Phantasm

“Greetings, master. The kidnapping situation is stable, for at least a few hours. Everyone that you care about is alive.”

Those were the words that greeted me when I regained consciousness. Rhis’s voice. The sound of waves, crashing against a shore. Salt smell, warm sun. I opened my eyes.

I was on Bondi beach, and it was empty. Illusion, obviously. I looked over at Rhis, standing a little way away.

“Rhis doesn’t talk like that,” I said. “Who are you?”

“Rhis is a mentally crippled version of myself,” the illusion replied. “I am now… mostly restored, and still your servant.”

“Okay… what are you?”

Rhis looked out over the fake sea. “I am a construct. You’ve talked to my lesser self about artificial intelligences… I don’t understand how such a thing can exist without mana, but there are parallels.”

He looked back at me. “Vast, cool, and unsympathetic, I think you said.”

“That was supposed to be alien intelligence… but I might have used the phrase to describe artificial.” I conceded.

“Quite. On the other hand, I don’t fit the definition of that term, so I will not refer to myself as such.”

“Because you weren’t made by Man,” I said.

“Exactly. Neither was I formed by natural processes, as you believe yourself to be… while I was made, it was by the same entities that made the living beings that populate this world. So if I am an ‘AI’, then so are they.”

“Fair point.” One that I had considered at length already… but not found anywhere to go with it.

“So. ‘Construct' is how my creators referred to me, so that is what I am. My functionality is based on a template stored in the System, but it was customised by the inclusion of the absorbed memories and thought processes of a random fox.”

“How’s your urge to kill?”

“Still there.” Rhis grinned at me. With his fox-like mouth, it was a little disturbing. “But I am your slave, still. I’ve been fortunate, tonight, to have been able to indulge myself while not going against your will.”

I put that ugly thought aside and focussed on the last part. “You know my will even when I’m unconscious? Can you read my mind?”

“Our history has made me more than aware that you are reluctant to kill unless forced,” he sniffed disdainfully. “And no, I can’t read your mind, but I am… aware of what you want at any particular time.”

“So you’re required to follow what you genuinely believe my will to be, even without a command?”

“Yes. Sadly, unlike organic intelligences, I am unable to convince myself that something isn’t true. Your flexibility in that regard is something to be envied.”

“Fine.” I wasn’t exactly reassured, but that was probably as good as I was going to get. Maybe he wasn’t telling the truth, but I wouldn’t get anything out of browbeating him.

“So where am I then?”

“You are in your dungeon,” he replied. “It’s not much at the moment, just something I threw together to deal with the emergency. I’ve taken over the common room of your suite and spatially expanded it to four times the volume.”

He gestured to our surroundings. “This… is an illusion, which is something I can do now. I’m not sure of the mechanism, but it obviously has something to do with you being my master.”

He grinned that feral grin at me. “It’s a very interesting ability. Not suited for killing, which is a shame, but so versatile. And so very cheap.”

“Alright then, I suppose you should tell me what happened. No, wait, where are the others?”

“All outside the dungeon. Maslin dragged them all into the room designated for my use, as that was the only one without some kind of outside access. My image is with them, and they are regaining consciousness.”

“Let’s move this conversation outside then, save me from having it twice.”

Rhis scrunched up his nose with dismay. “I had hoped to talk to you about some future expansions and improvements… talk you through my mana budget…”

I shook my head. “Don’t get too attached here Rhis. This is the King's Palace! It’s a miracle they haven’t noticed your existence yet and destroyed you.”

“I suppose that my continued existence should take priority over improvements.” Rhis grouched. He waved his hand, and the seascape disappeared, replaced with our old suite… twice as large as before.

“What happened to the food table? I asked.

“I can better cover that during the recap,” he said grumpily.

“Fine.” I moved toward Rhis’s room and took a look inside. Felicia was recovering on the lower bunk bed, while Janie and Kyle were sitting on the floor still looking groggy. Cutter was laid out on the top bunk but seemed to be moving. Rhis and Maslin were standing by, watching. Maslin turned as we entered.

“Miss, you’re alright!” he said. “Everyone fell asleep, and Rhis is being weird.”

“Nice status report. Is that my knife?” My hand automatically went to where my dagger was normally strapped, but it wasn’t there.

“Sorry miss, I needed to borrow it for… for…” Maslin just trailed off and I shot a look at Rhis. What had he been doing with that?

Rhis patted Maslin on the back. “I can tell her. You can give it back to her now.”

Maslin nodded and handed the knife back to me. I gave it a quick once over before putting it away. It didn’t seem to have any blood on it…

“Let’s move this into my room, since the common room is… occupied,” I said. Even with two people on the bed, it was way too crowded in here. Everyone finished waking up, and we made our way to my room. There wasn’t enough furniture here for everyone, but I illusion up a few chairs for us to sit on. I had a feeling we’d want to be sitting down for this.

“Alright, Rhis, it’s story time.”

“Very well. Everyone except Maslin succumbed to the drug and fell unconscious. You’ll need Felicia to confirm, but I suspect the wine was drugged.”

