Lightning flashed above choppy seas, lighting the crests of massive waves that reached up to the skies like the arms of an angry giant. Thunder rumbled soon afterwards, drowning out the howling winds that whipped the waters into a frenzy. Nature had torn off her mask of amiability, revealing herself in all her violent glory. Yet, amidst this clash of forces where no life should have survived, a ship cut through the turbid waters.

It was a nondescript thing, a construct of unadorned metal that gleamed violet under the intermittent flashes of lightning. The salty waters and harsh winds had been unkind to it. Dark patches of rust sprawled all over its sides along with fluorescent moss that glowed dimly in the pauses of darkness between subsequent strikes of lightning. Tattered sails whipped in the violent winds, wrapping around the similarly rusty mast.

Despite its appearance, the ship was clearly far from ordinary as it navigated the stormy ocean as easily as a skiff would a still pond – climbing near vertical waves with consummate ease. Any lightning that approached it would inexplicably swerve midair and strike its mast, sending a trail of sparks down it and spreading over the metallic planks that made up the deck.

Elemental beings of violet electricity manned the deck, soaking up the sparks with evident enjoyment. Approximately humanoid in form, their inordinately long, spindly arms trailed along the ground in a shower of sparks as they lumbered along, adjusting a wire here or tightening a lashing there. But whenever their featureless faces turned to the prow of the ship, respect bordering on reverence could be read off their body language.

Standing at the prow with his hands on the wheel stood a large man. No matter how the deck rolled and jinked, no matter how far from the horizontal it leaned, he stood erect as though his legs were sewn onto the deck. Long grey hair and beard lashed around in the wind, framing his resolute face. His drenched, sleeveless tunic stuck to his burly figure and revealed his thick, hairy arms – muscles straining under his skin as he fought against the wheel to keep the ship on its desired path. An ornate tattoo of a serpent coiled around his arms, the tip of its tail starting on the back of his left arm and its head resting on the back of his right. But the most remarkable feature about him was his eyes. Eyes the dark grey of thunderclouds with purple sparks of lightning flashing in their depths, a mirror of the current environment. A portal to his Dungeon.

The ship crested a particularly large wave, hanging weightlessly in the air for one precarious moment before tipping and plunging down into the dark abyss between waves. The man let go of the wheel, letting it spin wildly for a moment before grabbing it and stilling it. The momentary respite angled the prow into the onrushing wall of water. With an impact that rippled through the ship causing the metal to groan ominously, the Wavestrider crashed into the water, plunging beneath the surface for a brief moment of utter silence before emerging into the cacophony of the storm yet again, sending water cascading off the sides of the vessel.

Blowing a strand of wet hair out of his eyes, Ezekiel Enzeal’s eyes seemed to penetrate the intervening miles of ocean and desert as he induced the location of his goal through the tracking mark placed on her. He had been tasked with bringing his niece home whether she wanted to come or not.

The Sangre prince had grown impatient to meet his bride.

Lirael licked the corner of her lip, feeling the pleasurable sting of the lingering spice on the tip of her tongue. Taking a deep breath, she inhaled the colourful miasma surrounding her as she stood outside her Dungeon - the swiftly dimming light of dusk casting a grey pall over the land. Beside her, protected by her Domain was Vlad.

Her Undead Marrow shard activated, rendering the toxin harmless. Now that she knew what to look for, she detected the faint fragrance of spice concealed by the sting of the poison. To her, the air smelt like money.

The corners of her lips curved upwards. Buying that slave had been an investment that just kept on giving. The boy was talented in both combat and magic and possessed an animal cunning that drove him to seek her favour through any means possible. All she had paid was a couple of shards and some Tier 2 resources. In return, he had handed over an entire industry. It was no wonder that she was so pleased with him.

As someone who had grown up trailing the coattails of her restaurateur aunt, there was no way she wouldn't understand the value of a monopoly business, especially in an industry involving luxury goods like spice. It didn’t matter what the actual cost of the product was as long as it was marketed to the correct people in the correct manner. Her market wasn’t the magical portion of the populace. If a mage had even an iota of spare cash, they would invest it right back into their magic. That was their basis. No mage in their right mind would choose luxury over a chance to advance their realm.

No. Her customers would be mortals. Mortal aristocrats to be precise. Lacking the ability to practice magic, to a mortal aristocrat, money was oftentimes just a number. Reputation was what they clung to – in some cases with a zeal bordering on obsession. She didn’t doubt that if she managed to advertise the new spice as a limited product, she could literally decide a price at will. And people would pay it, happily. It didn’t matter if the volume of production was low if she was making several hundred times the cost price in profits.

