Hm. That–

I was, by nature, a rather suspicious being, one formed from death and consequence; I knew the shadowed edges of things seemingly sunlight-bright and how poison could taste the sweetest. Many things had tried to kill me as a sea-drake, and few had been able to match my strength—so they resorted to the trickery and the darkness and the guile.

They had never succeeded, to be very clear, but still the threat lingered. Many times had I woken from a decade of healing slumber to be faced with something that seemed too good to be true, and it often was.

I ate those that tried it. I was not one to suffer deception.

But my current form had a regrettable lack of teeth, and so I was limited to merely watching as a gluttonous, hulking beast dragged itself into my dungeon.

It was large, and made all the larger by the light emanating from its sinewed skin. A deep burnt-orange skin, and a deeper glow, something fierce and scorching.

Scorching enough that the green algae around its body was curling and drying from the heat.

A being of fire.

And that led me back to my previous suspicion, to the hunger that gnawed at my sensibilities; because I had only just been carving out the final trenches for my seventh floor, the deep furrows where I had inlaid coal to burn as a substitute for actual lava. I had been prepared to wait as long as it took for me to either figure out a way to safely produce lava or find a way to reverse-evolve a cloudskipper wisp to try and get one of the fire elementals. Suffice to say, I had been prepared to wait as long as necessary.

But now I stared at the creature before me, and I hesitated.

Because I remembered, with a lingering kind of frustration, what schema choices had been presented to me upon my last evolution—how nearly everything had been those I hadn't chosen before, those I had rejected. Something that whatever god guided my powers knew I didn't want.

In the end, the only true option I'd had to pick had been the capturing coral. I had been pushed to pick that coral; and I would have anyway, considering it was exactly what I wanted, but there was still the confusion on why it had been presented to me. Why it was the only true choice from a list.

The creature before me felt similarly guided.

It heaved itself further into the Fungal Gardens, moving with the slow lethargy of a creature not used to moving; it was quadrupedal, low to the ground, dragging a tail nearly the same width as its body behind it and with a heavy, boxy head. Similar to the sarco crocodile in build, honestly, though a mere five feet in length and without scales.

Instead, it had a stretched, porous skin, from which dripped fucking magma.

Again. You can see why I was suspicious.

I hadn't encountered them often under the sea, as there were frightful few species from the line who adapted to my watery depths, but I knew the generalities—some kind of salamander, its orange skin speckled with black dots like cooled stone, craggy armour splashing up around its feet. No claws, as was unfortunately common, and its enormous maw looked similarly toothless, or at least no fangs large enough to care about.

It didn't seem to matter, though. There wasn't much defense that could be more effective than apparently being covered in lava.

In slow, methodical precision, in lumpy droplets that immediately started to harden upon meeting the air, it… bled? exuded? produced? magma with a viciousness. They weren't impossibly hot, not the white of scalding stone, but a deep, sluggish red. So.

It was a good thing that it was a salamander, rather than a lizard, otherwise this would be far too close to fire-drakes for my tastes—but because it wasn't, I wanted it. Badly. Down below, I had been halfway through carving out another vein of coal as my mana trickled back to full, the bounding deer herd already increased to eight and the darkness of the seventh floor absolute, but now—now it was looking like I didn't have to do that. That I could do something more.

And with that, I dug my points of awareness into the Fungal Gardens, sunk them deep into the marrow of my creatures, and angled my guiding probe into the trio in the far back, curled in their dens.

They were juveniles no longer, which was wonderful, and the lunar cave bears were the distinguished apex predators of this floor. Even now, the shadowthief rats hissed and flinched from the glow off the salamander's skin, burrowing rats fleeing for their dens, stone-backed toads freezing up in hopes of not being noticed, luminous constrictors stayed coiled and tense around their stalagmites. This was not their fight.

But it was for the bears.

Go, I urged, a silent voice overhead. They were twice-bitten with the raids they hadn't been able to take part in, too weak to fight the Silvers, and they took to this challenge with hunger bared. The eldest of the trio staked out of her darkened den, fur bristling, lips pulled back from ivory fangs.

The salamander, which I was beginning to realize wasn't very smart, because of course, hardly seemed to notice the new threat in its path. Just kept plodding on, endless, algae and mushrooms burning away in its wake. There were hardened rivulets of stone, prints where its feet had landed, a curving furrow where its tail dragged behind it.

If just one of these was doing this much ambient damage to my floor, I couldn't imagine what they did inside the mountain proper, with full populations of them.

Or, more accurately, what they'd do to my seventh floor. For all I was still… displeased at how the goblins were sticking their bulging noses into the Skylands and changing things to fit their needs, I would be slightly more lenient for these salamanders. It didn't seem like they had much of a choice, besides.

Either way, they would be joining me. The Fungal Gardens awoke, in hesitant, crawling figures, the deep and the scuttling and the strong, and my main help marched forward. She would be the one to take this down.

