When I first picked my path I was in a bit of haste but I knew I was choosing one that was derived primarily from one of my skills, Pack Conjuring. Knowing that, most of my creatures are actually created with that skill, allowing me to have a few alphas on each floor that manage the larger pack. When a lesser wolf died on the surface the alpha would just reconjure it from the hide it dropped once the enemy was killed. The only time this didn’t work was when the bear came through. It wasn’t until intelligent adventurers came did I find the weak spot. The Alphas.

I thought up several ways to fix this, and over the next weeks I tested them out on this party of novices. First I made the alphas go in pairs with each having a half of a combined pack. After they figured that out they just had the mage and archer both kill one. I tried making the Alpha hang back out of the fight but as soon as the adventurer’s auras came to close the alpha would stop listening and just follow its instincts. At last I hit on an idea that worked. I made the packs out of an Alpha and six of her conjured wolves paired with six wolves I conjured myself that looked just like the Alpha. During a fight the second generation wolves would go ahead and the Alpha and all the other first generation wolves would follow after. The adventurers couldn’t tell which was the Alpha and even if they did guess right the other wolves would still attack them.

To reward the adventurers for pointing out this flaw to me I used arrows as the base for the new first generation wolves. Being made of dungeon Essence, these could be infused so they could hurt Graymane. It didn’t hurt that every time the archer infused his arrow he released a fair amount of Aether as well. I got the idea on their third delve when the archer fired a strange arrow at the boss that didn’t fly right, it veered into the corner and broke. When I absorbed it I found that he had spliced the blade of one of those little knives onto the end of the arrow to improvise an infusable arrow. It was quite industrious of him.

The other thing I did was diversify. I had patterns for a lot of beasts but I had only used the two owls and the bear in addition to my wolves. The rabbits didn’t count as they were only there so the wolves would have something to chase and wouldn’t be sitting around looking sad and pathetic all the time. The fact that the owls came so close to crippling the archer was proof that I need more variety.

Don’t get me wrong, wolves would still be the backbone of my forces, I had expanded the five packs on the first floor, but I needed more. On each of the first four floors I conjured progressively stronger versions of all the animals a had. Foxes to ambush and cripple. Boars to charge. Dear and Elk to trample and gore. But best of all, birds in all shapes and sizes. While I found that other than the cervids and my wolves I couldn’t use Pack Conjuring on most land animals. Birds, though, moved in flocks. My surface floor was overflown with boils of hawks and murders of crows. They were mostly dealt with by the mage but toward the end of the second week the healer started using a spell that fired finger length thorns from her hands. They weren’t powerful but fired rapidly and did enough damage that it would ground any bird it hit. It made me want one of the enormous eagles I saw with my sister on the way up the pass.

With the mostly normal animals on the first floor I considered it done. Now that it was finished something in the dungeon magic that was at the heart of me settled. It didn’t like changing something that was already supposed to be done. Now that it was done again I found that I would replace anything taken, slain, or destroyed after a few hours without even thinking about it. In fact once I left the first floor as finished, the adventurers started being able to leave unmolested if they slew everything on the way in. Once they realized this they started having an easier time facing Graymane since they didn’t need to hold back as much.

In addition to the upgrades for my wolf packs, on my next three floors I merged the animals with some of the things on the floor until I found an enhanced beast I liked. I found I particularly liked the [Oak Hide Stag] on the fourth floor. The [Dark Wolves] that hunted this floor even had trouble taking one down. What’s better is the stag is able to conjure three does that, while not as durable as the stag, could kill a lone wolf if they worked together. There were now three of these herds wandering the fourth floor. I also placed two lesser bears in caves similar to the one that Struggle lived in.

It was nearing the end of the second week of adventurers and I was about to declare the second floor fixed as well when Star came up to see the work I had done. I was proud of what I had accomplished and watched as she floated around my self contained forest. It was quite pretty the way the light she gave off danced around the leaves like sunbeams. I could see her swirling ethereal glow reflected off the eyes of all the creatures who saw her. Then I screamed in frustration.

“What’s wrong?” the wisp asked.

“All my floors are in darkness,” I wailed. “I spend so much time making them beautiful, so the shadows would dance just right but no one will see it. Why didn’t you tell me, and why can all my creatures see?”

“Alright, calm down” she said, “now I know why you spent so much time rotating branches around. I’m glad you take so much artistic pride in what you made. First off, everything in here can see because one of your titles gives them all [True Dungeon Vision], they can see anywhere in your dungeon as if it was mid day. For the other part, you never asked, I assumed you just wanted your prey stumbling around in the dark.”

