Does a dungeon serve its monsters, or does its monsters serve the dungeon?

I wonder if the delvers know that in the dungeons, they are guests invited by such nebulous, capricious hosts.

Vermin grimaced at the taste of copper in the air characteristic of ends of cycles. What delvers don’t realise is that they are guests to an intelligent host. Overstay their welcome, and … the consequences can be ugly.

Vermin shook her head.

Clearly not.

The corpses of monsters and adventurers were long swallowed by the earth, leaving only bloodstains and the lingering stench of death. Wispier facsimiles of Vermin stood silently along the labyrinthine hallways, their shadowy black hands stained in blood.

Like you aren’t a facsimile of lif-

It was a cruel joke that the dungeon workers were made in her image, tasked with the tasks requiring a more delicate touch than maws of earth: clearing the blood stains, reshaping the statues, polishing the patterned tiles. Never hungry, never dissatisfied, never worried. Ephemeral.

Right now, the other dungeon monsters would be clawing their way to hunt, enthused by the loosening of domain restrictions, and eager for evaluation and evolution. If Vermin paused to spread her senses, she would hear the sound of distant fighting. She didn’t.

Vermin took her time patrolling the dungeon. She finds it helps to consider her previous work, their imperfections and their charms. She noted the corridor that would eventually branch into the core room. She took the path that led deeper. She would visit the core, but later. There’s a moment, of end and beginning, as the orb transitions from one cycle to the next that works as an abyssal muse. Not yet though, the transition just began, and, she had something more important to visit first.

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Vermin reached one of the dungeon’s less known halls, lesser known, firstly because it is deeper than the core, so the dungeon denies delvers from getting close, but secondly, because Vermin marks it with her mana and tracks the delvers down as they try to leave with its trace.

It was just as she remembered it. A beautiful piece, her best. In a sense, she considered it an a priori part of her being, memories of before she was born. Engravings on the wall showed looming figures, each grand and sublime but each in their own way, some vague, some distinct. A priest who saw it might recognise it for what it was: a court of Gods.

When Vermin was first born, she knew only three things; firstly, that she was owned by the dungeon, and that meant she protected the dimly green core; secondly, that she was not supposed to be; and thirdly, that she was Vermin. The soft murmurs of the Gods told her so, their overlapping figures carved into her memory.

And it looked – felt – just like this.

At different times, the piece means different things to Vermin. Today, it served as a reminder. The dungeon was right. She knew it was. Her work this cycle did not deserve to be preserved for time immemorial. Not like this. She basked in its presence. It gave her a sense of relief.

As Vermin moved towards the core room, she found herself frowning at a shade along the way. Maybe next cycle she should turn away from her more aesthetic endeavors, and pursue a more functional project. For a moment, decorated blades, thematic pitfalls, and arcing wires flashed through her mind. She would meditate on it later.

And then she saw the dungeon core. Undulating waves of green swirled around its perfect sphere, its glow rhythmically waxing and waning in the darkness like some eerie heart. It was large, suspended in the middle of the ornate room, rotating slower and slower. And then, finally, it stopped.

Vermin’s dungeon is of an infernal affinity, and in an abstract sense, that made it eternally hungry, eternally lonely. For a moment Vermin saw that in the dungeon.

It is rare for an old dungeon to grant a monster intelligence and autonomy. It is rarer for an old dungeon to let one see its core.

The silence broke, and Vermin felt the earth shift beneath her. Now, the dungeon will be deeper, its depths darker.

For a moment, Vermin pitied the delvers. And then she remembered what she was. It broke her just a little more.