Blue Core, page 11
part #1 of Blue Core Series
"That may be true, but are you okay?" Iniri gave her a skeptical look, the frown easing slightly.
"I think so. I mean...before, what chance did we really have? Now...we have a Power shielding us. And I…" She gestured vaguely, the new Skills flickering through her mind and blurring her form. "I can help."
Iniri’s expression softened. "If that’s how you feel, then...all I can say is thank you."
Shayma smiled back, then spoke to the voice again. "So do what do I call you? Do you have a name?"
"I guess I don’t. Hm. How about you call me...Blue."
Day 79 - Blue
Shayma took things better than I expected. After her discussion with Iniri, and getting me to assign a name, she didn’t even twitch when I told her about the Dungeon Seed growing in her womb. Actually, it was to the point where I was worried the species change was affecting her mind. Not that anyone could do anything about that.
I restrained myself from nattering in her ear, despite the fact that I probably could have talked for hours. Instead I let Shayma discuss her new Skills with her companions and test them out. The fighter types for [Physical Superiority], the caster types for [Illusion] and the like. Nobody there knew what to do about the shapeshifting stuff, but I did know someone who could shapeshift...though I’d let that wait until later. For the moment, I just watched, chatting with her when she or Iniri had questions. It was so nice to have someone respond to me, and it did a world of good just having other people around. Talking and laughing and swearing at each other.
The process of making sure their living arrangements worked gave me a few skills as well. First, my attempts at making a septic tank or a grey-water system, hazy as they were, netted me [Composting Chamber], with the accompanying resource of [Fertilizer] and a [Growth] field that consumed it. Second, trying to give them light switches to control the illumination I had made for them, and to keep them from setting extraneous fires, got me [Mana Logic]. This was a skill with some potential to it, though I wasn’t sure what I would use it for right now other than light switches and maybe a few traps.
Of course, that wasn’t my main focus. After testing the ideas I had in the small scale, I was reworking almost all my internal space. Now that I knew what I’d been doing wrong with Dungeon Ecology, I was ready to turn myself into a mana dynamo, as well as maybe level up the category. Sure it was maxed at level ten, but I hadn’t learned a single new item for that category. Maybe now I would.
Below the living space I’d cleared out for Shayma, Iniri, and the rest, I converted my boxes into one huge circular chamber, putting another one above the refugee camp. That gave me three cylinders, each some three hundred meters wide and fifty tall, which was enough to start. If I was right, it’d be considerably more soon.
The bottom layer I filled with magma and red chrystheniums, and the top layer I filled with ice and white chrystheniums. Between the two layers I put vents, first from magma to ice, then from ice down into the living area and from there down toward the magma. I wasn’t sure they were strictly necessary, since I could just run mana through my own dungeon stone, but I liked the idea of a water cycle more.
Once the enormous spaces were ready, I reworked the lake drains, letting the water flow radially outward, eight symmetrical streams that vanished through grates in the walls to cascade onto the lava. It hissed into steam, and I dragged the mana from the red chrystheniums through it, hauling it up through a similar eightfold set of passages toward the ice. It actually took a couple tries, getting the mana to stretch that far, but eventually I got the flow to anchor itself to the white chrystheniums. Steam followed, pulled by the mana, and started condensing into icicles, the excess dripping onto the ice floor and eventually making its way out as near-freezing water.
This time I dragged the mana down through the ice, pulling it through each of the passages of flowing water and toward the lake, where I spun it into a spiral that went through all the tayantan trees and the surrounding grasses. The snap as it connected was weaker this time, and I could tell it wouldn’t stay long, incomplete as the cycle was, so I hurried onward. The last segment was to pull the mana back outward, down into the lava chamber and into the bottom of the red chrystheniums.
The movement this time was slow, with so many connections over so large an area, but as I ran through the loop several times, reinforcing it each time, adding more connections and spreading it further, the engine started. Mana began to flow, and with a lot more force than my test area or Ansae’s lair.
Flowers bloomed.
