POV: Fay
My world was taken from me. All that remained now were memories. Memories and me.
I still remember the day I left mother’s dungeon, she and Sandy had sent me off with their well wishes and a few options they had preselected for me. I remember that I was embarrassed that my mother couldn’t trust me to find a good dungeon for myself, it had been more than a little humiliating to be handed a list of what she considered “Suitable” partners.
I miss her now, miss her and Sandy’s constant nagging.
But most of all I miss Cal.
Cal had been nothing more than a little two room cave system when I found her, Her white core floating peacefully amongst the brown stone. She had been beautiful, from the moment I saw her core I knew that there could be no other. The two dungeons I had come to before had spoken to my instincts, but when I first saw Cal it had been more than that. Something just clicked and I could feel in my heart that this little dungeon was the one for me.
Our bond had went perfectly, I had just known deep inside what I was supposed to do. Mom had been right about that much, but she never told me how powerful the bond was. In one moment everything had changed, my priorities had shifted. I was living for more than myself, I had my important partner to consider now.
Full of euphoria and wonder I asked something to Cal, some question I couldn’t even remember now. She had growled at me.
I asked if she had a preferred name. She had hissed at me.
I had rambled on and on for hours about what our new life together would be like. She had huffed and spat.
I named her Callous, a fitting name for a former badger. It had taken her a month to warm up to me, and a whole year to learn to actually speak. Cal had been shy, and she would often say things she didn’t mean. Every time I used my magic and wove mana to show her the dungeon trait options she would be standoffish and refuse to pick anything, she had insisted she didn’t need any special gifts or miracles to protect us both.
For a time we were happy, Cal and I had worked at making the best dungeon we could. Cal had a gift with plants, so I would go out on occasion and bring back plants to sacrifice to her. I had also convinced Cal to pick out a starting monster, blessing, and law for the dungeon. Within two years we had two floors full of plant life and loyal goblins, our dungeon held the blessing of monster loyalty and the law of limited harvest.
It had been a great start, better than all the examples that I had heard about growing up. Cal and I had managed to avoid all the pitfalls and dangers a young dungeon would face early on in its development. We had even planed on coupling for the first time after making the next floor.
And then she had come.
That damn grey mage woman came and plowed through all of our defenses, she had marched right to the core room in under an hour. I looked on powerlessly as she tortured Cal with her strange magic, any possibility of aiding my partner taken from me as Cal blocked off our bond. By sparing me the pain, Cal had shouldered it all on her own. And then she gave in. I had been forced to watch helplessly as that damn woman broke my partner’s will right in front of me, I have imagined countless times what I would’ve done if I could access my mana then. It became my singular fantasy over the next decade.
After that day things changed, Cal’s confidence disappeared. My partner would behave like a beaten animal every time that woman came to our home, and all I could do was hide away when she told me. It broke my heart every time I saw Cal act that way, and it hurt even more when I realized she was still trying to protect me from the mage.
For years our dungeon was treated as a farm and training ground, to be harvested, beaten and raped in all new ways everyday by any the mage wanted. Cal was treated like a slave, no, worse than that... The damn mage treated the love of my life, my one and only life partner, as a tool, a fucking resource that she was entitled to abuse.
New sacrifices of rare plants and animals were forced on us, all so we could produce an endless supply for our captor. Mana was leached from us constantly, unnaturally feeding and growing our captor’s mana pool. Our creations were slaughtered or enslaved and taken from us every day, and our new floors were predesigned for us.
For ten years and four months Cal and I lived a hell that was unimaginable to me. And then it ended.
The mage wanted to watch us couple, something about researching dungeon fairy reproduction. Cal had refused.
After two weeks of near constant torture of Cal’s core and spirit, under which my love still refused to bend, the mage killed her. That damn grey mage just ripped Cal’s spirit right out of her core, then she had plunged a ghostly dagger into the badger spirit.
The pain of my bond with Cal shattering was indescribable, I felt it as she died. Felt it as her soul itself ceased to be and whatever remnants of energy that were my partner entered that bitch’s mana pool. I felt every moment of it, and I knew with crushing certainty that Cal was gone. That my love’s very being had ceased to be.
I had been empty, even my hate was gone. I simply wanted to stop, to cease to be. I wanted to die with my love, to go with her into whatever awaited after death.
But I couldn’t die. Fairies can’t kill themselves, and the mage kept me full of enough mana that I wouldn’t starve.
I existed in a cage. A literal gilded cage.
For three years, six months, two weeks, and five days I have been alone.
