Olin Frampt, high mage of Caltern, despised storms. He had stopped his aging centuries ago, soon enough that he kept his pretty face and his curled golden hair, but there was one thing that reminded him of his real age.

And that was the way his bones ached when a storm was on the way.

His knees twinged and ached in the hours beforehand, when the smell of rain was in the air but the deluge was yet to fall. When the clouds swirled overhead, darkly threatening, cracks of lightning visible in their swollen underbellies, he felt pain for once in his pampered existence.

He liked to retire to his bath and sink into warm water, underneath mountains of fluffy soapbubbles. The heat of the water made him feel like he could drift off into sleep.

And then his eyes snapped open.

Something was wrong.

An immense surge of Mana had just swept through his city.

He shot up from the tub. The maid refilled the hot water flinched back, her eyes spared the worst of sights by a convenient clump of soapbubbles. Olin had no time for dignity. He seized a towel, threw it around his waist, and went running down the halls towards the vast double doors of his laboratory.

It was too late. As he threw the doors open, every arcane instrument was askew. Every dowsing stone burned hot. Every orrery was spinning. His creation, his beautiful creation, sat in the center of the room, an ominous presence. It was housed in what looked like a bronze diving bell, with a single porthole of smoked green glass.

As he peered through, what met his eyes was enough to make Olin stagger back and retch. It had all gone terribly wrong. That Mana had fed uncontrolled growth, and that meant mutation, corruption. He felt the burn of bile in his throat.

The maid was following him, looking concerned.

“Bury it.” Olin said. His pretty face was dark with anger.

“What?” Hers was high, cracked with fear and confusion.

“Find a shovel, take it out into the garden, and bury it.” Olin snapped, glaring at her with such intensity she flinched back like he had landed a physical blow.

He had no time.

He would go to the Adventurer’s Guild and- Olin paused, reconsidering. He would put on clothes, then he would go to the Adventurer’s Guild and have those useless clods search for him.

A wave of Mana like that could only mean one of a very few things.

And the most likely was a newborn Dungeon.

In the confusion and terror of the flood, I had levelled. The annihilation of my gardens had granted me enough Soul fragments to break through. My field of ethereal Mana slowly swept outwards, filling my ruined domain and going beyond its previous bounds.

In one direction my new territory was more sewer tunnels, but in the other, I expanded through the hole I had torn in the walls. My domain swept over a deep, muddy lake - but only briefly.

What I discovered was that in the open air and without walls, my Mana would simply continue to spread outwards, until it was too thin for me to ‘see’ through it or control it. In order to claim a territory I needed it to be enclosed.

And I had a plan for that.

First I had to rebuild. My fungal gardens needed to be replanted, my populations restored from the ‘bottles’ I had built sprouting off from the shaft of the Sanctum.

Thankfully, I had Mana to spare after the deluge. I only needed time.

I didn’t know that I had that time, anymore.

After restoring the gardens as best I could my Mana was low again. I had just enough to throw up a barrier of Somnolent Blooms to guard the newly open breach around the great tree I had grown.

The tree itself was something of an anomaly. It had been planted as an apple seed, but after the sheer amount of Mana I had fed it, the bark had turned dark and the branches were twisted, the leaves veined with threads of purple. It moved faintly even without any wind, and as I watched, a toad hopping near the base of the tree was seized by a sudden twist of the roots, letting out frantic ribbits as the wooden tendrils slowly crushed down. I flinched at the poor creature’s demise.

It was safe to say I’d made something rather sinister.

After considering, I did something I had been delaying for a long time- My gardens were to the north of my Sanctum, which was a tall chamber within the walls of the sewer. Very likely, there was another tunnel passing by the Sanctum to the south. Before I had chosen not to dig that way, for fear of exposing myself from another direction. Now, with the breach letting sunlight steam into my domain, it seemed too late to worry about that.

Instead I wanted to expand quickly and raise my Mana income as high as I could.

Rather than digging directly from my Sanctum, I chose a spot a little east of it, starting to eat a connecting tunnel from the gardens to the south. Within an hour I had broken through, and my reward was an immediate waft of sewer-fresh air.

