Morghul placed a leaf into a cup of water and held his hands to either side, sending a faint thread of Mana into the makeshift compass. The leaf spun, slowly wobbling to point northwards, and he nodded. “Not far now.”
Strix shook her head. “My owls say it will be a long time yet.” She wore an ochre sundress, high leather boots, and a broad-brimmed hat. A tawny little owl with dark spots perched on the sunhat’s edge, staring out with bright amber eyes.
“Well damn.” Morghul squinted at his augury, giving the leaf a prod with one ringed finger. Sure enough it swayed right back to where it had been pointing. “Never heard your owls get it backwards, but I’ve never had my augury steer me wrong either...”
“Let’s keep going. The future’s only something to meet.” Strix said, her blind gaze focusing on nothing in particular.
“I am voting to follow the person who can actually see.” The thief had yet to give her name, but she was grey-haired and carried herself with the pride of a noble, so she had become Lady Grey to the rest of the group. She wore a little cap with a dark veil and riding clothes, wielding a long rapier and a half-dozen knives strapped to her belt.
“Sounds good t’me.” Olkaz brought up the rear, barely able to squeeze himself into the sewer tunnels by walking on his knuckles in an awkward lope. A pair of throwing axes smacked against the segmented greaves armoring his legs. He was in full plate, battered and dented and anything but shining, a bizarre and oversized knight.
“Funny, I thought we were sensible adults, and yet everyone just voted to ignore the damn seer.” Morghul stroked his beard in concern. “Dammit, but alright. Let’s walk right in to trouble.”
Through Adamant’s blurry single eye and Argent’s lurching, seasick perspective, I had no clear sight of the attackers. What I saw looked like orange flames darting under the waters, slamming into the clay man’s sides to harass him. I could almost laugh. They were dire goldfish.
Although not particularly dangerous, without any claws or teeth, their hunting strategy was clear; bludgeon their prey down into the water and hold them there until they drowned.
And while the golem wouldn’t be drowning anytime soon, atop his head, Argent was struggling not to swept off into the lake.
Adamant swept his hands through the water, trying clumsily to seize his assailants. They neatly evaded with flicks of their trailing fins and slammed into him again from behind. He tripped forward, and Argent went splashing into the water.
Instantly, one of the fish broke off to attack her instead, its dorsal fin scything through the water as it shot towards the albino rodent.
At the last second - even as the giant fish lifted its head above the water to sweep down towards Argent with mouth wide open - Izzis dropped out of the sky, sinking his little talons into the beast’s sides and kicking his wings, managing to hold it off for a crucial moment.
Izzis let go and in the same instant Adamant’s club-like hand came crashing down. The goldfish was smashed towards the bottom of the lake, killed instantly.
Another fish slammed into his legs, sending the giant clay man down to his knees beneath the water. The rest of the school surrounded him, making battering-ram runs with their blunt skulls, kicking him with their tails.
And all the while, Argent was struggling to stay afloat with her three legs.
Izzis grabbed her by the back and tried to pull her up, but it was too late. Beneath them an orange-gold shadow was looming, growing bigger and bigger as it rose towards the surface. In the instant before Izzis could pull his friend free there was a splashing explosion of water, a snap of jaws, and Argent was gone, swallowed whole.
Adamant rose from the waters and lunged for the fish, but it deftly wove between the clumsy giant’s hands.
Then I realized I could still hear Argent’s mind within my own, and she was trying to tell me something. I sent the frantic order, ARMS UP, and obedient Adamant reached out his arms just as there was a silver flash of light. The goldfish was teleported out of the water directly into his grasp.
Seizing it in both hands, my golem wrung that damned fish like a towel until it coughed up a slime-covered, bedraggled rat. My rat. Adamant caught her in one hand. And then, with as much anger as an expressionless, faceless golem could ever show, Adamant wound up like a pitcher and hurled the fish clear into the horizon.
Holding his friend in one hand stretched high, the clay man continued across the lake. The fish, frightened off with two dead, scattered back into the murky edges and deep crevices of the water.
Their goal was nothing more than the trees at the far end. Setting his friends down, Adamant went back into the water to fetch the dead fish, while Izzis picked up beetles and bugs he thought might interest me. But the true goal of the expedition were the seeds Argent scampered up to fetch from the high branches.
Adamant, Argent, and Izzis returned as conquering heroes. I dismissed them back to playing with a wave of goodwill and dissolved the fish corpse, then the samples they had brought, studying each carefully as I devoured them layer by layer.
Oh yes, there was potential there.
