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Progress By Dawn

The night had passed in cycles of digging, figuring out basic foundations, erecting short term walls to keep the sand away, and planning new digging routes. As the sun rose for the first time since his arrival, Chase sat on the edge of the sandpit, looking down and across his work, watching as the first hints of color bled up from the horizon and washed away the gleam of all but the brightest stars.

The sight was… awe inspiring, and Chase didn’t know why. Or, perhaps he did, and merely could not put it in words.

The arrival the previous afternoon had been… frantic, with the chaos of trying to establish the core, of adjusting to the new environment, and the urge to get as much of a start as he could. Then the night had been more chaos, the surprise of the scorpion, the drive to get… walls established, to get Coverage around the core. To carve enough material to make walls and keep the sand away, the swarm of plans and thoughts rushing through him.

Being without a true body… It made focusing so much harder. There was so little to ground himself with. It had been what drove him to create the mapping table, to put concepts into a physical record, to steady himself.

The first streaks of color stretched across the sky. A gradient of blue so clear and pure…

If he had breath, it would have ripped it away.

Instead, he leaned back, arms splayed out, once more struck by the oddness of not being… weighty. For all the pressure he exerted, the sand may as well have been solid concrete. He let his eyes focus solely on the streaks of color, the bright yellows and pale oranges that wove with the blue, the edges where the light was bleeding out across the dark of the night sky.

The night sky had been fine, but when he closed his eyes, blurring the world around him into shades of gold, when he had stared up and let the stars fade from his thoughts, there was part of him that felt like he was back in the Void. Senseless, bodiless. Merely thought and soul held in the cradle of His God’s burning light, the god’s essence. He had watched the body left behind twisting and burning away into pure mana… leaving only the cradle of his ribcage, and the core that was his heart.

Chase watched as the sun, bright and merciless as it was in the desert, began to rise from above distant dunes, casting light across the desert and revealing the pale red and gold sands.

“We survived our first night.”

The words were soft, almost… uncertain.

“Indeed.”

The form of His God floating behind him sharpened, the contrast of the dark void that he wreathed in white flame becoming sharper, even as the burning details faded slightly in the light of day.

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Below them, the sunlight slowly angled over the edge of the sandy pit, lighting and showing the bright red clay that formed his foundations.

They were rough, a simple crossroads of halls and rooms, carved half a unit deep into the long-baked clay of the desert. Above the carved paths, retaining walls of sandstone stretched up, going nearly a full unit higher, but only half that as thick. The inside had thin mesh lattices of clay that braced the far weaker sandstone and gave it a much-needed stability.

Above the four hallways, the latticework eventually reached above the sandstone into thin raised arches, tall enough for Chase to walk through with plenty of headroom. Meanwhile, the outer rooms were left open to the air, with only the sandstone bulwarks to keep the waves of sand from burying them. Chase had tried to give them better roofing, but the few attempts overnight to form clay arches over the eastern room had failed. The few tressess that hadn’t collapsed still cracked and sagged under their own weight, and the sole beam that hadn’t done either was nearly a half unit thick and had nearly collapsed the sandstone wall with its own weight.

In the center, around the core, Chase had splurged somewhat. Nearly ten units of clay, a full fourth of what he had excavated digging the foundations, had been arrayed into thin pillars and arches, forming a raised wall that rose around the core room. The walls themselves were filled with clay latticework, and the supporting sandstone around the bottom encased in more clay, covering the weaker material as it gave support for the rest.

Looking down, Chase had to say that it looked… kinda greekish. Lots of round pillars, arches, forming a… colonnade? He wasn’t sure if that was the right word, but it sounded right.

It was the start anyway.

He opened his menu to check his building supplies. After digging the foundation, he had chosen the southern room and selected it to just dig down. The mine was visible even now, nearly three units deep into layers of clay as golden particles slowly drifted up and towards the core.

“Chase, have you chosen a name for this place?”

The question drew his gaze from the simple rooms and up to His God.

“I’ve got a few ideas. Bit of Latin, bit of geek. Why?”

The god hummed, a sound that was more metal strings being strummed then human vocals.

“Names carry power. I’ve told you this before.”

Chase paused as the memory hit him, and nodded. In the early hours of the void, when they were both trying to come to some form of alliance, to bind themselves to each other, names had been brought up.

“Yeah. You said to not name you. That it would… cost us.”

The God slowly sat, though the overlapping of its limbs was less ‘movement’ and more ‘one shape to the next.’

“I am a being of Intent, Chase. My form, and appearance, are not Defined. My domains are unchosen. Giving me a Name… would influence what I become. For now, I am ‘More than a Muse’ and ‘Chase’s God’.”

Right. When dealing with the weave of the universe, knowledge was more than power, it was shaping reality.

“Okay… So you want me to name the Dungeon?”

As the god gave silent agreement, Chase turned back to the low foundations. They hadn’t even reached halfway out of the sand pit; they were still so small.

But Chase closed his eyes on the image before him, and let himself dream, let his mind push past the ‘Now’ to what ‘Could Be’.

A towering structure rising from the dunes… glass and clay weaving towers and paths, light so hot it could sear the flesh… A mirage given form, a dungeon far removed from the world, dangerous merely for the travel to reach it, before ever meeting its inhabitants or defenses.

The details didn’t matter. The intent mattered. The idea.

Sunlight, sand… and spite.

Chase didn’t build the dungeon core from his heart merely out of want or fun. He did it to survive, to spite the void and death. He built it to escape.

“It’s name…” Chase spoke, opening his eyes and feeling as if the very dungeon was humming and vibrating, his connections with the core opening in full as the nascent awareness turned towards him. He couldn’t help the weight, the magic behind his next words.

“Is Solis Crux. The Crossroads Of the Sun.”