Fuck. Moss. Moss is absurd. How is this damn thing so simple, but so complex? It’s a friggin nonvascular organism, but the patterns are denser than animals I was working with! Again, fuck moss. All I wanted to do was create a thriving and beautiful underwater ecosystem by modifying a single plant! Maybe some aquatic ants, hack together some axolotls out of lizards. I have no idea what I’m doing.

This sucks. I’m not going to be a water dungeon, I’m going to be a damn RESERVOIR.

Ugh.

Uuuurgh.

And I still want to make a trash gryphon too. A beautiful creature with tiny clever little hands that can eat fucking anything and fly away from urban predators… The perfect mix of rat and pigeon. I’d fold their brains like origami till they were smarter than the people they hid from. Alas...

No, NO. I’m not giving up.

I will have my cake and eat it too.

I will not entrust my survival to humans alone! Viva la resistance! Viva la dungeon!

If I can’t get the creatures I need from the sandy hellhole outside, I’ll tunnel a thousand miles till I find a lake! They want water, I’ll give them a fucking swamp! Fuck moss and FUCK SAND! I gather my will and send a great wave of force and magic to smash open the dead-end I created before, allowing the waters of my short-lived aquatic dungeon to pour out of the hill.

...Damn, that was cool. I feel calmer too. Shocked myself out of a frustrated rage. Huh.

...I hear shouting. Oh hey, Tweedledee and Tweedledum are out there.

With the outpouring of water comes an outpouring of essence, and where the essence extends, I can now see. I’m unsure if I own the essence in some form or it’s just an ideal conductor for my manalocation. I suppose it doesn’t matter, but I doubt there are any other dungeons around. Except Borb and any others I create.

Anyways, the two dudes are real excited. They’re on a hill going up to my original entrance, just above where I, uh, tantrumed the wall open. I think I could have killed them, if not in the explosion, then by the waters sweeping them away. They’re hugging each other and hopping in place like they just won the lottery. Well, I guess they did? Oh, they’re kissing, I’ll give ‘em some privacy....

When my essence was only venting from the cave entrance, I couldn’t see anything outside. I suppose I could see the air, but uh, I didn’t really see anything. I imagine the essence rises like a plume of smoke. Now the essence infused water is releasing essence all across its surface giving me a far broader field of view. Kinda like the fog of war in a video game, except it’s a fog of vision instead.

I’ve said hill before, but it looks like I’m actually located on the side of a crater. My waters spread out quite shallowly along the bottom of the crater. A bit of it anyways, I think I only cover about a quarter of it? I’ll need more water to fill the entire thing, a lot more water. The ground is thirsty, drinking it all up in an instant. It’ll have to be saturated before any of it sticks around and gives me permanent vision, but for now the information is very welcome. 

I thought it was a desert based on the variety of animals that visited me, but fortunately it’s not quite the Sahara. It’s more of an arid scrubland. It’s definitely not Earth either. None of the plants and animals are quite familiar. I’ve been wondering about my inability to positively identify any of the birds that wander into the cave, but now it seems none of the creatures are exact duplicates. There’s something like a boar, but a lizard. Big fat thing with stubby little legs and tusks, sorta dinosaury. I’m gonna call it a boarsaur. A large variety of small rodents and lizards. Lil’ birds everywhere. Lizardy things that seem to approximate the deer and wild cats. Normalish furry deer and wild cats. Unfamiliar cacti.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Not Earth, but the same sort of ecological niches. Stealthy ambush predators gonna look like cats. It’s a good shape. Something is going to try to bully others with sheer mass, so it’ll look like a boar, a neckless fucker made for ramming covered in thick armor. Rhinos and hippos are the same thing, tho hippos have those terrifying maws. Everything is both familiar and subtly alien.

There’s also a big fucking crystal in the middle of the crater surrounded by an aura of death. Not like a magical aura, just a big circle around it where the vegetation is weird and sickly and no animals dare to tread. Ominous. Radioactive? I will have to look at it in more detail later. Ominous thing. Looks like a fountain of water froze in place but was angry about it, generally fountain shaped but with lots of random spiky projections. Very green.

Looks quite nice except for being obviously evil.

While the flood and a bit of a mudslide did a number on the nearby flora and fauna, now that it’s over I can see a great many creatures heading up towards me. This pleases me. Potential new minions get! Some get distracted by playing in the mud and others just go up to my little stream for a drink, but they know I’m here now and can follow it up to the cave.

Dee and Dum have finished their little celebration and gone down to the stream to clean up. They don’t get cleaner. They’re obviously unfamiliar with walking on muddy slopes and traction is a bit of a problem. Lots of slipping and sliding and laughter and impromptu wrestling. Glad I made ‘em happy! They say nothing of particular interest until they get to the cave, giving one of the boarsaurs a wide berth, and peer inside.

“Miphas fat cock, is all this new? How much did the damn thing dig? Every fingerwiggler in a hundred miles is going to know it’s here now! It practically announced itself to the fucking world!”

“So, uh, shouldn’t we report to sir Itzal as soon as possible?” Now that I’m not distracted by Mr. Crows pulsating aura, I can tell the word isn’t quite sir. It’s… Wise-warrior-priest? Kas. Kas Itzal? Is that Mr. Crow?

“Kaz Itzal fucking knows, dude. I know you have the sensitivity of a rock, but even you should be able to feel this. This entire stream, it’s all essence water. It’s a river of fucking gold! Wait...” He pulls out a water flask, then hesitates. The water is covering the entire floor of the tunnel and various animals are licking at it greedily, but it’s not deep enough there to actually dip the flask in it. He puts the flask away. “We’ll have to go deeper. It’s as concentrated as it’ll get right now. Dungeon must have sealed itself up and then had a blowout. The essence will fade away soon, we need to drink as much as we can and fill up all our waterskins before that happens!”

“...But it’s dark. There’s no glowing moss.” The moss glows? Since when?

“Yeah… And we have no idea what sort of monsters it has in there… Fuck. I’m going to the edge of the light.” The light has no edge. Is there light spilling into my cave? Everything is perfectly lit. Unless… I can’t see light. What the hell. Guess manalocation can’t do everything, eh? They walk in deeper till the water is about three inches deep, then start filling their water flasks and guzzling water. 

A tornado of mana is coming down from the sky. It touches down, forms an orb, and the orb slurps up the tornado part. The orb gets flatter and flatter and more and more opaque till it’s a disk of opaque iridescent light, then it gradually gets clearer, but what is on the other side has changed. I can see a villager with a bunch of people standing around, Mr Crow in front. Itzal, not Mr. Crow...

...I like calling him Mr Crow. 

He steps forward and touches the surface of the disk, then pushes against it. It bulges out like a bubble around him and he seems to be straining. He pushes harder and steps though the disk, the bubble shuddering around him, then it pops and he’s standing here now and the disk is gone. The effort seems to have left him entirely exhausted. His enormous intimidating aura is tiny now.

That’s teleportation, mang. Fucking awesome!

When the bubble popped, Dee jerked upright then grabbed Dum by the shoulder and hustled him out of there. They run down to meet Mr. Crow who stands there looking regal, but swaying gently. Dee hands him a waterskin as soon as he gets there and Mr. Crow drinks greedily, recovering his strength with each gulp. He looks up at my new cave entrance and the water slowly pouring out. 

“Well boys, it looks like you were right. I think the village will be moving out here after all.”