Gonçal, the primeval bastard who had been the first to not receive the death he deserved, swam into my halls.

I coiled up like a sea-drake, but instead of lashing out with fangs and claws and fury, I held myself. My mana, weaving throughout the Underlake, frozen partially through my repurposing of the sandy floor; Mayalle's presence, her whirlpool tugging Gonçal further in.

Time to behave much like my shadowthief rats in the Fungal Gardens. Assess.

Gonçal was here—and I knew he would be, because he had promised it, though some part of me was vaguely impressed he had actually returned instead of sprinting with all hells to any other kingdom. Whatever tether kept him to Calarata, that desire for denouncing his master's previous position, was stronger than I had given it credit for. Curious.

A simple progression wandered over my awareness. Attack him—no. Trap him—perhaps, but later, given we needed to talk first, which meant I needed him in a position to breathe. He'd come in through the cove entrance, likely to get around the Adventuring Guild noticing him—but I also couldn't ignore that he was showing up less than a day after the twelve person party that had nearly broken me. Coincidence? Something worse?

He wasn't Shoth, presumably. But I also would not be allowing him lower than the Underlake. If he tried to go further, damn our parlay, he was dead.

I reached out my mana, dulling the claws down to tugging currents; the opposite of subtle was I and Gonçal felt my interference immediately, bronze scales gleaming like sea-cliffs. Stiff as a corpse, that one. Half a wonder I hadn't managed to kill him on the first go.

But instead, I flattened out the swirling currents enough to drag him upright, avoiding the half-transformed I'd been in the midst of tearing up to avoid this exact situation. Gonçal caught on quickly enough, kicking hard as the silvertooth swarm began to spiral around the corners of the Underlake, a gleaming, rippling cloud of fangs. They stayed away, held by my glared command to the royal silvertooth, but their presence was felt. As they damn well should be.

Gonçal flared out his arms, light sparking through his slitted eyes—he breached the surface with a ragged gasp, peppering the air with spilled-over mana. My presence thickened like salt-heavy water around him, making sure he knew just how ticked I was about his general existence, and then I hauled his attention to the far back.

It wouldn't work in every other situation, but Gonçal was being remarkably open to my mana. Most of the time I'd bounce right off, because humans were tetchy about foreign mana blundering about in their channels—for good reason, as I'd use it to shred them from the inside out if they let me—but he was actively allowing me in. Curious, both that he was and that he knew to do it.

…he'd been sent to make an alliance with me by Ealdhere, the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild. That implied a sense of understanding my sapience, knowing I was a thing that could be allied with, but knowing how I communicated was more than that. It was treading the line of knowing what I was.

Not acceptable. I didn't want anyone to know anything except my brilliance.

I batted away a peckish roughwater shark, shoving her back to sulk by easier prey, and impressed on Gonçal the importance of haste. His arms and legs twisted as he cleaved through the water, in what surely would have been impressive to humans but was only inelegant to a sea-born—far below, the armoured jawfish tensed, scarlet eyes redoubling with an internal fire. But he didn't try to attack, curiously enough. His thoughts echoed with a strange sort of remembrance.

But then Gonçal clawed his last way forward, his shadow followed by a hundred vicious creatures, and hauled himself onto the stone.

Boiled leather armour hanging heavy in sodden folds, long hair dripping over his face, he shouldn't have looked intimidating, but he managed it—something with the mana he wore like a challenge and the burnished ancestry crawling beneath his eyes. He had survived the night of death not by pushing forward, but by retreating; something very few of all the invaders I'd ever had could say. That already made him more intelligent than I necessarily wanted to deal with.

But for all the word alliance was too strong, I could see the potential in working with him and the Scholar. Two who, from my bare gleams of their intentions, had no outright connection to the Dread Pirate, which was excellent, because right underneath my desire for survival was my desire to murder that man into the worlds beyond. It'd been quite some time since I'd made any progress on that front; and as soon as I finished protecting myself, I'd make strides. Gonçal could aid in that.

"I apologize for the unannounced entrance," Gonçal said, shaking out more locks of waterlogged hair. "But I believed it was best if the Adventuring Guild did not learn of this."

Interesting. Wasn't he allied with Ealdhere? Or did he think the Guildmaster Lluc—and, by extension, the Dread Pirate—shouldn't know?

"I bring word from the Filla de Orgull," Gonçal said, with this stoic professionalism that would likely have made every buyer pull out their gold for the sale if not for how I could see his mana twitching through his channels, a ruby-red anxiety that his face never showed. Gathered around his eyes, oddly enough; I didn't know his attunement, but with how he had handled himself in my dungeon, I would have thought it was something of strength or agility. Was his power only from his ancestry?