With a roar, the eldest lunar cave bear threw herself forward and slammed her claws into the beast's head.

And immediately bounced back.

Though I had no true sense for it, I could feel how the air filled with the stench of burning hair, the raw sizzle of cooking flesh—the mere presence of this salamander burned and scorched and completely negated all attacks against it. She howled, thrashing, and in blind ferocity attacked again—her claws sunk into its sinewy skin but cracked and charred from the heat. She fell backward with a whine.

Her other siblings charged forward, eager to prove themselves, and on the salamander marched—they hissed and bellowed but all they earned for their rage were more burns, more injuries. The salamander bled thick, molten blood, its black eyes narrowing in, but it hardly seemed to notice. Or even to care.

And then I got the uncommon privilege of watching one of my creatures have a thought for once.

In the front, her fur smoldering and skin burned, the eldest lunar cave bear paused; she looked at the creature and its relentless charge, slow and pottering as it was, and looked closer. Looked in such a manner that forced her to step closer, even as the air wavered and her breaths came hot and heavy—and to notice that there was no retaliation.

None at all.

This salamander was hardly even a creature, it seemed—more a force of nature, no thought paid to the outside world. It marched on, content in its magma-protection, seemingly unable to comprehend that any harm could be done to it.

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Well. It wasn't that incorrect, considering my bears had bounced off it in fruitless attacks—but it wasn't impervious.

And she had, with the three brain cells to her head, figured something out. She was watching the algae by its feet, the fragile fauna that hissed and curled up; but only parts of it. The thallus clinging to the streams of water survived.

The parts with water survived.

A genius my bear was. Fire could not beat water. A basic law of the universe.

And it just so happened that in the back of my Fungal Gardens, a rock pond stood, swarming with silverheads and jagged stalactites; her gaze flicked to it even as her siblings continued to fight their useless fight.

I waited with bated breath as she seemingly put together this impossible concept. Fire… water?

On the salamander marched, unceasing, the drive of the unbothered; and she plodded beside it, glaring at its form as it scorched its way over my Fungal Gardens. I bristled my unfortunately few points of mana in its direction, already regrowing the green algae and whitecap mushrooms so the ecosystem wouldn't suffer in its wake. The other bears seemed to realize she had a plan and pulled back, nursing injuries and bruised egos. Not content to let her take the glory, but it wasn't like they knew what to do. Their minds were only full of hunger and battle. Nothing more.

But it happened that, once it had marched its way to the back, something actually made it stop in the way three enormous cave bears hadn't—it turned its dull black eyes downward as water lapped at its clawless toes. Through sluggish determination, I watched it puzzle this new obstacle on its way towards the mana it so clearly desired.

And in that moment of waiting, the eldest bear threw herself forward, ignoring the squelch of cooking flesh, hooked her claws under its enormous tail, and hurled it forward.

WIth a low, warbling cry that sounded entirely alien, the salamander collapsed forward, its enormous bulk moved, and hit the water with a scream of mist. Steam exploded upward, drowning the Fungal Gardens, searing the bear's skin even as she stumbled back. Silverheads fled in mindless panic, their little paradise upended, as the corpse of a salamander sunk through their midst.

The corpse. Because the mere second it had touched water, the cold had raced through its system, blood solidifying, and it had died.

A little worrying.

But I had more important things to worry about, such as dissolving its body and immediately consuming its schema. I did so with gusto.

Magma Salamander (Rare)

A beast of fire and flame, it lives deep in the only caverns that will survive it. It ever-hunts for volcanic salvation, where it can submerge itself in true molten stone—none have ever emerged unchanged from this. It is not known what happens, only that something does.

Huh.

Well, I could certainly expect they wouldn't be able to find their way to a volcano any time soon, given how slow the thing had moved, but that was still an interesting question. Would they… die upon encountering a volcano? That didn't make any sense why they would seek it out, and laying eggs didn't make sense either if the young would be born there and could immediately throw themselves back in.

Fascinating. For all I was pissed about everything and anything involving my death, it was interesting to see so much more of the world—as a sea-drake, I had never encountered anything like this creature, and now I had questions and mysteries abound. Sometimes I wondered if my new hoard was information, rather than creatures.

But either way, the schema flooded through me, deep and endless. It was a stationary thing, laying content in pools of melted stone its own body heat generated, waiting until it was strong and old enough to go off in hunt for a volcano. Even it didnt know what would happen when it got to one, only that it had to. Which.

A bit less interesting, if this schema was saying they would only ever leave my halls once they got strong enough, but I could make it work.

I pushed soothing mana over the bear, her ivory claws solidifying and her missing fur reblooming over her body. She made a disgruntled huff, some bellows-deep rumble in her chest, and plodded back to her den. Full of mana, though. Her evolution wasn't near, but it was getting closer. Lovely.

I had more important things, though. My consciousness dove back to my seventh floor, to the basalt and the pillars; I had finished the room itself, although only seven furrows were lit with coal-fed fire.

