Vysala seemed less than thrilled at the suggestion she stop pointing her weapon at Zaria. “What did you do to the Acolytes?”

“I fed them to my mobs,” Zaria said, crossing her arms. She wanted to raise an eyebrow, but had no features to do so. It was nice to have a body again, though. “They were, reportedly, delicious.”

“You ate them?” Vysala asked, her eyes widening. The curl of her lip that accompanied the expression made sure her disgust was unmistakable.

“No, my minions ate them. I just watched.” Zaria cocked her head. “I thought you’d be happy. You didn’t seem overly fond of them.”

“There’s a difference between disliking someone and wanting them eaten alive, you daft building.” Vysala took a step back, then took a deep breath. “Apologies. It’s just the dungeons I’ve heard of tend to be… discouraged from such actions by their wisps.”

“I don’t have one of those,” Zaria said. “Don’t even know what it is.”

“Ah,” Vysala said, nodding. “That… explains a bit. So you’re one of the mutant cores, then?”

Zaria’s eyes narrowed. “You sure seem to know a lot about us.”

“A few months after the first Fissure, Dungeons contacted the sapient races in large numbers,” Vysala finally lowered her spork to the ground, using it for support like a staff. The tension in her arms told she was ready to move at a moment’s notice, however. “We’ve been talking to them since. The Midnight Guild has two dungeons as members now.” There was a note of pride in her voice there. Then her lips curled again, the disgust returning. “The Children of Redemption have one as well. A Celestial Dungeon that’s helping them. Which is why you now have a problem.”

“I do?”

Vysala nodded. “Their dungeon tracks their members when they’re in the field. It knows you ate those people. And it’ll be looking for vengeance. There was a reason I didn’t start a brawl with them right there in field. Even if I won, the dungeon’s minions would make sure it’s a loss for me.”

Zaria sighed. “So,” she said. “How long do I have until I have to deal with the mobs of an angry dungeon?”

“Three, maybe four days?”

“Oh, that’s good. I won’t be around that long, anyway.” Zaria motioned to her home. “I’m mobile. Just going to stay until the Fissure opens tomorrow, kill the monsters that come out, take the fissure core, and be on my way. Ideally with you along for the ride.”

Vysala laughed. “I’m sorry, but what? Me?”

“Yes,” Zaria said. “Like you said, I’m a mutant core. Because I don’t have a wisp, I’m going to - eventually - explode unless I can form a bond with a witch.”

“And you think I’ll trust that? I just watched you eat people.”

“People you didn’t like.”

“That doesn’t make eating people-” Vysala cut herself off and took a deep breath. “Okay. You’re a newborn. Don’t remember most of your old life, I’m guessing?”

“Yes,” Zaria said.

“Then you may have forgotten that people tend to view eating other people in a negative light. It’s hard to trust someone who preys on humans.” Vysala shook her head. “On top of that, we just met, and you’re asking me to form a bond with you?”

Zaria tapped her mask where her chin would be. It helped convey the same message as a frown. “I really don’t see the problem with my monsters eating people. It wasn’t me doing it. It’s how mimics fight. They bite.”

Vysala's fear had basically evaporated into exasperation, and she was blatantly trying to clamp it down. “Did the Acolytes have a fighting chance?”

“Oh, Hungry Night, no. I put all my mobs and the boss in the same area to make sure…” Zaria trailed off. “Oh. Okay. I can see why you might have an issue there.”

“Thank you,” Vysala said.

“So will you be my striga?” Zaria asked eagerly.

'Look, I still just met you, and…” Vysala trailed off. “Did you say Striga?”

“I did,” Zaria said, trying not to sound too smug. She knew a hungry question when she heard one.

“Do you mean that? A Striga?”

The ogre shuffled. “Vys, what’s that mean?”

“A Striga is one of the Wyrd classes, like Witches and Vampyrs and Twisted Doctors.” Vysala looked like she had a mimics hunger all of a sudden. “My order has long thought the ability to become a Striga would never be recovered. The method was lost. A bond with a dungeon… it makes so much sense that would be how the striga of the past managed it.”

“And you could be one,” Zaria said, trying to contain her glee. “Just need to form a bond with me, and you’re able to be the first of your kind in… however long it’s been.”

Vysala shifted and bit her lip.

“You cannot be considering this,” the ogre grumbled.

