Alverost awoke with a hangover. He reached to rub his head before remembering he didn’t have arms. And that he was stuck to this idiot.

He tried, for a fifth time, to absorb the soul next to him.

Whoops. That woke him up. Alverost could feel Mark’s consciousness stirring to wakefulness in the dungeon core. With a relaxing stretch, he felt a wave of mana crash into him, and his influence expand, surveying their Domain.

It was still just a bubble in darkness in the damp, shithole of a cavern.

Except something was very different. He squinted with his not-eyes, trying to discern the change. Was it the huge abundance of heavy mana? If they had passed out from using too much mana, the air would saturate while they were unconscious, so the amount of heavy mana was almost to be expected.

Almost. Alverost squinted at the forest of mushrooms that surrounded him, towering all the way to the ceiling in some places. The mushrooms had mutated wildly in reactions to Mark’s irresponsible use of Light and Life mana.

Ah. Thats the difference. The wild field of black and white and green and purple mushrooms now stretched beyond the limit of their domain, a twisting forest of shadows and shapes.

A Kobold of pitch black scales knelt in supplication in front of the small tunnel their dungeon was recessed into, surrounded by the warped, rat-lizards that even now chewed into his garden. Their bodies were saturated with mana from the mushrooms they were eating, a swirling miasma of color shifting inside them from Alverost’s perspective.

Alverost felt Mark’s mana reach out towards them.

“No.” Alverost said before Mark got the chance to start shifting them.

“But look at them. They’re suffering. The Kobold you changed brought his whole family.”

“Stop. Its a waste of mana. I haven’t even been able to send a signal to my family yet.” Alverost spoke, irritated at Mark’s lack of priorities. They were a dungeoncore now, trapped beneath the earth in an unknown area. It was only a matter of time before something came looking for them, digging through the earth to find the wellspring of fresh mana they represented.

Mark ignored him as always, choosing to refuse the advice of his betters. He reached out to one of the Kobolds. This one was even sicker than the others, a small, deformed rat, with pallid white flesh. Even its scales were white. This one flickered brightly with Light mana.

Alverost heaved a mental sigh before returning to work on his sigil. A remote contact sigil was an incredible intricate piece of magic circuitry, and not for the first time he grumbled at the fact that there was no simple Arcana for it. Ritual magic was always more mentally intensive than the use of Arcana— Arcana was just magic for simpletons, and relying on them would cost you any flexibility. Only idiotic light paladins rely on them.

“Alverost?” the dolt asked.

“Alvy?” He asked again, using an insidious nickname.

“What!?”

“What is this?”

“Its a sick little Kobold. They’re low level monsters. Some dungeon has clearly mutilated it beyond recognition.”

“No, I mean, did you see this? Its like a video player. Like an embedded youtube link. Its like its recorded in a piece of DNA when you examine the structure.”

“DNA? Youtube? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Here, I’m just going to… I’m just going to play it. I’ll tell you what happens—”

The world disappeared from around Alverost. He was floating in a void.

“Hello?” Alverost asked.

“Whats going on?” Mark replied, floating off to his left. Alverost could see Mark— he was in the body he perceived as his own. He wore rough, blue pants, completely unfitting of the kind of nobility that could afford decades of education. A button up shirt, plain with stripes across it. His hair an and uncut loose mess, his eyes fearful. Like a lost child.

Alverost looked forward as a huge shape coalesced from nothing.

It was towering. Gigantic. The size of a castle. And that was just its head. Large and reptilian, with brilliant gemstone eyes that searched Alverost’s own. The world shook with the baritone rumble of its voice, and its wings stretched until they obscured the sky. In its hand, a single rat Kobold looked up towards it.

“IF YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS MESSAGE, I AM LONG DEAD

TO YOU WHO HAVE SEARCHED THROUGH THE FOUNDATIONAL STRUCTURE OF EVEN THE LEAST OF MY CREATIONS

I GIVE YOU THE KEY TO MY SECRETS

LIKE YOU, I AM NOT OF THIS WORLD

I COME FROM A WORLD OF MY KIND

AND SET OUT TO RECREATE MY LONG DEAD RACE

I KNEW THEY WOULD COME FOR ME WHEN I CREATED THEM, AND SENT THEM FREE FROM THE DUNGEON

ONE BY ONE, THEY HUNTED MY CHILDREN

IF YOU ARE WORTHY TO RESURRECT DRAGONKIND, YOU WILL FIND A PIECE OF THEM WITHIN EACH OF MY CREATIONS, ENCODED WITH THE KEY HERE

ASSEMBLE ALL OF THEIR PIECES AND YOU MAY RETURN DRAGONKIND TO THIS WORLD

I WISH YOU LUCK”

The world shuddered to a stop, and then was silent. They were back in the cave.

“Huh. It left behind a piece of a blueprint.” With a final twist, Mark’s own edited Kobold stood beside Alverost’s, looking at it suspiciously. It backed away. Mark’s editing had made it no longer a runt, and though it lacked the refined ebon beauty of the shadow infused Kobold, it moved with a simpler kind of grace. It was also another head taller than the ebon Kobold. Like the first, it stared in reverence towards the dungeoncores secluded position.

