Vera hadn’t decided on a name for her newt people. Their design was quite nice, and Vera was quite pleased with her handy work. If she were to create them much like she did her centipedes, would they act in the same way? She hesitated with bringing any of the creatures into physical existence.There was a feeling that if she were to place one, the design would be set. Her planned layout for the dungeon was coming along quite nicely. The rooms were formed, the furniture was placed. It didn’t look pretty, but that was the point. She would have to think of ways to make it look older. Halloween decorations might be the key.

Max was still sleeping, so there wasn’t anything she could do. She had always hated waking him. She didn’t want to disturb him. If she did she’d feel guilty about it. His little form was curled up on the floor in what was to be the library. She had started to place basics. There was a small table for studying, a few empty bookshelves, and finally a counter for a librarian. None of it was occupied, nor had she figured out how to occupy anything, but it at least gave her something to work on in the future. She would have to expand the room some. With all the furniture added, and Max's sleeping body, the room was crowded. It still wasn’t right. The bookshelves were empty. Their barren aura seemed to affect the whole room. It was odd, she had never felt such emptiness in such a crowded space. This room still needed work. When Max woke next, she’d ask him for his opinion.

She moved back to the hallway that she had lined with cells. There wasn’t really much else she could do currently with it. Her centipede in the cavern sat in it’s crevice. Apart from the occasional twitch of limbs, the creature hadn’t moved since she set the crevice as its home. She created some dried cave catfish and balanced it on a small ledge within the crevice to entice the creature to move, but it was ineffective. After ten minutes, She absorbed the dried meat and tried again with something fresh. It had the same effect as the dried meat. If she had fingers she would be tapping them on a desk. Not having a thing to do was the worst. The crevices she created earlier called to her, and she set about filling them with the large cave centipedes. Once she had the process down for creating something, any copy of the same thing was far easier to create. Her influence seemed to be waning around her so she stopped having only filled a handful of the crevices. It only appeared to be the area around her core that was affected. She looked briefly into her constructed monastery, but the influence seemed just as strong as before.

Her core beat steadily. Each pulse of light seemed to push the influence further than the last. She examined the core. It seemed to be pushing out mana at a steady pace. She felt Max’s draw. He had been drawing mana from her since the beginning. His presence was still comforting. His own core that was linked to hers seemed to have a counter beat to her own. Having his own physical body seperated from her essence must be draining. That was something she would need to work on, but like most of the other things she had vowed to do, she still needed to talk to someone about it. Currently that was Max, and he was still sleeping.

She was curious about the world beyond the borders of her influence. The influence itself seemed quite fluid, with each beat of her core pushing out the boundaries and each use of her tools pulling them back in. There was a vague sense of what was immediately outside of the border, just because she had previously held it within her own borders. Anything beyond that was a mystery. The only way she could think about the influence was like some kind of glue that didn’t set well. She found that the areas where she had previously made changes tended to hold the boundaries of the influence longer than the unaltered areas. Perhaps it was more of paint that peeled away, even when set? Maybe snot on a napkin? No, that wasn’t right, and kind of gross. In the end she couldn’t think of a proper analogy, but she felt herself grasping some of the mechanics. She liked the look of the cavern, so she didn’t want to do anything too drastic as she changed her surroundings. She found that even if she moved something to a new area it was enough to give the ‘sticky’ effect she was looking for. She knew! The influence acted like the little glue things that stuck cards to paper that she’d receive in the mail. Was that rubber cement?

Vera wasn’t sure if this would help much, but having the ability to modify her surroundings seemed to be quite useful. It seemed to her that any effort that helped keep her influence over an area for a longer period was a good investment for her time. Even if that weren’t true, she was glad she found something that she could work on while Max was sleeping. It wasn’t a project with an end goal like with her monastery. It felt more like redecorating her home. Well, the monastery was like a home to her in a way as well. Maybe it was more like redecorating her living room. Just the little changes seemed to help give her a sense of comfort and safety.

Vera was pleased with her work. The cavern surrounding her core looked different, but it still fundamentally gave off the same sort of atmosphere that it had previously. She found the crevice that contained her only dungeon centipede. The myriapod had squeezed into the rock and had fit quite snugly. Vera still wasn’t quite comfortable with the creature, but seeing as it was one of her only monsters she could summon she decided on a test. Her improvements should help maintain the borders around her influence as she created additional creatures. She just wanted to make sure that she wasn’t mistaken.

