“How fares your progress?”

The shadows surrounding the woman in black do nothing to obscure the wine flute in her hand as she disinterestedly swirls its red contents.

“We are within expected parameters, my lady,” I answer from my place on the floor, kneeling before her.

After a moment, a sharp sigh pierces the silence.

I say nothing – I’ve learned my lesson over many years in her service that leaving her to ruminate is a far better option than incurring her wrath. Better to let it stay directed at her most recent recipient of ire.

Finally, she snaps her reply. “You move far too slow. Double your progress. You will move as fast as you can without disrupting Dolos’ efforts to distract the fool.”

As she leans forward and directs her gaze into mine, I feel my sanity strain against the pressure of her crimson eyes, the pinpricks of deepest black roiling across their surface.

“Am I understood?” she whispers darkly.

***

We’re making good progress on the Moonside Labyrinth!

Also, having the entry roped off wasn’t working, we still had a handful of adventurers wander in to explore that actually walked up on Rose, Abaris, and me as we worked, despite the dungeon being empty and partially formed at that point.

So I filled the entrance up with my kin. I wanted to just remove the dungeon entrance, but according to Rose that’s apparently not possible for a dungeon core – removing the entrance also cuts off the dungeon’s mana generation, despite pulling it directly from the plane… which, whatever. There are all sorts of dumb rules I don’t understand but still have to follow.

Although… I could probably just change them with Spellspeech…

(Nemesis,) Nyx starts in an annoyed tone, but I don’t let her continue.

Yes, yes, I know. Horrible consequences or unexpected consequences or something else horrible or unexpected or both kinds of consequences. Right?

She doesn’t respond, but I can practically feel the mental nod of her head.

I sigh.

Some of them can probably be skirted though. Technicalities. Hmmm…

Well, I’ll think more about that later. For now, dungeon design!

“We need more traps that release ridiculous monsters,” I say.

Abaris frowns. “If we do that, then everyone who enters will probably die.”

“Not my problem,” I shrug, “I want this one to be a dozen times harder than the other. That one has signs for new adventurers and warnings and I don’t know, crosswalks pretty much.”

He opens his mouth to disagree but I keep talking.

“This one is my capital city dungeon, full stop. I want this to be a real challenge, a real one, for the really strong adventurers. You know, the ones who think they’re heroes or whatever.”

“So a trap, then. We are building a trap for annoyances,” Rose rasps.

“Exactly! Also if they’re actually really strong, they’ll be more fun to test, won’t they? Let’s do that! Oh, and this one should have an actual boss, a strong one, a really unfair one, yeah? Something that will cause outright despair. And if they make it past that, we’ll have another audience room there. If they make it that far, I definitely want them to work for me!”

(Yeah, that sounds like you.)

Oh hush.

Anyway, so far most of the monsters are some variant of golem powered entirely by the plane’s mana. I had the idea from the guard golems all over Moonside up above, so I thought why not make even scarier versions? They all regenerate, and they’re all stupid strong.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

That should do an excellent job of filtering candidates.

Also, it’s absolutely cheating, but I’ve had Omorth fighting them nonstop for experience. He recently passed level 100, but that’s not enough.

It’s not nearly enough.

***

“Alright, who are you again?”

The human bows and starts prattling something uninteresting about trade agreements or whatever.

“-And that’s why you would do best to deal exclusively with the Mercantile Guild! We can maximize your potential for profit while keeping the flow of goods entirely under your control. What’s not to want, if I do say so myself?”

I sigh and the ash swirls idly across my reception room.

Projecting Will Sense to my maximum range, I confirm that Abaris is nowhere nearby, at least not close enough for me to sense him.

It really would have been a good idea to have him here beforehand, but nobody warned me this human wanted to talk about trade and profit and whatever. I don’t have any interest in this stuff!

Well, whatever.

“Olive,” I say over my shoulder.

The fox spirit maid moves to the side of the table and bows.

And says nothing. Good. She’s definitely learning well. I should think of some way to reward her later.

…

Maybe in a way that doesn’t result in her making weird noises or polluting our bond with weird human emotions.

Anyway, she’s been waiting so I should probably say something.

