Pocket Dungeon, page 18
“Where do you venture into the crystal?” Yasha asked as her nimble fingers began to braid her damp hair into two thick plaits.
My brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Where do you venture into the crystal,” she repeated. “That seemed to have been translated correctly. Where do you use the crystal?”
“Uhhh…” I had to be missing something. “I use it here?”
“In your home?” she asked me as her eyes narrowed.
I felt like we were having two separate conversations at the same time, and it was starting to make my head hurt a little.
“Yes?” I said. “I’ve used it in my living room the last two times. It’s been fine, like it hasn’t done any damage to my house or whatever?”
“Oh, no,” Yasha gasped. “You should not do that!”
The alarm on her face was enough to make me feel a small surge of panic.
“Why not?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“What of the power surges?” she asked, as if I had any fucking idea what she was talking about.
“Power surges?” I repeated. “I think I just need you to explain why I shouldn’t do this, or else we’re going to keep going around and around in circles.”
“Right, of course,” Yasha said as she stood. It was hard to focus on anything other than her bare legs, but I was making an effort. “While using a crystal, it releases a large amount of energy. It is not such a problem in Arcadio, as we do not have much power or energy in our homes, but you have power here. A lot of electricity.”
“Wait.” I held my hands up to stop her. “Are you saying that the crystal is the reason my apartment building has been losing power?”
Yasha gave me a very serious nod. “Yes. I am amazed you have not had any problems yet, other than losing your power.”
“Shit,” I said. “Do all crystals affect electronics and stuff when they’re being used?”
“Yes,” she said. “It is a large reason we do not rely on electricity in Arcadio. We have too many crystals being used at any time. It makes things too difficult. But there is so much power here. It probably caused a surge through this building, and every building surrounding yours.”
“Oops,” I managed. That was definitely something it would have been nice to know earlier, but live and learn, I guess.
“You also should not use it in your home…” She pulled on the pair of socks I had loaned her as if she hadn’t just said something incredibly concerning.
“Wait, what does that mean?” I felt like I needed a map to follow this conversation.
“The crystals act as beacons,” she explained. “When they are used, they send out… send out signals? I think that is what I want to say. The crystal alerts anyone else with a crystal that someone has entered a dungeon.”
“What!” I gaped at her. “You mean other people know when I’m in a dungeon?”
“It is more complicated than that,” she said. “They do not know it is you, Wes Rhodes, but that someone in this area has entered a dungeon. It can be a very dangerous thing indeed.”
“Wait, what do you mean by that? How can it be dangerous?” But as I asked the question, I had a sudden flashback to my conversation with Clarissa le Fay, and her strange, ominous warning about other people having crystals.
“I do not know if things are the same on Earth,” Yasha began. “But on Arcadio, people covet crystals. The more you have, the more dangerous the dungeons you can enter. And so, the more reward you have to gain.”
“Whoa. There’s so much more to this than I could have ever anticipated,” I gasped, and my mind spun as I tried to keep up with the number of questions I now had. I decided to stick with my first train of thought for now. “You mentioned having to guard the crystal at night. So, people can hone in on my location whenever I use the crystal?”
“Essentially, yes,” she said. “It is not exact, but it will allow them to get closer and closer to you.”
“And when that’s paired with the power surges…” I finished.
“You create a target with yourself at the very center,” Yasha confirmed. “It is smartest to get far from your home, somewhere safe where no one can find you before you use the crystal. And even then, it is best to have someone you trust wait on the outside. You are prone while you are in the crystal. It is a dangerous activity to engage in, and not everyone is as kind as you, Wes. Many will do whatever it takes to possess your crystal.”
I leaned back against my dresser as I processed all the information Yasha had just casually dropped on me. I felt more than a little gobsmacked by it all, but I supposed it made sense.
“Shit,” I summarized the situation. “That is very good information to have.”
“I should have told you sooner,” Yasha sighed. “Please, forgive me, Wes.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I held my hands up. “You have nothing to apologize for. You didn’t know what I did or didn’t know about the crystals. And you’re telling me now, which is all that matters. But if there’s anything else about the crystals that I might not know, I’d appreciate it if you could tell me now.”
“Right, of course.” Yasha pursed her lips. “Well, the more crystals you have, the more dungeons that you can unlock.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that earlier,” I said with a frown. “What does that mean?”
“They are harder dungeons than those with single crystals, but the gold and the loot you can gain is exponentially higher. One of the ways you can gain new crystals is by completing ten dungeons successfully. The crystal will award you with a second one at that point in time.”
“But I have a feeling that isn’t the only way to get new crystals,” I added.
“You are right,” the sexy fox-woman sighed. “I have mentioned the stealing. It is not uncommon for crystals to be stolen from other crystal keepers to increase someone else’s wealth. I wish I had not seen it happen before, but it is a part of the lifestyle we have chosen.”
I mulled over her words. “That means I definitely have to find somewhere else to use my crystal.”
