A short time ago, deep beneath Noviel…

Gis pursed his lip sin distaste at the steaming piles of goo that had recently been shapeshifting abominations of various sorts. The cave was filled with them. Them, and shards of exploded gemstones and piles of false treasure.

What a waste.

Still, Urkhan had commanded he cleanse this place and as far as he could see he had done so.

Gis flicked some purple ichor off his fingers and jerked his chin at the man in black plate mail accompanying him.

‘Do one more check. Make sure we haven’t missed anything. The Great Urkhan would be most displeased.’

He left no hint of ambiguity as to just who might be the tool—and the recipient—of that displeasure in his tone.

The man in plate barked out some orders and the platoon of adventurers they had with them got to work, stabbing piles of goo and carefully checking the remaining piles of coin, in case any proved to be treasure mimics.

‘Quickly!’ the priest snapped. His mouth twisted in irritation. ‘We have a long journey ahead of us.’

A long and unpleasant journey. Urkhan had ordered him to travel to that unholy ruin Tarin-Tiran, for some reason the deity did not bother to divulge.

Though Gis has his suspicions. Ones which he had carefully confirmed by consulting with a select few demons not directly in Urkhan’s chain of command.

The bard was making trouble again. Why else would Gis have been sent here, to Noviel? Yes, their efforts at The Keep had all come to naught, because that idiot bard had interfered. The local populace had been riled up, and supplied with information they never should have had access to!

Now the whole place was in open rebellion and with Gis gone, it would likely be only a matter of days before that idiot Basgar was summarily deprived of his head. Waste upon waste. The Keep could have been a springboard for a new empire that dominated the entire continent!

‘It isss good to be out doing thingsss again,’ Ghen hissed from his little home in Gis’s eye socket.

The snake was taking things a lot better than the priest was.

‘Nothing here!’ one of his adventurers called from her area of the cave.

‘Clear here too!’ another shouted.

In short order it was established that there were no further threats, shapeshifter or otherwise, still lurking in the room. The cavern was a place of death. There was nothing left here for anyone.

‘Very well. Let us leave this place then.’ Gis spat on the floor. ‘Disgusting.’

The priest paused and he and the snake in his head took one last, lingering look around the ruined cavern. So much effort. And no treasure. Only the knowledge that he was fulfilling Lord Urkhan’s will saved this expedition from being a complete waste.

‘Move!’ He snapped his fingers irritably at his party. ‘We have a long journey ahead of us and we had best get started.’

***

‘Finally!’ Amaranthine said, watching the priest disappear from the safety of Ruprecht’s true core room, ‘I thought he’d never leave.’

He certainly did enough damage.

If the dungeon’s voice was sour, well, wasn’t that his right? The damned priest of Urkhan had shown up with plenty of support and all but razed Ruprecht’s dungeon down to component parts. So much work, gone.

It was a good thing he’d already invested most of his resources into his special project, and achieved his goal. Otherwise this might have set him back months, and he would have had to try and find a new set of adventurers to ‘help him recover’ his energies.

Robin had been reluctant enough to send him criminals. His position down here was no longer tenable. Priests raiding him at the behest of their cockamamie deities. Another rival dungeon, both older and stronger, nipping at his borders. No. Action needed to be taken.

So he had.

Ruprecht had poured everything he had into increasing his abilities along one very specific line, and now, well, now he started reflectively at himself. For two core gems, identical in all but size (one being substantially smaller than the other), now floated next to one another on identical pillars in his core room.

He’d managed to created a secondary core. His consciousness could inhabit either, and even if one were destroyed he would survive and live on in the other.

Some cores used secondaries like this to better expand and control territory they already had. Ruprecht intended his for another purpose. To set himself up in a second location. And, when he had recovered some more energies, a third.

It was a highly inefficient use of resources, but someone clearly wanted him destroyed. Possibly more than one someone, if there had been more to that reckless knight’s attack on him than there appeared.

Ruprecht had no intention of going quietly. So he conceived a plan, based on his own observations of the world and its realities and the gossip he enjoyed a steady stream of from Rerebos, Robin’s familiar.

Bribing the little dragon with vast quantities of shiny metal had more than paid dividends.

Robin had been searching for information on illusion magics and legends about a place called Tarin-Tiran. Ruprecht had done the sensible thing and asked Amaranthine what she knew. She was a fairy after all, very knowledgeable and hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.

‘I’ve never been, myself. I never had call to. But it was a city that was very well thought of by several of the more urban and urbane powers, Rhyth among them. I think it did quite well with his sort. I’ll ask my siblings what they might know.’

It hadn’t taken long for Ruprecht to conclude that there was a goodly deal (perhaps a godly deal) of writing on the wall that that was a place well worth investigating, and sooner rather than later.

So he made plans accordingly.

Right then. Off you go!

The small mimic carrying Ruprecht’s secondary core scuttled off.

The dungeon was ready for an adventure!