The red chrystheniums scintillated red and orange, roots driving deep into the magma, pulling heat into them as thin obsidian stalks grew from the center of the broad petals. Some of them opened to puff tiny red seeds into the rising air, while others formed an iron cage around a ruby-like gem that glowed at the tip of the stalks. The red seeds spread out, sprouting more chrystheniums where they touched down in magma, but others anchored themselves on the walls and ceiling, sprouting into new variations. The magma at the center began to change, the surface solidifying and the liquid underneath getting hotter, shaping itself into a cracked and red-glowing promontory over the surrounding liquid.
The white flowers glowed with an almost prismatic light, tiny and delicate petals tinkling in the breeze as their roots branched and branched again, connecting to each other to form a softly glowing lattice, followed by ice rapidly forming and melting. Some of those lattices grew to enclose white gems, cousin to the red ones far below. Silvery-white seeds floated away from the roots, creating new flowers where they rooted in the ice, and some lodged themselves in the passages, while a few followed the water down, washing into the lake.
At the bottom of the lakebed, blue flowers unfurled themselves, glowing in the darkness. The mana churned in and out of the lake itself, flowing through all the grass and trees surrounding it. The grass grew more vibrant, a few stalks of it opening tiny blue flowers and even tinier puffs of seed, while the trees stood straighter and grew thicker, over the course of just a few minutes. The trees grew flowers, which dropped away as crystalline-looking spherical fruits swelled from the branches. The grass seeds found their way to the outlet drains, turning into moss as they coated the exteriors of the pipes.
My mana intake increased by almost two orders of magnitude.
[Mana Manipulation] advances to 3.
[Mana Manipulation] advances to 4.
[Mana Manipulation] advances to 5.
[Steam Chrysthenium] discovered. Generates Steam.
[Heat Chrysthenium] discovered. Generates Heat. Absorbs Water.
[Carbonized Chrysthenium] discovered. Absorbs Heat. Generates Coal.
[Fire Gem] discovered. Source for Fire-attuned Mana.
[Crystalline Chrysthenium] discovered. Crystallizes Local Resources. Light-Sensitive.
[Latticework Chrysthenium] discovered. Generates Mana Latticework. Light-Sensitive.
[Deepwater Chrysthenium] discovered. Increases Local Pressure. Enriches Local Resources.
[Ice Gem] discovered. Source for Ice-attuned Mana.
[Tayan moss] discovered. Mild Healing Properties.
[Blue Tayan Fruit] discovered. Moderate Restorative Properties.
"Uhh, Blue?" Shayma called as, tugged by the mana, a cool breeze blew across the lake. She, along with all the other people outside, were staring at the suddenly-happy plants. "What’s going on?"
"Just doing some redecorating. Not done yet, though. This next bit should be great!"
With all the extra mana flow, it was no trouble at all to put full Expansion on all three chambers and effectively double my volume.
Size requirements for level increase met.
Dungeon Level increases by 1.
Skill base levels increase by 1.
The mana threads stretched, and I was glad that I had additional ranks in [Mana Manipulation] because it was all I could do to keep the engine I’d made from breaking under the strain. Even considering that, I hadn’t considered the resource costs properly and I ran out of stone. For the first time in practically forever, I ran out of stone, even after converting my reserves of Hardened and Stonesteel.
Massive cracks appeared in the outer periphery of each of the chambers, along with sharp, aching stabs of pain, but I had ways to deal with that. Mana-empowered boring tendrils and the so-far-ignored grey chrystheniums. There were eight five-hundred-meter waterfalls, and I seeded the stone surrounding each one with the flowers, along with, after a moment of thought, some moss. Once I linked them into the mana flow, the stone income stabilized. Cracks began to heal, and the stone flowers bloomed.
[Earth Gem] discovered. Source for Earth-attuned Mana.
[Green Chrysthenium] discovered. Improves growth of nearby flora. Improves environmental tolerance of nearby flora.
[Mossy Chrysthenium] discovered. Emits mildly regenerative pollen. Generates small amounts of water.
