Chapter One What's in a Name

Eminence: 1. fame or recognized superiority, especially within a particular sphere or profession 2. an important, influential, or distinguished person 3. a piece of rising ground.

The diamond sat as it had for the past four months. It had first heard words, conversations, in the satchel, then in a backpack and nowhere lying on the open floor of a cave. It was confusing. It felt things it did not understand, but the longer it thought about them the more clarity it had. It had been building its understanding for months now, quietly contemplating in darkness. It rested in a nest of mushrooms that reached halfway up the sides of the fist-sized diamond.

I want. It had thought, and with that one thought it began to understand increasingly more, as it dwelt on the things it knew and expanded on them; desire, greed, passion, power, these concepts began to flow into it as it sat there. It ached for more and felt as if it was losing something of itself.

It looked around, suddenly it realized it had no eyes; what were eyes? Eyes, a strange word, where had it come from? It thought about this now, it couldn’t ‘see’ very well. It could sense colors for a few feet around it and detect vague shapes and space around it. It could make out the top of the ceiling far above it hanging with stalactites, with bats three times his size winging overhead flying off out of sight, presumably to hunt for food somewhere. It could vaguely detect rats scuttling at the edges of the cavern, fighting and scavenging for food, there presence like little red dots of heat to it. It sat at the center of the cavern among a large group of mushrooms that spread out to the west side of the cavern.

More months passed, and the caves fungi began to expand around it with the addition of water that flowed into the cave from a small stream along the south end of the cave. The mushrooms began to grow until they were ten times larger than the diamond, they began to let off a green mist around them and the undersides of them glowed with a faint greenish light. Bats that flew low over the mushrooms collapsed to the ground and gasped as they died, and mushrooms began sprouting from their corpses. Whenever a bat died the diamond would feel slightly better, but it had no idea how it could kill more bats.

Kill, another interesting word, it liked that word but somehow also made it afraid. It could also be killed it realized, it would have to kill everything around it to keep them from killing it, the diamond decided.

“You know, you really should fix the leak in your side,” a voice spoke out of the darkness, “It looks like you’ve been leaking mana for months now and only the occasional dying bat has been keeping you alive.”

Who said that? the diamond asked looking around but unable to see anything past the mushrooms.

“I did,” said a glowing red disk that floated down from the ceiling, unaffected by the mushroom’s spores. “I am Ember, a soul spark, at your service, my dungeon.”

What is a soul spark? It asked pondering its own existence now. What is a dungeon?

“Curious, that’s good, some new dungeons just want to sit and absorb mana, no curiosity or work ethic to speak of. To answer your first question, a soul spark is a living creature of pure energy. We have no bodies, which is why we need Dungeon Cores like you,” the spark explained cheerfully.

A dungeon core? So that is what I am? the diamond asked.

“Yes, you are a being of pure creative and destructive energies, bound inside a natural forming crystal that under certain unknown circumstances becomes sentient,” the spark explained.

Why do you need me? the diamond asked. Being needed, another interesting concept, it liked that. Maybe if it was needed it wouldn’t have to kill everything, handy since it had no idea how it could.

“You have the ability to create bodies for my kind, we, in turn, can then inhabit those bodies, move around in them to do tasks for you, such as guarding your core, killing enemies or scouting out targets for you,” the spark explained.

Will more of you come? the diamond asked.

“Unlikely, my kind do arise naturally out of the core of the world, but it is rare. Eventually, you will want to get more sparks but that will come later when you kill adventurers,” the spark explained.

The diamond reeled at the wealth of words and concepts coming from the glowing speck. Adventures, why did that sound familiar? Name, that sounded important, did it have one. No, it didn’t think so.

What is an adventurer? the diamond finally asked.

“Excellent question,” Ember said. “An adventurer is a humanoid of some type, and there are many types, that has a soul; this is important to you. They come to dungeons, usually ruins, caves, old temples or some other structure to fight monsters or other humanoids in order to collect valuable body parts, precious metals and minerals or magical items.”

How do they find dungeons? the diamond asked.

“You lure them here. Dungeons will create chaos out in the world, adventures pick up on that chaos and come to fight us. We try to kill as many as we can, when one is killed you can collect part of their soul which will turn into another soul spark,” Ember explained.

Like you? the diamond asked.

“Somewhat, I am special, a Lord Spark, we are a more advanced form. Every Dungeon Core can only ever have one Lord Spark. We are your most powerful asset, without us you would be unable to get new minions,” Ember said.

So you are mine then? It asked, latching onto this; it understood that having things was good. It liked things, especially shiny things; odd, it never saw anything shiny before, how did it know it liked them?

“In a manner of speaking yes, but back to what I was saying, you really should fix that crack in your side, it’s leaking so much mana that you might accidentally create a rogue monster that will try to kill you to absorb your mana. You can only control monsters you’ve created from a soul spark after all.” Ember explained.

