Lirael Enzeal, the third Princess of the Enzeal Royal family sighed lightly as she closed the door to the suite the orcs had set aside for her. Vlad had gone to deliver the last of her wealth to the Silveros residence to pay for her recent purchase of the slave while Igor stayed outside to guard the door – not that it needed guarding with what she was about to do. Calling upon the power of her Dungeon, she let a bit of it bleed out into the world.

A transparent bubble expanded centred on her, gently distorting the fabric of reality as her personal world made its presence known.

~ Bloodskull Domain ~

The achromatic ripple pressed up against the walls of the suite, enveloping the entirety of it and turning it into her Domain.

A Domain wasn’t a spell or an ability. Rather, projecting the presence of one's inner world was something anyone with a Dungeon or the embryonic form of one could accomplish. Not only did it amplify the caster’s use of skills related to the core shards of the Dungeon, it also suppressed the use of contrary skills by opponents as long as they were within range. While she had it active, she didn’t need to worry about anyone less than a Dungeon mage disturbing her rest.

Her paranoia was well founded as she felt at least two detection shards lose their effect as they were blocked beyond the boundaries of her Domain. She sighed again, choosing to ignore the affront to her privacy in favour of the alluring call of the bed. Even if she looked up the offenders, she was sure that they would be some fall guys equipped with a shard. The true instigators of the investigation would remain shrouded in several layers of plausible deniability.

‘What would be the point? And I’m exhausted…’

Her midnight black robes pooled around her feet as she shrugged them off and collapsed onto the bed in her underwear, the tarantula-down mattress sinking under her weight, cushioning her fall. Curling up into a foetal position, she drew the spider-silk blankets over her form, temporarily cutting herself off from the rest of the world.

In the comfortable warmth of the darkness, she could easily imagine she was lying in a bed of clouds and enveloped with silky streams of water. Sighing in contentment, she rubbed her face into the mattress with a small smile, letting the accumulated tension of the weeks on edge drain out of her.

Others might look up to her and envy her pedigree and bloodline. Others might believe that she had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth – not having to struggle for a single moment in her life. They would be wrong. Every year beyond her tenth birthday, her status had been more of a hindrance than a help to her.

The world was a vast place and most would only live their lives out trapped in one tiny corner of it. Maybe they wouldn't even consider anything outside the scope of their immediate perception. To them, that small flake region was their entire world. But, as the scion of one of the foremost families of Vampire nobility and the daughter of two Dungeon Mages, Lirael knew better.

Visiting all seven Great Seas, tasting the fruit of the World Tree, scaling the Spine of the World, flying up to and touching the very Vault of Heaven, exploring the deepest known layer of the Abyss and discovering the entrance to the one below – these were the things she dreamed of in her childhood.

Exploration! Adventure! Excitement!

So, when a choice had been placed in front of her: avail of the resources of the family and lose her freedom or to forge a path of her own; she had chosen the latter without hesitation.

Burying her face deeper into the mattress, she groaned in frustration. ‘If only I had known how damn difficult it would be!’

Her recent promotion to the level of a Quasi-Dungeon Mage had wiped out most of her savings and her purchase of Sand had cleared out the last bit of her wealth. She was as poor as a pauper.

‘It’s not like the bastard needs more gold!’ she complained about Torak sourly in her mind. ‘He has the support of his entire clan behind him. A darned Blue mage is richer than the Princess of the Enzeal clan. Who would believe me?!’

At the age of ten, children with the appropriate magical talent and the requisite heritage were offered one of the few Dungeon formulas possessed by the clan. If they accepted, then they would be trained with emphasis till they condensed their Dungeon… Or perished on the way. The magical path was one filled with dangers. Not even a noble clan could guarantee the safety of those who walked down it.

But thenceforth, they would be obligated towards the clan. Whatever shard they were told to fuse, whatever duty they were told to perform, whoever they were told to marry – they would have to follow the directives. The clan wasn’t subsidizing them in vain. It was indentured servitude. Nothing more, nothing less.

Still, people went after it like moths to flame – the members of the collateral branches struggling insanely for the limited quotas set out every ten years. After all, however restricted they might be, in the end they were still Dungeon mages. Men and women who stood at the peak of existence.

Sighing one last time, Lirael snapped out of her bout of self-pity and reluctantly dragged herself out of the comfortable embrace of the silken covers. Collecting a neatly folded towel and some toiletries from the bedside table, she made her way towards the bathroom. Entering it, she couldn't help but be impressed by the close approximation to the Metropolitan architecture the Orcs had managed to pull off. Porcelain tiles and running water wasn’t something she had expected to find in the middle of the desert. A closer inspection with her Domain revealed that the water originated from a Tier 1 Water Kettle shard connected to the city’s public Dungeon.

Another impressive achievement that – reaching such a level without the foundation of the deep magical heritage possessed by the Vampires or the other Elder Races. The Orcs had done well to develop to this degree in the short three millennia that had elapsed after their Banishment.

Depositing the towel and the toiletries on a rack, Lirael divested herself of her undergarments. Selecting the option for warm water, she turned on the shower, letting the steaming liquid cascade down upon her and wash her fatigue away.

