All life comes from mana. No matter how lopsided or skewed the mana of a living creature, no creature exists without the six basic elements - earth, air, water, fire, light, and darkness.  ~Archmage Ged

Rain on the battlefield woke me from dreams afloat on the screams of dying men. I felt it falling on my crystal skin. I had memories of having arms and legs, but I could feel that I was only ever this, a crystal. Oddly enough, I could see myself as well as my surroundings in a small sphere of about 6 ". Odd simply because I remembered seeing differently in a hundred shadowed memories.

It was dark, but I could see clearly within my tiny scope. I was a faceted crystal, about the size of a robin's egg of a nearly opaque deep red, to all appearance black except as the crack of lightning shone brightly enough to push light through me. I radiated mana and a glow not of light but of shadow.

My first emotion, the first one that truly belonged to me, was terror. Above me was a seemingly endless expanse with rain falling into my sight briefly before it touched the ground. Loosely clasped around me was the hand of a dead man, his arm disappearing into the unknown. It was just enough to remind me of my dreams of death.

I didn't want to die. Instinctively, I feared this wide open space and the limb of this dead man, so instead of staying where i lay, I grasped about me with my power and began to devour the rock around me.

 New Materials Gained - Dirt, Rock, Flesh, Bone

The Voice of the World rang out in my mind as a message in my vision, telling me of my achievements, but I was too concerned with digging down away from the horrible space and the memories of brutal death to pay it much heed. I dug downward and angled my path slightly, cutting off the droplets of rain and the awful, empty sky. I felt a strange sensation, as though I were becoming thin and transparent. The earth became heavy and my pace slowed, until finally, even consciousness was too much effort.

*   *   *   *   *

I awoke to the safe embrace of dirt and stone comfortingly surrounding me on three sides. My short tunnel angled sharply up and the movement of the air hinted at the shallowness of my refuge. At merely a foot in diameter, it could be mistaken for a rabbit burrow or an empty fencepost hole.

The remembered terror came back, but without the bite and panic. I feared the surface and the death that was there, so I continued to devour, digging downward further. My memory became a patchwork of consciousness and oblivion. When I was awake, I dug deeper into the earth. When I was tired I slept. Each time I awoke, I felt stronger and could devour the stone and dirt longer.

As I dug down, the air felt thicker, until I could almost imagine the walls of my crystal creaking with the effort to breath. That's when I realized I could breath, and when I realized that I couldn't dig down any deeper. Here I stand, so to speak, although I was simply lying on the dirt at the bottom of my long sloped tunnel.

I felt my mind clear, as though from an adrenaline high, and for the first time, I felt a sense of calm and security. The surface was distant, from my perspective, perhaps a dozen of feet away up a sharply sloped tunnel. I had grown in size. Now I was a 3 inch orb and my senses extended nearly three feet in every direction. My unfocused devouring had left me at the base of a 6 foot diameter room of plain dirt, really just the widest end of a tunnel which stretched beyond my sight up to the surface.

I finally took a step back from my frantic efforts to consider some important questions. What am I? I had vague memories of past events, mostly painful death in a myriad of fashions. I could remember dying from an arrow to the throat, a sword through the gut, bleeding out from a crushed leg, being impaled and lifted up by a spear, and on and on. I could feel the memories fade in with pain and terror and awful epiphany that this was the moment of death and trickle off in the final black abyss of death. I felt instinctively that there must be more memories than these. Something that came before, even if there was nothing to come after.

Out of hundreds of deaths, there were a few shining exceptions and I found myself wishing to be an exception. I wanted to rise above the common and mediocre. These few exceptions were those who cast their final thoughts to the welfare of others. There were perhaps half a dozen of those who died who did it for the men standing next to them. Some of them went to their deaths so that someone else would not have to die. One dead man had hoped for... something more to come from his and others deaths. The concepts were beyond my feeble understanding.

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It was clear to me that I was not, and never had been, one of these men who died.

