Day 52

Damien's heart was tingling with energy. After every arduous battle with his foe, he was rewarded with a great surge of mana. Each beast his enemy threw at him built up his power with its dying breath, and even his insects contributed with their meager souls. But there was no great battle this time, and no great war within his domain. While he had not collected the same vast pool of mana he had from his past encounters, his situation was very different this time.

None of his treasured creatures were injured. There was no need to waste anything on recovery, and the few beetles and maggots the beasts had found on their way in were completely inconsequential. Only his ants and flies would be in danger, and they had yet to return. But the greatest change this time was that the beasts flailing and screaming below were feeding him a constant supply of mana. The battles were short and bloody. Countless casualties piled up, but the terrible slaughter lasted only a few short minutes. This was something else entirely.

There were far more rodents and leporids writhing and tangled below him than had ever come to attack him before, and the steady flow of mana was ambrosial. A few scores of the beasts could match the mana created by the many tens of thousands of creatures that had filled his lair, and it was constant. With every passing moment his reserves were filled more and more, and without the wild expenditures of post-battle damage control, he was able to truly bask in the euphoric sensation. The power was intoxicating. On top of that, he had won.

As he watched the beasts tangle themselves deeper and deeper into the webbing with each desperate flail, he felt his foe's despair. The confidence that had once led to an unprovoked assault and Sheila's demise had given way over time, but as his legions poured forth into the breach, he felt that bastard's shock and fear. He felt his resignation, then his panic, his desperation, his pain, and then a glimmer of hope. And a sense of fulfillment? Of satisfaction? It was strange. Unclear. Out of place amongst the loss and pain. The entire battle was relayed to him through these emotions.

They resonated within its lair and pressed into the breaches where their domains met. Just as he felt the color of his foe, he felt the wild fluctuations of emotion as they echoed across the threshold. It was a profound connection, and for the first time his foe's emotions were running wild. Damien quivered with delight. His foe was finally feeling everything that Damien had felt. That tiny flicker of hope gave way to heart-wrenching grief, a sense of loss incomparable to all those before. And while Damien savored that sweet tragedy, a new broken resignation took hold of his foe. He wished for the end. He wished to die. But Damien's creatures would not indulge that darkest desire which resonated across the tunnels between them. He would suffer for his-

New beasts poured out from the breach. Damien's wicked gloating was derailed by their inexplicable appearance. Nothing should have survived the onslaught of his legions. His foe's despair proved its defeat, but Damien was reminded of Sheila. Despair and grief is no stranger to victory. A pyrrhic victory would explain that glimmer of hope, and these new intruders, but also this despair. It had lost something so precious, that it no longer mattered whether it won or not. A small tinge of doubt clouded Damien's victory glow.

The beasts that emerged were far larger than the ones that had come before, and those who struggled beneath him. He had wondered why all the invaders were normal, why none of them had grown like his own creatures had. None of them were predators, so the wild growth that Ajax and Rex had achieved would have been too much, but even the moss beetles grew as they basked in the ambient mana of the dungeon. He had assumed they couldn't, that the ability to grow was reserved for the lesser creatures, or that they required too much to grow for it to be noticeable. All of these possibilities had worried him, as he hoped to add them to his vastly growing legions. The beasts in front of him proved that these particular concerns were unnecessary. 

With the exception of the babies being dragged and carried, and the young scrambling to keep up, the average size of the beasts was twice that of those he had battled. He had not been fighting the best or the strongest of his enemy's creatures, but the youngest and the weakest, and many of those before him were pregnant or nursing. These great rodents and rabbits had been rapidly bred to replenish the sapphire lair's forces, and the immature and the weak were sent to die. They had seemed the right size, but instead the juveniles simply were so large that he had mistaken them for adults.

Had he underestimated this foe just as it had underestimated him all those weeks ago? Would his rage and greed be his demise? Were these venerable elites here to punish him? 'It doesn't matter.' he thought, 'No matter how much stronger they might be, they cannot reach me. They will be trapped just like the others. They will be mine.'

He returned to basking in his post-battle euphoria, delighted that his enemy had so thoughtfully sent his best and brightest in tribute whether he meant to or not. The beasts frantically loped down the outer bastion tunnel just like those before, and his delight filled the cavern with its red glow. As they rounded the corner just before the entryway tunnel, he began planning out where he would dig warrens for the pregnant mothers, and then they shattered his hopes. 

