“There had been a frozen mist here, and the trees were spun into feathers. Their fragile brilliance made me wonder why, into the spotlessness of Creation, God had seen fit to introduce soiling, twisting, rampaging, Man.”

-Maria McCann, The Wilding

==Zidaun==

We saw a beetle poking its head out of the next pond when the mist cleared. It watched us as we passed by, but it didn’t attempt to attack us. That meant the beetles were acting like aggressive animals. This one had seen us destroy another of its kind, and presumably its offspring, and decided we weren’t worth the effort of fighting.

The next pond after that, we were attacked again.

This time we fought against two of the beetles, as well as slightly more offspring. It still proved to be an easy battle for us. Fighting in the mists would be obnoxious to many groups, however. It got marked down, along with everything else we learned about the beetles. It was the usual type of report:

“The beetles never attacked us in groups larger than two. My guess was that they were a mated pair. That would certainly line up with the larva that attacked us from the ponds. After killing the beetles from one pond, it was common that the next pond’s beetles would leave us alone. It didn’t always happen, but it was common. This suggested tactics that were more than simply monstrous. The beetles also didn’t attack until we entered the boardwalk space right next to, or above, their pond. This indicated that they were likely highly territorial. Each mated pair would claim a single pond and then defend it. It might be that they were focused on defending, or feeding, their offspring. Their offspring only rose to the surface when they received a specific signal from at least one of the mature beetles in the pond. And so on…”

I had written countless reports like this over the years. At least the monsters here were unique and interesting. Many starting dungeons just had a single monster, with maybe a few additions or variations.

We soon reached where the boardwalk split. To the right it continued until it became the bridge. Straight ahead, and then curving gently back to the left, the path continued over the ponds and then back toward the far side of the meadows.

We paused for the moment.

“So which way should we go?” I asked.

Inda pointed toward the bridge.

“We are already here,” she said. “We might as well go see what is there.”

“Just making sure,” I said, a small smile on my lips. I knew that we were all curious.

We journeyed to the right, fighting the various beetles, until we stood right before the bridge.

==Caden==

I hadn’t stopped working with the various teleport runes since I got them. I hadn’t stopped working on metallurgy, either. Being able to divide my mind into multiple shards might be the single most powerful ability that I possessed. And it wasn’t even a delineated ability visible to my skill sheet. It was one of the many intrinsic abilities of being a dungeon core. And, like so many of my skills, it wasn’t listed at all. I wasn’t sure why the system was so clear with titles, but so vague with abilities. Perhaps it was simply that abilities were larger than titles. There were so many ways to use skills, listing them all would be impossible. Or maybe it helped force people to explore their abilities for themselves.

Regardless, I was grateful that I could work and observe people at the same time. Not that observing people wasn’t work, because it was.

As Zidaun and his team fought, I had been subtly adjusting the aggression parameters for the monsters that they encountered. I liked that they had used aggressive posturing to scare some of the animals away. That kind of creative solution deserved a reward. They were testing my dungeon, and as they did, I adjusted the dungeon in response. I wanted the dungeon to feel more natural. I had to live here. Some areas would be more scripted and regimented, but I liked creating areas that felt natural.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I was also excited when they went down toward the ponds and waterfalls. The ponds were based off of some geothermal ponds that I had seen in my old world. The ponds there had been shallow, but very hot, and had barriers of calcium deposits. They had also had a range of colors, from a rust red to a brilliant green. I liked the idea of sequential ponds feeding into each other, but I had used a more wetlands interpretation of it.

I was actually proud of how I made them feel natural.

I had laid down barriers of harder, and more resistant, stone that were pressed up against each other. In between those, I had filled them with soft limestone and then mud and gravel. All this was in the future pond areas. Then I had let the water from the aqueducts pour out and down over the ground on the far side of the valley. Where the water naturally traveled, I had carved the earth and stone away. I had shaped the slope of the hills and ground so that the water would head in the general direction of the future ponds, but I let the water itself create its own path. That way it would look completely natural, because it was.

After that, the water finally reached the ponds. The water entered and dissolved some of the mud as it traveled along. It would also pickup pieces of gravel. The random motions of the water, as it spread out like a miniature delta, deposited mud and gravel into tiny dams. These would then redirect the water. Then the water would finally escape one pond barrier and create a tiny inch tall waterfalls into the next pond down. And then the cycle would continue. And this happened many times until the water finally started to trickle down over the edges of all the ponds that bordered against the steep canyon that lead far below.