(Just like you to make people wait though, have to admit,) Nyx snarks, though I choose to ignore her.

“Would you please find Abaris and bring him here?”

Olive nods and promptly vanishes. I manifest a feeler and whisk my teacup from the table, then take slow, satisfied sip.

Not even a minute later, Olive returns in a flare of blue fire with Abaris in tow.

“If I may ask, what is this all about?” the obounis starts. “I have little time for unofficial business, I am quite busy at the moment.”

I gesture absently to the human on the sofa across from me. “This human is from the Merc… mercan… Something Guild and is trying to make some kind of business arrangements. That’s your department here, so it’d make more sense for you to be involved, yeah?”

He quietly sighs before turning to the only slightly baffled human. “Ah, yes. My apologies. Our planar patron is not particularly interested in the minutiae of operating… much of anything, other than the dungeons I suppose. You would be much better served discussing this with me. Now, if you would forgive me, would you please repeat your sales pitch, as well as provide the necessary figures?”

Perfect. This is exactly why I wanted him here. Now I can just tune out the rest, or… wait, can I just leave? I can just leave, can’t I?

(You can’t just leave, this is still technically an audience with you. Idiot.)

Really?

That sucks. Oh well I guess, I’m just gonna…

Hmm.

…

Wait, I could have searched for Abaris by projecting Will Sense through my kin, couldn’t I?

(Yep.)

I sigh again, causing the two mortals to look up at me expectantly, so I hurriedly gesture for them to continue.

That also means I could do that to find anyone else on the plane… or probably on other planes, as long as there’s a wraith somewhere nearby.

So I do.

And for testing purposes… I’ll start with someone I can easily track to begin with, so I can confirm that it worked. Izahne is running the old plant whatever dungeon again with Pearl and Nyx, so even without peering through our bond for her location I have a rough idea where she is.

Focusing my will to reach through my kin in the meandering halls, I cascade Will Sense through them a few at a time until I find my target, then focus on one even closer.

She doesn’t look like she’s fighting anything at the time. Which is good.

And I gently brush her with Consume, because why not, and watch her flinch.

“What? What’s up?” Pearl asks, startled.

“N-nothing. Nothing happened. Sorry,” my wife replies.

My least willing attendant gives her a sideways look but doesn’t say anything more about it.

I found out I can use Skills and so on through my kin! Or remembered, I guess. I’ve done it before, I just forgot, I project to Izahne.

And she doesn’t reply.

…

Oh, right. She can’t. No telepathic communication Skill or whatever…

You look like you’re in a safe enough place for the moment, the closest monsters are a few hundred meters down and around a few corners. I’m going to try giving you the same communication Skill I gave Pearl so you can actually answer me. Well, unless you really don’t want me to.

I drift the wraith I’m basically possessing from the wall it was concealed in. All three ‘adventurers’ jump in surprise, but thankfully none of them attack.

Though I can tell Pearl would really like to.

…

Wait, can I just, talk through them too? I probably can, can’t I?

And my kin releases a grating wail. Guess not.

Sorry, testing ideas. Apparently I can’t actually talk through my kin, not directly. Do you want me to try giving you the Skill or no? Or uh, yes but not now?

“How did you get it?” she asks.

I just uh. Focused my will on it? And it unlocked. That’s how I got most of my Skills, they supposedly were just available and trying to do the thing unlocked them.

“Is it inherent? Class?”

Class, at least for me. Originally it was general but it moved when I took my Class.

Izahne looks thoughtful for a moment, while Pearl just looks annoyed and Nyx shrugs before dematerializing.

If it makes a difference, Pearl didn’t lose consciousness or anything when it happened, right? I think I’m the only one it impacted, and I’m currently in a really boring meeting with some human about something I don’t care about. If I get a headache I’ll just, I don’t know. Make a lure and have it nod along or something?

“Don’t do that,” she immediately dismisses.

My wraith puppet vaguely shrugs – it’s not like it has arms or shoulders, after all. If you say so.

She sighs before answering. “Go ahead, I guess. But don’t skip your meeting.”

I focus on her and repeat the same Spellspeech I’d used for Pearl, and promptly feel like my soul is squeezing through a tube.

A tube that’s on fire.