I needed to work quickly.

I needed to make certain that unicorn was mine, and I needed to reinforce my position against the invaders that were no doubt coming on the heels of the last incursion. One dwarf had gotten away, carrying the secrets of my Dungeon with him, and the merfolk’s failure to return would be a sure signal they had found me.

Thankfully, I had tools to work with.

Within its amber chrysalis, the mind of my Jeweler-Spider had begun to still. The melding of the souls had completed, and its dreams had ceased to be frantic nightmares of skittering legs and carapace-covered bodies, but evened out, mellowing to languid thoughts of glimmering webs and glittering diamonds.

It was time for it to evolve.

Your creation is undergoing Evolution

During this time, Mana you gift them will be more effective, and they will be easier to shape.

Choose a path-

Arachne (Common) - Caught halfway between man and spider, this solitary creature lives a cursed existence but produces breathtaking art.

Sword Tarantula (Common) - With eight bladed limbs and an armor of thick hairs, the sword tarantula is a terrifying foe that can slaughter common warriors.

Crystal Spider (Rare) - Beautiful and cunning creatures, Crystal Spiders secrete dazzling and razor sharp crystals that they use to prepare traps for their prey.

Fateweaver (Rare) - Attuned to the weave of destiny itself, this highly intelligent and reclusive breed can manifest oracular powers.

Cavern Lurker (Mutant) - Absorbs traits from the last foe defeated. Gains corrosive spit and forelimbs adapted to digging.

The choice was easy enough here. Only Fateweaver and Arachne played to the strengths of the reincarnated jeweler, and while Fatewaver was dearly alluring, Arachne, a half-human half-spider, fit the state of the strange creature’s hybrid soul precisely.

Selecting that choice, I watched as the amber light began to expand, swelling to fit a much larger creature. The silhouette of the spider encased within began to stretch and distort, going through transformations that would have been hideous to experience if not for the soothing effects of the chrysalis. It was a power I had only begun to imitate in my own modifications.

I turned to the next on my list.

The fisherman spider had less interesting choices. Lurelimb Ambusher, adding a luminescent lure like an angler fish and strengthening her webs. Useful in nature but not so much against adventurers. Dire Widow, a large and venomous breed, and Harpoon Spider, adapting to hurl a spear of bone and skewer its enemies. Swarm Queen, which would produce massive quantities of tiny, ravenous children, threatened to devastate my ecology. Tradesman Recluse, an intelligent breed with the skills to make basic tools, was interesting but didn’t solve the immediate problem.

In the end I chose Harpoon Spider. It solved the basic problem fisherman spiders faced, being too slow and clumsy to properly engage the enemy, by massively increasing their range. With a few of these sprinkled into the swarm, their effectiveness as a harassing force would skyrocket.

Two vastly improved servants. Two steps towards my goal- Descent. My only route forward as a Dungeon was down, and I felt excited to begin a new layer.

I began to work on a third front. The mangrove orchard lacked a proper defender if a true contender like the merfolk attempted to invade from that flank. But I had acquired a sharktooth necklace from Trivelin, and while it was a salt-water creature, I finally felt the confidence in my ability to change that.

Mana roiled and concentrated as I began to create. Blots of condensed magic form in the air and slowly pulled inwards, shaped like clay to form a long, sleek silhouette, the primal image of a graceful terror. But I had more to do. I began to weave in aspects of the mutant lamprey Aurum had vanquished so long ago, using its biology as a base for adapting the shark to freshwater. In the process it gained several more eyes, and long trailing tendrils that followed the line of its tail.

It was a strange beauty to look at, to be sure, but a beauty nonetheless. I had made its skin translucent, allowing the pump and pulse of the organs beneath to shine through with a faint glow of bioluminescence, imbuing the creature’s visible skeleton with a golden tint. With its trailing tendrils and single fin, it looked like a horror from the deepest depths of the ocean.

Just like that, I knew what I’d name it.

[ Abyssal Shark ]

Brought about by chimeric methods, this strange creature is imbued with an endless hunger and a beautiful elegance.

I had changed its instincts, too. This ‘shark’ would happily slumber in the mud at the lakebottom, rising only to breathe on occasion, until blood filled the water. Only then would it rise up and attack- Only when someone tried to force their way through and filled the lake with carnage like the merfolk had.

I didn’t want to discourage the poor fools on the lakeshore from coming to seek their fortune, after all. And the sight of this beast rising from beneath would certainly be… striking.

Oh yes, I could safely be proud of myself here.

With that, I felt my work was largely complete.

It had only been a few weeks since I had first awoken, but I had reshaped my domain into a thing of beauty.

