Graverra had only ever tried to solo a dungeon once before the abysmal attempt to run her own. She had been level three - a perfectly respectable level for a Necromancer out of Drethi - though they weren’t exactly clamoring to include her in their parties even then. Before Valerea and Branimir. Pickings were slim, but evidently not slim enough to make her burgeoning deadwaking an appealing addition to a dungeon run. If she had wanted the spoils of running a dungeon, she would just have to do it herself.

And it had been such a tiny dungeon. A room, really. At least that’s what they’d told her, by the time she had stood herself on the dungeon’s front step it had evidently done some leveling of it’s own. At the time she had resented the parties - or single casters in want of a party trying to improve their standings as quickly as possible - that had come before her, thereby causing the dungeon to grow at least one extra room. She had only managed to clear the one - it turned out that sort of thing was tedious and just barely within the reaches of her stats at the moment. Still, it would have been impressive… If she hadn’t chickened out of attempting the rest of it.

Looking back now, Graverra wishes she remembered more specifics about it all - How long did they think the dungeon had been sitting there? Who really found it first? How many of them had to go through before it leveled up? Did it get to kill anyone, or should they expect most parties to be able to clear their own dungeon? What did happen when someone died down there? - But that was getting ahead of herself.

The point in her reminiscing was this; If Graverra had learned anything lately it was that dungeons did not appear fully formed and functional at any level, let alone all the way at seven. And although someday she still had a rather grand vision for it all, she wouldn’t want to frighten off any potential XP or mana. Perhaps that was further proof she was beginning to think more like a core.

The other reason a dungeon started at the very beginning turned out to be because moving an entire room was a pain in the ass.

Graverra huffs, already beginning to feel tense from the sheer number of things she had to keep mental tabs on, let alone actually move at the same time. She can’t use any of her usual aids - not with Hecrux watching - and even then, Graverra isn’t sure using the mirror to be able to see what she’s doing wouldn’t just go and make her feel more dizzy. It’s less of a headrush than moving her own consciousness through the dungeon, just the horrible vertigo inducing sensation of not feeling any direction as firm or stable or just still.

She hardly notices the way everything else around her - Capo, the table, the mirror, even the little crystalline trinkets tying back her bed canopy - rattles when she stops trying to move the broom closet for a rest.

“Graverra…”

It doesn’t matter though. She already knows what he might say. “Don’t! I just said don’t!”

“I haven’t said anything!”

“You want to though.”

The dungeon core sighs. “May I ask a question?”

Graverra worries her bottom lip as she considers whether she can actually handle that or not. “… One.”

“Why didn’t you place everything where you wanted it in the first place?”

“Because! Because I didn’t know I wanted it there first! First I wanted you to not be annoyed at it!”

“I’m not annoyed at it.” In fact, she might even have to admit he was doing a remarkable job remaining even tempered against her own preemptive touchiness.

“Well, you’ll be less annoyed when it’s the first room.”

“May I offer a suggestion?”

“… One.”

“Put your set dressings in storage, dearest.”

Graverra growls, annoyed at herself for forgetting that… But the training hadn’t said anything about storage. Granted, training didn’t seem to account for the fact that they weren’t starting from absolute scratch at all.

Nor had there been any mention of there being a limit to the storage either, but Graverra supposes infinite storage would just be too easy. The bone spider, for the time being, she can just set the roaming the hall that would eventually be behind the broom closet. The puddle-pond she quickly drags to the courtyard to sit beside the fountain until she has need of it again, but this garners the attention of the dogs.

“We do not eat the goldfish!” Graverra projects her voice down into the courtyard. “I’m still mad at you for trying to eat me!”

The pair of hounds slides to a sit and Mograid goes as far as to cock his head towards the ceiling - Still another thing to fix when she got the chance.

“I know, you’re hungry, I’m sorry. But that’s my goldfish.” Another thing she had been reluctant to let Hecrux know; Technically they had to feed their defenders. She’s not sure if that had been the case before, or a carrier over from her inclusion. In an open dungeon the whole thing seemed to take care of itself or at the very least, made the procuring of food stuffs even out in the end. If she felt especially confident in their abilities and didn’t mind ensuring the proper steps for resurrection were in place, she could have even sent them outside the dungeon - just a small radius from the entrance - to hunt for themselves.

But they weren’t open and they certainly weren’t ‘properly functioning’ right in that moment. It still didn’t mean the goldfish could become dog food.

Without a second thought, Graverra summons a glass bowl to the table - the mana cost would be a pittance and she’d banish it away for what she could get back later - and into it Bubbles and a bit of pond water.

Capo makes a show of annoyance at having to share what had up until that moment been his table, but Graverra only half listens. She gives the fishbowl a fond little tap with her nail before flicking her attention back to the ceiling - She’d asked the skull to remind her about it later anyway, and while she wasn’t physically there she was mentally in the courtyard so really she might as well do that one thing.

With some extra familiarity with the various menus of the dungeon system, Graverra quickly navigates to Invisible Ceilings, spreading it over the cave-like tiles Hecrux had placed, earning them back roughly 1/3rd of what it had cost them in mana to place but just as quickly spending it and a little more on a repeating pattern of a dusky twilight sky.

