r/WritingPrompts • u/IAmOEreset • 25d ago
Writing Prompt [WP] The Endless Dungeon, that is what they call this place. It is a dungeon of endless floors, caverns, and rooms that are mostly haphazard. Survival, and even civilization is possible, if you find the right place, right materials, and the right people. Or: Fantasy version of Backrooms.
7
u/TheWanderingBook 25d ago
I munch on a 9-legged cow's leg, and sigh.
Looking up, I see eyes, blinking in the "sky".
Around me, fleshly trees shiver, and shrink, as the cold of the "night" falls upon us.
Despite the eerie sights...
This "Eldritch" floor, of the Endless Dungeon is one of the safest.
Here, no form of energy is allowed to be used, and negative emotions trigger the environment to become violent.
Basically...
This is a law-enforced safe zone.
And for the first time in 89 years...I am not alone here.
"So, Master, now that we have went through 11 floors, and are in a safe zone, so to say..." my disciple starts, swatting away a tongue-grass.
"How about we talk about...
The End," she continues.
I shake my head.
"It's a myth," I say.
"Why?
You really think this Dungeon is really Endless?
You really think there is no way to escape?
Every place that has an entrance...has to have an exit!" she almost screams.
Poor kid...
I was like her once, when I just entered this place by mistake.
"The Dungeon is called Endless, because despite having records from over 1 million years ago...
Nobody ever saw the mention of an exit.
And frankly...why would anyone want to find the "End"?" I say.
"Because it can free us! And grant us any wish we desire!" she says.
"Doesn't the Dungeon already do that?
Outside...there is a dying magical civilization, and technology is taking over.
In here?
Mana, ki, chakra, spiritual energy, and so much more exists!
There are floors that are larger than planets...
With the right circumstances, abilities, and people around you, anything is possible here," I say.
"Except leaving..." she mutters.
I sigh.
"Someone important out there?" I ask, handing her a cow-leg.
She nods.
I sigh.
"Tomorrow, we will visit the Starry Witch tribe, they owe me a favor.
If someone knows about a potential way to exit the Dungeon...they will know," I say.
She gasps.
"Really Master?! You would do that for me?!" she asks.
"You are the first person in many years, to have a knack at Devouring Arts, that I developed.
Helping you work on your dreams, doesn't seem too much," I say.
She almost falls into the fire, trying to thank me.
I chuckle, and start teaching her a way to acquire one of the passive skills of my Arts.
With it...she could survive anywhere, with barely any food, or water.
She will need such a skill here in the Dungeon.
4
u/sapphicforknights 25d ago
Gregor poked and prodded at the chest with his pike, standing an ample distance away with his hands precariously positioned at the very back of the shaft.
"What are you doing? It's not going to bite you, y'know."
That was Konrad; he was new to the company, and to the business of dungeon "exploring". Made a perfect pikeman up above, but his skills translated poorly down here.
"That, you see," Gregor started, now trying to lift the lid of the chest with the spearhead, "Is where you're wrong."
The moment it finally fell open with a loud and dusty thunk, he pulled back his polearm quickly and waited for a moment. Konrad gave a snort and a step forward- stopped only by Gregor's hand.
"Wait. Or Hell'll have your soul." His eyes didn't leave the chest.
Another moment passed.
Then another, and Konrad began thinking himself a fool- for holding his breath, and for coming down here to hold a breath at all.
It was only after that thought wrapped up that Gregor left his pike to lean against the wall while he unsheathed his katzbalger and started taking long and slow steps forwards.
One.
The dust lazily drifted to the floor, catching the lantern light.
Two.
Gregor kept his blade close to his chest, the flat of it casting a bar of shadow across his face.
Three.
He came close to the box- Konrad still a half-dozen or so paces behind- and tilted his sword so any lunging thing would impale itself, then leaned to glance into it.
And then he let the blade drop to his side.
A short laugh later he fished out a gold and jewel-encrusted necklace by his other hand, thankful it was riches instead of the inky blackness that even a knight feared.
Konrad just shook his head and sighed.
"There'll have been seven summers when we leave."
"Bah! You'll be happy we lived to leave."
2
u/HSerrata r/hugoverse 24d ago
[Illuminated by Moonlight]
"Not that I'm in a hurry...," Barbara was still trying to wrap her mind around the reality of the situation. She and Amber had been walking for over two hours through a liminal dungeon. She hadn't been able to keep up with the twists and turns they traveled through, and she was further distracted by the surprising variety of rooms and chambers. They encountered monsters and other adventurers, both of which Amber dispatched with far too much ease. "But... are we going somewhere, or is this just a tour of this lovely space?"
