A voice sounded out throughout yet another hall, cutting through the cool, dry air like a knife. The speaker should not have been aware of whether his words were being listened to or could even be heard but his high-pitched, disturbingly enthused voice continued heedless to whether his message was being heard. And, unfortunately for the intended recipient, it was most certainly being heard. It hadn't stopped once as the speaker cut through the dungeon, and if it were in any other context, his words would be appallingly boring.

“Reading is, to me, surprisingly difficult, after all. I know that must be shocking to you, considering my line of work and my accomplishments therein, but it’s true; I have never had enough patience to simply sit and read someone else's work. I’d so very much rather be out in the world, making them myself and to my endless joy, it seems that even Vol can’t help but agree. Unfortunately, there are a few necessary exceptions to that.

“Were you aware that the Greater Accords of Vol, if written onto mundane parchment in standardized script, would stretch for nearly two kilometers from introduction to conclusion? Within that, the Dungeon Accords alone would be nearly three hundred meters, surprisingly short in my own, humble opinion. Of course, I have read this all, quite exhaustively I’d like to think, and I must say that it is all so unbearably dry, but deeply informative.

“I’ve no doubt that your ilk must dream of having a fraction of the intellectual might that went into the creation of this Vol-shaking document if only that those like me might never have wriggled out from under your tiny thumbs.” The speaker paused meaningfully, but his footsteps still pattered along the naked dolomite cave, unaccompanied by even the faintest flow of air. Their pace was measured, but the progress they were making into the unnamed dungeon far exceeded what that pace might suggest. Those listening with rapt attention at the very end of the complex were growing less confident by the footfall.

It wasn’t for another ten minutes that the tiny intruder spoke, having calmly strolled through just as many floors and left countless defenders in his wake, unharmed but slated for reclamation. “Oh, you poor, precious little thing. I do not know to what extent you have been shackled, nor how long you’ve had to suffer under ego given form, but there is still a spark of life, true creativity beneath all… this” a furred hand was motioned around the feast hall the twentieth floor’s boss resided, that the pixie holed up beside the core had personally designed. She would have been fuming at the comment if said boss had been any more use to her defense than the tile he stepped on underfoot.

“Perhaps one day you might truly wake up from your fugue, but I can tell that no small amount of effort was spent on making that day far, far in the future and you might never reach that day with this dreadful collar,” A pointed look, towards the mosaic of her and her progenitor on the thirty-seventh floor. “holding you back.

“My only regret is that I cannot guide you there myself- no, that is only one of a few, unfortunately. I think my biggest, though, would be that you might never become what you should have been, that you might even lose yourself in the grief of what I am about to do, that you could even grieve this at all. I promise, though, that I do not mean for you to suffer, and that if I am right, you won’t have to.” The blindingly white mousekin pulled a worn leather notebook out of nothingness, thick enough to be called a tome by this point, and flicked through some pages.

More than a few shockingly lifelike illustrations were on display, of various creatures frozen in an endless moment. Each was so immaculately detailed, like they were captured at the very moment they launched an attack or realized they should flee just a moment too late. Pages of intensely detailed notes that could not be read, for several reasons. The script was too small to decipher, not helped by the sheer volume of mana rolling off it dulling even the dungeon’s sight. Perhaps most disconcertingly to the pixie watching from the side was the way that it seemed to be shifting- updating- constantly, growing ever longer and shunting information aside. Something about it was decidedly foreboding but she couldn’t place it, and as he crossed the threshold to her forty-fifth floor, just seven away now, she put it aside trying to mount any sort of defense that she could.

Artifacts gifted to her by her progenitors were activated and set up to create a bulwark. The few enthralled Fae she had managed to create were also set to guarding, their lives tethered to some creation or another and their minds twisted to her will. She no longer needed to scry throughout her halls to hear the voice, tinny and so dreadful in spite of this, it was being carried down the last two floors with preternatural clarity and as he grew closer it started taking on an edge that unnerved her greatly.

She waited for any sign that he’d encountered the first line of defense, one floor above her, but there was only a tense silence shattered moments later by footsteps echoing down to her final floor. The thrall hadn’t made a noise, still wasn’t, and any sign that he’d encountered any resistance was absent. She waited for what felt like hours, for what should have been hours considering the kilometers upon kilometers of winding hallways between them, but it was only a few minutes before she could see his snowy fur cut through the dim light of her catacombs, just before the core room.

Her core was fully terrified now, but she could not deal with its still untrained emotions through her link and so she quashed them down, dulling its mind so that she could use hers. The Mapper seemed to notice that something had just happened, though, if his already icy look shifting into one of arctic intent was any sign. She could feel his mana wash down the hall, and was acutely aware of the sensation of something else mixed in, a strength of will and soul she imagined only a Fae Royal could match, along with the attentive, almost excited stare of Vol confirming his presence. To have the Plane itself showing such clear favoritism meant only one terrible, awful thing.

Her nonexistent stomach dropped, knowing that he really had been Titled, that somehow he was acting in line with that Title and he might as well have the blessings of the Plane to do whatever it was he had planned. She was about to ask exactly what that might be, to beseech him for answers or threaten him with some form of action, but her mouth stayed shut, her body stock still. Dimly, it struck her that the Mapper had slammed his own intent around her in nearly the same way she’d done to her core. She couldn’t even burn her own soul and mana to weave a spell, she was simply trapped in her own manaflesh.

“Your Name, please.” He spoke, somehow standing mere centimeters before her as he spoke. She tried to refuse, to laugh in his face or spit on his feet or remind him that he could not harm her, that his Oath broken meant he could never harm anything again but the only word that came out was her True Name. “My thanks. Let me write in my newest entry: Eloiah of the Desert, a Dungeon Pixie no older than twenty-eight and bound to her core for twenty years, or so.”

She tried paying attention to everything that was spoken but all she could hear was the fluttering of thick parchment pages. She wasn’t aware of when she lost awareness, but for the Mapper, it didn’t much matter. He let his Encyclopedia slam shut with a dull thud, satisfied with the new heft. He turned a deeply sympathetic eye onto the core and stopped to rummage around in his bag, pulling out a smattering of items, vials, even a handful of smaller dried specimens he’d acquired, arraying them all before the magnificent citrine sphere. With a final glance, he chased away whatever cruel influence the Fae had woven to dull the Core as she had and departed, disappearing without fanfare.

When the dungeon in question regained its senses again, it was with a resounding sense of terror at what had transpired, to it, only moments earlier. That dread only deepened as it realized that the Mistress was missing and its awareness tore through the halls to find Her, only to find nothing. By this point, the mana in the core was behaving erratically and a sound distinctly like the stress crackle of glass about to shatter could be heard. The denizens responded to their Creator's distress, and silence was replaced by panicked wailing in short order. The soil around it started to be pushed and pulled and destroyed haphazardly but then it took a moment to feel inward, and the growing chaos was halted immediately.

The core was content as soon as it realized its Mistress was fine, the bond they shared was still firm and unbroken. Whatever She had done to scare away the terrible intruder had to have been a lot, she was probably traveling out again to get something to make sure that it wouldn’t happen again. Now calmed, the core turned its mind to its domain, surprised and pleased to see that no creatures were harmed, aside from the Mistress nothing at all was even absent, and there were even gifts for it. The Mistress rarely rewarded it, and sometimes the rewards were tests to make sure it deserved them, but as it prodded the items with its mana it felt no sensation of admonishment through the bond. It broke down everything, excited to learn what it had been given but it would wait to create. The Mistress didn’t like when it made things without Her, so it would wait until She got back.