As they emerged from the southern bastion, they raced out towards the light, and as quickly as they had come they began to vanish into the world above.

'No! ' he roared, 'After them! '

His creatures raced to carry out his order, but it was a pitiful attempt. The few remaining flies raced through the air, winding their way through the caves and tunnels of his lair. Ajax and Rex charged forwards at their best speed, and the beetles and ants marched on the offensive, but they were all too slow. He had placed the tunnel for the southern bastion just a few feet away from the exit into the world above, so that the attacks of his enemy would be forced to trudge through the entirety of his dungeon instead of appearing in the middle. But this time, it backfired. 

Damien reached out to collapse the exit tunnel. He tried to fill in the opening, not caring if a few rabbits were caught in the process, but he couldn't. He tried and tried to will the dirt into existence, to plug their path to freedom like he had many times before, but he simply couldn't. Each beast carried with it a fraction of the enemy lair's power, and just as he couldn't see or act beyond the threshold, he was powerless to stop them. Where the power of another lair existed, he could not. 

He watched uselessly as the last of the great beasts escaped, resigned to the lost opportunity that these great beasts had represented. It was disappointing, but his legions were returning. This was the final proof of his victory. The flies arrived first, and it was clear that the assault had been a one-sided slaughter. The tens of thousands of flies had returned practically unharmed, and they brought with them yet another surge of power.

They had grown, absorbing the might of their defeated enemies just as always, but they had brought more with them than that. Damien had assumed that the deaths of his foe's beasts would fuel the lair they died in, however it was clear that he was wrong. His returning raiders carried the excess mana they couldn't absorb themselves, and only released it when they returned. Damien doubted it was perfect, and there was surely a much lost in the process, but this meant that if his beasts killed enemies outside the dungeon and survived to return he would still be rewarded. War was very profitable for the victor.

The ants followed next, marching in perfect formation just as he had trained them to do. It was probably a waste of time, but ants were creatures of order. They worked for the good of the colony, they marched in line as they went after their food, and they already displayed an instinctive coordination unheard of in any other species. With a bit of discipline and intelligent direction, they were easily molded into a powerful army. His loyal legions brought even more mana to him, and his core swelled with power.

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The once radiant sapphire lair had been left defeated and broken amongst the corpses of his pets, his brilliant light now darkened to a dour midnight blue. Its presence had already begun to recede as it was cut off from its surviving creatures. Without their constant supply of energy, it was impossible to maintain its domain. It was starving, it was weak and dying, and if he pushed now Damien was sure he could finish it off, but experience had taught him caution. This would not be a battle decided by the clash of armies, or a struggle of insects and beasts. This battle would be a clash between himself and his foe, and he alone could take part. He had to crush this lair out of existence with his own power, but this enemy had lived longer, and grown stronger than Damien. While Damien believed himself to be the better fighter, this was foreign territory. 

Damien waited as his core filled with mana, the ensnared beasts below fueling the next phase of the battle against their own master. After a few hours, he believed his strength would be enough, and now was the perfect time for the final assault. He was as ready as he would ever be. He reached out to the impenetrable threshold, the black abyss where his domain ended and another began, but now there were two. Both he and his foe had dug tunnels to attack, and now each served as a point of contact between them. Damien pressed equally into both points, he believed his rapidly filling reserves should be plenty to overwhelm his starving foe, but it was far more complicated than he had imagined. 

Just as when he had tried weeks ago, his mana grew weaker and less concentrated the further away from his core he reached. He thought the new difference in power would be enough to compensate. He pushed the foreign domain back through the tunnels, and his progress was much faster in the tunnel which he had sent his ants and flies in through. The first tunnel which had spewed forth the beasts seemed to be connected much closer to the enemy's core, and so Damien concentrated his efforts on the second. 

Now that he wasn't dividing his power, his encroachment on the enemy lair progressed far more rapidly. But as the distance grew, and he pushed further and further into the enemy lair, the foe's meager resistance became insurmountable. It seemed as if his opponent wasn't even trying, but simply the ambient mana of his foe so close to lair was too much for his overstretched attacks. It felt as if he was trying to fight underwater, with the pressure increasing and the water becoming thicker with each and every inch he pressed forwards. After he reached nearly all the way through the access tunnel, their strengths reached an equilibrium, and the line held. 

