No Need for a Core?

A couple of days after the equinox, Moriko decided her break time was over. A few days of simply lounging and indulging herself in the company of her family was about as much as she could take, she needed to be active.

As she walked out onto the balcony from their tree home, she mused that the travel outfit that Mordecai had commissioned for her and Kazue turned out to be quite useful at home as well. She needed to look good and, well, needed something that wouldn't flash people either. She scritched Thunder and Lightning's heads before stepping out from the balcony and onto thin air.

She hummed happily to herself as she hopped down imaginary 'steps' that led past the stone town and to the ground beyond. One of the quirks of her fey-granted air-walk ability was that she could fall whenever she pleased and instantly stop when and where she wanted, but that stop always felt like she landed on the ground. Moriko could take a very long drop without much trouble, but that didn't mean it felt great and she had her familiar as a passenger. So she limited the height of her drops to something a little more reasonable by imagining a landscape of projecting cliffs she was jumping down to.

Once she was on the ground, Moriko headed toward the entrance of the underground portion of the dungeon. She wasn't in a hurry and hadn't looked around much since her return, so she saw little need to avail herself of the shortcuts.

There were several new buildings and a lot more people than when she and Kazue had left for their trip, so she took the time to meander a little as well and re-familiarize herself with the layout. Along the way, she saw a familiar face waiting in line to be checked by Jiah, the buzzkin floor-boss in charge of evaluating non-combat skills. She slipped through the crowds to lightly punch his shoulder with a grin. "Yambul, I wasn't expecting to see you here."

"Wha-?" The orc cobbler said as he started from the sudden contact, then he relaxed with a sheepish grin. "Hey Moriko, you surprised me. Last night I heard you got back from your trip, but I wasn't expecting to run into you like that."

"Hmm," Moriko said as she considered her friend, "you run your own shop and this is a pretty long trip to be closed up for. What's brought you out here to delve?" A faint flush on his cheeks brought a small bit of enlightenment, and she smirked as she added, "Or should I say, who brought you out here?"

Yambul coughed and shifted his weight before saying, "Well, I had a rather pleasant time with Aliyah when she visited Riverbridge, and I was hoping to see her again."

Let's see, that was... ah yes, the runner. "Aliyah? It looks like you have a visitor," Moriko sent across the dungeon's connections.

"Do I?" the usagisune replied with a satisfied-sounding tone, "Well then, if it's who I expect, would you please let him know that I will be in the audience to enjoy his performance at the theater? Assuming you don't mind, Mistress."

Why would she mind? Oh, right. Yambul had been one of her lovers. Some people cared about stuff like that. "I'd be happy to," she told Aliyah, and then to Yambul said, "Your friend would like you to know she is ready to be entertained by your performance when you reach the third zone theaters. If I have a chance, I might make the time to watch your show myself."

He sighed dramatically and said, "Dare I ask what fate awaits me there?"

Moriko snorted at that. "I'm pretty certain you have a good idea by now. But we let the playwrights have their fun, so I have no idea what particular challenges wait for you. I do have one bit of advice though; have fun. If you forget to have fun playing Kazue's games, you might make her sad."

She left him to ponder those words and set out for the entrance once more. Once Moriko was inside the main hall, she went down one of the side corridors instead of heading toward the path selection chamber. Moriko wasn't headed to the shrine at the end of the corridor, her objective was a discreet alcove where one of the larger entrances to the warrens was located.

The hidden entrance was plainly visible to her, but most people wouldn't have even been able to notice the alcove let alone the sealed entrance. It wasn't just her status as a contractor either, their Domain had grown this far and was starting to affect the surface as well. It was still odd to feel herself tied to the space around her this way, but she rather liked it. Her ability to communicate with the dungeon's inhabitants hadn't been as clean and easy as Bellona's and Fuyuko's. Mordecai thought it had something to do with her more intense and intimate connection with the cores interfering. But now that it was also her Domain, she found her awareness of the environment growing and it was almost as easy to talk with the inhabitants as it was to talk with the cores.

Moriko rather enjoyed being in tune with the rest of the dungeon like this. She'd never been particularly bothered by not having this deep sense of the territory around her, but she also hadn't known what it was really like either. This was part of the reason she was taking her time and walking through the warrens instead, she wanted to enjoy knowing her domain.

There were several small stops along the way as she chatted with various inhabitants, but eventually, she made her way to the library and sought out her target.

Deidre was sitting at a small table where she had several books piled up. Payne had fallen asleep while reading one of them and was currently sprawled across the open volume. Betty had chosen a comfortable seat nearby where she was reading a small novel. Moriko greeted Betty first, leaning down to give her a hug rather than having the pregnant woman get up, and then she joined Deidre at her table.

"Hello Deidre, it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Moriko."

"Yes, I recognized you from the images your spouses have shown," Deidre replied, "How can I help you?"

Moriko shrugged as she settled into a seat. "I'm not sure actually. I mostly felt that I should meet with our involuntary guest, especially as I am now a queen. It also seemed possible that you might have some questions for me. So I am making myself available."

