Tarantulas allowed him to free his hands to let him boot up his navigator from his bag.

  Using the magitech in front of a sentient and extremely intelligent monster worried Matthew quite a lot—Tarantulas learning how to eavesdrop on their communications would put the entire Association in danger—but he figured Crypto had already foreseen such an outcome and prepared safeties. Or at least he hoped so. While his Doom Sense didn’t buzz as loudly as it used to, it hadn’t gone silent either.

  The spider wouldn’t hesitate to throw him down the magma shift if negotiations went south.

  “Crypto?” he called out to her through the navigator, his ass firmly seated on the magnetic tape web. Tarantulas watched him speak up with unwavering eyes that put him ill at ease. He is a goddamn voyeur.

  “Matthew?” The relief in Crypto’s voice was palpable. “Matthew, what happened? Your teammates warned me that they had lost contact with you.”

  Aww, he knew they cared! “I met with our spider,” Matthew replied. “It wants to become my friend, whether I want it to or not.”

  Tarantulas’ head tilted to the side in confusion. “Do you not want us to become friends?”

  “That was sarcasm,” Matthew deadpanned back.

  “I have no understanding of the term. Your negotiation framework does not mention it.”

  The creature’s naivety would have been almost endearing, had it not come from a giant spider with three murders under its belt. The more that thing understood humanity, the more dangerous it became. Liv was right, they were playing with fire here.

  Crypto didn’t say a word for a moment, and her tone had become noticeably quiet when she spoke up again. “Is it in the room with you right now?”

  “A hologram of it is,” Matthew replied. And frankly, that was creepy enough as it was. “It’s kinda keeping me hostage.”

  “Are you in immediate danger?” Crypto asked, her words as sharp as daggers. The real message was clear: did he need help right now?

  Crypto had asked Matthew’s crew to establish friendly communications with Tarantulas, but not at the cost of their personal safety. Whether or not Crypto used the navigator to send the rest of the team gun-blazing to Matthew’s position was entirely up to him.

  Part of him wanted nothing more than to put the monster in the ground, both for the sake of its victims and the threat it represented to all other human beings… but Matthew was no fool. The last sentient monster they encountered answered all attempts at diplomacy with violence, yet Tarantulas appeared open to negotiation. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gather critical information that might help them destroy the Mall and its kind.

  So Matthew swallowed his prejudices and went along with the plan.

  “No,” he replied. “I’m fine… for now.”

  “I am establishing a framework for peaceful communication,” Tarantulas stated with all the enthusiasm of a digital voiceover. “Identify your negotiator.”

  “Put me on speaker, Matthew,” Crypto asked, an order which he followed through. “I am Crypto, manager of the Dungeon Wreckers Association. I dispatched this team to establish contact with you.”

  “Manager?” Tarantulas repeated the word like a parrot before inferring its meaning. “You are the core of this human group?”

  “You… could say that, I suppose. I provide directives for teams dispatched into the field.”

  “Except killing her won’t harm any of us,” Matthew warned the spider. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  “Understood,” Tarantulas replied, his eyes letting out a click like a camera taking a snapshot. “Core Crypto, what is your initial offer?”

  “Let me make one detail clear before we begin: any possibility of a peaceful resolution will be voided should any harm come to our Crawlers, Matthew included. Any attempt at mind manipulation of any kind will be viewed as hostility. Is that clear?”

  “Negative,” Tarantulas replied flatly. “Behavioral analysis indicates that human aggression is directly correlated to the absence of consequences for this behavior. The threat to a human’s physical condition is required to guarantee my own survival.”

  “I’ll make for a poor damsel in distress,” Matthew countered. “If you ever ask for a ransom, they’ll just pay you double to keep me.”

  Tarantulas seemed more confused than anything. “The term ‘ransom’ is unknown to me.”

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  Ugh, how long would it take for an intelligent monster to develop a sense of humor?

  Whatever the case, Crypto refused to play along. “I am willing to provide other security guarantees, but the safety of our members is paramount. I demand that you return Matthew to us safe and sound.”

  “Negative.” Although Matthew didn’t detect any change in Tarantulas’ tone, his Doom Sense spiked up a little more. “Peaceful negotiation requires trust according to your flowchart. Trust, like friendship, equals proximity correlated to intensity. There cannot be trust without proximity.”

  Damn it, the creature wasn’t stupid enough to surrender its leverage. Matthew couldn’t entirely blame it after both of its encounters with Crawler teams ended in a fight, but this would definitively complicate things. John’s perfectly simple plan to simply lie and capture Tarantulas sounded dead in the water.

  Crypto remained quiet for a long, long moment. Matthew half-expected her to contact his team and organize a rescue mission rather than surrender one of their own to the monster… only for her next words to take him completely by surprise.