Perhaps there was a reason he had been enslaved.

And the Filla de Orgull—the Marquesa de Wolf—was a character I didn't know but wanted to. She'd made an alliance with Nicau when she thought he was the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild, had arranged for Gonçal to guide him, and kept brushing her tail against my territory without fully breaching.

The silence stretched as I thought. Gonçal coughed roughly into the palm of his hand and continued shaking water out of his hair.

Right. He wanted a response.

Which was a problem in its own right, unfortunately. Because like fucking hells was I talking directly to Gonçal—I knew myself, and I knew my budding grasp on Viejabran, and I knew that if I tried to talk to him directly, I'd end up with a garbled mess of sounds and thoughts and complete illegibility. As much as I had to feed him the answers, Nicau was better at this than me.

Gods, had I really just said that? I was going to kill something to forget it.

And I didn't want to talk to him, not after he'd opened his mana to me; for all both of us knew I could kill him, in the past I hadn't, and that could have filled him with an undue sense of confidence. He could try to scrape something from my mind in return, and though I didn't know if that was even possible as a dungeon core, I wasn't willing to risk it.

Which meant I had to go find someone else to do the talking.

Shit.

Gonçal shifted weight between his feet, mana prickling through his channels. "Is Romei not here?" He asked, hesitant but not willing to show it outright.

Romei? Right, Nicau—from a pigeoncatcher to someone juggling half a dozen false names, each more separate than the last. This one, at least, I knew; the name of the first human I'd ever killed.

…and Nicau had known her. How long had we been tied? How much fate had been written out so that he would end up sworn to me?

I shook out my bristled mana, smoothing it down to apathetic currents once more. Again, I was trying to keep Gonçal from learning my inner workings. Not quite the time to wax philosophy on the influence of mortals to Aiqith herself.

Well, Gonçal had felt just how much I'd been holding the Underlake back when he'd gone swimming, and I could probably trust him not to dive back in if I left him without an answer for a moment. I peppered the tunnel with points of awareness, enough to watch the thump of his heart through his armour, and dove down.

An option was the parrot, with that mysterious ember in her chest, the intelligence she showed; it would likely work, but I didn't particularly want it. I didn't know what was up with her, with her history, her anything, and I rather doubted I would keep the fear of evisceration if I shoved a half-baked speaker before Gonçal.

I'd call her up anyway, just in case. The parrot responded instantly, lovely creature she was—a piercing shriek, echoing over the rippling blue waters of the Hungering Reefs, and she took to wing, a gold-red flame darting through the floor.

A better choice—Bylk. For all he spoke a goblin tongue, he at least spoke; if I had to pry open his mouth and shape it into Viejabran myself, I would, but I'd get much further with him than, say, a burrowing rat that only knew how to squeak.

Moderate issue; he was evolving. And for some reason, I doubted I could simply pause his evolution for him to chat with a thief. But in terms of speaking creatures, I had another in the Skylands; my Named, who spoke and learned and listened.

Akkyst hesitated, given that he was apparently tremendously busy watching over the rickety old bastard, whose evolution was going smoothly and uninterrupted and would likely be complete in a day or two. And even if it wasn't, there was half the population of the Magelords waiting in anticipation. He'd be fine.

What was less fine was that I desperately needed someone to talk.

Please, I said, though it tasted like knives on the way out. I will watch over him. But I require a voice.

Akkyst sighed, air rumbling through his chest like an earthquake, but turned away from the runes carved over the sleeping form of his friend. Surprisingly morose about it all, despite his thoughts thrumming with excitement at speaking with someone new; was he that close with Bylk?

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As if to prove me right, Akkyst paused for a moment to carefully butt his nose against Bylk's shoulder, barely visible under the light, before padding his way out of the den and into the Skylands proper. I settled in with patience; he wasn't particularly fast.

Gonçal, for his part, hadn't taken the absence with grace; he kept shuffling and shifting, tapping claws over his leather and glancing back at the water like he was weighing whether to dive back in. If nothing else, he at least hadn't made a single move toward the tunnel further down; an adventurer, yes, but one that wanted to return to his Silent Market. More predictable. Less likely to dive all the way to the bottom without a plan for escape.

Though still an adventurer, considering how he tensed when Akkyst emerged from the shadows.

For his part, the starwrought bear looked around the Underlake, remaining eye wide. Fitting, really; it was entirely separate from the Skylands, a world apart, mist-tossed waters and hanging stalactites heavy with ore and potential. His fur burned with silver here, constantly reflecting off the quartz-lights and kicking up runes with every step of his enormous paws; a spectre apart, his presence felt all throughout. Gonçal looked like someone had pressed his feet to a bed of coals, mana crackling around his eyes. An analysis attunement, maybe?

