Draconic Karma Dungeon

Chapter 83: The Story of A Leashed Dolphin Out of Water

Lagurith was one of the few still living members of the Order of The Broken Goddess to have actually met the prophet in person. Lagurith had been 24 at the time and had explored the world above the sea, since he had reached maturity at 13.

Sirens were very tribal in nature. They didn’t like to live in pods over 500 and not even the largest groups had 1,000 people in them. If a pod went from 249 to 250 people the System would go from calling them a Large Tribe to a Small Village, which was when most sirens began considering how to split the pod up.

It was a siren belief that everyone needed to know everyone in a Tribe to encourage kindness amongst each other and that that was hard in Villages and impossible in anything larger. It was also believed that this kindness would - and should - then bleed into 'kindness toward strangers'. So, while sirens lived in small groups compared to the other sapient species, they always made sure to be able to house their own number of people in visitors. Visitors were always welcome - though you would need a good reason if you wanted to be allowed to settle down - and the additional housing was often used by the nomadic siren pods.

A nomadic pod - like the one Lagurith had grown up in - swam from one settled pod to the next, traded with them and shared news, before leaving for the next settled pod. In between their stays with settled pods they would hunt the creatures who refused to get near a settled pod of sirens, parts of which they would trade to settled pods, who rarely - if ever - got to see those creatures alive.

It wasn't just sea creatures nomadic pods hunted, though that was certainly the majority. Land and air creatures were also on the menu at times, though Lagurith's pod had never been particularly good at catching those.

Which was a part of why Lagurith had wanted to leave the sea behind. Other sapient species were experts at hunting land and air creatures as well as large quantities of the dumbest fish of the sunlight zone, while sirens were only experts in sea creatures.

Well… Generally sirens only hunted creatures from the sunlight and twilight zones. Anything deeper than that needed a Skill or Ability dedicated simply to keeping one alive from the water pressure, another to allow you to see in the dark, and a third to keep you from drowning.

For unlike what the landbound species thought about sirens, they couldn't naturally breathe under water. Like their dolphin companions they could hold their breath for extensive periods but still needed to come up for air.

Due to their underwater life, sirens were also the sapient species to have their own separate language. Said language consisted of a mixture of body movements and whistle, trill, and squeak sounds, much like that of a dolphin. Which made it easy to convey commands to their animal companions.

But unlike dolphins, sirens couldn't echolocate. Which was one of the reasons Lagurith's pod had trained hunting dolphins. Locating camouflaged prey was much easier with the aid of a dolphin partner.

Only once Lagurith had ventured out of the waters of his home, had he realized he couldn't understand the language of the other sapient species. Sirens normally didn't leave the waters and so only a few members of each pod could understand and speak the common language.

So, Lagurith decided to locate the mountain dwelling sirens he had heard talk about as a calf. Supposedly, some sirens preferred their winged form over their tailed one and had settled down in mountains to make the most use of their flight.

Something Lagurith hadn't known how to do as he had spent his calfhood under water. He had experienced the transformation from tail form to wing form and vice versa a couple of times before as his pod hunted some creature above water. But he had never stayed in his wing form for more than an hour or two before his adulthood.

Having talons instead of webbed and clawed hands felt too light, and having talon legs instead of his heavy dolphin tail only made that feeling so much worse.

He had felt like he was about to fly away against his will with every windblow, he was so light all of a sudden! And the giant wings on his back were simultaneously a heavy weight where none should have been and not heavy enough to stop him from flying away with the wind.

At least his face was still the same in both forms…

Walking on talons instead of swimming with a tail were much easier to get used to in comparison. He had had a bit of practice with that in his calfhood during the short periods he had had wings.

When he finally found the mountain dwelling sirens, he was relieved to finally understand what people were saying once again. For they two spoke mainly in the siren language of body movements and whistle, trill, and squeak sounds.

But where it in tail form sounded and looked similar to a dolphin, in wing form it was clearly avian in nature.

Something it took a bit to get used to.

The next half a year - longer than a visitor was normally allowed to stay, but they had made a small exception for him - the mountain sirens taught Lagurith the common language as well as what little they knew about the other sapients and their customs. Like their water dwelling counterparts they disliked how large the settlements of the other species were and tended to avoid them whenever possible.

But Lagurith was still full of curiosity for the other sapient species, and eventually left the mountain sirens to explore.

It was over a decade after he had left, in the midst of his 24th year of life, that he met Luvenia Mein and her newly formed Order of The Broken Goddess.

As with most of the Order, Lagurith hadn't taken much convincing before he joined.

It was near instant in fact.

In the young siren's attempt to learn all he could about the other sapient species, he had simply walked up to the female human, who was clearly the leader of the group, and introduced himself. They had been talking together in a sidestreet, and Lagurith had wondered why.

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Why talk in a, quite frankly, filthy sidestreet instead of somewhere cleaner? Somewhere less loud than outside in a Small City?

It had taken him quite some time to work himself up to walking around a Small City with all its people.

People who didn't all know each other.

So, he went up to them and asked.

Of course, he now knew how weird that was. But he was from a world of hospitality! He simply wanted to understand, but there were so many different cultures! It was hard to keep track of them all!

But he was about to understand. Just not about cultures as he had expected.

He had introduced himself and asked his question. The prophet - though he didn't know she was a prophet at the time - had looked around before asking if he was alone. Lagurith had answered that yes he was alone, he was wandering the world learning about other people's cultures as he went. He had been confused as to why he was asked a question when his own hadn't been answered yet. That would have been seen as rude and not hospitable among sirens.

But none of them had been sirens, and he didn't know for sure if that was acceptable behavior or not.

These days he knew it was a part of the initiation process. For no initiator was allowed to initiate someone while those not initiated or to-be-initiated could see it happen, so as not to spoil the surprise of how it happened before it was their time.

