Too many would seek this power only to become enslaved by it, destroy thoughtlessly and never look back. Dungeons are not meant for the likes of us. They are beyond us and should remain so.


    <hr>


    Jair and Eythron fought their way through Meliarn, through the known and the unknown; sections Jair knew like the back of his hand and hidden passages he had never imagined existed before.


    Not that Meliarn really posed a threat to either of them. Even its strongest avatars were predictable enough to be handled easily by a pair of ascendant mageblades. Some of the fights dragged on for minutes or even hours, but never once did Jair need to revert due to either of them being severely injured.


    Eythron never questioned his conviction again and they fell into casual cooperation with perfect ease. Sometimes they fought in silence, other times they spoke either in brief or to great depth.


    Jair wasn’t sure why this timeline was so different. There was a natural fluidity to their conversation this time that normally took years to obtain.


    Eythron never opened up so much even with a lot of careful planning. Was it seeing Maelstrom right in front of him, the unmistakable proof that he’d trusted Jair at least somewhat in other timelines? Being far from his home leaving him off balance? The fact that they were dealing with dungeons on his behalf?


    Their discussion ranged from such heavy topics as the moral and ethical quandaries of using soul-devouring beings like seascourge or dungeons as execution methods, through mundane chatter and alchemical recipes.


    Eythron knew a lot of recipes that he''d never shared with Jair in the past. Or perhaps he had, and Jair had forgotten. Alchemy had never been his specialization and so much information tended to jumble up and fade over the years.


    They’d been in here for nearly a month now, though that didn''t matter either. Once Jair connected to the core, he could revert the entire thing to when they entered. They could leave moments after they arrived and the soul-deep binding would remain in place.


    All he needed to do was find the dungeon and make that core connection. He couldn''t hesitate once the moment came, dungeons would find any excuse to escape being bound, unless they were desperate. Which, come to think of it, Meliarn might be. If it was so drenched in fear, perhaps it wouldn’t require the usual tests.


    At one point as they were searching through Meliarn, they encountered someone Jair hadn''t expected to, but probably should have.


    Princess Fahla.


    "What are you doing here?" Jair demanded, leveling Maelstrom at her.


    She jumped and spun, voice a low hiss. “Who do you think you are? Sneaking up on me?”


    "You should be off somewhere where you aren''t going to get your soul eaten, don’t you know this isn’t a safe place to hide?"


    “Keep your voice down,” she whispered, scowling. “I''ve been waiting for my team. They were supposed to come get me a few weeks ago but I haven''t seen them."


    "The dungeon is dangerous and you''re quite deep in." Jair frowned. "Which team is this?"


    "Ardent Shield."


    "I think I heard something about them being killed. Are you sure they''re the ones?"


    "Yes." She stood up and drew herself up to a more dramatic poise. "If you are here to rescue me, I will permit you to escort me to the surface."


    Aelir, had she always been so self-centered at this age? Jair reached out. "I''ve healed your father."


    She flinched back. "My... what?"


    "You''re Fahla, right? Farhesn''s daughter?"


    "How did you know that?" she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I haven''t told anyone who I am or where I''d be."


    "Clearly that''s not true if you were expecting the adventurers to find you."


    "They don''t know who I am, just that I''m rich."


    "And I know you and your father very closely. We''ve worked together in the past."


    "I don’t remember you." She lifted her chin. "That''s a suspicious thing to say."


    "You''re very suspicious of everyone, aren''t you?" Jair smiled. Seeing her again brought back memories of the years they''d spent together in a few particular timelines. "That''s a good trait. You should keep it."


    "Who are you?"


    "Jair Welburne, Phoenix Healer, Dragonslayer, a bunch of other titles. Right now I''m aiming for Avatar of Meliarn."


    The princess stiffened. "Don''t."


    "I''m aware of the risks."


    "Meliarn has never known an avatar. We have kept it pure for generations. Do not corrupt its innocence."


    Jair scoffed and shook his head. "Innocence? A dungeon? And since when are you concerned with Veor''s legacy?"


    "I am always concerned with Veor''s legacy."


    "That''s why you''re running away with an adventurer company at the first opportunity, yes."


    Fahla huffed, hands on her hips. "Who do you think you are, judging me?"


    "I''m sorry, Princess, but I think I like you better when you''re a couple years older."


    She opened her mouth indignantly to respond, and Jair stabbed her. Darkflame returned her to the entrance. With any luck, she''d have enough sense to go out and find her way to safety rather than insisting on continuing to roam the dungeon. But even if she did try to come after them, they were deep enough in it would take her days even if she knew the exact route.


