“Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly, and the butterfly dust?”

- Max Muller

“The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding ... as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration.”

- Carl Jung

== POV: Zidaun ==

No words were sufficient for what I was feeling.

Adar had words for the process of becoming an ancient. The Adar had words for almost anything. Our language was ancient and filled with vast shades of meaning. The subtle gradations made it harder to understand our language, so it was encouraged.

The words were hollow against the feeling of the experience.

The world had faded from me. I was inside my own body, aware of my own soul.

All that I was, was changing, metamorphosing to something new. I felt agony and rapture both.

My body shifted, paralyzed even as changes rippled through it. However, this was but a lesser change in my flesh. Beyond this my soul was shaped and remade.

When I had still lived in the swamp my priority was to the dungeon that lived there. My soul was bound to it. And from there I was bound to the ancient who oversaw us all. And after that to my people.

In becoming a Seeker my soul had undergone a similar process. All my focus coming to bear on serving my people. That feeling had always been with me, and it always would.

Now my soul was shifted once more. This dungeon was the center of my existence, my world. I could allow all the world to perish if it meant that this one place would be safe.

Eventually my exquisite agony ended and I was remade.

The clear crystals on the walls were sufficient mirrors to see my new self.

The purple of my eyes had shifted, growing to an even more intense amethyst, with almost crystalline fault-lines. My eyesight was slightly sharper; everything around me was clearer.

My skin was reddish brown now. The green veins running over the surface were as vibrant as ever, though the contrast made them even more striking. At least where it wasn’t covered with bark.

My skin had thickened into bark in quite a few places: the top my arms, the front of my legs, the back of my neck, and down my back over my spine. It was not the shaggy bark that I used to have, either, but rather looked like glossy scales, so deep a shade of reddish brown as to almost seem black.

The thorns at my elbows and knees appeared to be gone, as was the shaggy bark that used to cover those joints. The thorns at least, were still there, though they were retracted into my body. It took me a few moments to get them to extend. They were now perfectly straight and had the same glossy shade as my bark. A faint sheen also glistened near the tips. I was fairly certain it was some kind of poison.

I could feel that the system was waiting to speak to me. The faint pressure in my mind a sure indication.

Status

Name: Zidaun

Race: Adar

Subtype: Ancient One

Health: 98% - Fantastic Health

Status Effects:

Mana: 765/780

Primary Level: 26

Class: Dungeon Mimic

Former Classes: Awakened, Student

Ability Points: 24,975

Class Skills:

Dungeon Mimicry IV

Aura Tap IV

Racial Skills:

Of One Mind

Hybrid Blood III

Adaptive Armor I

Poison Thorns I

Improved Sight I

Titles:

Awakened

Dungeon Delver III

Explorer I

Adapted I

Back from the Brink II

Soul Bond (Agent)

Immortal of Transient Flesh

Additive Pact I (Secondary Master)

Racial Subtype Changed!

Your subtype has changed from [Blaze Blossom Swamp] to [Ancient One]

New Racial Skills Gained!

Adaptive Armor I

Sections of your skin have been toughened into a natural armor. As you take damage and are exposed to hostile conditions, your armor, thorns, and skin will all adapt to become stronger.

Poison Thorns I

Your natural thorns now secrete a toxin. While weak initially, the poison will grow stronger as you use it.

Improved Sight I

Your eyesight has become better. The world is now sharper and more colorful. You can more easily see into the distance and in bright or dim light conditions. This ability will grow with use.

New Titles Added

Soul Bond (Agent)

Your soul is permanently* bound to the dungeon you have made a pact with. You are the agent of the dungeon and are subject to its will. Depending upon the actions of the dungeon you may experience additional effects.

*This bond is unstable due to the dungeons inability to complete the pact.

Bonuses temporarily suspended

Immortal of Transient Flesh

You have found a method to be reborn after death, even while still in a weak mortal body.

Bonuses temporarily suspended

Additive Pact I (Secondary Master)

Adar which become connected to you or your bonded dungeon will also be bonded to the other. No other Adar brought into this pact will become an Ancient.

Bonuses temporarily suspended

That was strange.

Actually there were a number of strange things about it.

I had become an Ancient One, at least that part was expected. However, all the bonuses were suspended and the pact was not yet complete. I didn’t know why though.

And I had received quite a few bonuses as part of the process. The bonuses were fairly minor right now, but they would all grow with me. It was an unusual level of investment for a dungeon to offer.

I could feel a new connection linking me to the dungeon. For all the strangeness that had occurred, that was working as it ought to. I tapped into it and spoke to it.

“Dungeon, with the compact that we have forged I entreat thee to be my guide. Be my companion and my master.”

There was a brief pause, and then a voice spoke in reply. However, the words were utterly foreign. I had spoken to the dungeon in common, but its reply was unintelligible. Regional dialects of common, the merchant tongue, made it imperfect, however it was generally enough to allow at least the beginnings of decent communication. The language the dungeon spoke was odd; its had strange combinations of sibilant tones mixed with flowing sounds and harsh choppy blocks of crisp words. Whatever language it spoke, I had no place to begin.

