The wheel had ceased to spin. The statue stepped forward, a woman of black obsidian in a diamond studded dress, carrying an ivory chest. As the lid snapped open the crowd breathed in with mass anticipation.

And a crack split the air as the stage was torn into splinters. The wheel and the statue vanished like soapbubbles, and only the jester remained, taking a low bow as the earth behind him lifted up and sloughed away in a rain of debris, sundered by the rising peak of a tower made all from white stone.

A square-walled tower lifted into the sky where the stage had been. It was split into seven layers, divided by bands of dark red where the walls were engraved with statues of men and women struggled to lift the next portion of the tower onto their shoulders, their faces permanently scowling in strain. Some stood tall, others were lay defeated on the ground. At the very top, just two statues remained, carved in full, each bent to lift overhead a pyramid cap of pure gold.

“The Sevenfold Tower!” The jester announced, striking his gloved hands together. “What a beautiful prize, o’ glorious day, beautiful! For as long as this tower stands, those with the strength to climb will receive the glory and generosity of the Sun. Let champions from a thousand lands journey to this city to test their mettle!”

“Whether it is strength or riches you desire, rise! If you wish to live a hundred years, rise! If you would live a life that shines among the stars, rise!” With each exclamation to climb the jester grew fainter, more translucent, until by the third cry he was gone entirely, with only his echo remaining a while longer.

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Suffi’s mouth was slack with shock. Her thoughts were like water overflowing a cup. One thing pushed the other out of her head, and she fought to keep the important things in view.

Below, people were rushing for the tower’s four entrances, fighting to be the first inside. Fights were breaking out as a human tide struggled to force its way through the doors.

There would be a real flood of challengers once the news spread. Both for the tower and the Dungeon. They would be like locusts descending, and Suffi would need to entrench herself deeper to hold on to power. Her workshops, her forges, would be the ones to provide the adventurers with weaponry; dwarven scouts and her guides would lead challengers through the dark.

She would triumph. Her two-fingered hand clenched into a malformed fist. She had been born with it, with two almost flippered protrusions of pink, wrinkled flesh where most were given slender fingers by the gods. Her mother had been accused of consorting with devils and cast out, newborn Suffi in her arms. Nobody had thought she would ever be worth anything. Nobody could have imagined she would be the greatest artisan of her generation.

It proved Suffi’s basic theory. People were stupid. The world couldn’t be predicted through the sheer weight of stupid decisions being made every day, couldn’t be reasoned with because it didn’t run on reason.

Usually what mattered was the ability to hold course when things went mad, to keep the goals in mind. Steady as she goes. Trust the right people.

Most of all, you had to know what people wanted. Knowing why people acted was the closest you could come to a guiding light.

Suffi didn’t trust Eyfrae, and never would. They shared a small camaraderie and a large host of reasons to kill each other.

She didn’t trust the gods, and they could change that any day they wished- they just needed make gold rain from the heavens and the sick rise from their beds, and Suffi would be the first to bow.

But until then they were a lot of useless sods.

So of course she didn’t believe this promise, or rather, didn’t believe it was for Caltern’s benefit. No, this had to be about the Dungeon.

Her mother laid a hand on her shoulder. Always near, always watching over her. Suffi closed her eyes and pondered.

The question was, were the gods helping the Dungeon or trying to harm it? In the end, the flood of adventurers coming to challenge the tower would attack the Dungeon as well, making things much harder on the core. On the other hand…

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If the Dungeon was particularly weak right now…

It was a loose hypothesis born of speculation, but it made sense. This tower was an excellent delay, while if the gods only wanted to harm the Core, all they would have needed was the promise of a reward for the first adventurer to conquer the Dungeon.

Suffi had always trusted her intuitions.

To her right, Governor Kedlin was trying to muster his soldiers to intervene in the brawl below. Eyfrae raised her hand to stop them. “We’ll let them fight. You can’t stop a riot, Kedlin, only let it exhaust itself. Once they've worn themselves out, we take control of the tower and begin limiting the attempts."