Then I felt something, a tickling of instinct that was oddly familiar. I looked up to find a black and silver orb that floated amongst grey stone. I felt the tingle of instincts grow stronger, a part of me whispered unthinkable things to my heart. My race existed alongside dungeons, we needed them even as dungeons have come to need us. Without a dungeon a dungeon fairy is nothing, a mere woman with wings. Without a fairy most dungeons were powerless, mere orbs floating in place. The same instincts that have been with my race since our first ancestors told me it was my duty to bind myself to the unbound dungeon core I saw.
I picked myself up from where I sat, took a few tentative steps on wobbly legs. Testing the wings I had not used in so long I fluttered into the air, as I came closer to the core I found myself almost reaching out subconsciously.
I stopped, my rising hand twitched and fell back to my side. I was disgusted with myself, disgusted at my moment of weakness. I was Cal’s fairy, the one given the name Fay. I refused to bind myself to another, refused to sully my love for Cal by casting her aside for someone new. It didn’t matter if Cal was gone, it didn’t matter if this new dungeon needed a fairy, it didn’t even matter that I could probably be happy again if I did this, I would never bind myself to another.
Dungeon Fairies mated for life, our bonds were made absolute after our first coupling with our partners. I had missed my chance to couple with my love, but I wouldn’t allow myself to cast her aside for some other dungeon. I knew what would happen if I took another bond, Cal would lose her place in my heart. Slowly I would fall out of love with her, and eventually I would wonder why she mattered to me at all. If I took this dungeon as a bond mate it would be the one to become my whole world, it would make my time with Cal become nothing more than a passing memory. And eventually even a regret.
I would never allow that to happen.
Even still, I couldn’t let this young dungeon remain powerless and at the mercy of the damn grey mage. It had to be terrified, unable to move or speak and unsure of what it was. It probably still thought it was the animal or monster that its spirit was in life, leaving it like this would be cruel.
Cal would want me to help, she would say that it would be part of my duty to help. That I should do what I can.
Trying to summon forth a smile I tried to remember one of the ways my mom told me to approach a young dungeon.
“Hello young one. I imagine that right now you’re fairly scared and confused…”
END POV
***
I looked at the fairy and tried to suppress my excitement, today had been busier than I had ever anticipated. I even had someone trying to talk to me right now, which honestly was a bit nerve wracking considering I couldn’t say anything back to them. Then there was the weird need to reach out to the fairy that was rising inside me, something that was clearly impossible given my lack of limbs.
“I’m going to try something that should help us both, so just relax…”
The fairy slowly and unsteadily flew closer until she was right in front of my orb. As she stared at me her face scrunched up in what looked like confusion.
“How do you already have elemental attributes without being bound? That shouldn’t be possible, unless… Oh, that BITCH! She did something to you didn’t she? Well, don’t worry, it doesn’t seem to have done any damage to your core. You also don’t seem to have any compulsions or false bonds on you, so that’s good…”
The fairy seemed to be muttering mostly to herself as she hovered in front of me, most of what she said I didn’t really understand…
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Well ok, I actually don’t really understand any of what she’s saying, but that bond thing…
Something about her talking about a bond or false bonds just seemed to resonate with me. Again I got that urge to reach out to the fairy, but again I had nothing to reach out with.
“Alright, let me see if I still remember how to do this…”
The fairy reached out her hand and touched my orb body, in a flash I felt a jolt run through me before something inside me rushed out towards the fairy. I felt strange, like my body was suddenly far too small for me. I practically felt like I was exploding, and then I felt resistance pushing back against me. It was like I had run full tilt into an iron wall, a fairly painful sensation all things considered. I knew I could pass the wall blocking my way, something growled inside me that I could break through the obstacle. That I had a RIGHT to break through.
I pushed. The wall was hard as iron, but my will was as strong as admantite. The wall would crumble to dust before it blocked my way. I could feel the wall blocking me beginning to give way, it was cracking and caving in on itself. It wouldn’t stand in my way much longer…
“No… Stop… Strong?! Cant… Sorry… Failed…”
“Cal…”
I felt surprize, sadness, regret, a budding reluctant acceptance, and an immeasurable sense of loss. But strangest of all I felt these emotions and knew that they weren’t actually my own, they belonged to someone else. With that realization I froze, my mind reeling. My advance out of my body stopped dead, then slowly pulled back.
I shook off all the feelings as I came back to my senses, I had practically lost myself in that fit of instinct. Looking at the fairy I felt strange, a part of me wanted to reach out to her again and another part of me felt sick at what I had just done. It was like I was overwriting her free will with my own, worse yet a part of me deep down enjoyed that fact. In a twisted way I liked knowing that I was stronger than the fairy, that if I ever wanted to I could dominate her with the sheer force of my will crushing her own. I sighed.
