《The Dugeon of the Silent Woods: A Dungeon Core Novel》


 Chapter 1

    A thousand bejewelled butterfly wings glistened in the light from the stained-glass windows. The sorcerer¡¯s mad cackling echoed from the arched ceiling of the tower¡¯s highest chamber.


    To my shame, I was frozen in place, sword still in hand but unable to swing it. I could only watch as the insect swarm, which had only moments before been my companion Reinhart, rose from his now hollow armour. The empty breastplate clattered to the floor a heartbeat later.


    The clash of metal on stone broke the horrified stillness and with a maddened scream, Sonja rushed forward. Her Broadsword arced over her head, but her blade never made it to the sorcerers'' skull. She disappeared with an idle wave of the sorcerer¡¯s hand and a sudden flash of lightning.


    I was alone now. Bernard hadn¡¯t even made it to the tower, torn to shreds on our way through the woods, and Hildegard we had left to bleed out three floors below after battling the vicious chimera the sorcerer had kept there.


    The old man¡¯s eyes turned on me.


    They shone with the fire of madness, a flame fanned by the foul magic that crackled around his crooked form. His long fingers rose once more, pointing at me, and a new bout of laughter was the last thing I heard.


    - Darkness -


    I awoke.


    It took a few moments for me to realize that I had woken up. I was surrounded by silent darkness, so there wasn¡¯t much difference to when I wasn¡¯t awake besides a faint awareness of, well, awareness.


    I tried to look around, but then I realized I didn¡¯t know how to. I couldn¡¯t feel a head, or even eyes for that matter, to move around and take in my surroundings.


    Perhaps I had already turned around, though, and simply not noticed. How, after all, would I be able to tell in this all consuming blackness.


    I tried to think back to how I got here, wherever here was, but to no avail. I couldn¡¯t remember how I got here. I couldn¡¯t remember anything, now that I thought of it.


    On that matter, who was I?


    What was I?


    Well, I was me, probably.


    I pondered this an indeterminate amount of time but came to the conclusion that if I wasn¡¯t me, then who would be thinking these thoughts? Therefore, I must have been myself.


    With that baseline certainty established, I made out to discover more about the world surrounding me. This, however, proved difficult due to me neither seeing nor otherwise sensing them in any way.


    From this, I began theorizing that perhaps there was nothing besides me. Maybe I was everything there was in this world.


    A world. A strange notion, that. A place encompassing all places.


    Where did that concept come from? For that matter, why had I expected to possess a head or eyes when first waking up?


    These expectations and ideas must have come from somewhere, I decided. Most likely from those nebulous memories that were currently evading me, but of which I was sure they were there. Just lurking out of reach.


    Out of reach. Another strange phrase, this one implying the possession of hands. Another body part I was currently lacking on account of not possessing a body.


    After pondering that, I came to the conclusion that I was in a most horrifying situation, trapped in a void with no eyes to see nor a mouth to scream with.


    I tried being horrified for a while as that seemed only appropriate, but it didn¡¯t seem to get me any further either, so I stopped soon after.


    After that, I stopped thinking. It appeared to me that I had exhausted every possible avenue of thought that was likely to get me any further, so I decided to save my energies and simply wait for something to happen that might illuminate my circumstances.


    And indeed, something did happen eventually.


    As I waited, the darkness became different in quality. It took on a texture and depth. Not sight, not as I had expected it upon waking up. Something else, that still allowed me to take in my surroundings without a need for light.


    Slowly, my surroundings took shape around me. It appeared that I was hovering in the middle of a small, stony cave. Stalactites and stalagmites formed an irregular cage around me, and a small pond of water encircled that cage.


    My own body was a blind spot, but I realized that I could see everything else at once. It was a strange feeling, to be able to look behind and in front of myself at the same time, though perhaps those weren¡¯t the right words as I had no idea where my front actually was.


    As the cave grew clearer around me, to the point that I saw the outer walls and began even sensing the tiny fissures and irregularities in the stone, I noticed other beings existing in the same space. Tiny insects were flying through the air and crawling along the walls of my cave, other creatures were swimming lazily through the pond surrounding my cage, and yet others I could feel burrowing through tiny cracks and fissures just outside my little cave. There were fungi too, growing where water dripped from stalagmites and around the edges of the pond, and moss was growing wherever moisture collected on the walls.


    A little paradise of my own, I decided. A garden to keep me company.


    <div>


    My understanding of the cave was still expanding, to the point that I was now slowly becoming aware of the plants and creatures inhabiting my tiny garden. The flying creatures, I soon realized, were tiny moths, eternally fluttering through the darkness. They seemed to be feeding off of strange flowers growing in patches of moss on the walls. Their petals were tiny and colorless, yet strangely shaped, almost like the wings of the moths that were feeding on them. But even stranger were their leaves, long and thin and forming feathery structures. They reminded me of a herb, Dill. Unlike the petals, the leafs were of a faint purple, seemingly the only colour down here, as I had already seen it in bushels of hair on the tips of the moth''s antennae.


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    I still didn''t know how I knew their colour or shape. I certainly didn''t see them, more like the memory of it just formed in my head when I concentrated my focus on the matter.


    That too was another trick I learned. Even though I was able to take in the entire cave at once, that understanding was hazy and unfocused. If I instead concentrated on a particular part of it, my awareness grew sharper, leading to my discovery of the flowers when I had simply focused on a random patch of wall. They had evaded my awareness completely, before then, but now that I knew they were there I was still vaguely aware of them still when I broadened my focus again.


    I concentrated my focus once more, narrowing in on the patch of moss. I wondered how deep my focus would be able to go. I limited my awareness to the patch, taking it in entirely with all the flowers and months currently inside it, and as I did, the picture clarified. I became aware of the roots with which the flowers anchored the patch in the wall. I became aware of the other insects that were living inside the moss. Translucent pill bugs first, like tiny pebbles crawling across their vertical lawn, grazing peacefully. But then I noticed ever smaller mites and worms who were inhabiting the moss as if it were a large forest. They were feasting on decaying leaves, on the remains of their own and the refuse of their larger neighbours.


    But still I could go deeper. As I focused in on one of the mites, itself smaller than a grain of sand, I still kept discovering other beings living on it''s shell. These were unlike anything I''d ever seen. Amorphous blobs containing a variety of shapes, undulating and flailing about in the faint layer of moisture on the Mite''s shell. When I dove deeper, I discovered the building blocks these blobs were made from, fitting into one another like gears in clockwork, each with a unique shape fit for its purpose, though their purposes I couldn''t even remotely guess at. Deeper still there lay more confusion. A realm of nothingness and fizzing energy far beyond my understanding. I got lost in it for some time before finding back to the world I was used to.


    When I returned, I found that my awareness of the cave had sharpened once more. It seemed that it grew over time, filling the cave like water in a cup, and after closer examination it seemed it was emanating from myself. Without focusing, my awareness was just the slightest bit sharper around my immediate body, whatever that was, than at the edge of the cave.


    Interesting, yet not immediately helpful. I returned to examining the contents of my little cave. The floor was covered in a veritable forest of mosses and flowers, at least the half of it that wasn''t taken up by shallow ponds. The land area seemed to be dominated by long, pink, eel-like creatures moving on four feet. Instead of eyes, they had a large mane of feathery hairs that extended all the way around their head, and their maw was lined with stone lips like a crude attempt at teeth. The mane, once again, was of the same faint purple as the leaves and antennae. Curiously, the hue intensified slightly as I focused my attention on the creature.


    These little Salamander lions were a joy to behold, plodding along the mossy ground and quickly waddling into the nearest pond when something startled them. All in all, I imagined they would be of the same length as my arm if I had one. They seemed rather peaceful, feeding off of leaves, bugs and snails they crushed with their stony lips. As I watched them, I discovered that I could still hear in a manner. Much like my sight, it was more the memory of having heard than actual hearing, but it was better than the silence I had known until now. The discovery happened when I observed one of them drawing their head back and up rhythmically with their mouth open, and when I focused on the strange movement, I became aware of a melodic croaking. They were communicating with one another. Suddenly, my cave became alive with a strange kind of subterranean birdsong.


    The lion lizards weren''t without foe, though. Not long after I became aware of the sound, I noticed a different kind of call. Hurried and more high-pitched. Directing my attention toward it, I saw one of the Salamander lions alone and surrounded by a pack of abnormally large spiders. The spiders seemed to have circled the lone salamander lion and were now advancing on it in unison. The sight of spiders displaying such unnatural behaviour was quite disconcerting, and their size didn''t help at all. They were continually drumming their legs on the ground in strange rhythms, perhaps another form of communication.


    However, before the spiders could get close enough, the lion darted through their line and into the nearest pond. Quite literally, through them. The creature had temporarily shirked off its corporeal nature and ignored every obstacle between itself and the pond. The sight of such a small creature using such strong magic was strange, yet not unheard of. However, that would have to mean the amount of magic in this cave would have to be unusually high. When I focused, I could still see traces of it in the air where the salamander lion had run through, hair-like slivers of purple light. I turned and searched the cave for other traces, and soon enough I found them, seeping up from the ground. All magic came from the world''s core, but this place seemed to lie on a particularly strong font of it. This explained the purple colours I kept finding, the plants and animals here were feeding off of the ambient magic like plants above fed on light.


    As I examined the strands closer, I found they weren''t moving randomly. Instead, they seemed to converge in the middle of the cave, that is to say, the hole in my perception that was my body. The magic was drawn into it like water down a drain. Maybe that''s how I was taking in my surroundings, by using the magic and spreading it through the cave. So the reason my awareness continued growing was because I kept collecting more magic. It''d also explain why the magic-sensitive plants and animals were reacting when I focused my attention on them, I was concentrating more magic into the area.


    I wondered if I might be able to use this magic in other ways. I would have to experiment on that, try to do something simple with it, and the simplest thing of all was to break something apart. So, I began examining the walls of my cave for a suitable target.


    <div>


    Stone, as it turned out, was a surprisingly complex matter. Really, I should have expected as much after finding an entire cosmos on the back of a mite dwarfed by the tiny patch of moss that was its world, but finding the complex geometric forms and interlocking crystals that made up the minuscule structure of my cave''s walls still filled me with wonder.