And right in the back, far from the wary, skittering herd of bounding deer, I sunk my awareness into a separate furrow. One shallower than the others, with no fire around it, content in the darkness. My first target.

I grasped for the schema deep within my core and got to sculpting.

It took seventeen—seventeen—points, but eventually the mana coalesced, a burning light in the darkness of the floor, and with a low, warbling cry, a magma salamander poured forth.

The one shaped from my mana was smaller, only three, four feet long, still with the deep orange skin and cragged bits of stone forming around its underside, blinking dull black eyes at its surroundings. Now that I could connect with their heads, I could see that my previous prediction was far too generous. Its—her—thoughts were impossibly slow and vacant, mostly concerned with what was directly before her toothless maw. No food? No threat? No thoughts.

An utter genius. Lovely.

But she did eventually peer around and see the furrow before her, that depression deep in the basalt pillars; she dragged herself forward, sluggish tail carving lines through the stone, and sank into the middle.

All around her, the stone began to melt, little droplets trickling downward. I watched overhead, growing outcroppings of basalt for her to melt. It would take time for her to grow herself a proper pool of lava, but soon she would be an ambush predator, sitting in the depths of her pond and waiting for any movement overhead.

Something to perfectly match my floor.

Already my mind started to race, imagining the floor filled with all these beautiful creatures, but then my points of awareness turned back to the fire already there.

Well. In the, perhaps, two days I'd had it, I had grown rather fond of the coal fires. They belched thick black smoke constantly, something deep and choking, and for all the magma was the greater threat, I saw no harm in keeping a few furrows fed by coal. It would keep things from being too predictable, and keep the air blackened with soot and ash. All the more reason to make this floor a living nightmare.

But everything else, all the furrows I hadn't yet filled with coal, would become homes to this lovely new creature.

…and to provide a more lasting defense, just in case a water mage managed to make it through the floor. I was a touch leery of how easily even the rock pond had defeated one of them. That was not a weakness I was over-fond of.

Still mostly salamanders, though. The aesthetics of lava pools with beasts hungering below was not something I would willingly give up.

But, well.

A new invasion would be coming soon, endless as the tide, but there were points of mana still in my core and I wanted to taste the potential; so I reached up and bored my way through rock once more, carving deep and endless through the stone. Basalt-limestone-granite melted away beneath my furrowed claws, my intangible hunger as I shaped a tunnel to wrap around the Hungering Reef and emerge in the far back of the Skylands.

Immediately, every creature raised their head, sensing the new call—my core had not yet dropped to the flower floor, so the pull of mana wasn't from there yet, but still the change was noticeable. I nudged Seros awake, his sleepy thoughts echoing through our connection, but for my other points of awareness, I darted through the Skylands and started to sing.

Come, I called, open and yearning, the siren's simpering words of promise and pleasure. This land is not for you. Come to where you will belong.

As one, the pack of scorch hounds raised their weary heads, charcoal horns angled back and ember-eyes narrowed. Mottled scorpions whose carapaces did not blend in with the grey limestone clicked their pincers together, stings flicking. The beast-tamer kobold tilted his head to the side, tail lashing, claws curling together.

Below them, the Magelords noticed it, Akkyst rearing onto his back paws with a mountain-deep rumble, but this call wasn't for them. This was their home, or it would be—but there were other creatures that had long-deserved the comfort of a paradise.

Or, well.

Something for them. I wasn't sure I could ever call the seventh floor a paradise.

But it was theirs.

And with the cautious trust I tended to warrant from my creatures, they came; in great, loping strides, or the scuttling of many legs, or the wary trot with spear raised, the survivors came to the tunnel. Down to the depths, to the shadows beneath; they traveled as quickly as they could, already their excitement rising as they felt the temperature increased, the mana hanging heavy around them.

And, when they finally emerged into the seventh floor, I could have purred.

Immediately I felt them sink into this place, truly become it in a way they simply hadn't for the Skylands; the scorch hounds' eyes lit up, the ember of their internal power now fed by a greater force, until the tips of their auburn fur seemed to glow and their horns trailed smoke from the tips. The blotched carapace of the scorpions all but disappeared in the smoke-choked sky, impossible to detect, only the flash of their stingers visible. Even the kobold exhaled a breath he didn't appear to know he had been holding, his unfortunately scarlet scales reflecting the distant fires.

They looked at home.

And, in the far distance, bounding deer raced over plains unforgiving and magma salamanders rooted deeper into growing pools of lava. Now scorch hounds in one pack I was soon to be expanding into territorial groups, darted forward with high, piercing yips and the delirious joy of finding a home; mottled scorpions slunk off to overhangs and underlays to make their nests; the beast-tamer kobold grabbed his spear and made to find the scorch hound he had been working so hard to befriend.

It wasn't perfect, not yet. There was a long way to go before it was close to getting claimed.

But oh, was it beautiful.