A whole day had nearly passed. With the Eater having healed up enough by lunch that he was back on his feet and out and about hunting for a whole range of creatures for little Please to work with.

Bob the Bard was comfortably sitting in a little alcove beside the baby dungeon deep underground, that for some unknown reason had chosen to go by the name of Please after their constant little interactions.

Please was anything but easy to please, for it was an absolute whirlpool of questions whenever the young little dungeon wasn’t digging more tendrils and rooting tunnels through the ground.

What is a shape Sad? Hummed Please into the Bard’s mind as he sat patiently beside the floating little crystal.

“Shapes are shapes Please, they are the forms that things can take,” patiently replied Bob.

He just wanted to dive into the bio-splicing that the Dungeon was capable of doing, well at least after he had secured his safety-measure. For before this mission he had smartly done some research into dungeons in Isaldra’s library. He had gained access to fringes of the private section by cashing in a hefty chunk of his share of Swallow prestige that he and his friend had accrued over the years through completing missions for the Phoenix Alliance.

There the Bard had found books that described how Dungeons were able to morph and shaped living creatures inside it’s domain that have been sufficiently saturated in the Dungeon’s mana to be considered “Owned” by the Dungeon.

Damn this is going to take forever, thought Bob as he waited for the Dungeon to claim him. For he and the Eater only took on this mission on the hopes that they can circumvent the Bard’s glaring weakness of being an absolute wet-towel in terms of his constitution by making him into a Dungeon monster.

In their gang the Eater was considered nigh-on unkillable. With his introduction to Delmathar being a rude awakening in some necromantic research facility that was already in the course of being raided by some fanatic Fantimark Paladins. He had to break out of the crazy situation and nearly lost his life a second time, before discovering that he could regenerate and gain skills by eating living flesh. Obviously Amir’s origin story did not set him to be a some sort of hero, for his new body was that of some horrific Ghoul/Chimeric-Insect hybrid that looked like Dobbie the house-elf on crack and was forcefully merged with a some sort of cricket. That was before he became even stronger over the years and took the intimidating form he took now, full of power and skills he had gained and absorbed from the flesh of his fallen foes as he slowly morphed into stronger forms. With his original regenerative powers that were his from the very beginning and not plundered from his enemies only growing in strength over time and making him even harder to kill by his enemies.

Harriet the Fire-Fist ape was but a sickly little gangly baby monkey when the Bard had first chanced upon her being transported in a cage and chained by some slavers to some wicked auction or whatever it was that slavers used to sell their ill-gotten products. He had risked his life to free her and since then she had followed him wherever he went even before he tracked down his friend the Eater. But the thing is, she was even stronger than Bard as a baby. Now a fully grown adult after all those years together, she faithfully guards the Bard and keeps him safe as he continues to buff the team from the back with her and Amir growing tougher and faster with every victory the party claimed as their own.

But the Bard, he stayed the same sickly little creature even if his musically-orientated powers grew as he climbed in levels along with his party.

With the Eater and the Bard knowing full well that they were beyond lucky to have Bob still be alive after all these years. For it would only take nothing but one decent punch from a Strength based Silver classer to end his life for good. The Eater also knew that he couldn’t keep him safe forever, even if Harriet believed in her simple mindedness that she could.

Then the pair had heard rumours that Dungeon monsters could reincarnate in the Dungeon even if they perished outside of the Dungeon’s domain.

So with the fact that there were no humanoids of the same type as the Bard or the Eater, Bob had theorized that they had grafted into monsters. It was already a given in Amir’s case, for ghouls were a type of necromantic Monster and Chimeric-Ants a insect type of monster. In some sort of inversive joke, the Bard had grafted into something that closely resembled a defective and highly gimped and crippled Turken-durk, a type of weak little bird that was well known for being able to create and mimic a whole range of sounds. So with this theory in mind, he hypothesized that it was possible for them to become Dungeon Monsters, and therefore give him and Amir a safety net in case they were defeated and killed in this brutal fantasy world.

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But there was a catch to this plan, for if they became denizens of Please and it died, so would they. But then again, Please was a dungeon and living dungeons were notoriously dangerous.