One of the beetles Izzis had brought had the unique ability to spray phosphorescent chemicals, building nests of hardened, glowing spittle to attract their mates. I could work with that. Another interesting bug was a fat larvae with the potential to evolve into a giant mosquito the size of a cat. Hideous but deadly.
But most of all, the goldfish specimen was promising. Due to its remarkable simplicity there was almost no size it couldn’t grow to. Which meant if I could feed in enough Mana I could make a true leviathan.
Since most of the defenders I had so far were rather small and relied on stealth or numbers it was a rather interesting prospect.
I couldn’t just throw up a canopy of stone to enclose the lake, but the mangrove trees were already there. If I planted more of them and tightly interwove their branches, I could make a ceiling thick enough to contain my Mana, allowing my influence to extend across the lake instead of dispersing into the open air. Since it seemed like few people cared about this lonely edge of the city where the sewers poured out, it would likely be a while before the expansion of my domain became too noticeable.
By then I hoped to have burrowed down and begun my next floor.
For now, I only had the Mana to plant and nourish a few seeds around the breach in my walls. I would need to up my income before I could properly expand. It seemed like there was always some new siphon for my Mana and never enough coming in.
Gems! I longed for beautiful, sparkling jewels, hidden away in dark corners never to be seen again by human eyes. I wanted a hoard that would make a dragon envious.
And oh, I wasn't going to idly sit back and just dream of riches. No, I had a plan. I only needed a few more days.
As it turned out, time was something else I would never have enough of.
When it happened, I was working on something new. I was steadily hollowing out a thin crawlspace above the gardens, leaving short columns to stabilize the shallow new caverns hidden above the main chamber of my Dungeon.
I had started to discover I could make stone stronger by simply feeding it a little Mana, producing something stronger than steel with just a fraction of a point per square inch. That let me work the stone in ways I hadn’t before, carving out a barely-there false ceiling above the gardens.
My goal, of course, was traps. Without complex mechanical know-how I’d relied on simple pitfalls so far, but now I had an idea that would let me go farther.
I would take a trapdoor spider and give it a perfect hiding place within the ceiling. Moreover I’d integrate the little glow-beetle’s abilities, teaching this spider to spin luminous, dazzling webs within its hiding place, so that in the moment the trapdoor opened the unfortunate victim would be stunned by the Attunement of Gleam’s hypnotic effects.
This was all a ways in the future, but I was proud of the concept. With hidden passages above and below the Gardens I could both defend them if need be or pretend to be just another mushroom-ridden corner of the sewers. Deception in action.
That was when a spell slammed into the sealed-off end of the tunnels. I don’t know if you’ve ever been a Dungeon Core and had a spell cast within your domain, but let me assure you, don’t be. It flat sucks. My being was the warp and weft of Mana within my territory. A spell seizes that Mana and twists it to someone else’s purpose.
Do you know what’s that like? It’s like having a bully hold you down and declare ‘stop hitting yourself’ as he beats you with your own fists.
The spell ripped into the stone blockades I had put up, causing them to melt and flow like water. With a little application of the magician’s willpower a circular tunnel was bored into the formerly-solid rock.
And through stepped four adventurers, each of them enough to send shivers down my spine.
An enormous brute of a knight. A mysterious lady. A diminutive and exotic priest. And at the head of them, a dwarf who made storm currents swirl within the Mana around him, bending it to his will simply by existing.
Adamant was the closest to the breach. He stepped forward to defend me on pure instinct and that-
That was the only mistake he got to make.
The giant knight stepped forward and backhanded him with a tremendous, sweeping haymaker that tore Adamant’s upper body clean in half. Mud and torn roots sprayed across the wall as the disembodied legs sunk to the ground.
Just like that. Gone.
“Heh.” The ogre let out a mean little chuckle that would have made my blood run cold with fury, if I had blood at all. “Easy, easy.”
“This should be it, then.” The dwarf said.
“Then let’s begin.” Reaching into her bag, the priest pulled out a stick of incense and lit it with a flame that danced in the palm of her hand. As smoke wreathed up into the air from the burning stick I felt suddenly constricted, my Mana out of my control, my senses growing blurry.
“By the gods will, be restricted.” She intoned, as a strange feeling of mental weight pressed down upon my mind. “Let all license be revoked, as long as this incense burns, let the challenge be met without interference. Be sealed.”
Just like that, I was helpless. The only thing I could do was reach out to Argent through our shared bond. We have to get that incense, I told her.
And we didn’t have much time to do it.
Because the adventurers were walking through my Dungeon like it was a stroll in the park.
