"Zack!?" Archie coughed, running up to the dungeon. The smoke billowing out of the front entrance was thick and black, choking the air around him and obscuring his vision.

The moment he passed into Zack's influence, he could feel something was wrong. There were holes in the mana that were slowly refilling, but it felt like the flames were burning away at the very magic itself. As it was, the fire was so thick he couldn't push his way into the building, not without risking serious injury.

"Archie!" Alex called out, running up beside him. "Dude, stay back!"

Archie felt a hand fall on his shoulder and promptly yanked away from it. "Alex, you're a pyromancer. You can control fire. Do something!" His pleas were desperate, his worry mounting. He couldn't hear Zack's voice. If the core was alive, he wasn't answering.

Alex furrowed his brow and looked at the flames, his hands flexing open and closed. "I just make fire, I'm not sure I…" He paused and cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. "Hold the phone…"

Archie watched as Alex slowly walked up to the burning dungeon, the neck of his shirt pulled over his nose to protect him from the smoke. He held out a hand to the raging inferno and, with a gasp, sucked flames into his hand. The sudden influx of fire was enough to make both him and Archie recoil in surprise.

"What on Earth?" Archie asked.

"It's not fire, it's fire-aspected mana," Alex explained quickly. "Oh this is going to suck."

"What?"

Alex lifted his hand to the sky, palm-up, and a pillar of fire errupted into the air. Archie watched as he sustained that flow for a long moment, the blue mana bar on the back of Alex's hand quickly depleting. Once it was empty, he once more held his hand out to the burning dungeon and started absorbing the loose flames.

"I'll clear the fire," Alex said, glancing over his shoulder at Archie. With one hand absorbing the errant mana, he raised the other to the sky and started burning the excess into aether. "Go make sure everyone's okay."

Archie nodded briskly and waited until the front entrance was clear of flames before diving through. The knowledge they were dealing with mana and not real fire did nothing to help against the blistering heat.

When mana was aspected towards an element, it started to take on qualities of that aspect. Even though it was just mana, that didn't make it any less dangerous or hot. Like Alex, Archie pulled the hem of his shirt up to cover his nose, thankful to still be wearing the t-shirt from earlier. The heat stung his eyes, and he desperately wished he wasn't covered in flammable fur so he could sweat.

"Zack!?" He called again, diving through the singed lobby. The formerly clean tiles and walls were signed black, and a few stray flames were licking at the ruined remains of the front desk and benches. "Zack, are you in here?"

Again, no response. Archie swore under his breath and tried to look for a path deeper into the dungeon. He spotted the burning carcass of an enormous spider, and shuddered as he realized that Zack must have unleashed the warren. Only Chorus could be so large. Clearly, whatever was dangerous enough to cause such a blaze would warrant that level of defense.

He pushed deeper, barely waiting for Alex to pull out more of the boiling mana. As the fiery magic subsided, the air quickly began to cool. Archie gasped as he felt Zack's influence pour back into the vacated space, as though the fire was holding it back and preventing it from fully healing.

"Another dungeon's influence? But how is that possible?" Archie muttered. "Zack? Can you hear me?"

"Archie…?" Came the quiet reply a moment later.

"Thank heavens, I was worried," Archie breathed a sigh of relief, and quickly started gasping as the smokey air tried to fill his chest in its stead. "When I couldn't hear you, I…"

"I'm okay," Zack said, but the tone implied anything but.

"You're on fire," Archie reminded him, pushing deeper as Alex cleared more flames out of the way.

"No I'm not," Zack insisted. The burning desk promptly vanished and was replaced by a new one. The benches, in turn, were absorbed and replaced. "It's just a flesh wound."

Archie frowned. He could sense the implied levity in the words, but the tone was anything but. He could practically feel the mask his dungeon was trying to wear, to hide something much deeper. "Zack, you do not have flesh to wound. You are on fire."

"I'm fine, honest." The lie was so obvious that not even he believed it. Zack let out a mental sigh, and Archie could feel him thinking about how desperately he missed Jean-Claude.

"What happened?" Archie asked. Alex ran up beside him and started clearing away the blaze in the middle of the room, allowing Zack's influence to creep back in.

As more and more fire mana was purged, Archie finally got a good look at the room. The prize counter was completely destroyed, with nothing more than a puddle of melted glass in burning coals to note where it had been. The manor and meadow were both sealed shut with large doors, black with char, in an attempt to spare the creatures within from the inferno. The spider warren was afforded no such grace, and its entrance yawned like a towering maw.

The tile floor was melted and blackened, and there were more spider carcasses littering the ground. Worse, there was a pile of ashes and melted plastic atop the prize counter ruins—Archie didn't need to hear Zack say it to know those were the remains of Bob and Jean-Claude.

