No Need for a Core?

Deep in the flesh of the world, bound to a single crystal of deep purple and confined by innumerable wards to a single sealed chamber of stone, an ancient mind lay dormant.

With the steadiness of a river cutting a canyon through solid stone, the power of the slumbering entity and that of the wards that bound it waned over time as they wore at each other.

The wards were meant to last slightly longer than the trapped entity, given the normal course of events. But not even the gods can predict everything perfectly, nor would they if they could. While those who laid the wards may have had divine guidance, they were certainly not gods.

This far underground it was often silent but there was always a deep rumbling as the land grew, eroded, and shifted. Rumblings that the sleeping mind was so used to that those distant sounds did not disturb its slumber. Yet, on this day, there were new sounds. Something faint; an impact; scrabbling sounds; muttered curses. The slipping sounds of a hand trying to grab onto a rock as it fell past. A heartbeat of silence. Then there was a sharp yell, much too close, cutting through the brief moment of silence and awakening the trapped presence just before a final crash.

The unusual noises stirred the mind to partial wakefulness, then a crashing boulder dispelled the last of its mental fog. Full awareness followed as swiftly as the boulder breaking through the roof of the cavern was followed by a flailing body.

It reacted more on instinct than thought, channeling magic into a swirl of force and dim light that surrounded the figure and slowed its fall. There was a softer ‘woof’, then a quiet groan as the figure lay there, recovering.

The mind observed its new visitor, the first since it had been sealed here, and tried to decide what he should do.

He? Oh, right, he did think of himself that way. Not that a soul born of a crystal core had to be a specific gender, but it felt right. Hmm. He focused his attention on the slowly moving form as it sat upright. Ah, a human.. no, her aura wasn’t quite right. It had a touch of something more fey… a half-elf? That seemed likely.

His mind felt sluggish as he tried to think after so long. This intrusion had a meaning of some importance, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t bring all of his thoughts together.

“Hello?” a soft voice called out, breaking his train of thought. Oh right, he should talk to her. Um, how again? He used to know how to do it... oh right, an avatar. Hmm, could he still make one? He was not as strong as he felt he should be… ah, good. Weaker than he was, but still so much stronger than when he'd first awakened with only a single room between his core and the world beyond. He only needed a basic internal avatar for now, so he was efficient with his mana and reused a basic template for designing the body. Her being here was also making him feel stronger; as an outsider in a dungeon's territory, the beat of her life and spirit was a steady source of mana. Her presence should also encourage a flow of mana from outside, but that normal flow was absent. Hmm.

Small motes of purplish and indigo hues began appearing and slowly gathering a few meters away from the half-elf, who swiftly leapt to her feet in surprise, then immediately began swearing as sore muscles and bruised flesh gave complaint. He took his time in order to be as efficient as possible, but in due course, his avatar was constructed: A somewhat tallish humanoid male, with moderately tanned skin, purple-hued black hair that fell a little below his shoulders, and eyes that were an almost molten gold color. Oh, right! Just before the avatar finished coalescing he remembered that clothes were important, and managed to get leather pants on his avatar. A distant memory rose of being playfully encouraged to dress like this, and he didn't take the time to consider his other options.

“Hello,” he replied, though his tone wavered a moment as he focused on trying to remember how to speak. “I’m sorry if I got anything wrong; I still feel half asleep, and it’s been a very long time.” His voice caused his visitor to jump slightly again, perhaps caused by the adrenaline rush after her fall?

Fall? From where?

He looked up at the thought, to see the hole in his prison. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have disrupted the wards themselves very much, his senses and power were unable to cross that threshold.

Because of his distraction, he missed it when his guest started to talk. “Hi yourself, um, I think you’re over there?” The sudden flare of light caught his attention and drew his gaze back down to where the woman was standing with a small orb of whitish light hovering nearby. It was undoubtedly the result of an untiered light spell, common even amongst explorers who don't use much magic.

For a moment they studied each other, with the light giving him a better image than his other senses had. She had almost delicate facial features, somewhat pale skin with golden undertones, black hair pinned into a once-neat bun, rich brown eyes that faintly hinted at red tones, and pointed ears that spoke of her elven bloodlines. While many elven-blooded folk did tend to have somewhat almond-shaped eyes, his impression of her features also made him think of the humans from the Azanxuan continent, though not enough to say she definitely had bloodlines from there.

Her lightweight clothing didn’t look practical for spelunking, but he guessed that cave delving hadn’t been her intent for the day. The clothing style also held hints of techniques from different continents, and it left him wondering what exactly had happened while he had slumbered. If that represented how much cultural intermingling there had been then any speculation on her ancestry was rather meaningless.

