Chapter 11: Reawakening

Chapter 11: Reawakening

Halfway through gnawing my way deeper into the mountain, I ran face-first into something different.

I stopped, letting my mana relax around me—using it for too long was like overusing a muscle, my vague sense of it strained and stiff. After what I could estimate as hours of digging, it stood to reason I'd be tired.

But there wasn't time to worry about that, because what I had come across was not rock.

Well. It was, but it hadn't always been; some type of fiber, fossilized for untold centuries, entombed in the stone. I prodded it with a spark of mana.

Pale and twisting, it sprawled over the limestone like the veins of some monstrous creature, digging deep into every surrounding section of rock. I shifted my thoughts to careful little claws and tunneled around the fossil, freeing it all to the open air; it stuck out from the limestone like pale fingers extending from the dark.Visit no(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

But when I brought my mana closer to examine it, I accidentally dissolved a bare sliver from its further point.

I knew fossils—in the Ilera Sea, there was a hidden trench that only the strongest creatures could swim to the bottom of, surviving past the crushing pressure and dead water to find all the others who hadn't managed to survive. Mostly smaller fish, bones embedded in the stone they had died on, but I remembered venturing there as a younger dragon and seeing the skeleton of the greatest being to ever dominate the sea. Nearly two hundred feet long, armed with enormous jaws and fangs to cleave kingdoms, built like a crocodile but superior in every way—it had been humbling, as a sea-drake not yet out of my venomous days, to see such a titan brought low by age. None knew what had killed them, if their preferred food of whales and dragons had run out or territorial fights had brought them low, but they were dead.

And their fossils were their remains. Their dead remains.

Dead for minutes or for hundreds of years, but was there a difference to me or my mana?

Still three points left to my name after my endless burrowing, potentially enough—I gathered it around me in great billowing clouds, tugging points of awareness away from my top floor to glare at the fossils sticking placidly out of the rock. I spared a last glance at my creatures, just to make sure they wouldn't immediately crumble over and die without my watching presence.

Seros glanced up as he sensed my gaze, paddling carefully over the rock pond that barely fit his massive new size. He kept his limbs close to his sides and tried to only guide himself with his tail, spraying water over the surrounding whitecap mushrooms. His clumsiness was endearing.

You're very temporarily in charge, I impressed upon him, earning a hiss in response—Seros glanced around at the quietly existing first floor but begrudgingly dragged himself out of the pond, assuming a perch on the edge of the island. His lantern-yellow eyes swept over the floor I had appointed him guardian of.

Temporarily. I still didn't trust his particular brand of intelligence.

My jeweled jumper and horned serpent continued slumbering in their evolution-mana hazes, shapes twisting and rebuilding, but they were far enough away from the entrances if any ne'er-do-wells came in. Seros would protect them.

And thus I turned back to the fossil in my dungeon home, gathered my mana, and began to dissolve it.

I broke off a sliver from the furthest point, less than an inch of calcified fiber, and ate the white motes of mana it produced—knowledge flooded through me, intricate information about what it had been. A root of some type, much larger than from other trees, made to sit above the soil and... I narrowed my focus, dissolving a little more. Made to sit in water?

It made sense, if I stretched it. The cove was a very tropical location, and I could presume it had been so before this mountain had sprung up, give way for a water-adapted tree. I gathered a spark of mana, chose a random location in the massive empty room I was constructing, and recreated the pattern.

White tendrils spilled out across the stone.

I– hm.

Sweeping my points of awareness between the two, I could see they were functionally similar, though mine was a bit too symmetrical for a proper root cluster; but it was still clearly a fossil. I glared at the exposed roots.

I had come back to life. Clearly it couldn't be that hard.

But my normal strategy didn't look to be working—either dead for too long or plain stubborn, both of which wouldn't match up to my own particular level of obstinance. This time, I gathered my mana and instead of dissolving, I pushed it into the root.

It shuddered, bowing under its own weight, but stayed calcified. I narrowed my focus.

