“Once there was a tiny little planet out in the middle of nowhere. This, tiny insignificant speck had been created, populated, and then happily forgotten by a cadre of cruel and uncaring gods. New gods constantly came and went, but none really stayed for any long amount of time, because the planet Oboris was, in a word, boring. It was an utterly predictable world, with utterly predictable outcomes which eventually began to build to an utterly predictable arcane Armageddon. Those with the cognitive capacity to notice what was coming fled, or went deep underground. Except of course for one very brilliant, nay, genius level sorcerer, Norbrant the Mathematical.

“Norbrant, being the magnificent genius he was, bent his not inconsiderable faculties toward the task of immortality. He alone would ride the apocalyptic energies to a new and brilliant future! And he did! The how of it, of course, involves a lot of very boring math but it’s sufficient to say it was clever, ingenious, and had never been done before. On Orboris.” I finished as the tiny winged reptile gnawed on my glittering, faceted surface. “And it’s why you should stop that and put me down!” I tried unsuccessfully, again, to convince the draconic creature to release me.

“You shiny!” It squawked in it’s high, grating parody of speech. “You mine now!”

I tried to maintain some dignity, I didn’t swear at the little bastard as he scrabbled about to make sure that there were no other glimmering tidbits to be found in the wreckage of my tower. It was here, of course, that I’d performed the most audacious of plans, using the arcane conflagration that destroyed most of the civilized world as a fuel source for the greatest of magical events, my ascension to immortality. As a Dungeon Core. It wasn’t going well so far.

I viewed our surroundings as the tiny dragon, no bigger than a house cat, scrabbled in the dirt. Clearly I’d been out for a while, the tower had long since toppled and had a very nice amount of heavy vegetation crawling all over it. I could see a few rotted timbers from the interior beams. How long did it take wood to rot away like that? It was almost gone. Years, at least.

My sight reoriented on the little beast as it squealed in triumph, holding up a bent shoe buckle made of brass. I tried once more to exert my influence, force the earth to part around me and swallow me up, but the aura of the infuriating scaly nuisance was blocking me. Why why why had I not woken up until the moment it’d touched my perfect, glimmering facets? Now it viewed me as nothing more than a bauble and intended to treat me as such. Chortling it scooped up the shoe buckle and my physical form, a diamond roughly the size of a robin’s egg, and hopped out of the mostly intact ground floor on shaky back legs.

Once free of the confines of the tower it stretched its wings and beat them furiously. I could feel as its magic rose around us, helping propel it into the air, its ill-gotten loot with it. I sighed and prayed he’d drop me. I was a diamond, I could survive it! I sighed as we settled into a gentle glide, the land far below flashing by. It was a pretty sight at least, the flora and fauna had survived remarkably well it seemed, I could even see a small village several miles away.

We flew for perhaps an hour before I saw The Castle. I’m not being pedantic, that was its name. The Castle. I told you, our world is boring, and it was the only castle within two months walking distance, so it was The Castle. It sat on a rocky outcropping in the middle of a river and acted as both bulwark and crossing, capable of lowering down a drawbridge to either side of the river, or just as easily denying access. It was terribly clever thinking, until an industrious group of farmers had built a bridge just two miles south. By the time anyone thought to stop them the deed was done.

As we neared the decapitated pile of stone we began to lose altitude, it seemed we’d arrived at our destination. In dramatic fashion we swooped in through a large, empty window frame and into the Grand Hall, where once fine tapestries and a moderate grade rug had graced the floor an walls. Those were gone now of course, and there, sitting on the baronial throne, was a big pile of trash.

With the grace of a bloated duck we alighted atop the pile and the ghastly creature crooned a chuckle as he dropped the shoe buckle and clasped my gem in both front claws. Piercing orange-red eyes stared into my depths as his golden claws caressed the facets of my gem, his black scales making tiny rasping noises at the slight movement. It quickly began to feel awkward, and then creepy, then it got… upsetting.

