“One of them lets me borrow a Skill from someone bound to the Dungeon and make it an aura for an entire level. It’s normally used on monsters, to make a Monster Ruler’s Rulership ability extend throughout the whole level. It has to be taken each time it applies and it only applies on that level, but I’m sure you can see the benefit. There are some other issues with it, but it would be a good start for sharing a Skill with a group of monsters.” Aki stopped there.

Serenity shook his head. “It wouldn’t let you share the skill with Phoebe and Red, then. And can you even borrow it from me?”

“I’m not sure. I thought we could pair Phoebe with a monster under the aura, see if that’s enough to break the curse. It’s not something for the short term; I don’t have any good monsters for it. It also wouldn’t work off the specific level. It’s the cheaper option, so I thought I’d present it first.”

Aki hesitated noticeably before continuing. “I’m not sure the second option is any better. It’s dungeon specialization. If I can borrow the skill, I could make it apply across the entire dungeon. It’s expensive, but that’s not the real problem. I have Time as an Affinity, but making a Skill Specialization will further limit what I can have in the dungeon. It’ll change my Theme. I’m really not sure what that skill would do, especially since it would only work when you’re in the dungeon.”

“Wait, only when I’m in the dungeon? That’s not going to work.” Serenity couldn’t afford to be tied down that way. “Do they both have that restriction?”

“I thought it was obvious, yes. I can’t use anything that isn’t inside the dungeons, and wandering monsters don’t count. It’s one of the reasons I’m not sure I even can borrow the skill from you. You aren’t one of my monsters, plus you leave the dungeon.” Aki sounded tired more than anything else. “I’m still looking for other options but unless it’s a Species trait, that’s all I’ve got.”

That was easy, then. “It is a Species trait.”

The silence that followed reminded Serenity that Child of Time wasn’t the Species they thought he had, since they knew he was really a dragon (or perhaps a half-dragon?). Oops. Maybe he could pass it off as knowledge instead of his own Species? “The Species you want is Child of Time, Unbound. The other Child of Time variants have different traits.”

“I do have the Time affinity, Child of Time sounds possible. I haven’t set any encounters on either of the new levels. If they’re supposed to be friendly, the upper level might be the better choice…” Aki trailed off while she searched, but after a moment she had to admit, “I’m not finding them. What Tier are they?”

Serenity frowned, trying to remember. He’d been offered it the first time he evolved, hadn’t he? He’d chosen against it at the time because it was different. “Tier One, I think? The minimum for a true monster with a real core. Not sure if a Child of Time can be Tier Zero or not. At that Tier they’re different, very limited. Time only, forever, not in addition. I expect they’re more attuned to the Affinity?”

“Hmmm.” It was the first time Serenity had heard Aki use a placeholder sound. Then again, they hadn’t exactly been talking verbally for long.

While Serenity was still trying to think of other options, Rissa spoke up. “There’s one more thing we haven’t mentioned. I seem to be light-sensitive outside the dungeon. Maybe Sun-sensitive? We’re not sure. I had Raz check with some Sunstones in the dungeon; I don’t have any issues with them.”

“I’m redoing all of the interior lights with Sunstones,” Raz pitched in. “Sun is one of the dungeon’s Affinities, so we need something to bring its influence throughout the dungeon. I don’t want areas where the Affinity is weak. Magic and Time don’t have that problem, but without a carrier like Sunstones, the Sun affinity is weak at night and in inside areas. It wasn’t a problem until we had more levels. I’m really eager to see how it affects the crafting area; it’s likely to make the area Sun-attuned, which might affect things that are made there.”

“Might? Will!” Katya slapped her hand on the table. “Affinity crafting areas are wonderful if you’re making something that even vaguely resonates with the Affinity. Sun … that will work for a lot of different things. Moon and Night-related items will be harder to make if it’s even possible, but anything that reveals or burns will be empowered. You might even add effects to some things that wouldn’t normally have them.”

Katya’s rant was followed by a short silence, which she broke with another comment. “You should make a sun-Affinity room. That’s all that would be in it, things that are Sun Affinity. They help to train Affinity, and it’d be especially useful for crafters trying to figure out how to work with it.”

“So put it next to the crafting area?” Raz sounded excited by the idea.

“I’d recommend a separate entrance. It’d be more awkward for crafters but more secure, and I think more mages than you’d expect would want to enter. Sun is an advanced Affinity with a lot of ties to other Affinities.” Serenity thought it was a good idea, too. It would be useful in the long run; not only would it help people gain or increase the Sun Affinity but once they were ready, a high-Affinity area was extremely useful for creating an Aspect. Whether or not anyone would get there while they were still on Earth was questionable, but it was very possible if Earth ever came even vaguely close to the power the empty space around its World Core indicated it had once been.