How? The diamond asked.

“Focus your mana, the energy you absorb and create and then examine the crack in your side, then either replicate the diamond around you to fill the crack or compress your body to fill it,” the spark instructed.

The dungeon core looked inward, focusing, noticing for the first time the energy that flowed through it. It thought hard, and it's body shrunk by about two percent, but that was enough to fill the crack and it immediately noticed a difference. It felt, power, the mana that had been flowing out of the diamond at the same rate it absorbed and created it began to fill up its core and it's light began to grow brighter within it, although muffled by the black coloring of the diamond.

“A black core eh, unusual. To answer the question, I’m sure you’re going to ask, a black core means you will specialize in black and shadow magic, this includes necromancy, demonology, infernal and abyssal casting. I will explain what those mean when you need to know,” Ember said.

The diamond felt a bit annoyed at being denied knowledge but decided it had enough to think about for the moment.

“Now we need to work on me. There are some things that once done to me cannot be changed, my gender once decided by you cannot be changed so think carefully…” Ember was cut off by the dungeon.

Male, it said and immediately Ember began to change, growing blacker around the edges and his color becoming a deeper red.

“Well, that was sudden and unusual. Usually, dungeons with a male-sounding personality like you, usually choose female,” Ember said. The dungeon got the sense he was looking at himself. "Also, Queen Sparks can produce more soul sparks than regular female soul sparks, they can produce about fifty a year while a regular female only gets out about three. All of the offspring from a queen is also stronger than offspring from regular females.”

What about offspring from King’s? The dungeon asked curiously.

"Oh, they are just as strong as offspring from queens,” Ember said.

Why would anyone pick Queens then? A King with fifty regular females could produce three times the offspring a queen could, and they would all be just as strong

The dungeon reasoned, scoffing at the foolishness of other dungeons.

Ember stopped talking and floated completely still as he considered the dungeon’s words. “You know, I’ve never had anyone explain it to me like that before, but it does make sense. But the females can get really ticked off at lord sparks if they take more than one mate,” Ember said.

They will do as I command, the dungeons said.

“Going the strong dictator route eh?” Ember asked with a grin in his voice, “well that should be fun. Now we come to the second part, you need a name, something inspiring for me to tell other sparks looking for a dungeon as they come up from the core or their dungeon gets destroyed. You name should be scary and ominous, not only will it be how I get more sparks here but when adventurers come here for us to eat them they will also know your dungeon by your name. Some famous dungeons for inspiration are Labyrinth, Annihilation, Nature’s Wrath. So, do you have any ideas? It should also include your dark nature since you are a black dungeon core,” Ember said flying in circles in excitement.

Hmm, the diamond thought. Dark things, what was dark? The cave was dark, fungi liked to grow in the dark, bats lived in the dark, so did rats and bugs. Rat Cave? No that didn’t sound right, what about Bat Cave? No, not that either, Mushroom Cavern?

What are dark things? The diamond asked, having run out of ideas.

“Are we speaking metaphorically or literally?” Ember asked.

What? The diamond said confused. Metaphorically, what was that? Hmm, it was when something didn’t actually mean something but only represented it, where did this information come from? Probably has something to do with Ember, the diamond decided.

Both, I need some inspiration, the diamond said.

“Well, chasms are usually dark but that doesn’t really fit you. Demons and undead usually symbolize darkness. I advise staying away from demons though unless you want to die,” Ember said.

What are undead? The diamond asked.

“There are hundreds of different types,” Ember said. “Liches, vampires, ghouls, zombies, skeletons, draugr, ghosts, banshees, specters, wraiths, etc.”

Wraith, I like that word. What is it? The diamond asked.

“It is an incorporeal undead that sucks the life-force from creatures and turns them into other undead under its control,” Ember answered. “Wraith would be a good part of a name, but you would need to choose another word to go with it. Something to describe your location like Cove, Mountain, Forest. Sadly, none of those fit you and you don’t want to pick too narrow a description like ruin or cave.

The diamond decided to be quiet about it's first few ideas for a name. What kind of place am I?

“You are in a large cavern with a few holes leading up to the surface, under what looks to be a ruined castle. Wraith Castle? Its not bad but if you ever decide to build something besides a castle it could be confusing,” Ember reasoned.

The name came to him suddenly. The diamond didn’t know where the word came from or how it knew what it meant but it liked it immediately.

I am Wraith Eminence, he said, the name seeming to click into place in his mind.

“Very mysterious sounding, I like it.” Ember said approvingly. “Now, we come to the best part, my body, unfortunately, you don’t have enough mana built up yet to give me one, so we are going to need to either wait or kill some stuff, since you require monsters to kill things that will be difficult but let me see what I can do.”

Ember began flying up and down, side to side over the patch of mushrooms. Sure enough, a bat swooped over to eat what looked like a delicious insect but fell to the earth as poisonous spores from the mushrooms killed it.

