Cabochon was returning, and I could hardly restrain my excitement. For more a week I’d been seething, stagnating in this too-thin, painfully inadequate air.

Now I saw salvation. He carried with him the flower of the Goddess, Sith, that was the promised cure for Aurum. That would restore my guardian, and with him my strength. If Aurum had been awake the second layer would never have been lost. Adamant would never have died. None of the adventurers could have even posed a threat to me.

Without Aurum, I wasn’t whole. Argent was clever and cunning, the best of my creations, but Aurum, Aurum was close to my equal. A companion.

Plainly, I missed him.

He would understand my vendetta. My need to declare myself against the gods. My other minions knew my mind because it was joined to them, but Aurum simply understood.

Even if he was a lazy, idle creature who slept all day.

Cabochon returned with the flower held high, and I opened a door for him, carving a curved tunnel that descended down to Aurum’s lair. The lamp I had made was still turning, casting the endless shadows of swimming fish about the walls. Grand pillars lined in reflective glass caught the sparks of light and scattered them into shimmering cascades of blue, watery luminance.

Aurum had barely moved. His scaled bulk curled around the light blue egg that I had created so long ago, still unhatched. His eyes were open, even in sleep, but I could feel the slowness of his breath, the thrum of too many organs packed inside his body. I had done what I could to fix him but this, this would take a miracle.

Cabochon lifted the flower.

It opened slowly, the pinkish, waxy petal parting, releasing from within a dazzling white glow. A tiny star tangled among the golden pistil of the flower’s heart.

Tiny, but growing. Rising from the flower and taking up more and more of the cavernous room, swelling to a golden halo that washed away the fish-shadows and made the lake shine like a mirror. White petals drifted from above, forming a spiral that descended upon and into Aurum, the petals landing on his scales and sinking into the flesh beneath, dissolving into pure divine energy.

His eyes flickered. The storm of petals continued to fall, moving faster now, resembling shooting stars or silver threads of rain as it poured energy into him. His scaled bulk shifted, a breath running through him.

And then he lifted his head. The roar that poured from his throat was neither snake, nor insect, nor dark thing from beneath the sea. It was all of them, fused into an outpouring of raw triumphant sound. It shook the cavern, dispersing the last of the flower storm in a hail of petals.

He was changing. His form, mishappen with the bumps of cancerous growth, began to settle, reforming into the smooth lustrous scales and streamlined form of a serpent. The dark, chitinous arms that burst from his underbelly took on an opalescent green hue, like the carapace of a beetle, cut with sheens of purple and black that matched them to the fringe of feathers that ran around his cobra’s hood and down his back in two long ridges. Those feathers grew larger, more pronounced. He was still roughly the same shape as he’d been, but given balance again, a beauty instilled. A strange chimeric handsomeness born of symmetry and daring colors.

He swayed, proudly raised up, a serpent’s happy little dance, and dipped his head to nuzzle fondly against the egg he’d protected for so long. It was a tiny speck of blue lost in his sea of green scales. Opening his trifold mouth, he let out a huff of steam - a pang of recollection striking me as I saw the similarities between him and the stone-lizard - and a long, hissing tongue of blue flame bathed the egg’s surface.

It shivered, and cracked. Something bulged at the broken fragments in their laminate of sticky yolk. A scaled head, cute and peeping, prodded its way through the breach, followed by sharp little four-fingered hands. A kobold.

A kobold with a runaway streak of gold in the spiny ridges that started above its eye and ran in two parallel lines down its brow. With feathers in a mantle around its scrawny neck. Four-armed, and amber-eyed.

[ Gold-Streaked Kobold ]

Forming an attunement in its egg to a nearby source of draconic blood, this kobold has taken on draconic traits from Aurum, its spiritual sire. It will serve with faith and affection all its life.

In the space of an hour, I had been restored my oldest friend, and a new addition to my Dungeon. Today was a glorious day.

And tomorrow, tomorrow would also be glorious. A day of revenge.

Nathan Withersprout struggled to hold Camila up. The armored woman had turned pale. Her dark brown hair was pasted to the cold drops of sweat that beaded on her brow, running down her eyes as they opened and closed in convulsive tremors, hanging half-lidded, oblivious to the world.

Annabelle was even harder pressed, the tiny bard almost vanishing under Camila’s armored shoulder. The soldier’s feet trailed and snagged against the endless roots that tangled across the ground here. It was a strange, strange forest, with crystalline blades for leaves, creating an endless humming canopy of sound, and when the wind turned and knocked the leaves against one another, a chiming like a thousand bells.