“Hah… Sorry, I’m not sure what came over me…”
The fairy’s expression froze in shock at the same moment I realized what happened. I had actually made noise, I had heard sounds that matched up with what I thought. At the same time I sighed with my nonexistent lungs I had heard a sighing noise, at the same time I tried to mentally project my apology a voice had spoken out my thoughts.
“Is that me? It is, isn’t it! Wait, I need to be sure… I’m an orb observing over obtuse objects, fixedly fascinated by a fantastic floating fairy… Hmm… Yep, I doubt anyone else would come up with such an alliterative way of talking. So this is me… This is my voice… It sounds off somehow, I feel like my voice should be deeper. I should have some rumbling baritone that sends fear and awe down the spines of all that hear it! This voice just sounds too normal. Argh! It’s pleasant enough to hear, but this is hardly what I’d expect myself to sound like! I just sound so normal! It’s just disappointing…”
I let out another sigh, I guess I shouldn’t complain now that I could somehow speak but I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. I sounded young, not like I child but also not quite like an adult. At least the voice was clearly male, even though the tone was light and pleasant to the ear. I doubt I could’ve handled the blow to my admittedly weak self-identity if my voice had come out feminine, I would begin to question what little I thought I knew about myself.
“You… you… you…”
I looked up at the stuttering fairy, she seemed to move back a little in the air. In a flash of inspiration I realized what I could finally do.
“Hey, I need your opinion on something. Which do you think is a better name: Rock, Stone, or Drop?”
***
The fairy was sitting down on one of the crates, her head resting in her hands.
“So let me get this straight. You woke up with no idea who you are, and an old man poured mana into you before leaving after telling you to make him something. Then you never see him again, but spend who knows how long pondering the “Real” meaning behind what he told you. THEN the true dragon shows up and gives you even MORE mana as well as draconic knowledge?”
I tried to feel the mana inside myself, it felt murky and nebulous. Every time I thought I had a grip on the force of magic the fairy had described it seemed to slip out of my grasp.
“Yep, then I meditated to help absorb the knowledge, and when I woke from the meditation the black dragon was gone and my colors were different again.”
The fairy just shook her head.
“And then the grey mage shows up and asks to be your “Friend”?”
I almost got a grip on the power before it once again slipped away. I felt my frustration rising up, but it immediately fell away as my calm returned.
“Yeah, Melinda came by after the dragon, but I have no idea how much time passed between the two…”
The fairy waved away my clarification.
“That’s common, newborn dungeons don’t keep track of time very well without an entrance with a view of the surface. Anyway, you shouldn’t trust that bitc… Ahem, the grey mage. She’s a dungeon killer you know…”
I shrugged my nonexistent shoulders.
“She’s been alright to me, she gave me a gift after all…”
The fairy fell back and laid flat on the crate.
“Yeah, the gift of her captive dungeon fairy. Such a great friend… Ever wonder how she even came across me?”
I gave another shrug.
“I assume you’re from the dungeon you say she killed.”
The fairy froze and laid in silence for a while.
“I… You…”
The fairy let out a heavy sigh before giving me a single word in a clipped tone.
“Yes.”
The fairy was silent after that, I figured that she no longer wanted to talk. That was fine, she would start talking again when she was ready and until then I could practice using my mana.
I relaxed, every time I tried to marshal my mana it got away from me. As I relaxed I felt the mana float and shift around what I could only assume was my soul. It was a pleasant feeling, one I had somehow never noticed before. The colors, each represented one of the eight elements. Elemental mana it was called, I had four of the eight elements. Darkness and space were strongest, the swirls of black and spots of silver were ever present around my soul. Then there was the haze of dark grey and pale green that hovered and clung around my soul, soul and earth. All four elements were mine, a part of me that I could wield and move as I chose. They were like the limbs of my very being, the arms and legs of my soul or spirit or whatever it was I was seeing.
The powers were mine, the magic was already inside me ready to be wielded. I just had to use it, tell it what I wanted. Reaching out to the mana inside me I traced nonexistent fingers along the colors, I didn’t grab at the mana or try to force it in any way. I just made contact, petted at and stroked the mana as if it was a faithful pet.
As I relaxed and maintained contact with my mana I began to meditate, I sank to an even deeper part of myself in the hopes of finding an answer. As my world shrank into a swathe of familiar colors I saw something out of place. It was white, every other color was tied to an element but the white wasn’t. it had been there since the beginning, it was at the center of everything. It wasn’t light, the element I now knew the color was supposed to represent, it was just white. A ball of white that was at the center of my very being.
I reached out a mental finger to touch the white, and then my nonexistent eyes flew open with understanding. The white wasn’t a color and it wasn’t mana, it was emptiness. An emptiness at my center that needed to be filled, that had been begging for me to fill it.
