[Establishing Dungeon boundaries]
[Boundary instability]
[Repairing Dungeon core to hold Dungeon stable]
Aki?
Aki didn’t reply, but Raz could still feel her in the back of his mind, grumpy but pleased. It was odd to know the way she felt after so many years of just guessing, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was simply different.
It was something he’d looked forward to for years. He hadn’t expected it to be as easy as just accepting her request, though; that was supposed to only be for new dungeons. Bonding to an established dungeon was supposed to be tricky and require a higher Tier, with specific skills.
Raz glanced over at the others; Serenity and Rissa were sitting in the grass with their backs against a boulder. They seemed to be talking quietly to each other. No need to push in there, so Raz looked back at Aki. There was a glow coming from her crystal. Was repairing her actually visible?
The glow seemed to expand spherically. As it washed over Raz, he felt a jolt of pain and disorientation.
[Welcome to your Hunting Lands, youngling]
[Help your dungeon grow and expand]
Everything felt funny. Raz looked at Aki first. She looked fine, but she was still sleeping. He turned to Serenity and Rissa; Serenity was looking right at him - no. Serenity was looking right at Aki. Raz took a step forward and tripped over his own four feet.
Wait. Four feet?
----------------------------------------
Serenity leaned back against the sun-warmed boulder and shifted the arm he had from his fiancee’s shoulder down to her side. He wasn’t used to that yet, and it sounded good. Fiancee.
Serenity had made the mistake of asking about Red and was sitting next to Rissa as she told a silly story about one of her birthday parties as a child; apparently, she’d been absolutely thrilled when Red let her play with the “magic bubbles”. Each one she caught had a different effect when she caught them, anything from changing her hair color to letting her float off the ground.
Rissa laughed beautifully. “So then my Dad came into the backyard and started yelling at Red. I was too young to know then, but some of the spells were still pretty experimental. When we have kids, we’re never leaving them alone with Red.” Her voice was serious, but she still had a broad grin and there was a twinkle in her eye.
Serenity couldn’t help but grin back. “Supervised visits only, got it.” He was about to say more when he felt a wash of magic from where Raz and Aki were at the meeting point of the Nexus. If he could feel a wash of magic inside a ley line, it had to be strong.
It tasted warm and comfortable, like a nap in the sun on a beautiful spring day.
As he turned to look, Serenity saw the hillside they’d climbed down shift until there was an overhang over a furnished, comfortable living area. The structure of the hill itself looked similar, other than the newly-opened side. The hill itself seemed to have turned into stone, though greenery still grew on the top of the hill.
Serenity swung towards Raz and Aki, only to find that Raz wasn’t there; instead, there was a young dragon, standing next to the brightest mana source Serenity had ever seen. Serenity pushed himself to his feet, drawn by the strength of the mana Aki emitted. He’d only taken a single step forward when the dragon turned, tripped itself, and, in Raz’s voice, said “Serenity?”
The oddity pulled Serenity out of the magic-induced pull and he stared at the young dragon. “Now this just isn’t fair. I turn into a hatchling and you get to turn into a dragon as tall as I am?”
Raz was noticeably larger as a dragon than he had been as a draykin. On all four feet, his shoulder was nearly as high as Serenity’s was in his chimera form, which meant that he could easily look Serenity in the eye - but if he held his head up instead of mostly forward, Raz would be taller than Serenity. It would probably only be by a few inches, but even so, Serenity felt a little like it was rubbing in the fact that he was still stuck as a hatchling.
“I’m a dragon?” Raz examined himself.
Serenity had to suppress a laugh at how silly it looked. Raz didn’t have a particularly long neck; other than the wings, he reminded Serenity more of a mammal than a dragon or a lizard. He certainly didn’t move like a lizard - but then, neither did the classical fantasy dragon. In fact, other than the tail, scales, wings and ears, Serenity got more of an impression of a raccoon than a dragon.
He was probably imagining it.
Other than being a much younger dragon, Serenity had seemed to just know how to move when he hatched. Yes, he’d been a bit awkward at first, but Raz seemed to have no idea how to do anything. Every time he moved, he seemed to tangle his feet in each other and have to pick himself back up.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
:Raz?:
Serenity heard a woman’s voice that seemed to come from nowhere. She sounded worried. Could that be Aki?
Serenity turned towards the dungeon core, only to find that he’d instinctively faced towards the new living area under the overhang instead of the field Aki had been set in, yet he could see the dungeon core resting in an alcove on the far wall, deep in the rock shelter.
The magical light had subsided from incandescent to a warm, welcoming glow while he watched Raz. It no longer pulled at Serenity, and he turned his attention back to the clumsy dragon.
“Aki? I’m here, are you - can you hear me? Where are you?” Raz turned his head quickly enough that he tripped again, this time without even intending to move.
Couldn’t Raz feel Aki?
Was that wave of magic the establishment of the dungeon? Serenity didn’t remember anything like that for the Blue Line dungeon, which was the only one he knew he’d been present for the creation of. He wasn’t sure he could count the Safe Rest, but it also hadn’t had a wave of magic.