    But, be that as it may, I hadn''t come here to marvel at rocks, fascinating as they might be. I had focused on this tiny part of my world in order to test whether I could wield magic. A dangerous indulgence of my curiosity, everyone knew magic was as powerful as it was unpredictable, but still. My entire existence, as far as I could remember, had been nothing but passive observation. If the use of magic could allow me some agency, then I''d accept the risks.


    However, I also didn''t want to risk my little cave world falling in on itself, so I had resolved to start as small as I could. I finally settled on a cube-shaped crystal that would''ve been dozens of times too small to be seen with the naked eye, and concentrated.


    Wherever my knowledge of magic, and everything else for that matter, was coming from, it didn''t grant me the knowledge of how to actually use magic. I was vaguely aware that magic was a power permeating the world, which would be used by certain people to impose their will on reality. That was where my knowledge of its use ended, though. I could tell you quite a lot about how it corrupted body, mind and soul and how it tended to turn places where it was used often into dark, twisted parodies. Under the wrong circumstances, it could even tear apart the fabric of the world, shunting parts of it into other realms or vice versa.


    So, with all that in mind, I started concentrating on the crystal very, very carefully. I imagined how it would crumple, how the seams between the tiniest parts of it might break apart, how the world would be when it was no more. As I concentrated on this, I became aware of the energies that held it together, and I noticed how my will, my magic, concentrated ever more precisely on the crystal. As I continued, my awareness of everything else shrunk and disappeared until the crystal was my entire world and I was aware of every facet of it. The shape, texture, colour, even taste and the sound it made as the wall it sat in was disturbed by creatures walking upon and burrowing within it. I saw every single one of the fundamental energies that I had glimpsed when delving into the empty void at the heart of everything. I saw how they came together to form the crystal, and I began weaving strands of magic in between their seams. I poured more and more magic into them, until they began to stretch and tear and suddenly, all at once, they split.


    The crystal came undone on the smallest scale, and my world became light and violent energy and pain.


    And then it was darkness once more.

 Chapter 1.2

    - The Cave -


    When I woke again, it was much like the first time, just without as much confusion. I woke to all consuming darkness, only slowly lifting to reveal my cave as my awareness spread out again.


    If I was right in that my awareness was a field of magic spreading out from my core, then that likely meant I had spent all of my magic in disintegrating that particle of rock. That I had fallen unconscious carried more worrying implications.


    Was my mind powered by magic as well? If so, I should probably be more careful with my experiments from now on, lest I accidentally extinguish myself entirely. An uncomfortable thought, that I could accidentally end myself with a careless use of my power.


    But first, I needed to figure out why this experiment had exhausted me so much in the first place.


    In hindsight, it had probably been the attempt to split the crystal at every seam at once. There had to be more efficient ways than forcefully wedging matter apart at its most fundamental level.


    As I was thinking, my awareness slowly filled the cave once more, comforting me with its already familiar shape. Besides the gaping hole where I had performed my experiment. In a radius of several paces surrounding the point where the crystal had been, the cave had simply ceased to exist, leaving only a perfectly circular emptiness. Surrounding its edge, plants and animals had been burned to ash, and the rest of the cave been singed quite badly. Only on the far opposite wall had plants and animals been mostly spared.


    The space within the void felt different, somehow hostile, and my own awareness seeped in much slower than with the rest of the cave. When it did, it was much more hazy, leaving me with only vague guesses at shapes and colours, like a half-forgotten memory. It was enough for me to make sure the space was actually empty. Except for a small crystal, floating right in the middle of it. It was small and, as far as I could make out, perfectly cubical. In short, it looked exactly like the crystal that I had destroyed, floating right where I had destroyed it. Just that now, instead of being so minuscule you wouldn''t have been able to see it, it was as big as the theoretical tip of my finger might have been.


    What?


    Was that really the crystal I had destroyed? Or rather, transformed? But how? My mishandling of magic had destroyed a good chunk of my cave, so how had this tiny crystal survived, much less grown. And why was my awareness spreading more slowly around it than the rest of the cave?


    At least the latter question I could answer. Shifting my awareness to focus on the currents of magic within the cave, an increasingly familiar exercise, I could see that it had shifted since my experiment. Outside the crater, it was much the same a before, but within it, the natural magic from below flowed towards the crystal rather than myself. From there, it expanded in a field uncomfortably similar to my own awareness.


    Was that what I was? A floating crystal that transformed magic? I hadn''t thought of my body, my new one, much since waking. It was a blind-spot in my awareness, and I admit I much rather pretended the issue didn''t exist. But, feeling it out now, the shape of it fit. Geometrical, and easily able to fit in the palm of my hand. Or the hand I used to have.


    The thought didn''t fit. I could not be that. I instinctively knew that I had a body, that I had hands and feet and a head with a pair of eyes. This was a truth so deep, it was the first thing I had been aware of after waking. Anything else just seemed too absurd to entertain, but here I was facing a mirror image of what I had become.


    I was a dead little shard hung in the middle of an underground cave. I might never again be able to feel or taste or see again. Not truly. The senses my awareness granted were dull imitations, memories of sensation rather than sensation itself.


    I was panicking, should have been panicking, but the sensation failed me here as well. No faltering breath, no thundering of my heart, no shaking in my hands. None of the thousands of comforting reminders of the flesh, the warmth and the sense of place that it offered. Only the sharp, cold awareness that I had been stripped of my- my everything. The holy, inviolable sanctity that was mastery of my own body, ripped away in its entirety, leaving only barren intellect and a shadow of sensory experience.


    There was nothing I could do against it. I couldn''t fix this. I couldn''t do anything besides hang here in this dark hole for however many eternities before this prison of a new body would crumble to dust.


    Whatever had done this to me would pay dearly. Not death but imprisonment like this one, however I would be able to achieve this. But for that, I would need to stay focused. The dreamlike numbness that had allowed me to stay calm so far would have to be replaced with grim purpose.


    I needed work to occupy my thoughts, and so I went in search of it. The most obvious task was further experimentation with my magic, as that still seemed the only way for me to interact with my surroundings. Right after that came figuring out whether this new crystal was somehow dangerous. I still had no idea of what it was, exactly. Only theories and the vague knowledge that it was somehow similar to me.


    I tried directing my focus to the crystal, but found it falling short. I apparently couldn''t pierce through the surface to look into its inner workings. Focusing inside its territory at all was an effort. It still allowed me to see more clearly, though still with interference, but I could feel my awareness draining away the longer I maintained it. Taking more than a quick glimpse from time to time was likely more costly than I could afford, which also meant that proactive use of my magic inside its territory would be out of the question.


    That also meant I had exhausted all available methods for studying the new crystal, besides just keeping watch.


    So, I turned my attention to the havoc I wrought. A good half of the cave had been burned in the blast of my mistake, leaving nothing but ash and singed bones. The other half had fared only marginally better. Much there had survived, wounded and hurting, but much also hadn''t. Already, though, the carrion birds of this little world were descending on the burned husks, devouring all that was yet to be devoured. Of course there were no birds here, and rather than fly, they crawled and slithered through the ashes. A legion of minuscule insects eagerly set to the task of repurposing what I had killed.


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    Larger animals had survived too, and I decided to take a more focused categorization of the denizens of my domain.


    Most of them were known to me from the surface, bugs and flies and worms, though many bore peculiar adaptations to the everlasting night of this place. Only few had eyes, and those that did were enormous to let in the faint violet glow of magic being used. These skittering hordes were the lowest of this kingdom, subsisting on that which was left by their larger counterparts, whether through death or defecation.


    Next to them were the many plants, mostly ferns and mosses, glowing a faint violet from the magic they were absorbing in place of light. They provided the basis for the entire population, transforming water, rock and ambient magic into the basic building block of life. My attention lingered on them. They were taking in magic and using it like I had used air to breathe. I watched them, closely, delving deep into their structure to observe the process of it. Learning the structure of this process might help me glean some insight on how to use my own magic more efficiently, so I dedicated myself to studying it.


    It was a magnificent machine that I had uncovered, like the most complex clockwork mechanism one could imagine. And though I didn''t understand much of the process, its basic shape was evident. Mana was taken in and used to form water and air into energy, producing the violet glow. The energy was then used to form matter from the ground into more plant. A magnificent dance of tiny particles beyond my comprehension, yet with the right modulation of my attention, the overall shape became evident to me in a glowing network of energy. A flow of energy, magic and matter mingling into a stream of life.


    But I needed to know more. As I had previously noted, the plant was structured into small building blocks, which I turn were constructed from even smaller ones. Each block, or cell, was akin to its own little machine, working away for the god of the greater whole. They contained many different structures, not unlike the organs of an animal, dedicated to fulfil the particular task the cell was dedicated to. I searched out the cells that were responsible for transforming magic, air and water into energy and managed to identify the organ that was facilitating the alchemical transformation.


    The plant was funnelling strands of magic through gateways in the cell''s wall, but how the magic was attracted to them was still a mystery to me. However, once inside, then the magic was guided through further gates into the transformative organ. There, the magic was twisted into a particular shape, and the particles of air and water made to interact with it. The shape of the strand pulled only lightly, brushing against the particles in a certain way here, pushing up against them there, and through an almost gentle actress, the particles were made to come apart and form anew. The process was expertly balanced, impacting the particles only ever as much as absolutely necessary, encouraging the desired result through nothing but a fractional strengthening or weakening of particular bonds until they came apart willingly.


    If this was what it was to be a magician, then I couldn''t possibly comprehend how any working larger than at this smallest of scales could ever be attempted.


    But then again, the magic I knew of was performed through acts of will, something a plant was entirely lacking in. This living machine was manipulating the strands one at a time, physically twisting them into the shape that it needed. I myself had previously just willed them into doing what I needed of them. This likely meant that I would not have to know the exact arrangement making this little process possible, but could instead use the basic principles I had learned to structure the general shape of my working.


    I turned my attention away and toward one of the ponds that populated the cave. Their inhabitants had seemingly been spared from the fiery destruction, but I would study them later. Above the water''s surface, I concentrated on the particles of air and water. If I could replicate the process here, I was confident I could learn to use my magic for more complex workings.


    I focused on the structures of the particles, and imagined how they would interact. The short exchange of components resulting in two different materials. The gentle tugging and pushing that would move them apart. And true enough, the magic moved to exercise my will. The water moved, mingling with the air in a fist-sized space, moved by the strands of my accumulated magic. The exchange wasn''t as efficient as the one I had observed, but it worked! Strands moved to gently tug and prod until the interaction was initiated.


