“Explain it again, please.”

“No. You won’t understand, even if I explained it.”

“Look, we’re stuck in the same boat, no? I’m a dungeon core linked to your life force somehow. You are a simple human being that ended up here through mysterious means, now linked to my very existence on a magical level. The least you could do is to share what you two really discussed.”

Felicia touched the shining diamond around her neck firmly. She stroked the faceted stone with excessive force for a long time.

“Okay. I get it. I will not ask questions about that conversation. Please stop squeezing me.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate it. Now, how is your training going?” Felicia smiled as Agren backed down. She had had a rather enlightening conversation with Cammy. A lot of things had become clear, and a lot of questions had been answered as she had conversed with the young archmage’s apprentice. Felicia now had a much clearer view of the political aspects of this foreign world. She had gained a broader understanding of the social systems in play around her.

She did thought it was a bit of a shame that she had forgotten to ask the girl about any magical systems or mana-based knowledge though.

On the other hand, Felicia now understood that she was located inside the Empire, the major political force present on the continent she resided on. She knew that to the south was a great and un-inhabited desert and the east was filled with lush and food providing plains. To the north was the capital, the unyielding gem opposing the sun, and to the west where the small counties. These fragmented states all held allegiance to the mighty Emperor, but inner conflicts were only stamped down when they grew in scale. Border conflicts were tolerated, if not encouraged. Only full-scale invasions brought the wrath of the Empire down upon the smaller city-states. She found it a brilliant strategy of dividing while having conquered.

She had given Cammy some of her own knowledge. The few tidbits of Tsun’Su’s Art of War she told the young girl seemed a rather steep price, in retrospect. The way Camprisse’s eye lit up whenever Felicia imparted some half-remembered stratagem gave her the feeling she had been had. Then again, that too might have been a carefully orchestrated ploy. The young mage's political and social skills had been impressive indeed. Subterfuge and double - even triple or quadruple - meaning had hidden behind each sentence that flowed from her venemous mouth.

On the other hand, the information provided by the young girl had been extremely valuable to Felicia. She had asked extensive questions about the farm she found herself stuck inside. She had hung on every single word coming from the girl’s lips as she casually listened to Camprisse describe a system that traded human lives for easily controlled sources of magical power. She had forced her own expression into blankness as she heard tales of secret police organizations rounding up entire villages on obviously trumped-up charges. The many pirates in the seas and bandits in the poor city-states to the west were rich sources of sapient fuel, large caravans often arriving nearby to offload human livestock.

And she had asked as many questions about the slave collars as she felt like she could get away with. Knowing full well that showing a potential enemy your true desires is not smart, she'd spent the rest of the time asking inane questions. She had guided the conversation towards local culinary specialities in order to hide her burning desire to learn about the murdering pieces of steel strapped around every slave’s neck.

She had learned that the simple and cheap items worked on the life force of the prisoners themselves, and any form of tampering caused them to self-destruct. Even veteran mages and warriors wouldn’t be able to free themselves from the innocent looking chokers, and Camprisse had obviously taken her own necklace as an ornamental slave collar. The tightly hidden disgust that shown through the young girls immature visage each time she looked at Felicia was enough for her to get the picture. She obviously thought her some pleasure slave fallen out of grace and disposed of. The reasons why she was still alive while the rest of the prisoners - teleported here through a rather massive magical array located in the cellar of the wizard tower - was interesting but of little import to Cammy.

“I can do it. It just costs too much mana! I still don't get why we can't just let them pop like the last two groups.”

Felicia swallowed a mouth full of bile, refusing to start vomiting up stomach acid again. “That’s fine.”

Agren’s reply was horribly cheery. “So we can let the-”

“No,” was her brusque reply. “It’s fine you don’t understand.”

And so they sat in silence for a while longer. Felicia contemplated all that she had learned while idly trying to sense mana. She remembered feeling the weird layer of energies vividly. She recalled wielding the clear-as-water streams of might as she healed her hand. None of those memories did her any good. Even the sweltering pressure she felt when she just arrived in this godforsaken prison was nowhere to be found. No matter how much she tried, she failed to sense mana in a conscious and controlled manner.