Alex quietly got to work slurping up the remaining mana lingering in the room. Burning threads of magic flowing through his arms and into his body. Temperature quickly normalized, and Zack's influence felt like it was able to breathe again.

"What happened?" Archie asked again, gentler this time. He could feel the relief leaking out of his dungeon, but there was something else there. He could sense the way Zack was guarding his emotions, being incredibly careful of what he did or didn't let through.

That was when he spotted Zack's disembodied awareness. There was no wisp to guide him, but then again Archie had never needed one in order to see or communicate with his dungeon. Zack was hovering above the ground in the middle of the room, above what Archie had at first assumed was just a coal.

As he examined it closer, though, he caught the glimmer of something more.

Crystal.

"Oh no," Archie breathed, running over to the shattered crystal. With surprising care and reverence, he brushed the soot off its surface, revealing shards of dull orange stone. They didn't shine with magic, and Archie couldn't help but feel relief upon realizing that this wasn't Zack's core.

"Is that what I think it is?" Alex asked, finally finished clearing the blaze. He ran up behind Archie and glanced over the rabbit's shoulder to peer at the remains.

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"Her name was Ember," Zack muttered sadly, spinning up a small green wisp so Alex could hear him.

"She was a core," Archie confirmed. "I can… I can feel the residual magic in these stones. She was a lesser core, but a core nonetheless."

Alex stared at the hovering wisp, his lips pursed as though he were trying to find the right words to speak. After a moment's hesitation, he shook his head and muttered his condolences to Zack.

"There are so few of us," Zack whispered, the words sounding hoarse and forced as they came from his wisp. "Cores are meant to balance the flow of magic in the world. We take in aether and convert it back into clean, usable mana. I watched as a man named Edward Fenton shoved more aether into Ember than her core could handle. She ruptured, violently, as she desperately tried to dump it all. I couldn't save her."

Archie hung his head in dismay. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"Sorry won't bring her back," Zack whispered. The sorrow was giving way to anger now. Archie could feel the bubbling fury building inside the dungeon, the righteous anger at seeing his own kind weaponized and killed in such a horrible fashion. "If this is what people think of cores, then maybe I was wrong to take it easy on them…"

"Zack!" Alex's eyes bugged, and he took a step back in horror.

"What?" Zack snapped. "Look at her, Alex! I had to split her in two before she exploded! That was the only thing I could do to spare her the pain she was going through, pain an empowered human put her through!"

"Zack, I'm pretty sure he didn't know she was alive," Archie noted.

"And that makes what he did okay!?"

"No, but you're not thinking straight. You're grieving," Archie said, keeping his voice calm. "You need to calm down."

"Calm? How can you ask me to be calm!? While you were off playing human, I was under attack from a human who knew how to hurt me!" Zack raised his voice, the anger pushing aside his sorrow. "He fed her magic until her influence was a raging inferno that shoved my own aside! He burned holes into my territory, slaughtered my mobs, and then left her to die once it was clear he couldn't fight me back."

"Zack, there's no way Archie could have stopped this," Alex said, rushing to the rabbit's defense. "He's just a mob, and in case you haven't noticed, none of your mobs survived this."

Archie could feel Zack's gaze sweep out across the room, pausing only when he noticed the ashes and slag that had once been Jean-Claude and Bob. Again, anger was pushed aside by grief. Slowly, he respawned the mobs. Jean-Claude blinked his yellow eyes in surprise as he popped back into being, and Bob hugged him in relief.

Piece by piece, Zack started absorbing the burnt remains of spiders and structures littered about the room. As he did, the lingering heat and smoke subsided, leaving cleaner air behind.

"I'm sorry," Zack muttered, his voice hoarse. "I'm just so angry. I've never been this mad before, and I don't know how to handle it."

"It's okay. I'm sorry, too. We should have been here. It was foolish to leave you undefended in the wake of someone like Snow," Archie said, shaking his head.

"Are we even sure this Edward Fenton guy was working for Snow?" Alex asked.

"He has to be, or at least one of the other Archmages," Zack confirmed. "He had a core and knew how to abuse it. From what we understand, only Archmages and their pupils should have that information. They're the ones who rounded up the cores and experimented with them."

"What should we do with her? Bury her?" Archie asked, holding the shattered remains of Ember gently, with reverence afforded the dead.

Zack's wisp hovered quietly in the air for a few seconds, as he contemplated his decision. "I want to absorb her," he finally said. "It feels like the right thing to do. Burying her just means someone else might come around and find her again and abuse her shards. This way, I'm paying her the highest respect I can as a fellow core."