Beside them, Suffi slid off her throne. Cathara moved with her, the two of them hurrying down the steps, the mother catching on to the daughter's agitation. Their personal guard shoved them through the milling outskirts of the crowd, the hangers-on wanting to see the violence as adventurers clashed at the tower doors.

As soon as they were safely drowned out beneath the roar of the crowd, Suffi turned to Cathara. "This is a distraction. The Dungeon is weak, and the gods are buying it time."

“And what do we do?”

“We make our move. Today."

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Disaster! Calamity! Chaos!

The earth hounds were pouring into my Dungeon, ripping their way free from the walls and tearing up my beautiful work as they came rampaging through the fields of grey lilies. I had no creations down here who could guard me save Adamant and the Arachne. I had no defenses, no foundation on which to rely.

And they were coming fast. As I watched, the foremost hound vaulted between the islands, not even needing to look down to sense the chasms hidden among the flowers. It was only Adamant's quick thinking that stopped it from coming further. Kneeling down, the silent golem planted his hands into the earth and caused the far edge of the cliff to crumble away just as the beast landed, sending it plummeting down in a sliding wave of rubble.

One down. But before I could taste even that small victory, another arrived through the breach in the walls.

I was calling the lion and the faun down as fast as I could, calling everything in my Dungeon that would answer, but it was a grim situation.

I could not return up the stairs. Everything in my instincts as a Dungeon prevented me from doing so, strongly enough that I felt pain, actual pain, just contemplating the idea. Delving had thinned my Mana somehow, allowed me to move freely within it, but now it was congealing again, coagulating around me like setting blood. The longer I waited the more damage would be done when I moved again.

The first clash was short and brutal. Adamant turned his fists to metal, meeting two hounds with blunt force.

A punch tore a hound's skull to a spray of shattered stone. Another smashed in a ribcage. Neither killed. Instead the hounds reformed, slamming into Adamant from both sides. It was like watching avalanches fight. Shapeless waves of earth crashed against each other as Adamant was torn to pieces and reformed, his fists swinging like clubs, breaking the hounds only for their stone bodies to lift from the floor and be remade.

A third hound joined the fray, leaping high to seize Adamant by the skull and crush down. He seized it by the throat and responded in kind. But another grabbed him by the leg, pulling him down.

I could feel his Mana running out, exhausted by constantly reshaping his own body. I fed him what I could but it was an uphill struggle. The hounds must have their own limits to how often they can be reborn, their own limited Mana, but I couldn’t sense it.

A fourth hound had already leapt the gap, barreling towards Adamant.

GIVE ME TO ARGENT, I commanded my newest creation, AND GO FIGHT.

I could sense his fear and unwillingness as he handed me down, Argent gripping me in her paws as we watched her brother struggle to rise against a sea of stony flesh and snapping jaws. The Arachne waded in, seizing a hound in both hands and hoisting it overhead.

One throw and the elemental shattered into pieces. Pieces that shivered and reformed, yes, but both me and the Arachne were thrilled by the show of strength.

I felt the brutal satisfaction in his mind. The joy at the simplicity of violence. No doubts, no worries, just movement and impact. He reached out to seize another but this time the hounds were on guard, circling away, making him lunge after them on his clumsy lower body. He let his attention slip for a second, let one of the hounds slide towards his flank.

Before I could warn him it had already happened. The hound lunged forward and turned its head down, arched its back out. It hit him with the full of its weight and with the long deadly spines of obsidian that jutted from its back like spears. They pushed through the nacre-armor and made the Arachne cry out, a sound neither human nor spider but undeniably pained; with a sweeping backhand he shattered the hound in retribution, but half of his legs were left limping, a yellowish blood weeping from his side.

In the background, Adamant managed to reform enough of himself to seize an elemental and rip it in two. The one that remained slowly backed away as its brothers began to reshape themselves.

A fifth, and then a sixth hound vaulted over the gap.