Even as I was getting accustomed to the strange flow of the language, I was startled when another voice spoke into my mind. It felt more distant than the first voice, as though it was not as strongly connected to me. It spoke words in the same unknowable tongue, though it spoke only a few words at a time, and felt terse.

How ancient was this dungeon? It spoke a language that was utterly unknown now. And it didn’t seem to understand the common language at all. I knew that language had changed with time, but even accounting for some drift, it would need to be many thousands of years. I had seen some ancient records, we could generally read them without too much difficulty if they were still in common. This language the dungeon spoke had no similarities. There were no common words; there were no familiar pronunciations; everything about it was foreign.

This fact was certainly surprising, but my surprise was a little bit dulled. I was sure that the dungeon was awakened well before now, and the art had indicated cultures I didn’t know. I was more surprised that there were two voices. What did it even mean for it to have two? I wouldn’t have thought a dungeon even capable of sharing enough for that to be possible.

Or was the dungeon bound to some other entity, even as it was now partially bound to me? Had I just heard the thoughts of some ancient creation made to serve its will? The tenuous connection that I shared with the dungeon was already a risk. It would be unfortunate if I needed to deal with another entity that might view my intrusion on its presence with animosity. The dungeon came first to me now, but uncertain of its desires, my duty to my people took priority. I needed to reach an accord with the dungeon so that we could grow.

I kept trying to speak with the dungeon for a few minutes, but it soon became obvious that we would not come to any meaningful contact, and the dungeon soon stopped replying to me at all. It was time for me to move on to the next step; I needed to contact my people.

==POV: Caden==

I finally had the chance to speak to someone, well someone besides Exsan, and I was left disappointed.

Of course we couldn’t speak because of a language barrier. I had been running headfirst into that barrier from the beginning when Tam summoned me. Why should speaking with telepathy be any different? Honestly, I already did quite a bit of that with Exsan, so it wasn’t a great surprise.

Still, having the chance to talk to a fully realized individual and just not being able to make any type of headway was a bitter feeling. Even Exsan had seemed interested in who this person speaking into our mind was.

I left a shard of myself here and watched in case something interesting happened again, but most of my mind turned away.

I was finally ready to recreate some animals.

It was an interesting experience, because I had a sense of… timing. It was something that was available whenever I recreated a pattern, but it was usually more subtle. When I created trees there was not much of a division between a mature tree and one that had been there a long time. In creating an animal, however, there was distinct sense of stages of growth. And now as I was creating a larger animal I could feel that even stronger. For now I decided it would be best to create adults.

A new empty environment had a cloud of mana stream into it at my direction. The air wavered and then, like a lens being moved slowly into focus, an animal appeared.

It actually wasn’t that large. Honestly it was about the size of a large rabbit. It was bipedal with splayed out claws in front and back to keep it stable.

It had black ultra fine hair covering it. The fluffiness of the hair made it look like down. Two black eyes gleamed in the hair. It mouth was small and something between a beak and a snout. Its teeth were mostly farther into its mouth. Quite a few of them were flat and could obviously be used to grind down seeds or grass. It had no wings or arms, instead it had a long tail with a tuft at the end. Honestly, it was adorable. It reminded me of a baby chicken, if they were a foot and a half feet tall. I wondered how cute the baby ones were?

I appraised it and it told me it was a mauti. It had no level as of yet.

I wasn’t sure what it would need to eat, so I set up an environment for it. Grass grew in patches, tall enough that it would be able to disappear within, and shorter patches of grass and stony areas were also added. Insects of various kinds and a couple plate mice were added too. Just in case, I added a few sparse trees.

The mauti hopped around happily, its long tail allowing it to balance and move with ease, and it snapped at a few bugs. Content that it seemed to doing alright for the moment, I made a few more of both genders. They looked identical as far as I could tell.

I had one more type of animal to make, and I could tell that it was much larger.

I created an empty space right next to where I had placed the mautis. Hopefully I would be able to add this animal to their habitat.

With a shimmer and considerably more mana investment, a new creature appeared.

A quick appraisal told me that it was a nurak. It was level five. Well, now I knew that animals could have levels.

Unlike the mautis, who only had two limbs, the nurak had six. Its body was an elongated oval shape, with the limbs coming off the bottom in rows of two. It was about three feet tall and four feet long.

Its skin was slightly shiny, and it had no hair that I could see. The top of its back was a single stretch of hard smooth grey skin, under that were folds of skin. It had folds of skin around its neck and around its joints. It also had a short stumpy tail. Its feet ended in large flat hooves, while its eyes were almost one hundred and eighty degrees apart from each other. Combined with its large flat teeth I was almost certain it was an herbivore.

I opened up the cave into the other environment and it calmly walked out and started to munch on the grass.

I added a few more nuraks into the environment. Hopefully they weren’t territorial. Eh, even if they were, I would be able to change how they interacted with each other if it became a problem. Now that I had a stable environment, I added both my new creations into my monster breeding areas. I was eager to see what kind of monsters they would make.