-M’lord?- the wisp asked telepathically as Puck fumed in silence. It had been nearly 30 minutes since the wisp’s creation and 10 minutes since Puck finally ran out of epithets and fell into a quiet stewing anger. In spite of his good fortune, Puck felt rather abused. It was as though he had encountered a genie. Not the genial type that granted whatever their master wished, but the real genies from the original tales, who gave with one hand but took away with the other. Like granting a man’s wish for a mountain of gold and taking it directly from the sultan’s treasury so the man ended up arrested and executed. Puck had had the good luck of several levels coming all at once, goblins to absorb, and being granted a powerful monster for his dungeon, but the strongest, or at least most clever and wicked of the goblins had escaped his influence before dying and his Spirit Wisp was stuck in place like a giant glowing target for anyone with an arrow. What’s more, he was pretty certain that he had only awakened less than a day ago. It was a lot for one day.
-M’lord?- the wisp pressed again.
“What?” Puck replied irritably.
-I seem to be trapped.-
The sprite’s eyes bulged. “I hadn’t fucking noticed,” he raged, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
The wisp’s reply was preternaturally calm and polite. -Have I done something to displease you, M’lord?-
“Ah. . .” Puck began, his jaw opening and shutting several times before he managed to articulate anything else. “No. I suppose you haven’t.”
-Is it possible to free me, M’lord?-
“I don’t know. . . um. . .” Puck paused. “Do you have a name?” he asked.
-M’lord hasn’t given me one yet,- the wisp answered.
Puck frowned. Names were important things. They defined character and held power. If he was going to be spending a significant amount of time with this creature, she should have a good name, one as memorable as a good prank or particularly vicious pinch. A verse came unbidden into his mind and he found himself reciting a passage from something he didn’t remember knowing.
“Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab. . ."
The dungeon spirit nodded. It was perfect. Not to mention that Titania, if she ever heard of it, would be livid to know such a lovely and powerful creature was named after her husband’s mistress. His head tilted to the side, not sure where the thought had come from.
“You are to be known henceforth as Mab,” Puck stated. A scroll appeared.
You wish to name your Dungeon Spirit Wisp Mab. This decision is final. Yes/No?
He nodded yes. The scroll changed to her stats.
Name: Mab
Level: 4 Classification: Dungeon Spirit Wisp [Boss]
Bonds: 0 Fauna: 1 Flora: 0
Abilities: Conjure Creature, Summons I, Improved Metawell I, Command Lesser Fae
Spells: Paralyze, Fae Flames, Cancel Magic, Mana Leech.
P.S. Yes, this scroll was totally unnecessary. I’m just bored. No adventurers strong enough to require my attention today and hassling you is the most interesting thing I have to do. None of the other dungeons are doing anything anyone but adventurers find the slightest bit fascinating. They’re all fierce monsters, nasty traps, fancy treasures, jungle biomes, accidentally resurrecting humans, and other such typical things that one dungeon or another has been doing for two thousand years.
Puck ignored the chatty system and focused on Mab’s spells. They filled out the rest of the scroll.
Paralyze: Triggers constant action potentials in muscle cells to turn one creature into a living statue for five minutes. Weaker creatures may suffer from exhaustion when the spell ends.
Fae Flames: All animate targets in a 10 foot diameter per caster level are wreathed in illusionary fire visible in all forms of darkness or light, magical or otherwise. Reveals invisible and camouflaged targets.
Cancel Magic: Cancels all positive and negative magics on one individual. Temporarily nullifies enchanted gear or permanent curses/blessings for 5 seconds per caster level.
Mana Leech: Summons a spiritual leech that attaches to any animate target’s metawell. Victim must have a mana source available to be leeched. Drains a portion of mana every second until the victim’s metawell is completely emptied. Returns a small portion of drained mana to the summoner. Cannot be removed by conventional means.
Puck glanced up from scroll to his wisp. Even trapped, she sounded like a formidable creature, at least against one opponent at a time.
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Mab responded to his attention. -Mab. I. . . Thank you, M’lord.- She sounded uncertain of the name, which didn’t particularly suit her beauty as much as it did her purpose. As the dungeon’s creation, she had little choice in the matter.
Puck changed the subject, “Do you know how to use Conjure Creature?” he asked.
-I seem to know how to use all my abilities, M’lord,- she answered in his head.
The dungeon wondered why telepathy wasn’t listed on her status scroll. None of the scrolls seemed to record methods of communication at all, so perhaps that was the answer.
“Can you use it now?” he asked. He was curious what the results of summoning a dungeon pixie would be, but didn’t want to use his own energy to do so.
