You might imagine a core would despise sleep, hate losing control, loathe wasting hours on dreaming.

And true, we are creatures of relentless forward motion. We march along in an endless progression of gainful work, as busy as the hive insect, as restless as the shark, driven by a mix of pride and paranoia. The knowledge that we build the world to be more beautiful– the knowledge that everything we have not created is an outsider, an enemy, an unknown.

A dungeon core could be happy if it was to consume and remake the entire world in its own image, I think. Not before– and not long after, not before some itch of the mind compelled us to tear it all apart and begin again.

A body the size of a simple jewel.

An ego bigger than a planet.

Yes, and all that was true. But dreaming– wonderful dreaming!– was an escape from that.

When a core allows themselves to drift into torpor, they are released from their own ceaseless nature. They are allowed to relax, to let paranoia fall away. And while they dream, the world continues. The creatures I had created were still connected to my mind– I could still feel the buzzing of the bees as they set out from their hive, the cuckoos not yet hatched dreaming alongside me in their eggs, even the primitive sort of ‘feeling’ that resides within plants, the sense of happiness at the sun and rain.

And beneath that…

There was the slow changing of the earth, the mix of decomposition and rot and growth that took place on the upper layers of soil.

I experienced all these things without worry, or ego. I simply existed alongside them in harmony.

It was a comforting and quiet way to pass through the world. Perhaps, if I had the choice, I would simply remain so. Yes.

It was the first thing I’d ever truly wanted.

To dream forever.

To find that eternal peace.

But the weary and wicked find no rest, and I had many things to do.

The cuckoos were beginning to hatch. I felt their nascent souls beginning to form completely as their tiny, fragile bodies pushed against the barrier of their eggs, which had gone from a comforting barrier to a stifling, claustrophobic one. Their blunt beaks tapped and pecked as hard as they could, sending fractures spiraling through the shell.

Who was I to miss the birth of my first creations?

With a groan and a sigh I pulled myself free of dreams entirely, quickly scouring the crop of grass and weeds that had grown up in my absence, and pulling the mana into me. The effect was instant. The quiet and cloudy world of dreams was washed away by a sudden rush of crystal clear thought.

I had returned.

As the twin cuckoos hatched, their surrogate mother watching with curious yellow eyes, I was there. I fed them mana to strengthen their bodies and give them the energy to make the final push, spilling through their shells with a crack and a sudden sprawl as their clumsy bodies plummeted through the hole their egg-teeth had cut. They were huge, pinkish blobs, covered in fuzzy white fur-like stubble.

The mother blinked her large, owlish eyes, a little confused at how these awkward things had been born from her eggs. But they mewled for food, blind and confused, and she was a matriarch of many seasons. She had come to accept the strange and mutated among her children, even though few of them would ever escape the nest.

Better than the heartbreak of brooding over a stillborn egg.

She took to the sky, setting out in search of food. I remained. Mana flowed from my reserves into the newborn chicks, allowing them to grow stronger and stronger. The ugly stubble thickened into downy white feathers. Their eyes opened, their beaks yawping open in search of food.

Their minds crystallized out of the pre-birth murk of dreams, and I felt their first thoughts shiver through my own consciousness.

Cuckoos were…

There are no monsters in nature, truly. But the cuckoo’s instincts towards its foster clutch are violent. Ancient imperative tells them to push their unhatched brothers and sisters out of the nest, so that they can receive more food. In the nests of smaller birds where the cuckoo chick will rapidly outgrow its own parent before it can fly and hunt for itself, this vile act is necessary.

Not here.

“Brother, do we kill them?” The first-hatched asked in her scratchy, fresh-hatched voice.

“Sister, I don’t know.” The second one answered nervously. “I think they’re our siblings, too.”

“But I’m hungry.” She responded, murderous intent in her voice.

They were connected. Through their shared connection to me they could communicate mentally, even though physically they could only make awkward squawks and peeps.

“Shush now.” I said into their minds. “There’s no need. I won’t let you starve.”

They quieted, for a moment. The presence of their creator gave them warm comfort while their mother was away– and they were stronger, already, than most hatchlings. I had given them enough mana to easily grow them to full size, even if they were abandoned.

With a flutter of wings the owl returned. I will spare you the details of their feeding, but they were soon satisfied, curling up to sleep as the mother owl pecked eggshell away from their furry down.

Or one of them did.

The brother was content to be fed and sleep, to live his idle life. I could sense already he was not an ambitious creature. The older sister, who had broken from her egg just that much quicker, was a different matter. She reached into my thoughts and addressed me directly.

“Maker, why do we not push the other eggs from the nest? There will be more food.”

“Hmm. I suppose that’s true.” I admitted. “But you will find there’s enough violence in this world to sate any heart, without turning on your family.”

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

“I would never turn on my brother.” She responded testily.

“Not just him– you will have family such as earth-born creatures never could have. All the creatures of my domain will be your kin.” I soothed her fiery little thoughts with patience and understanding, sending these emotions into her mind. “But you will have as many enemies. If someone tried to hurt your brother, what would you do?”

“I would peck their eyes from their skull.” She spat, outraged by the thought.

“And you must defend all your family this way. So save your strength for the enemies that come– you will need it.”

She seemed to accept this. I suppose she was not wrong, to be hesitant. She was just born and already it was clear to her that life– the world– was not an altogether pleasant or peaceful place. But violence could be directed. In fact, in nature, nothing else could be done. Violence was inevitable; it came to predator and prey alike. But strength would let you choose who it fell upon most heavily.

The little warrior curled her body protectively over her brother, and slept. I turned my attentions elsewhere.