“Rasagon’s fetid womb, Arakah, opportunities don’t come by like this every day,” Vysala said. “Striga could fly. Flight. It’s said they were so powerful, they could solo dungeon bosses of the same tier. How can I pass that up?”

“Because you’d be moving in with a woman you just met?”

Vysala shrugged. “I’ve done that before, and for lesser reasons. At least this time I’m not thinking with my skirt.”

Zaria leaned forward, steepling her fingers. “So… do we have a deal?”

Vysala chewed on her lip for a moment, then shook her head slowly. “I don’t know if I can trust you yet. This could easily be a trap to get me inside you and then eat me. Sorry, I just…” Vysala trialed off. “Wait. Wait one gods forsaken moment. What did you say earlier? About there being a Fissure near here?”

“One’s opening in…” Zaria checked the time. “One day, seventeen hours, and eleven minutes.”

Vysala cursed vehemently. “All right. Then I definitely can’t bond with you right now. There’s no way of knowing if the process will set me back for days. Help us protect the town, and that’ll give me a chance to think about it.”

Zaria considered for a moment. She was going to fight the rift anyway. Helping to protect the town would add a layer of complication to that, but on the other hand, she could use some allies in the fight. “One condition. A promise of either your bond, or the Fissure Core. I need one or the other to stabilize. The Fissure Core won’t be as good as your bond, but it’ll give me what I need to make it to the next Fissure - I think. But I can’t burn through my stability if I have no guarantee I’ll be able to recover it.”

Vysala nodded. “I can promise that. I need to prepare our defenses. What will you be doing?”

“The same.” Zaria finally gave the rest of the group her attention. “If any of you wish to form a party and test yourselves against my mobs to increase your power - or anyone else in the town does - you’re welcome to. I do promise a fair fight.”

For some reason, no one seemed eager to take her up on that offer. Instead, they departed, with a final promise from Vysala to come back and speak to Zaria more before the Fissure appeared.

Now back to her own devices, Zaria pulled up her stats again. She left the Hag body on her front porch. The moment Zaria abandoned the form, it slumped down, looking for all the world like her body had fallen asleep standing up.

Tier: Tin

Rank: Two

Mana: 42 / 60

Regeneration: 10 / Hour

Regen Bonus for Upkeep: 0 / 0

Command: 32 / 40 (Max unknown)

Area of Influence: [View]

Region Map: [View]

Rooms | Mobs | Upgrade | Core Stability Logs

More information than she’d had last time she checked, so progress there. Thirty-two command… so twenty from the crate mimics, and twelve for Maw. She could create another Oven to get twenty more command, assuming she hadn’t hit the maximum already. But to do that, she needed more space for it. Which called for the second floor.

And that meant using more Core Stability.

Zaria pulled the log back up.

Warning: Core Stability 63%.

Expand Area of Influence: -1% per 100 square feet.

Command Mobs: -0.2% per use.

Discover New Mobs: -7%

Summon Mob: -1%

Summon Boss: -2%

Influence Dungeon Interior: -0.05% per use.

Activate/Deactivate Oven: -1% per use.

Advancement: +5%

Material Creation: -.01% per square ft.

Rank Up: +5%

Consume Sapients: +0.5% per person

That was no where near as bad as Zaria feared. Even the 7% hit she’d taken for summoning Maw, with an extra 2% for the cost of a boss, was mostly covered by ranking up and eating the Acolytes.

It was worth the risk to build her second story. She just needed to plan it out.

Zaria converted what had been her bedroom into a spiral staircase. She could hide her core under the stairs, and it’s not like she’d have any need for a bed anymore. Plus, that being a place that stayed safe and secret even as adventurers traipsed through her home felt… right.

She made the second story have three rooms, slightly narrower but longer than the ones on the first story, with a hallway at the top of the staircase to connect them. She’d leave one for Vysala to claim as her own. One room would become Maw’s new boss room, allowing Zaria to convert the existing boss room into one with normal mobs for regular combat. And the final room would be where Zaria put more Ovens - as well as the Hag, when it wasn’t needed to converse with the outside world. Fairly basic, but far more space than Zaria had ever had before. Each room would also have a window, facing towards the front of Zaria’s house and out to both the right and the left for the rooms on either end of the hallway. It would be nice to have windows, and Zaria also liked that she could eventually put mobs in there to shoot outwards.

