Awake. I had not been sleeping per say, but I definitely had not been in charge of my facilities. Apparently cycling your mana was very entrancing.

I took a second to recap the last… how long had it been? Either way I thought over what I could remember since first waking up. I am a Manning. I was a young Dungeon Core, according to the fairy man. I was still a little unsure about what that meant, but that was just one more question I was supposed to save for my companion. Taking stock of my situation, I noticed that I was now sitting above the large crevice I’d previously been trapped in.

Strange but not unexpected I suppose. I was unable to alter our size anymore during my trance, and our gem did not seem to be able to store a whole lot of mana. It was strange, but I came to the decision that I could just push the processed Mana back out so that I could drink in more. Of course, as I did that my surroundings became more refined and visible to me, it almost felt like my surroundings were a part of my new body.

I slowly became aware of murmuring. That must have been what woke me up.

"Look, you are here to make a bond, and I am unbonded. I really do not see what the issue here is.” I took a second to be thankful for how much better I was handling this situation than Cara, she was already resorting to talking to herself! I don’t remember anything, but for some reason I had a feeling that talking to yourself wasn’t something you were supposed to do.

"There must be some sort of mistake. I cannot put roots down in a dark dungeon. The beacon that the pixies broadcasted said that there was a nature affinity core here." A second voice spoke, just outside of my sight but within hearing. It sounded like another female, but very different than Cara. There was a light tilt to a voice and it was sounded so very sad. The voice resonated with a memory that I did not have, or could not access, and brought to mind an image of a felled forest. "I am sorry, but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to bond with you."

The new arrival sounded like she was on the verge of tears and her voice brought be pain in my chest. Core. Whatever.

"Cara, who are you talking to? What do they want?"

Anxiety. Anger. Coldness. Cara's emotions were so strong every one of them left a clear impression on me. It felt like a bit of an overreaction, but I probably wouldn’t appreciate somebody cutting into my conversations either. If I ever had conversations that is.

"Is there another core under you?" The voice still sounded pathetic, so quiet it was barely audible, but with a tinge of something else. Hope? "Are you the nature based dungeon?"

"I really don't know, sorry." Cara chose to remain silent, apparently. "It sounds about right. How can I check to be sure?"

"OH! You are! I couldn't sense you before, but you seem to be-" Excitement followed quickly by hesitation, "Are there two of you in that core? How is that possible?"

"Uhh-"

"Oh, I am so rude, sorry! My name is Ash, and I am a Dryad. If you wouldn't mind, I would like for us to bond our souls together so that we can grow stronger with each other. I can help you with all sorts of things!" By this point it sounded like the visitor (Ash, her name was Ash) was about to explode. Her voice had completely changed cadence and now brought new imagery to mind. Gone was the devastated forest, instead in its place was a meadow with tiny green plants starting to sprout out of the ground. The smell of a freshly harvested field flowed in. It was extremely relaxing. Wait, bond?

"Are you supposed to be my Dungeon Companion?"

"Only if you will have me."

"Of course! I am so confused, and we could use all the help we can get! The little fairy man said you could answer our questions."

"I’ll try to answer any of your questions to the best of my ability. Some things you should know first. As your companion, I won't be able to hurt you, and you won't be able to hurt me. My job is to help you develop into a thriving dungeon so that nobody comes to kill us. Anyways I can explain more as we go along, there is a lot and I won't be able to remember it all at once anyways, but I know quiet of a bit from my time in my mother’s dungeon. Okay, so to bond I am going to have touch your core and we need to exchange mana. Do you know how to control your mana yet?"

“Yep! Cara showed me when we first woke up, she is very smart.” There was no way to be sure, but something told me that when a female was angry at you it was a good idea to layer on the compliments. In my soul I could feel that it was the healthy approach.”

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What followed was Ash’s hand descending and covering our core. I felt her mana trickle in through my casing and it tasted much better than anything I’d been able to harvest from around me so far. In order to make room for it in my mana pool I had to expel some of my own first. As I pushed my mana back out into the hand, more flowed back into me even faster. This proceeded for a while and felt exhilarating. After a minute or two of exchange I felt something change and I knew that the bond was complete.

"Okay first things first, my mother told me when a new dungeon forms, it is often very small and non-symmetrical. That means that both sides match if you cut it in half by the way.” Ash paused briefly as she got a good look at the core. “It looks like you are already the correct shape and a bit larger than I was expecting though..."

"Oh yeah! We was an oval and I pushed us into this shape. Cara showed me how to do that too, like I said she is very smart," Cara was still silent and it was mostly the truth. "What's next?"

