After traveling to the surface to show Cliodhna their territory from the starting area that most experienced it from, Mordecai left the escorting of their guest to Moriko and Kazue. He had a lot of work to do still and certain aspects of this zone were waiting on his work.

Somewhat irritatingly, Satsuki decided to accompany him and watch him work. Mordecai was briefly tempted to leave her behind, but either Kazue would allow Satsuki to use the shortcuts or he'd be dealing with a possibly irate nine-tail making her way through their combat path.

So instead he took her with him through the shortcut to the feasting hall and then walked up to the not-yet-volcanic island with her. The slush of ice and saltwater below was still far from their intended final level of water, but his work was going to carry him into it eventually.

Mordecai's core and avatar worked together to begin shaping a cave that sloped down into a tunnel that would eventually exit out onto the sea floor. Satsuki watched as Mordecai began etching runes into the stone, and he let her figure it out rather than letting her know what he was up to.

She frowned when she puzzled it out. "You are manually creating an airy water enchantment? But why? You should just be able to create that as an environmental effect."

"In my previous life, I would have relied on that," Mordecai replied as he continued his work. "I've certainly never had such an effect fail before. But in this life, I find I wish to take more care in my work. I will, of course, also be creating the effect via dungeon magic when the time is right, but I feel better about having redundancy here. Also, I am fairly certain that our delvers will feel more confident about the situation if they can see visible markers that they can verify the function of."

Satsuki tilted her head thoughtfully before saying, "This is because of Kazue, isn't it? She's a sweetheart, and I admit that the idea of seeing her upset about an accidental death is painful."

"In part. She certainly helped me get my start on this path," He said. "But it goes beyond that. I long ago figured out how to be thorough about protecting myself, that's easy. Being that thorough about how to protect others? That requires a lot more thought and care. So I am trying to do that."

"Mordecai..." Satsuki started, then trailed off as if uncertain how to continue.

But he had a good guess what was on her mind.

"Yes," he said, "it is in part guilt for the damage my carelessness wrought. But this is not simply a reaction, I have reflected on my decisions and methodology. Had I experimented with expanding outward the way environmental dungeons do, I could have found a way to shelter the village that the cult destroyed."

"You can't what-if the past, Mordecai," she said crossly.

"I know," Mordecai replied, "but it can be used as a guide for how to proceed in the future. I need to be more careful, not only for my sake but for Kazue, Moriko, and all those under our care."

Satsuki's tails swished as she thought over his words. He let her think as he began the next runic engraving. Mordecai could proceed through this task at a faster pace than his power alone would imply. To begin with, the surface he carved into could be prepared by his core, giving him a perfectly flat surface to work with.

Additionally, he could transport materials to himself instantly. Tasks like this were part of why the dungeon was still willing to trade in raw materials and intermediate products, manual enchantment and crafting consumed those goods.

Finally, he could multitask in a way most could not. Mordecai was not waiting until his physical carving was complete to begin inlaying materials and weaving mana forms, he was doing it all as a single, nearly simultaneous process.

After watching him in silence for a while, Satsuki said, "Hmm. If I expend effort inside the dungeon's territory, especially upon the dungeons behalf, then I earn a certain amount of reward, do I not?" A smile slowly crossed her lips before she said, "You know, I think I should help you with that project. I have to admit, I am rather curious to find out what sort of, mm, reward, you might have for me."

Mordecai gave her a flat look and replied, "My wives and I will figure out something appropriate. Sedatives maybe."

Satsuki's laugh floated through the cavern as she held out her hands for a set of supplies. He rolled his eyes and then conjured a set of materials to hand over to her.

"Thank you dear," Satsuki said with a purr, "I promise, I will work very hard for you, so you make sure to treat me right."

The woman was absolutely incorrigible.

Of course, that was part of her appeal. She was open and shameless in getting what she wanted, but you also knew where you stood with her. Well, usually at least. Plus, she knew how to be perfectly alluring. What memories he'd allowed himself to unlock about her suggested she'd always been very good at that, but those vague memories also implied that she was even better at offering temptation than she had been.

She had been active for the two-thousand-year period where he had been asleep, after all.

His work went much faster with her help; she was as fast as he was, though she was exchanging efficiency for that speed. Satsuki was using magic for every aspect of her crafting, including how she carved the stone's runes. Mordecai was fairly certain she could go even faster, but at the cost of more efficiency.