Satisfied, for now, Graverra begins shifting her thoughts back to the broom closet… Until becoming aware of a conversation happening around her.

“She does that now.” Capo says matter of factly and when her eyes refocus on the bedroom she gives the skull a quizical stare.

“Your eyes were doing the glowing thing again.” He explains.

“Oh.” And Hecrux had noticed. Which shouldn't have been a bad thing, she wouldn’t have thought, but the fact that it became a topic of conversation at all… “Should they not do that? I thought it was a good thing, you know? Like, your’s does it, but I guess that’s cause usually cores really are like a whole crystal thing, but then you get to put a skin over it, so…” If her irises were the only real bit of dungeon core she had in her… She was going to have to find a way to fix that. “If I had bitten off more of you- Don’t either of you make that any weirder than it already is or I swear I will throw Capo at you again, Hecrux. If I had more of you inside-“ She couldn’t even blame them for that one. Graverra quickly shuts her mouth, the rest of that sentence coming out as a frustrated hum.

Despite the skull’s lack of lips and Graverra’s threats, Capo sputters as he holds in a laugh. If Hecrux had any sort of reaction, he’s doing a much better job of hiding it and Graverra is more than grateful for the wall between them now.

She tries again, her voice raised and fast until it once again becomes hopeless. “Do we think the amount of core-ness is related to the volume of… you… in… me.”

Hecrux clears his non existant throat. “I’m not certain. I- I didn’t mean to distract you this much, I was only commenting- I hadn’t seen that before.”

She hadn’t been aware that would be something worth seeing… But she supposed if it was she wasn’t about to start complaining. Maybe one of those things to revisit later.

“Technically, you still haven’t.” Intuiting things in another room was different than actually being in the room. Graverra very much understood that now, and if she were the primary core she might have been grateful to have the difference brought to her attention.

“Maybe I’d like to.”

Graverra purses her lips as if she really has to consider it. Definitely something to revisit later. “Maybe once I’m finished with this.”

“Freaks.” Capo doesn't even do them the curtesy of trying to mumble.

“Hush, you.” She gives the skull a little flick on the forehead.

It is difficult to focus after that - as if the small audience wasn’t nerve-racking enough - but Graverra does manage to settle back in to clearing the broom closet and finally sliding the whole thing to the front of the dungeon. It does feel lighter without everything in it, which makes for both less strain on herself but does leave more room for feeling dizzy. By the time the broom closet was really moving, even if she had kept an ear out for conversations happening without her, she wouldn’t have been able to make sense of it anyway.

The broom closet meets it’s - hopefully - final resting place with a slightly smaller thud. Graverra notices this time, cocking her head at the way the goldfish’s temporary bowl ripples. Interesting… Though she doesn’t know what it might mean for them in a practical sense. And even if it did right in that moment… That had been a lot. Maybe more than she had expected.

Graverra folds her arms over her grimoire and then rests her chin on top of them.

Core 66.5 (SECONDARY)

Class: Dungeon

Location: Undetermined

Core Rank: 147th

Mana Reserves: 975 (7% / 1hr)

Dungeon: Unnamed

[See Further Dungeon Info]

Core Avatar - ‘Graverra Graeme’

Appearance: Drethiaq Necromancer

Theme: Bride of the Dungeon Core

The sight of her mana reserves has her faceplanting into the book completely. She hadn’t expected it to cost quite so much, though she guessed she had done a bit more than just move the room. There didn’t seem to be a way to pull up her stamina any longer, but now that she has the renewed point of reference the correlation between that and dungeon building, she definitely feels the absence of mana. And it would still take a bit more to move the things not left in storage back.

“Maybe you’ll just stay here with me…” Graverra turns her head to face the fishbowl still on the table.

Capo is quick to protest. “Absolutely not.”

“And since when do you make decisions around here?”

“Since I recall being promised a body at some point and until that happens this table and being kicked back and forth between the two of you is all I got.”

The skull wasn’t wrong… She hadn’t forgotten that, but…

“Hecrux is right.” Graverra begins to sound miserable again, but not about that. “Everything costs.”

It had to be that way, she at least knew that. Not from any dungeon training, but before. Most liked to assume necromancers were trying to cheat things like mana, but they had always been beholden to the same rules as any other caster… They just knew how to be a bit more resourceful about it. But there was nothing dead in the dungeon yet. No corpses to borrow a bit of mana off of unless she made them first and that defeated the entire purpose.

“But it is a good idea.” Hecrux interjects, sounding delicate again. There’s a brief thought given to the idea that maybe he knows she’s on the verge of panic again and then, how he came to know that… But Graverra lets it be. For now. “Perhaps we did work a little backwards…”

“I figure we can lure a few overly ambitious ones in.” Graverra sits up again only to glumly rest her chin in the palm of her hand. She appreciates the compliment, more than she’s letting on, but… It still doesn’t feel like enough.

The huff of amusement Hecrux lets out next doesn’t read as anything against her though. “We seem to have a knack for that, don’t we?”