I watched Nicau descend.
Chieftess was carrying Kriya, the anaga-human weighing nothing in her arms, the darkness before meaning little to her golden eyes. Nicau kept Otherworld mana in his throat, tense and coiling for any threats, but I smoothed the way before them as they traveled to the Hungering Reef. Kriya was still unconscious, listing from the breaking of her geas, of her enslavement.
I turned away. I would confront that when she was talking.
But for now, I gathered my wits about me, letting my new schemas flutter through my awareness; not enough mana to fully sculpt the eighth floor, considering how large it was, but enough to begin. I dove down through the limestone and basalt, through the empty mountain that protected my floors from the other, and arrived at the future home of my heart tree.
It was a wonderful hell of a place, exactly as I wanted. In comparison to my other floors, it wasn't as large; perhaps some three thousand feet in diameter, vaguely circular, the walls irregular and peppered with dens.
And then the ceiling, a lovely three thousand feet off the ground.
I had rather wanted to make it more, to tunnel down until it was leagues upon leagues that invaders had to climb up, but my dungeon instincts had lurched unpleasantly at the thought. There was a reason dungeons had floors, rather than amorphous spaces; digging too deep meant breaking the orderly composure of our halls. If I dug too far, I would limit the amount of total floors I could build. And already I could sense the faintest strain in my awareness, the knowledge that I was approaching the end of what I could maintain. Even as I allowed more deities to claim my upper floors, to hold them stable with their mana, I was only one core, and I could not control an empire fit to consume the world. There would be a maximum to my number of floors, and one day, I would reach it.
But not yet. I still had time.
So I spread myself over the floor, mana coiled and ready. My dreams were already honed and prepared, waiting at the tip of my core, and all I had to do was breathe them into life.
First, the trees.
I had four at my disposal—vampiric mangrove, cloudsire palm, towering cypress, and cobweb banyan. But for the first time, I wanted to limit the mangroves; though they had dominated my floors above, by the time invaders made it to the eighth floor, they would be well-familiar with their tricks. And, well. I didn't want to be predictable.
I'd carved a small pond to one side of the floor, a repository for aquatic beings and a water source for others. I'd even magicked up a small waterfall down one basalt wall, looping an auxiliary tunnel to my higher floors to feed it, though too small for anything but baitfish to slither through. I unstoppered it with a sliver of mana and let the water rush down, the pool blossoming in pale blue—already mist trickled out into the air, humidity raising.
Mangroves around the pond, their thorned roots tangled in the shore, and only there. The rest would be for other trees.
And chief among them was the towering cypress.
Oh, Nicau couldn't have chosen a better schema if it had been him designing the floor; it was tall and enormous and powerful. Not in terms of mana, being rather a passive species, but in terms of presence; there was little that could see the bulwark shape I envisioned and not feel humbled by their own pitiful size.
The cloudsire palms would fit in the corners, helping to bring even more mist and humidity to the jungle space; the cobweb banyans would weave together this land until it was an interconnected mess of a paradise, drowning in branches and pathways for brave creatures. And above all, the strength of the place.
I wanted a heart tree—the heart of a primeval forest, grown so old its mana had no choice but to coalesce into one tree to serve as the beating heart of its depths. Could I make one as they existed? No. I didn't have a thousand years to wait patiently for a tree to decide it wanted to be more, nor did I necessarily have the room for one befitting its station.
But I could cheat. And I did love cheating.
So I gathered my mana, bright and sparking with potential, and began to weave.
First around the edges; I laid the seeds of cypresses, pumping points into their shells until they cracked free and shot up. Their deep, caramel-amber bark, sinuous like muscle and flesh, erupting through the earth; I guided them up and up and up, as tall as their schema would allow. Their roots, rising up like buttresses, lancing through the soil until they formed a maze at their underside.
But even at their tallest, they stretched only perhaps seven hundred feet up, feathery leaves spread to catch the quartz-lights I had filled the walls with. Tall, yes, but not enough.
My solution was simple. I went into the walls, digging out pockets wide as my schema directed, and there I planted more towering cypresses. Then up they grew, seemingly continuing from the trunk beneath them, up at least their caps brushed the stalactites far above.
Was it perfect? Admittedly not. It was rather hard to hide that the trees did end when you got close to them, when you saw new shoots coming from the walls directly. But when you were a hapless invader fleeing for your life through the tangled labyrinth of my jungle hell, all you would see was the canopy of trees, so far ahead.
Curled within a den, feathered tail resting over her nose, the boundless jaguar pricked her ears as I settled overhead.
Come, I murmured, quiet and polite. A land for you.
And in her mind, I showed her just what I meant; the tangle of trees and thickets, the perfect perches for her to watch all those beneath her, the bountiful prey I promised just as soon as I finished. A land for the taking.
Her thoughts hungered. She wasn't Old, not in the way her evolution said she should have been, but she was a creation of hunger still. She rose to her paws, feathered tail swishing over the stone; for too long had she been confined to the Jungle Labyrinth, only able to hunt that which was not under Veresai's command. I would give her a territory for herself, now. She could test what I had created, to show me where I needed to form bridges or thicken up the canopy; the eyes of a hunter to see what my omnipresent dungeon-self didn't notice.
She churred something in her throat and stretched, six limbs digging claws into the stone. Then she padded off to Akkyst, either a goodbye or just informing him of where she hunted, considering very little could keep her from traveling my different floors if she wanted, and from there I knew she would follow the map I set in her mind.
Soon, I would fill in the rest of the floor. Already my mind spun with it; verdant howlers, terrorbirds, mottled scorpions, cavern-mouths. A land akin to my others, but altogether separate. Travel up instead of through. The promise, not threat, of a fall.
As soon as Nicau made it to the Hungering Reefs—he was already partially through the Skylands, moving at a starfish's pace past the Magelord's territory—I would let Kriya decide to either help me or die, then I would Name Chieftess, and then I would figure out what the fuck else I had to do.
But as I looked over my green hell, my paradise in waiting, I couldn't help but feel content.
-
The jeweled jumper followed the masses into the midst.
They moved slow, limited by their lack of limbs, the grey-green-beasts and their mindless walk. All the creatures at their sides, the monsters he took such delight in killing when he could, but on they marched and on they moved, and only now were they stopping.
The halls were unremarkable; grey stone and shadows, much the same as before, but the grey-green-beasts treated it like new territory. They clustered, tucking in, not one separating from the others. Difficult to kill. Difficult to be unkillable.
But the jeweled jumper didn't try, not now. He was curious; an odd thing to be, but he was. Whatever scared them more than him was here.
The think-word echoed like a prayer. Growth, Growth, Growth.
To the stone they turned, a flat section of grey the same as all the others. But this they faced like a threat, and this the largest grey-green-beast stepped forward. Not the one the jeweled jumper had killed, but just as unthreatening. The only difference was a staff it carried in its odd-flat-claws, tipped in bone.
It slammed the base against the rock. The bones clattered, echoing louder than they should have.
Deep within the mountain, something rumbled in answer. A monster.
The jeweled jumper shivered—his carapace felt suddenly hot, bursting at the cracks. His mind, so large, so clever, hungered for that rumble—wanted to know what it was. The grey-green-beasts all huddled and clutched at each other after the noise, and again the leader slammed its staff against the rock. The rumble snarled through the depths again.
And the wall shook. The wall trembled.
The jeweled jumper readied himself, venom hissing over his fangs. The grey-green-beasts picked up their spears and prepared for battle; he did the same.
They had arrived.
It was time to fight.