"I see." Deidre considered that for a moment. While she did, Sparks slid down from Moriko's shoulder to investigate, with Thunder sniffing at the still-sleeping Payne while Lightning sniffed at Deidre. "Well, if you are entertaining my curiosity, I would ask where your curious companion came from."

Moriko smiled and shook her head. "I'm afraid I can't answer that in detail." She playfully snatched at her dragon's slowly lashing tail, causing both heads to look at her with mild affront before they whipped their tail out of her loose grasp. "I can say that that I was entrusted with their care by their parents, and it came about from dealing with a bit of leftover mess caused by Mordecai's war."

"Hmm," Deidre said as she slowly lifted a hand to let Lightning sniff her again before she scritched his head, "your relationship seems odd compared to what I know of such things, but I am aware that my knowledge has been somewhat curated."

"Oh, it is odd," Moriko admitted before bopping Thunder's nose, "long term relationships between three or more people are the minority in most places and there are technically a few power imbalances in our particular arrangement, but everyone is careful about not taking advantage of anything. Especially Mordecai."

The conversation and constant movement around her finally caused Payne to stir. The resulting chaos when the excited pixie found a dragon nearby who was the perfect size to play with and ride resulted in a visitation by Horace, complete with a stern reprimand of "Ook!"

Thankfully, Kazue had designed her library with pseudo outdoor areas which the pair were quickly shooed off to. Even so, excited yells and roars could occasionally be faintly heard

"It's strange to see inhabitants so unbound by their core's will," Deidre said softly, "but I like it, and I do think I understand what Mordecai meant when he talked about my perspective having been shaped. Control must be enforced at every level to ensure that none can work against the one at the top of the chain."

Which meant that Deidre's inhabitants were little more than slaves themselves, through no fault of hers. Moriko sighed and said, "I wish there was more we could do to make things better for you. But we are working toward that goal. It just, well, will take time. You've seen what happens when someone acts without proper preparation."

"Indeed," Deidre replied, "I understand the practical need to move carefully. But it is easier when you do not know the suffering or sufferers personally."

It was said without any judgment but Moriko felt guilty anyway. The suffering of Deidre's core and inhabitants was a bit abstract in some ways, which made it easier to focus on proceeding the right way rather than giving in to the urge to charge in as soon as possible. But in the long run, it would be better to do this once and get it right.

There didn't seem to be much left to say on the topic, so Moriko switched to talking about more trivial things while waiting for her familiar to return. She was very open about her life before meeting Kazue and Mordecai when Deidre asked; Moriko got the feeling that Deidre wanted to get a sense of what 'normal' was. Not that there really was a singular normal, but if Deidre was asking Bellona and Fuyuko similar questions she should be getting a bit of that understanding.

After she left Deidre, it was time to deal with a less pleasant visit. Mordecai and Kazue were both a little dubious about the necessity of seeing the man, but it felt right to her.

"All this could have been avoided if you had just taken 'no' for an answer," was her greeting for Antoine when his cell door opened.

"Oh look, it's the mixed-blood wh-" his words were cut off sharply when she slapped him. By the time he recovered, she'd crossed back to the entrance of the room. Antoine raised a hand to his face and then flinched; Moriko had added just enough electric charge to her hand to leave a red hand print that would not fade as fast as a simple impact would. Moriko's objection was mostly in the tone and his word choice; Sakiya was a rather common patron amongst courtesans and no devotee would fault someone choosing that path of their own will.

She felt a certain amount of smug satisfaction seeing his facial muscles twitching in the aftermath of the electric shock and said, "While we may need to keep you safe, you are not immune to being punished within reason. You just insulted a queen to her face, when she has no need to be polite to you. Oh, you hadn't heard?" She smirked at his confusion. "I suppose I should thank you in some ways. Thanks to you, I met the two people who would be my husband and wife. That chain of events has led to me becoming a literal Faerie Queen." Moriko shook her head and sighed. "Honestly, I could do without some of those complications, but it's worth it. And now I have two adoptive daughters as well."

Antoine eventually got his muscles under control, no doubt aided by the traces of healing energy in the room, and asked, "How? I don't ... what?"

His bewilderment was enjoyable as well. "Well," she replied, "That's a long story I have no intention of telling you. But I wanted to make sure that you knew that every attempt of yours to make my life worse has, in the end, made my life better. No matter how troublesome your attempts were in the moment. From what my spouses say, your father makes a much better impression than you do. I hope that when I eventually meet your parents, your mother turns out to be like your father in that. I can only imagine how disappointed she must be to have a son like you."

Moriko gave Antoine a sarcastic bow as she stepped back out through the doorway and left him to stew in his thoughts and that final insult.

That confrontation had been satisfying in some ways, but also sort of ... hollow. She didn't have a better word for it. Well, she saw no reason to try again, she didn't think it would get any better. Besides, there were more entertaining things to spend her time on, it looked like she still had a chance to sit with Aliyah while they watched Yambul's performance. Seems he was lucky enough to find an open spot in a delving group that had already signed up, otherwise, it might have been a day or two.

She did wonder if Aliyah would have truly made him wait that long before seeing him, as long as he'd proven sincere in being willing to put forth the effort to meet her. Moriko suspected that the usagisune would probably have 'ambushed' him later that night if that had been the situation.