Chapter 142: Burning Resentment

Chapter 142: Burning Resentment

Well. I had little cause to compliment the lesser, scuttling things of my dungeon, particularly when they lacked finery or elegance—but to their own damning credit, at least the webweavers had managed to construct a passable shrine.

A collection of intricate webs, melded together into the faint reminiscent ideal of her symbol of worship—I'd originally thought it as a needle's point, but now that it was before me, it shaped itself like a spider's mandible, thread unspooling from the base and scattering around. Nenaigch, the goddess of weaving, with her newest followers.

And they'd already done what I'd chosen them for—namely, sacrifice. Though I hadn't started to fill the Haven with populations of creatures I wanted to live there, mostly because I wanted to save my mana until I knew if a threat was imminently banging on my door, I had built up the beginnings of the prey populations needed to support them.

So, in fine fashion, they had immediately butchered a burrowing rat and strung its desiccated corpse up on the marble platform.

That was probably about as close to prayer as a bunch of identity-less spiders could manage.

My confidence in the plan to avoid humans and go right to spiders was waning, just a touch.

But that was a question for when I had alternatives, so for now I pushed more worship into their insipid minds and moved elsewhere.

Time was an ancient enemy of mine, particularly when my distractions numbered painfully few. Until Nicau returned, I couldn't work on the new tunnel branching out of my dungeon; until Seros returned, I couldn't talk to him about my future plans; until both of them told me of the outside world, I couldn't prepare for my retribution.

When I had torn out my own heart to wreak vengeance on the man who had slaughtered me, I hadn't exactly anticipated the waiting.

In the future, I would work on limiting the number of my Named I sent into the wider world at the same time. I hated being stuck without intelligent conversation, which was in short supply with Veresai busy compelling Kriya and Akkyst having long, meandering talks with Bylk about their ancient stone plaque and his blessing.

Which meant I had to go entertain myself. Horrible.

My attention was neatly divided between the Jungle Labyrinth and the Scorchplains, the targets of my design. For the Jungle Labyrinth, it was relatively plain—wait for Nicau, finish the Haven, and then carve a twisting escape far through the madness and the depths of the Alómbra Mountains.

Then potentially go steal some priests, because while I wouldn't put myself in the alien mindset of a deity with nothing to worry about but sycophants, I also wouldn't call the webweavers particularly respectable followers. Nenaigch had been calm for the moment, the spool of iron-threads in the back of my mind, but I doubted she would stay so forever. No, I needed a better plan.

I glared a little harsher at the scuttling, ghost-pale bodies in the Haven.

But the Scorchplains—they were the next floor to truly work on finishing. The Hungering Reefs were well on their way, three rooms of impossible danger and beauty, from the swarming swallows of the first to the elegant lagoon of the second to the crushing depths and many-fanged jaws of the sea serpent in the third room. My own little paradise, though I doubted many of those who died there would see it as such. I wasn't quite ready to finish it yet, considering I could see little pockets where new creatures could fit, but it was working there. The Scorchplains were an untapped spring of potential.

And, well. I was impatient in all the ways that a dungeon core could afford to be. The sooner I strengthened the Scorchplains and made them a land that would survive, the sooner I could begin my eighth floor, and I had many wonderful ideas already scattering through my thoughts. But not until I got this one to a serviceable level.

The Scorchplains were, at their core, a very mean-spirited place. The basalt columns, never equal, always a tripping hazard—and tripping that could go right into a magma pool, coal-filled chasm, or waiting stinger of a mottled scorpion. Smoke in the air and darkness all around, no water beyond little oases of mushrooms, rampaging packs of scorch hounds and herds of bounding deer whose preferred response to threats was to trample them.

Fire-tongue flowers belched smoke into the air, choking the land in smog where the burning coal didn't. Already the magma salamanders had blossomed in size, from hatchlings to threats, bulbous bodies pouring molten stone from their skin and wrapping near-toothless maws about anything that entered their pool's surroundings. Death and devastation made pairs.