Well. I poked back into Akkyst's mind. Do not reveal your abilities, I murmured, nor your Name.

Akkyst tilted his enormous head to the side, shaggy fur drifting off in motes of silver light. Hard to hide that, but as a whole he could be handwaved as a rare, unknown creature. I'd have to risk it.

If Gonçal even thought about telling Calarata of Akkyst, I'd split him throat to asshole, schemas be damned.

"What am I to say?" Akkyst asked, quiet for him, which was likely deafening in the enclosed stone quarters. A fair question, considering I'd be diving into his throat and twisting the sounds so they came out Viejabran instead, but–

And then Gonçal inclined his head, one fist tapping his collarbone in a bow that probably meant something to the terrestrial races. "Greetings," he said, in flawless goblin. "I am Gonçal of the Silent Market."

What.

Akkyst rumbled, low in his throat but not threatening, after he'd finished blinking in abject surprise. "I am Akkyst."

"Well met," Gonçal said. "Are you the liaison of the dungeon?"

That was a nice and proper way of keeping the conversation moving forward instead of lingering on how Gonçal apparently spoke… whatever the goblin language was called without issue. Hells, was that something to do with being a nightmarketer? Or did he just decide to learn it so he could thoroughly surprise all others whenever it came up?

Both were options. Both were terrible.

"Yes," Akkyst said, when I prompted him. "What news?"

"The Filla de Orgull kept her bargain, and showed me the location of another nightmarket in Calarata," Gonçal said, head still inclined. He had as pretty a tongue as last time, this time polished with expectation for what was occurring rather than delving with what he thought was a normal adventurer and finding himself instead speaking to the dungeon. "As befitting my station, they have been taken into the fold of the Silent Market, and I am here to offer you the finest selection of their spoils."

Out of the kindness of his heart, I'm sure. The imminent threat to his life had nothing to do with it.

For his part, Akkyst perked up, his singular ear flicking forward. My thoughts melded with his through our connection. "Show them," he said.

Gonçal reached to his side and clicked a buckle; there was a flash of protective mana, sparking out against his legs—potent stuff, it seemed, because everything he pulled out was perfectly dry despite how he could be wrung out to fill a lagoon.

And the things he pulled out were–

Well.

First was a heavy coil of horn, coiling in and black at the tip; bristle and cartilage still hung from the end, which prickled my relief and discomfort in even amounts—pleased that Gonçal had made sure to collect enough pieces of an animal for its schema, and worried that he knew to do so. But the horn itself was off-white ivory, not sharpened for combat but flat and broad to wrap around a head; defense, perhaps?

Gonçal set it delicately on the stone. Runes floated off Akkyst's fur by the hundreds.

Next he pulled out a roll of fur, pale grey with incomplete rosettes peppering up the sides. It shifted to follow gravity and two long ears poked from the top, complete with tufts of fur extending to the ceiling—just the fur, but Gonçal quickly pulled out a glass sphere and set it on top of the fur. From within, a yellow-gold eye blinked out from its preservation.

Last was the smallest, a wide tail made of creased leather, a hatch pattern throughout, extending to the dark grey fur and surprisingly hard bone protrusion from the tip, though it seemed entirely useless for defense or offense. It was large, the length of Gonçal's arm, and every point of awareness I had swarmed in as he set it down.

Sea-drake had I been, which made me quite familiar with the brisk, biting flavour of ice-attuned mana. All three of these creatures drowned in it, heavy and all-present. Arctic, perhaps, gathered from the same place.

None of these would be found around Calarata—hells, if nothing else, this was a ringing endorsement to Gonçal if he could keep bringing me exotic creatures like this. Calarata was a sub-tropical land, full of humid springs and blistering months, but never quite cold. I would have never gotten these in any situation other than Otherworld schemas.

But now I had them. And I could use them.

Pride, reflecting off Gonçal's mana like a magma vent. He knew those were good selections, damn him. He knew they were impressive.

And unfortunately, I couldn't tell Akkyst to stop being so excited, because my own excitability was still slithering through our connection and influencing him. I kept looking at them, imagining them, trying to figure out where they would go and what they would do–

But not while a human was still here.

They will suffice, I murmured. Now make him go.

Akkyst's thoughts twitched—he didn't particularly want Gonçal to leave, considering that was a wealth of information to be harvested—but for all I'd allow my Named to run rampaging over my halls, this was not it. I redoubled my thoughts.

"Now leave," Akkyst said, with a rumble that sounded aggressive until you spent longer than a day with the bear and knew it was annoyance.

Gonçal nodded, but didn't actually make the move to leave—mana prickled again over his skin, making his scales flash. "I thank you for your generosity," he said, and managed to make the lie sound nearly heartfelt. "What of our alliance?"