“She’s in the shelter.” Serenity pointed out Aki’s new location to Raz. “What was that wave of magic? It tasted like … warmth and light and that feeling when a spellform snaps into place and it’s ready to do whatever you ask…”
“It also tasted like the space between the world and dreams where visions live and the past and future meet, balanced on the edge of a knife.” Rissa’s voice was not one he’d expected, especially not talking about how magic tasted. “It was like it was welcoming me with a greeting. Also, you’ve stopped glowing again.”
Serenity looked down at himself. He still couldn’t see it one way or the other, but he should have realized; the inflow of tasty ley line mana had stopped after the magic wave washed over him. A look at his Status told him that his mana and essence had risen while he waited. Just as importantly, they were no longer dropping; it didn’t look like it was rising the way it should, but at least he was no longer bottoming out on both mana and essence simply by not being in a ley line.
“We’re in the dungeon.” Serenity looked around again; he didn’t see any obvious dangers. It was odd to be at the core and the entry point at the same time; the only time he’d seen that before was in the Safe Rest dungeon. Many dungeons were like the Blue Line dungeon, where you didn’t see the core at all. “Why does this look like outside? Did you copy the surroundings?”
:I can hear you all. This is wonderful.: Aki sounded overjoyed. :To be able to hear people again! I haven’t even heard Raz out loud in so long!:
Raz seemed to have finally untangled his feet enough to make his way over to Aki’s new resting point with only a few falls. He poked the crystal with his snout. “Care to explain why I’m a dragon now?”
:Ah, um, this is a Dragon’s Lair? It must have needed a dragon?: Aki sounded uncertain, even nervous. :I don’t know. I … I know I wanted a dragon, but I don’t think that would be enough. I’ve never seen a Bonded change before.:
Raz plopped down onto his haunches. “I don’t want to be stuck here.” He looked around the living area. “I mean, this looks nice and it even looks like some of it’s made for a dragon, but I want to be able to leave. I don’t - I don’t want to be a dungeon monster.”
There was a long silence.
:You want to leave me.: Aki sounded brittle yet stern. :Go, then.:
“I - no, that’s not what I mean! I want to be with you. I want to help you. I -” Raz tapped the crystal with his snout again. “I’m a dragon. That’s not your fault, I picked Dragons’ Lair too. I wanted to see a dragon, talk to one-”
Serenity felt a much weaker shift in the magic around him. This time, it tasted like a memory, nearly lost to forgetfulness.
“If you’re going to blame anyone, blame Serenity. His shoulders are wide enough to carry it. Before you do that, though, you wouldn’t mind some more visitors, would you, Aki? We might be here on and off for a while.” Rissa only glowed with magic for a moment, but she looked worried now.
:More visitors? This is a dungeon, not a teahouse.: Aki’s tone did not match her words. She sounded wistful.
“I don’t know how or why, but I saw the five of us here, sleeping. It felt soon.” Rissa looked down from Aki’s crystal to stare at her feet. “Sometimes I hate seeing the future. It’s often incomplete, and it doesn’t tell me why. But if I see it, I know it’s going to happen.”
“That’s not true. You didn’t die, either time.” Serenity needed to snap her out of it.
Or perhaps he simply wanted to snap her out of it. He didn’t like seeing her so down.
A slight smile found its way to her face and Rissa looked up at him. “You’re right. I forgot. I’m overthinking it. This could be only a maybe.”
“We make our own choices,” Serenity asserted. “Always.”
“You do,” Rissa seemed to agree. “It doesn’t matter what I do, but you can change things.”
He’d have to accept that for now. Maybe someday he’d be able to get her to change something she saw without his help; as long as he helped her, he knew she’d claim it was really him changing things. Perhaps it didn’t matter; it wasn’t like he wanted to be gone from her for long ever again.
“We should head out. Whatever the vision means, my parents expect us. Ah, how do we leave?” Rissa looked at Aki’s crystal expectantly.
:You will have to walk out. It doesn’t feel like teleportation is possible. I used to be an instanced dungeon, this feels different.:
The core usually had a teleport option of some sort. Having to walk out connected with the odd way the landscape had changed yet stayed the same in Serenity’s mind. “Is this a surface dungeon?”
:A surface floor. I do not know what that means; I have never heard of it before. I assume it is because this is aboveground.:
Serenity chuckled. Many dungeons had floors that seemed to be aboveground. “No, surface dungeons are different. It means the dungeon literally is the surface. Surface dungeon monsters aren’t bound to the dungeon, but they also tend to develop monsters from the surface instead of spawning their own. I don’t know what that means inside a city.”
On a world more used to dungeons, it would probably either be left alone if it was hard to reach or used as land for some sort of monster ranch if it was conveniently located. Monsters grew faster and better in a surface dungeon.
Serenity hadn’t dealt with many; they weren’t exactly the best candidate for delving, since they tended to be more like the natural world, where strong monsters would have their own ranges, and there were far more food animals or monsters than predators of any sort. The most you’d generally see was an expedition to clear out something that was being a special problem.