    “Princess, huh?” Eythron stared at the place she’d been standing. “I agree with your assessment.”


    "She''s normally here two years from now, but I didn''t know she came in already. Either she has an incredibly resilient soul, or she comes back to the dungeon multiple times over the years."


    "I wouldn''t be surprised if she has a familial protection,” Eythron mused, still watching the spot where she’d disappeared. “There are often individuals who are immune to a dungeon''s hunger, who can enter and go freely. But I don’t think there would be a guardian link if it were avatarless like she claims. I expect one of her ancestors was an avatar for a time and left an imprint when he left."


    "Why haven''t I heard about that? If it''s a commonplace occurrence, it should be recorded somewhere."


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "You place too much emphasis on recordkeeping. You forget that people want to preserve the secrecy of their advantages.”


    "I understand how people work," Jair grumbled. "But how do you know it if I haven''t found it in decades of searching specifically for dungeon information?"


    "Because I''m better at finding information than you are."


    Jair grimaced, but given the context he couldn''t exactly argue.


    <hr>


    By the time they reached Meliarn''s core room, this time with the entire dungeon cleared behind them, their old camaraderie was more than fully reinstituted. In some ways, they were closer than they ever had in the past.


    Jair knew secrets now that Eythron had never shared in the past, and having faced new dangers together bound them in much the same way as hunting to Oriad had the earliest loops.


    It was almost disappointing to come to their unplanned journey’s end.


    "Well, here we are." Eythron ignored Jair’s reluctance and crossed to the core''s hiding place. He gave the wall a forceful tap and whispered something Jair couldn’t quite understand. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was too far away or because it was an unknown language.


    The room trembled, and the core hatch slid open.


    Eythron stood back and waved Jair forward.


    Jair crossed to Meliarn''s brilliant teal core and gently placed his hands upon the crystal. It glowed like a miniature star. With its entire collection of inhabitants cleared, all of its power was forced into the core itself. Trying to take over with any of its created avatars active would result in a prolonged power struggle. Far quicker to eliminate everything in the dungeon first.


    Concentrated, open, available. Jair reached out to it through his manabody, initiating a brief connection.


    Meliarn emitted nothing but a sense of relief. This was not the hunter who came for it. If Jair wanted to take responsibility for dealing with the alien hunger, Meliarn would give itself to him gladly.


    He''d expected at least a small war over control, but the dungeon surrendered at barely a touch. There was no debate, no exchange of testing attacks. Meliarn offered itself unconditionally and he accepted it.


    For a moment, everything was in confusion. Jair was too many things all at once, too many places, too many himselves.


    Maelstrom was shoved aside to make space. His soul tried to protest. Maelstrom didn’t appreciate its place being shared, but though it was strong for a weapon, Meliarn was thousands of years of evolution and power and a soul beyond mere mortality. Nothing other than a dungeon had a soul so concentrated that it became physically tangible.


    Without a mediator, Meliarn would have simply taken over, but it was mindless and Jair was determined. He would hold this power, but he would not be dominated by it.


    The hierarchy of Jair’s soul shifted back, then settled as Meliarn, Maelstrom, and himself reached a stable equilibrium.


    The world became lines of teal, then it expanded into the same light framework that Eythron experienced even outside a dungeon. It showed Meliarn in all its vast sprawling depth. Meliarn reached the edges of the sandbogs, stretched across all the oases, to the eastern cliffs overlooking the Leikovar Channel and the northwestern shores.


    Immediately, Jair felt the lethargic urge to sit down with the core in his lap, close his eyes, and not move. Perhaps never again.


    He resisted this inclination. He placed Meliarn’s core back into its hiding place and left the dungeon blueprints untouched.


    He held out Maelstrom to Eythron, and darkflamed them both the entrance. Jair felt the draw back to the core room immediately, a pull that would continue to tug at his soul no matter where he went.


    Unsettling, an inner imbalance, spiritual vertigo. Like he was perpetually about to fall from the edge of a cliff within himself.


    But he had lived with this feeling before. While distracting, it was bearable. He couldn’t exactly ignore it, but it did not demand the totality of his attention. It only tried to.


    The others were no longer waiting for them at the entrance, but that wasn’t entirely surprising. Their little trip had ended up going a lot longer than anticipated. Jair could detect anything alive in the dungeon now that he was bound to Meliarn’s core and none of them were present. Neither was Princess Fahla, thankfully. He didn’t particularly want to go chasing her down to get her out again.


