Adventurers arrived at my western border that night. They set up camp on the edge of the ravine, going no further. One of them, a bald man with a too-big head on a too-small neck, perched on the edge and sent out, with little flicks of his hand, bobbing wisps of light. They flew out from him like roaming eyes, peering through every crack and crevice of the ravine’s downward slope.

As I watched through a rat, my own wandering eye, he shambled back to his companions and they began to sketch maps from his description. It seemed like they planned to scout the Dungeon rather than actually try to conquer it.

Unfortunately, that was the last I saw. A man jumped forward like a spider and caught the rat, swinging it against a stone. I was broken free of my link through Argent and to the rodent’s eyes in a rude jolt.

In the end, I decided to leave them where they were. The big event was coming up and they were only a small distraction.

I had already completed my gazebo, lifting up two layers of brilliant, ice-white frosted glass in tall columns and a round, two-tiered roof. The upper layer was Cabochon’s personal den, while the lower was rapidly becoming a workshop of sorts as we discovered one thing after another he would need to begin his work for me.

It turned out that being able to conjure things out of thin air had made me shockingly numb to how much effort humans had to put in to the act of creation. All the fiddly workings and skills that went into something like a jeweled cup. Some of the tools Cabochon needed were so specific I couldn’t even create them.

But he was fascinated with the process, and quietly delighted by me shaping his tools out of thin air and Mana, so I continued until he had a little workshop.

Suffi’s goblet sat at a long table in the center, surrounded by imitations. I had done a fair job of faking the gems with common crystals, and of replicating the broader strokes of her work. But anyone with a refined eye could tell which one was original.

At least, they could if they had a strong enough mind to resist the Attunement of Gleam within the glass Vault, where every light scattering into hundreds of reflections.

That was the challenge of this Vault.

To depart this room, the Law shall be:

You must choose a goblet and drink its contents.

[https://i.imgur.com/okCjs7y.png]

We had no shortage of poisons to fill the imitations with. Deadly or merely debilitating, painful or disgusting ways to die, there was a cornucopia of wrong choices to make. The true cup was merely filled with brackish water.

Suffi’s blood had been washed away. I realized something important: she had come to me. Giving me the blood was a good way of putting the burden on me to make a decision, but far from being now or never, I had the luxury of waiting her out. She would make a second offer soon.

Now her masterpiece served as a part of my Dungeon, and the Vault itself sat over the entrance of the stairwell, hiding it from sight. I’d used nacre-spider spit to weave a solid trapdoor out of the carefully colored mosses, so that the intruders, if they got this far, could literally step on it without noticing.

Considering what was down there I was almost doing them a favor.

I still found myself struck by moments of seething rage, where it was like I was witnessing that horrible moment all over again. But they were distinct, contained moments now, flashes of anger. They did not disrupt my work.

I was a Dungeon Core. Nothing could be allowed to disrupt my work.

As I finished the touches on my first Vault, my ratty spies in the market informed me that workers were swarming to and from, lifting up a stage for the auction, setting up for the grand event.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

That meant people moving through the tunnels, a byzantine labyrinth I had come to know like a facet of my own Core.

One by one, men started to go missing, pulled into the dark. Giant spiders were seen. And just importantly, as the workers started to avoid the tunnels where the arachnid terrors were spotted, what I was really up to wasn’t seen.

Huge pale grubs burrowed into the earth with caustic spit, turning the stone soft and chewing it away. I had designed them specially for the task. By tomorrow they would be dead, eaten by their own acidic stomach fluids. They were more living tools than true creatures.

For the longest time, the nacre-spiders had been confined to their relatively small nests, unable to branch out and expand. Now the eagert adolescents would have their chance at a nest of their own. By tomorrow night, these tunnels would be riddled with secret nests, with hidden doorways to death.

Of the people who came to see the auction, how many would die on the way, pulled into an opalescent, lavish larder by my eight-legged beauties?

How many would simply vanish down here in the dark?

One thing concerned me. None of my spies had yet seen so much as a hair of this unicorn.

[https://i.imgur.com/okCjs7y.png]

Ilbur sat in his cage, miserable, confused.

For the first time in his life he wasn’t sure why he was alive. The taskmasters had told him he lived to work, his father that he lived for the chance at freedom. The Dungeon simply ignored him. The weight of doing nothing every day as his people waited to be rescued was crushing.

They should have sent someone better.

He had eaten all the mushrooms he could reach through the glass bars of his prison. His belly grumbled and growled. The boy felt strange, a thrumming energy beneath his skin. Despite only being able to walk from one end of the cage to the next, he felt stronger than he’d ever been, hungrier. Orcish.

He felt orcish.

There was a fire building beneath his skin, as he drank in the air of the Dungeon. This was home. He only needed to make the Dungeon understand that.

Rolling onto his belly, he stuck his hand through the cage and reached desperately for a mushroom, his fingers just barely able to scrape its edges.

A shadow loomed over him.

It was a man and it was a spider, joined together at the hips. Pale white armor that reflected the light in slick rings of rainbow covered nearly every inch of flesh except the face, the fingertips extending into bladed claws, the legs raking the earth as it moved.

“I am Cabochon.” The creature said.

“Ilbur, son of Hrask. I have come to-” Ilbur was ready to beg, to give the improved, the revised version of his speech, but Cabochon just raised a hand.

“I know. I think you will succeed.” It opened its other palm, revealing a small emerald. “But, first you must eat this.”

“Eat it?” Ilbur would have much rather had a mushroom.

“Yes, to see if your kind can become connected to the Maker. If not there is no hope.”

With a shaking hand, Ilbur reached out to take the gem, turning it over in the light before placing it on his tongue. A swallow and-

He screamed.

The jewel burned on the way down, igniting like a fire. Ilbur bent double, clutching his throat, feeling the flame descend into his belly. His head ached and ached and thoughts not his own were pouring in.

The boy thought he was dying.

JUST THE OPPOSITE. A voice spoke to him. YOU ARE EARNING A CHANCE TO LIVE.

[https://i.imgur.com/okCjs7y.png]

The silent market began with men and women making their excuses from their families, or padding down the stairs from rented rooms with mask and cloak tucked under their arm. They slid into the sewers by well-worn routes marked with jumbles of thief-sign, pausing in the shadows to don the required clothes, to fix their mask in place.

And then they set out, fingers scraping the walls to pick up half-faded signs that would guide them, or simply so familiar they could walk their way there in the dark.

Not all of them made it tonight.

Many stories ended in a flash of nacre-coated claws, a scream cut short, and the click of a trapdoor closing. Others simply passed on by, safe in numbers or simply lucky enough to have caught a moment when the spider was still spinning its last meal into a nacreous coffin.

By the time they arrived at the market, there was a sense of wrongness in the air. An atmosphere of suspicion as appointments were missed and familiar masks failed to show. In the early hours, the stalls still setting up, the stage still being assembled, it was only a worming worry at the back of the mind.

Nothing anyone gave too much attention.

But there was a palpable sense of relief as the stage was completed without incident, and an audible sigh as the Underqueen, Immer’s private barge, was seen sailing down the river. They thought everything was going according to plan.

And it was. Just a different plan than they expected.