Shayma stood there, staring at the now-distant walls and ceiling, and I had a sudden idea. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but…
I pulled one of each of the flowers into a spare room and, working quickly, used [Mana Manipulation] to sever one piece of mana from the other, cutting off their roots and then, before the mana faded, twined the stems together. Oddly, the mana didn’t fade completely, but rather...sort of crystallized into a more solid form, settling into the plants.
"Hey, Shayma? Hold out your hand."
She did so, looking a little confused. I took advantage the fact that she was part dungeon to pull the bouquet out of the room and push it into her hand, the flowers appearing in a little black whirl. The expression she had while staring at the colorful assortment of magic flowers made my day.
Unfortunately, Shayma wasn’t the only one watching my work. From her lair, Ansae stirred. "Well, that is interesting," she said aloud, a wide grin on her toothy muzzle. Then she shifted down into her amazon form, heading for the doorway. [Tempered Wisdom] told me it was probably a good idea to keep her from wandering in among the refugees, but it wasn’t like a wall would stop her. I needed words.
"Shayma? I’m going to need your help…"
Day 79 - Iniri
Really, she’d suspected that Shayma had contracted a Power when she mentioned it could cure Depletion. Nobody could cure Depletion, not even the best mages, because there was nothing to cure. It wasn’t a disease, it was just that you were less.
Then there was the dungeon finding them despite all the scrying protection that had kept even the agents of Vok Nal from locating them, despite the immense mana-flares they’d been raining down over the area. And it had effortlessly chased off or killed any pursuit. She’d noticed the doors closing behind them, even if nobody else had. But beyond that, there was nothing. Given the forces some of the mage-king’s underlings could wield, that was disturbing.
She’d tried to warn Shayma what she was playing with, though even she had no idea what other options there were. Once Shayma had returned, the mage-king’s surveillance had massively increased. Another hallmark of Powers, that you found alternatives to fulfilling your Bargain closing to you by chance and happenstance. The ever-so-timely appearance of the dungeon entrance? Just another aspect of how Powers bent probability and reality itself.
Now she watched with bemusement as the very grass and trees suddenly surged with life. They had been lush before, but now they acted as if they’d received ten years of growth all at once, wood creaking as it grew. All without anything in her mana-sight. It was magical, of course, but it had to be a brand of mana outside the normal range, something special to dungeons and the occasional ascended being. Those who transcended the limits of their species.
"Uhh, Blue?" Shayma said, distracted from her practice with [Illusion]. "What’s going on?"
Iniri watched as Shayma’s ears flicked. It was still hard to accept that she could hear the dungeon. Everything about dungeons that she knew marked them as, at best, intelligent enough to know the difference between a threat and an opportunity. Powerful, sometimes vastly so, but easily controllable by a mage that knew what they were doing. Such as the mage-kings. This one...Iniri wasn’t even tempted to try.
"He says that he’s redecorating?" Shayma’s face twisted in something that was confusion and amusement both. "And there’s more coming."
A moment later, the walls fled. Shayma stared. Iniri stared. There wasn’t much else to do as the room became larger. Then larger still. They were inside of the largest working that Iniri had ever heard of. She recognized it as spatial magic, of course, rather than an adjustment of the dungeon structure, but it was over an area so large that it must have taken hundreds of mana every second to support it. And it just continued expanding. Even if she joined forces with all the mages under her command they could have, between them, maybe managed three or four seconds of this, with plenty of preparation and careful creation of the proper rune circles.
All of this, and she didn’t feel a whisper of a tug on her person. She’d never done spatial work herself, but she knew you never did it with something living inside. It tended to end rather messily as the contents of the space were expanded along with its boundaries. Not so for this dungeon, which could perfectly exclude them from the effect. It was absolutely terrifying, for anyone who could spot the casual power and execution behind the awesome spectacle. Redecorating, indeed.
