Ahe had a light and boisterous soul. As he slithered through the boundary line where carnivorous, poisonous, and toxic plants interwove around the collapsing beams of the old fence, he was bright-minded with excitement to tell me all he had seen.

What did a snake find wondrous in the world?

The shine of the light coming through the trees and reflecting on river-bed stones like the scales of an enormous serpent, who he had named Pehaku, the Serpent that Swallows the Sea.

The croaking death-cry of frogs, which Ahe believed to be the song of Kuana, the Heron that Speaks Death.

Everywhere he went, he saw gods hiding just beyond the canopy, among the ferns, beneath the rivers.

And he had adventured far, down the line of the water towards where it spilled into muddy islands and estuaries. There, massive toads with horned heads had clashed for dominance, and enormous gharials had snapped up the victors after lying in wait for them to exhaust themselves. The air was torn by croaks and cries.

He had seen landbound birds with red, scaly necks that hunted for river clams and small worms, but been devoured by massive snails that could disguise themselves by changing the colors of their sluggish bodies.

Centipedes the size of boa constrictors.

Trapdoor spiders that hid under a bed of leaves and exploded up with jaws dripping poisoned death.

A thousand mosquitoes drinking dry an old boar.

The world was full of deaths and gods, to his eyes, but he saw no horror in it. He proudly recounted each brush with death and showed me the bloody scar where a bird had tried to pluck him up into the air– only to die to his lightning-fast bite.

I greeted his stories with pride and affection. He was born from my will to explore the island, and he had carried that task out with joy and fearlessness.

He had even brought me tribute. It was a small gemstone, formed from the tumult of river water slowly polishing a fragment of sapphire. Now it was smooth and flat and oval with bright white faults like stars within a half-lit sky.

He entered into the gloomy hut where the hermit farmers remains lay, my core crystallized in the eye socket of the skull. Climbing onto the bed of filthy straw where the farmer had sat and let himself die, he coiled in my lap and set the gemstone down.

“The jungle beyond is perilous, but nothing compares to your creations.” He hissed into my mind.

“Little flatterer with a serpent tongue.” I shot back, affectionate. “But I think you’re flattering yourself. You mean nothing compares to you.”

“The creatures beyond your walls are dull-minded. They see, they eat, but they do not know, they do not appreciate. They are blind to the will of the gods.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps the will of the gods is mindlessness and slaughter. I cannot say, but I am not eager to meet them.”

“The gods are already with us.” He protested. “I have seen them hiding in the sun’s shadow.”

“The matter I have called you here for is close to your heart, then.” I decided to avoid the argument; there was little point in dispelling his head full of gods and dreams. “The hunters who once lived here made a shrine deep in the forest. I cannot go there, but you can go in my stead. Find what spirit or magic inhabits it.”

He nodded his scaly head. “This I will do. All over the island, there are pieces of the dead. Things they left behind. I am curious why their gods abandoned them.”

Because the killers had stronger gods, I thought, but did not allow him to hear.

I had none of my creation’s faith that the gods were good, or anything different from what I saw in the world around me. As above, so below, they said.

Just as creatures in nature contested for resources so did gods. And they were not above killing each other in their fights; a better question would be why these shrines were not defiled and wiped away by the conquering empire.

The empire itself was my chief concern. They spanned several dozen islands, ruling them all with a fleet of warships and the help of massive moving fortresses built on the back of leviathans. To say one island was no threat to them was an understatement; they could raze all I’d created without ever setting foot on shore.

How to beat them?

It wasn’t easy to say. If I could move from this island to another nearby, I could hope to hide, but movement was deeply traumatic for a dungeon core. It could permanently damage me to relocate.

Building up my defenses on the island itself was one step, but they had the advantage of range and mobility. Likely they’d pelt me with flaming ballista and catapults loaded with caustic tar from a distance long before they sent their soldiers. That was the difficulty.

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The solution was in the water.

While they had warships, ballista, soldiers, the majority of the empire’s people were humans, and their weapons had been designed to fight other humans. They sailed upon the surface of the sea, but had few defenses against threats that came from below. If I could extend my reach past the island’s shores to strangle the seas with monstrosities and traps, they would never be able to position to bombard me. Unfortunately…

This was a brute force solution, to be sure. It would require leveling many times over to cover the entire island and a significant swathe of the water beyond.

But it was a solution I could work towards.