Wrath felt a sudden rush as mana flowed into him, it was a glorious rush of sensations, but his core was far from filled. Ember managed to lure fifteen more bats in before coming back to rest on the ground.

“Well how do you feel?” he asked.

Good, how do I give you a body? Wraith asked.

"Easy, just do what you did to your core, only this time instead of compressing your body by focusing your mana, you’re focusing your mana to make a body. You can do this by either creating matter out of mana or by using the materials around you and bringing them together into a body. The second option costs the least amount of mana but it is limited. Also, you can only imagine things made out of what you have seen and understand, of course, so you couldn’t give me mithril skin for instance but if you had mithril you could copy it into my skin, making my body immensely more powerful. Once you’ve created the body, you just focus on me and imagine me bound inside the body” Ember explained.

Understood, Wraith said and began focusing his mana.

He looked around and saw the dead bodies of the bats and began merging them together. He first began constructing a massive version of the bats but then looked at their limbs and began adjusting it, making the hind limbs able to stand on the ground and adding another set of limbs in the front without the winged membrane so that Ember would be able to grasp things at the same time as flying. When he tried bringing the body to life it immediately began gasping as its lungs breathed in the poisonous spores.

Frustrated, Wraith melted the flesh away from its bones, only leaving the membrane on its wings to continue giving it flight. He covered the inside of the bat’s skull with tiny versions of the mushrooms and spores began to float out of its sockets like mist. He tried to get the body to blow out the mist, but it lacked lungs. Wraith stopped and thought about it, then began modifying the neck and skull, making its nose act as a tube so that when the elongated neck whipped forward, the air pressure would force the spores out of its mouth. The breath attack only went about five feet, but it was still impressive. He looked at Ember, who was flying around the mushrooms as he waited and thought about his red spark filling the skull of the monster and animating its bones. Ember began to fade out of the air as a red glow began to appear behind the bat’s eye sockets.

“Undead, good choice, an interesting design. I feel sort of like a small dragon,” Ember said flexing his wings and leaping up into the air. He soared up above the circular patch of mushrooms before landing down on top of a broad green head of the largest mushroom. “Excellent work, I’m impressed. Some dungeons take a few weeks to get a body right, you finished that in two days. I think that’s the record for completing a body on a dungeon’s first try.”

Record? Wraith asked interestedly.

“Yeah, dungeons try to one-up each other a lot, killing an adventurer in under two years is considered a big accomplishment. I think the record is one year and three days before a dungeon built up enough mana and monsters,” Ember said.

How do I get more? Wraith asked.

“Well, now that you are a named dungeon, soul sparks should naturally come to you for few miles around as they get drawn to your dungeon by your mana; don’t really on that though, naturally occurring soul sparks are rare. Also, there are a lot of other dungeons around here and most are higher ranked than you, so their pull will be stronger than yours.”

Other Dungeons? Wraith asked feeling uneasy.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it though, Dungeons aren’t allowed to kill each other, and you will meet them someday,” Ember said.

I will get to meet them? Wraith asked.

“Yep, but that is a long ways off, so best to put it out of your mind,” Ember said. “It will probably be a month or two before we get a soul spark, so we should use the time to prepare this cavern and castle above it into a proper dungeon. Don’t create any passages up to the surface for at least a year.” Ember instructed.

What do we do now? Wraith asked his core vibrating in anticipation.

“Now, we do the slowest process of all, expansion. This cavern is about one hundred yards long and two hundred yards and I can sense lots of minor rogue monsters here. What we need to do is expand your sphere of magic,” Ember said.

Why? Wraith asked.

“It is the area you can effect; you cannot build things in areas that don’t belong to you, you expand it by pushing mana onto the ground around us. Unfortunately, this has the side effect of picking fights with the creatures around us as the rogue monsters will fight us to keep their territory private.”

How do I take over their territory then? Wraith asked.

“You will need to be careful; you’ll die if you aren’t. Taking over territory is simple but deadly if it goes wrong; what you do is push your magic into the edges of their territory. The monster will then either accept defeat if it feels you are more powerful than it or it will fight back, and it and I will have to fight till one of us dies or surrenders. If I die it will try to make it to your core to eat you and absorb your mana, some pretty powerful rogue monsters were created by that happening to young foolish dungeons, so learn from their mistakes.”

What do you mean by a surrender? Wraith asked.

“Unfortunately, it won’t be an option we have but monsters will sometimes prefer to let you control them rather than dying. If a monster surrenders to you, it allows you to understand it, the same thing if you kill them and you can create copies that soul sparks can possess. However, if they surrender to you, they will have to fight for you compelled by their own magic but if they die you won’t be able to bring them back, so they are always only temporary boosts to your power,” Ember explained.

Let us begin then, Wraith replied eagerly.