Archie nodded in understanding, holding the shards out for the wisp to take. Piece by piece, the shattered core turned to dust in his hands and vanished into thin air. When the final piece was absorbed, Zack let out a sharp gasp.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Alex demanded.

Archie didn't need Zack to say it to see what had happened. He felt it the moment something changed, and when Zack pulled up his status window, it appeared before Archie too.

[Status]

[Name: Zack]

[Core type: Dungeon]

[Level: 15]

[Integrity: 112%]

[Mana: 115/105]

[Upkeep requirements]

[Influence: 75 mana per hour]

[Monsters: 8 mana per hour]

[Advanced Spawners: 25 mana per hour

[Aether intake]

[Influence: 70 aether per hour]

[Ambient: 65 aether per hour (+45 aether per hour from harvesters)]

[Recovery: 15 per hour]

[Warning: Maximum Aether intake exceeds upkeep requirements. Risk of mana overflow increased.]

[You have attempted to integrate a minor core—type: Forge core—into yourself]

[Core integration successful.]

[New Perk Unlocked: Forge Heart]

[You have gained the abilities associated with Forge cores.]

[You can now create advanced item patterns. Advanced item patterns posess innate qualities otherwise unavailable to them.]

[You can now enchant items. Enchantments require an investment of mana to bestow new magical abilities.]

[You have learned all patterns known to the absorbed Forge core.]

Archie balked. "I was not aware the system encouraged core cannibalism," he muttered.

"I didn't, either," Zack admitted. He quietly perused the window himself a couple more times. "I feel… dirty."

Archie quickly explained what had happened to Alex, who looked equally disturbed by the information.

"I didn't know that was going to happen!" Zack blurted. "I just wanted to pay my respects the only way I knew how. I didn't… I didn't mean to eat her!"

"Zack, hey, calm down, it's okay," Alex said quickly, looking for all the world like he might reach out and put a hand on Zack's shoulder. Then, he remembered Zack didn't have shoulders, and he was left standing with one arm half-raised before he awkwardly lowered it.

"No, it's not okay! God, I'm just as bad as Snow," Zack lamented.

"No, you're not," Archie insisted. "You are nothing like that man. She was already dead, Zack."

"But—"

"But nothing. She was dead, and you paid your respect the only way you knew how: you absorbed her and integrated her powers into your own. Is that not the highest respect a core could give its fellow? In a way, does she not live on through you?" Archie said, standing up straight, with his shoulders back.

Zack hovered silently in place for a moment, before bobbing in agreement. "Y-yeah, you're right. All her powers and patterns are mine now. That really is the highest honour I can give another of my kind."

"Although, the implication behind that is a little scary," Archie muttered, scratching his chin. "The status page said that you successfully integrated her functions, but does that mean there is a chance for integration to fail? And does that mean another core might try to integrate you if they find you?"

Alex paled as Archie speculated, but Zack's quick words put him at ease. "I don't think it's that simple. I couldn't touch her unless I shoved my way through her influence—which was incredibly difficult considering how overwhelmed with mana she was. Even then, I didn't try to absorb her until just now, when she was already dead. Likely, absorbing live cores isn't possible. This feels less like a way to cheat advancement and more like a way to ensure the mana and information stored in dead cores isn't lost forever."

"Cheat advancement?" Alex asked.

"I gained levels from absorbing her, and overhealed my integrity too," Zack said, without a hint of excitement. "That's not how I would have liked to recover, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers."

Alex crossed his arms and looked around the mess of a lobby. "Well, at least the worst of this night has come and gone. We should probably clean up before we open for tomorrow."

"No kidding. At least the spider warren is dealt with," Zack sighed. "I'll get to work repopulating it—and reprogramming the spiders to keep them from breeding again. Archie, Alex, can you get to work cleaning up in here?"

Before anyone could ask how he intended for them to do that, a pair of metal brooms appeared in the air before them. Archie caught his deftly and twirled it like a staff, while Alex leapt back to dodge his.

"Since when did you have brooms?" Alex demanded, scooping the tool off the floor and holding it in both hands.

"It's one of the patterns I got from Ember. She has a surprising amount of cleaning tools, which is a little weird for a fire-aspected core. I think they were testing her capabilities with safe items rather than weapons," Zack explained. "Anyway, now you guys dont have an excuse to avoid cleaning up the dungeon! Chop chop, this ash won't sweep itself."

"Can't you just absorb it?" Alex complained, as Archie got to work sweeping nearby ash into a neat pile.

"Yeah, but there's a lot of it. It's going to take me a bit to cycle through my mana to make sure I can absorb it all safely," Zack reminded them. "Unless you want me to explode like Ember…?"

Alex paled again, and got to sweeping.