No Need for a Core?

Mordecai raised an eyebrow, wondering what Moriko had in mind now. The woman was proving full of surprises. Once the half-elf had decided she had both his and Kazue’s attention, she continued.

“I want to change how our bedrooms are set up. Namely, I think we should have one primary bedroom, and then a small bedroom for each of us, if we need some alone time for whatever reason, and maybe some extra closets or storage space.” Kazue bounced up from the bed at the idea and ran to hug Moriko, clearly pleased with the idea.

“Hmm," Mordecai said thoughtfully, a smile flickering on his lips as he watched his wives, "I don’t have a bedroom. I made the office in case I need a workspace, but since that’s also intended to be where we could do business with visitors and such, I don’t think we want to move it.” Kazue nodded in acknowledgment, but Moriko seemed to have other ideas given the look on her face.

Then she sighed at him and he couldn’t help but wonder what he missed. “You never did have much in the way of normal relationships, did you?” Well, she wasn’t wrong so far. “Okay, so here is why you are going to create a bedroom for yourself. If you don’t have a bedroom of your own, and we are all sharing a primary one, then it will feel like that central one is chiefly yours, and ours are merely attached to your space.” She raised a hand to interrupt him before he could even open his mouth. “I know, not your intent or thought, but it is both how it would appear, and how it would feel, even if you never used the bedroom in any capacity without one of us here. Sometimes the intent is what is most important, sometimes not, and you have the resources. It’d be different if it was a house with limited space.”

The resources bit was certainly true. It would have a minimal one-time impact on their growth, but they had already done a lot more to their living space in the last few days that had used their mana, and this was a lot less mana in comparison. Mordecai pondered what she said, and he could see the logic to it. Admittedly, it was logic based on a way of thinking that wasn’t entirely natural to a dungeon core, but he could see from Kazue’s expression that she’d gotten what Moriko meant immediately. “Alright, I’ll think about the details of my room later then, you two feel free to design the rest unless there is any specific input you want.” He paused, then took a breath, which was a useful mental tool he had to admit. “Was there anything else before we moved to other matters?”

Moriko shook her head, and Kazue just watched him. The kitsune was unusually silent. Well then, let’s start with some basics before getting to the part he didn’t want to talk about so much. “So, once I had an invested avatar I had the potential to have children. Our initial internal avatars are as much a mana construct as they are flesh; males are unlikely to be fertile and I have never heard of a female internal avatar conceiving. For a male avatar, it would take at least a few days of not ever unsummoning their avatar form to potentially get a woman pregnant; for female avatars, it would take weeks just to get everything set, and then still their avatar would have to remain physical at all times to not disrupt the pregnancy, and even doing all that, it’s still far less likely than with normal people.”

He waited a bit to make sure they understood before moving on. “The mana construct aspect is why we literally can’t leave. Eventually, the core develops the ability to form a more ‘real’ body. This takes a larger initial amount of magic, but these invested avatars can support their own existence and do not draw much magic from the dungeon when not inside. This still takes up a certain amount of our core’s ability to process information, since the two are still linked, so generally a dungeon can only have one avatar at a time. And being real flesh, they are generally fertile with the species they appear to be.” He was rehashing to delay, and he knew it. It was time to get on to the part that hurt.

Mordecai’s gaze fell to the floor. “I had a lot of invested avatars over time, and as I learned more about the world I experimented with a lot of ancestry types. Through them, I eventually had a lot of children, though not at first, and never quickly. I wasn’t interested in romance when I first started exploring the world outside my dungeon, and even when I did learn the joy of that sort of personal relationship, the type of people whom I met and spent time with tended to be the sort who were not immediately interested in kids; they wanted to explore the world too. I also had a lot of resources, and no one was particularly interested in raising their child inside of a dungeon, so I made sure to trade for stuff that could be used to set up a home in a somewhat secluded valley not too far away when one of my lovers wanted to have a child, but not be in one of the cities. I even spent the energy to forge a tunnel and second entrance out that way so that I could see them more easily or they could visit me."

He took a slow breath to maintain his calm as he got closer to what he preferred to not think about. "The centuries that followed are somewhat of a blur, the majority of my memories are still folded up until our core grows significantly larger; but suffice it to say over time the community grew, children fell in love with people they met outside the valley and brought them home, more children and lovers that were mine joined the community, and so on. Upon occasion, we would have other travelers and displaced folk come to join the community as well. Especially early on, relationships rarely survived the retirement of an avatar and forging of a new one; it’s often difficult for young dungeons to maintain their personalites exactly between avatars, and if nothing else, lovers found the sudden small differences to be off-putting.” That personality shift primarily affected the avatars; he anticipated fewer if any issues with this relationship as it was tied to his core.

