No Need for a Core?

Moriko listened to Mordecai talk about his early life as she pondered the oddities of the man she now called ‘husband’. Though this marriage had been forged out of necessity and convenience and had empowered and altered them all with the magic bonds it produced, which she didn't truly understand the details of, it was hardly a bad marriage, even with a third, unexpected but welcome, mate thrown in the mix. The flow of his power through her and the exertion they had made when escaping his tomb had been her key to unlocking the next step in her path to the skies, and she'd become stronger in the process. Mordecai had also made no attempts to pressure either her or Kazue. Quite the opposite in fact, which was probably the oddest thing about this dungeon-husband.

While it was obvious that he did have a sexuality and drive, it had slowly become clear to her that it was very much a secondary nature to Mordecai. The first clue was just simply that, in the end, he was a dungeon. His truest self was an orb of crystal that did not feel the normal rhythms of flesh. The second clue was his offer to ‘turn off’ his sex drive if either of the women had wanted that. Then this final little piece to drive the final nail in: in however many hundreds of years he’d existed previously, he’d apparently never thought to use his dungeon point of view to look up a skirt until she’d suggested it.

Oh, any decent person wouldn’t without some level of invitation or intimacy, but most would have at least thought of the idea. It was strange that he hadn’t, but at the same time it made sense in context. She still wasn’t going to let him off the hook of ‘pervert dungeon’, especially now that Kazue had joined the game. Moriko grinned at that thought. If Mordecai had seemed actually bothered by it she’d have stopped, but it was a fun nickname to tease him with since he wasn’t. The most she got from him was a roll of the eyes, but that was worth it.

The trio came to a stop at the entrance to an enormous cavern, fifty feet tall and wide, and two hundred fifty feet long, and Mordecai finished up his quick biography. “Now,” he said, gazing over the cavern, "here’s what I want you to do, Kazue. Once we’ve got a design in mind, I want you to start building it while you tell us about your life.”

The little kitsune yelped. “Hey, you know I have trouble paying attention to both at-oh.” Moriko held back a smirk as Kazue realized what Mordecai was doing. “More training, isn’t it? I guess it makes sense.” Then she looked at the two of them suspiciously. “Okay, I’ll try. But what are you up to that you need Moriko here too?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he replied as he glanced over at Moriko. “She’s going to be our tester for this section because I want to make the challenges interesting. Not too hard, but requiring a bit of skill to get past everything.” He smiled at her now. “The traps won’t activate on you, but the other challenges will give us an idea of how well we are doing. Oh, and we should show you what other people will have to deal with on top of traps and athletic challenges.”

She couldn’t help but stare up at the set of strange flying creatures that came out of small holes in the walls and ceiling. Those were absolutely adorable little abominations of nature. These creatures were going to be harassing adventurers doing athletic challenges? “Let me guess, that blue-white one is an ice breather? So it might be able to make surfaces slick? And the blunt-horn is probably great for knocking people off of stuff.” Moriko looked back over to him to see Mordecai give her an evil grin. “Sadist,” she said with a chuckle. Though not exactly the same thing, she’d had similar training experiences back at the temple.

“Undoubtedly, but I am being somewhat nice. This path isn’t for people we intend to kill after all. So, here’s what I’m thinking,” and now he turned back to Kazue. “We break the cavern into fifty foot sections, which will count as rooms. Gives folk a chance to speed run it if they can, but there is a drawback to doing so. Okay, so the first fifty feet I want to make very slick and smooth, with the top several inches being transparent. We’ll use that to create stumbling traps out of the same transparent material, making it easy to trip with such poor traction, and it will be hard to watch your feet if you are always looking for aerial attacks.”

Moriko couldn’t help but feel amused as Mordecai got animated describing what he wanted to the other half of the dungeon, who had her brow furrowed in concentration while she chewed on the tip of a tail, the other two whipping back and forth. The whipping seemed to be oddly, but amusingly, in time with the processing of each of Mordecai's ideas.

“Then we want a cliff going up about, mmm, thirty feet. Leave the ceiling in place. Give the cliff a natural roughness, but create three paths up. The center one should just be a narrow switchback path, but have the most fliers harass them. The second path should be imbedded rocks and tiny cliff edges, for more adventurous climbers. Make a few that can break off suddenly, but give a subtle clue for those keeping an eye out. The third one should be a chimney climb. Even just thirty feet of it can be pretty taxing, so let’s not harass folk too much with this one. And of course, anyone who tries to fly over should get swarmed more heavily than taking one of the paths. Not too heavily though, and break off early. If they can fly this floor probably won’t be much of a challenge anyway, but there should be some penalty for bypassing the challenge.”

And she was going to need to run all three routes to test them of course.

“The next fifty feet should just be heavy on our stalactites and stalagmites. I want them to feel hemmed in and not have a good place to rest after exerting themselves. Maybe throw in a few traps and harass them with the vampire rabbat swarms, but this is mostly to ratchet up the tension as they have to pick out a path. Make lots of refractive and reflective crystals, and some glowing ones, so they have to spend time and effort making it through. Flying won’t help much, so if they used a spell then this will eat into their duration.”