“And it cannot be the same place each time,” she said. “Someone could find it and expect you, and then they could simply wait until you exited the dungeon and kill you for the crystal.”
“Well, isn’t that pleasant,” I mumbled.
I’d never put myself in mortal danger before, aside from some seriously sketchy maneuvers on my bike during rush hour. Granted, I’d been genuinely scared for my life a couple times since discovering the strange dungeons I could now venture into, but this was different.
This was cold-blooded murder Yasha was talking about.
I drew a deep breath to keep from momentarily panicking at the idea.
“Okay,” I said in what I hoped was a reasonably calm tone. “So I’ve got to find somewhere new each time, somewhere outside of the range for electricity shorting out, and somewhere that is far from home.”
“It is not an easy task,” Yasha said. “Especially here, where there are so many people, but I believe you can do it. I will help as much as I can, though I fear with my injury, I may hold you back.”
“I don’t think you’re capable of doing something like that,” I assured her. “You were still fighting when I first saw you, and that was after the injury. And without you, I wouldn’t know any of what I know now. You’re already doing plenty to help me.”
Yasha flashed me a smile that lit up her entire beautiful face.
“Thank you, Wes,” she said. “That means much to me.”
“Come on,” I urged and reached out to offer her my hand. “Let’s get something to eat, and we can discuss strategy while we wait for it to be time to enter the crystal. You don’t have to come with me this time if you don’t want to, but you’re more than welcome if you decide you do want to.”
“Thank you,” she said again. “I have met many people with crystals in my short time as a crystal keeper, but I have never met someone as kind as you. You are clearly a good man, the only sort of person who should have access to the wealth and power of the crystals.”
I felt a small surge in my chest at her compliment, and I gave her hand a squeeze as I led her back into the living room.
I glanced over toward the bathroom and saw that the water spill was painfully apparent, and I knew I couldn’t just leave that there for much longer.
“Here,” I told Yasha as I helped her sit on the couch. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and quickly navigated to the Grubhub app. “You can look through this for any food that seems interesting.”
“This will bring me food?” She studied my phone in her hand like it was the strangest thing she had ever seen. She lifted it up, as if there might be some sort of hidden food dispenser she had missed on the slim device.
I bit back a laugh. “Not quite. You find what you want to eat on the device, and then you order it. It sends a notification to the restaurant, and then someone goes and picks up the food and then brings it here to you.”
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously and looked between me and the phone. “Are you sure you are not royalty and have not told me? I have never heard of such an astounding thing.”
“I’m sure,” I promised with a grin. “Just shout if you need any help. I’m going to get the bathroom cleaned up a little bit before the water can, like, leak through the floor to the people below me.”
Yasha nodded and returned her focus to my phone in her hand. She tapped at the screen with one of her nails and frowned before she tried the pad of her finger. It was hard not to watch her process of trial and error, but alas, the bathroom needed to be cleaned.
I heard the faint sound of Yasha’s fingers tapping against the cracked screen of my phone as I used one of the towels from the back of the door to mop up the massive spill of water that covered the bathroom tile.
I had needed to mop anyway, so I guessed it was a win-win. I got to have fantastic sex, and my floors were cleaned.
“What is the Burger King, Wes?” Yasha called out to me. “Is he the king of Earth? Why is he on this little screen, and what is a burger?”
It took everything in me not to laugh out loud at her questions. But before I could answer her and tell her that no, Burger King was not actually a king, and he especially wasn’t the king of earth, she asked another question.
“What is a taco and why does it have a bell? I am very confused by these names,” she continued. “Why does all of your food have such strange names?”
“Do you need some help?” I asked as I used my foot to push the towel around the floor like a makeshift mop.
“No,” Yasha said, which seemed sort of counterintuitive to all of the questions she had just asked. “I am just… scrolling. Yes, scrolling.”
“Well, I’m here if you need me,” I assured her as I quickly finished cleaning up the bathroom.
Our clothing that had been on the floor before our impromptu romp in the tub was soaked. I tossed them over the rod for the shower curtain so they could dry and made a mental note to take them to the laundromat soon.
I figured it would be something mundane that Yasha was interested in, and suddenly the idea of doing a menial chore didn’t seem so boring.
Yasha continued to murmur to herself in what I assumed was her native language from the living room as I finished cleaning up the bathroom. Then I draped the towel over the shower rod with our clothes, dried my hands on the hand towel by the sink, and went out to join Yasha on the couch.
“Have you found anything interesting?” I peered over her shoulder to see what she had been looking at.
She’d managed to find a local Mexican restaurant and had tapped on what appeared to be every single entree they offered.
“Is this correct?” she asked as she passed the phone back to me. “I do not know what I was doing.”
I bit back a laugh. “It’s a lot of food, but what the hell. I’ve got money to spare right now, and you can’t go wrong with Mexican food.”
“What is Mexican food?” she asked. “Is it a plant? Some sort of meat?”