Damien knew his foe would slowly starve and die as he watched, or that he could simply send in Rex and let the great lizard tear apart his enemy, but he wanted to do this with his own power. He needed to. After all that had happened, after all the pain, suffering, and humiliation he couldn't simply wait as his minions ended its existence or time took its toll. He needed to feel his enemy being crushed under the weight of his own power. And so he tried again.

He waited longer, as the hours ticked by his reserves quickly swelled, and then he launched himself into the fight once more. As he eagerly pushed his essence into the foe, the enemy gave way before his might, and the momentum carried Damien's domain deeper into the tunnel than Damien had anticipated, but the advance quickly slowed as his energy pushed against the barrier with each inch he advanced, until the parity was restored. He had gained another foot, but he had learned. 

Rather than slowly pressing in, the initial charge seemed to be far more effective. His energy would drive out his foe, and then settle on the new threshold. Damien was uncertain how this strategy would fare if his enemy could still replenish his mana, but it would work well enough right now, and would hasten his victory.

He waited until the sun in the world above had nearly set, and then began his third assault. He gathered his energy together, concentrating it as best he could before he hurled it at the enemy with all his might. Despite the ever increasing proximity to the heart of the blue lair, he advanced even further than his last attempt and broke through the remaining length of the access tunnel, breaking into the enemy lair through the ceiling just as he had when he had dug in before. It was still incremental progress, but he had proven his theory about how to wage this magical war.

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Day 53

As the first light of dawn broke through the entrance to his lair, Damien decided that he had gathered enough power. Taking a single foot or two every hour was arduous, and if his progress was decided by how much force he could exert in the first push, then there was a far better way. He had practiced collecting and concentrating his power all night, and it was time for that practice to bear fruit.

He released a stream of mana from his body, and pressed it together as he circled it around his throne room. He poured more and more mana into it, until the stream became a torrential flow. He swirled the energy around himself, and it grew faster and wilder with each revolution. The air was caught up in the force of the gale, and the creatures were buffeted by the winds and energy, but still he pushed harder. Soon the beginnings of a tornado swirled in the confines of his cave, but before it could take form, he released it from its wild spin, and forced it through the tunnels of his lair.

The primal force howled through the tunnels and caverns, driven on by his manifest will, rushing through the same path his ants and flies had taken hours before until it inevitably reached its destination. It slammed into the feeble, and murky, blue barrier at the threshold. The impenetrable barrier had moved according the force exerted on either side, it had flexed and bowed, retreated and advanced as their flexing and pushing caused it to move, but it had never broken. Until now.

The tide of wild energy stalled for the briefest moment as it met resistance before it tore through. Damien's energy crashed through the the resistance of his foe like a breached dam, and flooded through the foreign cavern. The exposed mana clashed as it swirled together. They came together like oil and water, never mixing, but where they met they released an explosive burst of heat and force as the energy broke down. 

Their clashes before had met at the threshold, pushing each-other back and forth, but this was a different. Once the barrier of the threshold was broken, this rapid and violent evaporation of their energy was the result. For every bit of Damien's ruby energy that was destroyed, a nearly equal amount of the blue lair's dour domain went with it. It completely stripped his foe of the distance advantage he held as the threshold moved closer and closer to his core. This result was not something he had expected, and the result was truly devastating, but there was a price.

As the barrier broke, so did his defenses. The dungeon was a part of him, the dirt was his bones, the mana infused air his blood, the tunnels his arteries, the caves his organs, and the outer surface of his domain, the barrier which was the threshold when met with an opposing force, was his skin. But he had just torn through it. Just as he broke through his enemy's barrier, for their energy to mingle and destroy each-other, his were also torn down. It was as if his skin had been torn open and an explosively reactive substance was poured into his veins. He felt every burst and pop as the opposing forces collided, and it hurt like hell.

He was stunned by the sudden pain, and it was impossible pour in enough new mana to sustain the storm as fast as it was expended, and so soon the clash began to settle. The threshold slowly began to reform between them, their domains separating as the fiery clashes lost the force required to break through. Damien's mana reserves were nearly depleted once more, and he ached with the memory of the pain, but he had pushed the foe back into the depths of his lair. Damien now controlled the first room of his enemy.