After the paths had been chosen by the water, I had made them permanent by adding more stone here and there to enforce the new barriers. And then I had built banks of mud and grass along the barriers. After that the ponds were hollowed, and I placed springs in a few of them to enhance the flow of water. That created significant waterfalls, which is what I wanted.

However, the gap around the single surviving island of stone in the canyon was filled with mostly darkness at that point. A little mist naturally spread out around the waterfalls, but it didn’t create the effect that I wanted. I tried a few of the environmental options, but they didn’t fit my needs either. It was easy enough to create a stable fog bank, or mimic the mist from the waterfall on a greater scale, but neither had the sense of motion that I wanted to create.

I wanted an adventurer to come here and see the mist boiling. I wanted it to feel like the mist was a barrier that was barely strong enough to contain the immense power that was lurking below it. I wanted it to possess a beauty and power that was otherworldly. I wanted it to feel alien, and almost alive.

So I had gone to work. If there weren’t any options available, then I would create them.

So I did.

I had started by working more on fog. I used water pushed through ultra fine nozzles to aerosolize the water. I knew that certain amusement parks had used this to create fog effects. I borrowed the same idea. Properly done, with a very light wind, I was able to create a fog that spread out across the ground in a wave of thick vapor. Replicating the idea many times over, I was able to create extremely thick layers.

This fog was more artificial, and it moved in ways that felt unnatural as it spread. It still wasn’t perfect, but it was much better.

After that I had played more with wind. I had a large section of air below the mist that I could mess around with. Unfortunately, just using updrafts, even ones pointed and oriented in different directions was not enough. Ultimately I had needed to create a number of different layers of mist at different temperatures. The coolest layer of mist was on the top, followed by layers of progressively hotter mist below. The super heated water in the bottom layers, combined with the wind, formed steam that rose up and then encountered the cooler layers above. The steam would cool, but its motion was imparted to the layers above. The mist roiled with warmer layers rising up to the top and then cooling and falling back below.

After I had managed to create the effect that I was looking for, it became one of the options I could create. Now it simply happened. All the nozzles and other artificial methods of creating the roiling mist were not necessary anymore. Now it was simply an effect that was created with the magic of the dungeon. I liked it better this way. Now, even if someone studied the mist, there was no obvious reason for its existence. It felt like proper magic.

I had taken my time making the bridge, and everything else as well.

The boardwalk and the bridge were deliberately made with loose joins in the wood. Those joins were still more than strong enough to hold people and monsters.

I had used boulders for some very enjoyable destructive weight testing. The fact that it was also necessary just to double check everything was a bonus.

Designing the bridge had been easy.

I didn’t consciously think about it very much, but I could feel forces. I could feel all the countless pressures on the ground as people and monsters walked on it. I could feel how the artificial wind pushed against the leaves in the trees. And then I could feel that force transmitted into the springiness of the branches and tree trunk. And then from there the countless vibrations of those springs releasing the tension flowed down into the roots and into the earth. And it was like that everywhere. I constantly ignored those forces, except when I needed use them.

I had reinforced the walls in arches. I had chosen shapes that made things as stable as possible. And I was still doing more testing, as well, with hexagons, spheres, and other configurations.

So when I went to make a bridge, it was simple.

I already knew that arches were some of the most stable arrangements possible. I wasn’t planning to use wires of metal anchored to the bridge from above the sides, so that left out suspension bridges. In the end, I went for one of the most basic bridge designs. It was an arch, with another arch below the span of the bridge to support it.

All of this was made of wood.

I had also added in an additional effect, however.

I knew that people might add their own supports to the bridge.

I wasn’t opposed to that, it was a perfectly sensible precaution. However, I felt like showing off. I wasn’t going to allow someone to support the bridge with shoddy craftsmanship. If someone tried to enhance the bridge, they would get a surprise.

Having watched Zidaun manipulate the stone of my dungeon many times, I was hoping he would do it again here. It would be a fun show.

Plus, I was looking forward to them getting to the next area soon. I had made some strides forward with teleportation.