The enchantments were placed for extreme redundancy; they were creating two lines, and each line had enough overlap that a single missing stone would not interrupt coverage. Combine that with the two lines of enchantments being offset from each other, and it would take removing a minimum of four stones being broken/removed in one area to create a gap.

And these runes themselves were backup for the eventual environmental effect the cores were going to make.

While they had started just above the intended eventual waterline, it took some hours to reach the current level of the icy slush. The cold wouldn't bother him and he was certain that Satsuki could keep herself warm and dry with a simple spell, but the airy water effect only worked on liquid water and the ice would obscure vision anyway.

So Mordecai unleashed an aura of fire energy. He didn't need to hold back here, melting the ice would absorb most of the energy and it wasn't enough to work past Satsuki's defenses anyway. Their work brought them under the level of the water before too long, which let them test the effects of the runes. They could breathe as if the water was air and for the most part, they could move freely, but the water still left his skin and clothes wet, and provided some buoyancy, if less than water normally would have.

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As he was focused on his work, it took a while for Mordecai to notice something about what she was doing. Or rather, not doing. While his aura was enough to melt the ice, the water remained cold, yet Satsuki had not warded the water away. True, neither had he, but this avatar's baseline was sufficient to ignore all but the most extreme environmental heat or cold.

"What are you doing?" Mordecai asked with a sigh.

Satsuki lowered her eyes and smiled as she said, "Why, whatever do you mean? I'm just helping out a friend with his work."

Right. While letting her dress get soaked so that it clung to her form and showed off the effects of the cold water. She was even letting her tails get soaked to not ruin the illusion, and she was usually too vain to allow that to happen.

"Although," Satsuki continued as she stepped close to him, "I have to admit it is just a bit chilly here, and you are rather warm. Perhaps I could use you to warm myself up on?"

Her dress had loosened enough to reveal a dangerously tempting shadow when she leaned toward him and Mordecai quickly found his back pressed up against the wall. "Satsuki, this isn't the time for games."

"Games?" she said, "My dear, who ever said I was playing a game?" She began to press herself up against him and he grabbed her wrists to pull her arms between them and push her back.

Anger stirred in reaction to the other emotions she was deliberately stirring in him and he growled at her. "Stop this, now."

"Stop what, exactly?" She asked in a husky tone. "I'm not doing anything we haven't done so often before. Surely you can remember those delightful times?" She bit her low lip as she looked up at him with wide, dark eyes.

He couldn't, actually. Or rather, he wasn't letting himself unpack his knowledge of her any further than he already had and he ignored that faint whisper of thought pointing out that his core had plenty of space for that information now.

Before he could reply, Satsuki shook herself in what looked almost like a violent shudder and stepped back away from him. "I'm sorry darling, I know I shouldn't have done that, but it wasn't a game. At least, not that sort of game." With the change in her posture and attitude, the allure was gone as she buttoned the top of her dress once more. "I am a vain and selfish creature in some things."

Satsuki looked embarrassed as she glanced down. "I needed to be certain you still saw me as attractive. You have no idea how much it hurt to see that you recognized me but to not see even a hint of desire. While I've worked to wear down your self-control, I can not recall ever having to work so hard just to invoke a small spark of heat from your gaze."

Without looking at him she gathered up the materials she had been using for her rune crafting. "I know that I should apologize more, that was going a bit too far. But to say I was completely sorry would be a lie, and I am not going to start lying to you now. We've been through too much for me to do that. So I will leave it at the acknowledgment that I was wrong."

Mordecai noticed that she did not promise to never do anything like that again. He was fairly certain that she would try to behave, but he also doubted she could say that promise even casually in front of him.

Yet he could not find any residual anger or resentment for her actions. Satsuki was simply herself and he completely believed her when she said that she had been soothing emotional pain, even if it might not have been her only motive. The outer layer of knowledge and impressions that he had unlocked regarding her did include the awareness that he'd been drawn to her from the very first time he'd seen her.

He just couldn't remember exactly when or where that was or what happened, nor would he let himself remember.

There was no point in berating her, there was nothing he could say that she didn't already know.

Really, her honesty with and about herself was one of the things that he found attractive, and she could be just as soothing as she could be provocative and seductive.

