“That was so STUPID!” Zoe shouted at Emma in their empty cavern as Emma moved large planks around in the planned out rooms.

“It sounds pretty annoying.” Emma agreed.

“They wouldn’t let me learn anything. I don’t even know if this is actually going to make a dungeon or if it’s for something else. Or maybe it’s just a small part of what goes into making a dungeon. And I’m not allowed ot use it here. And maybe I could just do it anyway, but that Yul guy was so stupidly high level that I’m not sure I could even actually hide what I’m doing from them with it even if I wanted to. And I’m not sure I do.” Zoe said.

“Why didn’t you just take the pact?” Emma asked.

“Cause making a dungeon wouldn’t be any fun if I can’t talk to you about it. Can you imagine? Me going off to work with the royals for who knows how long only to come back and be like ‘yup I did stuff over there?’” Zoe asked.

Emma chuckled. “It’d be pretty suspicious.”

“Yeah! And then one day, maybe we do get a dungeon here, and would I be able to talk about it then? Probably not. Nobody ever talks about any other dungeons that were made. Everybody’s sworn to this stupid secret pact. I hate it. It’s so stupid. And the council just agreed to it, like that!” Zoe shouted.

Emma nodded.

“What else have they sworn to keep secret? What stupid secrets does Joe know that he just can’t tell me?” Zoe asked.

“I dunno. A lot, probably. They run a city, Zoe.” Emma said.

“Yeah, but I don’t. I’m just a random girl. God, it’s so frustrating. Just the fact that they’d go through all that means that this stupid stone must be important, somehow. But how do I use it? Do I enchant it and then just leave it and hope it makes a dungeon like I was planning? Or does it have to be a specific enchantment? Or do you need a bunch of them together? Or do you have to build a bunch of feng shui to make the dungeon feel like it can form?" Zoe ranted.

“You can always just try stuff out.” Emma said. “If they were willing to do something with it, then it’s probably not apocalyptically bad.”

“It was never going to be that bad, Emma. It’s just really cold. Even if it was literally absolute zero, it doesn’t have enough mass to literally freeze a planet.” Zoe groaned.

“Just forget about it for a bit.” Emma said.

“I can’t! I can’t now. I know it’s important now, I just don’t know exactly how or why. And I need to know. But I can’t do that stupid pact. This is so annoying. I hate this. Maybe it isn’t even for a dungeon but just really useful for making some kind of city defense and they don’t want the secret of how they power their capital’s defenses getting out. This is so stupid.” Zoe continued ranting.

“Just try something. If you really don’t think it’s going to freeze the entire moon, then I dunno. Lets go take a trip to the moon and leave it there. We can come back here, finish up our home and then go check on it later.” Emma said.

Zoe nodded. “You’re right. We may as well just try something, right?"

“Only if you’re really sure it’s not going to freeze the entire moon.” Emma said.

“The moon’s already basically frozen, Emma.” Zoe said.

Emma raised an eyebrow.

“Okay it’s not going to freeze the entire moon. Probably. I mean it made the room I was in very cold but the room is a lot smaller than the moon, so I can’t imagine it being a problem on that scale.” Zoe said.

“Then let’s go do it.” Emma said.

“Now?" Zoe asked.

“Yeah, why not? When’s better than now? You tried to be responsible, the king didn’t want to clue you in on what it was. What else can you do?” Emma asked.

Zoe nodded. “Yeah. Alright, lets go do this then.”

Emma made a quick stop in the cats’ room to fill up their food and then they were off flying through space towards the distant gray rock. In about a day’s time, they landed on the surface of the moon, surrounded by Zoe’s air bubble that kept them from suffocating in the vacuum of space. It was strange, after so long of being terrified of going to the moon without some way of finding her way back to feel comfortable flying there even without using the skill she’d worked so hard to get.

But reality had hit her like a giant’s sock full of apples. The moon was very far away, but Abyllan was still visible from it. There was little difference between going to the moon or just going to the very edges of space around the planet. Even with the skill, it didn’t help her get home. It might have helped her find which direction home was initially, but once she found the massive rock floating in the sky, all she had to do was go straight.

“Where do we wanna do it?” Emma asked.

“Here?" Zoe asked.

“As good a spot as any, I guess. You should dig down a bit though, probably, since it’s supposed to be a dungeon and all.” Emma said.

“True. That’s smart.” Zoe said. Mana rushed out from her and flooded into the ground, ripping up the moon’s surface and carving out a sizable hole beneath that Zoe sealed off.

“So what? You just enchant it and leave it, and then a dungeon is formed?" Emma asked.

“I have no idea!” Zoe shouted. “Cause they wouldn’t tell me. Jerks. But that’s the best idea I’ve got right now, so I think we may as well give it a try.”

“Well, go ahead and then take us home. I’m a little worried about the boys.” Emma said.

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Zoe nodded and summoned the rock, then enchanted it with Frost, Enchanting, Meditation and Cosmic Familiar, just in case she had to disable it for some reason. As soon as she did, the temperature began to plummet.

“Holy crap.” Emma said. “That’s insane.”

“I told you. It’s REALLY cold.” Zoe said as the temperature continued to fall. She dropped the rock on the ground, and frost began to form along the surface of the rock, creeping along the cracks and crevices left behind by Zoe’s magic.

“You sure it won’t freeze the moon?" Emma asked.

“Like ninety five percent sure?" Zoe said.

Emma chuckled. “Well, even if the moon gets really cold, it’ll still be the moon. It’s just rock, I guess.”

Zoe nodded. “That’s the theory, anyway.”

“Alright, well. Take us home before we become moon rock too.” Emma said.

