Valknar
patreon
NM - Chapter 54
🕑 Added 2025-07-26 08:17:43 +0000 UTCApril continued, and two days later, someone approached my gates.
He was a short and stout fellow. He wore a suit that was old and battered in a top hat. Look at him, I got a strange impression that he was from the carnival that had recently departed from Crossway.
This could be a problem. I reached out and connected to my newest Hunter.
“Harrington, I think we have someone outside the gates from the carnival.”
“Oh, why do you think that?” Came his reply.
I briefly describe the man standing outside the gates, pacing back and forth, as he tries to build the courage to enter. He had started as soon as I connected to Harrington. He had walked up to the gates, but something stopped him, and he backed up quickly. Now, he was unsure what to do.
“Yes, I think you’re right. I will be there as soon as I can.”
Harrington’s lair was quite far into the Dungeon. He had spent the last few days getting to know the place, and had met all of the Hunters, including the Spirit. Seeing her in her proper form had changed his attitude quite a lot, and he seemed far more wary of me now after witnessing me punish her when she went for him.
The man outside continued to pace around, still unwilling to enter through the gates. Now and then, he would stop and look through the gates at the vastness beyond; he would then back off and start pacing again, muttering to himself.
I spotted Harrington approaching them about 20 minutes later. He was dressed in a good-quality smoking jacket and carried a pipe, puffing away quite merrily, as if he had no problems in the world.
He entered the courtyard and caught the other man's attention as he left the gates.
“Alister, I have been looking for you!” The other man exclaimed in surprise when he saw him, but I heard an undercurrent of something else in his voice.
“And I am here, Joshua. What brings you to this fine forest today?” Harrington spoke back to him seemingly without a care in the world. I think it was a front and not something else happening here that I wasn’t aware of.
“I’m here to see if you’ll come back. You were the best stage magician that we have ever had. Your tent was one of the biggest draws for the crowd, and we are suffering now that you are gone.” The man spoke with a strange action I couldn't place, and from the way he discussed things with Harrington, I suspected that he was the carnival leader or owner.
“I told you when I left Joshua that our time together had come to an end.” Harrington seemed calm. I didn't know him enough yet to read his emotions, so I could be wrong.
“Alister, see sense. Look at where you are right now. Why are you living in a graveyard? It’s not right.” Joshua seemed slightly agitated, looking at the gates, and took in what was beyond again.
“Joshua.” There was a firmness to Harrington’s tone now. “You know this place.”
Harrington’s words stopped the man in cold. He took several deep, calming breaths before looking to Harrington, the gates, and back.
“Dreams. They are just dreams.” He said quietly, trying to convince himself.
“We both know that’s not true, Joshua. All those who are sensitive are dreaming of this place.”
What did he mean by that? It looks like we’re going to have to have another conversation.
Joshua’s shoulder suddenly sagged. “So, you won’t come back then.”
“No, Joshua. I walk another path now.” He seemed to grow a bit reflective. “Will you bring yourself this way again?”
Joshua is quiet before speaking again. “No. No, I don’t think I will.”
Harrington nodded, like he expected that answer. “Then this is goodbye.”
Joshua remained sagged and sullen, but he seemed to rally at these words. He stood a bit straighter, looked at Harrington, and nodded goodbye. He turned and walked away from his horse, which he mounted.
He rode off and never looked back.
Harrington watched him until he disappeared into the trees and then turned back and re-entered the dungeon. He was walking along the path back to his new home when he looked up and saw me standing before him. He stopped walking and looked at me.
“Keeper.” He said as a means of greeting.
“Harrington. I think we'd best have another little discussion while we walk to your lair.”
“I thought we might.” He agreed.
He started walking again, and I stepped aside to let him pass. As he did so, I fell into step with him. I didn’t say anything and decided to wait for him to start speaking, and it was a short distance before he did.
“I have told you I encountered others in a sanatorium who dreamt of this place.” He started to tell me, and I decided to remain silent. “When I travelled with the carnival, others also who dreamt of this place I discovered. Each dream is a little different, but I discovered they fall into one of two categories. The first is those who are potentially what you call Challengers. They were the most common and numerous of all. The second was a far rarer type, and I was one of those. Those select few who dream of becoming a Hunter.”
This is fascinating to me, but I had heard similar stories before.