Raz frowned and turned to Rissa. “What did you do with those two Sunstones I gave you to test with? The ones that could be taken out of the dungeon.”

“They’re under the table, can I hang on to them? I did the test we talked about, and it worked.” Rissa stared at Raz with a pleading expression on her face. Serenity was glad Rissa wasn’t the one looking at him with that expression; he never could resist her puppy dog eyes.

Raz seemed unmoved, even though he agreed. “Sure. That was always the plan, wasn’t it?”

Serenity looked back and forth between the two of them. “Care to let me in on what you’re talking about?”

Rissa blinked. “Didn’t I tell you? Raz gave me some Sunstones to test outside the dungeon. They have the same effect of reducing the prickling and heat. It’s not as good as being in the dungeon, where I don’t have a problem at all, but they help.”

Serenity frowned. “That means that either there isn’t enough Sun mana for you outside which doesn’t make any sense or there’s something in it that is bothering you that isn’t in Aki’s Sun mana.”

“I’ve rescheduled our flights for tomorrow morning,” Rissa stated. “First to an airfield near the Traa portal then up to one near Serenity Settlement. We’ll spend the night in the Settlement then head back here the following day.”

Serenity was about to respond when Aki interrupted. “Found them! They’re not in the standard monsters listing at all. Child of Time is listed as a specialty miscellaneous creature. They’re weirdly expensive, too. Creatures are usually animals, present mostly to give the right ambiance, serve as annoyances, or use for specialty areas like farms and exploration zones.”

There was a short pause while Aki looked over the menu, then she continued. “It tells me how expensive a Child of Time is, but they’re restricted. It won’t tell me what the restrictions are, but there’s a link over to - oh. I see. Child of Time isn’t a spawnable monster, it’s a modifier. Well, it can be spawnable but only in areas predominantly controlled by Time Herself. I don’t qualify, and I’m just as happy about that. So, all I can get is a modifier. Do you all know what that is?”

Raz was the only person who nodded. It sounded familiar to Serenity; something about modifier dungeons being strange, but they were rare. Were they the ones where monsters would look like one thing but act like something else and sometimes have the abilities of a third group of monsters?

Aki chuckled at the response. “They’re expensive and don’t usually do much to make a monster more powerful; I guess I can see why you wouldn’t know them. In my last dungeon, I used modifiers to make my monsters follow a theme. I had an entire family of crystalline modifiers I’d put on things, to make it seem like monsters that weren’t from that zone grew from the walls. They’d have crystals growing from them and …”

Aki trailed off and started to sound sad. “When I started to fail, many of my monsters fell out of my control and gained madness-related modifiers. My crystallines often went first.”

“Then you need a base monster for the modifier? I know we talked about golems for the crafting area.” Raz was clearly not going to let her get distracted by her past.

“Ah? Right, we did. Let me dig, Serenity’s right. There are at least a dozen different Child of Time modifiers. Oh, here we are. Unbound. Huh.” Aki sounded a lot better with something to distract her. “There are two options; actually, it looks like there’s an entire tree of options, but I have to choose one of the top two. If this works like other dungeon branches, there’s a good chance I’ll never be able to pick the second option. I’d have to re-unlock it somehow, and that’s hard to do, especially for something with this sort of unlock condition; ones related to the number of a particular type of monster will often show up again at another threshold, but not ones like this. Neither of them is quite like the one you showed, and neither is what I’d expect.”

“What are they?” That could have been anyone, but Serenity was fairly confident Raz said it first.

Aki didn’t answer in words.

Unbound Flow (Child of Time), Modifier [Available due to Time Affinity]

Grants the Unbound Flow modifier to a dungeon monster. Utility, puzzle.

An Unbound (Flow) Child of Time can innately warp Time to follow its bidding. The events of the past or future may yet change. Scope limited to assigned areas; Time changes limited by innate power and countered by power of opponents (if applicable).

Tied to the dungeon in which it is created; may not become a Wandering Monster.

Unbound Fate (Child of Time), Modifier [Available due to defying Fate]

Essence Seed

When consumed or absorbed, grants the Unbound Fate modifier. Usable modifier, Dungeon Reward (extreme rarity).

Fate does not rule a Unbound Child of Time. An Unbound can slip between the lines others have laid out and even break them.

May only be used by those with an existing Fate.

Serenity was reading the two options for the third time, fairly confident he was going to recommend the second one because as a dungeon reward it could be taken outside the dungeon even if it might be hard to find someone who could use it, when Rissa started laughing. “Rissa?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just,” Rissa giggled again, then took a deep breath to try to calm down. “We’ve been reading the prophecy about the Child of Time all wrong! “For each of us, a Child is born.””

She dissolved into hysterical laughter again.