Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge.

-Lord Byron

The vales were mankind's first homes. Protected from the elements, and capable of growing crops, these vales, save those threatened by grave dangers or lost, are still occupied by a human or Adar city. In these places, life thrives, and it does so in ways wholly foreign to the rest of the world.

-From A History of Civilization

==Gnaeus (aka Tam)==

I sighed, allowing the spell to dissipate.

By Otga’s devouring maw, now what?

The core was gone. The room looked… barren now. Entire sections of the wall were removed. The carvings, the emblems, my chair, the table. Everything was removed, with one glaring exception.

A single sculpture remained. Like all of them, it was rough stone, with otherwise perfect detail. This statue depicted me examining a smaller version of myself, even as that one examined the core. I found it amusing at the time. It seemed merely a ridiculous artifact of the core following an iterative design, copying what it saw without understanding. It saw me staring at a statue of myself; so it copied that. There had been no creativity, apart from some entirely ineffective traps. And traps were perfectly normal for a dungeon.

Not so amusing now. I stared at the core, larger than life, resting above the largest statue of myself. I smiled bitterly.

There had been signs, and I had ignored them. I knew it was something more, of course, something new; it had been created that way. I was so sure. So sure that I restricted everything the dungeon was capable of doing. Especially since the dungeon never attacked me directly. If it were an old and sapient dungeon, maybe it could have restrained itself, though I still knew little of them. With me this close to the core… any dungeon should have lashed out, if they could. That meant it had awareness and self-control. There were anomalies, so many, but I had ignored them, because its entire existence was anomalous.

I looked at the statue again. What does it mean? It took everything else, but it left this one, even adding to the design. There was no way it hadn’t left it on purpose. Is it a taunt, a mockery? A last message that even as I had studied the core, it had studied me and learned far more. That it had won. Maybe it was a gift? I laughed at this one, after all. Or was it some combination of those? A lighthearted gesture that declared it had fooled me? It could be… well, anything. What kind of mind ruled over the core? Who knew, certainly not me. As I just proved. It might be so alien trying to understand it was fruitless. I shook my head. Too many possibilities.

Was it self aware, from the beginning? Had the learning skill let it become sapient? Had everything been learned in such a short space of time? I shuddered… If so… It would learn so fast that it would be utterly out of anyone’s control.

I pulled in a blank soul. No skills, no abilities, no levels, no titles declaring the circumstances of its birth. How could that be a thinking mind? Was it more than it seemed? How far had my spells reached? How alien must that place be, to think but gain no skills.

I pulled a silver lump of folerth from my pocket, looking at it with a frown, then putting it back away. Getting more would not be pleasant.

I barked a laugh.

Get more for what?

It wasn’t like I needed to contain a dungeon core anymore. Sure, I would need more emblems in the future, but I would be able to take my time with those. I would use other materials, other methods, unless I needed them truly permanent.

I reached out; I felt the aura left behind and drifting in the room. How did it shed this much aura? It simply left it behind. Absurd really. A dungeon core retreated, left its territory, even abandoned its aura. I had never heard the like. If anyone told me this story, I would have called them fools to believe it.

The dungeon had built its aura up more than I had realized. This aura was far wider than the breadth of the room. A long narrow stretch extended deeply into the wall. I should have checked the aura, every day. A spell secured the fraying remnant now, affixing it in place. I had actually had to tow it back upwards. The aura, disconnected from the core, had started to sink down into the earth. Already, the aura felt different, lacking the characteristic pressure of a dungeon’s aura. Flickers of raw mana condensed and sparked across the suspended aura. I’ll study it later. I sighed again. For now, I would check my precautions, just in case.

My staff made soft clicks, the noise echoing back from the walls as I walked. Quickly, my former containment room was left behind.

Not worth dwelling on. A dungeon core, let loose beneath a major city. I would have been happy in the middle of nowhere, but no, the guild objected. On their head be it, should something happen. And on my own…

The city had not been attacked for centuries. And who cared if I was high level. It was not like my abilities were best displayed in a battle anyway… well, not exactly true. Some of my abilities could be displayed very well in a battle indeed. The point, however, was that I would need to set everything up well in advance. But no, of course law and tradition were not to be trifled with. No matter how stupid they were. I would have happily gone off and made my own lab anyway, but the people sent out by the guild to persuade me to come back would have been more trouble than the privacy was worth.

