Novels2Search
Artifice Core
Chapter 11: Preparation

Chapter 11: Preparation

We returned to our work, both of us taking the time to comprehend the magnitude of what had occurred. I had given Argent my Name, my True Name written into the very heart of me. At my center the tiny rift, barely thicker than a hair and not even as long as a fingernail, was bound with that Name. I had given Argent power over me, if she choose to exercise it. She could free herself of my service at will, attempt to bind me to her own by magic alone. If she chose. It was a whim that felt right at the moment, felt earned and deserved. In the aftermath I felt vulnerable, afraid, a sense of wrongness in my mind. Dungeons did not do such things, did not reveal our Names or free our servants. I knew this...and yet I had.

There was a force at work here I didn't understand, coming from within me. A separation of Dungeon and Individual. Both were me, one my instincts, the other my thoughts. I realised with horror that I recognised the sensation - I had felt it in the experience of the dwarf. It was a sensation dimly remembered from his youth, before wisdom and experience tempered a compromise. A compromise negotiated daily, in tiny actions or life altering events. It was perhaps what it really meant to be sapient, to overcome one's genetic legacy and societal expectations to self-determine. It was insane. They were all insane. If this was the daily life of organics, what their minds looked like from the inside, I...

I needed more time to parse this. I was a Dungeon Core, I was stone, immutable. I knew somewhere in the very bedrock of me that this was not a normal experience. So too did I know that this was not unknown to me. In the fractal depths of the Guide this had happened before, more than once but once I had seen it. This had happened to Leshalinod. My antecedent had experienced this, chosen its path, determined its own fate. I took solace in that, that oasis of calm in the whirlwind of my thoughts. It was a solvable dilemma. I would equal my benefactor.

Argent's own thoughts were swirling, a vortex like my own. I could and would not intrude upon them, waiting patiently when she stared into space, lost in thought. We gave each other space, together. It was an alien feeling, unpleasant and uncomforting but somehow reassuring and not uncomfortable. Just not comfortable either. Together we expanded on the doorframe I had etched, digging out an office with a concealed door to a private bedroom. Argent chose the furnishings and decoration, I took part only to supplement her excavation and provide the mana. I fed it into a shapeless green pool, suspended in the hall outside. Argent pulled from it, extracting long strands that stretched like syrup, shaping the raw magic to her desired form and texture. When she was finished each piece, I set my own will to it, granting it permanence. It was a slow process, mortals unable to hold a perfect image in their mind's eye the way a Dungeon could, necessitating reworks and reimaginings. I gave her the time, my own reserves needed to replenish and we both needed to think. I owed her this as well, the opportunity to shape her own home.

It was her space, I will not describe it here. That small privacy at least I can give her.

When she was finished, I forged a chromium-silver alloy to form the doorframe, which she had shaped in arch. It stood out from the geometric angles of my Dungeon. It did not fit. Yet it remained. I was quietly pleased at that small discordant note of architecture. The door was varnished Tower Cap, bone white wood with handles and hinges of Argentum alloy, as I had named it. I finished the doors and frame while Argent prepared to sleep, overdue and much needed. So much had happened already in her short life.

While she slept, I regenerated. Creating new goblins was a simple thing for me now, scarcely two mana each to create and barely a tenth to upkeep. I would need to create several, in rapid succession. It was not the most beneficial perhaps to lose the time that could have been spent productively as I waited for Argent to wake but it gave me time to plan. I admit I wanted my new minions to show due deference to my First, to create them while she slept was counter to that purpose but the time was well spent. I would create three tribes to begin. I could sustain a combined fifty minions before my regeneration was equaled by the upkeep if I was to magically perpetuate them all. I would need additional income, some method of farming souls if I wanted more, to create traps and continue to delve. I would need miners and smiths, a garrison of warriors and librarians. All would be sustained by the farmers. I resolved to create two tribes of eight, one of farmers, brewers, cooks and clothiers and another of miners and smiths. The last tribe would number an even twenty, a tribe of soldiers to defend us.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I set aside space for each. On the fifth floor I furnished two dorms, combined three rooms to make space to build a metal industry. On the fourth I provided more compost, hoes, shovels, spades and rakes. I gathered dwarven stills of copper in one chamber, the makings of a brewery, and stacked what tailors tools I found in another. On the third floor I carried the remaining weapons and armour I had found to a makeshift armoury, piling them on stone shelves. I made archery targets, dummies, crude obstacle courses for training. I created gaps between the rooms of the second and third floors, allowing space to shape secret tunnels and ambush points for my guards. I created a barracks, airgapped on all sides with a staircase to the fourth floor within. To breach the lower floors any invader would need to successfully siege it - all the while harassed by soldiers able to move about at will through secret passages and attack from any angle. Most of the work was simply moving or processing existing materials and tools and my mana continued to regenerate.

I cast my mind into the branches of my chosen schema, finding the shape of the skills my servants would require. I chose officers, soldiers, instructors. I chose field hands and animal tamers, clothiers and dyers. Smiths of black, weapon and armour, miners, prospectors and supervisors. I found the shapes, studied and internalised them to better equip my servants. When Argent awoke I had one last task to undertake, one last overdue action. For that however I would need her help and then, at last, I could create my second batch of servants.

When at last she woke, I had been idle for hours, out of constructive purpose. I simply existed, a pleasant torpor. A Dungeon at rest was a happy one, I did not mind the inaction as much as I had expected to. It was, I imagine, as close to sleeping as we can achieve - letting our thoughts drift and percolate as the minutes tick away. I observed a single cave spider spin a web for half an hour, enjoying the natural elegance of the construction. A meandering millipede gave me a new - if useless - species to summon, smothered in Puffer Cap spores. I examined The Glorious Constructs, a craftsdwarf guild whose conditions remained unmet. Unfortunately that information was written in Dwarfish, a language I did not speak and could not read. Still, I sank the room to the fifth floor, adjusting my domain so it fit neatly above me.

I stirred as Argent did, beginning final preparations. She seemed to understand my intent immediately, dressing and eating a quick breakfast of mushroom and insect meat I had conjured for her. Before long she was lifting the broken History to the places prepared for it. The four fragments were the placed quickly despite their obvious weight, the splinters and dust taking the longest. Each sliver and mote was placed upon a flat disc on the low shelves that flanked the walkways from my Fountain to each side. I had to create additional shelves and discs, her careful magic filtering the finest flecks from the cloth bag they had been stored in. At last it was time, each piece in its place, and I extended my will to fill each corner of my Core Chamber. I drew the boundary across the open gate, a solid wall of force. I spoke the name in my mind and so it became.

Tasglann Nilavarai, The Chronicle Vault.

For each stage of the Vault, a single Dungeon may be commemorated.

The History of Dungeons will evolve with each stage of the Vault.

I rang, my surface resonating like a struck bell. The sound filled the room, caught by the arcane boundary at the gate, swelled and shivered. The entire chamber reverbed for a moment that seemed to stretch Time itself, lasting less than a second and perceived as a tiny eternity. The fragments of The History blurred, coalesced. The fragments now polished slabs in their own right, each the size of the original and infinitely runed. The dust was dust no more, each green dot a thin tablet of finest serpentine. Richly and densely wrought runes covered their surface, the larger splinters now larger sheets marked on both sides.

No fractals these. I could read them.