Our World Is Now A Dungeon World

Teeth In The Water

Their phones lit up together, screens drowning in text.

 

Riley tilted his phone down against the violet glare of the sky. Columns of information scrolled past—dense, structured, impossible. It read like a character sheet from one of those games he'd never had the patience for. Except it was addressed to him by name. And the data fields were filling themselves in real time.

 

SYSTEM NOTICE: Due to your world's recent designation as a Dungeon Territory, all registered entities have been granted an accelerated starter allocation. You will select THREE abilities from your class tree: one BASIC tier, one MID tier, one HIGH tier. Selection window: 60:00 minutes. Failure to select will result in random assignment.

 

Below the notice, a branching list unfolded under the heading LUNAMANCER. Basic abilities included things like Moonlit Sight and Lunar Spark. Mid tier offered constructs, shields, crescent projections. High tier—he barely skimmed it before the ground shook beneath his feet and something shrieked from the direction of Borough Market.

 

"Are you all seeing this?" Arianna held up her phone. Her screen showed a different tree—Beast Master—populated with abilities involving bonding, sensory links, territorial marks. Her eyes were scanning fast, the way they did during exams, converting panic into focus.

 

"Three abilities. One hour." Amber's voice was flat, controlled. She was reading her Paladin tree with the same concentration she gave circuit diagrams. "We need to not be standing in the open when we make these choices."

 

"My flat," Arianna said immediately. "It's five minutes from here. Up Tooley Street, past the car park. We go there, we lock the door, we figure out what this is."

 

Riley glanced at the river. Its surface had turned oily and dark, and the stillness from before had broken—something was moving underneath, shapes displacing water in long slow rolls. "Yeah. Let's go."

 

They moved fast, hugging the buildings. The violet light from the fractured sky had deepened, casting everything in a colour that made shadows look solid. Southwark was unrecognisable. Parked cars sat beneath canopies of vegetation that hadn't existed ten minutes ago—thick ropey vines punching through tarmac, leaves broad as dinner plates and edged with something that glistened like mucus. A lamppost had been consumed entirely, wrapped in tendrils that pulsed with a faint bioluminescence.

 

Miko walked point, the glass shard still in her hand. She moved differently now—lighter on her feet, head turning at every sound, as though some new instinct was already threading itself through her muscles. Riley noticed and filed it away.

 

They turned onto Tooley Street and Arianna stopped dead.

 

A cat sat in the middle of the pavement. A tabby, the kind that loitered outside every corner shop in London. It was watching them with yellow eyes that caught the moonlight. Then, as they stared, the cat's outline blurred. Its fur darkened past black into something that swallowed light entirely. Its shape lost definition—edges dissolving, body flattening—until it was nothing but a shadow pressed against the concrete, two yellow eyes floating in a silhouette.

 

It hissed. The sound came from everywhere.

 

Then it slid sideways like ink across wet paper and vanished beneath a parked van.

 

"That was a cat," Arianna said.

 

"That was a cat," Riley confirmed.

 

"That's not a cat anymore."

 

A cockroach the size of a terrier scuttled across the bonnet of the van. Its carapace was thick, armoured, and its mandibles clicked with a wet mechanical rhythm. Another followed. Then a third, pulling itself out of a storm drain with legs like jointed pipes.

 

Amber grabbed Arianna's arm. "Move. Now."

 

They ran. The street was alive with wrongness—moths with wingspans wide enough to blot out the lamplight, a pigeon perched on a traffic light that had grown talons and a second set of eyes. Something large crashed through the front of a Tesco Express two blocks ahead and they didn't slow down to see what it was.

 

Arianna's building appeared on the left. Victorian conversion, ground floor flat, iron gate. She fumbled her keys. Riley put his back to the street and watched the darkness while Miko flanked the other side, glass raised, breathing hard.

 

The gate opened. They cut through the small courtyard toward the front door.

 

That was when the thing came from the water.

 

The courtyard backed onto a narrow canal offshoot—barely more than a drainage channel connecting to the Thames—and something erupted from it with a sound like tearing canvas. A limb, grey-green and slick, wrapped around Amber's ankle and pulled. She went down hard, her phone skittering across the flagstones, and was dragged backward toward the water at terrifying speed.

 

Amber screamed—a raw, shocked sound—and clawed at the stone. Arianna lunged for her hand and caught it, bracing herself, but the thing was strong. Amber slid another foot toward the canal's edge. In the churning dark water, Riley caught a glimpse of something with too many limbs and a mouth like a lamprey, ringed with translucent teeth.

 

Miko moved.

 

She didn't hesitate. She sprinted past Riley, dropped to one knee beside Amber, and drove the glass shard into the tentacle with both hands. The edge bit deep. Fluid that wasn't quite blood sprayed across the flagstones—pale, viscous, reeking of brine and rot. She twisted the shard and slashed outward, severing the limb clean through.

 

The creature in the water shrieked—a high gurgling note—and the stump retracted into the canal, whipping spray. The severed tentacle twitched once around Amber's ankle and went limp.

 

Amber scrambled backward. Arianna hauled her upright. They stared at the canal as the water churned and then went still.

 

Miko's phone chimed.

 

She looked down, breathing hard, the shard dripping. Riley leaned over her shoulder and read the notification.

 

COMBAT EXPERIENCE GAINED. Entity: Canal Lurker (Juvenile). Damage dealt: Critical. XP awarded: 35. Progress to Level 2: 35/100.

 

"Experience points," Miko murmured. She looked at the shard in her hand, then at Riley. A strange expression crossed her face—not fear, not excitement, something caught between the two. "It's keeping score."

 

"Inside," Amber said through gritted teeth, limping. Blood seeped through her jeans where the teeth had grazed her calf.

 

Arianna unlocked the front door with shaking hands. They piled through and she slammed it shut, turned the deadbolt, and pressed her back against the wood.

 

The flat was dark. The power was out. Moonlight poured through the kitchen window, impossibly bright, and Riley felt it settle on his skin again—that strange recognition, that pull.

 

His phone glowed in his pocket. Fifty-three minutes remained on the selection timer.

 

"Alright," he said, his voice steadier than he felt. "We've got less than an hour. Let's figure out what we're becoming."