Mary was mulling over her options, she wanted aerial recon capability and she needed a fast messenger service, her fast ships just weren’t cutting it. The hydrogen producing jellyfish were fun but otherwise a waste of time, the albatross had great eyesight but it was dumb and had a one track mind to boot the wyverns, both varieties were just too big. What to make, winged sphinx, no, manticore, nope, some kind of bat, too limited.

‘Now if I took the wyvern and shrunk it to the size of a large hawk or small eagle, that would allow the thing to devote more of its brains for thinking with less body to control. The mouth could be adapted for speech easily enough, maybe I could add arms or make the feet more flexible to serve as hands... Yeah I’ll try that. Wish I had a dragon to play with.’

Mary became aware of her surroundings once again and focused on the merchantman that had just entered her domain, she scanned it and relaxed, no adventurers or soldiers but the well dressed woman at the rail was carrying two little embryos, by the genetic signature they were Tomcat’s, she was really sorry she couldn’t grin but she could share the news with Drina and Trish and did.

« Hey Trish care to help, I want to find something out via the System’s interface and you’re much better than me at that. »

A giggling Trisha agreed to help and was soon digging through blue screens while Mary looked on. They noted that ‘Unnamed – Sandrinna’ was now ‘Last Stand – Sandrinna’. What all had in common was the fact that they were in dire straights, especially Heaven’s Belt he had a large group of rouge adventurers on his penultimate floor and his last floor was nearly bare.

« Wow Trish you’re good with this System thingy, I think we can help Ralpindi survive but it’s gonna cost him, can you put us in touch with them? »

“Well no, but I can use the messenger service.”

« Please do, tell them we can save them but they’ll owe us a big one, then tell them to merge the two big caverns on their last level into one and release or share control of it with me for half an hour. I have just the monster for them. »

Nightlight ceased his frantic searching through the system when he received Trisha’s message. He promptly relayed it to his dungeon adding the source.

« We’ll do it, if Blue Lagoon means us harm it’ll only shorten our lives and or freedom by a day at most and those Badger Folk have been invaluable even if not enough. »

Ralpindi merged the caverns wondering what would need so much space. Then he ceded control of the cavern to the intruding force. He maintained just enough control to be able to see what was happening. He watched as half the floor deepened becoming a deep cavity that filled with water, then two forty-five meter long snake monsters slowly came into being. His huge cavern started to look somewhat small. Then a small portal opened and six well armed Tigermen stepped through. The portal vanished and control of the cavern returned to him along with control of the snake things. He inspected them with care and formed the template but there was no way he could afford to spawn one of those monsters for some time. At least he was confident that he would have the time now.

« Nightlight how can we best use those monsters? »

“Why not just aim them at our enemies and let them use whatever tactics Blue Lagoon has programmed into them. I can’t see any of the tanks lasting long against those things. What about the tigermen?”

« They’re free willed like the Badger Folk I Suspect they are Tiger Folk and they belong to Blue Lagoon, will you go and talk to them see why they’re here. »

Not long after Nightlight was back, “boss they say Mother sent them to help then to establish themselves as an adventurer party on their way home.”

* * *

« Hey Trish it worked, it worked, I can open a portal to a remote location if the local dungeon cedes control of the location to me, now got to create a little air filled labyrinth deep under the ocean to fool the locals of the various continents. »

“What are you planning now?”

« Plannin’ why you know that Trish, I’m gonna own this world... (snicker) Sorry Trish, (snicker) Too much work but I do intend to have tentacles in everything I can reach. »

Trish calmed down slowly as she glared at the half buried diamond.

« Might be able to do something similar with Folding Deep. »

‘Hey me, could use some help, any ideas.’

Mary stopped and concentrated on her link to the human her and Trisha froze in shock there were two of Mary.

Mary watched the scene of organised chaos, If only her other me could use the dogsoldiers... Then she concentrated and installed Bluey’s updated templates after she added a few extra tweaks on other core along with instructions for use and maintenance.

* * *

« Damn it Nightlight, she’s playing at politics and we’re entangled with her. We will owe her our very existence. »

“Hey boss, calm down we’ll be fine, hey look here they come, that damn Tank is in front as usual, hey where’s the other snake?”