The Enzeal family had been declining steadily after the loss of their High Lord three millennia ago. The other Royal Families had been poking and prodding at them like one would an injured animal to see whether it still had the strength to bite back. They had held them off all these years but now, political undercurrents were surging and a sense of crisis had covered the clan.

In their moment of dire need, the Sangre clan had extended an offer of alliance. A marital alliance with the wayward third Princess of their clan.

The family had been putting a great deal of pressure on Lirael lately until it had finally culminated in an ultimatum – either she promoted to a full-fledged Dungeon mage or she became a sacrificial pawn and was delivered into the bed of the Sangre scion. A trophy wife for him to brag about.

This ultimatum was the source of her sleepless nights and the reason she had run away from home.

Lirael opened her eyes, droplets of water showering off her long lashes.

Whoever had designed the washroom, had for some odd reason, believed that the proper position for a full-length mirror was directly opposite the shower. Obviously, shower-curtains were conspicuous in their absence. To the Orcs, taking a bath in running water was probably the pinnacle of luxury and any of them would like to have a perfect view of their heroic bearing while indulging in such an act . Similar traces of botched imitation were littered across the suite. It was like the Orcs had decided to paint a picture from second-hand descriptions and their own conceptions had bled in.

Lirael observed her form in the mirror. A tall woman with perfect proportions and hair the colour of fresh snow stared back at her with ruby eyes. Slicking back the strands of her hair plastered onto her face by the stream of running water, she watched her reflection do the same. She was beautiful. The lack of colour elsewhere only accentuating her soulful eyes that seemed like they would glow in the dark. If one looked deep and long enough into the depths of her pupils, they would feel as though they were staring into another world entirely – one the colour of blood.

All Dungeon mages had alluring eyes that gave a glimpse into their personal worlds. Rumour had it that their world shaped them just as they shaped their worlds.

Her hand involuntarily travelled to a spot on the centre of her chest just beneath her breasts – the only flaw on her otherwise unblemished skin. A circle with an inverted triangle inscribed within.

The mark was light, like someone had painted it on and then vigorously scrubbed it away, only leaving a reddened impression on the skin. One that would soon fade away. But Lirael knew otherwise. The mark wasn’t on the surface but beneath it. A network of capillaries close to the surface that had grown that way showing through her translucent skin.

‘No, a network of capillaries that had been grown that way,’ she mused as she traced the mark with a slender finger tipped with nails lacquered a rich crimson. A tracking spell cast on her by her family ostensibly to locate her in times of crisis but which far more often served as a means to keep tabs on her whereabouts. The only way to get rid of the mark was to promote to a Dungeon mage whence it would be washed away by the tide of heavenly energy that would reform her body during the process.

This was why the clan hadn't cared much when she had 'run away'. They could always find her. And if they couldn't, it would mean that she had promoted successfully and was off the negotiation table. Marrying off a failed mage was one thing - a full-blown Dungeon mage was a different proposition altogether.

As a mage with enough talent to condense a Dungeon, the family wasn’t willing to see her wasting her potential. On the other hand, individuality was the mother of innovation and most of the new Dungeon formulae the clan had developed over the millennia stemmed from the hands of those like her that had rejected the family’s grant of a Dungeon formula. So, as one of these free-spirited individuals, she had been set up with some initial resources and a comprehensive guide to magic instead. While the more conformist of the scions stood upon the shoulders of their forefathers and aimed to leave an improved formula to their posterity; Lirael was expected to derive an entirely new one based upon the fundamental principles of magic that had been observed and recorded by the clan in their long and storied history.

And she had succeeded – more or less.

Another sigh involuntarily escaped her lips as she thought about the bottleneck she had run up against in her Dungeon creation. The first five shards had given her no trouble, fitting in like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and forming a circulating, interlinked environment within her nascent world. No. It was the sixth shard – the Undead Marrow shard that refused to conform like it was supposed to as per her calculations.

If it had simply failed to fuse, she wouldn't be that upset. It would just mean that she would have to calculate again and try with another shard. The reason for her current dilemma was that the shard had fused with the Dungeon but it had done so partially. And for the life of her, she couldn't guess at why.

It was like a fishbone carded in her throat. Profoundly painful and irritating. She couldn't spit it out, nor could she swallow forcibly without the risk of causing great damage to her existing setup. Caution was warranted. After all, the collapse of her Dungeon would mean her death.

That was why she had arrived here: to explore the origin of the Undead Marrow shard – the Myriad Toxins Desert Area – in the hope of gaining some inspiration on how to escape her dilemma. Seeing a slave who used the same shard had piqued her interest and brought Sand to her notice. Observing him with the use of her Domain had revealed his extraordinary natural talent and she had snatched him up.

She didn’t know how the boy’s talent had escaped exposition but it had helped her grab a bargain. If not for the Orc’s astuteness, her profits could have been more. Turning the shower off, she flicked her soaked shoulder-length hair, scattering droplets everywhere.

She couldn't keep the excited grin off her face or the crazy glint out of her eye. Such a suitable slave was top quality experimental material. Her time was running out. She just hoped that the boy could hold up against the trials she would be putting him through.