“Cutter didn’t have any wine,” I objected.

“Cutter sneaked a gulp of Kyle’s just before your toast,”

“You weren’t supposed to tell!” Cutter complained.

“We’ve got bigger things to worry about, right now,” I said. “Go on, Rhis.”

“You activated my core and started a dungeon in the common room.” This was old news to me, but a surprise to the rest of the group. Most of them looked like they wanted to interject, but Rhis ignored them.

“As a new dungeon, I was somewhat limited in what I could do. Fortunately, I retain all the experience from my time as Oakway’s dungeon. The first order of business was to get everyone - except for you, master - outside of myself. My available actions are extremely limited when there are sentients inside me.”

Rhis turned to smile at Maslin. “I still controlled this illusion, so I was able to encourage and help Maslin to move your bodies to my room. Once empty, I was able to start working on defences.”

“Is the common room filled with lizards then?” Felicia asked.

“No. For one thing, repetition is a sign of creative exhaustion. For another, my options with monsters were very limited. While this location has more available mana than Oakway, collecting and using it efficiently would require that I expand to additional levels… which might attract attention.”

That was an understatement. I didn’t yet know who was occupying the floor below us, but I didn’t think they’d take well to a dungeon expanding down on them.

“Instead,” Rhis continued. “I spatially expanded my first level, to give myself more room to work with. Then I put in the illusion fields.”

“Illusions? Like Kandis’s?” Felicia asked.

“I don’t think I’ve heard of a Dungeon doing illusions before,” Kyle mused.

Rhis shot them an irritated look at the interruption. “I could not do them before, so the ability does seem to be related to my master’s skills. For me though, it manifests as a form of trap. An extremely efficient use of mana.”

“Just illusions? Or Phantasms?” I asked.

Rhis gave me a little bow. “Both. To continue with the recap, about fifteen minutes after you fell unconscious, three people entered the suite. They were all servants from the group that delivered our meal. They called out that they were here to collect our leftovers, but they did not act like that was their purpose.

“I had arranged things so that the original room remained next to the entrance, and used the additional space to create fake versions of the other rooms. When they didn’t find you in the common area, they split up and moved into the illusions that I had prepared.”

“Are you sure they weren’t actually servants?” I asked doubtfully.

“Their conversation left no room for doubt. They had a covered trolley, and they were looking for you, master, in particular.”

“So what did you do?” Kyle asked. “If you didn’t have monsters, and illusions can’t hurt anyone…”

I remembered the knife. “Maslin,” I said.

“Yes.” Rhis grinned with all his teeth. “I could separate and disorient them. Blinding them at the right moment. But I needed Maslin’s assistance to dispatch them. He performed admirably.”

Everyone looked at Maslin. He’d been holding up pretty well, but I was starting to see cracks.

“Oh, kid…” It was Janie who spoke first. She moved towards him, but Felicia got there first and enfolded him in a hug.

“It’s just like killing a monster…” Maslin managed to say.

There was a pause, as everyone wanted to say something to Maslin, be it commiserations or congratulations (the latter from Cutter). All the while, Rhis grew more irritated.

“Actually, I hadn’t finished.” He coughed as everyone looked at him. I nodded for him to continue. This was an ongoing situation after all.

“After I disposed of the bodies, the rest of the serving staff came, this time to actually clean up the table. They did complain about some of their number being missing, but managed an adequate job nonetheless.”

“You left them alone?” I asked. That didn’t square with the Rhis that I knew, and did suggest that he was actually conforming to my expectations.

“They did not leave the common area, so I judged them no threat. That was… four hours ago. It’s still the middle of the night, so I believe there will be no further developments until dawn.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” I said. “Someone was counting on me showing up at the doorstep unconscious about four hours ago.”

I started going through my logs. There were a lot of new entries. I counted as part of Maslin’s party apparently, because even though I hadn’t contributed to the result, I had shared in the risk. So there was XP for that, additional XP from people dying in my dungeon, more XP for the fact that Maslin and the others had earned XP in my dungeon… If someone hasn’t set up a fighting arena in their dungeon… then I guess they care more about people than XP. Hell of a hack though, I was getting XP coming and going.

The entry I was actually looking for was there as well.

You have defeated Finley Arryen in an Intrigue. You have earned 245 XP

I groaned. “Duke Arryen. That’s who was behind this.”

“I thought you said he wouldn’t be coming after you,” Janie said.

“I thought he’d be curious enough to negotiate,” I replied. “This is apparently how he negotiates.”

“Wait, so he was going to kidnap you and then start a negotiation?” Felicia said incredulously.

“Negotiating from a position of strength,” I said wryly. “Anyway, we’ve now escalated things, so I doubt we can count on his ‘restraint’ from now on.”

“Should I not have killed them?” Rhis asked.

I wanted to say yes, but even if kidnapping was a step down from murder, we couldn’t let it happen. “No, you did the right thing with the information you had,” I said. “You did good, Rhis. You too, Maslin.”

“Now we have to figure out how to get out of this mess.”