    The effort drained my reserves, but only at a negligible rate, almost balanced out by what I gained naturally.


    The drain increased, though, the longer I held it. Slowly at first, but then faster and faster, until the surface of the water broke.


    One of the fish living in the pond had come up, gulping up the energy particles I had created. It was the reason my working had become more costly. There was a faint magic field around it, which had disrupted my own. Not to the extent that my awareness suffered, but my working was shattered by it, dissolving into chaotic whirls.


    The fish didn''t seem particularly special in any way, even lacking the violet glow of magic most other animals here had. Was this a wizard fish?


    I looked through the rest of the ponds, finding more of the big, grey, eyeless fish, and to my surprise all of them had the same field.


    It was faint, barely perceptible, and I''d have missed it entirely if I hadn''t been looking. On that note, I found similar fields around the smaller fish, and when I went looking, the other animals too. The strength varied, generally getting denser the larger the animal was, but that wasn''t a rule. For instance, the salamander lions, the few that still remained, had denser fields than the giant spiders that were hunting them. I supposed this would be due to the salamander lions actively gathering magic with their manes, while the spiders seemed largely unmagical.


    I tried focusing my awareness on the flow of vitality, as I had when studying the plant, and true enough, the magical field seemed to be an outgrowth of the magic the Salamander Lion had coursing through its body. The same went for the spiders, though, and their bodies held a lot more magic than that of the lion. It had rivers and brooks of magic flowing through its body similar to veins, which, on closer inspection, it was lacking. Riga complex magical flow seemed to entirely replace the need for blood in these spiders, distributing air and food by tangling it in the threads. Yet they had no obvious organs through which to collect magic. Only their silk, I saw while peering into one''s abdomen, had the tell-tale colour.


    Now that I was already back to studying animals, I decided to shelf this whole tangent for now and continue studying the ecology of my cave.


    However, as I broadened my attention to envelop the fullness of its bounds, I noticed something had changed around the new crystal.


    It was growing more crystals on the rock of its cave section, glowing in a familiar violet. As I watched one of them closer, I could visibly see the growth of layer after layer. And then it started moving.

 Chapter 1.3

    So, the crystal was growing more crystals. And pretty quickly at that. On the upside, it was using a lot of the magic in its aura to do so, thinning it out and conversely giving me a greater foothold and better vision in the area.


    The crystal, the main one floating in the centre of the area, had formed condensed tendrils of peculiarly pink magic emanating from its core and flowing toward the forming crystal structures. The skill with which it formed its power was enviable, but watching the strands weave complex crystals from simple rock didn''t tell me anything of their purpose.


    I thought about perhaps creating a signal or message, but even in its weakened state, the crystal''s aura prevented me from forming a working in its territory. Even if I could, though, I wouldn''t have known what to do. Form words in the ground? Draw its attention with pulses of magic? My control wasn''t good enough to do either of those, and who knew if the thing could read in the first place.


    I withdrew into my part of the cave and turned my attention back to the diminished garden. Now that I could replicate one of the plant''s processes, perhaps I could intervene directly. I moved toward one of the feathery bushes littering the cave floor. They were one of the most common plants, besides the moss, that covered the ground. From a distance, it looked like purple grass, but up-close it revealed a miniature tree-like structure. A thick stem radiating horizontal branches, which in turn grew long, feathery leaves pointing straight upward.


    I spent some time watching the hair-thin leaves filter magic from the air before moving in more. At first a little, but then, inspired by the crystal, I formed a larger tendril right from my own core, where my magic emanated from, and guided it toward the plant. Looking inside, I could see its internal mechanisms speed up, fuelled by overwhelming energy, and soon enough the plant started growing.


    At first, it started glowing slightly in an arcane violet, as the magic grew denser and denser inside the plant, and it was struggling to process it. Then, explosively, its leaves grew taller, its branches broader and its roots hungrily dug into the ground, spreading to all sides. Saplings started sprouting along the lay of the plant''s roots, spreading out into the scorched area my first experiment had decimated, and they spread the violet glow.


    However, as the plants grew, my magic showed less and less effect. Even as I increased the density of my channelling, I couldn''t keep up with the rapid growth of the plant.


    I had to stop when I felt my awareness shrink and blur. I didn''t want to fall unconscious again, not when there was the faint possibility that I might extinguish myself completely if I spent too much magic at once.


    However, the plants didn''t stop glowing, not entirely. The magic I''d used in growing them had stayed in the area, apparently expelled through the roots once used, and returned to the air where they absorbed it again. Some of it was drawn back to my core, but the plants definitely cycled more than they did before. Maybe I could use this to increase the density of my aura?


    Satisfied, I looked at my work from above. A quarter of the destruction was now covered by new growth, and other plants and animals were taking advantage of it already. The moss was the fastest, probably fuelled by the remains of my magic, it quickly spread out under the cover of the feather trees. Insects, snails and lizard lions followed in quick succession, each preying on those that came before them. Though they didn''t populate as quickly as the plants, instead simply spreading themselves more thinly.


    I doubted I''d have to worry about the smaller insects, they would be breeding themselves up to regular numbers in a few days, I was sure. But the larger animals, the big beetles, the lizards and, I shudder to think of them, even the spiders would be slow to recover.


    But perhaps I could help along there too.


    After a quick search, I found a beetle nest. Not of the smaller variety, those living off of dead plants and animal faeces, but the large ones. These were about as large as my hand would have been. Their shells were jagged like the inside of a geode, and they glistened in the weak glow of the plants. As far as I could tell, they mainly subsisted by grazing on the feather tree¡¯s feathers, which none of the other insects could reach. But that wasn¡¯t important at the moment. The adults I couldn¡¯t do much with, their auras would prevent me from working near them, much less inside.


    It was their eggs thatI was after. I quickly discovered about three dozen of the small, milky-white balls in a moss-covered ditch, currently unguarded. The mother¡¯s own magical aura would have prevented me from interfering, but she was currently grazing nearby, so I was free to work as I pleased.


    The first difficulty was deciphering which of their many parts did what. Their physiology was far more mundane than that of the plants, utilizing magic only to tiny degrees. I¡¯d have to carefully weave my magic to work alongside their natural processes and hasten them along, instead of simply pumping them full of raw power. So, I set out to study the cosmos of their bodies, peering deep into their tissues to observe their tiniest building blocks in action. Once I had a grasp of how their cells split, how they fed on the yolk and transformed it into more of themselves, I began my working.


    It was delicate and difficult work at first, but it quickly got easier. It seemed like once I had a basic understanding of the matter, I only needed to will it to happen, and the magic automatically conformed itself to my understanding.


    After perhaps an hour, and some more impromptu anatomy lessons, two dozen fully formed beetles emerged from their eggs. The rest had fallen casualty to some errors on my part, but that was the price of progress. Hungrily, the little beetles clambered up the next feather tree and began devouring the leaves. It seemed their quick growth had resulted in a large appetite, which was understandable. Though, I wondered if I had to stop here.


    The baby beetle¡¯s auras appeared far weaker than their mother¡¯s at first glance. And first, I thought this was simply due to them being still young, but then I realized their auras were just as strong, if smaller. It was just that they were almost indistinguishable from my own. The beetles were, on some fundamental level, part of me now, and that meant I was free to work on them as I pleased.


    I continued my previous work, adapting it to fit their now fully formed bodies, and watched them mature in a matter of hours. They were ravenous, in that time, devouring two whole feather trees and an uncountable number of mites, smails and pill bugs, but afterwards they were finished and fully functioning adults.


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    I hesitated.


    Was this right? Something inside myself told me that I was interfering with life on a level no mortal was meant to. I was interfering directly with the work of the gods. ¡°Blasphemy¡±, an unknown voice called out from my lost memories. ¡°Verily, the Avatar of Frohnwerk spoke thus: ¡®Thou shalt not dare to fashion life as the divine doth, for in such audacity, thou dost mar their sacred creation.¡¯¡±


    The voice was familiar, even though I couldn¡¯t remember having ever heard it before. However, could it really be wrong to right my mistakes? All I was doing was hasten life along its natural path, fixing what I destroyed before. And anyway, what else was I supposed to do down here, simply bemoan my fate while my mind rotted away? No, if the gods wanted me to stop, the could come down here and tell me themselves.


    Angrily, I looked around for my next subject. Having pushed the beetle population to an acceptable level, I¡¯d have to work on their predators next. The spiders. I shuddered, mentally. Well, maybe I should push the other prey species up first. The snails and the lizards. Oh, and there were some frogs too, though they had remained mostly underwater during and after the catastrophe, so like the rest of the pond life, they were doing fine. But maybe I should check up on them just to make sure.


    Finding a clutch of snail eggs proved easy, and I was able to work on them despite some adults being close by. Their aura was truly minimal, and they were surprisingly easy to work on. They soaked up my magic like sponges, probably due to them feeding on magic like the plants did. However, they absorbed it through large, purple fins sprouting on their backs. They actually looked quite pretty, like fleshy flowers, especially once the young ones hatched and I started hastening them to adults. Their fins glowed during the process, and like the plants, they kept glowing slightly once I was done.


    The Lizards, on the other hand, were more difficult to work with. Despite them too absorbing magic through their mane, they didn¡¯t feed on it. Instead, they somehow used it to escape their predators, like I¡¯d seen before. They were able to somehow become intangible for brief periods of time. Their anatomy, too, was much more complex than that of the insects or molluscs. But, with a few hours of study, I was reasonably certain I could use my magic on them without doing too much harm. The problem was finding an unoccupied nest, because the Lizard¡¯s aura was definitely strong enough to scatter any working I might attempt.


    The solution turned out to be relatively easy. With some idle experimentation, I found out that I was able to steer the creatures I had raised by expending some of my will. So, I looked for a nest with a particularly hungry-looking lizard mom, finding one in a crack in the cave wall. With a few commands, a chain of snails started slowly moving her way and up the wall. She fell for the bait and, one snail after another, chomped her way out of the nest and down to the ground.


    Truthfully, that cost me quite a lot of snails, but making new ones was easy enough. I just had to make sure I didn''t spend my magic faster than I got it.


    So, with the mother distracted, I set to studying the eggs. Luckily the basic processes seemed to be the same as with the other two species, and their anatomy was much more familiar, with the heart, lungs, bones and stomach all being where I would have expected them. The way they interacted with one another wasn''t all too different from what I remembered from human anatomy, either, so I quickly got to work.


