The bones of a great beast jut from the ground. Where the peaks of the Dragon’s Teeth mountain range tear into the sky, sharp and pointed and bent, like an angry mouth roaring defiance at the heaven, one mountain falls short. Squat and stunted. There the beast’s carcass sits nested in the earth. It was not a beast of flesh and bone, but a beast of stone and death. It didn’t hunt, or scour the land. Its prey came to it, dying of their own volition. It was a huge, towering thing, the size of a mountain and more. Where it had grown, it had hollowed the earth. Not many knew of its existence. Not anymore. After all, to get to it, you would have to cross a great expanse of now lifeless land.

On one side of the mountain, a desert of shifting sands. Hulking, scaled titans bury themselves, waiting for pray that flits across the burning sand.

On the other, an endless swamp. Reptilian shapes lurk in the shadows, just waiting to swallow anything foolish enough to step too close to the murky waters.

But there in the center, in the middle of the range, once the tallest mountain, now a carcass of an ancient and dead thing, sits a maze. Its shaped like the wormy, exposed crevasses and lines of a human brain, exposed to the sky— a mockery of the human mind.

Even now, clouds slide over the swamp, slamming into the Teeth, an ocean of gray and white and black, cresting upon the stone. The clouds themselves crash like waves, some sliding around the great peaks that tower over all the world. Still, some clouds meet their end, condensing and falling in great grayish black clouds, storms and wind and rain battering the exposed brain below. Rain puddles, and pools, and at some points rages, a great river of water that washes into the labyrinth below. Down beneath the exposed tops of its maze-like walls.

Down hundreds of feet, deeper still, where the walls meet the floors. This brain of a stone giant was deep, nearly guaranteeing no way out, save the one stairway. And no way in, save the one stairway. Or a plummet to inevitable death below.

The sound of thunder reverberated, echoing in the maze. It has been a long time since it was maintained. There are holes now, dug into the walls by great, burly, beast like hands and claws and teeth, and by crude pickaxes of rough hewn stone. Shortcuts that connect the city within, sitting at the bottom of the labyrinth. A city of leather tarps, hung on great teeth that were pounded into the stone.

A city of great, scaly ogres, who worshiped and served at the whim of an old master, a false dragon, a wyrm that’s lived for centuries, since the Crusade and the Fall. A wyrm that can sense mana, who looks to the sky. Eyes widening. Tail shifting. Body rising up, staring at the heavens above, as the force of the divine itself echoed with a clap of thunder. Pink lightning coursed along the labyrinth’s walls.

The wyrm felt it then, rising to his full height and commanding his dragon-ogres to destroy any of them that they found. They couldn’t be allowed to threaten his rule here.

The ogres, stalking, stomping, stamping through the labyrinth, smash the gems to bits wherever they find them. Ever obedient, ever subservient. Ever stupid.

These things are not of interest. What is, is deeper still, beyond the labyrinth. For if you make it to the mazes end, you’ll find that there isn’t one stair case— there are two. This one a spiral, slanted and sloping, down deep. Deeper into the mountain. It has been centuries since a human has seen this place, kept secured from prying eyes.

In the dark of the dungeons carcass is a forest. Its trees are towering, its insides illuminated by great luminescent organs, left behind. Veins of magic pulse through the wall, powering the great lights, filling them so full of mana they thrum, and vibrate, and roar. Every day, the veins grow dimmer, the magic in these walls near exhausted.

Therein live the Draken, building houses of wood and stone and bone that hang from great metal chains dangling from the ceiling. More intelligent than their ogre brothers, but not strong enough to make the push to the surface, to move past this dead world. Therein were once cities. Cities that had slowly died as more and more lights went out. Many of them cocked their heads as they felt it: Dungeon Rain. Many stretched their wings, diving to where the cores were forming even now. If anyone reached deep enough to explore this place, not that they would live that long, they would find paths that lead even deeper.

And deeper still.

To the wet, swamp like territory of the Lizardkin, a motley mix of species that live on the filth of the mighty Draken above them. They eat berries, and forage, and anything they can catch that moves. A mighty river rages from a hole in the labyrinth above, ensuring the ground here is always wet. Few of the great lights still work, and the ones that do have lost their ability to cycle, leaving the swamps in a constant, dim twilight. Shanty towns on towering legs stay above the waterline when the rain floods this place, which constantly reeks of fermenting plants and dead matter. They don’t even notice the swirling colors and shapes of mana forming in the water. Only the very bravest would search for a way to go deeper in a place so full of water. But look, and you shall find something.

Something deeper still.

Here the lights have gone out entirely. The Fourth Strata is illuminated solely by the dim light of the magical veins in the wall. When they pulse, illuminating the Second Strata above them, they’re blessed with a few hours of dim morning light.

This is a place not even Lizardkin would bother inhabiting, left solely for the sickly Kobolds. Not as strong as the ogres. They lack the sharp intelligence of the Draken, and have no knowledge of magic or the arcane. They don’t wield the indomitable will of the lizard kin. But they are cunning. Sneaky. Conniving.

And while they cannot sense mana, they’re always on the look out for things new and shiny to add to their hordes. So when they find gems, scattered about their town, they’re brought to the different houses of the Kobold clans, placed as key ornaments to their accumulated hordes.

Here where everything is filthy, and the houses are a motley mix of rusted metal, somewhat scaly leather, and rotting wood, these gems were some of the most fascinating sights they’d ever seen. Below this Strata, there are only waste tunnels and drainage. Nothing worth mentioning. Bugs. Mushrooms. Scaled Rats.

Deeper still.

The last of the Dungeon Cores scattered by Dungeon Rain forms. Alone on a pitch black floor, where not even a glimmer of mana remains. Its dark here. The inhabitants are blind, crawling around using their hands and whiskers. Misshapen, lumpy, pseudo-kobolds, these Scaled Rats aren’t even capable of base communication.

Here the last dungeon core forms. Split down the middle. Two souls fused as one. Burning and screaming as they take shape in the earth together.