Moriko frowned. That wasn’t going to be hard, but it was going to be annoying.

“For the next section, make a slope to land them back at the original level, but make it muddy. So they have to keep their footing while sliding down, and once more are harassed. Hidden stones in the mud of course.”

Now the monk sighed. She’d switched back to her dress, and this was going to get messy. Maybe she should use her new technique for that section... bah, that wouldn’t test it. Fine.

“At the end of the slope, give about twenty feet, which brings them to the fourth section. Make the base flat land, but boggy with quicksand up to, say, three feet deep. Dangerous for the smaller folk, but few groups will be comprised entirely of such. Then raise, oh, let’s go with five paths this time. Make them equal total lengths, but give each of them a different winding shape. And make them about two feet wide. Should be good enough for most to keep their footing, but the less physical folk will still find it tricky. Again with a set of fliers to harass them.”

Well, since they wouldn’t be attacking her, she’d have it somewhat easier at least.

“And for our final stretch, I think a set of tunnels five feet wide and tall.” Moriko blinked at him, but the man continued on. “No traps or attackers, just make them wind up, down, and around, connecting and crossing at weird angles, before finally dumping them out in a smaller space right before Hildegard’s lair.”

Who? Oh, that must be the boss, well, this should be interesting. She was pretty certain she was going to want to kill Mordecai by the end of this. “Okay, but you are going to owe me another luxury bath and more massages this time. Both of you.” She glared at Mordecai and Kazue, but neither seemed particularly intimidated.

While her wife was trying to look scary, Kazue took a deep breath as she gathered her focus, and began to get to work while talking. “So, I was born in the Azeria forest. My mother’s a kitsune, my father is a human merchant who travels a lot. Um, he doesn’t live with us or anything, but he comes by a lot, and my mom seems okay with that, so…” She shrugged, trying to not look too embarrassed. Helped that she already knew that the two of them weren’t like some of the stuffier humans and elves. Whoops, she’d stopped making the cavern design when she got distracted. Kazue felt a little like she was walking a tightrope, but she continued on.

“Anyway, I was never interested in my dad’s work, and I never had the knack for herbal gardens and alchemy that my mother had. I mean, I wasn't terrible, but her touch was like magic. So as I grew up I was eventually pointed at the shrine to try and see if that would work.” Part of her core paused momentarily to look at the crystal flowers lining her cave walls. “A little funny that I am now a gardener like my mom, yet so very different.” Kazue couldn’t help but sigh, she didn’t know if she’d get to see either of them again.

“That wasn’t too bad. I mean, I was never great at most of the shrine duties and the rituals mostly put me to sleep, but it turns out I was good at painting and dancing and they liked my singing voice too. So most of my duties became to help keep the place clean and decorated. Plus, I took part in the celebrations and ceremonies where I could be more useful. I never felt it was entirely the right place for me, but it wasn’t exactly the wrong place either, and it’s not like I had any other ideas at the time, so I just kept doing it as I got older.”

She could feel a faint headache, splitting her concentration this way. But it really wasn’t supposed to be a split, was it? She was both here, and was the dungeon around herself. She was supposed to be able to do both things as easily as doing one. “And I always liked reading a lot, and Dad always brought back a few books for me. And, um, the ones I didn’t want to have him get I asked others for.” Oh goddess, she was blushing again. They already knew what sort of books she’d been reading, this was ridiculous. “And, as I think you guessed, I didn’t have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. I mean, I wanted one, but I kind of just made an idiot of myself whenever I liked someone that much, and ran away.”

Her tails were swishing in agitation, and she tried to calm them down while she continued building the cavern out. It was slowly becoming easier. “So, like I said, not that interesting. All that happened since then was kind of the same life, until that night.” When she’d died. Drowned. She’d been too drunk to even realize what was happening at first, but once she did, well, that part had been unpleasant, and she tried not to think about it.

Moriko spoke up then. “You said you were part of the Azeria clan? I’d been meaning to ask since you have a demi-human form. We’re not that far away, I skirted it on my way here, and my home of Riverbridge is only two days easy walking to the river. We’re in the foothills to the south of the kingdom, I wanted to avoid the normal big roads from my temple to the town.”

Kazue looked at her suspiciously and noticed Mordecai doing the same with a raised eyebrow. Moriko sighed. “Fine, I’ll tell my tale while I’m running your obstacle course. You can both hear me anywhere I speak, right?”

The two of them nodded, and Mordecai said, “We’ll meet you at the other end. Oh, and they may not be willing to attack you, but they are certainly willing to distract you.”

Oh yeah, they could just despawn their avatars. All that wool-gathering had distracted Kazue from the here and now. But now it was time for Kazue to be entertained, instead of entertaining. Kazue grinned at the monk, imagining how much she was going to enjoy watching what her wife could do, and then despawned her avatar, reforming at the boss room and then settling in to enjoy the show.