    “Hold on, this could get weird for a little.” He stabbed Eythron in the back and then reverted them a few days at a time.


    At first, each reversion took them back to the spot in the dungeon where they’d been at the time, but Jair continued to strain to hold both the time-memory of the place they’d been and the presence-memory of the entry hall so he could bypass constantly darkflaming them back each time.


    It only worked about half the time, but that was still progress. If he could revert to anywhere in one step that would make things a lot more flexible.


    He hadn’t gone back even half the duration of their trip before they reached a point where the others were still present.


    "Where''d you come from?" Raina jumped. "I thought you were..." she looked back and forth between the tunnel he’d disappeared into, then back at him. “I didn’t see the darkflame. Did you time travel?”


    Jair nodded. "What does it look like when I do that?" he asked, curious. "The transition from past to future. Do I go gold? Green? Black? Silver?"


    Raina shook her head. "No flash of light, just you’re suddenly there as though you always had been. Is this something you''re trying to figure out now, reverting to a different physical location?"


    "Working on it. It''s something that happens whether I want it to or not, and I don''t know if it''ll ever be understandable." Too much to do with soulspells was arbitrary to degrees that could not be studied. Even if you tried, you''d get inconsistent results even with the same exact conditions.


    Study of the soul was all but impossible. Even trying to understand your own was difficult, but attempts to learn another’s were entirely unreliable.


    But the fact that he could appear silently and without the flare of venix fire that accompanied Darkflame’s rebirth functionality… that could be incredibly powerful in the right circumstances.


    "You waited here for weeks?" Jair asked, shaking his head. "Why?"


    Lilin crossed her arms. "You were going to be right back."


    Raina shrugged. "Tempest was convinced you were fine. Up until you appeared just now."


    “I was fine. What does it say now?”


    Raina shook her head. “It’s just not happy. Seems to think I should stab you. A bit distracting how insistent it is.”


    "What were you doing this whole time?" Lilin demanded.


    "Becoming a dungeon''s avatar."


    "I thought you didn''t want to do that?"


    "I didn''t. But it became obvious to me that it is a necessary sacrifice to obtain otherwise unattainable resources."


    Eythron scoffed. "That''s an excessively pretentious way of saying he wanted my help and the dungeon was an inescapable distraction."


    "That''s my brother, always excessively pretentious."


    "Hey, since when do you care about what''s excessive?"


    Lilin made a fake innocent face. "Me, excessive? I would never!"


    "Your immediate denial is practically a confession."


    [---]


    Once everyone was together, he reverted them to the beginning, the moment they first stepped inside.


    Time strained. The dungeon tried to revert to its original state, but it remained bound to Jair and the strength of his soulspell forced the dungeon’s soul to conform into its new shape.


    The desire to return to his core continued to press at Jair’s mind, and he disregarded it.


    "Ready to party this Solaria?"


    They emerged back into the desert outside the gate, Eythron leading, Raina and Lilin on either side of Jair, and Carn trailing quietly behind.


    Jair had been aware of Eythron''s presence in the dungeon since the moment he bound himself to Meliarn, but as soon as they stepped outside, something shifted and the urgent awareness of Eythron''s danger level rose drastically.


    If Jair didn''t know him, he would''ve assumed the man to be an implacable monster, stronger than a dragon, more on the level of seascourge. Some monstrous abomination capable of leaving the water and roaming the earth.


    Meliarn''s fear tickled at the back of his mind, clawing for purchase, demanding he fight back.


    Jair suppressed it effortlessly. He knew Eythron. If he ever decided to kill him, nothing would talk him out of it, but even then being afraid of him was pointless.


    Eythron let out a surprised grunt, the tension leaving his shoulders in slow hesitant twitches. "You''re right. It''s gone. There is nothing to feed on."


    “Hah, I knew it!” His plan had paid off. If an unbound dungeon would always trigger his hunger, but one bound to a creature might not… and it had worked out perfectly.


    Eythron nodded, eyes closed. "I will be ready whenever you need me." His voice was unusually mellow, as though he were intentionally moving beyond calm into… something Jair couldn''t quite describe.


    "Thank you, master. For now, I think it''s time we start this day over again."


    "This day?" Lilin asked.


    "Solaria. Time in the dungeon doesn''t count if we revert it before it ever happened. Let’s go collect Ajriol and Qahrvirna and we can get started."


    Time for round two. And this time, they''d be watching everything.


    <hr>