She created a group of three centipedes and set their homes into crevices around her core. The centipedes sped off once they popped into existence and squeezed into their own personal crevices. Vera felt a little accomplished after bringing more of the critters into reality. She continued to place more of them until she felt her borders start to collapse. It didn’t take too long for her to reach her limit. She had only created a total of eleven new dungeon centipedes before a feeling of tiredness seemed to take her over. The steady beat of her core seemed to increase in tempo in an effort to overcome her use of influence. Her actual border hadn’t shrunk back too far, but it felt as though the air between her core and border began to thin out.

It was an unpleasant feeling. There was a dull ache that seemed to follow her thoughts. She pictured a chart featuring the ridiculous faces that helped medical professionals quantify a patient’s pain. If she were to use said chart, she would be at a four. Maybe a two or a three would fit better? The numbers weren’t exactly easy to match with the faces. She felt more like the face with the straight line for a mouth, but it was a minor pain. It was like a dull headache that follows you throughout the day. It was just enough that some basic pain medication could wipe it out, but not enough to actually take the pills in the first place. There were other undercurrents to the pain as well. Maybe a sense of thirst? Her own core pulled energy from some kind of void and converted it into mana, or at least that’s how she remembered it. Perhaps it was more like having general hunger and just letting it sit a day while not wishing to put any effort into preparing food because what’s in the fridge just isn’t appealing. It was easy for her to imagine the sensations that her own body would have given her. It was not easy for her to find any link between her core? Pillar? Well, regardless, she didn’t have a body. It was still a little weird.

Having down time was causing her head to spin. She had never considered herself a great thinker. She considered herself more of a doer than anything. The whispers of memory that flew through her mind seemed to confirm this. She could see herself constantly going out into the world and doing so much her body would be so tired it would forcefully drag her to sleep. The memories played in her head, It must have been because she rarely self-reflected, or she had wandered her own personal forest for so long they started to fade with time, like all things eventually did. Something about those thoughts seemed off to her, but she couldn’t seem to pinpoint exactly what it was. Maybe even her memories had been wrong? Well, Max seemed to be helpful, and there was something he seemed to see in her. Maybe he was in on some grand conspiracy. They wiped her memory and then just put her into a strange simulation or something. That seemed stupid to her. There wasn’t a ‘they,’ there couldn’t be. This seemed like something that would take far too much effort and time to fake. She clearly remembered spending years upon years in the forest. She even remembered when her own forest hadn’t even been a forest.

Wait! There must be another person! Max had slaughtered a ton of creatures at her pillar and when he left he was quick to retrieve a bag filled with what she would have thought of as garbage had she had different circumstances. The bag had been well worn. Leather that should have been stiff had gone soft. Many of the buckles were rusted. Nothing in the cave seemed to be able to produce such a bag, beyond what she had already created using materials that she had only been able to use because of the bag. Well, this was a little flimsy. He might have just found the bag in the caverns. She only had a limited point of view into her surroundings. There might have been some poor soul that had been wandering ruins and got trapped then died. There was at least one other person beyond Max. He didn’t really seem the type to be deceitful. He was a cat. Cats were quite brazen when they did things. Well, most things. They were ambush hunters or something like that. She was pretty sure that someone either told her that, or she might have just heard it in passing.

Vera would have to think about this logically. There were a few explanations to how Max might have retrieved the worn bag. The random items that had been included in the bag were something that any normal person traveling in a cave system wouldn’t carry around. While it was highly unlikely, Vera could rule it out exactly. Max could have stumbled upon the lost soul, remembered the location and then returned to retrieve the bag at a later time. Max could have also stumbled upon a location in the caverns that had the items that he gathered for Vera’s eventual absorption. Max could have also been given the bag by an unknown individual. The bag had contained a few specific items that she had asked for after all. This presented her with a few questions. If there were a location deeper in the caverns, should she try to make an effort to expand her influence in an attempt to claim it? If it was just another individual attempting to help her out by providing materials, what would their objectives be? Max seemed to be driven by the need to help her out, but could it be possible that someone else had something more sinister in mind? Vera mulled over the questions as she worked to rebuild her influence. Having something else to occupy her mind seemed to help drive away the dull ache that seemed to be ever present. The centipedes seemed to be cozy in their new homes. Each myriapod seemed to wiggle in between the cracks of the stone attempting to form a small ball, their black segments glinting dimly in Vera’s pulsating light. She still wasn’t comfortable with the creatures. They certainly gave her the heebies, but the fact they existed around her gave a strange sense of comfort. She hadn’t felt as exposed as she had before. There was still a strong urge to get herself buried further down, but having these centipedes made her feel like there was some extra protection.