The Monster's Translator

Midwife to a Dungeon

The jagged fissure in the stone ripped open with a sound like tearing metal, spewing a cloud of warm, damp vapor that smelled faintly of old earth and sweet nectar.

"Woah, woah, woah! Easy!" Atlas yelled, stumbling backward as the floor pitched violently beneath his boots.

He threw his weight against a nearby pillar of unyielding basalt, struggling to keep his footing while the cavern shuddered with another earth-shaking throb. Dust rained down from the vaulted ceiling, stinging his eyes and matting his sweat-soaked hair.

"Hold on, you clumsy ape!" Grim snapped mentally, the black, blade-like appendage on Atlas’s right arm shifting into a thick, adhesive anchor that drove itself deep into a crack in the floorboards of the trench. "Stop stumbling around! The ground is moving, but you're shaking worse than a wet dog!"

"I think a living piece of real estate is trying to swallow us whole, Grim! Excuse me for not doing a graceful waltz!" Atlas retorted out loud, wiping a streak of grimy sweat from his brow with his free hand.

The cavern around them was changing. What had looked like dead rock a moment ago was now pulsing with a steady, rhythmic bioluminescence. Neon-blue veins throbbed along the curved stone walls like swollen arteries, pumping a warm, viscous fluid into shallow pools at their feet. The air grew thick, humid, and heavy with an almost suffocating pressure.

Atlas tried to edge toward a narrow corridor that promised an exit, his eyes scanning the looming crystalline stalactites for any hidden structural traps. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to flee this subterranean nightmare before the ceiling caved in completely.

"Traps? You think these clumsy walls are worried about traps right now?" Grim scoffed inside Atlas's head, the slime-weapon shifting shape into a protective shield as a massive boulder detached from the roof and smashed into the ground inches from Atlas's boots. "This isn't an attack. This place is having a fit!"

"A fit?!" Atlas cried out, dodging a shower of jagged pebbles as a violent contraction ripped through the stone chamber.

The entire cavern groaned—a low, agonizing metallic shriek that vibrated straight through Atlas’s teeth and settled heavily in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't the sound of mindless destruction or predatory hunger. As the resonant shockwave washed over him, Atlas’s cursed Babel Ears twitched violently, picking up a high-pitched, frantic frequency that bypassed the physical air and echoed directly inside his mind.

“Oh, the pressure... it’s too much... it’s coming too fast!”

A voice—deep, weary, and distinctly feminine, yet carrying the booming resonance of shifting tectonic plates—echoed across the cavern.

Atlas froze, his breath catching in his throat. He blinked, pressing a hand against his ear as if he could block out the intrusive sound.

“Please… someone… anyone out there… make it stop… the core… it’s wedged! It won't pass through the lower valve!”

The walls heaved inward, squeezing the space tighter, and a massive wave of wet heat washed over the room. Atlas staggered, his eyes widening in sudden, staggering realization.

"Wait..." Atlas whispered, staring at the pulsating neon veins on the wall in sheer disbelief. "You're... you're not trying to crush us?"

“Of course not, you idiot human!” the voice sobbed back into his mind, heavy with exhaustion and panic. “I’m trying not to crush YOU! Do you have any idea how hard it is to maintain structural integrity while having contractions? My lower conduit is blocked, and if I don't expel this core in the next five minutes, I'm going to suffer a complete seismic rupture!”

"Did... did the cave just talk to you?" Grim demanded, the black blade dissolving back into a restless, shimmering blue gauntlet around Atlas’s arm. The slime pulsed with annoyance, clearly jealous of the cavern's sudden monopoly on Atlas's attention. "Why are you looking at the wall like a lovesick puppy? Tell it to stop shaking before I dissolve its wallpaper!"

"Quiet, Grim! She's in labor!" Atlas hissed back, his internal confusion completely overshadowing his fear as he stared at the glowing stone wall.

"Labor?" Grim repeated mentally, a wave of sheer, unadulterated confusion echoing across their shared nervous system. "A dungeon is laying an egg? What kind of twisted biology is this?"

“It’s not an egg, you translucent nuisance, it’s a baby dungeon core!” the cavern snapped back, a fresh wave of agony shaking loose a rain of sparkling crystals from the ceiling. “And it’s breech! Oh, the agony... contractions are hitting every ten seconds now! Push? I am pushing! I’ve been pushing for three days! I need a midwife, not a spectator!”

Atlas stood rooted to the spot, his mouth opening and closing as his brain desperately tried to process the absurdity of his current situation. He had been an elite cadet, a falsely accused traitor, a survivor of a deadly fall, and now... a delivery doctor for an architectural anomaly.

"A midwife?" Atlas muttered, questioning his own sanity as he converses aloud with cave walls. "I'm a disgraced swordsman! My only medical training was patching up sword cuts and treating bruises with basic poultices! I don't know the first thing about dungeon obstetrics!"

“Well, you have the Babel Ears, don't you? You're the only living creature down here who can hear my directions instead of getting crushed by my panic!” Mama the dungeon pleaded, her mental voice cracking with desperate, maternal tears that manifested as warm, salty condensation dripping from the stalactites.

“Look at the eastern alcove! There’s a jammed pressure valve! If you don't reach in there and manually realign the crystal alignment, the core is going to shatter inside my lower chamber!”

Atlas looked over at the eastern alcove. A churning vortex of acidic slime and jagged, razor-sharp obsidian teeth blocked the entrance. A single misstep meant losing an arm, or worse.

"You want me to stick my bare hands into a live dungeon's internal plumbing while she's having contractions?" Atlas asked, his voice pitching an octave higher in sheer panic.

"If you don't, I'm going to faint, and then this entire trench is going to collapse on top of both of us!" Mama sobbed, a violent tremor shaking the floorboards and nearly knocking Atlas off his feet.

Grim surged up Atlas's arm, hardening into a jagged, protective edge, though the slime's mental voice was laced with deep, indignant reluctance. "If this stupid rock-woman bites you, I am personally turning her interior into a toxic waste dump."

"Just hold her steady, Grim," Atlas murmured, wiping a fresh bead of cold sweat from his forehead as he took a deep, trembling breath.

He stared down at his dirt-covered hands, then up at the glowing, pulsating womb of the living dungeon that was weeping silent, watery tears of pure distress. The absurdity of it all brought a hysterical, watery laugh to his lips.

From high-ranking military tribunals to Hell Trench midwifery his life certainly took the most scenic routes to disaster.

With a determined grit of his teeth, Atlas stepped forward into the pulsating cavern, rolling up his sleeves while the dungeon groaned a deeply human plea for help directly into his mind.

“Oh, gods… here comes another contraction reach into the valve, human, please, catch my baby!”