Yet it didn’t need any of that power for its hold on Shayma. Iniri wasn’t sure the girl even yet quite understood what her new Status meant. The dungeon owned her body and soul. Anything that dealt in souls was generally forbidden, but Iniri had looked into it once, when someone indulging in soul manipulation in a neighboring kingdom had made a monster. So far as Iniri knew, Shayma’s entire existence, every thought and action, was sustained by the dungeon’s will. The fact that she retained her life and mind and will was only because the dungeon actively willed it to be so. That Blue actively willed it to be so. No matter how powerful it seemed to others, for her it was actually a god.
A god that gave her flowers from nowhere, apparently. Magic flowers, a mix of affinities that shone like a rainbow beacon. She’d witnessed how it had claimed her - or rather, she hadn’t, the dungeon wrapping a sheet coyly over the act. What happened in the mage-kings’ dungeons was too brutal and clinical to be called even carnal, but judging by the sounds Shayma had made, Blue's attentions were...not uncomfortable. Actually, she found she was a little jealous. Queens didn’t have freedom to play around, and she could only hope she enjoyed her first time half as much as Shayma was enjoying Blue.
But despite all that strangeness and stress, it did her heart good to see Shayma smile like that.
The young woman had shown up almost literally at her doorstep, Classless and alone, one of maybe a dozen people to escape the mage-king’s landfall. She’d had, even then, an unshakeable and unearned loyalty to Iniri in particular and to the Tarnil Kingdom as a whole. Even now, Iniri wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t much of a [Protector Queen] if she couldn’t protect her own subjects.
But Shayma had stayed, and in her Iniri had found a core of bright faith to keep the darkness away as cities fell, as diplomacy was ignored, as her Classers found themselves impotent against the overwhelming power of the mage-kings and their subordinates. Not to mention Shayma was intelligent and insightful enough, despite indifferent schooling, to be a worthwhile albeit unofficial addition to her inner circle. Most importantly, Shayma was able to see Iniri both as a person and as a ruler, effortlessly balancing the two so that she could laugh and joke in one instant, and take an order as utter command in the next.
Then she’d emerged from the ruins of the capital, now a [Seeker] and bearing a city-cube, a legacy that Iniri had thought only legend. A portable fortress that, if said legend could be believed, would be enough to give even the mage-kings pause. Of course, that selfsame legend attributed the Great Northern Waste to that artifact, which explained why it was disassembled and packed away, pieces lost over the centuries.
Still, it had been a hope, with Shayma as the centerpiece. After all, who allowed themselves to take a Class, no matter that it was rare to vanishing, that locked out combat Skills? One that was doomed to the low levels forever because the only way to level was to actually lay hands on what [Seeker] could find? But Shayma could find the lost and scattered cubes, while her Classers retrieved ones they knew had turned up in enemy-held cities. Well, that had been the idea. Reality and the arrival of Vok Nal had made things different.
But now, Shayma had found something even better, though with the loss of something more than [Luck].
"Ah," she said. "He says he needs me to go represent him? I’ll be back soon."
"Be careful," Iniri told her, putting a hand on Shayma’s shoulder as a staircase simply appeared next to them, leading down into the unknown.
"I’ll be fine." Shayma smiled again, then blurred as she activated her new [Ghost Step], vanishing down the stairs.
Iniri watched her go, tail twitching as the stairs evaporated like they had never been. Blue was terrifying, true, but if it continued to show it had integrity with Shayma...well, she’d have to take a chance. It might be the only way she had to protect her kingdom.
Day 79 - Ansae
The guiding intelligence had really taken her experiment to heart.
Mana made mana, which was the only reason injudicious mages and profligate Powers (and, she might admit under pressure, careless dragons) hadn’t sucked the whole world dry of the stuff by now. But it wasn’t as simple as that, and actually creating a mana dynamo was tricky to impossible. In pragmatic terms, only natural processes cycled mana enough to produce excess, where it often gathered in points of stillness.
Like, say, under a mountain.
But the flowers seemed to generate enough of it that she thought it worthwhile to try. Her initial waving about was interesting, but then the mana had rearranged itself and snapped into place with breathtaking precision. And it provided just enough excess that she could absorb it without disrupting the cycle, which was better than slowly siphoning off elemental earth mana that trickled down toward its roots.