"You... You seem a lot more aware and intelligent than I was led to believe you would be. You must have retained some memories from a past life or something, usually baby dungeons are nothing but bare instincts. Well maybe not usually, but often. There are a lot of stories I’ve heard of dungeons who are wise beyond their years, or days. Anyways, now we need to decide what kind of dungeon you'll be, and I still need to put my roots down. That is basically planting my hearth tree and claiming my, our, domain."

"What kinds of dungeons are there? Also, no. Cara has her memories, but I don't. She's been super helpful. Cara?" I tried to reach out to Cara, but instead I felt a wall. How did she build a wall in our coffin? "Ash! I can't talk to Cara, there is a wall in the way. How do I get to her? Is she going to be okay?"

"Well, umm. I've never heard of two Cores sharing the same Vessel before. But I know that you have an ability to Segment your mind. As a dungeon you will need to be able to concentrate on several rooms at once, as well as maintain continuous processes like ventilation so that the explorers can breathe. She probably segmented herself off from you. It's actually a lot like what you were doing when I showed up I think." Ash sounded a bit nervous. I guess her job was supposed to be answering my questions, yet here I was asking her things she didn't know already. "I'm sure she will come out eventually. While we wait you should use your mana to spread your influence and we can talk about dungeon types."

"What's that, and how do I do that?" As concerned as I was about Cara, Ash made a lot of sense. There was no sense waiting around for Cara to talk to me, if she was giving me the silent treatment the best bet was to wait.

"Okay first we need to pull in some ambient mana, you can do this by-" Ash stopped half way through her speech. Instead of waiting for her to keep going, I started sucking in the energy from the rocks all around me and started to cycle it around in my core. I was already full up on mana so it started to leak slightly, but I did what I was told to.

"Now what?"

"I definitely need to exchange words with Cara. Somehow you two managed to go from a tiny oval to your first level with no companion. Not only that, but you seem to have already tapped into your affinity and, from the looks of the swirling mana in your core right now, learned to cycle and refine. Ugh this is so frustrating! You are supposed to need my help for this stuff, now what am I going to bring to the partnership!" Ash was angry now? Females make no sense to me! I was starting to think that I just had no luck with the ladies. Both of them were angry at me and I had no idea why. I decided to adapt my previous policy of waiting out the silent treatment. The silence stretched on for what felt like an eternity, and I broke first.

"Err, Ash. I still don't know how to spread my Influence. Could you help me figure that out?"

Slowly, as if unsure of herself, Ash started speaking again. Well, more of a mumble. Either way- "Just... I was taught that you would be able to look inside your core and imagine that your mana is a liquid around your shell. Let it melt away from you and coat the surface around you."

So that is exactly what I did. At first, only a little of my mana seeped away before I recoiled and my concentration broke. I had been shocked when the surfaces my mana melted onto became a part of me. I could see a bit more properly now, a lot like the area that had already been touching my core. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling that I’d already been inefficiently spreading my influence while cycling.

Before, when I looked at my surroundings, everything just seemed flat and lackluster. But as my mana touched it, and was absorbed into the ground, everything became vibrant and full. I could feel the dirt, under me, like it was one of those limb things that I lost. Amazing!

My ravenous hunger flared up yet again, but this time it was screaming at me to influence more. I closed my eyes and I let all the mana flow out of me as fast as it could. Like a river finally breaking a dam, my mana came pouring out over the surface around me, a nearly translucent fog with a slight green tint. My vision rapidly expanded as my influence doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and much more.

Suddenly I felt very drained, both mentally and literally. As the last vestiges of my mana left my core I realized I shouldn't have been so rash, but I was unable to regain control of my mana in time. I was rapidly losing consciousness. On the way out, I finally managed to catch a glimpse of the Dryad who had been speaking outside my range of sight, because now she was inside of domain.

I still had no way of measuring height or distance without a proper scale, but Ash was much larger than my core was.  She wore a dress woven out of small pale green leaves. Her eyes were a very deep shade of green, and the whites of her eyes were even tinted green as well. Her skin was almost entirely white, with a strange looking texture like the bark of a tree and she was standing there barefoot on the floor of my dungeon. Her hair, which seemed to be changing colors as I looked at it, went down past her shoulders, and in her hands she held what seemed to be a bigger version of one of those sprouts I saw earlier, like a long stick with some leaves on top. A sapling, the unidentifiable voice in the back of my head told me.

As I looked at her through my blurring vision, I realized that on her face she was wearing a very concerned expression. Her mouth was moving but I could not hear what she was saying. Then I slept.