To the east, there was the mangrove orchard. Countless water lilies blooming with pink flowers covered the water, rising and falling with its faint waves, and the trees rose on spidery, thin hills of roots, gold in their branches and silk billowing in huge nets from their trunks. The bronze-metallic reelfish and the fat grey fisherman spiders presided over this district.

To the west, there was the ravine, topped with its jungle of glass beams where spiders threw their webs and bright-bodied birds nested. The steep, unsteady sides of the chasm were home to countless more spiders, and descending down into the tropical humidity of a green jungle, one would find their way barred by the sporeback sloths, who spread fecund and poisonous mushrooms wherever they roamed in their slow way.

Either way, one would reach the gardens. A land of glass mushrooms, glass cages, and deadly surprises. In the ceiling above lived the colony of nacre-spiders, hunting by ambush. To see them attack was to see a flash of pearl-covered limbs slice through flesh like butter. Their adolescents hunted on the ground below; there was only space for a dozen or so adults, and so coming of age meant challenging one for a spot in the nests, a brutal and bloody affair that kept the herd strong.

Hidden in the grass, mantises, lurking vipers, poisonous toadstools all conspired to claim the life of the unwary. The snakes poured in from a secret chamber to the south, the tunnel only small enough for them to pass through. Beyond was a secret feeding grounds that ensured we never ran short of deadly serpents, connected by vertical burrows to the chamber of Aurum below, their predecessor and king.

Beneath the Gardens wound numerous labyrinth tunnels, all of them flooded and teaming with reelfish. If someone, somehow, navigated those muddy passages, they would find themselves in an underwater arena, facing Aurum as he slithered forth from his den. Even now, I believed he would come to protect me if the invaders ever got that far.

Finally, there was the sanctum, that beautiful and dazzling corridor that had been my first creation. Moss the color of black glass and luminous mushrooms patterned in a double-helix slid up the walls, concealing razor sharp ridges beneath an endless, slippery coat of lichens, making it all but impossible to climb. Lethal centipedes crawled from hidden caves to feast on opalescent beetle. Above it all, a cavern entrance shaped like the mouth of a beast loomed, its jaws parted, its teeth on display.

I would miss my cozy nest atop the Dungeon. Now it would only host the token of Sol, the golden coin that was a fragment of the sun god’s blazing luck.

But there was an itch in the back of my mind. A paranoid urge I couldn’t stave off much longer. I couldn’t feel truly satisfied unless I was constantly moving down, armoring myself behind ever more deadly traps and creations.

It was the urge to delve deeper into the stone foundations of the world. To vanish from the world of light into my own underground realm. To work wonders beneath the earth that nobody would ever see.

It was time. Time to begin on a fresh canvas.

The first of the Arachne awoke in a daze. He remembered many things, things that didn’t make sense together. He remembered his mother singing him lullabies. He remembered killing his mother in a duel for her nest, the feel of his jaws crunching through her carapace.

He remembered having teeth and having mandibles, having eight legs and having two. He clutched his face with eight-fingered hands. Even that was alien to him. The shape was smooth, hardened by black chitin but with soft flesh between. Not quite human. Not quite spider. It sloped backwards, a great bulbous knot of chitin wadded on to the back of his skull.

Unsteady, he stepped forward. Eight legs. A body shaped like a spider’s but with a human torso rising where the head would be, the skin as black as charcoal, the hands covered in shiny carapace.

He was in a strange garden. On all sides, impossible growths bloomed.

COME HERE.

A voice was speaking to him. The Arachne laughed, a strange sound that hissed and chittered over his tongue, through his twitching mandibles. He must be going mad. Anyone would.

A door opened in the walls, the stone smoothly dissolving into nothing.

The Arachne felt compelled forward, through the gateway, into a room where the floor dropped away into a deep pool and the ceiling lifted away, a tunnel running overhead.

His thin, dexterous legs easily carried him up the walls, thousand of tiny hairs anchoring him despite the slimy muck clinging to them. The centipedes that wound around his legs could do nothing to stop him. There was a place where stalactites pressed together in a ring that resembled a horrific mouth.

The Arachne rose through it, into a darkened chamber. By the light of a blazing shard of gold, he saw the most beautiful gem lying on a small pedestal, the light seeming to twist around it, drawn in scintillating ribbons of rainbow towards the miniscule green jewel.

CARRY ME.

Lifting the gem like it was more precious than life, the Arachne took it down from that secret place, the door closing back into a blank stone wall behind them.

The first step of a stairway formed in the floor of the garden. An invisible force was digging itself into the rock. As he set foot on it, another one was carved away from the stone floor. With each step, he was led on a spiralling path, a tunnel cutting through the earth in front of him. Soon there was stone overhead, stone on all sides, the air sour with the smell of the underground, the light vanished behind them as he followed the spiral stairway.

Where are we going? The newborn Guardian asked.

DEEPER.