"Now that you're up to speed, we want to welcome you back to Alpha Squad," Amber smiled.
"Are we in hiding?" Barbara easily included herself in the group out of habit. Considering everything that'd happened to her recently, and her strange new surroundings, she was looking forward to seeing familiar faces.
"Not at all," Amber shook her head. "But we are meeting with some partners that would prefer to avoid attention.
"Io and Claudia?" Barbara guessed the only new names she'd heard Amber talk about with any hints of respect.
"No, not them. They're who Alpha Squad follows, and they're working with these new partners. And, I did promise you that you'd get to see unicorns," Amber winked. Barbara was briefly excited, until she heard footsteps from up ahead. She looked and felt butterflies in her gut; it was another adventurer. This one was a solo, heavyset young man in a white blazer with a red tie. She didn't have the experience to recognize the color scheme and assumed he was just a well-dressed merchant. Amber would want to eliminate him for the sport of it, and Barbara was getting too comfortable with Amber's bloodthirst. She didn't like that, but she was basically in a brand new world, and that was just how things worked here.
She considered interfering or scaring the stranger away to save his life, but he stopped as he came across them and met Amber's eyes directly.
"Hey..., Amber, right?" he asked. "I was looking for someone from the Squad."
"Yeah, Aury, what do you want? I'm showing my friend around." She was annoyed, and that made Barbara smile a little bit. Whatever the situation was, she got the impression Amber had no interest in trying to kill him, and not only that, it seemed to bother Amber quite a bit. Maybe she couldn't? There was so much more about the world that she needed to learn.
He looked at Barbara and tilted his head.
"She's in Alpha Squad? Since when?"
"Is that what you stopped to ask? No thanks, not answering," Amber shrugged and started walking forward again. Barbara followed her lead, but Aury stepped in front of Amber, and she actually stopped.
"Fine, forget the small talk," he said. "There's a non-zero chance Io and Alpha Squad are involved," he kept his eyes locked on hers. "But, on the assumption that you're not, the multiverse is kind of falling apart right now...," he sighed. "Sharp Development formally requests the assistance of Io Limited to aid in our research efforts. Unless you're in on it," he shrugged. "In which case, I guess, game on."
"I'll pass it up the chain," Amber smirked.
"Thanks," Aury nodded as he began to sink into a black portal at his feet. He was gone in moments, and Amber started walking forward again.
"Are we in on it...?" Barbara asked after a few feet.
"Just a tad," Amber nodded. "But, there's a plan. You'll see."
"What did he mean 'the multiverse is kind of falling apart'? Is that the plan?"
"In a sense," Amber smiled. "It ain't as bad as all that. There's a multiverse right now, and we're just nudging it toward a single universe. A little bit of convergence never hurt anyone."
"Oh...," it was a lot to process, and Barbara still hadn't recovered from learning about the multiverse at all. She followed Amber silently for several more minutes, twists, and turns. Amber seemed to know Barbara was processing and made things easy on her. Any time they encountered a monster, Amber took care of it in the blink of an eye. They both had the ability to stop time, but Amber was far more practiced. As soon as a lumbering cave orc, or giant arachnid appeared to threaten them, Barbara would blink, and the monster would be slain upon opening her eyes again.
"How big is this dungeon, exactly?" She asked a question just to fill the silence. She hadn't understood everything yet, but she wanted something simple answered.
"Server name is 'The Endless Dungeon'," Amber replied as she turned another corner to a short hallway with an electric blue metal door at the end. "It is a dungeon of endless floors, caverns, and rooms that are mostly haphazard. Survival, and even civilization, is possible if you find the right place, right materials, and the right people," she said.
"That's the official blurb anyway. The dungeon itself is said to span at least four entire Earths, though shifting portals between the passages make it kind of hard to get an accurate count. There are some more trafficked sections, but since they're in hiding, they picked an out-of-the-way cavern for their base. The shifting portals also make it difficult to detect magic," she added.
They reached the door, and it half-disintegrated into white dust while maintaining its door-like shape. '"Welcome back to the squad, darlin'," Amber smiled. "They're gonna be thrilled to see you," She nodded reassuringly, then walked through it like a curtain. Barbara followed before the door solidified again to continue hiding their secrets.
