“So, this is your… dungeon?” Vysala asked, looking around the kitchen. She eyeballed the crates, each with a candelabra next to them, with a wary crease of her forehead.

Zaria used her once daily ability to relocate her body, reforming it from the wall over the Oven. It let her loom there, hovering over the structure. Vysala jumped a bit in shock at the sudden change, and Zaria chuckled. “It’s my home. I wasn’t exactly planning on combat in here. I’m working to make it more dungeon-esque, but for now, I’m working with what I have.”

Vysala nodded. “Well, it’s a very…” she trailed off, groping for the word. “I’m guessing you removed any personal effects?”

“Not that I can remember. Apparently, I wasn’t a very sentimental human. Or at least, not one that liked sentiments on my walls.”

“Or colors,” Vysala muttered, probably thinking it was too quiet for Zaria to hear. But even though Zaria was in her body, she wasn’t limited to just using her ears - now that they were inside her dungeon, Zaria could hear every noise Vysala made.

Zaria couldn’t help needling Vysala back for the comment. “You should have seen it yesterday. Plenty of red. Maybe I should leave that for the future.”

Vysala shuddered, then paused. “You know, if you are looking to be intimidating - which many dungeons are, from what I’ve heard - you could put some red back. Make it look like this kitchen is for serving people.”

Zaria cackled. “As the main dish. Oh, I like that. I’ll do some work when I can spare the mana and my core is secure. Speaking of which…”

“My concerns remain,” Vysala said, moving towards a chair. She paused before grabbing it. “This chair isn’t a mimic, is it?”

“Don’t have chair mimics. Yet.” Zaria motioned for her to sit. “Or table mimics, before you ask. In fact, I’ll make it easy - my current mimic types are crate, candle, and chest. But don’t go spreading that around. I don’t want to make it easy for adventurers in here.”

Vysala took a seat, chewing on her lip for a moment before speaking. “So you do plan on eating everyone who walks in, eh?”

“Not everyone. You, for example. And also, there’s…” Zaria trailed off. “Actually, it’s just you. Everyone else gets eaten.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” Vysala said, her voice soft.

Zaria folded her arms. “I’m a dungeon. Why wouldn’t I? I exist to challenge people and kill the weak. And unlike other dungeons, if people get too leery of delving, I can just… stand up and walk away.”

“I suppose appealing to your sense of ethics is a lost cause,” Vysala said, looking at the table.

It hadn’t been a question, but Zaria decided to answer. She stretched her torso from the wall, elongating until she could reach Vysala, and put a hand on the witch’s shoulder. “I do have ethics,” Zaria said, matching Vysala’s soft tone. “I’m not a monster. I won’t be sending mimics out to steal people from their bed, I won’t harm a child save for life and death, and I won’t go into a town and start crushing people underfoot.”

“That’s a very short list of morals,” Vysala said.

“It’s not exhaustive. Just a sample. But ‘don’t kill adventurers’ is like telling a human ‘don’t eat animals or plants.’ I need to kill to grow stronger, to survive, and to thrive.” Zaria put a hand under Vysala’s chin, gently lifting the witch’s chin so they were eye-to-eye. Hungry Night, she had beautiful eyes. “I am a predator, Vysala. But I will be a fair one. The strong, the clever, and the observant will survive. The rest will perish.”

Vysala didn’t break her gaze. Instead, the witch’s eyes blazed. “And you would limit your own growth?”

Zaira cocked her head. “Explain?”

“Rumors spread faster than chicken huts can walk. People will know all who enter your home never return - or will come to see you as a threat. If a herd of cattle understood they were being led to the slaughter, they’d stampede. Sapients are smart enough to understand that. No one will care for your ethics, Zaria. They’ll care that you kill capriciously.”

Zaria let out a frustrated hiss and withdrew back to the wall, crossing her arms to think. What Vysala said had the ring of truth to it, but that didn’t mean the mutant core had to like it. “My mobs are mimics. Their greatest strength lies in stealth and ambush. Why is that different from some mutant rabbit or skeletal monstrosity or hungry bird-lizard looking for a fight?”

Vysala spread out her hands helplessly. “I don’t… wait. I think I do know.” She chewed her lip for a moment longer, testing the words before speaking. “It’s because the latter options are not a binary pass or fail. Against those three, you can fight and win, you can see them and flee, you can fight and die, or you can fight until you are too weak and flee. But against your mimics? If you don’t see them, and you aren’t strong enough to survive the initial assault, there’s no such thing as a fighting chance. You get pulled into a hungry maw and devoured.”

