My mind expanded like a breath, released in a sudden but regular action. What was not simply was, in the infinitesmal space between the tiniest instances of time, I became. The radiant green light emanating from my emerald core cast more than mere luminescence, where my glow fell so too did my senses, my mind fully formed and yet blooming all at once around my form.

I rested upon a heap, detritus piled high against a wall. The chamber of my birth was clearly fashioned and laid by some unknown hand, each surface angular and precise where they weren’t cracked or shattered. It was unusual to be born to such a place I somehow knew, some instinctive part of myself had been expecting another environment but no matter. Strangely the room was canted; I could feel gravity pushing upon me into the pile of…metal and stone? More shapes I recognised as crafted, unnatural, artificial. Knowledge of their form and purpose was secondary to my discomfort.

I am a Dungeon Core, an entity of order - and my birthplace was decidedly not. My light flowed to chambers rent and broken in every direction, some wholly crushed, others like my own almost intact but horribly canted and sundered.

This would not do.

I sent my light into the earth and stone around me - granite, basalt, obsidian, marble, others too all shaped and worked - feeling the edges and shapes, understanding reaching me as fast as my brilliance could reflect back to me. So swift at this distance I could not even perceive the time taken to send my light and gain understanding, I wished to have the knowledge and so I did.

Exercising my will I held my birthplace tight in my light and expended my mana to lift-

You have awakened.

Your soul is strong and fate smiles upon you, granting you Life as a Dungeon Core.

The words bloomed in my mind, through a sense I had not yet discovered. I saw the words, read them, observed the brilliant field of green they lay upon and knew it to be the same shade as myself, though not the brilliance of my light. I knew these things though my own senses did not include sight, I could not see with my light but feel the shape and glean knowledge of all that it fell upon. It was a strange sensation, to experience an entirely new method of observing the universe that one does not possess, a totally alien sense and yet it was as familiar to me as my light, my thoughts, more familiar than my surroundings. It simply was, a natural piece of the universe that had always existed and always would, its appearances noteworthy for they were triggered rather than regulated. Feeling no urgency at this familiar unexpected anomaly I simply thought it aside to be experienced at my convenience.

With barely an interruption, my magic hardened, emerald light shining around the form of my chamber, so brightly as to turn nearly white at the edge gravity pulled me towards. Against gravity’s strength I cast my own, my brilliance devouring loose rocks and dirt above and gently but firmly pushing aside the forms of other rooms and chambers. Below the opposite edge I exerted my light in a wedge, driving aside stone, soil and what I recognised to be lengths of metal. A structural reinforcement, torn loose by some great force. My chamber rotated swiftly and smoothly to a more comfortable level plane. I, unfortunately, did not.

Gravity was a devious and harsh mistress. Not through simple strength did she impose her law on reality, her methods were subtle and unyielding. The workshop I was birthed in - for that was what it was, the detritus I had been whelped upon were tools, resources, creations and pieces of creations yet unmade - turned and so too did I. Gravity’s edict was down and that simple direction was no longer orientated to the same features as before.

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My birthpile, which I had not thought to secure promptly slid, tumbled, collided, rebounded and poured from its prior position across the floor. I fell, my senses collapsing in upon myself and exploding forth again a billion times a second for my movement was not my own, I was not controlled, my luminescence shone forth and did not return directly to me but rebounded from where I was to where I am at the speed of light. It was wrong so fundamentally I knew nothing but panic, a terror so whole and complete I knew nothing, I was nothing, I knew no thought, no thought at all. My entire being was fear, a fear that did not dissipate or lessen until it ceased. Like me, one moment it was not, the next it was. Unlike me, the next it was not, just a memory.

No entity should have to comprehend the meaning of its own mortality, how swiftly and suddenly it could end mere seconds after its birth. It was a brutal and harsh lesson, that little death, that nonexistence of thought. Eternal seconds where I did not exist, a memory of a time where I paused and resumed, where only fear was. From a simple oversight.

I would not make such a mistake again.

I was once more, I existed, a sort of rebirth so soon after my birth but that sense of wrongness still persisted. I lay beneath the pile in this chamber I now knew had fallen much like myself, fallen from place and purpose like I had; I knew now and my mana lashed out to reach the surface, consuming stones, metal, gems and fossil -

The fossil crumbled and dissipated into motes of light, my magic tearing through petrified bone as easily as it consumed the intricate gauntlets and bracers encasing the dirt and stone. The knowledge flowed through me, fingerbones, metacarpals, wristbones and elbow hungrily devoured for this was no mere stone, this was a sapient turned to stone and within lay memory. My panic faded before my greed, mana yet burning towards a surface, slivers of air reaching me, my hunger for data gorging upon the legacy in the dead dwarf’s armoured reliquiae.

It took less than four seconds to consume from fingertip to above the elbow and my memory, young and small was dwarfed, pardon the pun, by the knowledge I learned. Every working that arm had learned, movements repeated again and again until they were another simple fact of it, I knew it all. I knew how to swing an axe, to feint, to hook. How to grasp a wrist, a cup, a hammer. I knew movement, I knew the motion of pumping a bellows, of stoking a forge, fastening a clasp.

It was rich, rich and vital and fleeting. A second later I bit into torso, knew the flex of muscle, bone and cartilage of breathing, the rhythm of a torso absorbing the blow of hammer on forge, of foot on stone, of strike on plate. I consumed the dwarf so rapidly, I was the dwarf for his existence - it was a he, I knew as I consumed his chest and tore ravenously into the cavern of his abdomen - was so much greater than my own. I was young,not even tens of seconds old but he had lived for decades, perhaps centuries. All contained in the stone his ancient corpse had become. I knew the bacteria that had consumed his flesh and nibbled futilely upon the bones before they were compacted by time and pressure. I knew -

What was once his skull crumbled inwards as the glut of my magic chased up his spine and into his cranium and oh, what a sensation! The stone of a sapient’s head contained no thoughts, no memories of its life. I did not know what this dwarf had thought but I knew how he thought for the bone was worn, shaped and smoothed and carved by the thoughts below over a lifetime. I was barely fifteen seconds old when I first tasted the knowledge of one solitary fingertip and still less than a minute old when the meal was done but I lived a lifetime.

It was several seconds before I remembered myself, once more remembered I was a Dungeon Core, not a dwarf, for my memory of my own experiences was now such a tiny fraction of the memories I held now. I knew breath and motion, I knew hope and joy, sorrow and loss, love and wroth, community and loneliness. I knew industry and rest, I knew the thrill of a truly new thought or new experience, the surprise of an old and wizened being at finding that old and dearly loved friend that was true novelty after so much time.

For the second time in my life, in a way I died. So overwhelmed by this spiritual forebear whose breadth of experiences so vastly surpassed my own meager handful that my thoughts were not my own. Not truly for it was me that was thinking but not as me, not as a Dungeon. I thought as a dwarf. I tried to stand, to stretch, to speak with a body I had never possessed There was a lesson there but this I did not learn half so well as the first. A hunger had been awakened in me that was not sated, not at all, but I recognised a danger too and so at last, I turned to the words that I had seen myself in search of an anchor.