The glass faun spilled through the portal to the Everforest, missing an arm and covered in black bile. It turned back, and for a single moment I saw what looked like concern in the language of its body, as it stared through the silver doorway.
Then Ilbur crashed through as well, pulling with him a sled that overturned and spilled furs and trinkets of bone. Tiny arrows bristled from the backs of his arms like the spines of a porcupine.
Rats swarmed across him. They were here in the dozens, in the hundreds. Argent had called and they had answered. Now they sniffed curiously at the orc, the groaning pile of blubber.
Cabochon bent over him, lifting the boy over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carrying him towards the glass gazebo. The golem bowed to me, and followed.
That left the rats. Argent scrambled atop the severed head of an enormous, beautiful monstrosity, blood red ridges of feathers running across leathery, scale-armored skin. Its mouth was open in a permanent predatory smile, teeth like knives.
The rats gathered beneath her in teeming swarms. There was a hidden city built atop my Dungeon, in the long tunnel that led upwards towards Vaulder’s cafe. Rats built their dens into the walls, carving out countless burrows and caverns by their gnawing, and rats tended to secret forests, plantings of fungal spore from my own gardens taking root in rich soil to feed the thriving metropolis that sprawled into unseen multitudes.
Stone-tusk rats like goliaths among their people. Wallflowers clever and intricate in their thinking. Blightclaw rats fierce fighters all. Webweavers shunned and feared for their strange ways.
It was no longer fair to call them merely a part of my own Dungeon. They were a legion unto themselves, loyal to Argent and thus to me, but as for what happened in those miniature cities, even I could barely keep track of a fraction. But when Argent called, they came. A swarm. A plague. An army waiting for their command.
I had a challenge for them.
And an honor second only to Argent’s.
She conveyed my words to them.
I HAVE CREATED, FROM A COMMON RAT, A WARRIOR.
My ratfolk loomed above them. In his paws he held a crude spear carved from fungal shoots, the dense waxy chitin fire-hardened to form a point.
OF YOU, ALL DUNGEON-BORN RATS HAVE A CHANCE TO BECOME MORE.
TO FIGHT FOR YOUR QUEEN AND YOUR PEOPLE.
I WILL GRANT THIS PRIZE TO THREE RATS. THOSE THREE THAT BRING ME THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS.
I GIVE YOU ONE WEEK.
FOR THOSE NOT BORN OF THE DUNGEON, ANOTHER CHALLENGE AND ANOTHER PRIZE.
TO THOSE THREE WHO BRING ME THE MOST USEFUL INFORMATION, I WILL GRANT A BOUNTY OF STRENGTH AND CUNNING.
NOW GO.
My words dispersed them, the sea of ratty bodies with whiskered faces lifted up towards Argent on her high perch breaking at once; breaking into chaos, they scrambled and fought one another to be the first into the tunnels, to lead the way up into the waking world where they would find their prizes.
I had started a stampede.
Perhaps- and only to spare the secret entrance from being discovered - perhaps I should have warned Vaulder about all this.
I turned my attention briefly towards the gazebo, where the boy lay recuperating. It seemed he would live, and better yet, that the glass golem had accumulated enough Mana to evolve. Both concerns for later. For now…
CABOCHON. I HAVE A TASK FOR YOU TOO.
“Yes, Maker.” He replied, lifting his gaze into the air where he imagined I resided. I could sense the eagerness to serve, the want for my attention, through his voice alone without looking into his mind.
YOU MUST BUILD A HUNTING GROUNDS. IT WILL STAND ABOVE THE BREACH, AND CHALLENGE THE HUMANS.
“It will be done.” He answered.
And with that, I was free to indulge myself. The glass golem had returned with a bounty, and I wouldn’t let a single present go to waste.
I was going to enjoy this.
The first appetizer was the tooth of an enormous jungle cat that hunted by way of numerous eyes patterned on its brilliant orange pelt. Every eye was capable of magical sight, making it a supreme observer.
Next, a horned rabbit that bore an innate ability with illusions. A six-armed monkey with six eyes. Grey eels with electrified bodies that swim through the air like ribbons of stormcloud.
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I ate and ate. The Everforest was home to a thousand species. On my plate were fragments of shell from pale spiders that spun musical webs to lure lovestruck birds who believed they were answering a mate’s call. The petals of a parasitic plant that seized its victims as puppet defenders.
But the prize of the feast was the enormous head of the terror bird, its flesh dense with Mana. Full grown, the specimen must have been the size of a house.
By the time I had finished dissolving the tributes into flames of purest Mana, I had reached Overflow.