Except now… a dungeon was loose beneath the city. An apparently mobile dungeon. I shuddered. That could go… very wrong. All the mobile dungeons I knew of were very powerful. Whether that was a product of their mobility or vice versa I couldn’t say.

Eh… I would blame guildmaster Matonasucus if it came down to it. I had wanted to build my lab in the middle of nowhere. Not that Matonasucus knew exactly what I was doing down here. I had told him it was dangerous, but he knew better than to ask for details. Either that or he truly didn’t care. It was always hard to tell.

A smile came to my lips as I remembered how reluctant he was to build a lab for me, at least at first. Some drivel about impracticability and expense. Of course that had changed quickly when I mentioned I might get back into guild politics if I was bored. He had quickly become gracious. So predictable.

The plain stone shifted to a tiled blue floor with creamy marble walls. The tiles on the floor were almost completely hidden beneath plush rugs. Why even bother with the tiles? The rugs absorbed the sound even as light enchantments hung in the air beneath an intricately painted ceiling.

I rolled my eyes at the extravagance.

The guildmaster had decided to get a subtle revenge by telling the architects, workers, and stone shapers that the dwelling needed to match my elevated status. Or maybe Matonasucus actually thought this was an appropriate bribe to keep me away from guild politics? He certainly enjoyed his own indulgences.

I sighed again. Even as I came to check on the core, earlier this morning, my spell continued to tell me that its status was unchanged. Everything was as it should be.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

My laughter barked out and faded into a hard edged smile. As it should be. And the core was gone.

The useless opulence passed on either side until I reached my own personal core. The center of my subterranean home.

This room was one of the few rooms I had bothered to make sure stayed plain. The center of the room held a grey stone platform raised up to waist height. The walls held six emblems, glimmering with folerth. Each connected to the others, gathered mana, and sent it down a single silver line that traveled across the floor and up the platform. The mana flowed into six mana batteries set into the sides of the platform.

My primary defenses were here, creating a three layered shield.

One covered just this room. All my defenses were potentially useless if this room was compromised. The most intricate emblem created the next layer. That layer covered everything down here except the containment room. And after that was the final shield. My final measure to ensure that the dungeon would be contained even it somehow escaped, or started to produce monsters.

It had failed.

There was no way the dungeon core should have been able to fit through the shield. The dungeon core. Was that even the right term anymore? Certainly it was more than merely that now. Some of the ancient dungeons were self aware. I had honestly not found the information too surprising, given the increasing complexity in dungeons as they aged. However that had not stopped an Adar from confronting me and swearing me to secrecy anyway. Other than emblems, dungeons were my specialty.

And neither specialty had been enough to contain this new core that I had infused with a human soul. And it wasn’t just any human soul either… No, I had needed one from some other place. Any human soul on this world refused to join with the core. They already had abilities and skills. Their nature was too solid to join with it. Even the soul of a new born child, dead on delivery, was incompatible.

I had needed a truly blank slate. I thought I had managed to snag a soul before it joined with a body. And the dungeon, while developing quickly, seemed mostly normal. It wasn’t like anyone really had a chance to observe a dungeon core before they founded a dungeon, so nothing had seemed too strange, considering that and its unusual origins. Right until it disappeared.

I scowled as I looked at the shield emblems. Every piece of it said that it was functioning perfectly. Useless.

I turned on my heel and walked away. My staff making the occasional click on exposed pieces of tile.

I walked to the stairs that lead to the surface. How long had it been since I had been out of this place? I rubbed my eyes. Months, at the least.

Had Thaw come yet? It should have, by now, but the heavens were always fickle.

I turned aside from the stairs for a moment and went to my bed chamber. I took off my robes and replaced them with simple white ones. No doubt their simplicity would annoy the guildmaster, but I was beyond caring. I had been for years.

My feet led me back to the stairs, and I climbed. This might be the only place I actually appreciated the softness of the rugs. I was far below the city here, and the interminable climb gave room for my thoughts to wander.

I had wanted to make a true impact on the world. All of this effort came of that. I had read the histories, I had seen the ancient tomes. I knew what was waiting for us. Civilizations had risen before. We had no idea how many, but they all fell in the end. Some fell to obvious things, individual civilizations dying off to war, plague, to their own stupidity. Those were not what truly concerned me. I was worried about the cycle. The cycle was not truly hidden, anyone could see it if they read and studied, if they made connections. Civilizations all across the world would face disaster simultaneously, and they would end. And we didn’t know why. No one did. We knew the last one was caused by ash. The whole world bathed in it and locked into Freeze for a century. However, they were not all like that. Innumerable causes, and some so sudden that no records of the catastrophe that caused them existed. The scholars did not talk much about it. The ruling class ignored it entirely. I had not been so blind to it.