“No, no, Mexico is a country here on Earth, specifically in North America,” I explained. “Mexican food is just some of the stuff that they tend to eat in Mexico. It usually involves some sort of rice and beans, and it’s usually spicy.”
Yasha gave a slow nod. “I like spicy. Sometimes we make our bread very spicy with desert plants we gather.”
“Then I’m sure you’ll love this.” I hit the submit button on the order and managed not to throw up at the total cost at checkout. I didn’t even bother finding something specific for myself to eat, because I was sure I’d find something out of the buffet Yasha had chosen.
“And now we wait for the food?” she asked, but her eyes already cut to the front door, as if it might have somehow appeared miraculously.
I supposed when I ordered food last night, it kind of had. One minute she’d been in the shower, and the next, we’d had a bunch of pizza and some cheesy bread ready to go.
“It’ll probably be here in an hour or so,” I said. “So there’s a little more time to kill.”
“Time to kill,” she repeated the phrase like she had never heard it before. “You have a very interesting way of using words, Wes. I have never heard things said quite like you say them.”
“Thank you?” I laughed. “I think that’s a compliment, at least. I’m choosing to take it as one, no matter what.”
“It is,” Yasha assured me. “You are just a very intriguing man. What would you normally do while you waited for food from this Grub Hub.”
She put a strange space between the words, and I was once again reminded of just how different our two lives had been.
I pursed my lips in thought. “Usually, I think I would find something to watch on TV. The box right over there. You can watch things like movies and television shows, which are like plays but digital.”
Trying to explain what televisions did was an incredibly strange experience that I had never expected to encounter, but here I was.
“I have seen plays,” she said. “One play. It was about a father who killed his children for being inadequate.”
I blanched. “That doesn’t sound like a very entertaining play.”
“Oh, no,” she corrected. “It was very funny. My sisters would reenact the death scenes of all the children for fun.”
“Riiiight,” I stretched out the word. “Anyway, we can watch things like plays.”
“I am very interested in what you can show me.” Yasha readjusted herself on the couch to sit even closer to me than before. She stared at the black television screen with a sort of laser focus, as if her thoughts alone would pull something up on the screen.
I struggled for a moment as I debated what I even wanted to show Yasha. What sort of movie did you show a woman who didn’t even know what Mexican food was? I felt like I was in vastly uncharted territory, so I decided to go with a classic.
Even if she wasn’t from Earth, I assumed Star Wars would have to have some sort of appeal, right?
I used the remote app on my phone to turn on the TV and then flipped through until I managed to find A New Hope. From the very first second, Yasha was practically glued to the television.
Her eyes were wide, and her mouth hung slightly agape as she stared at the Star Destroyer crossing the screen.
“This… this is not real?” she asked me in awe. “This is fake? It looks so real… I feel as if I could reach out and touch it.”
As if to emphasize her point, she reached one of her delicate, fine-boned hands toward the TV screen and grabbed the air. There was a sort of childlike wonder on her face as she stared in rapt intrigue at the movie.
She didn’t even seem to notice when I got up to grab the food from the Grubhub delivery driver. He looked miffed as he handed me the five bags of food he had to lug up the elevator, and I slipped him an extra twenty for his effort.
Then I carried the bags back into the living room and set them down on the coffee table. I started to unpack all the various dishes Yasha had ordered as she watched Obi-Wan and Darth Vader duel on screen.
“That’s nothing compared to the duel in the third movie. Well. Sixth movie, I guess,” I said.
Yasha slowly turned to look at me. “You mean to say there are more of these? These movies?”
“You like it, then?” I grinned.
She nodded her head so eagerly that her ears seemed to bounce.
“I would like a lightsaber.” She told me this with the solemnity of someone granting their last will and testament. “It is a powerful weapon.”
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “You and me both. Who knows, maybe there is something in the dungeons like a lightsaber, and we just haven’t found it yet.”
“I very much hope so,” she agreed. “Much better than my blade.”
“Your katana?” I asked.
“Katana?” she repeated the word.
“That’s what we call slightly curved swords like yours on my world.”
“Ahh.” She nodded. “We use hard metal in the middle and wrap it in softer metal. I can use all types of weapons, though. I hope I can use a lightsaber one day.”
I think I might have been in love with this woman.
“Here.” I gestured toward the extravagant spread of Mexican takeout laid out before us. “Dig in.”
I passed Yasha one of the plastic forks that had come with the order, and together, the two of us started to dive into our dinner. It had been a while since I’d had Mexican food, and I found myself fighting the urge to inhale it like a vacuum.
My appetite was never that strong, and I wondered if maybe all of the exercise I’d been getting in the dungeons lately was having some sort of effect. It certainly beat going to a gym, that was for sure.
Yasha took small, tentative bites of each and every single item from all of the containers. It was as if she wanted to make sure she had a taste of everything before she could offer me a full opinion.
As someone with a degree in a STEM field, I really appreciated her process.