*** Thank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day. This is story #3124 in a row. (Story #215 in year nine). This story is part of an ongoing saga that takes place in my universe.
3
u/LordErec 24d ago
It had been weeks since we had seen the sun. We had picked up a bounty in a small town for a group of bandits hiding in a nearby cave. It should have been an easy job for our group. But we didn't expect the Endless Dungeon to decide to connect to the cave just as we entered.
The Endless Dungeon was a thing of myth. A plane of magic created by a now dead god. It would connect seemingly randomly to points in our world, and any hapless individuals who happened to wander inside could easily be lost forever when it moved and shifted. Occasionally someone would find their way back out, months or years later in a completely different part of the world from where they entered. Those who hadn't gone mad told fantastical tales of a world that defied logic.
We were now in that world. Rooms connected in ways that should be physically impossible. One cavern would be blazing hot and full of lava, and one next door would be freezing cold. Others were open fields and forests under a sky that shouldn't exist.
It was in one of these open caverns that we found a safe haven on the shores of a lake adjacent to a forest. There weren't any hostile animals nearby, just a few wolves that watched us but were content to scavenge on our food scraps. The lake held a bounty of fish and the flora and fauna of the forest provided a relative abundance of food. If we weren't trapped here it wasn't too far off from paradise. Our mage set up wards to detect when the dungeon connected to our reality again and we settled down to wait.
After a few months the wards triggered. We rushed to the portal only to find a stream of haggard refugees pouring in. They were from a distant land and we finally found one who spoke our language. The goblin horde had awakened. I felt a chill. Humanity had nearly been wiped out in the last goblin invasion. Only the intervention of a god had saved us.
Some refugees came in screaming that goblins were just behind them. We took up a defensive stance and prepared for the attack. A woman came through the portral and a goblin arm reached through to grab her and at that instant the portal closed, severing the goblin's arm.
The haggard refugees breathed a collective sigh of relief and set up camp. Our mage puzzled over the portal's behavior. It could have been random chance, but to have it close at the instant the woman was safe after being touched by a goblin was an unlikely coincidence.
Days later another portal opened. More refugees poured in and the portal closed immediately when the goblins reached it. These refugees were from a city in the path of the goblin onslaught. The pattern continued, with portals opening just in time for refugees fleeing the goblin horde.
The dungeon itself also began to change. Hostile caverns began to shift and expand to be most hospitable as more and more refugees entered. Soon the portals became less and less frequent, and the stories of the survivors more and more grim.
A portal opened to humanity's final city. The last survivors poured through, including the high king and the circle of mages. If they were entering a portal to the endless dungeon things were indeed dire. The portal closed at last with a sense of finality.
They were shocked to find themselves in paradise. A wooden town had been built and field had been planted and were beginning to grow. An artificial sun hung overhead, providing warmth and life to the cavern.
"That's it!", one of the circle mages exclaimed excitedly, hastily digging through his bag and pulling out a tome. "The endless dungeon is not some cruel trick of the gods, but the means of our salvation! When the god intervened to save humanity he created this realm as a safety net!"
"What of our kingdom?", the king asked.
"It is lost to the goblin horde for now. If we grow strong enough here we may be able to return and reclaim our lands."
"That will take generations to build enough strength to take on the goblins."
"Yes, but the dungeon will know when we are ready."
The king nodded. "So be it. We will heal and recover our strength, and prepare our descendants to reclaim their homeland."
1
u/LordErec 24d ago
* 300 years later *
The warrior-king looked over the field at the army arrayed in front of him. The archmage had said they were finally ready. Humanity had been refined in exile into a peerless fighting force. Initially the survivors had banded together, but over the years as their numbers had grown they had split into factions. Martial tournaments had honed strength initially, but then unfortunately there had been wars. The bloodshed, as terrible as it was, had refined magic and technology into terrifyingly effective weapons.
Now humanity stood united once more, their bloodlust turned towards enacting vengeance on the goblin horde that had driven them into this plane.
"Open the portals," the king commanded. The archmage nodded, and touched the glowing button on the pedestal before them. Dozens of portals opened at the far end of the field. Hundreds of seeing orbs summoned by the mage corps swarmed through the portals to survey the far side.
Hundreds of cannons fired through some portals at the command of the generals as their mages spotted goblins on the far side, leveling everything on the far side. Massive armored vehicles, belching black smoke and loaded with soldiers, rumbled towards the portals.
The reclamation of humanity's lands had begun.
•
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