« It slipped into the water, it’s waiting underwater, it has fully functional gills. Not too surprising for an ocean dungeon monster. »

The tank roared his challenge as his party members dropped into their accustomed locations. The snake coiled back then shot its head forward for a lighting fast strike, its flank brushed against the tank sending him reeling as its mouth snapped closed around the party’s mage biting her in half then with a sideways swipe the snake bit the healer pumping him full of poison before swallowing him whole. The remaining adventurers charged into the room only to be attacked by the other snake when they passed its position in the lake.

The remaining adventurers broke and ran, Ralpindi noted with some bemusement that all the tanks had survived but none of the mages or healers had.

* * *

Drina, her brother, Joy and Pounce and a few of their friends were waiting for the ship to dock before swimming the channel so they could explore the new annexe in the story dungeon. They were all curious about Tomcat’s lady friend. They got bored waiting for the slow merchantman and decided to head for the play dungeon.

On the ship Tarandella watched with interest as a group of children swam across the channel stopping briefly to stare with interest at the ship she was in. They then dissapeared into the other island as the ship slowly turned into the small harbour.

‘They certainly looked happy and nobody seemed worried about their safety, maybe this would work after all.’ She thought to herself.

* * * INTERLUDE * * *

The teleconference had been going for some ten minutes and with the exception of Mary, Dr Jones and Dr Sebenschu all present and in conference were lost in the blizzard of technical jargon. Finally Dr Jones slumped in despair and Dr Sebenschu shook himself.

“So we’re agreed, none of this is possible with what we know, Ms Silvestre we are both very interested in that experiment you used as an example. I suspect money and resources will be found for your uplift experiment with octopi.” Dr Jones looked unhappy, “thank you all for your participation, please rest assured we will get to the bottom of this syndrome.”

The screen blanked, “Impressive, may I ask what’s your Int?” asked CeeJay

“Thirty-two.”

“That’s not possible, humans have a max of eighteen at level 1 and the max only goes up by one per level,” complained Ceejay.

Mary smirked, “an’ what has that to do with me, I’m unique.”

“Will you allow us to arrange for a medical...”

“No! Sorry agent Tremillio, absolutely not,” asserted Mary.

“But Ms Silvestre we need to learn everything about this condition.”

“My client has said no and I see no pressing need for her to comply,” inserted Trev.

Soon Mary was on her way home once again in her lawyer’s car, then arrived on her street to a scene of absolute chaos, “Oh beep! What now!”

Mary squeezed herself out of Trev’s BMW, “Beep stupid streamlined cramped cars.” She stretched to get the kinks out of her back and centred herself in her core and considered her options and grinned. ‘quick an’ dirty it is. No froggies but pain, oh yeah lessee.’

Mary casually leant against a tree near the beginning of the street and concentrated, first on her watch where she added a pain field enchantment, they would have to touch her to be affected but... fun!

Then she concentrated on her link and tried to pass the scene across focusing on the holy Joes waving placards around and screaming about God ordering them not to allow a witch to Live. That and the damn TV vans. ‘Hey me, could use some help, any ideas.’

Seconds later her head felt overfull, ‘Hey human me, added some updated templates you need to do... Have fun me tell the Badgers to deal with the beeps in the vans. Beep Bluey stop it with the beep beeps!”

Mary studied the instructions and explanations she had left herself and chuckled, Trev was still waiting though. She glanced at the bushes lining the edge of the Anderson’s property and grinned again and concentrated, why did nothing... oh right, so claim a bit, then try again. Recover domain lean back and watch.

Twenty-four wolf folk in light armour and armed with clubs and shields raced out of the Anderson’s garden, fell into two lined and charged the crowd and unlike the cops they didn’t have to worry about harming the beep protestors, and they had some nice teeth too, hopefully their victims would agonise at being bitten by werewolves until the next full moon.

Then ten Badger Folk trotted out of the Anderson’s garden and skirted the crowd as they headed for the vulture’s vans.

‘Hmm, Vultures, now that’s a real cool idea... I wonder,’ both versions of Mary thought in delight.