Zoe chuckled and grabbed Emma’s outstretched hand, then flew them back to the distant floating rock they called home. In just under another day, they arrived back in their cave to see two antsy cats who were very excited to see them again.

“Yes hello my lovely boys. Mommy was gone for so long wasn’t she?” Emma laid down on the soft carpet as the two cats came up to her.

“We froze the moon. You little kitties don’t even know what the moon is though. We should definitely get windows in here by the way at some point.” Zoe said.

Emma nodded. “I was gonna bring that up later, but we’ll also have other rooms with windows once the rest of the place is done. My room will have windows still. But I totally forgot they wouldn’t have any windows here while we were building.”

“We should take them out for a walk. Let them get some natural sunlight, see everything that’s out there for a bit.” Zoe said.

“You boys wanna go for a walk?” Emma asked, summoning two cloth harnesses. She handed one of the harnesses — the blue one, over to Zoe. “You wanna get Ollie in his? I’ll get Fennel.”

“Sure.” Zoe said. Oliver was the much easier one to get in his harness, though that was true for most things they did. Oliver was, in a word, reliable.

“God, little bennel, just get in your harness! You love going on walks, just be happy about it already.” Emma groaned as she fought with his claws, finally getting him tied up in his pink harness.

“Alright boys. Zoe, if you would?" Emma asked.

Zoe nodded and grabbed onto the two cats and Emma, then Cosmic Stepped them outside.

Emma led them down a meandering path through the outskirts of the city, and even out the southern gate when they got there into the forest for a while. Fennel ran back and forth in front of them, sniffing every flower and leave, investigating every movement he saw. Oliver stayed a little behind, walking between Zoe and Emma as his little nose wiggled.

They got back home a little under an hour later, as the sun began to set and dropped the cats off in their room again so they could get back to work on the rest of their home.

With no more interruptions getting in their way, progress went pretty quick. First they laid out all of the foundations for the ground floor, all of the supporting planks that would hold up the floor and the frames that the wall facades would attach to. Then Zoe ran through carving out small holes and pathways for air to flow through, and embedded some small icy splinters in the wood to create fresh, breathable air for them.

Next, they created the new entrance for their home, a large enchanted slab of dirt and grass that slid off to the side with the help of some enchanted gems acting as keys. To each side of the door they planted trees that acted as camouflage for the exhaust pipes Zoe carved into the wall to keep their home from pressurizing too much.

After the frames were all built up, and all of the underlying airflow pathways installed, getting the rest of the planks up was a simple process. Zoe carved small curved holes in the backs of each of the planks and attached them to matching hooks on the backing frames, building up large stone columns behind to help support the weight of all the wood.

The only other rooms they decided on carpet for were the library and Emma’s room, with the rest just getting a dark stain on their hardwood floors. In just under a month, they’d managed to finish the entire ground floor just as they wanted, besides a few of the finishing touches.

Overall, it was much larger than Zoe’s initial plan. The library was almost three times the size as her initial library, with several tables laid out throughout and dozens of bookshelves without any books on them. A project for another time, Zoe supposed.

The bathroom would be nice, though they hadn’t actually installed a toilet in it yet so they were still borrowing Joe’s whenever they needed to do the deed. The kitchen had been built better, with a smaller but much better stove embedded into the wall. White stone counters lined the rest of the wall the stove used to take up, with cupboards and drawers filing the wall beneath. Shelves lined the other walls, filled with pots, pans and other dinnerware.

Zoe’s room was smaller than the one she had before, though she never found herself using it other than occasionally sleeping on her bed which still fit with plenty of room to spare. Her closet took up almost the entire rest of the space, filled with all of the clothes she’d gotten in Korna but didn’t want to lug around with her everywhere.

Someday, she’d be able to create enchanted storage spaces to make her closet smaller, but at the moment the most she could do was create space to store a few dozen more dresses.

The living room was an entirely new addition, and one that Zoe enjoyed a lot more than she expected to. They’d purchased a nice red rug from Ingleki and it looked beautiful against the dark pink hardwood floors they’d used in the room. In the back was a fireplace, with logs crackling away which helped create quite the cozy atmosphere.

And they even had a spare room, which currently was used for miscellaneous storage. Piles of wood, extra carpet. A few extra rugs they’d purchased and hadn’t found a use for yet. When they were done, they’d toss a bed in the room and call it a day. The original plan was to make it inn themed, as a joke for Joe, but since he was going to get his own room downstairs the spare room had become more of a junk room.

“Okay, so what all is left?" Emma asked, sitting at the new wooden table in their much larger kitchen. ”The stairwell needs to be finished still, we need windows in the cats’ room and also to finally install their door so they can get in and out as they please. And a toilet, at some point. Anything else?"

Zoe shook her head. “I can’t think of anything else.”

“Okay, windows can come later still, since once we have an entrance they’ll be able to just look out my windows. But we should probably block off the stairwell until we’ve finished the basement and upper floors so they don’t get stuck in something.” Emma said.

“Sure. Block off the stairwell, open the entrance to their room and then get started on finishing the basement, maybe?” Zoe asked.

Emma nodded.

Installing the door to the cats’ room was a very simple process, although calling it a door was a bit of an overstatement. It was a simple black cloth that hung from some hooks at about knee height and covered a hole in the wall.

At the moment, the hole was covered with a large slab of hematite so the cats wouldn’t get out and hurt on something as they were working on the rest of the house. Zoe rose another slab of hematite in the doorway to the stairwell, and then let the slab in the cats’ room dissolve back into mana.

Fennel ran out almost as soon as the slab was removed and investigated all of the new rooms while Oliver sat at the entrance and stared out at the hallway for a bit.

“Welcome boys! To your new home. Hope you like it.” Emma said as Zoe hooked in the hanging piece of fabric that would serve as their door.