My sense of self refocused at some point and I looked around at the utter chaos of stone around me. Strong feelings surged through me, but I couldn't put my mind to understanding all that they meant. Anger was clear to me, but it felt somehow distant from the rage that I recalled before. Another was something lighter, like when a breeze passed along my awareness along with the feeling of sunlight. The word 'wonder' came to me as my mind continued to clear, and I agreed that, even though I didn't remember what, or how, I had done this. It was amazing to see how much of the earth I could control. Most of the spikes of where made from dirt and loose rocks all packed together in a tight form. I also saw several different shapes that tickled memories in me, but I couldn't place them yet. My mind was still partly foggy from something, but I could also feel myself filling up and the fog leaving as I did.

Confused I felt within myself and into the pool of power that was gathering there, and a surge of rainbow light and force met me. It was so strong that I found my mind snap back outside into the pit of earthen shapes. Clearly that energy was how I had managed to do so much, but I couldn't understand it yet, though a voice whispered that it wasn't important. My curiosity wouldn't let me back down from understanding it though, and I decided to go much slower this time. My mind once again descending into my core to find that pool of power, mana the voice whispered, and the moment I felt it I stopped. Hovering just before I entered that place of rainbow light, and just feeling as much as I could about it.

The current of power seemed to flow upwards from the rock my core now lay upon as if I was pulling it from deep within the land itself. Then it just passed into my core before turning very very small, and entering the place I was now sensing. Another feeling of wonder went through me as I just watched my mana fill, and realized how little of my self I understood, and here I was getting angry that I couldn't do more. I could do far more than those 'Humans' could, since they needed 'levels' in order to do much. I had transformed my little crack in the ground into a crater filled with spires of earth, and I was barely....actually I realized I didn't know how long I had been awake. That question seemed to make me blank out for a while, but when I came back I decided that I had a few things to try out, and ignored the odd blank period.

Reaching my senses out I found the books again, luckily protected by a shell of actual stone, so it seemed that even in my rage I didn't want to hurt them. Which I was thankful for since they would be impossible to replace. Then, I stopped as I hovered over them. I could 'see' what was on the books using my tendrils, made from my mana I now realized, and my senses. Then, I reached out with one such tendril to a pillar of dirt, and recalled the picture of a house that I had seen. Focusing I wanted the earth to take the form of that house, and I felt a tug on my mana as it flowed out. Now that I was actively paying attention I could feel the rainbow light pass along the invisible tendril of almost clear mana, and then spread through the earthen pillar. Once it was fully within the dirt and stone, my will seemed to press down on it and it just changed into the image that I recalled. It was made from dirt and stone, so it didn't have the same textures that the one in my memory had. Yet, I could 'see' the tiny bricks that made up the walls, and even the details of the symbols on the fence.

This brought up an interesting thought, and I wondered if I could write these books into stone so I wouldn't accidentally lose all of them. The area I could shape had been quickly expanding, but now was only slowly growing as if it was becoming harder. I still had a lot of room to play with, so I planned out what I could do. It seemed the idea of making a space agreed with me, because I found it easy to sink into a trance of concentration and the basic idea of the room for my books came together quickly. Though I kept finding myself wanting to connect it both to my core and the outside, but I hated the idea of the outside getting into that place. So, I push that notion aside with a bit of reluctance, probably just my Dungeon instincts. I made the room with a flex of my will and a good amount of mana, before making a dome around myself and connecting it to my library.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

A sudden tremor shook around me, and I realized that my connection to the rest of my domain was dull. I created a window out of my dome and saw all the earthen pillars and spikes had mostly fallen apart, and the ceiling of the main cavern was cracked. I was confused so I reached out with my senses, and found that my mana was in everything within my domain. And, it was far weaker than it should have been. After only a moment more it clicked in my mind. When I closed myself in the dome my mana didn't have a way to reach the rest of my domain, and it had started to collapse. Somehow it had been preventing the dirt from falling apart, and with it gone it was all crumbling. Now, with my window, my connection to it had been restored and everything was remaining stable. There was also a feeling of panic when the connection was cut, and I had a feeling that if I had let myself be buried something terrible would have happened.

It was worrying that I almost, maybe, died from not understanding how I lived and worked. In fact it was almost beyond frustrating to me that there was no guide or fairy like the books had. Instead I needed to figure this out for myself.

----

Weeks sped by as I worked on expanding my domain, sculpting rooms, and trying to do little experiments to understand myself better. There was only one book that I enjoyed reading as I copied all the words and pictures from the paper onto the stone walls of my library. It was called a 'fable' and supposed to be a 'story' of something that didn't happen. Many of the concepts and words in the book just made me happy when I recalled them, and so "The Song of Fire" was carved onto the biggest pillar of stone in the center of the library. Including all the pictures found within. The rest were given many smaller pillars with only the writing unless I thought the pictures were interesting, and I will say 'Ancient Architecture' did give me a lot of ideas for how to make my dungeon far prettier. As well as strong enough that my mana wasn't required to keep it stable, and I found that freed up my mind and mana slightly which made me feel that was the correct path.

Now, however, I had found myself looking at a snake. It had managed to sneak it's way into my domain, though I saw it the whole way down but didn't bother. It was one of a few living creatures that had entered my walls, and I was curious if I could do the same to it that I had done to the stone. I wanted to shape life the moment I saw it moving around on the surface and understood that they weren't bound by the rules I was. They could go anywhere, and since I could see all within my domain, if I could make a piece of my domain able to move around...well the thought was now a burning desire to see if it was possible. Sometimes I found my dungeon instincts distracting me, and wanting to just make spiked pits or something. But, this was something I kept pulling myself back to all the time. My wish to see the wider world and understand it more was just too great.

So now I was looking at this snake and slowly pulling it apart. Scales fell off, skin parted, and blood flowed out from the dying creature beneath my core. I felt there was something missing and it was just a bit deeper, but I had done this a number of times and fully understood the life before me. Yet, there was something just out of reach of my understanding, and it had something to do with the way mana could be different colors. I had found that my own mana, which was mostly clear when I used it, was just a single color of so many within the rainbow light that I gathered. I had also been able to see the colors of mana around plants, animals, and even within rocks.

This musing wasn't different than usual, but the idea of rocks tickled my mind this time. Using that dirt colored energy I could create rocks, simple ones of course, but I COULD make them. Then I focused harder on the dying creature, pushing my senses into seeing only mana. Then, I saw it. A wash of various colors of mana spinning in patterns so complex that, like when I first observed my mana pool, I was kicked out of my mana sight. I had found it, the secret to life, and it was mana. I knew it was far to complex to just make myself, but I wasn't just a dungeon core. I was a determined dungeon core. So I found a few snake eggs.

"Time for some experiments."