Mab glowed brighter for a moment, then dimmed back to her normal level of luminescence. She responded in the negative. -My apologies, M’lord. I don’t have enough mana at present. The dungeon pixies are very expensive to summon. My metawell would need to be nearly full to summon even one.-
Puck shrugged. They would just have to feed her later and give it a try afterward. He hoped the dungeon scroll A.I. had been right about someone hunting the goblins. He was still hungry and now there was a wisp to feed as well. He wondered if her mana leech spell would take away from his mana gains. Sharing his power wasn’t really on Puck’s agenda if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. He could feel himself slowly filling up with the steady trickle from the surrounding earth and Improved Metawell I, but it was hardly enough. Closing his eyes, he reached out with his other senses to determine whether there was something else within his influence to absorb. Nothing stirred against his perception. The dungeon had been stripped of all life in the mindless hunger triggered by his attempt to leave.
Dixon had mentioned that Puck could summon anything he absorbed and it was an ability the dungeon had yet to experiment with. There was a whole lot to this newfound existence Puck had yet to experience, even with the limited abilities he had chosen. Summoning something he could eat later sounded like a good place to start. The Biosphere I ability suggested that fauna wouldn’t procreate without it, so creating beetles and centipedes wouldn’t be a sustainable use of mana. The mushrooms on the other hand, he was extremely fond of the idea of, and couldn’t wait to see what happened when an intruder ate one.
The sprite hopped down from the altar and walked past Mab and the fae trap and out through the doors into the cavern. He imagined the mushrooms had grown in their last location for a reason, so he decided to regrow them in the same place. Off to the side of the tunnel was a patch of deep soil that had accumulated over time. Bat guano lay thick over the top and there was an impression left from where the mushrooms had previously grown. Puck leaned against a stalagmite and pondered the space. He may have been a dungeon, but he really had no idea how to go about summoning a mushroom. There was only one way he knew how to use magic, so in the end he just trusted his instincts.
Fungal fruits whose taste twists sight
Grow here in this garden bed so long fed by the denizens of night.
A small amount of mana spun out of the sprite’s metawell, through his awareness and into the dirt. It coalesced there and changed. Puck could sense as tendrils spread through the loam and a small body of substance formed out of the mana. After a minute or so, a single stalk grew from the soil and sprouted a cap. Puck was not impressed. He tried again, pushing the full force of his will into the task.
Let fungal fruits whose taste twists minds,
Grow wild in these deep, dark caverns rich with lime,
In spritely circles of the kind where fae voices sang
Beneath fangs of stone where night on leather wings from ceilings hang.
Let myconid spores take silent flight
Grow strong to play on mortal dreams, to alter sight
In wicked games that flip the meaning of wrong and right,
Beneath the world in this realm ruled by Puck, Merry Wanderer of the Night.
To say it went better this time would have been an understatement. Mana rushed into the soil, draining everything he had taken from the three goblins plus the extra he had received passively since. The combination of the rich nutrients and strong mana caused the original mycelium, the underground body of the fungus, to spread out at an impossible rate. Its threads spread out to entwine beneath the floor of the tunnel from where Puck had originally summoned the fungus all the way to the entrance of the cave. Wherever guano, lime, and eroded rock had collected rings of mushrooms of various sizes grew from the mycelium. Closer to the entrance the mushrooms and their rings were small, the largest ring a foot in diameter and the largest mushroom no bigger than a man’s fist. Where Puck stood the ring was so large it could barely be recognized as a ring. The mushrooms ran from wall to wall, shrinking to a height easy to step over along the pathway to the dungeon’s main room while along the walls stalks a foot and a half thick grew caps two to three feet in diameter. The largest grew from the site of the original summoning, two feet thick at the base and supporting a cap that spread 4 feet in diameter. Part of the cap rested against the peaks of some stalagmites, reminiscent of a thatch hut made of poles and a roof.
Puck still stood where he had cast the spell, now looking up at the underside of the giant mushroom. The result had been far beyond what he had expected or intended and the empty pit in his stomach where the mana had been was depressing. To his surprise, however, he could feel a faint amount of mana seeping into the ground and air everywhere the enormous fungus touched. While admittedly large, the fungi had turned nearly doubled the amount of mana trickling into his metawell every second. It was a pleasant and unexpected bonus.
Though he felt accomplished after reviewing the results of his summoning, Puck literally felt drained after expending the mana. He idly wondered if other dungeons got hungry or tired the way he perceived the sensations. Fortunately, the new mushroom seemed the perfect place for a nap. Puck sat down and leaned back against it, settling in. He closed his eyes, paying attention to nothing but the flow of mana into the air and into his metawell from every part of his dungeon. The sensation was so comforting and satisfying that he lost all track of the passage of time, almost as if he had truly been asleep.
A while later more footsteps startled the dungeon from his reverie. His eyelids opened slowly while a predatory grin spread across his face. The humans had arrived.