I watched as Vaulder retreated back the way he came, flinching back from invisible enemies only he perceived within the gloom. Unsettled by the grim beauty of my work. Starting to giggle, in high hysteria, as the kobold danced around him with its flute, piping away. It was a strange reaction.

I wondered if he understood the gravity of his position, that he was the first human to be allowed down into these dark depths to witness my grand creation.

That he was the only human allowed to see my creation.

Anyone else would have to pay a price of blood and war to reach this far. Blood and war. I felt strangely nauseous at the phrase. With swimming, dizzied thoughts I contemplated if that was all my future held, if I was going to spend the rest of eternity sinking deeper into the dark and watching the humans claw and fight to unearth me.

These were… un-Dungeon thoughts. Poisoned thoughts. I banished them.

But thoughts banished still remain in the skull, merely driven to some dark corner, and become tricky and insistent things, always whispering out. It spoke of long eternities with no one to appreciate my work.

Of seeing the world only through the lens of violence.

Of becoming warped by it.

And at the end of it all, dying in the way the Tomb of Acyeatrix had - too much a threat for the humans to ever allow to live.

But these were not my own thoughts. These were poisons, dripped in my ear.

I turned my attention upwards, to the breach that lanced sunshine into my domain. The wildlife had been completely cleared out wherever the light fell. Archers stood on either side of the gap, pouring fire down into anything that moved. It was a massacre.

As I observed through the ragged edges of my Mana cloud where it spilled out of the breach, two of them improvised a tool with a bucket and a rope, trying to fish up the pearl-covered corpse of a juvenile nacre-spider with their crude implement. This was humanity. I watched them fumble about until all thoughts of making friends with their kind had been thoroughly disinfected.

Still, there was something to be said for company. Yes, I was lonely, but not for lack of humans. What I needed was some other living being that could appreciate my work.

What I needed was a fellow artist.

But step back for a moment. I had four goals.

One, to seize control of the Silent Market. Even now my rats perched in the ruins, waiting for it to be reborn. It could only be a matter of time. I had dealt the market’s reputation a bitter blow but still, there was money to be made, and money would eventually draw humans like flies to honey.

Two, I had been instructed to build a shrine to Sith, one that would accommodate my gift of the unicorn; presently the beast cantered and galloped through the final of the seven islands, simply happy to be able to move, feeding from golden mangroves. The thick Mana in the fruits slowly revitalized the beast, restoring its coat to a sleek gloss and its body to a muscular fullness.

Three, I wanted to create an artistic soul, one that could match me. Cabochon was close, with his strange and melancholy temperment, his mystical way of seeing the world. Close but too devoted to me, too much a servant.

Four, to intertwine with the human world so they could no longer destroy me so easily.

These could be one and the same.

It was easy to see how an artist and a shrine went together, but it would also be a way to establish the market. An enduring symbol of my strength to reassure them that order would be established out of the chaos born in the Night of White Fires. And through the artist I could also have a proxy to negotiate with the humans.

But best of all it would mean parading the unicorn I’d stolen in front of them all. That was the kind of petty touch that delighted me.

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If I was going to bind myself to the human world to prevent my own destruction, it would be on my terms, not theirs. I would insinuate myself into their world and addict them to the riches I could bring.

But first, I needed a proxy. I had four Schemas; the green viper, the somnolent bloom, the sporeback sloth, and the common sewer rat. Thanks to my perfected understanding of each of them, I had more than enough ability to shape them into humanoids. Still, growing a talking, intelligent being from a mushroom was out, and thus so was the somnolent bloom.

Snakes, similarly, would take too much effort to give a humanoid form. Every alteration I made multiplied the cost of the next, and giving them arms and legs would make it prohibitive to also offer them increased intellect.

Sloths were the closest to human-form, but slow, lazy, dimwitted. Rats had an excellent intellect and a fierce spirit. It was no contest.

