“It’s just one long shaft…”

Graverra’s voice echoes ahead of her, a mixture of genuine bemusement and mind numbing frustration. She’s certain they’ve been walking for hours. Without a single change in their surroundings. Or another pitiful rat to whack. At least then she would have gotten some XP for all this…

Her shoulders droop and she drags the end of her scythe along the floor of the tunnel. If she wasn’t going to need to defend herself any time soon…

Still perched on her hat, Capo the skull snorts as if impressed. “Didn’t think he had this much in him…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Graverra frowns, looking up even if that really made no difference to the conversation.

“Clearly you’ve got him sweating. I mean, how would you feel? Haven’t even had a chance to finish the place and some snippy little thing just comes waltzing down your corridors with her opinions and-“

Graverra can’t help but interject, “It’s not a corridor if there aren’t other doors.”

“I rest my case.”

“So what? He’s just going to keep letting me walk down this endless hallway… endlessly?” She gestures ahead of them with her scythe for emphasis. The faint glow of the blade only highlights so much before the light runs out of reach.

“Until he catches up with his mana reserves, I’d guess. He can’t go making tunnels forever.”

“But… why is he making it at all? What’s making me walk forever going to accomplish for anyone?”

“He’s embarrassed! And you know… If I weren’t just stuck in one spot like before, I wouldn’t mind watching someone like you walk through my dungeons, you know what I’m saying?”

“Eugh.” Graverra pulls a face, then shakes her head to clear the thought. She wasn’t going to argue the finer points of that metaphor either, as confused as it seemed to be. Still, she takes the moment to glance around herself, as if this time she’ll be able to see beyond the miles and miles of crumbling, musty tunnel. “He’s the whole dungeon?”

“More or less.” Capo wobbles above like he means to shrug. “I mean, he made me, but he’s not me. The rat too, though he’s gonna be a different kind of sore that was so easy for you…”

Graverra had another train of thought, but pauses for the moment to follow this one. “Why did he make you?”

“Dungeon’s gotta have mobs, girlie.”

“You’re not a mob, you’re just a head. I can make more than that and I’m just one necromancer.” She still should have summoned her minion, she thinks. At least it would keep her company. Less confusing company than Capo had been thus far.

“Ouch. You know, just cause they don’t tick down somebody’s health doesn’t mean words don’t hurt.” Somehow Capo’s voice trembles a little, like it might have actually hurt, but whatever emotion the skull did or didn’t feel clears out as quickly as it came. “That’s good though, bossman’ll like that.”

“Why do you keep saying that? What’s it matter if some incompetent dungeon core likes me anyway?”

“Again, with the words. It’s lonesome work, being a dungeon core, especially in the beginning.”

“You just said he didn’t want anyone seeing the unfinished dungeon. I didn’t come down here on purpose. I told you, I just fell in. Maybe he should have thought about that.”

“Well, between you and me, sometimes I’m not so sure the bossman knows exactly what he wants.”

Graverra frowns again, her steps slowing as she puts some pieces together in her head. “Are you trying to set me up with a dungeon core?”

“I just think he could use a little inspiration! A muse, if we will.”

“Well…” That certainly was an idea. Graverra isn’t so sure it’s a good one, or a plausible one, but… “That’s very flattering, and you’re not wrong, I guess. I do have plenty of ideas on how this whole thing could be improved, but that starts with a way out!” She raises her voice on the last three words, so that maybe, if this dungeon core really was watching her every move, he would finally listen.

Nothing. And she does stand there and wait, giving this supposed dungeon core plenty of time to muster whatever strength or mana it must have taken to get anything so simple done.

“Fine then. Shows over.” Graverra sits down right where she had been standing with a loud ‘hmph’.

“Aw, come on now, girlie. He doesn’t mean anything by it. You gotta understand, this is a vulnerable moment for a dungeon core, especially if he has to go and let you see him.”