As it stared into my depths I could feel mana building around us, becoming stronger, and stronger. For a moment I couldn’t figure out what was happening, and then it hit me. Dungeon Cores have a unique ability to form a bond with a single creature, this creates a permanent link between the two and helps define certain things, such as the dungeon’s affinities and creature options. The damn thing was bonding too me! This could not be happening! I did not need, nor want a bond partner! Even if I had I certainly didn’t want a tiny lizard with the intellectual capacity of a house cat! I once again struggled to affect any kind of change I strained, and strained, and felt something move. For a moment elation… and then the bond completed and for a moment I and a dragon became one.

For a split second I knew what it was like to be the Common House Dragon. A species that occupied the same niche as cats, feasting on small rodents, taking advantage of stupid humans, stealing bits of shiny things. I knew, in that moment, what it was like to have a vocabulary that consisted of 20 words and the intellectual capacity to know I wasn’t smart, which, for a House Dragon was actually near genius intellect. I knew the irresistible pull of the shiny, the sincere and utter need to have it. And I knew its name, Nix. Then I was back in my own gem again, and the dragon was staring at me, a faint glimmer of intellect in its eyes.

“You mine, Noooorbraaahhhnt.” It crooned lovingly, and I despaired.

Dungeon bonds were for life, and neither side could raise their hand against the other. That was uncommon knowledge, but I’d made a good study of dungeons before I chose to become one, and I knew lots of interesting tidbits. Like the fact that because we were bonded I could create elemental motes that aligned with the bonded. Hopefully Nix was fire aligned, or maybe air. I focused on him hopefully. The black scales made me think darkness, maybe, but the gold claws….

“You make shinies now.” Nix interrupted my train of thought. If I’d had eyes I would have blinked. Shinies? Did he mean gold? I couldn’t make gold, I hadn’t even established a dungeon yet. “Shinies!” He repeated, and then breathed a cloud of sparkling light on me.

Light aligned. I simply stared dumbfounded at the little dragon as he repeated the display to no real effect. That meant Motes of Light, the least useful and offensive of all motes. I groaned audibly, and the little bugger swatted me. “MAKE SHINIES!” came his bellowing retort.

“Alright! Alright.” I finally responded. “But first I need to make a dungeon.”

“Not dungeon! Sh-i-ni-es.” The last word was said slowly, as if speaking to a small and particularly dense child. I gritted my mental teeth.

“I can’t make shinies without a dungeon. Once I make a dungeon I can make lots of shinies.” My response wasn’t quite as slow, but it wasn’t particularly fast either.

Nix stopped and stared at me for a long moment. “Need dungeon for shinies?” he said finally, perplexed.

“Yes,” I sighed. “Need dungeon for shinies.”

In a flash he scooped me up in his mouth and jumped from the throne of trash to the ground. He scampered out of the room and through a door, soon we were taking one twisting corridor after another, eventually reaching a set of stairs. We went down, and then down again after another small maze. Finally, after the third such repetition, we seemed to have reached our destination and I wanted to scream. We were in the castle’s dungeon. He continued along the passage past row after row after row of cells, most of which were still closed. Their occupants forgotten in the destruction that toppled nations. At the end we found more stairs, and descended again. Once more we passed cells, some of these ones had clearly been warded, though their magic had long since faded. Some of the bars were laced with special materials. Silver, gold, cold iron, special materials for special prisoners.

Finally we came to an end, to the final cell. Larger than the rest the vaulted ceiling was 15 feet tall, and every wall had been inscribed in runes and glyphs, the bars were laced with Orichalcum, one of the few rare metals that was inert to most magics. This cell, unlike many of the others, stood empty, it’s great doorway slightly ajar. Nix pushed it open and moved inside, dropping me in the approximate center of the room.

“You in dungeon! Now make shinies!” He proclaimed, clearly proud of his deduction. I had to give it to him, this was pretty smart, if not the right kind of smart. I remained quiet while I considered. The little dragon chuffed quietly to himself, pleased enough to ignore my lack of immediate obeyance.