The party then hatched a plan, to climb through the ranks of the Swallows and earn the right to escort a baby dungeon for it’s seeding. With the grinding taking years and so many dangerous missions before they were finally given the mission they had wanted. This was only after a certain even had come to pass, which nearly wiped out their whole crew. But that was a story for another day.

The Dungeon Queen Isaldra herself was the one to hand Please over to the pair, and stating to them that she knew full well what they were after. But that at the end of the day it was purely up to the child if it chose to take sentients as its own or not.

And Please had been picky indeed, with it choosing not to say a word to the Eater or Harriet and only choosing to converse with the Bard whom it had taken to calling the Sad-sound for some reason.

What is a form? asked Please as it paused from splitting its consciousness to further dig out the far reaches of its growing web-like domain. Instead Please waited for the Bard’s answer by injecting more growth into the soft moss that it had cultivated from the spores that Bob had tracked in by his feet, into a lush green carpet that blanketed his little core-room. It had pleased Please to see the green colour and the friendly Sad-sound had insisted that it needed a “Ecological base” in his domain, whatever that was. But Sad-sound was smart, so Please listened to him. Plus it displeased Please how his Domain was so bare. But that will change with the help of Sad-Sound and his not-so-nice-friends.

“Here it’s easier if you just look in my mind Please,” spoke Bob as he lifted his tiny little body off the newly carved alcove to let the growing moss crawl into his little recess and provide him with some cushioning. Bob sat back down comfortably and was reminded of a camping trip back on earth before he refocused on conversation at hand. He didn’t have much to do other than talk to Please anyways as he waited on Harriet and the Eater to collect plant and animal specimens for Please to seed it’s domain. So he let Please into his mind as he showed to him what he knew of shapes.

Here this one is a circle, he explained as he closed his little bird-like eyelids with the warm fuzzy pressure of Please inside his mind as he thought of a blue circle.

Circle, repeated Please.

This one’s a square, Bob continued with a red square in his mind. It’s got these right angles, he explained as he tried to highlight the corners of the image in his mind.

What’s a square with right angles? Asked the childlike yet androgenous mind-voice of Please.

Let’s not go there yet.. its complicated, replied the Bard as he knew that he should’ve paid more attention in his high-school maths, for he knew that down the line Please would want to learn about geometry and isosceles triangles. Eurgh, fucking isosceles triangles.

And sure enough, Please then asked, What’s an isosceles triangle?

Not now Please, lets get some more shapes in you first, replied the Bard.

So these are all shapes? Asked the ever-inquisitive Please.

Yes Please, they are the different forms things can take, happily thought back Bob as he felt like some sort of accomplished teacher. It brought back the happy little moments he had shared with Harriet when she was a little baby before she grew into an insolent teenage ape and then followed by the lazy and surly adult she became. God how the Realms did she even end up like that?

I think you did it, joked Please as she skimmed the answer from the Bard’s own mind. Open your eyes Sad.

Bob the Bard complied and found himself looking about the room in wonder. For when he was teaching Please, it had injected different strains of moss with it’s dungeon power and selectively grew out different colours in the Moss before spreading them around the whole chamber in certain patterns.

For the core room was now covered in bioluminescent blue moss circles, red moss squares and horrible yellowish isosceles triangles.

“It’s beautiful Please,” praised Bob with meaning.

Teach me more shapes, hummed Please.

If you like shapes, wait till I teach you biology Please.. it’s my strongest subject, and I have reason to believe you will absolutely love it, thought the Bard with a wicked little grin on his horrible face.

Please didn’t really understand much of what Sad-sound just said but Please was happy as he felt Sad-sound’s honest eagerness to help Please grow.

In Please’s dungeon sight, it could see the bigger shadow of creature with long arms and two legs and a round head that was super-imposed and tethered upon Sad-sound’s flesh body.

This little shadow that Please believed to be the true Sad-Sound, occasionally hummed out sad little melody every now and then, as if in yearning for something. But it was slowly being bleached of its blackish colour and into the same purple colour of Please’s domain.

And pleased liked that, for please liked Sad-Sound and wanted to keep Sad-sound. Even if Please couldn’t stop the sad-sound from the shadowy Sad-sound, at least Please was glad that it could help soften the sound.