Mages often got caught up in their status and overlooked the mortal section of the populace, considering them beneath their notice. That was why they would often dismiss anything not related to magic out of hand. And in the process, they would miss many business opportunities that would have otherwise provided a constant stream of revenue for them, catapulting them up the realms of magic. Lirael had no such compunctions. Her aunt’s restaurants served mortal and mage alike and the astute woman had made sure to instil a proper mindset for business in her niece.

Apart from a stable customer base, another reason why Lirael was confident in the success of the prospective spice trade was her Dungeon and her current location. One of the constituent shards of the Bloodskull Dungeon was an Undead Marrow shard and she was currently in the Myriad Toxins Desert Area, the birthplace of said shard. Once she managed to deal with her problem and properly integrate the shard into her Dungeon, she would have an inexhaustible source of raw material to work with and shards to equip her workforce. And what better workforce could there be than a regiment of untiring undead.

As for the Phlebotomy shard? Literal rivers of blood flowed through her Dungeon. One would be hard pressed to find an environment more suited to culturing the Oasis Leeches that produced those shards. All she had to do was dig a few ponds and reroute some of the blood into them. And if she was reading her map correctly, her destination for today would give her a steady supply of control shards required to link the Phlebotomy shards to the Undead Marrow shards.

In the end, it all came back to her troubles with her Dungeon. Unless she solved them, she wouldn't be able to take a single step forward, either in her business or her magic. Fortunately, she had a good idea of what was causing the problem and a tentative solution. That was the reason she had arrived here in the first place – to test whether her conjectures were right or not.

Lirael suspected that the reason why her Embryonic Dungeon was blowing hot and cold with the Undead Marrow shard was a lack of compatibility with the other shards that made up her Dungeon. It was a logical conclusion to make since, as per the records kept by her family, over nine-tenths of Dungeons failed to form due to this very reason. The statistics were on her side.

Shards that constituted a Dungeon needed to tie in to at least one, preferably more, of the other shards that were part of it. The connecting factor could be one of three things. The abilities conferred by the shards could be linked in some manner. This would result in a Combination Dungeon. The habitats or the food habits of the shards or the beasts they were extracted from could be connected. This would result in an Ecosystem Dungeon. Finally, there could be some overarching theme connecting the shards despite their disparate abilities and feeding habits. This would result in a Thematic Dungeon. The best, most tightly knit Dungeons had some measure of all three types of connections.

The Bloodskull Dungeon, with its ice-blood-fire precipitation cycle, had the embryonic form of a Thematic Dungeon. The problem was that the Undead Marrow shard didn't really add much to the theme. Lirael had only added it as a glue to hold her Dungeon together. The elemental repel between her fire and ice shards had caused a lot of instability in the early stages of her Dungeon's formation and she had been forced to add it as a stabilizer. The Undead Marrow shard, by dint of its flexible nature, conformed easily with other shards and was a popular choice for mages who wanted to increase the stability of their Dungeon without affecting their theme or function.

The solution she had conceived of was quite crude, but at the same time, it was effective in its simplicity. She would artificially modify the environment of her Dungeon until it matched her desires and then let the Dungeon adapt to it until it became the new baseline. It was similar in theory to the underwater training that her adventurer clansmen underwent to prepare for exploring Dungeons with zero gravity. By exposing their bodies to weightlessness over long periods of time, they adapted to it and could move unhindered in such environments.

All she had to do was load a variety of undead in her Dungeon and see how it responded. If the response was favourable, she would bring in more of them. If it wasn’t, she would pass them over. Over the last few days, that’s exactly what she had been doing and the results were encouraging. Especially undead with strong affinities to fire, ice or blood adapted to the environment of Bloodskull extremely well. This was in line with the principle that the better connected a shard was to the others that made up a Dungeon, the more stable would its integration be. So, the introduction of a fire attuned undead, like a Netherfire Serpent say, would result in the connection between the Undead Marrow shard and her fire shard being strengthened. Lirael believed that once the population of undead reached an optimum size and distribution, her Undead Marrow shard would finally fuse with her Dungeon.

Turning to Vlad, she said, “We’ll be visiting a place called the Bone Garden today. As per the map, it has the highest aggregation of undead in the surrounding regions. It’s going to be a tough fight. Ready?”

The Thrall thumped his left breast with his right fist. “Yes!”