Graverra guesses she can understand, all things considered. She still gives herself another few minutes to finish sulking.

“Well, if you can hear me…” Graverra starts with a huff, but another thought strikes her and she turns her attention back to Capo. “Do dungeon cores have names? I know the dungeon doesn’t yet- which is not a judgement on my part, just a fact.”

“I just call him Bossman.”

“Well, I’m not calling him that.” Graverra sighs before trying again. “Listen, dungeon core, I’m sorry to have embarrassed you. I understand what it’s like to be under leveled and I’m sure you’ll get there eventually, but we both know making me walk forever isn’t going to help either of us progress anything.” She pauses for some kind of response.

Capo pips up instead, “She’s one of those newfangled necromancer types! She gets it! He’s got a thing for the dead stuff, if you couldn’t tell.”

Finally, as if to answer the question for himself, the wall across the hallway ripples and shimmers blue until the shape of a door emerges. The knob glints and glimmers even if the torchlight isn’t enough to cause that effect normally; A palm sized, polished skull.

“I do like that…” Graverra mumbles and gets back to her feet. Maybe this dungeon core would listen to her after all…

Graverra hesitates with her hand hovering over the doorknob. She can hear her heart hammering in her chest, the little bone adornments on her bodice clinking against each other in time. Was she nervous? Why was she so nervous? All she was going to do was march in there and ask to be spit back out. A perfectly reasonable request, especially if this core was so mortified by her very presence.

The marching part only lasts for her first step into the room. The impractical heel of her boot sinks into the floor beneath her with a startling squelch. Already too far gone, she can only move forward, high stepping across the fleshy floor as if it were made of hot coals instead.

“Hey! Hey, easy! I thought you necros liked this kind of stuff!” Capo warns, but it’s too late. Graverra lands on her ass with a final squish and a deep cringe. She can feel the damp flesh through her fishnets… And a heartbeat pulsing through what she can only guess might be the entire room. It almost matches her own.

When she opens her eyes again, Graverra faces the source. An impossibly large heart floats on its own in the center of the room, thump-thumping in time with the way the fleshy walls pulse around her.

“I thought cores were supposed to be crystals or something?” She directs her question to Capo still.

A single, gigantic eye opens in the middle of the heart and stares Graverra down. She supposes the iris at least looks crystalline… Bright blue, like mana.

“We’re allowed to take on whatever form we please, within reason.” A different voice fills the room. Still male, but after Capo’s gruffness, this sounds more like velvet. Soft. Warm.

“It’s… kind of gross.”

The entire room rumbles with the core’s frustration.

“No! No! I like it!” Graverra almost scrambles back to her feet, concerned the room might close in on her or she’d be spit back out and forced to keep wandering the endless hallway. When nothing else happens, she takes to twirling a curl of her hair around her finger. “It makes sense, I guess. You’re like the heart of the dungeon.”

“Exactly. Thank you.”

“See!” Graverra had almost forgotten about Capo for the time being. “I knew you two were going to get along. Show him your thing.”

“My thing?” Both Graverra and the core blink in unison.

“You can summon bone type things too, can’t you?”

“Oh! That… Well, every necromancer can do that.” She remains dismissive only before catching the way the core’s eyelids narrow, like it would have liked to scowl at her. “It’s different for you, I’m sure! I can only do one at a time and it costs quite a bit…”

Suddenly and without her say so, Graverra’s grimoire is summoned to hand, and the page with her own stats flipped open.

Name: Graverra Graeme

Title: [untitled]

Race: Human - Drethiaq

Class: Necromancer

Guilds: [none]

Level - 7

EXP. - 33%

Health 300 / 300

Mana 700 / 700

Stamina 225 / 400

Skills Slotted

Withering Blast | Death Shroud | Bone Fiend | Good Shepherd | [empty]

Equipment Slotted

Mage Robes (Necrotic) | Quickened Gloves (Mana) | Enduring Boots (Stamina) | Voren’s Mage Hat (Mana)

Strexhin Reaper’s Scythe (Necrotic)

“Hey!” Graverra shuts the grimoire before anything else can be parsed. Technically, it wasn’t private information, especially for a dungeon core, but it still felt like an invasion of privacy. He could have just asked nicely.