Ah. The alliance. The fanciful trade he'd struck with Ealdhere; not Lluc, not the Adventuring Guild, but instead them and me. And Gonçal thought he could dump three corpses in my halls and achieve that?

I hadn't killed him. Frankly, for stealing my stormcaller sprite, that should have been enough.

"You are alive," Akkyst said when prompted, though he seemed a touch put out by the phrasing. "And upon your return, you may bring the terms of your alliance."

A pause. Our connection rose to a fever pitch.

"And more schemas."

There. A perfect deal, honestly. He'd come back with a list of things for us to discuss, I would find some fault in them and send him back, and I'd play bait for as long as I needed until the terms of the alliance were well and truly in my favour, and I'd be well-fed with schemas at the same time.

And as much as Akkyst had a lovely commanding presence and talked with true eloquence instead of stumbling exhaustion, I would be using Nicau instead. There was no reason to put my unknown Named in the spotlight.

Gonçal bowed even lower this time, near folding himself in half. "Thank you, o' dungeon," he said, apparently copying Nicau's form of address. Uncreative in the extreme. "I will return as soon as I can."

Oh, he could wait. I was fine with that.

Then, when Akkyst didn't respond—because I was holding back his questions with the force of will to move mountains, there wasn't a chance I would be giving Gonçal anything to hold over me if he started trading information—Gonçal nodded again, straightened his shoulders, and dove back into the Underlake.

I shuffled half as many points of awareness as I'd had last time, just enough to make sure he survived on his way out and never so much as turned around, but I kept my consciousness on the corpses before me. A second waited just to make sure Gonçal was at least out of sight before I dove in, reaching out with great tendrils to break apart the corpses to devour what was within, Akkyst leaning in to watch, the Underlake awash with pale light–

…the silvered motes when I dissolved something looked eerily similar to Akkyst's runes, actually. Just what was his blessing?

He could figure that out. He was already well on his way, and I imagined Bylk's evolution would only speed things up. They'd get there.

For now, I had schemas.

I finished taking in all three corpses, going in their proper order; the horn came apart slowly, dense and rigid, the gristle splintering apart as I gnawed it down.

Lesser Muskox (Common)

Inhospitality is its comfort. It lives in tundras and glacier-torn lands, plodding along in herds that can thunder over their surroundings should a predator dare to face their number and size.

The impression floating over my core was that of not so much herds but hordes, traveling endless over the land to scrounge up scraps from an unforgiving existence; and these were only lesser muskoxen. Though it wasn't in the schema, I felt the presence of their proper form; a beast so unlike the prey it could be called.

The fur fell to me quickly, each strand long and built for the cold; I paused over the eye, staring down as it stared up. It had been plucked from the creature and expertly laid in glass, kept for some purpose. Alchemic reasons meant certain pieces were often more valuable than others, but I wondered why eyes, considering they didn't seem much larger than a human's and without any specific characteristics that I could see.

Piercing Lynx (Uncommon)

You do not need to see the glow of its eyes for it to see you. Silent of foot and quick of claw, it stalks through the world with nothing capable of blinding its sight.

Well. That was certainly a reason to keep the eye.

A stalking hunter, built with dense fur for cold conditions and the lithe build of an ambusher. Already I could see where they slot in the food chain, not the apex predator but the one taking throne in the middle, handling those scurrying underfoot too small for the dragon of the land to eat.

And, interestingly, my first concurrent evolution. While I had half a dozen spider species and more snakes than I could care to count, they had all come from cave spiders and luminous constrictors. But now, with the boundless jaguar and the piercing lynx, they came from separate lines despite being both felines. I wondered if that would do anything.

The tail was a surprising pain to dissolve, with the bone spur on the underside; I chewed through, silver motes flecking outward, until it came to me.

Snowscape Beaver (Rare)

Creator and carver alike; the world is its canvas, and its dream of chiseling masterpieces. Ice is nothing but its path forward to create enormous, sprawling homes for its equally large family.

That explained the bone spur, perhaps; it broke apart ice and snow then flattened it with the broad side of its tail, creating sculptures like mountain ranges throughout tundras to protect itself and finalize its territory. A creature I could deeply relate to.

My points of awareness came back to me as Gonçal successfully left my halls, dragging his way through Mayalle's whirlpool that I'd put a token effort into making it passable, though certainly not easy. I felt a brief spark of joy about that, but all my consciousness was stuck on the schemas, on the plans.

Still I had more floors to finish repurposing, preparing for the survival that had to come first, but I'd said I wanted to start making my ninth floor, just to give me more room from invaders—and now I had an idea.