I conjured a specimen and began to work, flooding my new-made black rat with Mana to bulk him up, shaping him into a giant by the standards of the species. His forepaws slowly split and lengthened to gain opposable thumbs, and his hindquarters were strengthened to bear him as a biped. He hunched and curled as electric currents of raw Mana flooded through his being, transforming him harshly without the protective embrace of an evolution chrysalis.

I whispered reassurances as I worked, calming him with lullabies that only a Dungeon would know; songs of the cold, reliable earth, and the stillness of the air beneath, the slow drip of water dragging trails of sediment as it beaded down stalactite teeth. I shared the fierce pride of my Dungeon and the slow regard of the underground world I had built to soothe him.

Soon it was done. In no time, I had a ratfolk, an almost-human beast. I poured what remained of my Mana reserve into expanding his mind. He would be the first, but not the leader of his kind.

That honor was reserved. I reached out to Argent, finding her in the city above. The ashen smell of a battlefield washed through my senses, abrasive compared to the calm of the depths; she was running, fighting, surrounded by her pack.

I had turned a blind eye to her efforts surrounding the Halfhand villa, not wanting to have to betray her due to my Contract with Suffi.

Apparently I had missed quite a lot.

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

For nearly a week, the rats had waited. Watching for a dropped badge, a flaw in the defenses, a single way to slip through the web of defensive spellwork that guarded the Halfhand villa.

And then, today, she simply let us in.

For a single hour the wards fell, letting through the carriages and palanquins of the rich, the sumptuous gilded boxes that conveyed them in comfort through the filthy streets. Caltern’s finest were flocking to the villa for a grand event. My rats came with. The moment the barriers dropped, they were scurrying across the courtyard grounds.

My eyes flooded through the underground realm of cellars, sculleries, kitchens. They skittered on shelves and spice racks and were shooed by maids.

But it was the ones who hung back, watching from the rooftops outside the villa, who saw what was truly important; we were not the only guests who came uninvited. They came from the gutters. They came from the alleyways. From every hovel and shadow, clutching cheap swords, men in ragged clothing poured out, filling up a mob that swept into the procession of the rich like a knife through butter. The men of ash were already in the city.

Rich carriages were pushed over, set alight as the fine men and women within came screaming out and were butchered with rusted swords. Footmen were skewered. Guards were overrun by sheer numbers. The defensive force Suffi had set around the perimeter were forced back, stepping over the bodies of their dead as the human tide swept into them. Wherever they went, they lit fires. Torches landed on the grass, on the ornamental trees. Lamp oil was drenched over men who rushed screaming into the crowd of guards or threw themselves through glass windows to set the house alight with their blazing bodies.

They were less human, and more a living tableau of flesh; hundred handed, spitting flames, a dragon of the unwashed masses.

We saw everything. The guard’s retreat into the foyer, up the grand staircase. Ash men slipping past them to swarm into the parlor where the guests stood huddled in fear behind their last defenders. The arrival of Eyfrae who blazed through them, fighting fire with fire, all the way to the bitter end.

We saw that none of it, none of it was the true goal at all.

Because in all the noise and clamour, a platoon of just six had broken away. They moved like they knew where their quarry would be; they caught Suffi in her chambers, scaling up the walls and smashing through the windows. She wounded one of them with a dagger hidden in her boot. The other five bashed her over the head and threw her in a sack.

Her brother tried to come to her defense, holding a sword that trembled in his hand. For an instant, blue crystals exploded from his skin, armoring him- he was so surprised he dropped his weapon. A quick thump over the head settled him, and he went into a sack as well.

We trailed them through the courtyard, a swarm of rats clambering over the walls and ceilings, ahead and behind the crowd. We saw Trivelin, his head on a stump, waiting for death.

Here, we finally intervened. A blightclaw rat leapt down and ran, scrambling up the man holding Trivelin down, sinking his poison claws into the dwarf’s face. The pirate slipped away for the split second the axe’s fall was halted, capitalizing on the moment of confusion as the men of ash swept into the courtyard and everything went mad.

Like always, he thrived in chaos. Like a fish in water, disaster was simply his element.