Now she just needed to build it.

The staircase was easy enough, just a matter of building it out of mana, the same way she’d created the crates for the mimics besides Rav. It was also easy to establish a ceiling on her first floor, closing it off from the roof overhead. But raising the walls… that proved trickier.

The problem was, the walls could only expand into Zaria’s area of influence, and she didn’t have an area of influence outside her house. The paradox at first seemed to be impossible to resolve until Zaria finally figured out the trick. Instead of growing the wall in the open air, she had to grow it inside the existing walls.

The result of doing it that way meant her expansion was loud, wood creaking and groaning as it snapped apart under the strain of expansion, then cracked back into place from the force of Zaria’s mana holding it together through sheer willpower. The sounds echoed throughout the air, spreading into the village, where parents herded their children into homes and warriors thumbed their weapons and stared.

Well. Weapons was a loose term.

As Zaria’s expansion died down, she took a moment to look more closely at the village defenses. Only about three people in the village had implements that actually were weapons. The swordsman Aelif who had been with Vysala, an Urkin woman with a bow and about six arrows, and another human with a spear. The rest armed themselves more along the lines of Vysala - oversized ogre tools, or tools designed for another use that were being repurposed as weapons. A carpenter had two clawhammers stuck through the loops of her belt. A man with the burly build of a blacksmith carried his hammer even when leaving the forge. Several people held farming tools, and another man had a massive butter knife that looked like it belonged to the same set as Vysala’s spork.

she asked Rav, as if the mimic had any more idea than she did. She made a note to ask Vysala about it when they spoke next. Checking to confirm the growth of a new story hadn’t hurt her core stability too much - a mere 2.5%, plus some added loss from her area of influence spreading into the new space - Zaria was ready to create a new mimic.

She had to think through her options. Ideally, she’d make a mimic from the armor set left behind by the now consumed knight, but the whole suit was too large of an object to count as “small.” She’d have to hold off on her dream of an Armor Mimic. She could have used the Knight’s Sword, but if it had to slide along the ground like a slug akin to the Crate mimics, it’d be near useless. Similar struggles held for the bow and shield - they could be good, but they could also be unusable. She’d have to go with something else. Everything else in her home were just containers, which Zaria suspected wouldn’t be different enough from the Chest or Crate mimics to be worth the core degradation.

Which left precisely one item: the candelabra.

It could be useless too - any of them could be - but it was a unique design compared to the containers, and it could absolutely provide something unlike anything she’d seen before. If she had to, she could try with something else. 7% of her stability each time was a significant hit, but two hits would not be that much worse than one. Privately, Zaria set a goal to stop at 25% except for emergencies. Having that last quarter available could be critical in a pinch.

Then she poured mana into the candelabra.

A moment later, as she’d come to expect, the candelabra twitched and jerked about. This time, however, it was bending and contorting far more than she expected. The center pole split in half down the middle, then bent. The candle holders lengthened and stretched out, bending in the middle again. Both sets of bends became hinges. The whole thing looked like a child’s stick drawing of a person, but with candles in place of the hands and head.

Then the wax flowed, coating the rest of the metal skeleton.

Moments later it stood there - a rough approximation of a human shape in molten wax, lacking fingers and toes and any distinguishing features, save indentations where eyes would be. When it split open its mouth, it shocked Zaria. It wasn’t where it would be on a human - but in the center of the chest, a fleshy maw of gnashing teeth.

New Mob Discovered: Candle Mimic. 5 Command Points.

Zaria loved it, but was a bit disappointed that it wouldn’t be able to hide like the others. Or would it? she told the Candle Mimic.

The wax of the creature withdrew, and its legs snapped together. Mere seconds later, it was now indistinguishable from a floor mounted candle holder.

Zaria cackled to herself, and Maw responded out loud. Best of all, since it cost 5 Command Points, it should roughly approximate the crate mimics in terms of power. She commanded the Candle Mimic to reenter its mobile form and start walking around.

Faster than the Crates were, although not as fast as Maw could hop about. It was just about perfect. It wouldn’t have the agility of an actual human anytime soon, but it could still provide better battlefield aid than the slower crates. Although the crates were far more durable, being made of wood instead of wax.

That, however, gave Zaria an idea.

she said to her first mimic.

The mimic echoed her anticipation with an excited burble.