniffed loud and gruff, clad in multiple layers of shiny, golden gladiator plate. His voice rumbled, and the usual tethers of lightning rolled off his skin as he spoke. “First our overlord creates hefty time penalties for death, and now there are hefty time penalties just for doing what we were put in place to? This is a ruse! Something else is at play, and I too refuse this calling. I don’t even believe your proof. Those shard hunks on the table could be any gem. You can say it was the Prime’s Core all you want, but this is too much. This demand goes too far. I too am unwilling to leave my mountain and role of overseer. My people cannot function without me! What would I return to if I left now? Shambles! Shambles, I say!”

  His fist thundered as it hit the clock-table. Many were upset; most were silent. Especially those who had delivered the news. Even more so those that knew the truth, and were unwilling to accept it.

  Brianna was one such ruler, and while she’d succeeded in spreading her supervisory tasks, she was no less impervious to hubris. The Dark Elven Queen remained quiet, because she knew this information. She knew that they were as gods, and yet that they could die. Her spies had lurked in the moon, drawn secrets from their locked confines, and brought them to bear.

  She knew Bob was dying, but she just couldn’t for the life of her accept it. The denial was mighty. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Brianna held firm to the convenient lie that this was a ruse, rather than accept this news could hold a nugget of revelation. She floated in the same boat as Odin. Brianna acted as the pinnacle of her society. The supreme Matriarch, and all information and tribute flowed as water to her whims and graces. She’d created a unified realm so tight-knit even her mother would have been jealous. They would not be fettered by concerns of backstabbing; there would be no loss of allegiance.

  Brianna kept this to herself, though it was no secret that she was opposed to the long sleep. Ten years in stasis for every one year they spent waking? How long had they been here? Easily over a decade. Perhaps even two, if counted at ordinary speed. Two hundred years without oversight, influence, or knowledge of events that were happening in the regions they had meticulously worked on and invested in? The Administrator must be mad to think he could enforce it.

  Aiden raised his massive paw. When motioned to, he cleared his throat with a half howl. “If my packs can gain some safety in my absence, I am not opposed. Provide my people a safe haven, and I’ll sleep.”

  Chandra’s vines twisted, making a hand tentacle motion at him. “Your packs are welcomed in my forests, unlike the children of man. You do not keep cutting mine down. I am still thorny about that fact, Henry.”

  The ruler of the human Kingdom, King Henry, exhaled harshly and said nothing. His Aura was laid out much like Marie’s, frame donned in near identical seamless full plate. Henry’s lack of either response or excuse only made the nature Mage feel further irritation, though this was nothing new.

  Instead, Henry threw his hands in the air to end the awkward silence he’d created. “Honestly. I am with my friend, Aiden, on the topic. Unlike Marie, I have not been doing fantastic with my attempts at Kingdom management. The following is a terrible thought, but a true one. If I leave, or rather, when I leave, my Kingdom is going to collapse. The nobility present will rise, consolidate power, and make it a land of Dukedoms. A Viscount or Marquis might squeeze in, but it’s going to collapse. If two hundred years pass… they will have forgotten all about King Henry, who founded the first castle and dug the first moat.”

  Henry removed his helmet, placing it upon the table. “When I wake, I will still be a Mage. One without great control over himself or his techniques, but a Mage regardless. Since Midgard is unlikely to be allowed to keep people of my caliber, I can play the role of the Hero. Since I expect things to have gone terribly awry, I can swoop in and conquer the lands back under my name. As the savior of the people, rather than some… unknown founder who doesn’t have the time to leave his castle. I would then try to start some semblance of a family, so that when I go to sleep after ten years of ruling, a century later there is a resurgence with a golden child who brings the Kingdom back up to its silvered days from whatever state it has fallen to.”

  He kneaded his brow, Mana so poorly controlled that it sputtered and flecked from his skin. “Each time I rise again, I can make an improvement. Again, then again, then again… It’s a miserable existence to play patchmaker, but I believe the Administrator when there is mention of an actual threat to our well-being. Personally, I am fine with ruling for ten years, and sleeping for a hundred. I am… I don’t know if you all recall, but I am not an experienced Mage. I scarcely know what I’m doing with my own new form, and I only found out a few weeks ago that I no longer qualify as ‘human,’ because of what I’m made of. It’s been a bother, and I’m still putting together an argument for just how much I disagree.”

  Artorian put his hand in the air, and Henry passed him the ball. “About that. When we had that very passing conversation, that comment was meant specifically in terms of what you are made of. Your meaty bits and normal cellular functions are very much gone, and without the human limitations and weaknesses, you physically qualify as something else. I meant nothing by it concerning the perspective, understandings, or social ways of being. If you see yourself as a human, and wish to continue carrying yourself as such, that’s neither something incorrect, nor something that’s wrong. So, if you were going to come and rebuke my mention because being in a different body, whether more or less able
, doesn’t make you human, you can call it a win. Being more or less able has zero impact on one’s worth as a person. None. You’re solid, my boy.”

  The mention turned Henry’s concern, and his argument, into a fine pile of sawdust that sprinkled to the winds. Henry felt better, and continued. “I think we should talk more, another time. As it stands, if nobody is opposed to me trying to save and repair my Kingdom in the way I’ve mentioned, I think that’s how I would like to try to do it. There’s better ways… I hope. If I go to sleep, I don’t have the threat of having that happen to my Core. Right?”

  His finger accused the shards rather pointedly. “So I have all the time in the world to find a better method? Because eventually, when we leave Cal, even if I fail here, I don’t want to fail out there, when I’ve only got one shot.”

  That message rang home to a few people, and looks of consideration settled in. Tatum turned his head, making a motion to Henry in request for the ball, who just handed it over. “I think it would have helped if either Bob or Minya were here to help corroborate this story. Currently all we have is some odd tension, a somber Great Spirit, a surprisingly nervous Administrator, and pieces of a shattered crystal that happen to look like a Seed Core. Where are they?”