The powerful memories had tired me and my mind retreated into unconsciousness. I slept.

*   *   *   *   *

Congratulations! You have built the first room of your Dungeon!

I awoke to a message from the Voice of the World. Some of the memories I had referenced it, so I knew what it was. The Voice of the World was with every living creature. It seemed to track all my progress. Perhaps it could answer my question. I directed my thoughts toward it.

What am I?

Race: Dungeon Core

Name: None

Mana: 36/36

Health: 24/24

Influence: .3

Intelligence: 11

Creatures: 0

Rooms: 1

Materials: 4

Blueprints: 0

So I was a dungeon core. It felt right.

I reached out with my senses and viewed my little room and was staggered at my range of vision. My sight stretched a few inches into the walls of the small room I was in. More excitingly, I could see the long and increasingly narrow corridor that led up to the surface and even a foot beyond it. My mana faded out into the world like the steady breath of a living creature and I felt a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction as I identified myself as alive. My body was this cave. My crystal core was my heart. My mana was my blood and breath. I slept and I ate like any living creature. It was an epiphany.

For a few breaths, I savored the moment, and then the tunnel leading to my heart caught my attention.  It started one foot wide and gradually widened until it reached this room. It was mishapen, not evenly sloped, and just ugly. Without considering it, I reached out and devoured more of the dirt at the entrance. The first inches came away easily, as it was permeated by my mana. The next few inches were stubborn and tough to eat, but I persevered.

As I opened up the entrance wider, it felt like I could suddenly breath easier. The ground where I lay no longer seemed as stifling. It was like opening a window on a hot day. I was just feeling tired, when the picked over corpse of the dead man above shifted into my view. I had a sudden flashback to his particular death, bludgeoned to death by a cavalry charge, and my blood ran cold.

The air above my core misted with sudden condensation as I realized that I could still die. A dozen feet of distance was not safety. I suddenly longed to stop up my mouth and hold my breath forever, but the mere thought made me feel like drowning. Mist began to form at the mouth of my dungeon and flow downward to the call of gravity.

Suddenly, a black shape hopped into view. I recognized it as a crow. They had been waiting above the battlefield and many of those dying had looked up to see them flying by. I froze. The mist in my dungeon only grew deeper over my core as I held my breath, leaving the air still and chill.

The crow, fat with carrion, curiously cocked its head and eyed the dark hole. It could see me, I realized. The slope of my tunnel ran more or less straight from where I lay up the incine to the cave mouth. At the bottom, my darkly glowing core was plain to see. The crow began to hop down the tunnel with careful bounding steps. It was probably a foot tall with sleek black feathers, darkened around its head from recent feeding. Although it was hardly a mighty warrior, it could certainly kill me as I lay helpless like a babe.

Go away! I thought at it.

I felt a vague sensation of curiousity in its tiny bird brain and it instead hopped down the tunnel more quickly, using its wings to correct its balance when the ground hidden beneath the mist was too uneven.

Go away! Shoo! I mentally shouted. Of course, I couldn't make a sound. I suddenly longed for arms and legs, like the memories of men I held. Stop! You don't belong here!

None of my efforts seem to net anything but greater interest from the bird. It reached the bottom of the tunnel and began to pick its way through the mist. My desperation continued to grow. I summoned all my energy and took a deep breath. The mist in the cave rose in a column as I engulfed the bird in all the mana I had at my disposal. I felt the energy of the bird, its mana dark green, repulsing my own. My will caused our energies to collide. Like acid, the crow's mana burned away at my blackish red mana, but as it did, the bird's mana grew fainter.

The crow began to struggle now. It was wrapped in frigid mist so thick it couldn't see out and only the tips of its wings showed as it twisted about running into a wall as it flailed.  I felt my consciousness slipping as I poured everything I had into it. The crow's mana dimmed and my own mana flooded it system.

GET OUT!

Like a spent match, my consciousness guttered and slipped into oblivion, but not before I saw the crow winging its way out of my tunnel.