Hruin wakes up in a dark, cold and damp place.

First, she panics a little. Where is she? What happened? Where are her men?

Then she remembers. She was searching for some Marms in dark tunnels, but she didn’t find them. No, something else happened, she and her men were hit by a big wave, they ended up in an underground lake where they’ve been harassed by some creatures hiding in the dark or in the water.

She was lucky to be a Second, most of the attacks on her body were useless. But that didn’t save her from being taken away by the water when it retreat. At this moment she saw something very strange, some colorful crabs that looked like they were mocking her, it was such an unsettling view that she lost her concentration and dropped for a second the layer of mana she permanently keeps right under her skin. Then she hit her head on a rock, it wasn’t the first time in the last fifteen minutes, but without her mana reinforced skin the shock knocked her out.

And now she is in a place she doesn’t know a lot about, it’s dark, cold, everything is wet, the only sound comes from her right. She tries to get up on her feet but bumps her head on the roof. The roof of the place is fairly low, add to the fact that neither it nor the floor are even, and it’s a true pain in her ass to walk. Hence she decides to walk on all four, it doesn’t prevent her from slipping on the wet floor, but she won’t bump her head on the roof or her butt on the floor.

Hruin walks to the water sound she located earlier. She’s a bit thirsty, so maybe she would be able to drink a little water from a hypothetical trickle of water. She could always lick the water from the rocks around, but the idea doesn’t sit right in her mind, she would rather avoid it if she could. The sound grows a bit then her left hand touch some running water.

The water flows slowly and it’s cold, really colder than the air or the rocks of the place. Hruin tastes the water and is surprised by its taste. It is the purest water she ever drank, she drinks some more just for the taste of it.

After quenching her thirst, Hruin walks around the place to assess her situation. The room is a perfect square with five meters sides. One of the sides is occupied by the water stream, it’s only ten centimeters wide and flows straight from one side to the other. In a corner of the room, there is a bush, it has a lot of thorns that pierced through her skin and remind her of straightening her skin. The bush produces some blackberries that are full of sugar.

At least Hruin have some water to drink and some fruits to eat, she won’t die of starvation or dehydration. But she might lose her mind and become crazy.

She can’t afford to lose her sanity, and for that, she needs something to occupy her mind. So she starts to meditate. It’s been a long time since she had the opportunity to do so peacefully, always watching her back for backstabbing traitor or her front for those that would attack her without hiding. And she doesn’t truly fear for her life, the Marms, or whoever’s directing them - they’re not supposed to be civilized enough to put that sort of things in place - wouldn’t have go through so much trouble to arrange a place like that for her if they wanted her dead.

With the fear for her life gone, Hruin starts to meditate. She focuses her spirit in her body, on her hara, that part of the stomach where the energy comes from. She forces her mana to flow through all her body, speeding up the recovery of her bruises and scratches. She finds that she has more mana at her disposal than usual, but it’s probably linked to the fact that she didn’t meditate in a long time.

After a bit of simple meditation focused on her body, she starts to expand her consciousness out of it. Then it hits her, the actual mana concentration in the place is high, too high for a normal cave. She’d never been good on mana perception, but even she can’t miss it now that she’s focusing on this. There is a formidable amount of mana in the air around her, also in the earth beneath her.

That could be useful, she could absorb such amount of mana that she could reinforce herself enough and break a wall, then she would be able to search the exit of this place and maybe rescue some of her men. But first she needs to gather more mana, and she needs to find which one of the walls have the Marms’ tunnels on the other side.

And when she’s free, she can take her vengeance on the Marms and destroy them all.

But there something else that ticks at her mind, the amount and the quality of the mana here is strange. It’s a good thing, in the way she can use it for her personals goals, but it may hide something else.

---

Humm… I’m looking at the pirates I have manage to imprison. I have seven of them, the two Seconds, and five others.

There is only one female, she’s a Human and a Second. I guess it’s to be expected, there can’t be a lot of women in pirates crews, and most of them are strong warriors able to defend themselves against their lustful and amoral ‘comrades’. She’s the only one of the prisoners that takes the situation with calm, she even started to actively absorb mana from me, I let her do, I want to see what will happen.

The other Second is still unconscious, he almost drowned in the water. Same for the five other pirates.

Now I’m wondering how to make the Marms realize I’m a man. I could make change the form of the statue to be a man, but I think that would mostly confuse them. No I think I’ll go for another of my ideas and make a second cave with another statue, but a man this time, and the Marms will venerate me as not one Goddess, but as two Gods. I could even make a whole pantheon out of me, I and myself, but that would be too much. A simple couple of deities is better I think. The Goddess that will represent peace, love, and such. And a God for the war, revenge and the likes. Well, it’s just an idea for the moment, I’ll work on it later.

