Tyla leaned against the wall and relaxed into Communion.

  With her tunic removed, the bare skin of her back against the wall was all the contact her Trait needed. Her hand would have worked as well, but Tyla needed the feel of her bow in her hands before she could relax properly. She’d managed it before, under more trying circumstances, but she had relied on the rest of her party to keep her safe.

  Now she was alone. By choice, not out of any necessity. Tyla was sure that any or all of the others would have come down with her if she had asked. She just hadn’t seen the need for assistance for such an easy delve. This was her first solo expedition, and she hadn’t realised just how comforting the presence of friends was.

  She had slipped past the first two floors like a ghost. Not in the sense that she couldn’t be seen, but the slow-moving zombies couldn’t lay a hand (or stump) on her. Even in the close confines of a corridor, she could dance past the lumbering monsters as if they weren’t moving at all.

  She could have killed them easily enough, but she would get almost no experience. And by leaving them behind, they would serve as a warning if anyone disobeyed Anton’s orders and entered the dungeon while she was there. It was unlikely that they could stop anyone stronger than Tier One, but Kelsey would alert her in plenty of time to wake up.

  The third floor was the Skeleton Outpost. According to Kelsey, it was also the entrance to the hospitality section. Kelsey had been interested in hosting her there, but without her avatar present, she had thought it would be too dangerous. So Tyla had systematically destroyed every living skeleton in the Outpost before settling down and attempting to still her thoughts.

  She found the thread of mana that wound through the rock and latched on to it with her mind. It carried her… somewhere else.

  Communing with the Hungry Depths had put her in a white, featureless void. This was… not that.

  “Hey, kid, welcome to the Control Centre,” Kelsey said. Tyla looked around in wonderment and confusion.

  She was standing in front of a slightly curved table made of a glossy black rock, polished until it gleamed. Most of the table was covered with stacks of paper. All of it was of high quality. Some of it was blue with white lines on it.

  The floor under her feet was soft, covered with some kind of thick fabric that covered the entire floor, from wall to wall. Tyla wasn’t sure if it was cloth or fur. It seemed something in between and was dyed in a complicated pattern of red and gold.

  There was no entrance or exit to the room. All four walls were covered with windows, which started at about waist-high and extended outwards at a forty-five-degree angle. Each one showed a different scene. Some of them Tyla recognised as views from different dungeon floors. Others looked like nothing Tyla could imagine, complicated panoramas of vats, pipes and red-hot metal, with skeletons swarming all over everything. She shuddered and looked away.

  “You like it?” Kelsey asked. “I don’t really need all this, but with company coming, I thought I’d better spruce it up a bit.”

  A panel of the floor fell away, and a skeleton rose from underneath. It was wearing a soft cloth cap and carried one of the blue sheets of paper, which it handed to Kelsey, before stepping back into the void.

  Kelsey looked at it and nodded before putting it on the table with the others. She was seated in what looked like a giant egg that had been cut diagonally in half, and then lined with a plush red fabric.

  Somehow, the chair rotated to the side, and Kelsey jumped to her feet. “You look a little overwhelmed,” she said. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

  She gestured to the side, where there was something that might have been a chair. Or a bed. Covered with another strange material, it was wide and deep enough for Tyla to lie down on it, if she chose. When she sat down, it proved to be… unnervingly comfortable, which wasn’t a combination of words that Tyla had ever expected to use.

  She was still getting used to the way the seat embraced her when she felt a strange vibration running through her.

  “What is that?” she asked. Nothing in the room was moving; it felt like her chair was absorbing the vibrations.

  “Nothing for you to worry about,” Kelsey said. “You’re just feeling some movement in your real body.”

  She pointed at one of the windows, which was showing a massive underground waterfall. Tyla watched, awed, as an entire ocean of water thundered down into a rapidly growing pool.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Just moving some stuff around,” Kelsey said casually. “It’ll die down in a minute.”

  “What is this place?” Tyla asked, tearing her gaze away from the waterfall.

  “I guess you could say, it’s my mind. Or at least a part of it.” Kelsey gazed out of the windows. “A dungeon’s mind isn’t much like a human one.”

  “You seem human,” Tyla said hesitantly.

  “Thanks! At least, I think that was meant as a compliment?” Kelsey pointed at another window, which changed to show Anton and his family meeting with a well-dressed lady.

  “My avatar is only a small part of me, but it allows me to act more human. To have human experiences and feel things that I wouldn’t normally. Like eating food.”

  She turned to grin widely at Tyla. “Or having sex.”

  Tyla shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t recall any legends about Numen having sex,” she said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Kelsey acknowledged. “They didn’t have the memories that I do, and sex… isn’t as all-encompassing for me, even with an avatar.”

  Tyla didn’t know what to make of that. She knew that Kelsey had memories, memories that let her build guns and act strangely, but she rarely talked of them. She needed to respond, so she asked the first thing that came to mind.

  “Sex is… different, now, from what you remember?”