How many decades was it now? How long had I felt the disconnect from my society? Three… no it was almost four now.

Even then I had been considered a rare talent.

So I had used that talent and the wealth it had brought me. I leveraged them into a meeting with the best Seer in the world. I remembered meeting with her.

She had no name. Like all Seers she was simply addressed as Seer. Usually they ended up being known by where they resided, or some aspect of how they perceived time. Her name was long buried in the past, even as she gazed into the future.

And I had explained about the cycle, though she had simply nodded. Her knowledge of the future saw this. She could see the disaster. And not just one. A countless horde of disasters that could snip the threads of fate. And she explained to me the most important thing about what she saw. The future was not fixed. The warp and weft of fate was constantly being woven. A single thread cut, or moved, in the right place, could change everything.

I was not alone in asking how to break the cycle. The rulers of nations, scholars, would be heroes, had all come and asked. Of course this question had been asked before. I hadn’t truly supposed that I was unique in asking.

I had almost despaired when she told me this. When she said that some had no possibility, and even those that did almost always had possibilities too tenuous for her to grasp.

But she did say that she saw a way forward for me. And so she had given a possibility and a warning. A dungeon core with a human soul could break the cycle of the world. However, that cycle’s end could be freedom and salvation, or despair and destruction.

And how many times had I cursed her, and myself, in the decades that followed? I had deemed it impossible many times, but always I had returned to my quest.

Was this what was meant to happen? Would this break the cycle? I had no idea. I had hoped to break the cycle myself with the knowledge I gained from the dungeon. I thought, at the least, my knowledge would empower some future hero. Hubris, it was the new dungeon core itself that would determine the future, now.

My thoughts settled back into order as I reached the top of the stairs. I paused for a moment, my breath slightly labored, and then opened the door.

The guild building was much as it always was. Servants and apprentices scurried hither and thither for their studies, or masters. And everywhere was a cacophony of sound. It washed over me as I walked the corridors. The babble of indistinct voices grew more comforting as I continued. I had stayed away too long. For all that my worry remained, my breath came surer and my step livened. I made my way to the exit and stepped out.

The sun, Shurum, was high in its arc, and the day was biting cold. Snow lay a few feet high in all the shadowed places. It was not yet Thaw then; it was late. A tiny distance away from the sun, I could see his counterpart. The glowing ring of the maw, Otga. Soon Otga would excite her husband Shurum to passion, and Thaw would finally come.

I could see the ageless valley walls that sheltered Allalus covered thickly in snow. Few indeed would travel in Freeze. Only merchants in their endless rounds between the cities and adventurers tramping back and forth to the nearest dungeon would use the roads now. The sun glinted off the snow and everything seemed as it always had been. Was it truly the same?

My eyes were drawn to the north, to the most spectacular sight of the entire valley. A waterfall and a cliff. Of course it was not just any waterfall, it was the waterfall, Plucia. A cascade of water flowed down and over a mile high cliff of granite. And it flowed year round. With Freeze as late as it was, the water was thin, but it was also at its most magnificent.

Water, frozen as it ran down the cliff, formed thousands of fantastical icicles and floes. The cliffs to the side were covered in sheets of glassy ice formed from traces of spray. The light of morning and evening made the cliffs into mirrors, making the whole edifice shine like a torch. The Frozen Flame, it was called, sacred to the followers of Otga, and it was only present just before and after her courting dance started.

Even now the glinting of the light in the water and ice was majestic, but I found my eyes drawn to the heavens. Otga and Shurum, what have I wrought? And if I have broken the cycle, will it be creation or destruction?

My steps grew heavier as I made my way toward Otga’s temple. More than ever I hoped that she would hear me. She ruled over fire, darkness, and chaos. If any knew what my changes might herald, it was she.

I had walked slowly, and the sun was getting ready to go down as I reached the temple on its hill. The gleaming black and crimson of the temple felt heavy and comforting. Waiting, I eventually made it to the temple’s altar where it overlooked the valley.

I gave myself to a brief but heartfelt prayer.

“Otga, have mercy on us all.”

As if in answer, the sun caught the cliff just right and the The Frozen Flame burst into fiery light, the descending mist of the water burning like lava as it descended into the shadows of the waiting lake below.