It was beautiful, too. The sunlight sweeping through the translucent blue leaves created a deep, irregular blue quality of light that waved and flowed around them like an ocean, and the strange creatures that darted on the branches above them cast shadows like sharks passing overhead. It was a humbling feeling.

Just… a little hard to appreciate, at the moment.

Nathan had wanted to be an adventurer. To see the world. Already, he had seen more than he could have imagined. Even the air here tasted different, invigorated by sparks of Mana that settled on the face like fiery snowflakes.

He just wanted to make it back home and make sure all this knowledge wasn’t lost. To sit down and write a long, detailed tome on the experience that would keep him out of trouble for a decade or so.

Masked apes with russet-red fur and golden masks scuttled along the branches, more and more them arriving to peer down at the intruders to their forest. It was a little army, and it made Nathan very, very nervous.

“Are you seeing-” He started, and Annabelle nodded vigorously.

“I am.” She grunted out. “If we ditch her-”

“Not acceptable.” Nathan wasn’t going to leave Camila to die so they could run away. Where would they even run? Deeper into this forest? Farther away from the door home?

The fact was, they had to go back. Back through the Dungeon, that pit of horrors, and for that, they needed three people. At least three.

If they could find some way of scouting through the door, they could wait until another raid was being carried out and make their move then. It was a slim but real chance they had, but they needed, absolutely needed Camila.

Or maybe he was just making justifications for something he couldn’t stomach. Maybe this was the voice of weakness, convincing him it was logic speaking.

Maybe it was his conscience.

“Nathan-”

“I know, but I’m not going to let her die!”

“Nathan, she’s already dead.”

Annabelle let her half of Camila’s burden slip off her shoulders, and pure, dead weight dragged the armored woman free from Nathan’s grasp. He was left on his knees, panting. Camila lay sprawled and lifeless over the root-snarled black earth. Little insects, dragonflies with painted carapaces, buzzed over her closed eyes. She looked peaceful, at least.

Nathan blinked. Were there- Were there really tiny people, riding the dragonflies?

“Nathan?” Annabelle asked, almost laughing, her voice full of wonder.

“I know.” All around them were tiny creatures, half-human and half-insect, fluttering through the air on four-fold wings. Only he didn't see the anything to laugh about. They were surrounded.

“You sent adventurers to the Dungeon.” Eyfrae said, her voice low and dangerously controlled. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“Oh, come on now, Eyfrae, as if you tell me everything. As if anyone tells me anything.” Governor Kedlin huffed, trying to rise from his chair and dropping down again as Eyfrae turned, her eyes literally blazing. White flame poured from the sockets and ran along her eyebrows, giving her a ghastly stare of pure white fire with bluish blots hovering like pupils in the heart of the blaze.

“You are not in charge here, Kedlin. You are very good at what you do, but you do not rule this city, you merely administrate it. Keep your nose in your books and ledgers and leave the decisions to those qualified to make them.” She hissed, pinning him back in his seat with her burning presence as she leaned over his desk.

“The Empire rules this city.” The old man had finally found his nerve, instead of retreating back into his comfortable chair. “I thought you remembered that, but now you’re talking of handing it over to the dwarves, to the mer- inhumans. Now there are bandits on my borders shouting of revolution! Am I supposed to let Caltern fall out of the Empire’s grasp?”

“Funny.” She said the word sourly, a bit of fire falling from her tongue like ink from a quill. He hastily batted it out as she stepped away, walking to the row of windows that overlooked the training yard. Her reflection blazed in the glass pane. “Because what I heard was that they came from the Dungeon of Ashen Repose. There is a layer to politics, Kedlin, that you have barely sniffed at. Even your Empress-”

“Do not,” he spat out furiously. “Insult Her.”

“Even your Empress is the same as you, Kedlin, maintaining her position by allowing others to make the real decisions. Those others are the Guilds, and they are coming here.”

“How dare you. How dare-” The old man spluttered, voice petering out in sheer incomprehensible outrage.

“The only thing that will qualify us to hold onto any scrap of power, Kedlin, is my position as head for the Adventurer’s Guild. And even that only if I can prove some control over the Dungeon.” She turned back to him, letting her eyes slowly extinguish. “So the next time you send adventurers without my permission, I will kill you. I am going now. You know where to find me.”

“Watching the Tower all day like a mother hen squatting over her eggs?” Kedlin asked, his voice sour.

“You can throw insults, Kedlin. I can throw fire. See to it you remember which one counts in the end.”