“If you had more mana, could you make more?” The core asks. It feels like an odd next question. Like something he should have already known.

“Well, first I could make her bigger and stronger. They sort of level up with you…” Graverra keeps the grimoire out for the sole purpose of hugging it close to her chest. Level seven wasn’t actually all that impressive and though she might have been able to talk a very good game with the average adventurer, a dungeon core surely would have known better.

The core hums thoughtfully. “I could level you.”

Graverra rubs her thumb over the spine of her grimoire nervously. “That’s really very nice of you to offer and I really don’t mean any offense, but… I think if all I did was grind through your little rats I’d die of bordem first. And I still don’t really understand how that helps you. She’d still be my minion. I couldn’t just leave her here.”

“Unless you were part of the dungeon, right bossman?” Capo seems to do a better job of keeping up than she was, for once.

“I can’t just be part of a dungeon… That doesn’t work… does it?”

“If you let me, I could marge the two of us together. We could share everything; levels, mana, spells, minions… You would be like a queen, Graverra, and my dungeon your domain.”

“Oh.” Something about the intensity of it all made Graverra want to blush into her grimoire. “Well, that’s… That’s probably the sweetest offer anyone has ever made me- You’ve- You’ve seen my stats now, I can’t even get in a guild.”

“Say yes, Graverra.”

“I- I wouldn’t be able to leave though, would I?”

“The core blinks. “Why would you ever need to? Why would you ever want to?”

“Well, it’s a big world…”

“I could make a world just for you.”

That really was tempting… “Could I think about it?”

“I suppose if you feel you have to.” The core sounds oddly calm for the disappointment Graverra is certain she’s just caused, but even as she waits, there’s no offer to let her out. No other door summoned.

“So you’ll just let me out now and I’ll come back in… I don’t know, what’s fair? A day or two? I will come back either way, I promise.”

“Oh…” Now the dungeon core sounds disappointed. “No, I can’t let you leave.”

Graverra stows her grimoire, feeling as though she might be about to need something else. Like her scythe. “But what if I decide to say no?”

“I’ll have to kill you.”

“What?!”

“If you leave now, it’ll be read as you clearing the dungeon. I don’t have the resources to reward someone such as yourself properly. You’ll drain me of what little I do have and I’ll cease to exist.”

“Well, that’s very unfortunate that I fell in here then, but… that wasn’t my fault.” She wishes they could pause there to think about why she fell in the first place, but it seems that time has already passed.

“I can’t let you walk out of here alive,” The core says again. “I’m sorry.”

“So what? I’m supposed to just sit here and wait until you do?”

“If you aren’t interested in my offer and you aren’t alright with my killing you, then yes.”

“You can’t summon something big enough to try.” There’s an almost yawn like quality to Graverra’s voice as she makes a point of inspecting her fingernails just then. Even if it were a finished dungeon, she was sure now she would have out leveled it. It would be quite the boon for itself if this dungeon killed someone like her. Too bad he couldn’t.

“No?” The floor beneath her becomes unstable as it transforms into a fleshy tentacle, slithering up and around her, tightening until she can hear bones crack.

“You would drop an awful lot of mana for a lowly little core like me if I killed you…” The room rumbles in a truly dangerous tone. But this time, Graverra isn’t concerned. He can’t crush her outright, but as the tentacle coils around her throat, Graverra realizes the plan may very well be just to slowly suffocate her to death.

Even with her mouth covered, she screams and begins casting as many withering blasts as she can. There’s no point in this if she has no mana to drop. By the way, the entire room shrieks in response and the tentacle retreats even faster than it had appeared. Graverra believes she had been right… She did out level this dungeon.