After being initiated he had quickly learned all there was to know about The Order of The Broken Goddess from the prophet herself! The System had a soulmate who had been broken with each of her pieces kept captured in the deepest part of a Dungeon. Each piece was to be brought to the prophet for safekeeping and when all pieces had been rescued, she would perform a ritual to make the goddess whole once again.

After her death, none of her inner circle - her personal disciples - had wanted to admit to their fellows that none of them knew how to perform the ritual. They really should have seen her death coming, she had already been at the end of the human lifespan when she became the prophet. It was a wonder she had survived the 23 years she was the prophet, even with her being a 9th tier when she began spreading the word of the broken goddess.

Each tier above the 1st gave humans a lifespan extension of about 5 years, meaning her lifespan expectancy was 120 years, so dying at 134 shouldn't have come as a surprise to them.

But she hadn't wanted to talk about her inevitable death. She only wanted them to bring her more pieces of the goddess for her to guard.

Naturally, the safest place any of them knew was the prophet's bedroom, which had grown in size as the Order gained followers and wealth and more and more pieces were liberated from their prisons.

Even to this day the hall which contained the crystallized pieces of the goddess was referred to as 'the prophets bedroom' and was decorated as such in her honor.

The prophet hadn't always been able to initiate people. That had come to her later in life after her elven husband had left her for another woman. Someone younger and prettier and 'less controlling' and with a mere 4th tier, if the prophet was to be believed.

Which was naturally hard to fathom for her followers, though none doubted her words.

And apparently her elven husband had expected her to 'have died by now' and that she 'was really just a fling'.

Curse the elven 500 year lifespan!

It seems to be a curse to even the elves themselves more than it is a blessing. Lagurith had seen this many times over during his years in Alfamér.

The System had granted the prophet the Mindbender Class, when soon after her husband's betrayal she entered and defeated an ancient Dungeon with 45 Floors. During this she had leveled up, received the needed Breakthrough Orb and entered the 9th tier and her new Class.

At the end of the Dungeon, she stood alone in front of the 'Core' as her Party had died during the fight against the 9th Boss. And as she stood there she realized the truth and knew what she had to do.

She told the Dungeon 'no'.

'No, I will not show you mercy for you do not deserve it.'

Then she took its 'Core', having realized it for what it truly was, and ran out of the Core Room with the crystal. As she left the Core Room with its prisoner, the System forced her out of the Dungeon, just in time for her to see its Portal crumble down and disappear.

Lagurith knew he was unlikely to ever reach the same league as the legendary prophet. At the age of 71 he was only at the very beginning of the 8th tier and in a position which didn't allow for him to earn a lot of EXP.

At least the high tier had raised his expected lifespan to roughly 109 instead of the usual 65 for sirens, so he had time to fulfill the prophet's dream of freeing all the pieces of the goddess.

The 6.25 years per additional tier had made that number go up a lot over time.

Shortly before the death of the prophet, she had made the perfect plan to free the piece in the Royal Dungeon of Alfamér: Initiate the Queen, a member of her bodyguard Party, or someone else who was allowed into the Core Room. The initiated would then free the piece of the goddess at their earliest opportunity.

It would also allow the Order to operate more freely in Alfamér.

This job had been given to Lagurith, while the other cardinals handled other plans and hard to access Dungeons.

Unfortunately, Lagurith had only been able to initiate the Crown Princess, as she was the only one he had ever been able to get alone. And the Queen had ensured - intentionally or not - her daughter was never given the opportunity to free the goddess. Talindra was only allowed to enter the Dungeon while accompanied by two of her mother's personal Guards, and those Guards were always quick to stop her attempts to remove the goddess and had now grown wary of her goal.

Lagurith would have loved to initiate the Queen or any one of her 4 personal guards, who had been trained to be members of the Queen's own Party as well as being her bodyguards. But unfortunately all 5 of them wore Enchanted jewelry, which enhanced their Awareness while they wore them.

Which was all the time!

And with jewelry like that, there was too big a risk of his initiation failing for him to dare risk it, even if he could get them alone. Which rarely happened and only with one of the bodyguards.

If he somehow got the Queen alone, tried to initiate her, only to fail? She would immediately sound the alarm and he would be killed by the nearest Guard.

Even with his high level and though he wasn't one himself, he was just as squishy as any Int.

The plan would still be able to continue after his death of course, just as it had with the death of the prophet. But as one of the few still alive who had actually met her and listened to her words directly from her mouth…

No. Lagurith couldn't risk dying. Not for that. The goddess was immortal and the Crown Princess would one day be Queen. They just had to wait.

It was quite a stroke of luck, when he had found the Crown Princess without her Enchanted jewelry and all alone while out looking for a husband. She had thought the expensive looking jewelry would attract the wrong kind of people and taken it off.

Back in the present, Lagurith was sitting in a meeting with the Queen, her Advisors for foreign politics, and several Ambassadors from nearby Kingdoms. Her 4 bodyguards standing behind her tronelike chair.

Lagurith himself was pretending to be one of the Ambassadors. But of course sirens didn't do Towns much less Kingdoms. They all had shared traditions, culture, and customs but that was where it ended.

One couldn't know everyone in an entire Kingdom. That was simply impossible!

I don't know everyone in the Order either. It has gotten too big.

It should split, so everyone can know everyone.

I don't even keep track of my own disciples anymore.

What is wrong with me?!

But as sirens - both the sea and mountain dwelling kind - tended to avoid entering the territory of other sapients, no one had realized he was pretending.

The otherwise normal meeting was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Nalaea Acacia, one of the Queen's Advisors for intern politics.

The following news had Lagurith internally panicking, even though his face betrayed nothing.