Above, in the rafters, the twin cuckoos were growing more adventurous. Already they were easing their way out of the nest, hopping along the weed-tangled thatch of the roof and pecking about for worms. Their downy furry feathers had shed and new flight feathers were coming in rough patches. The sister was singing brightly, lifting her head to call up to the songbirds in the sky above. The brother hopped in circles, wings outstretched, his head twisting back and forth.

“Mele.” I called her. “Kahula.” I named him. Singing and dancing. Good names for birds.

“Names?” Kahula chirped curiously, tilting his head up at the sky. “We have names now?”

“Of course we have names. If we didn’t have names, how would the maker tell us apart.” As they grew their minds were growing more distinct. Mele was sharp and practical. Kahula, well, I wouldn’t call him dull but his attention wandered from one thing to the next without paying attention to any, and more often than not he would dream himself out of reality entirely.

But for what I needed, perhaps his artistic imagination was a better tool than Mele’s cold reason.

“I need you to learn the songs of the jungle animals. Listen carefully. When you can recreate every sound you hear, you will be ready to serve.”

They tilted their heads, and listened. Coming through the jungle canopy were all the strange and wonderful sounds of a thousand songbirds, intermingled into a senseless symphony. Below that were the sharp hoots and hollers of the tree-dwelling monkeys. The croaking of frogs, low and brass. The grunts and howls of larger beasts.

They began to sing along, their voices unaccustomed to doing much more than bantering in their pidgin twinspeak and croaking to their mother for food.

Now they found the melody, and now their chests puffed up with song.

I listened with pride as they learned to imitate different songbirds, learning the distinction between a warning cry for a predator or a mating song from a lonely soul. As they hooted back to the lemur colonies, and ribbited along with the frogs.

But then…

They paused.

Kahula looked to Mele, uncertain. Mele glanced back and spoke sharply. “Something is wrong.”

I didn’t understand what they meant. I could only ‘hear’ in the sense that I felt vibrations in the air. That was the same basic mechanism as any other creature, but I lacked some of the artistic impulse, the innate understanding, that my creations had. I ‘heard’ the way a foreigner heard their second language.

“Tell me.”

“Something is coming. Many somethings. They are worried, and they call out, but nobody answers.” Kahula answered, tilting his head to listen. “They are many times larger than us. Larger than the beasts in your field chewing on vines.” He pointed his beak towards the old boar.

Larger than that? Many of them?

I mentally prepared to see my little farm destroyed. I could survive the battle, no doubt. I might even slay the attackers…

But this would cost me. I pulled on the threads for the serpents out hunting, commanding them to return to me. I spoke to the queen, no more than four words. “Enemies coming. Stand ready.”

Returning to the duo, I said, “Fly out. Tell me what you see. Be careful.” I gave Mele the mana she needed to grow abruptly through the last stages of childhood– she was already wise and clever enough that I felt no fear sending her out into the world.

Mele nodded her head and pecked her brother on the head before taking flight. I waited for her return with nervousness in my heart.

But I was already preparing.

I seeded glowbelly mushrooms beneath the earth, ready to erupt. I lifted walls of bamboo to reinforce the fenceline and create a single pathway, a natural chokepoint. There I dug the earth out from under a shallow layer of soil to create a hidden pitfall.

Second nature to a dungeon. Traps, deception, death awaited.

But when Mele returned she was moving in a panic, still awkward in flight and struggling through the air. She crashed down beside her brother, who hopped around her exhausted body with confusion and fear. “What is it? What is it? What is making all that noise?”

I could finally hear it. They were close enough now that their bellowing was distinct from the backdrop of the jungle.

“Things with long bodies.” Mele gasped out. “Masked faces. Scales like a snake, but with arms and legs. And terrible claws. They move together. They are calling out to their brother, who walks towards us in a daze.”

And it hit me then what a mistake I had made.

I had sent out my parasitic wasps to bring me prey. I had failed to consider what that prey might bring with them.

By Mele’s description, I could guess what had happened. The wasps had stung a hunter, one of many in a roaming herd. It had been sickened and taken over, yes– but it had also brought its pack with it as it stumbled blindly towards me.

It was too late now. My serpents raced back to the farm, but I would need to hold the line for long enough that they could arrive.

As for saving up mana to unlock a phenotype…

There was no saving mana in this situation. I would either be overflowing with energy taken from the dead, or spend it all in a fruitless defense.

The line of the forest beneath the hill shifted. I watched through Kahula’s eyes as the first of the predators stumbled forward in a slow, ugly shamble. And I watched as six more emerged in its wake, calling out to their brother in confusion.

They were ferocious.