    The process was getting easier every time I applied it, and the little lizards were developing splendidly as their mother returned to the nest. I quickly wrapped up the working as I noticed her approach, as not to damage the embryos with a sudden cut-off. I estimated I was about half done with them. Ordinarily, they''d still be in there for a few more days, but I intended on finishing them as soon as possible.


    I mentally debated whether I should try and pull the same trick on another lizard nest, but decided against it. I didn''t want to over-populate the cave, and it''s not like I had any time pressure.


    Diving into the ponds, I instead looked for some frog eggs to experiment with. I quickly found some, quite a lot of them actually, and with no parents in sight. Again, I studied their anatomy, and found it similar enough to that of the lizards. Again, I started channelling my magic into their bodies, to speed up their natural growth processes. Soon enough, I had a small pond overflowing with tadpoles.


    I only ran into a snag when I tried quickening their growth into adults. The tadpoles grew, and grew and grew, but they didn''t grow into frogs. They only became larger tadpoles, as they started consuming each other.


    Some of them tried to escape the pond, fleeing their larger relatives, and only then did they start developing lungs and legs. Others simply puffed up with magic and started floating up out of the pond and into the air. Those developed lungs too, but they kept their fins and used them to steer through the air.


    Well, so much for simply spending along natural processes. I hadn''t produced a single frog, only a few land-living tadpoles, some balloon-like flying ones and a monstrous few still swimming in the pond.


    And I had no idea why.


    I''d probably have to study their development closely over the coming days to figure this out. I''d check in on the latter. For now, I turned back to the lizards. I prepared some more snails and sent it at the mother, which would probably be hungry again by now.


    Another caravan of snails later, the mother returned to a fully hatched batch of baby lizards, with vividly glowing manes. There wasn''t much food in the cave, and these little guys didn''t seem all that keen ongoing outside yet, so I stopped there. And to be honest, I was still a little disturbed by my chaotic results from the tadpole experiments.


    Either way, the little lizards would have to go the rest of the way themselves. I withdrew from the nest and observed my garden once again from above. The puffed-up tadpoles were floating like violet fireflies above a rapidly growing forest of feather trees. Bugs and snails and dozens of smaller insects termed under their canopies, and other plants were quickly moving in, attracted by the dense magic of my experiments. But there was still more to do. Two thirds of the cave were still nothing but scorched wasteland, and, I hated to admit it, I''d have to help the spiders along or my bugs and snails would ravage all that new growth entirely unchecked.


    I supposed I could check on the crystal situation first, my garden could deal on its own for a few moments.


    Curiously, the crystal''s aura was denser again, despite it still channelling much of its magic into creating more crystals. Crystals which, by now, covered almost every part of its territory. They had grown rapidly, while I was busy helping my garden recover from the catastrophe that had spawned them. And, through the thick obfuscation on its aura, I could even detect some movement among the crystals.


    Perhaps some of my creatures had got themselves lost in this crystal maze? Though that was unlikely. I hadn''t seen a single snail or beetle dare to venture outside of the feather tree''s canopies so far.


    Concentrating my magic, I tried to force my aura into the other crystal''s, trying to get a better look at whatever it was that moved there. I could feel my power draining from me, but it worked. I caught only one glimpse, I didn''t dare spend more of my essence on this as I already felt my consciousness sliding away. But a single glimpse was enough. There, between the crystalline growths, I saw a spider. A crystalline spider with a rosy-pink glow, making its way into my territory.


    I admit, that had me worried.

 Chapter 1.4

    - The Cave -


    Bright, violet blood shimmers on the crystal spider. The young lizard lion desperately kept croaking while it was slowly dragged back to the other side of the cave.


    This meant war. I¡¯d just spent however long to figure out how to repopulate my cave, and now this magic crystal was sending out it¡¯s minions to depopulate it again. What for? I¡¯m pretty sure a crystal spider wouldn¡¯t have to eat, and neither would its floating master. But then, why did it do that? Why send its constructs hunting into my domain?


    I kept observing the spider as it passed the border where my influence stopped and its master¡¯s began. As soon as it did, a stream of magic formed, flowing from the dying lizard lion into the floating crystal. The magic I had used to raise this creature, now drawn away to empower its killer.


    So it was feeding after all, just not on flesh. Could I do that? It seemed like I could, though I didn¡¯t want to kill any of the inhabitants of my garden to test this theory. However, death was common among them anyway, so it didn¡¯t take long for me to find a slug being devoured by one of the land-dwelling tadpoles I had accidentally spawned. As the slug died, I could see how the magic stored in its body was absorbed by its killer. However, a good third of it was spilled, joining the ambient background field. From there, it was slowly drawn to my core, as all the unclaimed ambient mana in my domain was. It didn¡¯t look anything like the stream I had seen coming from the dying lizard, though. That one had been like a river, full of purpose and power, while this was more like the lazy movement of a pond.


    At the moment, it didn¡¯t seem to make much of a difference either way. I had more important matters to deal with. The defence of my little garden foremost among them. My creatures had little defences against the crystal¡¯s constructs. Their hearing, smell and whatever other senses they had didn¡¯t seem to recognize them as a threat. Even the young lizard the crystl had slain hadn¡¯t made a move to defend itself before the spider had struck. If things stayed that way, it wouldn''t be long before the cave had been hunted empty, and then they might look for other prey.


    If the crystal could draw the magic out of living things, it might also be able to draw it out of myself. And since I was pretty sure at this point that I was made out of magic, that wouldn¡¯t go over well for me. So I better not let it come to that.


    First of all, I should probably speed along my own spider population¡¯s growth. There were only about a dozen left, by my count. Again, I set out to look for a nest or burrow or wherever these creatures lay their eggs, but this time I didn¡¯t find anything. Apparently, they weren¡¯t in the habit of settling down anywhere permanent. Of the two packs still around, one was currently stalking the slowly recovering wasteland of my first experiment, while the other was resting in the branches of a feather-tree grove. There, I noticed the eggs. They were bound to the abdomen of a female, secured there with threads of faintly violet spider silk.


    I¡¯d have loved to be able to take a deep breath before plunging into this, or to take a shower afterwards. The wet shine and slow pulsing of the eggs was truly repugnant. Yet, I dove my attention into them. I studied their make, as well as that of their parents, and once I felt my understanding was deep enough, I started channelling magic into them to hasten their growth along. It was easier with these than with the salamanders. The spider¡¯s bodies relied heavily on magic, as other animals relied on blood to cycle nutrients and air through their system. Yet, their magical aura was faint enough that I could safely work on the eggs while they were stuck to the mother. Either way, their system handled the transportation of resources almost by itself once I expanded and hastened it along, leaving me to concentrate on the workings within their cells.


    It didn¡¯t take long, and the first spiderlings began to hatch already. They were small, almost a hundred times smaller than the adults, yet there were many of them. I was unsure whether I should continue working on them after they hatched, considering they would need proper food now that they were born, but that problem solved itself quite handily. Almost immediately after they first smelled the dank air of the cave, they sough to hide away from it once more. To that purpose, they began burrowing into the soft underside of their mother, eating her alive.


    Had I still had a stomach, I would have likely emptied it at the sight. But, I would need these creatures as soldiers soon enough, so I set to working once more. With their new source of food, I quickly raised them into adolescence. Their white, transparent carapace hardened into thick, black armour and their jaws grew powerful and fearsome. Fearsome enough to fight back against their crystalline counterparts, I hoped.


    With a mental sigh, which wasn¡¯t nearly as satisfying as a physical one, I turned my attention away from the grisly business of raising spiders and let it expand into the whole of my cave. There would definitely be more things I could do to defend my garden against these crystal constructs, but right now I couldn¡¯t think of any. Letting my awareness broaden helped relieve some of the stress I was feeling since the first crystal spider had claimed its victim. Now, it was stalking my garden again already, and a second one had joined it on top. Still, my spiders would need time to grow, and I didn''t want to overexert myself again by raising a second batch immediately after. The ast batch had already noticably thinned out my aura, and I couldn''t afford to fall unconscious again with a threat so close by.


    It was soothing, letting my attention flow with the currents making up my sphere of influence. It also brought my attention, quite literally, to some interesting changes to said flow. My magic was forming small eddies and vortices around my newly raised groves, where it was absorbed and expelled aggain by the feather trees. This hadn¡¯t happened before, I was pretty sure. I had never paid this much attention to the flows, but I think I would have noticed. Especially since there would have been a lot more of these disturbances before I accidentally destroyed most of the plants in the cave. No, before I had helped them grow up, they had only ever used the natural magic seeping out of the ground. But now even the mosses and some of the ferns and flowers growing underneath the feather trees were using my own mana, making them as much part of myself as the feather trees and animal I had raised. It would likely also be easier to work on them if I chose to.


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    Also, though the plants were absorbing a mixture of natural magic and mine, they only expelled my magic. They were converting the natural magic, somehow, while using it. Or perhaps that happened automatically when natural magic was mixed into a high concentration of mine? Whatever the case, they were helping my aura grow faster and denser than ever before.


    The same was happening with the animals I had raised. Observing the flow of magic around and through them was trivial now, if I just let my awareness drift through the currents of them. The lizards, for example, were using their feathery magenta manes to absorb and store magic. But they also produced a small field of it around themselves, which they were using to sense their surroundings. By the way that the flows were bent around and through other objects, they could decipher the position and texture of whatever was around them. The bugs did a similar thing with a pair of feathery antenna, though to a much smaller degree, and even the spiders had tiny hairs on the ends of their legsthat extended their senses into the ground around them.


    As I let my attention wander on, I noticed movement in the air. A single moth was dancing above the scorched wasteland. I had completely forgotten about them after the disastrous experiment. Largely because I hadn¡¯t seen any. They must have been very exposed to the heat and fire, their delicate wings burning like paper in the open air. Looking a tittle further, I found another handful, but most were injured to some extent, sitting on isolated patches of purple moss on the far walls from the explosion. The white flowers there held eggs, though. On the undersides of their petals sat hundreds of them, and looking inside I saw the makings of larvae. Funnelling my magic once more, I brought them to hatch, and continued to speed along their growth until they began spinning cocoons.