I gently tugged at my mana, it had fought me so hard because it had known. I had been clumsily and foolishly been trying to force my mana out of myself. I had essentially been rejecting the mana, trying to rip it out of myself without understanding that it had no other place to return to inside myself. As I lead it into the ball of emptiness inside me it came willingly and eagerly, I was leading it to its new permanent home. I was giving my mana a place to collect, grow, and return to. I was creating a mana pool.
***
POV: Fay
This dungeon is ridiculous...
First it practically overwhelms me and almost forces a bond when I tried to unseal the core, then it starts to speak common clearly and coherently while flooding me with questions. It was even already considering a name before it met me.
I don’t even know what to say at this point… It’s like this dungeon is going through years of development in hours…
I looked at the floating core as it shifted colors rapidly. I wasn’t sure what the dungeon was doing, but it had been at it for two days now.
It could be trying to manipulate its mana… Heh, that should stump it for a good few years. Without a bonded fairy to lead the way it’ll take a dungeon years to even realize it HAS mana, making a mana pool would take decades for a normal dungeon. Even if this dungeon’s spirit is some super intelligent monster that learned how to speak and use magic while it was alive it would still probably take a year or so to make a functional mana pool. If even Cal and I couldn’t do it with that bitch flooding us with mana constantly, then a newborn dungeon won’t be able to do it anytime soon regardless of how abnormal it is…
I felt a small smile form on my face at that thought. This dungeon really was strange, no it was beyond strange. I had heard stories and read histories about all sorts of dungeons growing up in preparation of eventually bonding with and guiding a dungeon of my own. I knew of only two dungeons who could speak before they were core popped or bonded: Akash the soaring dungeon and Mavra the dungeon of doom. Both of those dungeons had come from rare and powerful monsters whose souls wouldn’t normally be absorbed by a core.
“What were you…?”
It was impossible for this dungeon’s spirit to be just a normal animal, I couldn’t imagine a squirrel or even a clever bear doing what this dungeon had.
Ugh… This has to be the weirdest newborn dungeon ever…
I looked at the barrels and crates I had been using as furniture and recently opening while I waited on the dungeon to wake up. The barrels had contained wine, ale, clear and pure magical infused water, mana restorative potion, and a health potion. The crates had all sorts of items and weapons in the common minerals that the high races used: gold, silver, iron, copper, even a mithril ring set with a water stone. That old man was obviously setting himself up to be a damned dungeon master, and the fact that he never returned was beyond a blessing. The resources the old man brought with him, and the dragon scales littering the floor would be perfect sacrifices for this dungeon.
He’ll make some lucky fairy a very happy girl… Hell, given what I’ve seen she’ll think she’s the luckiest fairy in centuries…
I shook my head, if I had stumbled into this dungeon before meeting and bonding with Cal… Well, I couldn’t be sure of anything. I was sure every fairy had moments of weakness when they just had to wonder, I mean when you’re bonded to what used to be a snake you must dream about what it would be like to be partner to a dungeon like Mavra.
“Forgive me for this much Cal, I’m just admiring the view. I promise I won’t be bonding or coupling with him, but at least let me enjoy the view.”
I plopped down on my favorite crate filled with golden trinkets.
“Cal, I miss you so much, but I need to help explain things to this newborn. I’ll be with you soon…”
END POV
***
I opened my nonexistent eyes and looked around, the fairy was sitting in a large bowl filled with some sort of red water. For a moment I didn’t understand what I was seeing, it just didn’t make sense.
“What are you doing?”
The fairy looked up at me and smiled.
“Ah, you’re finally awake!”
She sunk down deeper in the bowl and reached over for the yellow dress that was folded up next to the bowl.
“Really, what are you doing?”
The fairy snorted as she began fumbling with the yellow dress in the red water.
“Well, I figured after day six on my own that I deserved a bit of a reward for sticking around and not flying off to my death. I mean really, if I had just left when you took your nap I would be long dead by now…”
I started at that, it sounded like the fairy actually wanted to die. But that didn’t make any sense, every living thing wanted to live. Well, at least I thought that was the case.
“You want to die?”
The fairy smiled as she stood up wearing her wet yellow dress.
“Yep, but first I’m going to give you a crash course in being a dungeon. Let’s see if we can’t give the next fairy you meet a heart attack… I can just imagine, an unbound dungeon core that’s already shaping its dungeon, can speak, and doesn’t need to have absolutely everything explained to it. It might just make her drop from the shock!”
I didn’t understand what this fairy’s obsession with death was, but I was eager to learn something new.
“It may be a bit late dungeon, but my name is Fay. I’m going to be your temporary Fairy guide!”