The world went white, and I felt satisfied.
You have created -
The Lantern of the Merchant
A Dungeon Trader is being summoned towards your domain. Please wait.
[https://i.imgur.com/okCjs7y.png]
[https://i.imgur.com/okCjs7y.png]
That night, the soldiers guarding the breach saw something that would haunt their nightmares; enormous spiders hauled themselves out of the rift, their carapaces made of rough grey stone, their legs covered in coarse black hairs. Beady eyes regarded the men in their shining armor.
And ignored them.
The spiders spread outwards, the guard steadily falling back. The entire district had been damaged by the earthquake that tore the Dungeon open. Now, the spiders ripped down the fallen houses, pushed away the rubble. The people camped in the ruins had no choice but to flee as the insatiable stone monsters advanced.
From their spinnerets, they wove threads of black granite.
The chief of the guard fled back to inform Governor Kedlin and the new Lord-Protector. By the time the two arrived, in a sumptuous carriage, it was too late.
The dome had already begun to form. From the base of the cleared district, the spiders were weaving up a new construction, lifting it higher and higher.
By midmorning the walls were two stories high.
People gathered to see, sitting and watching the eight-legged horrors crawling along the edges, weaving thread after thread of silvery material that hardened into rough black stone. The braver picked up fallen bricks and hurled them at the goliath spiders. They bounced off, ineffective.
By noon, the walls were beginning to curve inwards to meet, and half the city’s army stood arrayed around the dome’s great edge. Just in case the spiders grew hungry.
In the end it took five days to finish the vast dome. Just five days to replace a two-acre wide chunk of the city with a black, ominous dome. And for all those five days, the people of Caltern would glance towards the edges of the rising monolith, see the eight-legged shadows crawling there, and shudder.
[https://i.imgur.com/okCjs7y.png]
This merchant was taking their own sweet time to arrive.
I had almost completed my preparations for the hunting grounds by the time the spiders finished. Cabochon was leading them, and I would leave it to him to determine all the small details, the flourishing touches that would be needed if it was to live up to my standards.
I simply took care of the creatures.
To start with, I created the base of a mycelium colony, a ball of tightly clustered roots fed on dense Mana and bred to expand rapidly, bringing green life to the hunting grounds. To augment it, I created several more ‘spore-hearts’ for differing species.
Born from my tribute from the Everforest, the beasts of the hunting ground would be simple predators, but with an artistic touch. I started with the birds.
Flightless and the size of a man, they strode on long, claw-footed legs, their bodies covered with shocking plumes of orange, while their short arms spread feathers of mottled black and white. Their heads were skeletal white and reptilian, with staring eyes in deep stains of black. Heavy claws the color of obsidian were meant for seizing prey, while vicious kicks and bites would bring down the foe. Pack hunters, they would serve as the frontline for the hunting grounds.
To accompany them, I combined a few of their traits with common crows caught in my spiders webs over the weeks. In specific I took the crow’s basic shape and made it bigger, much bigger, with the clawed wings and deadly talons of a terror bird. I even added a blade-like protrusion to the beak, making a chopping edge like an axe. What I kept was their capacity for flight, least in short bursts, and their unique vocal cords.
They would be able to mimic human speech.
And speaking of mimicking humans, my final addition to the hunting grounds were based on the six-armed monkeys, with eight eyes now to go with their eight limbs. I gave them a spider’s regenerative powers, augmented to the extreme to let them come back from even vicious wounds. Able to wield crude spears and hurl rocks they would serve as an excellent harassing force.
In short, I had no intention of making this easy.
[ Feathered Terror ] With excellent coordination within their packs, these deadly predators from another time can take down foes many times their size. Their fearsome plumage shines in the undergrowth of the jungle.
[ Axebeak Corvid ] With mocking voices and fierce intellects, axebeaks hunt from above, descending to finish off stragglers and the unwary.
[ Eight-Limbed Howler ] A hideous mix of ape and arachnid, the eight-limb howler's cries disturb the peace of the jungle, and they roam in great congregations in the branches, harassing invaders below.
That was when I heard clapping, and found the merchant had already arrived in my Dungeon, sitting on a rock smoking a long bone pipe. Ghosts and phantasms curled in the stream of smoke.
He had the rough shape of a human but the head and striped fur of a tiger, and wore multiple layers of robes, yellow silk and dark hides, with dangling bands of threaded seashells and teeth hanging across his chest.
His hands bent backwards, making the act of clapping rather difficult to do.
“Excellent, excellent. You and I will be able to do business together, without a doubt. You have the senses of an artist, my newfound friend.”