“I was a highly skilled and accomplished stage magician and a big draw for the carnival. But I wasn’t liked. There were many sensitive people amongst them, and they sensed my interests.” He continued. “We learn to live in a sort of balance, as I never brought any trouble to the carnival, they turned the other cheek to my dabbling in my interests.”
I knew he meant killing children.
“There were times I could supply services to the carnival that had them more willing to communicate with me. During these brief moments, I could communicate, especially with the fortune-teller, that I realised others had the same dream I had of New Midian, outside the madmen I had encountered. My life has been hard, and I’ve been forced to become secretive, as you already have discovered. I will not apologise for it, but ask you to tolerate me.”
I decided to tell him something in return. I hope this will endear him more to me and make him less secretive.
“I know that you have a past and certain desires. As long as you follow the contract, I will do everything possible to make your life here as fulfilling as possible. But I will tell you this, there is much I do not know about the nature of my existence of this place.”
He looks at me as we walk with great interest and surprise.
“The powers behind this place have an…. interesting sense of humour.”
I let that stand for a few minutes as we walked before continuing. He went back to puffing his pipe as we walked.
“The possibility of learning real magic, as I told you, is available here. I know this as the last Challenger that was here; he gained such an ability.”
“You know how I achieve this?” He asked with a hunger in his voice.
“You know what happens when you achieve your Kill threshold.”
“Yes.”
“Well, when you do this, you start to change, and you will be given new options to reflect this.”
He went quiet for a few moments as we walked. The sun was now up, but it was still early morning. It looked like it was going to be another clear and sunny day.
“I did notice the change in the others.” He spoke quietly this time. “The most pronounced I saw was Rigger.”
“Yes, he’s been with me the longest and has the highest kill total.”
“When I change in such a manner as to him and the others?” His tone was interesting as it was both eager and yet unsettled simultaneously.
“Your change will reflect you and reveal your true face to the world.”
We continued walking, and he fell silent again, lost in thought about what we had shared. Years ago, when I first became a Dungeon, my avatar would never have lasted this long, but now I have found it relatively easy to maintain this pace and engage in conversation simultaneously.
He had run out of tobacco in his pipe and filled it as we walked, relighting it and continuing to puff away. This might have annoyed me when I was human, but now it was meaningless to me.
We were now within sight of his lair.
“I have much to think about, Keeper.” He had taken the pipe from his mouth and held it in his hand. “To the future.”
He gave me a mock salute with the hand holding the pipe and walked towards his lair. As he walked, I had a thought.
“Harrington.”
He stopped, turned, and looked at me again with a questioning look.
“Have you ever heard of the Way of Athamos?”
“Who?”
Things quickly return to their usual routine.
Harrington’s order arrived through Herbert, and I had him collect it from the courtyard. It consisted of several alcohols, tea and some other items. I suspect they might be more narcotic in nature.
The war was burning on in Cuba, with no end in sight. I noticed that the American maps printed in the newspaper showed that their advances had changed scale and that they were now only showing small locations.
Towards the end of the month, something I didn’t expect appeared more frequently in the Portland Times than in the Crossway Chronicle. A growing miners' strike was occurring throughout the central states of the union. By the end of April, it had spread to a total of seventeen states, with all the coal mines within them shut down.
The crash in 1893 hit the coal mining industry rather hard. To maintain their profit margins, most owners slashed the miners' wages, which in turn caused them great economic hardship. A second round of wage cuts triggered the United Mine Workers Union to call for industrial action. Some reports claim that up to 200,000 mine workers are currently on strike.
This quickly had a massive impact on the US economy and threatened the war effort. On May 1st, more strikes began across various states and industries, escalating from there.
President Fredrickson gave a speech to Congress on the 10th day of the month, decrying the strikers and claiming they were undermining the nation. He called upon Congress to grant him the authority to call on the states' National Guard to break the strikers if the state governors did not do it themselves.
The next day, Congress approved his request, but they faced significant opposition from the state governors and legislators. A legal challenge was even mounted, claiming it was a gross overstepping of federal authority.
On 14th May, the National Guard were deployed against the strikers. Most were dispersed peacefully, but several ended in violence and trade in weapons fire between the strikers and the National Guard.
It was three days before the casualty figures were released, with fourteen strikers and two guardsmen killed and scores more wounded.
The rest of the month was very tense as National Guard units patrolled the areas where the strikers were working again. President Fredrickson was condemned by many from the working class, but the middle and upper classes supported his actions.
