The Dungeon is a spacetime anomaly, created by the intersection of an unknown number of worlds. Scars from its inception remain; the higher the Stratas, the greater the density of dimensional discontinuities. All Entities, regardless of Strata or origin, generate anomalous gravitational waveforms when traversing three-dimensional space. Waveforms are individually unique. In Strata Six and above, extreme environmental conditions – such as complete lightlessness and/or soundlessness - have led to the deprivation of the conventional senses in local Entities. Ninety-nine percent of all classified Entities in Strata Seven rely, partially or completely, on the detection of gravitational waveforms for traversal.
One in ten thousand elves born in the Dungeon manifest the ability to detect gravitational waves. The ability's range and sensitivity can be enhanced through rigorous training. Advanced mathematics and mental calculus are mandatory for its application. Three elite schools in the Home City offer courses in Vectorsmithing. Few graduate; fewer still qualify for ADC, which demands a minimum detection radius of five miles with up to two thousand entites five cubic inches in size.
Qualified Vectorsmiths are highly effective scouts, able to trace the movement of all Dungeon Entities regardless of camouflaging, environmental conditions, or disguise. In Stratas Six and above, due to reasons yet unknown, they gain a trivial but non-negligible influence over waveform propagation. While the amplitudes and frequencies of emitted waveforms cannot be altered, their sensory perception can be manipulated through phase shifts. Top Vectorsmiths can effect a one-in-ten-billion degree shift in Strata Seven (the "Frontier"). This is enough to overwhelm most Entities that rely on the detection of gravitational waveforms for navigation. In real terms, they are tricked into travelling at vectors designated by the Vectorsmith.
The Vectorsmith is invaluable in the exploration of the Frontier. They detect and manipulate Entity movement; enhance the effectiveness of Twinblades and Line Mages; and minimize high-risk engagements through uncharted terrain. The trivial spell, Marking, can be used to visualize these vectors to other Dungeoneers. Its casting conditions are negligible, requiring only that the ambient Magicule density is non-zero; but its accurate representation requires tremendous mental acuity. A simple mistake in the application of Marking is known to have led to the annihilation of the Second Expedition, where a Vectorsmith blundered by visualizing the traversal path of a Class Five Entity a hundred feet further away than its actual trajectory.
~
The refinery stank of sulfuric acid. The ancient centrifuges screeched as they spun in their tungsten cages. The ball bearings, each centuries old, have not been lubricated in a decade. Jacob's Engineers were not planning on it either. By the time the centrifuges were restored to tip-top shape, the Encroachment would be mere miles away.
It was progressing a magnitude faster than the science team had anticipated. A wall of impenetrable blackness, a starless void, relentlessly advancing into the Dungeon. The Encroachment had evicted the elves from their world twenty thousand years ago, but apparently it was still unsatiated. Everything it touches is erased from existence. There is no way to observe what is on the other side. It is assumed that all was lost.
It is also less than thirty miles from the refinery. Mere weeks ago, it had been inching along at fifty. The scientists could not explain it, nor did they dare to; if this was the new speed, then the Home City was doomed by the end of the century, along with fifty million elves, the last of their civilization.
Every notable mind has already seen it up close. That included every member of the Home Council, the entire board of the Association of Dungeoneers, the masters of the Prime Arsenal, the Energy Guild, the Metals and Gasses Guild, and half the Frontier squads. No one could offer any insight, save for an abundance of nodding gravely and gravely nodding.
Each and every one of them had managed to turn a blind eye to the technically illegal operation of the refineries. No one cared. The Matriarch herself took a shit in the overseer's restroom.
Jacob's Engineers worked with frenetic focus. Yellowcake was hauled out at three-hundred-percent capacity, increasing every day. Desperation filled the air. A brawl had broken out in the lunchroom two days ago, and every team member got their grudges out, but as soon as the shift bell rang, they jumped back into work. Calen has never seen anything like it, and she has done fifty expeditions to the Seventh Floor.
"It's the end of the world," she said to herself.
Jaswant the Twinblade looked up from his charts, then quickly down again.
"If this was your last day," she asked, "what would you do?"
