“Um… I want to try something.” I said.

“Oh? What do you want to try, Kaya?” Mother asked.

“I want to try redesigning the entrance area, while the others are asleep outside,”

“What makes you want to do that?”

“I got to see the Guild’s offices and buildings when I was in Berta, and I want to bring things at least a little closer to what I saw then.” I said.

Mother looked at me and smiled.

“Go ahead. I’m curious what you’ll do,”

“I… also want to bring it a little closer to what our home looks like,” I added.

“Is this about the conversation earlier?” Mother asked.

“It’s…. not unrelated to it,” I said.

Mother laughed.

“Well, I’m curious what you’ll do. Go on,”

Mother disappeared to go back to our home in Diamûn’s administrative space. I could sense she was watching, though. In any case, I focused on my work. To begin, I put a wall in front of the entrance so that no one would try to enter while I worked - and to prevent noise from getting out. I didn’t want to disturb the guests outside.

With the setup underway, the first thing I did was set aside the rest of the supplies the Pathfinders had brought: The entire room was getting destroyed, and I didn’t want to take their stuff out with it. So I walked over to it and sent it to the administrative space with Mother.

“I know you’re watching, Mother, can you hang on to this?” I said.

“I have it,” Mother’s voice sounded.

With the last of the setup work out of the way, I moved into redesigning the room. I had experience with changing the layout of Diamûn from redesigning it with Mother over the winter. To (over)simplify, my body moved into the administrative space, and I saw wherever I was working in Diamûn from any angle I wanted. To make any changes, I simply had to visualize what I wanted and it would come into being. This was technically my Dungeon Management (Diamûn) skill, however Captilio explained it was more like a title that granted power than an actual skill.

I started by reducing the entrance area into a hallway. This would connect to the new entrance space. It would be at least some length for what I was going to do for the new entrance area. As for the new entrance area, I opened an entirely new space in the domain of Diamûn - the hallway I had just prepared was the connector from the outside world to the entrance area. I’d be coming back to it in a bit.

In the new space - which was simply a void right now, I started by making an ocean - much like the one at home in the administrative space. I had heard from the other Keepers that entrance rooms like what Mother had made were standard practice, but I didn’t want to simply do the standard thing. I wanted to make an impression, to show what kind of Keepers that Mother and I were.

With the ocean in place, I made an island. The layout was going to be different than what home was on - it’d have to be at least a little bigger for the hallway to connect to, for the Guild post, and the entrance to Diamûns floors. I made it into roughly a teardrop shape, or the shape of a comma.

First, the hallway that connected outside needed somewhere to come out here. I turned my attention to the small end of the currently-flat island. I focused on raising it up, to make the small end rise as you approached the coast until it ended with a cliff. Then I brought down one side of the rise back to near-water level: the rise now had a rock face on the island, where the hallway to outside could connect as a cave entrance on the rock face with land to walk on.

You could also walk up the part of the rise that went over where the hallway would connect to. Remembering the times Sammy had stopped by and jumped off the island at home to dive, I decided that it’d be a fun diversion to allow that here, so below the top of the rise I just made I made sure that the water below was clear of any obstructions and deep enough to be safe to land in.

With the area to the outside world prepared, my next focus was the guild hall. I didn’t have a complete picture of what the Guild’s office was, but I knew what the front lobby looked like. I made a building in the style of the Berta office to start, but a little smaller. Space on the island was limited, but it also didn’t exactly matter too much here.

“Mother? I’m going to ask you to work with Therya tomorrow on filling out this space. But for now, I’m going to make the lobby,” I said.

“Okay, Kaya,” I heard Mother say.

I moved to making the lobby. Because I knew the space inside would eventually be expanded by Mother later, I made the entrance doors and front windows of the building connect to a space which would actually house the rest of the Guild office space - essentially, the building would be bigger on the inside. I made a lobby in this “inside” space, filling it with the lobby of the Berta office as best I could.

Mother and Therya could revise it later; I trusted Mother understood what I wanted. Next, it was time to make the entrance to Diamûn’s ten floors. We had planned for parties to be able to skip ahead once they had cleared up to certain points of Diamûn, so I created a stone platform with a door on the front of it.

There wasn’t anything on the other side of the door other than the rest of the large end of the island - the door would connect to the relevant starting area for the desired floor when a party came to the door. I made a small table-ish device in the center of the platform to select where parties would want to start. The options would be to start at the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth floors.

Okay, let’s make sure that no one skips ahead. Let’s make the buttons for the later floors deactivate unless everyone on it has the Hidden Titles for clearing the floors before them, I thought as I made it happen. I looked back over the entire island, and covered it in grass to turn it from a plain patch of rock into a green island in the sea.

The last thing I had to do was connect the hallway to here, but I wanted to add one other thing. I moved over to the space between the hallway exit and the Guild office, and built a small covered area. It was like a very large gazebo, and equally decorative. I wanted somewhere with shade so that vampires like Lillian would have a place to rest for what I did next.

I looked up into the void - I wanted this to be a sky, like at home. However, unlike at home, I wanted it to match the time of day and weather outside. Keepers didn’t need sleep, but everyone else did. It was a nice touch to make sure people could tell time inside. Additionally, I wanted it to mostly line up with the weather, outside of more extreme events. The sky turned from a void to a night sky full of rain clouds.

It was time to complete my work: I took the hallway that connected outside, and made the far end of it transition to the new entrance space, and made the exit a corner that led to the cliff entrance. I wanted it to be at least kind of a surprise what I had done.

“Wow…” I heard Mother say.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“It’s great, Kaya,” she said.