Zaria blew out a frustrated breath. What the woman was saying made sense. “So what would you have me do, then?”

“Change the mimics behavior?” Vysala shrugged. “Can you order them to only go for the head once the fight has gone on for some time, and to not fully bite legs and arms off while the target lives?”

“The majority of the time,” Zaria said. Vysala raised an eyebrow, but Zaria shook her head. “I’m not taking away my mimic’s greatest strength. But I’ll order them to mostly not go straight for the kill. If you’re right, and rumor travels faster than I will, then people will know what to expect before I arrive, no?”

Vysala tapped her chin. “You know, I half expected you to insist that I bond you before you agreed to that.”

“No,” Zaria said, so forcefully Vysala looked shocked. “I will get what I want, but I’ll do it because I earned it. Any fiend can threaten to get their way. I’m not interested in that. I want you to bond me because you want to. And because I like you. You’re an abrasive bitch in the best way.”

Vysala grinned broadly. “Well, when you put it that way…” she cracked her knuckles and look at the crates and candelabras. “Which one should I try the first rune on?”

“I’m glad you’re eager to get started, but I want to know what’s happening first. No offense, but I am allowing you to do spellwork in my dungeon. How does this work?”

“Right.” Vysala reached into a pouch in her skirt and pulled out a brush and paint. “At Tin Tier, all I can do is create runes. By inscribing them on an object, I create a single use rune that will be erased upon activation, all the energy I placed into it spent. I know four action runes right now - Vix, Cahr, Buth, and Maer. Or Impact, Absorb, Ward, and Repel.”

Zaria steepled her fingers, listening intensely. “I’m guessing what I saw earlier was the Impact rune? Or the Repel rune?”

“Both,” Vysala said, grinning. “It takes much longer, but I can merge the runes. If you were to write those as a sentence, it would be “Upon Impact, Repel.””

“Oh, I see. So you could build a suit of armor that would repel whoever struck it with… let me guess, Upon Ward, Repel.”

Vysala grimaced and made a see-saw motion with her hand. “Not exactly, although you're close. I’d personally go with Upon Absorb, Repel, because Absorb covers any kind of blow received, not just ones that are blocks. A shield would get Upon Ward, Repel… assuming I could do either to a shield or armor.”

Zaria extended her torso closer to Vysala again. “This has to do with the class limitations, doesn’t it?”

“Got it in one,” Vysala said. “I could do that to a shirt. But the limitations of the Wyrd means I cannot inscribe the runes on anything that is classified by the system as armor or weapons. Some classes gain that ability - Runeblades being the best known one - but I’m not interested in that. Hence the spork.”

Zaria hesitated. “That seems like a rather extreme limitation. How badly does that weaken you?”

“Not as badly as you’d think,” Vysala said. “Because I don’t rely on runes for my armor.” she gestured towards her leather garb. “At higher tiers, when I have more rune slots and can spare some for permanent runes, I’ll likely swap to cloth and just embroider my runes into it.”

Zaria nodded. “How many slots do you have?”

“Three, although that’s a bit of a rude term for them, don’t you think?”

Zaria stared at her for a moment, then broke into a fit of giggles. Vysala gave Zaria an impish grin. “How many rune slots do you have?” Zaria said once she got her laughter under control.

“I can have twelve. I leave four open for mid-combat rune work if needed - that’s what I was doing when the candle hurled the crate at me.” Vysala froze, and her mouth moved for a moment, repeating what she’d just said. “Crush me between Mother Hylena’s thighs, that’s a sentence that I don’t think another human being has uttered before.”

“You’re probably right about that. What was the rune you were starting, by the way?”

“Ward. It’s simple and quick to draw, and it would have given me a few seconds to come up with a plan.” Vysala drummed her fingers on the table in a short staccato rhythm. “I think I would have a slapped an Absorb rune on your Candleman there after the Ward broke.”

“How would that have helped?” Zaria asked, momentarily distracted.

“Without any set conditionals attached, the Absorb rune just pulls in all energy around the subject into them. It can get some minor burns on a person or animal. Not enough to be an effective weapon. But since he was made of wax…”

“Of course. It was already melting itself.”

Vysala tilted her head. “I called it he, you called it “it”, and that right there points to the big question of if I can enhance your mimics. Because normally putting those runes on living creatures causes immediate activation. Which makes it less than useless because it’s actively harmful.”