  “Mmn. I think it’s the same, but I’m bigger than before.” Kelsey came and sat down next to Tyla. Very close to Tyla, close enough that Tyla could feel her warmth.

  “Sex is pretty great, but it’s limited to the avatar body,” she explained. “I don’t feel it in my passages, my ducts or my huge tracts of land. I don’t feel it here. And my libido is gone completely.”

  “Th—then why are you sitting so cl—close to me?” Tyla managed to stammer.

  “I’m curious.” Kelsey reached out with one hand and gently brushed Tyla’s cheek. “About how it works, in here. This isn’t your real body, you know? It’s just a thought.”

  She leaned in so close that Tyla could feel breath on her skin.

  “So why is your heart beating faster?” Kelsey asked. “Skin temperature going up, breath rate increasing… ah! Now your real body is doing it too!”

  Sunk into the cushions, it was difficult to slide any distance away, but Tyla managed it. Kelsey let her go, observing her nervousness with clinical detachment.

  Of course, she let me go, Tyla thought. There is nowhere, nowhere at all for me to run to.

  Unless she broke the Communion. Should she? Would Kelsey take offence? A sudden stab of doubt impaled her. Could she? Every other Communion that Tyla had performed had ended by mutual agreement.

  Kelsey was still looking at her curiously, as if she could see the thoughts running through Tyla’s head. “I gather you didn’t enjoy your first sexual experiences,” she said calmly.

  “I was raped,” Tyla said bitterly. “Of course, I didn’t enjoy it.”

  “Sure.” Kelsey nodded. “A little under half of the girls with us who were forced into the Doxy class have resumed normal sexual activity.”

  “How would you know that?”

  Kelsey shrugged. “The senses of my avatar are much better than people suppose, I don’t sleep, and I have an inexhaustible curiosity about that sort of thing.”

  “You were spying on all of us?”

  “Observing you. Hard not to, when they started having sex on the boat.”

  Tyla flushed. Her senses were quite good as well, and she was often keeping watch at night.

  “You never said anything about this.”

  “It would have spoiled my data if they knew I was collecting it. Can we get back to you now?”

  “I don’t want to,” Tyla said sullenly.

  Kelsey just stared silently while Tyla shifted uncomfortably. Finally, the dungeon spoke.

  “I didn’t ask for it, but you’ve worshipped me from the start.”

  “You saved me,” Tyla said softly. “And the traditions of my people require me to show respect.”

  “I’m nothing like the Numina of your legends,” Kelsey said.

  “That is true,” Tyla admitted.

  “And yet you bound yourself to me, again and again.”

  “I still needed saving. I wanted what you wanted.”

  “You have no idea of what I want,” Kelsey said, and Tyla’s blood ran cold. “But yes, we did share some goals.”

  “More than that,” Tyla insisted. “I may not… know what you want, but I think you deserve to get it.”

  “That’s so sweet!” Kelsey smiled, and Tyla felt her heart—real or imagined, she wasn’t sure—flutter. The cold steel that had gleamed in Kelsey’s eyes for a moment was entirely gone.

  “Still, you should put some caveats on that,” she continued. “Even Anton required assurances that I can’t give him yet.”

  “I might turn out to be wrong in the future,” Tyla admitted, “but I’d rather have faith that I’m right today.”

  “So much faith in me, and yet you were too scared to kiss me.”

  “That’s different,” Tyla said, looking away. “I’m scared of… the kiss, not of you.”

  “Scared of a little kiss?”

  “…Of what comes after.”

  “I don’t know what you think I’m packing in these pants, but it’s not what those men had, I assure you.”

  “That’s not… the details of how it goes aren’t what I’m afraid of. It’s…” Tyla trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

  “Huh,” was all that Kelsey said. Then, “You took the Class, Dungeon Wife. What do you think that means?”

  “It was just the best one available! I didn’t take it so you could—”

  Tyla’s voice choked off again. Kelsey kept speaking, her voice calm and relentless.

  “Your Class has a purpose, though, doesn’t it? You can feel what it’s pushing you to do.” Kelsey moved forward, and Tyla moved back. She felt the raised side of the lounge against her back. She could still get off the chair and get away, but then she’d be running.

  “I don’t know!” Tyla insisted. “Why are you making me think about it?”

  “Because I’m curious,” Kelsey admitted. “But also because that’s what dungeons do. Anton thinks we just kill people, but that's just the how.”

  “What do you do, then?” Tyla didn’t want to know, but as long as Kelsey kept talking, she wasn’t moving forward.

  “We help people to grow. We push them to their limits, then extend their limits. We purge weakness from them, like a blacksmith hammers out dross.”

  She leaned forward, coming, once again, too close. “This fear of yours. I’ll help you face it.”

  “I—” was all that Tyla managed to say.

  Then a blue streak of light flew into the room, buzzing around the heads of the two women.

  “Hey!” It yelled in a squeaky voice. “No sexy stuff!”

  not dealing with it, and that's my point. She needs to-

  exact opposite of a therapist, and she shouldn't be doing anything you recommend.

  wants to be useful. Isn't that good enough?