She hated them, so very much, but there was no time to thing, so much power wasted , and still it was growing, she suppressed a laugh. It beckoned to her in the darkness, so very tempting. With that much strength she could do so much, she could be unstoppable, and nobody would ever hurt her again. She reached out for a brief moment relishing the strength it loaned her, it could all be hers.

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Mibbet did not like the look of this one little bit, if the more dramatic a dungeon became the more of a danger it was then they were really in trouble. This place was a total drama queen, walls lined with torches purple flames, glowing Crystalline pillars, this was the kind of place designed to make you pack your bags and run screaming into the night. The screaming skull images on the walls were a nice touch, but slightly overkill in her opinion. On an eldritch scale of one to ten this was a three hundred.

The worst sign was the entire place was flooded with plants which seemed to be alternating between living and withered at a disturbing rate, and judging from the smell of plant decay this cycle had been going on for a very long time.

The little Spriggans had tried rushing in several times, but every time it was like something compelled them to fall back. Mibbet watched their attempts for a bit, as she had never before seen a charge suddenly break as if every participant suddenly realised they’d left the oven on at home before. Well there was no time for that now, so she squared her shoulders and stepped inside. (Alba of course had to stay outside, as the issue of passages were still a thing, and an Owl-bear who can’t spread their wings is a grumpy owl-bear.)

As they stepped inside Mibbet jumped to one side to avoid been struck by a bramble plant as thick as her waist, which as fast as it grew suddenly turned into a withered shell.

“Reminds me of the time I let Sir Humphrey water the plants in the guardhouse” Errol said with a grim chuckle, following the age old brotherly instinct to take the mick out of scary stuff to make it less scary. He was an old hand at that as he’d been dealing with it since the days of pulling funny faces to scare off the the imaginary monster in the closet for a veritable horde of little siblings. (If you really do have a monster in the closet my advice is to have their back until they can come out, the closet being no place for anybody to spend their lives,)

“I won’t tell him you said that” said Sir Leeroy with a grin, carefully avoiding a hail of spines from some kind of plant that somehow managed to embed themselves in a wall. “Still I don’t like the look of this, something stinks.”

“Waddya mean” Mibbet asked,

“A dungeon has a limit to their power, they tend to pick a form and stick to it. This one isn’t doing that, meaning a young dungeon with a lot of power. That shouldn’t happen, young dungeons don’t get much prey. Especially not all the way out here, but it’s holding back from an expansion. Dungeons don’t waste energy like that.”

“That does not sound good, what happens if it suddenly expands?”

“Stampede.”

“Oh,” Replied Mibbet, there was a limit to how much you can say to news like that, and oh bollocks didn’t seem to fit in this particular situation. But as a Princess there were some words one didn’t use for fear of another compulsory etiquette lesson with Mz Melchitt. “So by the sounds of things we have to go and delve until we find the core and put a stop to it or things go pretty messy right?”

“Yups, that’s about the sum of it, also may not wanna stay still Princess, these Brambles look like they grow fast enough to be a problem.”

So they set off, starting their journey downwards, not that it took long before they came across a real problem, a wall of briars. With a groan Mibbet realised there was only one solution here, readying Choppy she swung, it is an age old rule of axe wielder if you face a barrier without a door MAKE ONE.

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Within the tangled briar bush she stirred, this had been a close run, and had taken her years, yet victory was within her grasp, when something new entered her mind. INTERLOPERS, how dare they interrupt her battle with victory so close. But she couldn’t divide her strength too greatly, so she halfheartedly lashed out. That should be more than enough to deal with a few mere humans. But it wasn’t, they dodged and dove, and wasted her time. Her attacks were failing too, she couldn’t fight on two fronts at once, so she reached out. Twisting together layer upon layer of brambles making a wall that was as close to impenetrable as she could possibly manage, then that done she went back to her fight. It had taken her literally years already, but she was born of the forest, and as ancient as the trees, and it was a barely rudimentary mind, further scrambled by the sudden influx of pure power with no clue how to deal with it.

Time was irrelevant to the pair, and though she was weakening all the decay around strengthened her, the match was a stalemate. Death feeding life, life dying, the cycle was endless. But diminishing returns were definitely a thing here, and that thing was bloated with several deaths from the beginning.

Then she felt it, the barriers she had set up were under attack, and with enchanted steel no less. With all that strength at hand she could ill afford such distractions, and desperately lashed out with more bladed briars, she was so close. Too close to give in now.