The Twinblade spent three precious seconds digging for an answer. "Will you -"
"No, I will not sleep with you."
"Then I'll go to in the Aventiel and drink 'til I pass out."
"What an ordinary elf you are."
"What would you do?"
"Go to the Frontier," Calen said without hesitation. "Die on the Frontier."
"Isn't it easier to -"
"Die here, yes, but it's not as romantic."
Something tugged at the edge of her mind, like an itch she could not scratch. "How many PDCs do we have?"
"Five. You, me, two Line Mages, and an amp with a Gorgon Eater."
That something grew into a larger something. A more numerous something. Ghosts danced at the edge of her vision. They were distortions in her retina, caused by collateral sensory agitation.
"Meet me outside. Something's coming."
"It's Strata One. What could be -"
"From the Encroachment."
The not-sky roiled with lightning. Clouds of water vapor rushed into the abyss as if drawn in by an invisible hand. The Encroachment glistened. It has never glistened before. Its surface was supposed to consume all light.
Calen looked with her mind. Waves blossomed in her mind like twilight roses. Two Entities, twenty miles away. Size would indicate Class Four, but the waveform was nothing she has ever seen, and she has seen hundreds of thousands. Squinting, she looked with her eyes. Two brown blobs, over the distant ridge. Much closer than expected.
"That's not twenty miles," she muttered.
Jaswant stepped up. "Evacuation's done. Report's sent. We're not -"
"We are eliminating the threat."
"I don't answer to you," the Twinblade snapped. "I am an independent contractor."
"You fuck me now, and you'll never get a gig from Jacob again."
The Twinblade leaned close, his big sticks inches from her face. "You can't fuck me if you're dead."
"By the Gods."
"As I said -"
"GORGON EATER!" Calen screamed, the Marking springing into existence on the approaching Entities. They were less than five miles away.
The skinny amp stepped up, the metal half-moon glinting with a ghostly luminescence. Pried off the carapace of a Class Five Entity known as 6-A179, the Gorgon Eater was one of the rarer artifacts. Calen had brought its user along on a whim.
Blue-white flame arched out of the half-moon with a sound like a hundred out-of-sync whips cracking. It split into a hundred fiery tendrils halfway into its trajectory and fell upon the two blobs in an incendiary hailstorm. The ridge exploded. A flaming tornado rose from the melted bedrock.
The blobs were a hundred feet away.
"What the fuck?!" The amp declared as his head imploded, crushed into the size of a peanut by two hammer waves. Ghosts crowded into Calen's vision. The waveforms screamed in her skull. The Marking blipped across the landscape as if crazed. The Line Mages sent two blazing arcs into the blobs. One was sixty feet too short. The other must have been some sort of genius, because his Plasma Filament, somehow, was a hundred feet long and cut a blob clean in half.
Blob? It was an elf.
Calen blinked. How could she have mistaken an elf for anything else? The elf's body fell to the ground with nary a wave. No anomaly whatsoever. His face was sunken, skeletal, bloodless save for where the Line Mage had split his skull.
A blast of splitting metal. Jaswant screamed. The Twinblade had swung at the other one. The blades struck, then blew apart. Fused tungsten alloy, torn to a string-like carcass with such force that it split the poor Twinblade's arms in half like tearing paper strips. The Line Mages rushed forward, Filament arcing.
The blob was not there. It was in Calen's face. Its surface glistened black like the Encroachment. Gravity waves radiated from its body. Calen watched the Marking do a twister dance on her left arm as it was crushed from three contrary directions.
"Jacob save me," she said. Out loud, in her mind, in some other dimension, she did not know.
The Plasma Filament burned in her retina. The ghosts fled as the blob disintegrated from the bottom up. Where the lines went, the black void fled. When it fell, it fell as an elven child, shrunken as if mummified but still wearing a pink dress. It had a cute unicorn icon on the straps. Calen recognized it. The Princessories, a store on 12th and Arlen.
The Line Mages had her by the good arm.
"Jaswant?" she asked.
"Dead," one of them replied. His voice was reedy and musical, like a harmonica.