“So, um, I guess I have you to thank for the save there?” she asked, shifting her weight. “Well, thanks. My name’s Moriko.” And with that stepped forward to offer her hand.

Name? Oh yes, his was… “Ah, right. You are most welcome Moriko.” he was a little slow in responding to her offered hand, but he did take it and gave it a firm grip and a brief shake before letting go. “I believe my name is Mordecai. It’s been a long time, my memory is a little fuzzy.”

He was beginning to remember more details of his life. Many good things, but also some very bad things. As those memories came, he started searching for certain patterns in his core's matrix, but they weren't there. Other souls and memories, the creatures that had once been a part of his dungeon. They should have been there still, presuming that they had stayed and their bodies perished inside his territory. Had they all managed to leave after he was sealed?

“A pleasure to meet you as well, Mordecai,” Moriko replied, trying not to stare. She was pretty certain he wasn’t truly any kind of humanoid, not with the giant orb of crystal behind him, his strange stillness between speech, and this odd place she'd found him; but whoever had helped design that body certainly had 'a type'. And well, she couldn’t exactly say she disapproved: a tall and lean base with just enough muscle to show off could be a tasty treat. She just didn’t find it very appropriate for him to be greeting her while barefoot and shirtless like that. Mostly because it was distracting. At least it gave her something to think about besides her predicament. She was used to taking on missions with a group, so she had been looking forward to adventuring on her own a little when the chance arose, but this was definitely more than she'd bargained for.

As for what this strange man actually was: “So, I take it you are a dungeon avatar?” Okay, she knew that wasn’t quite right, the avatar was an extension of the dungeon and core, but it didn’t feel right to call him just the dungeon or the core. “I haven’t met one before, but that is sort of what brought me here.”

There was just the slightest hesitation before he nodded, and another slight pause before he spoke. “Yes, I am, though I have been sealed here for a while. So I might not be like the ones you’ve heard of.” It was a touch creepy to be honest, the little hesitations. But based on what he’d said so far it had been a long time since he’d had a body, so Moriko was going to give him the benefit of the doubt on that matter. Especially since it was smoothing out the more he talked and acted. “How did you get here?”

Moriko hesitated when he asked her that. She was tempted to try and deflect, but given her situation, maybe she should just let herself be embarrassed. And if she was open, maybe he’d be more open when she asked him questions, because What in the Nine Hells? This dungeon’s existence didn’t seem possible.

“Well, I have to admit it’s not a story I’m going to like telling very much, but the first part isn’t too bad. I was taking a trip to visit my family, who live in the city of Riverbridge, and I had recently passed the Azeria Forest. I was kind of meandering to explore a bit as it's pretty peaceful in the area. So while exploring, I came across a little stream that seemed to be coming out of a small cave. And there were a few different types of weird rabbits in the cave, which sounded like what I’d heard about how living dungeons tend to theme their creatures. I figured it might be a new dungeon because you guys are kind of rare and I had never heard of one in the area before. Naturally, I went exploring.” Moriko did her best to work in a couple of landmarks, but nothing in his expression suggested he recognized either of them, so she continued on to the more embarrassing part.

Though she was absolutely not going to admit that the strange bunnies with the horns were super adorable and she had been hoping to be able to cuddle some, that would be even more embarrassing. “Things went well at first, then I think the dungeon panicked? All of a sudden a small wave of new rabbits charged out at me, bigger ones that jumped to try and hit me with their horns as well as others that breathed fire and stuff. None of them were very dangerous individually, but there were a lot of them and I wound up stepping into a pitfall that I swear wasn’t there a moment before.”

“And then... I fell. And hit a slope. Slid. Fell again. Rinse and repeat more times than I tried to count. No idea how far I fell, bouncing off of things until I wound up here." The memory caused her to grip a throbbing elbow, and the motion revealed a wrist that was already starting to purple from bruising. Moriko made her body relax, tilting her head to one side to crack it as she rotated a shoulder to release tension. "And I would probably have died if you hadn’t caught me. And, well, you know the rest.” The ache all over her body was trying to tell her the count of how much she had hit, and her dress was in terrible shape.

There was more to tell really. She was pretty certain he didn’t know much about what was going on up on the surface, but years of training helped her keep to the most immediate, relevant stuff. And she certainly was not going to talk about why she was on 'vacation' right now. “But my story is simple. What I want to know is how the heck you can even still be in existence sealed all the way down here.” Mordecai flinched a little at that, Moriko had clearly hit on a sensitive subject. Not surprising really, one didn't exactly come to be sealed some gods-only-know depth below the ground because of a light-hearted story.