    At that point, I stopped for fear of another incident like with the tadpoles. The balloon-like variety that had escaped the tumultuous pond into the air were still hovering around the cave. They had continued to feed on my ambient magic and changed further while my attention had been elsewhere. A ball of violet magic could now be seen through their transparent skin, swirling in the centre of the air sack that kept them buoyant. Their flipper had shortened and stretched around to form a plane around the equator of their body, moving in waves that let them swim through the air, and tiny stubs could be seen where they were growing their legs.


    Inside the water, the large ones had remained mostly unchanged, peasefully living alongside the tiny fish. More or less peacefully, I corrected, as I watched one swallow a handful of the tiny fished. These pond leviathans had started to feed by simply opening their mouths wide and swallowing everything that got trapped inside, and their neighbours had yet to adapt to this new danger. To help with their new method of feeding, the leviathans had developed slits along where their gills were, to let the water flow out to the sides of their mouthes, meaning they could just continue swimming open-mouthed forever now. Their tongue had grown wide and thin, splitting into a feathery net in which algea and small bugs got caught, and once there were enough, they simply had to close their mouth and swallow.


    Only the land-living tadpoles had developed relatively normally after their hastened escape out of the pond. They were now almost completely normal frogs, just that they had been forced to develop outside of the water to escape the feeding frenzy my experiment had caused.


    Now, however heretical creating these new forms of life might have been, the gods had yet to strike me down in righteous fury. So that meant they either didn¡¯t care that much after all, or they couldn¡¯t or wouldn''t reach me down here. Either way, I had to admit I was proud of my accidental creations. The leviathans were clearing the pools of the dead debris and algae that had accumulated there after my experiment, while the purple glow of the flying ones reminded me of fire flies at night. And even though I hadn''t intended for these variants to develop, the fac that they did had taught me an important lesson about magic. Namely that I had to be more careful with using it. I still didn''t know exactly why the tadpoles had reacted like this, but by now I had two main theories. Either, my working had been somehow distorted by the water, which might very well be possibly since I hadn''t attempted any working underwater before or since, or it might have been because they of all the species I had worked on underwent the largest changes during their adolescence, making them somehow more vulnerable to such random distortions.


    I let my attention wander further once again, mulling these two theories over inside my head. I would have liked to experiment some more to determine which one was closer to the truth, but I probably wouldn''t be able to in the near future, since all my magical effort swould have to be spent bolstering my defences. Speaking of, I had enough magic again to raise another batch of creatures. Apparently the second pack of spiders also had a female carrying eggs, so I set aside my disgust and began working once more. To my surprise, the working had become almost trivial after having done in the first time. It was as if the magic was pulling from my experience to figure out the minutia by itself after I set the general intent of my working. Once I had set up the channelling, I found I could even let my attention wander on through the cave and the channeling still kept going as long as I held the intent in the back of my mind.


    However, I pulled my attention together when I felt another foreign movement at the edges of my perception. It didn¡¯t come from the crystal fields this time, but rather the opposite end of the cave. While my influence was growing denser in the open air, it was slow to penetrate the surrounding rock. By now, it was only a hand¡¯s span deep into the stone and quickly drew back when I spend too much magic at once. But it was enough for me to feel something move there. There was something tunnelling through the stone. My awareness there was hazy, my influence too faint, but I glimpsed a long form, many legs and sharp pincers carving into rock. It moved, downwards, cutting though rock and root alike, devouring both. Once it reached the floor of my cave, the picture became clearer. It didn¡¯t tunnel through the hand¡¯s pan of soil that covered the floor of the cave, but it remained close to it. My awareness flowed much more easily through the soft soil than the hard rock, so it was almost as strong where the soil met stone as it was where air met stone on the walls and ceilin, so even though the creature stayed at relatively the same depth, my perception of it sharpened.


    It was a centipede, but unlike any I had seen before. Tough it was definitely an insect, with insides like any other, its carapace was like polished rock and its pincers like cut diamonds. It burrowed through the stone as easily as a fish swam through water, and I only detected minimal magic involved in doing so.


    It was a weapon almost tailor made to fight the crystalline threat facing me on the edge of my influence, and I would have to figure out how to wield it.

 Chapter 1.5

    - The Cave -


    The Centipede was difficult to get a hold of, figuratively speaking. I wouldn¡¯t really be holding anything any time soon, considering my lack of hands. No, I just wasn¡¯t able to get a good look at it. It always kept to the edges of my influence, feeding only on insects and roots straying deep into the soil or rocky crevices. As I had accidentally done with the snails, I was able to steer my creatures by manipulating the magical auras they projected to sense their environments, as long as I had raised them using my own mana. Using that, I tried to coax the Centipede out, laying trails of snails and bugs. The infuriating thing was that it worked, but not entirely. It always took the first ones, but shortly before it was deep enough within my influence for me to examine its makings, it turned about. Almost as if it could feel my attention perhaps.


    While I experimented around like that and absentmindedly raised bugs and snails to replace the ones I spent, the crystal spiders had claimed still more victims. Another young salamander and a handful of frogs. And I couldn¡¯t even strike back. The spiders were difficult to direct. Their senses relied on spreading their aura into the ground rather than the air around them to feel for tremors. But though I understood the general theory of it, this kind of perception was far too alien for me to really replicate. And even when one of the packs accidentally stumbled onto a hunting crystal spider, they didn¡¯t attack. They probed and prodded, but they didn¡¯t get aggressive the way they did when another spider pack crossed into their territory. It was likely the crystalline nature that was throwing them off like all the others. It didn¡¯t sound like anything they knew, didn¡¯t smell like it, my denizens just didn¡¯t know what to do about them, and I had no idea how to teach them.


    Well, as my teachers had taught me, magic was one¡¯s ability to enforce their will on the world, so maybe I should just try and force it again.


    Wait, teachers?


    There was something there, at the edge of my memory once more. I¡¯d been trained for something, taught by many teachers about subjects such as the god¡¯s commands, magic and the order of the natural world. The dying screams of another lizard tore me out of my memories though. There¡¯d be time for introspection once I had dealt with that.


    The last time I had forced an issue like this, it had created my crystal nemesis and knocked me out for who knew how long. But, well, this was far less rigid an issue, wasn¡¯t it? And now that I knew what to look out for, I could stop when I felt my magic being drained too much.


    So, I focused on the pack of spiders closest to the spider clutching yet another lizard in it¡¯s jaws. I willed them to understand my directions, imagining them storming off and hunting their crystal counterpart. I vividly pictured them pursuing and tearing into the crystal spider, and tried to put those pictures into their minds. Surprisingly, it worked. At least with the younger spiders that I had raised myself. They seemed to understand the orders I was sending them, and it didn¡¯t even cost me any magic, as far as I could tell. Looking more closely, I did the same again, and apparently the order simply made my magic that was already inside of them stir and transmit my intent¡­ somehow.


    But be that as it may, I could study the specifics of it later. Now I watched the spiders storm off. Their eight legs thrummed in a complex pattern as they carried their shining, black bodies gracefully through long, purple grass, over root and branch and then through the ashes of my mistake. Anward to the enemy, who still held in its clutches the croaking not-yet-corpse of the lizard. They surrounded the crystal spider, as if they were hunting normally. The crystal spider didn¡¯t react, simply carrying its prey further.


    Then, the first spider struck. Lunging out from behind, almost faster than I could follow. It catapulted itself forward, fangs ready to plunge into flesh. But there was no flesh to be found. Instead, the fangs simply slid off of the smooth crystal, leaving barely a scratch. The spider retreated, thrumming its legs against the ground, apparently communicating something to its fellows. The crystal spider still didn¡¯t react. It either didn¡¯t feel threatened or its limited intelligence didn¡¯t have any response for being attacked.


    The circle moved with it, following, scuttling to keep the same distance. The constant thrumming of legs filled the air with fine ash and dust. Another one lunged, striking from the side this time. It bit into a joint, trying to tear through the narrow part. Again, the fangs didn¡¯t leave the slightest mark, but it kept biting and tearing, trying to break rather than cut the leg.


    This time the construct reacted. Letting go of the lizard, it struck at it¡¯s attacker, but that only led to another spider lunging from the other side to grab another leg and restrain its movements. I¡¯d seen the same tactics applied to others of their kind, and it seemed like they were working just as well against this facsimile.


    Trapped, the construct now couldn¡¯t reach either of its assailants and the rest of the throng could now safely approach to restrain the other legs. And then they began to pull. It didn¡¯t have much effect. The crystal was simply too sturdy. I sent them instructions to lever rather than pull, bending them backwards, counter to how they were supposed to bend. I hoped that might crack them, but I didn¡¯t even know how the crystals were moving in the first place. It was all one solid piece and thus shouldn¡¯t have been able to move at all.


    But, it seemed to work. One spider bent a leg way over the construct¡¯s back and then, snap, off it went. Immediately, a wave of foreign magic hit my senses, scrambling my awareness. The Crystal¡¯s magic. It had a certain quality, sharp and bright like shards of glass. But it dissipated, overwhelmed by my own aura it quickly lost the Crystal¡¯s claim and then slowly floated towards my own core to be claimed again.


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    As the magic left the body, it slowly ceased struggling until it stopped moving at all. Victory, and not a single injury on my side. I¡¯d call that a complete success.


    With their task done, the spiders ambled about aimlessly. Some of them kept prodding the broken construct, maybe expecting to find something edible for their efforts, but when that failed, they turned about to return to the rest of their pack.


    By now there were four packs in the cave, each with about a dozen individuals. It would have been more, but due to the cave¡¯s devastated population, most of the young spiders I had raised hadn¡¯t been able to find anything to eat and started turning on each other. On the upside, it seemed that the slugs and bugs, at least the ones I had raised, were now developing faster than the original ones. Some of them were now in the third, some even fourth generations since I originally started working on them, so perhaps my repeated use of magic had caused some lasting changes.


    The lizards still were an issue, though. They required far too much food to quickly raise to adulthood, and the few adults I did have were slow to mate again. I could maintain a subtle working on the young ones, increasing their growth at a more moderate pace, but then I couldn''t maintain any other workings in the meantime. By now I was pretty much constantly working on one batch of eggs or another. Raising new slugs and busy, helping moths hatch or tadpoles hatch or raising another clutch of spiders. The latter were very fruitful, as it turned out. They were near constantly producing eggs. As it turned out, they were only carrying them when there wasn''t any alternative food source around. Normally they seemed to lay them in the remains of their huts after having fed. This meant there was much less food available though, so instead of dozens, only a hand full of spiders emerged from those clutches. Still, at the rate they were laying them in dead bugs and slugs I''d be able to assemble an army soon.