Hmm. Soothing and comforting. Painfully honest in her own way. Open about her desires. Knew him as well as Gil did, if not better, so could attest to his character, but would not glamorize him.

An idea bloomed, and he did not know if it was one of the best ideas he had ever had or one of the worst ideas he'd ever had. Or both. Quite possibly both.

"Satsuki," he said thoughtfully, "I don't think we've had a chance to bring you up to date on all that has happened recently." She paused in her work to look at him with a puzzled expression.

Mordecai smiled widely, which caused her some consternation. "You may be aware that after the last attack, we kept two prisoners. One of them is irrelevant, but the other is someone we are trying to treat as a guest as much as possible."

"And?" she asked.

"She's chosen to go by the name Deidre." Mordecai's smile faded as he continued. "She's the avatar of the core that has helped in the attack. Or rather, the core that has been forced to help attack us. I'm afraid she's been bound by the leaders of the cult in Trionea for several generations. And she has been treated very, very poorly."

The bloom of heat from Satsuki nearly matched his own elemental aura, and the anger suffusing her spirit was enough to drive the water away from her skin and fur. There was more fur than usual for a moment too; a snarl had rippled across her mouth to reveal elongated fangs, her hands had curled with her nails hardening into proper claws, and several streaks of fur had started growing along her skin.

A nine-tailed kitsune's strongest battle form was a giant, monstrous fox, and Satsuki had learned that technique long before his war.

Mordecai waited for Satsuki to regain her self-control before he continued. "We've done what we can for her in the months that she's been here, and in the spring or early summer we will be moving to free her core, but until then she is bound by the enslavement of her core on one end, and limited by the binding runes I needed to carve into her flesh to keep her contained."

"You, WHAT!?"

"Satsuki," Mordecai replied calmly, "we've gained two zones since then, if we include this one. Her avatar still has more depth of power than mine. My only other option was to kill her because I have no other way to contain her."

She sighed as she ran through the scenario in her mind. "No, I can see it now. That's still awful, but killing her would have just given information to your enemy and allowed the abuse to continue. So why are you bringing this up now?"

"Well, I just checked and she's in her suite reading a book, along with the small fairy that has chosen to become her familiar, Payne," Mordecai said. "I think it would be good for her to have some company that, while somewhat biased in my favor, is otherwise outside of the current struggles. I was thinking of sending you along with some food and drink. She's tasted plenty of alcohol during her stay, but her avatar is a pseudo-demon. She's barely gotten tipsy, let alone completely drunk."

Satsuki gazed into the distance for a moment before saying, "If she's been here for months, then maybe it is about time she did get thoroughly inebriated. I certainly can help with that. But first," her eyes refocused on him, "how far into Trionea?"

"Way too far, even at your fastest. You'd never make it."

"Damn it," Satsuki growled.

While Gil could cross the territory of Baba Yaga so long as he was cautious to stay clear of her, Satsuki could not come within a mile of The Witch's territory without a chicken-legged hut showing up. Even Satsuki's battle form couldn't outrun that thing.

Mordecai didn't know what Satsuki had done to piss off Baba Yaga so thoroughly, Satsuki refused to talk about it, but he could hazard a guess. Though Baba Yaga is often thought of as being a hag, that is only one of many faces that The Witch could present to the world. A less infamous form was that of a beautiful young woman. It wasn't hard to imagine the two coming into conflict over a pretty young man.

Even without the issue of Baba Yaga, Satsuki using her power to blow her way into a dungeon would force other people of power to act against her, namely, those invested in maintaining the status quo of the empire. It was better for everyone if people of such power did not directly clash.

The thought tickled a memory that he allowed to unfold, which treated him to the vision of Gil's form smashing into a granite cliffside, to the detriment of the cliff in question, as Satsuki's scream of 'Oaf!' rang off the mountains. Right. The two did not get along at all. That made sense.

"Very well then," Satsuki said, "I'll meet with her. Hmm, food and drink. Mordecai, are you setting me up with her?" she asked teasingly.

"Not really," he replied back with a smile, "but honestly, if it is what she needs and what happens, well, I trust you to be careful with her."

Whatever the complicated issues lay between him and her, Mordecai was very certain that Satsuki would never do anything to harm someone so vulnerable and in need. Mordecai could play the vixen's dangerous games safely. Deidre could not.