She had a long list of potential reasons why she couldn’t. She imagined it could very well be some form of a subconscious block. The realisation that the stone in her hand was partially formed from the very life essence of sapient and sentient beings was a pill she found hard to swallow. She kept seeing these imaginary scenes. Rows of humans, forced to step into a blender, the resulting goop compressed into Agren at cataclysmic pressures. Maybe it was the difference in mental proficiency. The stone had started out dumb as a brick. Now it was speaking with fluent sentences and reasoned with logic. No longer did she have the mental superiority she had a few days ago. Maybe it was something Cammy did. Maybe she burned herself out.

She put a hand across her face, letting her cool digits take away some of the heat in her head. Then she saw red. Through the skin and blood of her hands, light shone. A flash of brilliance that would have surely blinded her lit the small hut. Blinking against the crimson after images, she observed a pathetic group of people. Felicia started studying the new arrivals before she remembered what her plan was.

“Agren, start at the oldest.” The stone grumbled at this, but the faintest tingle of something unknown at the edge of her perception told her that he was shifting mana around. Then one of the silhouettes' heads exploded with a flash of light. Screaming followed, Felicia adding in her own voice, ordering the stone to do it properly. Then the lost businesswoman saw who remained. She saw the single rotund woman surrounded by smaller shapes. She recognised the woman and children for who they were, a word weary woman holding on to her spawn. And Felicia’s heart - which she thought good and numb by now - quaked. She reached for the small group of five. She reached for the hateful bands of death around their necks.

“Where're the toys, mommy?”

“They’ll be here soon. Just keep your eyes closed, honey. It will ruin the surprise.”

“Mommy! My necklace fell off, mom!”

“Mine too.”

And all kids started bawling their eyes out, small hands grasping at bare necks. Felicia looked at them through a haze of a headache and watery eyes. She saw the grim surprise on the central figure’s face. The stout lady had flinched once when the old man standing next to her was explosively decapitated, but his subsequent disappearance - layer by bloody layer - didn’t cause her to twitch a muscle. The faint image of a furious, stout and unmoving mother bear overlayed the ragged mother for a few moments. Felicia blinked, and the image was gone. The children all looked to be around ten, possibly under. Their stick-thin appearance and gaunt cheeks might be an indication of stunted growth due to malnutrition, a clinical part of her mind analysed.

Then years of training and willpower hardened habits snapped back into place.

Felicia stood and dusted herself off. The few splatters of blood that had landed on her meticulous business suit had vanished quickly, leaving her looking neat and tidy again. She clasped her hands in front of her and felt energy and reassurance flow into her as she took her power stance. She guided her lips into a dim smile, one that indicated neutral warmth. She made sure to display the image of a fair yet stern senior manager. “Hello and welcome. Please follow me, we will first get you freshened up before getting into other matters.” A slight widening of her lips and narrowing of her eyes made it clear that she was not to be disobeyed. She turned around and walked out of the hut with speed, sure in the fact that she'll be followed.

There was one problem she had foreseen though. Camprisse had not understood a single word coming out of Felicia’s mouth before the young woman had cast that spell. Technically speaking, it was a fifty-fifty shot whether or not the spell was targeted at the mage herself or Felicia. A one in two chance of having to go through the massive process of learning a new language. Agren had told her that she had smelled slightly off, but Felicia wasn’t sure whether that comment was aimed at her physical smell or some spell still clinging to her.

“Suprise! We’re in a forest. Come along now, let's listen to the nice lady.” Hearing the pattering of feet following behind her was like a wave of fresh relief splashing over her body. She turned around while slowing her stride, seeing the gaggle of kids hesitantly following after the large woman.

“It’s just down here, you all can wash up. I think my blouse will fit your children, but I'm afraid I don't have any suitable clothes for you, miss …”

“Call me Sue. Sue Nija.” Sue’s smile was wider than her hips. Felicia did note that the smile didn’t reach her eyes, though. “And these are Dako and Dylo,” she went on, pointing at the two biggest boys standing protectively in front of their mother, “this is Vola and the wee one is Yuuk.” Vola was the only girl, a waif of a thing that had spent all her time glaring daggers at Felicia. Yuuk was the only child hiding behind his mother, a small boy with tender features.

Felicia swallowed hard.

“Did you steal mah necklace?” The glare coming from the girl could have burned a sun.

“Did you steal her necklace?” asked the twins in tandem.

Felicia’s sense of dread shifted from a potentially painful loss to one that promised lots of headaches in the future. “I did not. Please follow me.” Instead of arguing with the obviously irate children, she strode down the stairs.