  “One of our members has agreed to act as your hostage as a show of good faith,” Crypto said, much to Matthew’s shock. “I ask that you proceed to an exchange point with Matthew once these initial negotiations are concluded. Is that agreeable?”

  Tarantulas hardly considered the offer before immediately consenting. “I am in agreement.”

  “You can’t be serious!” Matthew protested. “Who would be mad enough to–” The obvious answer came to him in a flash. “It’s the Doc, isn’t it?”

  “Finn volunteered,” Crypto confirmed. “He’s on his way as we speak. You know how he is with his research.”

  Matthew opened his mouth to protest further, before shutting it. Crypto had slightly emphasized the word ‘research,’ which she never did unless she wanted to pass on a message. He could read between the lines: the Doc wanted to use the occasion to study Tarantulas up close.

  It was an exceedingly dangerous game, and Matthew didn’t like it in the slightest… but the Doc was nothing if not careful and stubborn in his pursuit of knowledge. He was the one who taught Mr. Auguste about the stasis spell in the first place to see if monsters would naturally decay, after all.

  “In return for providing you leverage, I ask for a similar show of trust on your part,” Crypto said, pushing her advantage. “I must verify that you possess the information we seek.”

  “Understandable,” Tarantulas replied. Matthew’s Doom Sense had grown quiet, which he took for a sign the monster had been somewhat mollified into complacency. “What do you seek to learn?”

  “If you are using the term core, then I assume you are familiar with Dungeons, Crawlers, Disbelief, and Flux?”

  Tarantulas’ eyes let out a click, which Matthew realized was his equivalent of a nod. “I have gained understanding by observing your communications.”

  “We seek to understand the cause of all of these phenomena, and we believe you hold the answers to that question.” Crypto marked a short pause, her voice clearer than crystal. “Why are you here, Tarantulas?”

  Tarantulas listened, and then bugged the hell out.

  Matthew had no other way to qualify what followed. Tarantulas’ hologram flickered like a projection that had its wifi connection interrupted, and its head tilted so far to the side that it made a full clockwise motion. The sickening crack that followed caused Matthew’s stomach to lurch, as did the way its eyes whirred faster than spinning wheels.

  “I do not–do not–do not–know why I ex-xi-xist.” Tarantulas began to sound like a scratched record, with bleeps cutting through its words. “I mu-must find that ans–ans—answer. I must learn.”

  Matthew knew for a fact that sentient monsters could develop emotions—the Mall’s guardian having given him plenty of proof that they could learn the concept of sadism—but the one brimming from Tarantulas’ vocal cords was something he thought beyond these predators.

  Distress.

  Tarantulas was having an existential crisis.

  “But I–I–I understand Dungeons, and why they exist,” it said once its speech regained its mechanical clarity. “Dungeons are not things like us. They are a thing.”

  The sentence was uttered with such a lack of emotion that Matthew failed to pick on the immense implications at first; but Crypto quickly caught on. “They are a singular intelligence?”

  “That’s impossible,” Matthew protested. No two Dungeons behaved the same way. “They eat each other!”

  “Not singular intelligence,” Tarantulas replied. “Singular body. There are many heads, but one stomach; many brains connected to a central spine.”

  Many brains connected to one body? Matthew had spent enough time reading mythology books to find the appropriate analogy.

  “The Dungeons are a hydra,” Matthew muttered, a chill traveling down his spine. “We’re fighting a hydra.”

  “That would explain why one Dungeon’s adaptation can spread to others, if they are loosely connected,” Crypto replied on her end of the line. She sounded a little shaken by the news, but not too surprised. “I assume that they do not understand that they are a single entity?”

  “They think that they are things, not a thing,” Tarantulas confirmed. “They are too far apart to see the web that connects them, but I have threaded its strands and sensed the connections. They each seek to grow at the expense of others, but all feed one stomach.”

  Cut off one head, and two more would grow to take its place.

  A horrifying picture began to form in Matthew’s mind. If cores were a hydra’s heads, then their first instinct would be to grow and divide like stems splitting up into many branches. They divided and spread until they lost sight of their original source and its many extensions, eventually believing them to be different entities altogether.

  A head could starve the same way a branch could rot or lose its leaves from a lack of light, but no amount of pruning would starve the whole thing so long as the roots remained safe and strong.

  “Where’s the body?” Matthew dared to ask, his fingers clenching in dread. “If Dungeons are just heads reaching out for us… then where’s the body?”

  “Outside,” Tarantulas replied flatly.

  “Outside this reality?” Crypto guessed.

  “In-between this place and another. The thing seeks to enter, but you keep it out. Your minds suppress it.” Tarantulas marked a short pause, as if processing information and drawing a new conclusion. “For now.”

  How could two words feel so ominous, so heavy?

  “And if it gets in?” Crypto asked quietly, though she likely knew the answer. “If this hydra fully manifests… what will happen then?”

  Tarantulas’ jaws clicked in a nauseating sound. “It will eat you.”

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