It wasn’t a bad spot, I rationalized. Dungeons had been located in weirder (and far less appropriate) locations. Beyond that, the precious metals inherent in these bars and the other cells would give me loot to begin with and who could ask for a better defense than a castle? After a long moment I also accepted that, there wasn’t really any choice, as an immobile diamond I couldn’t exactly get up and walk out. Somehow that’d never occurred to me when I planned this. So I flexed my mental muscles and let out my aura. The feeling was strange, like stretching except it went on, and on, and on. Soon the entire room was covered in my aura, and it began to sink into the walls, taking control of my first dungeon room.

Nix tapped on my core startling me. “Hey! You in dungeon! You say dungeon for shines! Make shinies!” His very one-track mind made me sigh. Grudgingly I pulled on the bond between us and felt a gentle flow of information into my core. It wasn’t like learning, it was like instinct. I simply knew how to make a Golden Mote. I made one and watched as my mana plummeted. I didn’t have much mana, and this one mote took almost half of it. I’d need to absorb more materials and expand my domain in order to increase the rate at which I regenerated.

With a happy squeal nix began to dance around the little mote, not unlike a ferret hopping about defensively. It was cute until I remembered this was my bonded creature. I could have had a real dragon, or hell even a fairy. On second thought no fairies, they made annoying tinkling noises and repeated things endlessly. But I had nix, and I needed to make him work.

“I can’t make any more shinies.” I stated flatly, the black lizard stopped dancing and stared at my core. Somehow his saurian face managed to look disappointed and affronted at the same time.

“You my core! You make shinies!” He rejoined, sounding both put out and upon, as if I were breaking some kind of implicit rule or pact.

“Impossible.” My tone brooked no argument. “I don’t have the mana, we need to expand our dungeon, gather materials, lure in animals, and defeat adventurers.” I explained patiently the myriad things we had to do.

Nix cocked his head to the side as if considering, finally he spoke. “You expand dungeon!” My hopes soared, maybe, just maybe he’d understood. “I get adventurers!” My hopes crashed and burned on the mountain of reality.

“NO! NO NO NO!” I yelled at the retreating form of the pseudodragon. He neither stopped nor made reply. For the first time since I awoke, I was utterly alone. With a resigned sigh I looked around the vault like cell and considered where to begin.

The best option, I decided, was to move my core first. I made the floor below me soft, allowing the core to sink into it slightly, and then I shifted the stone about my core, propelling myself across the floor, up the wall, and into the ceiling where I wrapped myself firmly in stone, suspended 15 feet up from any possible intruder. Then I looked at the forlorn little mote, and ate it.

Watching the mote unravel was fascinating. Motes are little more than an elemental energy wrapped around a mana core, a sliver of mana stone so small that it may as well be a particle of dust. Most don’t occur in nature outside of highly mana rich environments, and even then the area needs a strong elemental affinity, such as a volcano, deep sea trench, or the highest mountain peaks. Dungeons could of course create motes, but most didn’t. Even a fire mote was mostly harmless unless they swarmed.

The mote came apart like a ball of yarn that’d suddenly lost its center, tiny tendrils of light flowing in every direction as its life energy turned back into mana for my core. Oddly I got slightly less mana back, as I understood it retrieving energy from a personally created creature was supposed to be lossless. I sighed mentally, just something else to look into. With that mana reclaimed I began pushing my aura out once more, slowly infusing it into the hallway just outside my cell, a task made harder by the orichalcum in the bars. Frustrated I began to absorb them, but the process was almost as slow as aura expansion causing me to groan in frustration. Fortunately the absorption of such expensive and rare material was causing my Mana to skyrocket, quickly leading me toward full.

I paused considering my mana. It wasn’t much, all things considered, but it was enough for another layer of Core. Like most living things, Cores can grow, all they needed was mana, specifically the entirety of the mana they could currently store. One might think that’d be easy enough to achieve, except for core growth was linear, but capacity was exponential. Growing your core always required double the amount it had cost previously. With a sigh I put my mana to work, building another layer of my core.