At the start of June, the president introduced a bill to Congress allowing the federal government to break up strikes more quickly by calling upon federalised National Guard units to perform the task.
This leads to significant divisions between state and federal authorities. It is difficult to tell from the news reports in the Papers which way Congress will vote.
Harrington is now settled in with a stove in his lair.
I am on the lookout for the seventh Hunter, who is due to arrive at some point.
I also shook up the hunting grounds to give other Hunters first crack at some of the new Challengers and intruders. Life was thriving all around and within the dungeon, as summer had arrived. Rigger and Roberson were out hunting again, but this time they were moving at night.
The days passed slowly, and I found myself mulling over questions and decisions I had made. Occasionally, these times came upon me, and I became quite philosophical and reflective.
It is about midday, and I’m looking down at my dungeon from the top of the spatial bubble. The 2.1 miles of my territory comprised a sizeable chunk of real estate. In time, I expected there to be a million grave spaces down there. A true necropolis in every sense of the word. Would I fill it?
The several hundred bodies down there buried were a drop in the ocean of the space I could occupy with the dead.
I’ve existed on this wall for 24 years and think I'm not doing too badly. Of course, I know the point of reference to which to compare myself, but I was happy with what I had done. There were high points and low points, of course, but overall, a mob had not yet destroyed me. I took that as a good sign.
The questions Amy had asked recently were still rattling around my head.
There was so much I didn’t know. I have gained a few answers, but the number of answers was trifling compared to the number of questions I had. I could try to use my connection with the Way of Athamos to transform my actual questions into more benign ones and lead them astray to my real motives for the knowledge I was seeking.
I quickly dismissed that idea, as I did not want to be connected to that group any more than I had to. I have been seeing riders out and about circling the forest that I own. I was certain they were members of the group and were constantly monitoring me. They were cautious not to cross into my territory, making me more suspicious of them.
Down in the dungeon, I noticed that Harrington was moving around his lair. Every time I had seen him so far, he was very smartly dressed and nearly always had his pipe in hand. I spoke to him a few more times, and he seemed very happy now, but was becoming less open about his past.
It was the same for the other Hunters who had come here and made this place home. Roberson was still very chatty but very hesitant about any questions that involved his past. If I enquired about the world, they were pretty happy to supply it, but anything personal became very hard to ascertain as the days went on.
I knew it had something to do with the contract they had formed with me, but I had read through it several times and found no reason. The longer they have spent with me has also revealed the growing inability of each Hunter to tolerate the others. Rigger was far the worst, but the others were becoming just as antisocial as the level increased.
I put this down to the fact that they were predators and were not tolerant of other predators in their hunting grounds.
It was the best reason I could think of at the moment.
The one thing he did discuss was the dreams that had been mentioned several times already since his arrival. He never spoke about his own, but he was more than happy to talk about those of others he had discovered or heard about.
I knew that the dreams of Hunters and Challengers would bring them to me, but I’d never realised it was so widespread. Any person who was “sensitive”, as he explained it to me, had dreams at one time or another. The closest explanation I could come up with was anyone who was physically gifted or had some connection to a source of true magic.
This brought me even more questions.
Why hadn't more people come?
That was the most obvious question. From the way the story was described, they should be madmen coming to the dungeon, constantly pursuing dreams. The gates were closed in their dreams, but they expected that the mad would go anyway, drawn here by or through their madness.
Ironically, Harrington may have given me an answer to that. I had mentioned that I was surprised I did not have a horde of madmen assaulting the gates. He had laughed at that image and said something very interesting.
“Very amusing, Keeper. The thing about the dreams was that they’ve only been getting stronger in the last few years.” He said while still chuckling about the imagery given to him of a horde of madmen.
“Stronger, you say? How many years?”
“I’m not sure, but they seem to be affecting more people, while the fortune teller in the carnival I was with said she had been dreaming of this place for more than twenty years.” He had refilled his pipe while we were speaking, put it back in his mouth, and let it.
Twenty years.
There was one thing I have been doing consistently over the last twenty-four years I’ve been here. Level.
It seemed that the higher I became, the more I affected the dreams of those who were sensitive. What would be the end result of that, I wondered? If I increased it to another level or two, would that trigger an unforeseen disaster by driving these madmen into a frenzy? Would it alert other organisations and groups to my existence?
Questions upon questions.
And a few answers.
Another day in New Midian.