A full point this time, slowly threaded in like the world's most elderly grandma. I hovered overhead and slowly pressed my mana in at different points, infusing the root with various thoughts of life and growing and curses at its unwillingness to come back; it shifted again, the tip trailing towards the ground before it made to harden again–

Not on my watch. I shoved two entire points into its base.

Titles: Resurrector

Oh, seeing a proper title there sent warm spirals through my mana. I still didn't know what patrons meant, but knowing my previous track record, I'll stumble face-first into them when I least expected it. Maybe it involved choosing what I'd heard of other dungeons having, guardians of particular floors? But the name should have been—

What? Full mana?

Now that I was concentrating, I could feel my core straining to hold itself together, my Otherworld connection closed off to protect myself; no more room left to fill. As strong as my creatures were I doubt they could have killed enough newcomers to give me nearly thirty points with what I'd used, unless–

Gods, it had taken me over two days to resurrect the mangrove root?

My floor.

I exploded out of my focused concentration, throwing points of awareness shooting back up to my fungal garden. Maybe adventurers had come in while I was distracted or another cave bear, not a juvenile this time, had come through and destroyed everything–

Seros blinked as my awareness burst back onto the scene, tail lashing against the surface of the pond. He managed a confused hiss past the mess of fur in his jaws.

I swept my gaze over the floor, panic crawling over my core—the entrances stayed empty, luminous constrictors slithering up their pillars, lacecaps swaying in the breeze of a passing stone-backed toad. My cave bear had situated himself between two rocky outcroppings to jab his claws underneath a protective stalagmite and snatch up a whitecap that had been climbing towards evolution, thoughts ripe with hunger. He looked an inch or two taller.

Normal and functioning. Not dead. My mana sagged in relief.

Seros padded closer and nosed at the pillar I was on, dragging my attention back. He crooned, eyes smug, and spat whatever creature he had in his mouth before me.

Little bastard. He'd been busy.

I spread out my influence, dragging loops of mana back—it certainly wasn't a full picture but I could drag up whatever scraps of outsider mana remained to try and piece together what had happened while I was unaware. Something new had come in, disturbing the lacecaps, and a luminous constrictor had only been too quick to capitalize on it.

Then Seros had claimed its corpse to give to me.

Thank you, I pushed to him through our connection, earning a hiss in response. His thoughts were smug.

As they should be, if I was being honest with myself. He'd done exactly what I'd asked of him—protect the dungeon—and more, by keeping the schema for me. I idly added a mental note to give him plenty of interesting areas to swim in on the second floor.

But honestly. Two days out to revive one simple little root? The resurrector title would be more useful for reducing that time and not keeping me from my dungeon more than any extinct bloodlines.

The corpse was another mammal, covered in the odd, stringy hair so many of them needed to stay warm; it seemed highly inefficient but I didn't know any other way to create them. Ah well. I dissolved it into white motes of mana.

Burrowing Rat (Common)

Small and often afraid, it avoids predators by digging through dirt and stone to create burrows, using their sensitive twin tails to sense vibrations of approaching animals. They feast on anything they can find in their short excursions out of their burrows.

Huh. Its twin tails were forked, like a snake's tongue, but could move independently—they were lined with sensors that relied on air currents, while their paws could feel vibrations in the ground. They were decently sized as well, which I hadn't exactly been able to see when it'd be crammed in Seros' mouth, about a foot long to match the stone-backed toads.

But a new schema.

It looked like another entirely prey build, full of interesting skills for my predators to test their skill against, but I could see potential in their evolution. The ability to dig through stone in a dungeon could never be ignored. But they were another useful level in my ecosystem, especially with my planned expansion to an area that could support larger creatures.

I paused, reactivating points of awareness aimed at the bare space I'd started to carve out—utterly massive in comparison to my last one, nearly one thousand feet long and not yet done, a bare sketch of a river meandering through. Plenty of space and options for actual aquatic creatures, as well as land for my kobolds and cave bears; the mangrove trees, even–

Oh. Oh.

Now that was an idea.