Riva woke up without a second to process her vision of Lindra. She needed to get back, to see what happened to everyone, to whatever remained of Eva. Immediately she flew out of her core room, still just a tiny underground hole. Not bothering to use the tunnel, she rushed directly up through the soil, along the bark of Eva’s tree, past a single blooming blossom.
High up in the sky, Riva orientated herself before resuming her mad dash. Faster than ever before, she continued towards the battlefield. At full speed, her consciousness crashed into the boundary of her domain. While this did not harm her, it stunned her for a moment. Then realization dawned. Flack, I can’t leave without inhabiting a monster’s body, but they’re all out fighting! Guess I will have to do this the difficult way.
Gathering her energy, she desperately began to grow her domain. Expansion was much easier and more efficient when expanded in all directions simultaneously. But she had no choice. So despite the effort, Riva pushed on. Every click that brought her closer also brought more strain. Eventually, the discomfort turned to pain. She felt like her muscles were being torn.
Just ahead, she could see the boundary to the enemy dungeon. She was so close, but each second was agony. Three clicks away. Two. One.
With a final surge, she crossed the boundary to where the enemy dungeon’s domain began. Like a bubble being popped, a deluge rushed into her. One second she was fighting through agony to expand further, the next overwhelming bliss permeated every speck of her being.
Back when she inhabited Eva’s body, Riva heard the crack that killed the enemy dungeon. What she didn’t realize at the time that with its death, all of its energy infused into the area. This gave Riva more than all of her previously accumulated energy combined. With the strength it gave her, she continued.
Through a battle-torn swamp, over the beaver’s barricades, through rejoicing Pixies. She finally reached the corpse of the final alliconda. The sun reflected off its scales, it lay next to a few wildflowers.
Eva’s murder looks too peaceful in death.
Just as she was about to savage the corpse with earth spikes, Akeldama came into sight. He held his webbed claws cupped in front of his chest.
“I-is that Eva’s body?”
Riva felt absolutely still in the last moments before seeing her friends corpse.
“No.” He opened his claws to show a Queen Ubee.
"Hello,” Eva calmly said.
“Eva!”
Riva rushed to her side. Without realizing it, she instinctively made an upper torso out of wind, scooped the ubee up into her arms, and cradled her.
"How are you alive?”
“Right after the alliconda struck out one last time the pixies managed to break the dungeon core. I passed out for a second, breaking our connection. Then the dungeon's death released a wave of power that washed over everything. My wounds partially healed and I felt stronger.”
Akeldama’s guttural voice broke the two out of their own little world. “All the monsters experienced some evolution. My magic is more powerful than before. The pixies agree.”
“Where are the pixies by the way?” Riva asked.
Eva appeared almost embarrassed, “They tend to get a little feisty after a battle. How have you not noticed? There’s a reason pixies multiply so fast…”
“Are there no more enemy creatures to fight?”
“Akeldama and I already spoke to Finn and Jarh. Apparently, every creature was a construct and disappeared like glowing smoke as soon as the dungeon core perished. The only monster was this alliconda.” Eva flew over to land on the corpse.
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“Speaking of the alliconda, that was extremely reckless! Do you know what losing you would have done to me?”
“I’m sorry, I got caught up in the battle. Looking back on it, I should’ve done something else.”
Riva paused as the strength behind her tirade was sapped.
“Well...let’s be more careful in the future. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Are you still hurt at all? I see your horn is chipped at the tip, let me heal it.”
“I would prefer you didn’t, I want a reminder of this rotation. Plenty died earlier, almost including myself.”
“Let’s go find Finn and Jarh to find out the death toll.”
The three traveled in silence. Occasionally they heard the sounds of pixies celebrating life. Mourning would come soon, but for now, the oppressive menace that threatened them for rotations was finally dead.
They found Jarh resting against a tree branch. For a moment Riva worried, but he jumped up as they approached. “Ah, Riva, we felt your domain expand to cover the area. We did it! We will be safe for a while now.”
“Who knows how long that will last? How many died, what are our current forces?”
His face turned more grave. “We lost thirty-five pixies, thirty-two colrumns, including Eikooc, and I am not sure of the ubees.”
“One-hundred fifty of the two-hundred ubees and my three Queen’s Guard are dead,” Eva supplied.
“We lost most of our people, then.”
“There were many factors against us, next time we can do better,” Jarh vowed.
"Next time we will do better. Never again will I let us be unprepared.”
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Recovery over the next few rotations was slow. The pixies held their traditional mourning service and crowned Finn’s eldest brother Zequar, who had recovered from his injuries. He and Riva renewed their vows of allyship before the pixie kingdom and her creatures.
Currently, the pixies are throwing a wake, drunk on ubee honey, to celebrate the lives of the dead. The more Riva familiarized herself with the pixies in a time of peace, the more they shocked her. While they called themselves a pixie kingdom, and try to shroud their customs with finery, at heart they were a primal society. Riva saw the first hint of this from homes made of skulls, the second hint their bloodlust, and finally, the current bawdy wake in honor of the fallen. They drunkenly twirled in the air to lively music, sometimes in dance, occasionally in a different tangle of limbs, other times brawling. She did not mind though, she knew fancy words or manners did not make good companions. The spirits of the pixies shone brightly in their smiles.
Zequar drunkenly stood up. “Shut your pie holes, I declare a toast to Riva. The most intelligent and kind dungeon in the whole continent, nay, all of Vequetar! Without her, everyone here would be dead, our kingdom destroyed, there is no doubt in my mind. Her efforts and sacrifices are the reason we celebrate today. To Riva!”
“To Riva!” a chorus of shouts echoed.
Perhaps because she lacked an intoxicating drink or perhaps due to her nature, Riva could not shake off the melancholy in the aftermath of death. The toast was appreciated, but the victory remained bitter. She needed to do something proactive.
Instead of joining the celebrations, Riva retreated back to her core. The last few rotations, she pondered what sort of defenses she could build. Most dungeons tended to make underground floors as death traps to protect their core. While she planned to make caverns eventually, they don’t suit her current creatures nor the pixies.
Riva began growing the trees. While the underbrush was already dense, she would make the forest into a maze. Massive trunks formed the walls, interwoven in places, and fused together in others. Branches arched overhead, close-knit enough to create a roof and strong enough to hold the next floor up. The dense foliage left her forest floor dark and foreboding, the darkness promising danger to any invader foolish enough to enter.
The layer of branches started the next level. Rather than a maze, she decided to create interconnected groves through tunnels. These large open spaces let the sunlight trickle down and would give her larger creatures room to fight. She connected the first and second levels in a handful of places, but not all second-floor areas connected to each other. To reach certain groves, adventures would need to travel back down to the ground and look for another entrance up. By the time she finished, even the pixies may get lost for a while until they adjust. The system spanned her entire domain.
Given more energy, she would form additional tiers in the trees. For now, she saved it for the major project. Riva was moving into Eva’s tree.
Carefully, Eva picked up Riva’s core and placed it in a hollow. Moving her core felt extremely uncomfortable, but she managed. Afterward, she began to swell Eva’s tree to massive proportions. It shot towards the sky and thickened until the top brushed her domain hundreds of clicks up and the trunk took up twenty clicks. Finally, midway up the tree, she transformed her hollow into a small cavern. Perfect for a ubee hive to hide and protect her. Just like she protected them.