That set the stage. Now for the events. “There have always been people with strange ideas about races and purity and such. It turns out that those who think this way tend to consider dungeons to be ‘monsters’, not ‘people’, and as such had a much more fervent reaction than they did to normal mixed ancestry. I was unaware of this until it was too late; several groups including one with a strong influence in the kingdom nearby had gathered their resources and managed to assault the valley while my avatar was on the other side of the continent. The first I knew of it was when a survivor managed to get to my second entrance. I acted as swiftly as I could, but at that moment it was already too late, and the halfling who had managed to reach me was not one of my descendants. I was… well, you saw, you felt much of what I felt in that moment. This was not a memory I dared tuck away, but I have also done my best to not dwell on it.”

He sighed and closed his eyes. “That pain, that fury, it gave me the power to do something I should not have been able to do. Living dungeons have a last resort mechanism to defend themselves, a temporary surge in power and capacity sometimes referred to as a dungeon break. Normally it can only be used in direct defense, but the pain felt like an attack upon my very self, and I used that to trigger a Breach. Only the threat wasn’t inside, it was outside, and while the Breach was active, I was able to call upon all of my retired avatars. I used scrying magic to quickly figure out the source of the attack, and when one route was blocked I could use another avatar to scry indirectly, tracing the movements and interactions of secondary figures. During all of this, I held the Breach active, forced it to last beyond its normal limits, and used that power to generate wave after wave of the most powerful dragons I could design. I then used these beings to assault that kingdom, all for cover so that I could use my avatars to assassinate those most responsible. And they weren’t clean kills, I used magic to rip information I needed out of people’s heads, to generate more leads, to hunt and kill the next set of people responsible. I didn’t run out of rage, I ran out of targets that I could justify. Only then did I pull back to my dungeon, recalling my avatars then cutting off the monsters I had spawned only for this war, letting the Breach finally end. The rest you know in rough detail: Kingdoms across the world responded to this and sent people to try and destroy my core. Even while being passive, my dungeon was too deep and my inhabitants were too eager to defend their home and me for any group to successfully reach me without massive sacrifices. So they finally figured out a way to seal me, and I slept until Moriko came across me.”

Mordecai finally opened his eyes again to look at the two women listening to him. “I am not proud of what I did, but I am not certain that if such events happened again my response wouldn’t be similar. It’s a selfish sort of pain and anger, I admit that, and I will do much to prevent ever experiencing it again. At the same time, I never even suggested that you not go home Moriko, nor would I ever try to trap you here, despite the worry that gnawed at me. I kept it hidden because I did not want to burden you so unfairly with my issues, and I know the world does not revolve around me. I care about both of you, and if either one of you was seriously hurt, I am not sure how rational I would be. I may have slept through the worst of my grief, and processed it in what dreams even a core may have in that state, but I have been awake for only a short while. This is probably my biggest weakness, and that was the worst thing I have ever done.”

There was an unspoken question of ‘can you live with that?’ unspoken in part because everyone’s options were limited. He kept his last resort option to himself; they were too kind to let him do that, but if his presence became painful for them, he would do what he had to do to free them from it. Mordecai didn’t dare search for their feelings across the bond, and just simply let his own emotions show sincerely. “I would never willingly hurt either of you nor any whom you held dear. I want to be my best self for both of you.”

Silence held for a long moment before Moriko moved, stepping up to where he sat on the bed. Kazue trailed behind her a little bit, less certain of herself, and let the other woman speak first. “You loved them, yes?” Moriko asked, staring into his eyes, and Mordecai just nodded. “And you,” she paused a moment, considering her exact words, “are coming to feel the same for us?” Again, he nodded, feeling his eyes watering. Damn it, that was the problem with avatars sometimes, too prone to reacting when you didn't want them to.

“Okay then. You acted in anger, however justified. You did things that you should not have, and innocents got caught in the crossfire. But it was a war of sorts, and innocents always get hurt in a war. They started it, you finished it. You could have done better though, you could have thought and taken the time to create more subtle creatures, and you could have hunted them over time. But maybe that sort of prolonged revenge would have twisted you. I am not sure I would have liked the person you would have been after that, though I doubt that I would have existed in that world. I don’t like what you did, but I like you, and I can accept that it happened, so long as you try to become better.” She leaned down and kissed him lightly on the lips, then sat down next to him. The surge of relief he felt at that was staggering, almost painful in its release.

Moriko looked to Kazue, and his own eyes followed. The kitsune shuffled in place, still thinking.