    Though I''d probably have to fix the lizard problem before then, or else they''d be hunted into extinction. Perhaps if I focused my working on only one or two individuals, they might be able to find enough food to grow into adulthood. Then I could use them as a breeding pair and repeat the process until they develop the same lasting changes as the other species.


    So, I did as I planned and set to breeding lizards. The process was easy enough to only need a fraction of my attention, so as the male and female I had selected started gorging themselves on everything around them, I set to improving my arsenal.


    Now that I could control my spiders, I sent them instructions to destroy the crystal constructs on sight. I made sure they understood, by guiding a pack towards one of them without specific instructions to attack and seeing what happened. As intended, they attacked as soon as they recognized the construct for what it was, though I still didn''t know how exactly they did. Maybe it''s steps sounded differently than that of a normal spider.


    I watched them score another victory, I sent the same command to all other spiders and immediately removed it from the group I was currently following. I''d need them for another task.


    The centipede was still circling my aura without ever truly entering it. It was infuriating, like a mosquito constantly circling when you were trying to fall asleep. Always just out of reach or suddenly gone when I almost had it.


    But no longer. I set my chosen pack up in a wide circle on a chunk of dry land and laid another line of lures. Bugs, directed to dig in at regular intervals, forming a line leading into the centre of the circle. All of them were at a depth the centipede was usually comfortable staying at.


    Then I waited. The centipede came soon enough, after I set out a few more lures between it and my trap. This time it followed the lie to it''s conclusion, and when it was at the centre of my circle, I told the spiders to dig down. They weren''t particularly good at it, but they were fast enough to reach solid stone before the centipede could escape. It was now surrounded by a trench of open air. Open air saturated with my magic.


    I told them to tunnel toward the centipede.


    As my aura spread into the soil, flowing into the tunnels my spiders dug and further from there. The centipede seemed to notice the density of my influence increase, but it¡¯s only way out was down into solid rock. I channelled power into my spiders, quickening their movements. My other working, the one focussed on the lizards, fizzled out with my attention so wholly devoured, but I could pick that up again later.


    It was a close race, between the centipede cutting its escape into solid rock and my spiders tunnelling ever closer towards it. The spider¡¯s legs weren¡¯t made to shovel around earth, but they had many and the ground was loose. Meanwhile the centipede began to writhe and contort the closer they went. It was starting to falter, its progress slowing and then halting completely. By the time my spiders reached it, it stopped moving at all.


    It died. That much was evident when I first looked into its body. It was completely still, not even the miniscule creatures that normally flourished in guts and innards were completely inert. The one thing still happening inside it was the magic. There was a violent clash there, between my magic and the unclaimed magic that had been in its body. My magic was converting the natural one, and in doing so it was damaging everything around it. There were a million breaks in the creature¡¯s nervous system, a million tiny burns and tears in its flesh. Fluids were leaking and intermingling where I was quite sure they shouldn¡¯t, and the creature was starting to digest itself from the stomach outwards.


    So this is why it has avoided my aura so far. Did that mean anything from the outside would die if it entered my aura? That would be an unfortunate effect I¡¯d have to learn how to deal with. Especially if I ever wanted to see any other people again. Gods, it would be nice to have someone to talk to at some point.


    But again, my brooding was disturbed. Near the edge of the Crystals domain, I could feel a large amount of mana being released. Larger than usual from a crystal spider. As I turned my attention there, I didn¡¯t see a defeated construct though. Instead I was greeted by the sight of a whole pack of crystal constructs standing over the gorey remains of a spider pack.

 Chapter 1.6

    They were twelve constructs all in all, moving as a unit. Half of them started carrying the corpses back to their master¡¯s domain, while the others formed a circle around them.


    Of course, my spiders wouldn¡¯t have a chance against an organized pack. The only reason they had won so far was due to far superior numbers, being able to surround the construct and strike from the back before restraining it. In anything but overwhelming force, the construct''s superior fangs and shell would be unbeatable.


    I had to arm and armour my forces, and quickly.


    Returning to the rapidly decomposing centipede, I set to studying the make of its mandibles and carapace. They were incredibly sharp and durable, the former looking like glass or cut diamond, while the latter was like polished rock. And indeed, their structure was incredibly similar. Similar, but not the same. Both were growing in visible layers, radiating from small pores on the skin. These pores seemed to have grown the materials, but their structure was too damaged to reveal anything about the how of it.


    Though, no two were destroyed the same way. So, if I studied enough of them, I might be able to reconstruct a functioning one.


    It was a slow and tedious task, requiring enough of my attention I couldn¡¯t maintain any workings in the meantime, but it worked. Whenever I found a new piece of intact structure, I copied it into one gland where I was gathering them all together, like the world''s most intricate puzzle. But in the end I did manage to assemble it all.


    I still had no clue how it worked, but I could replicate it in one of my spiders and see what happened. I repeated the same process for the mandibles as well, and then turned my attention back to my cave as a whole.


    I was greeted by bloody slaughter. It was almost as bad as after my cataclysmic mistake. Almost all of my newly raised spiders were gone. I should probably have removed the command to attack the enemy on sight. Now only the pack that had helped me catch the centipede remained. Of the various other denizens, only scattered remains were left. The lizards had fared worst of all, as I hadn¡¯t even managed to recover their population before this new offensive.


    Right now, there were two large packs still roaming my cave, searching for ever scarcer prey. I¡¯d have to strike back soon. First, I¡¯d have to find a new clutch of spider eggs. There was little chance these roaming constructs had left any carcasses for my spiders to lay their brood in, so I immediately went to check the last remaining pack. And true enough, there were two females carrying eggs. I set to work immediately. First, testing my theory. Focusing on a singular egg, I tried to implement the glands for shell and mandible into the tiny spiderling as it grew.


    First I had to remove the normal shell and mandibles, though. The first spider died, bleeding out in the process. The second died soon after, as I hadn¡¯t managed to properly seal wounds. The third made it through that stage. With it, I set to integrating the glands in such a pattern that the shield and claws would form properly. It was intricate work, and I had to stop the growth process multiple times to rework their positions, referencing the centipede¡¯s corpse each time. Number three died as its body rejected the foreign intrusion. On the fourth one, I tried coaxing the spider¡¯s own body into building the glands themselves. It was an unusual way to work in, and number four didn¡¯t survive long. But by number six, I had found out how to send the spider¡¯s body instructions similar to how I did their adult counterparts.


    Number six finally survived till the hatching. It burrowed into its mother as their kind was wont to do, and I watched as it grew. I would have liked to turn my attention away, but I needed to make sure my alterations worked.


    Soon, the shell and claws started growing out. The claws formed dagger-like protrusions, while the shell uniformly covered the spider¡¯s body. The material started out slightly viscous, moulding itself to the body, but then grew solid. Everything seemed fine for a heart crushingly long time. Both the shell and the claws were developing nicely. The former a nice, opal-like layer, the latter growing out as little nubs. But then the spider stiffened up and stopped moving. It was the shell. When the material was freshly produced, it was slightly viscous, so it could spread over the body evenly before hardening out. However, that led to it clogging up the joints until any movement became impossible.


    I reduced the number of glands around the joint areas of number seven and let it run wild to observe. This time, everything seemed fine. The shell around the joints was thin enough for the spider¡¯s movements to break through a newly developing layer, and afterwards the movement of shell against shell smoothed away any offending parts. As it grew, number seven started to devour the shell of its mother as well, and then it began grinding little pebbles to dust with its mandibles and consuming that. Apparently it needed the material for its developing shell.


    Soon enough, it grew to an impressive adult specimen. While still, it looked like a small pile of stones, and even in movement it was hard to make out. I didn¡¯t expect this camouflage to help against the crystal constructs though. The increased durability would likely be very helpful, however. Only the claws were a problem. They grew out as round, smooth rods, blunt as it got. I didn¡¯t know whether the centipede had had the same problem, or this was somehow a failure of my construction, but the problem was resolved rather easily. All I had to do was order the spider to sharpen its mandibles against one another, and soon they were like wicked little daggers. The sound of crystalline blade against blade was rather unnerving, almost like a blade of steel being sharpened but with an ethereal ring to it, and soon the cave would be filled with it.


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    I immediately set to applying the same changes to the rest of the spider eggs, sending a few of the pack out to hunt slugs and bugs for the little spiders to feed on. Their populations were dangerously low, true, but I could raise them up after this war was won. As I repeated the same working again and again, the familiar ease set in, the magic doing much of the work on its own as long as I kept a part of my mind concentrated on the task. I used my freed up concentration to raise a new batch of slugs simultaneously to the spiders. The little army I was raising would require much food. The one good thing about these slugs was that there were always eggs around somewhere.


    With my attention split like that, I didn¡¯t have much left to pay attention to my garden. Though I could tell there were two groups of constructs roaming at the moment. They were slowly closing in on something else. Something living, smaller than a lizard. A fight ensued, though I caught a general flurry of movement, and then the life was snuffed out. I was just about to turn my attention elsewhere when I noticed the pack set off again, but not towards their crystal realm. Before, they had always carried their catch back for their master to consume. But not any more, it seemed.


    This was interesting enough for me to leave the slug eggs be and concentrate on this pack of constructs. It was immediately evident they had been changed from when I¡¯d last seen them. They were all still spiders, but I could make out three distinct forms between them.


    Most of them, seven of these twelve, had become smaller. They were flitting about and around the group, combing through the area as they were passing through. They never strayed too far, though, before turning back to the group and searching in a new direction. Four of them were large behemoths, their bodies bulbous and easily three times the size of the smaller ones. Their blades had become imposing scythes, large enough to cut one of my spiders in two. They were travelling in formation around the last of the pack. A spider almost like the original ones, but with an engorged abdomen filled with a swirling storm of magic. This one had its teeth buried into their latest victim, sucking every last bit of magic out.


    So that was why they no longer needed to return after every kill.


    It also presented me with valuable targets to strike at. Though, I might need to develop some more intelligent tactics than the spider¡¯s instinctual surrounding and overwhelming.