There had been some interesting developments—namely, the splitting. The Scorchplains were enormous, some ten thousand feet long, but not divided into rooms or areas like my previous floors. I had imagined it as more of a threat of endurance, where invaders had to struggle across a field of pure darkness with danger on every side, a race of attrition.

But my creatures had a different idea, it seems.

The elder scorch hounds who had known the starvation in the Skylands, who had their pack whittled down from three dozen to half the number without the stability to support pups, had claimed the back half of the floor; had staked out their territory and defended it. And then all of the new scorch hounds I had created had been entirely kicked out to form a pack of their own, more in the front of the room, separate.

Which. Fascinating.

Made even more fascinating by just what was happening with the older pack; most notably, their newer member.

The beast-tamer kobold.

One of them was small and dusted and tripping along like he hadn't known sleep in a decade, and it was him whose mana had sparked alongside mine as his soul reconnected—Nicau, my Named, my wandering little spy with the tongue of a thousand species and the wits of none of them. Even now, his thoughts sung a weary funeral dirge of defective cohesion, blind to his surroundings. Goodness. I had long abandoned my mortal form and even I knew what he was doing was terrible.

Made infinitely moreso by the man standing beside him.

Tall, confident, strong—and familiar. Bronze scales and slitted pupils—ones that had faced my dungeon before. Chains and charms and cages—empty, for now.

Gonçal, the miserable fucking bastard who had stolen my wolf-wisp.

The mushrooms could wait. This was, just marginally, slightly more important. Because of some critical interest was the fact that Nicau, my Named, supposedly loyal to me, had just entered my dungeon side-by-side with a wretched thief.

My points of awareness unspooled overhead, weaving together amidst Nuvja's shadows until they formed a watching web of stars. Gonçal strode into my dungeon like he owned it but there was a wariness there, concern in his eyes, tension in his shoulders. As he damn well should, because through the mana-sense my dungeon was infused with, I felt the flickers of a response—the gentle simmers of something reaching back.

Around his neck, beneath the armour, wrapped in crystal and drenched in mana, was my cloudskipper wisp. Trapped. Contained.

Caged.

Nicau, halfway through entering with his shoulders hackled up to his ears, nearly fell flat on his face as the full force of my wrath descended into his mind.

Kill him, I snarled, vicious and biting and bellowing. Kill him, rip his spine out, shred his intestines, feast on his innards–

"Careful," Gonçal whispered, casual as all hells.

Nicau wheezed something without words, clutching at his head as pain echoed back through our connection. I bared unfortunately intangible teeth but did slink back, dropping my shrieks to hisses, untangling the fury into something more manageable. Kill him, I said again, cold. Kill him.

My Named, for some fucking reason, didn't immediately spring up to sink his dagger into Gonçal's throat. I was going to kill him, too.

Nicau just straightened up, still pressing a palm to his forehead like he could hold back his Otherworld mana. "My apologies," he managed, mana sparking to his tongue. "I'm fine."

Fine? Of course he was fine, he was back in the dungeon. What was less fine was the distinct lack of murder taking place. Why wasn't he–

Nicau looked up at the ceiling, eyes wild and panicked. His mind writhed with excess mana.

Ah, that was his problem—he'd only ever spoken to me out loud, using his mana-gifted tongue, but that was moderately more difficult with a companion. But I didn't really see why that mattered if he was going to kill Gonçal anyway.

Which he was. Because I demanded it.

Gonçal frowned, glancing around the Fungal Gardens, slithering with shadows and hidden threats. "If you are not feeling well enough to invade," he said, wary, "then we should not risk our lives for nothing."

"Don't worry," Nicau said, sounding like he was worrying enough for the both of them. "I have a plan."

Gonçal raised an eyebrow, mana flickering over his eyes. "A plan?"

"A plan," Nicau repeated wearily. "Just trust me."

Trust him? Trust him, who had brought a thief into my dungeon without the courtesy of gutting him first?

Oh, I couldn't wait to see this plan.