Most of the Marms are currently sleeping in their cave, the others are taking care of the wounded, feeding them fruits from my trees and water from my lake. None of the Marms are actively absorbing my mana, like Hruin, but all of them are marveling at the wonderful taste of my produce. They don’t seem to understand it’s only thanks to the high concentration of my mana in those things.

On the other side of the island, the pirates have renounced the search for the Marms lost in the forest and have launched a search party to find the missing pirates. Their almost at the hilltop. They will probably be as stupid as the other and go down the stairs and in the maze, I’ll wipe them out as easily as the two first groups.

---

Gormkar is part of the search party. He has complicated feelings about that.

Searching for lost peoples is a waste of time in his eyes, he would rather let them die and rot on this island, but the captain as ordered him to join the party, so Gormkar obeys. The captain is too strong to be defied.

On the other hand, he hopes to find what could have taken away the woman he has is eyes on. Hruin is a powerful warrior and a wise woman, she would make a perfect mother for Gormkar’s children, but first, he had to impress her and convinced her to marry him. It’s a thing to rape weak and defenseless women, it’s only for pleasure, but a woman to share is life with and give birth to children that would carry his name is a serious matter. It must be a worthy female and Hruin looks like one. If only he could prove to her that he is worthy of her. Maybe if he saves her life here, she would take his proposal more seriously than the last time. But if she’s truly in danger, doesn’t that means she’s not worthy of him?

Gormkar’s head is hurting him with all those considerations. Love is truly a painful thing, his father did warn him about that.

While he was lost in his thought the group he’s part of finally arrives at their destination. The entrance to an underground maze.

There is some discussion that annoys Gormkar, so he doesn’t pay attention to it instead, he focuses his mind on the hilltop and the strange feelings he gets there.

Gormkar walks to the hilltop and looks down the stairs. He’s feeling something familiar there, something he already felt before. He starts to go down and take a big breath of the air inside, it’s fresh, too fresh for an underground passage. He knows how the air is supposed to feel under the earth, and he also knows what makes the air feel like that.

Gormkar walks out of the hilltop and to the officers still discussing on what to do there.

“-nside of it and wait for their report.”

“D’ngeon.” Gormkar throws the word in the discussion like a stone in the water. The three officers look at him with all the disdain they have the courage to show him. He could take all of them together and they would barely be able to scratch him.

“What?”

“D’ngeon. Tis a d’ngeon. I feel it. I go to one b’fore.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Sure. Now, I go.”

“What? No, wait! We need to plan this or else it could be dangerous.”

“No care. I go. You pussy.”

And with those wise words, Gormkar dives into the dungeon, like he did a long time ago, letting the other pirates wonder what to do.

---

Oh?

One of the pirates recognized me as a dungeon? If he wasn’t talking like that and looking so dumb, I would have been impressed, but this one probably been in another dungeon before. In addition, the knowledge I gain from the other pirates show this one as a strong but stupid fighter, it should be easy to take care of it.

I wait a bit for the pirates to decide on what to do. They post more guards around the hilltop than the previous group and sent some messengers to the village and the other pirates to warn them about the presence of my dungeon. The rest of the searching party enter the maze after the Orc.

Now that the pirates are deep enough in the maze I close the entrance and open the water tank. I then look at them being thrown against the walls and enjoy the taste of their death. It’s good, I want more.

Once the water passed through all the corridors and all the pirates are in the second tank, I order my creatures to kill some of them, enjoying the taste. And, at the moment I open the water under it to flush them to their cells I see something that I don’t like.

---

At the instant they see the wave most of the pirates react like their comrades from the firsts groups and panic. But one of them doesn’t.

An Orc that has seen too many death to panic over such a simple thing as a big wave in an underground tunnel.

With a smug look in his eyes, Gormkar stands in front of the empty corridors he arrived from. The air is flowing right in his face and the sound of water running is growing more and more.

Gormkar doesn’t want to be blown away by the water coming, but there are no grips to hold here. It’s not a problem for an Orc like himself. With a mighty roar Gormkar punches the walls with his open hands and grab the interior of the walls themselves, he then gives another roar and sticks his feet in the floor.

The water is in sight now, but it’s okay, Gormkar has grips to hold and is good at holding his breath.

When the water hit him, it’s a big blow, he’s glad to have put his mana in his skin and his muscles, or else he would not have sustained the wave so easily. And he has taken stronger hits before, like the punches his mother launched at him when he was a bad little Orc.