    The Lizards'' ability to phase through matter would likely be very useful, if I could bring up their population to a fighting state.


    I turned my attention back to the slugs. If I wanted to raise two species for fighting, then my need for a stable food supply only grew that much more for it.


    While I split my attention between that and the growing spiders, I lost another four creatures to the roaming packs, and a third entered my territory. As soon as the slugs hatched, I turned my attention away. They could grow the rest of the way on their own. Then, I set to finding a batch of lizard eggs. There still weren¡¯t any. Then back to my last plan, finding a breeding pair and going on from there. It took some doing, but eventually I found two adolescents of the right gender, both raised by me. They sadly were on the opposite ends of the cave, so I¡¯d have to guide them through the patrolling constructs. On their way, I subtly enhanced their growth speed, feeding them with newly hatched slugs.


    It was arduous, guiding the lizards through burrows and dense foliage. I didn¡¯t dare to move them at anything but a crawl, for fear of guiding them into an unnoticed scout and having too little time to react. It was a hard task, focussing on five different targets at once while maintaining the working on the spiders, and I stopped trying when I almost slipped up. I hadn¡¯t noticed a pack suddenly changing direction and almost intersecting with the male¡¯s path. I only escaped the situation by ordering it to become mist and escape into a nearby pond.


    Afterwards, I redoubled my caution. Apparently that trick used a lot of the lizard¡¯s stored magic. Channelling more magic into it by hand only helped so much, as the lizard first had to convert it to something it could use. Similar to how I converted natural magic through my core into the steadily growing aura filling the cave.


    Some further careful manoeuvring finally saw the two lizards finally unite. I settled them down in an overgrown rock crack and kept guiding more insects to them to fuel their growth. After that, I gave the order to get to it, and the two of them did. Quickening the growth of the eggs inside the lizard was almost as easy as quickening them outside of it, so I kept that working in the back of my head and returned my attention to the spider army. The pack had moved on while I wasn¡¯t paying attention, avoiding the crystalline hunters without help. It seemed they had learned to fear them while my attentions had been consumed uncovering the secrets to the centipede¡¯s armour.


    Now, I looked at the fruits of that labour. Three dozen spiders had survived into adulthood, all now bearing the thick, rocky shells and glistening fangs I had given them. The sound of fang being dragged against fang as they continually sharpened their blades filled the rocky outcropping on which they had gathered.


    I set aside there pairs, ordering to hide from the patrolling constructs and multiply while I took the rest of them to war.

 Chapter 1.7

    Now that my newly armed force was ready, it was time to strike back. I went looking for the closest raiding party, and it didn¡¯t take long to find one, it¡¯s Collector construct gorging itself on a beetle in the midst of its retinue.


    My Spiders marched as ordered, flowing through plants and grass like a living avalanche, impossible to make out where one''s legs ended and another¡¯s began. The stony tide turned around ponds and flowed past feather trees until the enemy came in sight. They had noticed the thundering approach long before we arrived, and their ranks had turned toward us. The scouts were already spreading out, fifteen against thirty, but their weapons were sharp and armour sturdy. Whether ours were greater or lesser would show itself soon.


    I ordered my spiders to assemble in rank, forming a shield wall as I had been taught long ago. Of course, they had no shields, but their backside was almost as good. A round expanse of smooth armour, unlike the mess of eyes, joints and other weak spots that was their front. Half of them turned about, facing away from the enemy, and the others climbed atop. More literal wall than shield wall, with my soldiers poised to strike from above. A handful were ordered to guard the sides, entangling any who¡¯d try to pass around it in skirmishes until reinforcements could be sent.


    As it turned out, the last precaution was largely unnecessary. The smaller scouts simply clashed into the wall, trying in vain to reach atop it and strike at the defenders. The half that provided the wall were barely harmed, only an occasional scratch or bite that didn¡¯t penetrate deep into the body. The scouts didn¡¯t seem to realize that the wall was as much their enemy as those that harassed them from atop.


    The new fangs worked wonders. Though it didn¡¯t cut as easily through the crystal like the centipede had cut through stone, it left scratches with every bite. Once or twice, one of mine managed to get a limb in their fangs and hold on long enough to sever it entirely, but the scratches did more work than the occasional dismemberment. Every scratch was a wound bleeding mana, sapping away the force that animated the constructs, and mine were getting in more hits than the enemy. Already the scout¡¯s movements were getting stiffer, more sluggish, but victory wouldn¡¯t come just as easy as that.


    The enemy''s goliaths, the hulking monstrosities three times the size of my spiders, advanced towards my wall. Not all four of them, though. One remained, protecting the Collector. Meanwhile, a handful of scouts, those with the least injuries, broke away from the fighting and retreated. Back to the Collector and the Goliath that carried it away.


    I took the chance and collapsed my shield wall. Outnumbering the enemy three to one, I would take my chance in a skirmish. The wall wouldn¡¯t have held against the heavy hits of the goliaths, I suspected. The would likely have been able to simply use their superior size and strength to push through the ranks, if not outright crush them under a strike of their limbs. Better to clean up the scouts quickly and deal with the goliaths on their own.


    A frantic trade of blows followed, as the spiders I had set to guard the flanks now circled the enemy and attacked them from the back, while the majority of my force was keeping their attention on the front. With the scouts unable to turn around to deal with the smaller party, due to that exposing their vulnerable back to even more biting fangs, my army made quick work of them. Their movements had already been sluggish, so mine were able to evade the worst of their attacks, if not all. By the time the last of the scouts was dead, I had lost five of my own, and three more likely wouldn¡¯t make it past the battle the way they were bleeding from severed limbs and gushing wounds.


    I had just about enough time to get my spiders in order before the goliaths reached the battle. Their enormous size might make them a considerable threat, but it also slowed them down immensely. I decided to take advantage of that, sending ten of my spiders to follow the fleeing collector and its guards, while the rest were set to harass the goliaths. My spiders were much swifter, so I reasoned they would likely be able to run literal circles around these giant foes and attack their backs without taking too many hits of their own. Since the enemy didn¡¯t seem to use any formations of its own, I wasn¡¯t worried about them guarding each other¡¯s rears.


    With orders given, I followed the detachment I had sent after the collector. The scouts had formed a loose protective half-circle around the goliaths back, on which my target was perched. So they might be using formation after all. This boded ill for my abandoned soldiers, but the collector was too valuable a target to turn my attention away now. If it could deliver its stored magic to its master, that would only mean more constructs raiding my garden soon.


    So, I decided to try my luck. The five spiders were ordered to attack the enemies scouts in a frontal assault. I didn¡¯t fancy their chances in taking on the goliath in a frontal assault, and my force still outnumbered the scouts two to one.


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    The skirmish was quick and violent. Without me being able to encircle the enemy, due to them keeping their backs close to the goliath, and my own forces just as wounded as the enemy this time, the scouts quickly won the upper hand. At first, it looked rather balanced, with them trading blows one for one, but then one of my spiders died due to an unfortunate strike to the head. The other one that had been engaging the same enemy quickly followed, so now that scout was free to help another, and it only got worse from there.


    My detachment was wiped before I could even signal a retreat. Not that I thought that would have helped, considering the scouts were just as fast, if not faster, than my own. I returned my attention to the other battle, and saw it was coming to a close as well, but a far more favourable one. The goliaths had slowly been exhausted by constant harassment, as I predicted. It wasn¡¯t a victory without loss, though, as evidenced by the crushed and bisected spiders littering the field. The sorry state of the remains made counting them harder, but I estimated them at no more than ten.


    As the goliaths bled more and more power, it only got easier for my spiders to evade their strikes, so the rest of the battle was a done thing, even if it was still to be fought out. I kept my eye out for further reinforcements while my forces finished the clean-up. Luckily, there seemed to be no coordination between the enemy¡¯s raiding parties, as neither of the other two within my territory went in our direction.


    As the last goliath finally came to rest with a last, stuttering step, I signalled my spiders to retreat toward the breeding contingent I had set aside. On the way there, I tried to mend what I could for the wounded, channelling mana to speed along the bodies healing. It was similar enough to the workings of spending along their growth, so I had little difficulty in mending cuts and open wounds, though lost limbs were beyond my ability to heal. My workings simply sped along what the body could already do on its own, after all, and though I didn¡¯t doubt there was a way for me to heal those wounds as well, now wasn¡¯t the time to figure that out. I had already spent too much time on study while my garden was under attack.


    Fourteen foes slain, fourteen of my own as well, sixteen returned from battle. Now that I had time to count my ranks, the numbers didn¡¯t look as encouraging as I had first hoped. If I couldn¡¯t shift that trade of bodies more in my favour, the war would be a thing of attrition, coming down to who¡¯d be able to produce more bodies faster. And though I had no doubt the numbers would have looked even worse had I not given my soldiers their new armaments, it evidently wasn¡¯t enough on its own, and the enemy had already shown it could adapt as well.


    It was evident that the enemy understood little of battle formations, but that advantage was limited. With enough battles to study, it would likely pick up many of the tricks I had used today. Assuming it was able to study the battles, that is. After all, I was not able to look into its territory with all too much clarity, so it stood to reason the same applied to it. That might also account for the terrible coordination of the raiding parties, both between members of the same, and different parties altogether. They might simply be running on instructions given before they were sent out. If that was the case, it was an exploitable weakness, but I was too weary to accept is as truth just yet. Until I was able to verify this theory, I would assume it to be false.


    No, I would need to create other advantages to win this war. The lizard project seemed a promising route, with a properly improved unit of them, I would be able to strike at collectors behind the enemies defensive lines and deny it that mana. It would still be able to draw on ambient mana, true, but its territory was smaller than mine, still restricted to the crater my original mistake had created. I didn¡¯t know if that was due to a decision on its part, or somehow the rest of the cave had already been claimed by me already. Or maybe there was some more complex, arcane reasoning related to the exact manner of mistake my working had been. No matter what, if I could deny it the extra mana it was collecting from my denizens, I was sure I could win the battle of attrition. My territory was larger, thus the amount of ambient mana I was collecting would be as well. Besides that, I was also sure its method of creating servants was more mana consuming than mine. After all, it had to work from scratch to create every one of them, while I simply had to speed along natural processes, and if my first experiment had taught me one lesson, it was that going against the grooves of the universe was much costlier than moving inside them. True, my creatures required food and space, which all required their own mana too, but that was already there. Unlike the concentrated workings I used to grow them, their natural use of many simply cycled it from their surroundings into their body and back again. There was nothing spent there. On the contrary, that forceful mingling of my own mana with ambient one even increased the rate at which it was converted.