“So what, we collect all of these pieces and we can make a dragon?” Mark asked.

“Who cares. Its not important. The sooner we can get back to my family, the sooner we can send you back to whatever world you came from.” Although Alverost spoke this, he was tabbing through the creation pane, looking for this ‘DNA’ and ‘Youtube’ Mark spoke of. A dungeoncore had clearly left that behind, through some kind of magical enchanting far beyond anything Alverost had seen. Recorded messages like that were not nearly so progressed in modern magic, though they could be enchanted onto things, they would be simple one note tones, or at best, a sentence, and that would take years to produce.

Alverost tabbed through the pane of information. How the Kobold absorbed mana, its affinities, the amount of mana it contained, how much it would raise ambient levels, its mating patterns— but no ‘DNA’, no ‘video’. There was no this backwater bum had more knowledge of magic than he did. Did he?

“Mark, whats visible when you create something?” Alverost asked.

“Uhhhh…” Alverost felt him open it, editing another Kobold. “Lets see… DNA… growth rate… ooh, the type of mana thats in it! Thats new!”

“That just appeared?” Alverost paused. “It must only show information that you already understand…” But that would mean that Mark understood something Alverost didn’t, which was clearly impossible.

“Mark, what is this… DNA?”

“Wait, you don’t know? How advanced is science on Ispheria? Do you guys have irrigation? Oooh, what about crop rotation?” Mark paused. “DNA is, like, the structure that makes living things. It like… tells cells… these little parts that compromise everything you are? Cells. It tells them how to build new cells. Repair damaged organs, how many limbs to grow, what color your eyes are— everything.” As Mark finished, he finished untwisting one of the Kobolds. This one rose on two legs and looked around nervously. It was a vivid green, an almost emerald color.

“I see. I understand now. Just like how mana is the building block of all matter.” He lied. Alverost’s panel didn’t change. It would take a more thorough explanation than that for him to understand. He paused before answering Mark’s own questions. “We grow each crops on fresh dungeon soil. The dungeons work to produce fresh dirt and rid the crop of pests. Dungeon-spawn do most of the labor for crops, including irrigating them with water.”

“Fresh dirt? Like they dig it up? They’d have to fertilize it too.”

“No, they coalesce new dirt from mana and absorb the old dirt.” Alverost replied.

Mark paused for a second.

“So the dungeons produce crops— that means they’re like, part of your society? They don’t just eat people? How do you coerce them to make you food?”

“Oh, they do that too. Challenging adventurers. Culling the weak. Its a cornerstone of our society. But coerce? Most dungeons work with us willingly. We’re not the Empire of the Endless Dawn. We don’t enslave anyone. If they refuse to cooperate, we just shatter them.”

“I see.” Mark replied after a long pause.

“Aren’t three Kobolds enough to search for silver?” Alverost asked, feeling Mark hesitate after reaching out to a fourth Kobold.

The gods were yelling at each other. Again. He looked toward them, the small shaft they occupied in the ground. Their voices boomed out of it, echoing through his mind. They turned their attentions to him.

“Okay little guy. I have to send you on a mission. Wait, Alverost, they can hear me right?” There was a silent, Reply-less pause. “Nod if you can hear me.”

The white Kobold nodded.

“We’re gonna get the silver… complete the magic ritual… and then go home, alright? Man this is weird without giving you a name. A name… a name… lets see. I’m terrible at naming things. Okay. You’re white, and my first Kobold. I’ll call you… Silver.”

“Silver? Seriously?”

“Okay, well what would you name him?”

“Runt. Misshapen. Defect.” The white Kobold deflated, hunching over. “You, Dark Kobold! I name you… I name you Axel the Everdark, first of his name! Make me proud. That is what you name a minion! You see, Mark, you have to name them for greatness so that they can aspire to be as great as the name they’re born with.”

“I’m still going with Silver. Its okay little buddy! You’re not defective. Just albino. Its pretty cool actually!” The white Kobold puffed up its chest at this, standing tall, a whole head over Axel. The green Kobold looked between the two, then stepped towards the dungeon core, waiting for its name. “Oh yeah, you need one too. Lets see… as long as we’re doing metals… Malachite is normally green right? Its green in Skyrim. Okay, we’ll call you Mala for short.” The green Kobold also stood tall.

“Alright. So I need you guys to… go out and find us silver. I don’t think there will be any at this elevation, in the wall, or any stashes of silver left behind in a cave, so… wait, what elevation are we at? …still, I don’t think we’ll find any embedded in the walls, so we’re looking for scrap piles, junk, abandoned treasure, corpses. Maybe the exit to this cave system. Start by heading straight forwards—” As Mark spoke, a path forward was illuminated in the Kobolds vision. “Just straight this way, until you find a wall, then come back. Easy enough. We should do this in all four directions and figure out how far away the walls are. Also, don’t die to anything.”

Silver looked uneasily at his brother Kobolds, but Axel immediately began marching along their path, sliding through the forest of mushrooms. The mix of white mushrooms shining light and dark mushrooms casting shadows caused the Kobolds shadows to dance as they walked through the forest. Silver followed behind.