She had used the few days between Camprisse’s visit and the expected new batch of people - once every week, she had calculated and Cammy had confirmed this - to make a lot of changes to her underground apartment. It was no longer an apartment, for one. Instead, she had forced Agren into creating a spacious, welcoming hall. From there, one door led to her personal abodes. The door was welded shut and only accessible by herself. One entry led to the animal cages, one led to a toilet and shower area and the last door led to the employee apartments. She hadn’t through to provide a bathroom at first, but Agren told her that the only reason why he could the eat dirt directly off her skin was that they had a soul binding contract going on.

“Please use the washroom over there to freshen up. I’ve laid out some clothes for you all.” Felicia stood there, a combination between a corporate executive and hostess as she pointed at the showers. Knowing full well that the relatively modern concept of a shower was only widely understood in the upper nobility of this world, she gave a small explanation about how to operate the piece of equipment. Sue asked for washing clothes, dirt scrapers, soap and sand. Felicia told her that none of that was available. Sue took this in stride and ushered her restless brood through the designated door.

Felicia sat in one of the comfy couches as she listened to the rackous noising coming from the bathroom. She heard shrill screams, yells, splashing noises and even some tearing sounds. She allowed herself to gently bite on her pinky nail as a distraction to combat her rising nervousness.

The conversation with Camprisse had been an unexpected surprise, but she had measured the young mage’s worth and slipped inside a role rather quickly. Sue and her kids were - for all intents and purposes - civilians. And small talk was not a skill she enjoyed. At all.

Giving orders, reprimanding, using idle chatter in a high-level game of political give and take, sure. She could banter with the best of them when it came to trying to weasel useful information out of the other party while giving as little ground as possible. Idle gossip to kill time with a normal friend? She’d rather be chewing nails. And then there were the kids. They all looked to be under ten, and Felicia’s experience when it came to people in that age category whas non-existent. She had been a child herself at some point, she was sure, but all of the social skills needed to interact with those brats had atrophied and died years ago.

“Explain it again, please? I really do not understand what the purpose of any of this is.” Agren’s invasive voice inside her head was a genuine relief.

“No. I’m not going to explain it twice. Shush now, don’t distract me.”

Sue emerged first. The previously haggard woman had transformed from a rotonde witch into a prosperous head-maid down on her luck. Her dark hair had been greasy ropes sticking to her scalp not half an hour ago. Now it was a severe and clean bun, roughly combed backwards and still damp. Her tattered rags were tattered rags still, but she had rearranged and layered them to look more like a dress than the dirty burlap sacks they truly were.

The woman’s transformation was impressive, but the kids had changed entirely. Ratty street urchins with grimy faces had become rosy-cheeked munchkins with odd fashion senses. Each kid was clad in an overlarge blouse, a copy of the one Felicia was wearing even now. The twin boys were wearing two shirts each, an additional one tied across their waists. The smallest boy was nearly drowning in the shirt and honestly looked rather cute.

“Now, ma’am. I don’t suppose you gave us access to a magical bathhouse and the finest cloth I've ever seen out of the goodness of your own heart, no?”

Felicia could have kissed the woman. She was back on known territory again. The clear relationship between employer and employee distracted her from the complex gazes the kids had been sending her. “You may call me Fel. I would like to employ all of you. Your tasks will consist out of menial labour until further notice. Please follow me.” Smiling businesslike at the group, she walked over to the door leading to the animal cages.

The past few days had been fruitful indeed. Each new building had columns of glass piping sunlight into the dark chambers. So it was with the animal pens. She opened the door and showed the family what she had come up with. She heard gasps and was nearly bowled over as the girl darted inside. Looking back, Felicia saw that Sue had a hand outstretched. The expression on the pudgy woman’s face was a combination of fear and acceptance. Then Sue looked up from her daughter and gasped as she saw the room’s contents.

Animal cages and pens occupied every single possible surface of the cavernous space. Large open fields filled with gravel and sand housed masses of bunnies. Layered on top of each other, tanks partially filled with water housed hundreds of turtles. An entire wall was covered with deep cages, stone grates keeping the mice from each other. Each animal habitat had some form of obstacles or walkways. Every mouse cage held a complex network of tunnels, which the rodents could explore. The bunnies hopped from platform to platform as they amused themselves with simple sea-saws.

“I’m glad you all came. Getting enough food for all of these animals has been a nightmare.” Smiling at the Sea’s dumbstruck and the children’s awestruck expressions, she gave them a tour of her underground zoo and breeding farm.