    Yes, if I could consistently take out the collectors, I would be able to starve the enemy out. That would have to be my ultimate strategy.


    The working I had set up on the breeding pair of lizards was still in the back of my mind, so there should already be a clutch of eggs there, if not a small pack of young ones. And when I checked, true enough, there were a dozen small lizards crammed in to the crack with their parents. It was incredibly tight there, but the lizards didn¡¯t seem to mind much, especially since I was still leading a constant supply of food to them. But if I wanted to not only raise the population to a stable level, but one that could sustain battle and ensuing losses, they would need more space.


    Luckily, I had just acquired a new work force, equipped with claws capable of digging into solid stone who¡¯d also appreciate a safe, secluded space to rear their young in.

 Chapter 1.8

    I hadn¡¯t expected so much panicked screaming. The spiders had orders not to attack any of the lizards, of course, but the lizards didn¡¯t know that. As soon as the first spider had entered their little rock crack to start cutting away at the far wall, the whole family was roaring in their guttural, croaking way.


    I hastily ordered them to stop. I didn¡¯t know whether the constructs were able to hear, but better safe than sorry. A quick scan of the cave didn¡¯t reveal any impending invasions, so for now I¡¯d assume they hadn¡¯t heard whether they could or not.


    Though they had stopped screaming, the lizards weren¡¯t any less ¨¹anicked for it. If they didn¡¯t still have standing orders to stay in the cave and multiply, they would¡¯ve likely turned to mist and darted out of there already. As it was, they had only turned to mist, allowing them to all huddle together in the same corner, one overlapping another. They separated before returning to corporal form, though. Not that they felt any safer now, the number of spiders in the crack was only increasing and so was their pulse, their mana reserves had simply run out. I¡¯d have to do something about that before their little hearts exploded.


    Ordering them to stop being afraid would likely be complicated. Both because I had never done anything like that before, and because I didn¡¯t know how that would effect their behaviour. If I told them to stop being afraid of spiders, and they happened to come across a Spider I hadn¡¯t given that order to, I didn¡¯t want to be responsible for what followed. Besides, it simply felt wrong to manipulate their feelings like that.


    In the end, I ordered the spiders to stop digging at that cave altogether. Instead, I ordered them to dig a new one a little further along the wall, leaving the lizards in their little crack until the warrens were large enough I could resettle them there without risk of having them run into spiders.


    Speaking of, their new claws weren¡¯t quite as good at tunnelling through rocks as the centipede¡¯s ones had been, but whether that was due to the spiders being less adept at using them or some sort of defect in the way I had constructed them I didn¡¯t know. Either way, the work was progressing quickly enough, and in between cutting out rock chunks and carrying them away, there was even enough time to hunt and lay more eggs.


    The loose rocks were piled in a defensive ring around the entrance, secured there with spider silk. An incredibly useful material, that. I was still at a loss for why the spiders weren¡¯t using it more, or even at all, without my explicit prompting. The silk wasn¡¯t only useful for securing the chunks in place, it was also handy to carry them away in the first place. Lacking hands, the spiders could usually only carry a pebble at a time, but with the silk they could combine them into larger balls they could easily roll away.


    So, the hole in the wall kept growing and growing. But it remained a hole. This was a problem with the way I gave orders to my spiders, I could only impart general impressions and vague directions. I could order them to dig into the wall, but there my ability ended. Keeping the entrance tight, expanding it into a tunnel and then later on into a cave, that was beyond my ability to convey or theirs to understand. I let the work halt for now while I thought about how to circumvent that problem.


    When I had ordered my army to form a defensive line during the battle, that had worked flawlessly. But then, I had been able to send them an exact picture of how they would look lined up in those surroundings. Well, image was the wrong word. I still wasn¡¯t able to see like I had used to. My vision was more like a memory of things I had seen. Or rather a memory of a place I had been, with a general concept in my mind of where things were. Colours, sounds, feelings and smells were simply information attached to those things, like how I knew from stories that the ocean was filled with the sound of waves, though I had never seen or heard either. And there they were again, fragments of memories slipped away before I could properly grasp them. It had become almost common enough I was able to ignore it by now.


    But back to the orders. When I had commanded the spiders at the battle, I had been able to send them a general concept of where I expected them to be in relation to everything else, and then they went there. But with digging, that was another thing entirely, because I had done exactly that when I had given the order to dig out the cave. But after a while, they veered away from my instructions further and further. Even the defensive wall had grown more scattered as time went on.


    I suspected that the instructions simply were too complex for them to hold in their minds, like when you told a mason the exact position of every stone in the wall they were supposed to build and then expecting them to keep it all in their head.


    I¡¯d have to find a way to give them instructions without them having to memorise the whole plan in advance. However, I also didn¡¯t want to have to constantly hover about where they were working and constantly give new orders. I¡¯d need to simplify things, make it something as easy to follow as forming a line at a specific point.


    An image flashed through my mind, workers marking the outlines of a new temple wing in crushed chalk on cleared ground. As soon as it appeared, it was gone again, but the idea remained. If I could somehow make a permanent outline, I¡¯d just have to tell my spiders to dig along the marks. The problem was that in order to make such an outline, I¡¯d have to order my spiders to build it first, and that would run into the same problem. Also, the idea didn¡¯t work for digging tunnels in the first place, since there was no way to lay an outline in solid rock without digging a tunnel for it first, which rather defeated the whole point.


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    However, there was one thing I did have control over, and as it happened solid rock wasn¡¯t much of an obstacle for it. My mana. If I could lay down some kind of markings using that, my spiders might be able to feel its presence and use that to guide their work.


    I let my awareness drift into rock that was to become the lizard warren. It was thin and quickly grew thinner as the rock went on, but it was still dense enough to get a vague idea of what was there. Which wasn¡¯t much besides rock and stone. But if it was enough to get a view, it¡¯d be enough to lay down a simple working.


    Concentrating my awareness on a rounded area, about as long as the span from my fingertips to my elbow if I had either, and half as broad, with a domed roof flowing into a flat floor. Once my awareness was focused on that space and nothing else, I began saturating it with mana as I had done when first breaking that crystal which now haunted my domain with its minions. Perhaps that was some kind of revenge, I idly thought.


    Before anything could strain or break, however, I stopped. I willed the mana to stay where I had put it, and it did so. Then, I ordered them to thrum. The threads began vibrating, producing a low, quiet hum that reverberated through the rock. It would be more than enough for my spiders to perceive with the sensitive hairs on their legs.


    From that humming sketch, I worked myself back to the main cave, painting a spiralling tunnel as I went along. I made sure to insert chokepoints and easily defensible curves as I went along, as well as sloping the tunnel downward so any defenders would have the high ground. Once I had reached open air again, or at least relatively open considering I was still who knew how deep underground, I sent out an order to my spiders to start digging out the thrumming rock.


    Or at least the ones that still remained in the area. While I had been painting the first cave of the warrens, some had already wandered off in little packs, hunting as they would usually do. Getting them back together took about as long as sketching that cave had. I¡¯d need to order them not to wander off again, especially with the raiding packs still out there. But that¡¯d mean I¡¯d have to send the food toward them, and since I was already doing the same for the lizards, the supply was getting tight. Not that there weren''t enough plants to feed all the slugs and bugs sustaining my army, but I just couldn¡¯t raise them quick enough to sustain two growing populations, especially considering the still marauding constructs.


    Perhaps I could set aside a part of the warrens to raise those too, but then there was the problem that I could only concentrate on so many workings at once. Though perhaps there was a way to establish a permanent working covering the section I¡¯d set aside for them. I had been able to contain the mana sketching out the cave in a location by simply willing it to be there, so maybe I could set up something similar with the growth quickening working, though that one consumed the mana I assigned it to. In that case, I might be able to channel a portion of the mana emanating from my core to that area to sustain it. I had seen the crystal do something similar as it fed on one of my creatures, the first one I had noticed it drag away into its domain, though in that case it had channelled the creature¡¯s mana toward itself. Surely the opposite must be possible as well.


    While I was thinking, the spiders had already dug out the tunnel and had started on the first chamber. As air and mana flowed into the space, my aura expanded deeper into the surrounding rock and I idly went to set up further orders. The warrens would be a spacious retreat for my lizard populations, once finished. A network of caves and tunnels of varying sizes, filled with lush vegetation and watering holes. Everything they would need to create a stable, healthy stock I could pull from for the war.


    Inbetween painting in new chambers, I ordered some of the spiders to carry in soil and seeds from the outside and another group to carry the rubble out and pile it on top of the wall. For that, I set up a new set of orders with mana thrumming in slightly different tones. While that was happening, I moved the lizards out of their old rock crack and directed them into a dead-end pocket in the new warrens where no spiders would be bothering them.


    With the lizards moved, I¡¯d also have to set up a new food supply. The old way of simply sending a slug or two there every once in a while wouldn¡¯t work for much longer. So, instead I went about creating a few trails of mana leading back to the warrens. The snails seemed to be able to follow them, even though I had no idea how that worked. They didn¡¯t seem to have any ears, after all. Be that as it may, whenever one of them came across a trail, they would follow it into the warrens.


    Returning my attention back to the cave, it seemed that much of the floor, at the one already dug out, was already covered in a thin layer of soil. Enough to start growing plants there. The working went into the back of my mind, alongside the one I still maintained on the lizards.


    Now there was nothing left to do but watch. Watch the spiders dig the tunnels, watch the soil layer on the floor get higher and the plants and lizards grow. The snails were slowly coming in as well, beginning to feed on the still-growing plants. I debated whether to do something about that, but then the first snail was quickly snapped up by a spider. That became a problem though. With three dozen hungry spiders who were only allowed to go out hunting if absolutely necessary, there were a lot of hungry mouths to feed. Too many to also feed the lizards. In the long-term, I¡¯d be setting up a separate space in the warrens for snails to breed in, but for now I¡¯d need to draw more in from the outside.


    As my attention left the developing warren, I followed one of the lines drawing in snails from the outside. It¡¯d be interesting to know how effective they were at drawing them in. However, instead of more snails, I found a cohort of constructs moving toward the warrens instead. It seemed my efforts had been noticed after all.