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“As fun as that sounds, I don’t. Learning to use the play of light and shadow is how I got my name, it is part of who I am. How do I fix this?” I asked the dungeon wisp.

“Three, no four ways,” she said in a pensive tone. “You can emit ambient light from your exposed walls and floor. It is dim but enough for most things to see. This is what most dungeons do. You can also use Essence to create a permanent light spell on the ceiling. Many dungeons do this in large open spaces like your forest caverns. You also have two other options because of some of your titles. You can conjure a night sky. It will have stars and a moon but they won’t match the real ones. The moon will cross the sky once an hour and go through all its phases in a day. The other option is to reflect the real sky, weather and all, onto the ceiling using spatial magic.”

“I want the sun and clouds if I can have them,” I said. I thought of Dream and his crescent moon eyes. “I may use the moon thing on a lower floor.”

“Okay, you remember how you stretched all this space to begin with?” she asked. I gave a reluctant mental nod and she continued, “Cover the roof in Essence as if you are going to expand it. Now look up at the sky from your first floor. Good, now grab just a little of that space up there like you are going to reverse the expansion of a cavern and pull it down to the roof.”

I did as she said and suddenly my second floor was filled with light. All the animals on the floor who had never seen the sun cried out in panic until my own calm passed to them and they settled. The light played among the fluttering leaves of the aspen and birch, leaving dappled patterns on the grass like a cluster of butterflies made of shadow. The [Brindled Forest Wolves] would have a much easier time sneaking up on the adventurers now.

I added the sky to all of my first ten floors and then continued to look for mistakes I may have made in my haste. I would go floor by floor and make my den perfect. Four years was not enough time. The first and the second floors were done, and given the weakness of these adventurers that may be all I needed for the time being. Still, I would work my way back down until I reached the bottom and then plan for what was next.

The adventurers had been back two days on, two days off, since that first dive. When I started to change things they were concerned at first, then excited as they were able to fight more things. The mage was especially excited when they found I had made my alpha crows around some of the silver jewelry I had from those humans’ packs years ago. She started secreting some of it in her pockets when she could get away with it. Soon they started discussing the changes and their leader, Lord Tarkhan, told them that he thought it meant my dungeon was young. He claimed to have read that old dungeons don’t change much. I thought back to how uncomfortable it felt to change my floors after I had decided I was done. I could understand it, if I did that with fifty or a hundred floors I might have gone mad. My first two floors were only starting to feel alright again now, and the very thought of having a done floor below a not done one made me want to wine like a pup.

The party had just slain Graymane for the tenth time, and was sitting cultivating the Essence he left behind, when the mage started letting out a pleased hum. She turned to the others once they were done and said, “I just reached tier one. I am now officially an [Initiate of the Crimson Flame]. How about all of you?”

“I‘m an [Apprentice Mountain Guardian],” said the spearman. “It’s weird I have all this knowledge about how to proceed and it’s just in my head.”

“I know what you mean,” the archer said, “when I learned the path manual it was a lot, but just impressions. Now that I am a [Novice Yeoman of the Shadowed Hunt] I know things, like how to use Mana to change the way my arrows fly. There are a dozen skills I could learn and half of them I need before I can take the next step on the path.”

“How about you My Lord?” the mage asked with an insouciant smile. “What path did you finally decide to walk?”

“None,” he replied, “I am still level eight, and am waiting for level ten to advance like I told all of you to.”

“How are you still level eight,” she demanded with a skeptical tone, “you were four levels higher than all of us when we started?”

“I’m at the end of level eight, and I have a higher grade starting class,” he said, “it takes longer to level in exchange for giving me higher grade path options. Plus I have been letting all of you take the lion's share of Essence from the dungeon.”

He seemed ashamed and looked away, not seeing the look of envy on the face of the mage. He rubbed the back of his head through the coif and said, “It is a double edged blessing, the higher grade path will also take longer to level and I am not even sure if I’ll be able to meet the requirements to level after I hit tier five.”

The mage had a smug look for a moment before replacing it with a smile. She looked like she was about to say something when the healer spoke up, “I haven’t hit level ten yet either, still nine. I also don’t quite have my skills up enough to become a [Initiate of the Verdant Grove], Lord Tarkan is too good a defender, so my healing is a little behind.”

“We can’t have that,” the lord said. “How about we check out the second floor? If we both get enough Essence to reach level ten and you still haven’t gotten your healing skill high enough, we will go back to town and Kel and I will make the militia spar until you have healed enough broken wrists to put you over the top.”

The whole party laughed. Then they prepared themselves and went down the stairs to the second floor.