Using the last of my Mana, I created several vipers and unleashed them. There was a heavy stock of rats in this new tunnel, maybe hundreds of them, so I sealed the exits and poured my green-scaled beauties in, intending to reap enough Mana to start working on some proper defenses.

There was so much to do, and time was no longer on my side.

Eyfrae hated sewers. She had made her start as a Dungeoneer carving her way through the hordes of creatures that infested them. The crawling bugs, the enormous rats, the unspeakably foul slimes that oozed their way through the man-made tunnels, a heaven for monsters; it was as if people were trying to attract monster infestations.

She frowned at Olin. It was a hard thing to do, considering he was awfully pretty and awfully close to naked, with only a towel wrapped around his slender hips, but she managed nonetheless. The cupid’s bow of her lips pursed in disdain.

“You want me to investigate a sewer? Darling, I’m the leader of the Adventurer’s Guild, not a novice. You want some farmboy with a rusting sword who’s just signed up. I’m too good for this.” She feigned interest in her nails as he leaned across her desk, water dripping down his half-naked body.

“It has to be you.” Olin insisted. “There’s a new Dungeon down there, I can smell it. Right beneath our city.”

“New? No. I can tell you what it is. You gifted your little lapdog Gent a bound Dungeon Core, and it got lost when he died, no? And now you want me to go personally to reclaim it.” She huffed. “You could at least be honest about thinking I’m your errand-girl.”

“Fine, fine. It got away from me, I’ll admit it.” Olin threw up his hands, exasperated. He got so easily upset when the world didn’t give him what he wanted.

“I’ll get it.”

The intrusion of Morghul’s voice made both of them remember he existed. Two very annoyed, very pretty faces turned to glare at their unwanted third wheel, a weather-beaten old dwarf with a gray beard who sat quietly in the corner, casually polishing a golden ring. He had dozens of them. They shone on his scarred and muscular fingers.

Eyfrae didn’t like Morghul one bit. It was a shame he’d held his post of second-in-command since before she was born.

“I’ll go handle what business needs doing.” Rolling his eyes at them both, the dwarf slipped from his chair and set the ring back on his middle finger. “You two can go back to your flirting.”

As the door slammed shut behind him, cutting off their protests that they were definitely not flirting, Morghul shook his head. The young had so much energy and they spent it all on pointless things.

Now…

He’d need a warrior who could count past three, a priest without a stick up their rear, and a thief he could trust not to spend the whole trip eyeing his jewelry collection.

I floated in the in-between space where I chose Attunements, studying the different futures presented to me.

Refinement. A word I already embodied, thank you, and a tantalizing opportunity. The treasures I produced would rise to the next level, and so would my Shard-crafting. I could outfit my minions with beautiful weaponry.

Subtlety. An aspect to aspire to. The immediate benefit was to craft a fake Core, luring adventurers down the wrong path. It was an added layer of defense that would protect me.

But…

Gleam and Gloom called to me. They would layer with the defenses I already had, crafting a labyrinth of illusions to ensnare my enemies. Confused, invading adventurers would be more susceptible to my camouflaged minions, more likely to stumble into my defenses.

The synergy between the two was too good to pass up.

When I came to, Izzis was trying to get my attention. His face loomed over my jeweled surface, boggling eyes staring at me. “Boss, boss we’ve got a problem.”

I could immediately see what he meant.

An enormous, slithering fish had arrived in the area I had sealed off and set my vipers loose in. It had wriggled its slimy grey body through some crack or crevice and was now feasting relentless on the population. A mouth like a shapeless round tunnel full of sharp yellow teeth slurped up all in its path. Six beady eyes stared out at the world, emotionless, seeing only things to be eaten. Two tendrils extended parallel to its long, serpentine body, whipping through the air to snatch up prey.

It was some sort of mutant lamprey, oozing greyish slime from its skin. Of every creature I had seen in this wretched sewer it was by far the ugliest and least deserving of life.

Aurum lifted his head, waiting for the command. I gave it in a flash of bloodlust.

Go. Kill.