Zaria called one of the crate mimics over. Not Rav - she didn’t want to experiment on him, especially when she did plan to eventually make him into a Servitor. But she hadn’t built attachments to the other ones. They were just tools for her to use. The crate slid along the floor towards the witch.

Vysala folded her legs up into a lotus position as the mimic approached, doing an excellent job of making the gesture look totally natural and not at all a response to the hungry crate sliding towards her, then grabbed her brush. “Can you lift it up? It’ll be easier to reach, and I’d rather not sit on the floor.”

Zaria answered by raising a chair from the ground beneath the mimic.

“Thank you. Now, please don’t distract me. This will take a bit, and if I make an error at any part of it, I have to start over.”

Zaria had nothing better to do, so left her body. Discorporate like this, it was impossible to bother the witch, and allowed Zaria to just metaphorically sit back and watch as she worked.

Even though the rune was small and seemed simple, Vysala worked with the delicate care of a master painter trying to brush a masterpiece onto the head of a pin. Zaria could feel something happening to the air around the witch. Mana moved along, tracing every stroke of the brush. “You have so much power in here,” Vysala muttered, not looking up from her work. “This is so much easier than it would be if I were outside.”

Zaria checked her mana totals, wondering if this was having an impact. Sure enough, Vysala had taken up a point of Zaria’s mana and placed it into the paint, which then went to the mimic. At the same time, Vysala put a final brush stroke on and waited.

The mimic sat there. Zaria could feel the mana in the rune start to pulse, ready to release its effect. In a moment - but wait. This was her mana. She had absolute control of it. With a quick force of will, Zaria commanded the mana to remain inert inside the rune until activated.

The rune settled down.

“That was unusual,” Vysala said. “I could have sworn it was going to go off. But it didn’t, it works!” She pumped the air with her fist. “I wonder if that’s because it works on all dungeon mobs, or just your mimics.”

Zaria slid back into her body. “If I pick up a second mob type, we can test that. I’m not sure I will…but I’m also not sure I won’t, either. There’s some advantages…” Zaria realized she’d been rambling and stopped herself. “Anyway, we can discuss later. Probably shouldn’t reveal my long term build plans to you until we’re bonded. But for the rune in this instance, it at least partially works because it was my mana to begin with. It looks like you pull ambient mana to do your runes, am I right?”

Vysala nodded as her sweat-streaked forehead furrowed. “How did you know that, though?”

“Because it’s my mana,” Zaria said. “Which is also why it didn’t activate. It wanted to - I’m sure if you’d done that outside, it would have treated the mimic as a creature. But since it was in here, I could command the flow of mana and… tell it how to function, if that makes sense.”

Vysala nodded eagerly. Her eyes were alight with possibilities, “There’s so much about how mana works we don’t understand, but that’s in line with what we are sure of. Dungeons have control over their mana to such a level of detail, archmages would give up their bait and tackle for a fraction of that control.”

“Another reason to become my Striga, then. To make archmages jealous.” Zaria tried to keep her voice casual. From the way Vysala grinned, that did not go as planned.

“I didn’t say no. I didn’t say yes, either.” Vysala ran her hands through her hair. “It’ll depend on how the fight goes. I might not even be alive afterwards.” She chewed on her lip for a moment, then shook away the thought before it could coalesce fully. “So, four runes. I can use four for your mimics, four for myself, and keep four open to flex during the fight.”

“About that, one thing doesn’t quite add up for me. Why did it take that long to make a single rune, but you were attempting to make one during the fight?”

“Ah, right. That second method, doing it during the fight, is what we call a gross rune. The one I made for this mimic is a fine rune. Gross runes always instantly activate and have a weaker effect. It’s best to work with fine runes if you know what to expect. I prefer the flexibility.”

Zaria nodded, then leaned back in. “The Fissure will open soon. We should finish preparations. And then… I do want to hear more about you and how you work.” She saw Vysala’s expression and coughed. “Your class. I mean.”

“Of course you did,” Vysala said with a knowing smile. “Of course you did.” She let that hang in the air for a little bit. “Let’s finish up here, then. Any idea how you want those runes spread out?”

“I do, in fact, know exactly what we should do,” Zaria said.

When she finished explaining her plan to Vysala, the witch was fully on board. The runes were inscribed, and now all Zaria had to do was wait.

It didn't take long before the sky started to darken, heralding the Fissure's imminent arrival.