Nameless Core

Level 0.

[Accumulate 300 iota worth of mana to advance and unlock your phenotype]

Control: 1 // Intuition: 1 // Empathy: 2

—

– Blessings –

[Reach lv. 5 to unlock]

– Mana Production –

Ethereal: 0.2 IpH (Waking) // 1.0 IpH (Torpor)

– Reserves –

149.3i Ethereal Mana

Six days, and a few hours. I had been asleep for six days.

Worry washed back into me. Although there was no sign of them yet, the humans would know I was here by now. They would be closing in.

Letting myself sleep…

It was a luxury I could scarcely afford.

But in that time, the garden had grown. The bristly old boar had settled into his new life as a captive pet; the plants I had seeded had germinated out through the mana-rich soil and created a carnivorous garden.

Within the apartments, violence and chaos still ruled. The spider who had claimed the lowest layer had been dethroned by a massive scuttling centipede that coiled in the depths. It was a specimen from outside my initial crop of contenders– one that had crawled in from outside. It was an ugly specimen, yellow-limbed and black-shelled with long poison feelers extending from above its red mandibles, their ends tipped with glowing lures.

To the other insects, those lures were hypnotic. They swayed back and forth, luring its prey into mesmeric stupor– and then wrapping around them to strangle the life from their bodies with a poison grip.

With the rich mana deposits hidden in the lowest apartments, the centipede was only growing larger. It could barely squeeze through the entrances now. Instead, it had to hunt solely using those long feelers to grope blindly through the upper layers.

Many of the other occupants had gained small adaptations. A spider could now weave blades of chitin instead of webs, using them both to ward off predators with a forest of thorns and to impale its prey. A mantis had become almost invisible as its flesh turned to the consistency and translucence of glass.

Overall? The experiment was a remarkable success.

As for Ahe, he had yet to return from his exploration of the island, but I could faintly feel the thread connecting us. I didn’t have to worry that he had encountered death.

Therefore…

My first priority should be unlocking my phenotype and leveling up. Expanding my own capacity was the obvious winning move in this situation, where any threats were still beyond the horizon and I had time to prepare.

Slaughtering and eating the bristling boar would be one way to harvest a few extra iotas, but it ultimately wouldn’t get me very far. My crop of slime gourds had been exhausted– and if I regretted anything in my short life, it was not managing to plant more before I had passed into unconsciousness.

I considered another option: going back to sleep. With another week of rest I’d be at the requisite 300 mana.

But that should only be considered if I accepted, first, that I couldn’t invest my current mana in some way that would pay off faster than a week. And that seemed like an admission of defeat.

For instance…

My bees had already begun gathering pollens to make honeys, and thanks to their own capacity to consume and store mana, that honey was infused with wild magics from the flowers and grasses. Right now the amount was small.

But I had only seeded a few dozen bees at most, and they had already doubled in number, filling their crude hive with hexagonal cells of fragrant wax.

Most remarkably, the queen had begun to change– she was larger now, and more intelligent, her dim mind able to meet mine with a vague sort of emotional burst. It was happiness, pride, and duty mixed together, enclosed within a blurry image of the hive itself.

She was showing off.

It warmed my cold heart, a little, to be the one to whom she reported her pride and joy in founding such a thriving little empire. Her life would be short. Naturally speaking only two years, perhaps four with the mana I’d invested. But her children would continue on after her, growing smarter, longer-lived, stronger.

I would see it all.

And I was happy in that moment, returning her crude greeting with a wave of warmth and the promise I would watch over her children for a thousand generations.

Already, I combed their memories for information.

The bees were exploring out from their hive, and each time they left the radius of my domain, I lost my connection to them. But when they returned, I could suddenly access their memories.

There were places on the island my innate senses could not reach. Since I ‘saw’ through the extension of my mana through leylines, wherever there was a significant deposit of foreign manas, my vision blurred, distorted, or failed completely.

These were, by an irritating coincidence, the areas of most interest to me.

But the bees wandered everywhere, collecting pollens and sparks of mana from many flowers.

Through them I was gathering an impression of the hidden places.

Deep in the ruins of the old town, there was a well that seemed to be a total blank in my vision. The bees avoided it despite the wild flowers growing around– their primitive minds simply registered that there was something wrong about that place, but I could tell what.

Foul mana. The remnants of lives ended in horror. Spiritual decay…

If I had to guess, when the town was slaughtered the victims were thrown down that well, perhaps still alive. Their dying spirits poisoned the water physically and magically. Even now, it was a vile place.

I would have to cleanse it. Leaving such a source of spiritual poison festering in my home could only result in disaster.

But the others were less worrying.

One was beneath the lagoon. There, fire magics still lingered. Since it was underwater the bees couldn’t approach, but I was confident the source of the mana was the caldera of the dead volcano, where fire had once billowed from the earth. Likely I would find mana jewels and other treasures lingering there…

Along the cliffsides, there were ancient caves that radiated sacred airs. The memories of the dead farmer told me that they were holy places to his ancestors– but not why. Apparently the knowledge had been restricted to a few priests.

I would have to explore them.

Finally, deep in the forest, there was a shrine. Ancient stone played host to crawling moss and parasitic vines, but beneath the spreading growth, there was a depiction of some kind of god. The memories of the farmer were dim– he had only been a child when he was ripped away from this culture– but he had known the hunters of the village kept their own god, deep in the woods. This shrine must be a remnant of that small religion.

Hmmm…

Three of them were beyond my reach, but this forest shrine was achievable.

I reached through the thread that connected me to Ahe, and called him home.