A Demon's Core

Rose deliberated on what she should bring with her for the expedition. Violet was planning to bring a backpack, so they would have room to bring some supplies. She considered taking a spare set of clothes to change into, in case it became necessary, but decided against it. They would only be gone a little more than a day, so taking an extra set of clothes would be a needless waste of space. Besides, their destination was the river, so they could always just wash the clothes they were wearing if they had to. The biggest decision came down to which of her weapons she should take.

Though the objective of the mission was to make peaceful contact, there was no guarantee that the dungeon they were looking for would be peaceful in return and there was also the possibility of encountering other dangers along the way. The knife was an obvious choice; it was sharp, easy to use and had a sheath that could be easily attached to a belt. But she also really liked her hammer and could even use it more effectively than before now that she was stronger than she used to be. Maybe she would just take both of them.

Once she was ready, Magentam asked her to get one of the mana crystals to serve as a gift for the dungeon. She crawled through the hole in the kitchenette cabinet that led to Room 7 and opened the adjacent cabinet where most of the mana crystals were stored. She took a moment to marvel at them; some with a soft pink glow to them, others in various states of charge. There was getting to be quite a collection now.

She couldn’t help but adore the ones that glowed, the way they radiated such a delightful shade of pink. Rose liked to collect shiny things, but even the shiniest of things could not compare to the mesmerising allure of these crystals. Perhaps, after this mission, she would ask if she could decorate her room with some of them; not to use the mana they contained, for that belonged to Magentam, but simply so she could admire their beauty.

But that would be something to consider later; for now, she had to focus on the mission. She tried to select one of the larger mana crystals, though there didn’t seem to be too great of a disparity in their sizes. It was a little hard to tell due to the variety of different shapes Magentam had created when experimenting with them. She eventually chose a simple cube-shaped crystal.

She returned to Room 5 where Violet and Coal were now waiting. She was ready to go and standing by the door with her shield on her arm, her own knife on a belt and a backpack slung over her back. Coal, in typical fashion for him, had nothing but the clothes he was wearing and even that was only a pair of shorts, as he had chosen to forgo a shirt today. That wasn’t too unusual for him though, since he had more trouble putting shirts on than others due to his longer, sharper horns. He did have some shirts with buttons on the front that allowed him to avoid that issue, but he still only wore them around half the time, at most. It’s probable he wouldn’t even bother wearing pants either if Rose wasn’t so insistent on it.

Rose approached them and asked Violet to turn around so she could put the mana crystal into the pack. Doing so, Rose noticed that the backpack was empty besides that.

“Packing light this time, I see,” Rose commented with a smirk, recalling how much Violet had tried to fit in her backpack the last time she’d gone out on an important mission.

“I wasn’t sure what to bring. I don’t think I’ll need a bottle for water since we are going to the river. Do you think I should bring some spare clothes or anything else?” Came Violet’s tentative reply.

“I don’t think extra clothes will be necessary for such a short journey, but you can if you want, nor do I think there’s anything else especially important that we need to bring,” Rose assured her.

“Maybe I should just leave the backpack behind then?” Violet considered.

“Not at all, it’s holding the mana crystal now,” Rose jested, “besides, there’s also the possibility of finding interesting things to bring back.”

They were shortly joined by River and Aster, the last two imps who would be a part of the team, both equipped with weapons of their own and ready to go. River wielded a combat knife like those carried by Rose and Violet, while Aster had only a regular kitchen knife.

River may be invaluable for this mission due to her affinity for water and apparent friendship with the giant lizard that may or may be the guardian of this new dungeon they were trying to find. Aster, on the other hand, didn’t have anything special to contribute, but he and River were practically a mated pair at this point so he would likely have followed them even if Rose told him to stay behind.

Once all the imps were assembled, Igneous, the final member of the team, roused from his regular resting place to join them. With everyone now prepared to leave, Magentam reached out to all of them with some words of encouragement.

Try to avoid unnecessary danger as much as you can. Good luck and please return safely.

With that, the six of them departed. At the stairwell, Igneous went up instead of down. He’d rather glide down from the roof than follow the stairs all the way to the ground floor, but he assured them that he’d be waiting for them outside the front entrance.

As the imps made their way down, it soon turned into a race to see who would reach the hotel lobby first, although the result was a foregone conclusion before they even began. Violet was in the lead at first, until Coal started teleporting from one landing to the next. No matter how fast Violet was, even with her jumping and bouncing off the walls to minimise the loss of momentum when turning corners, she didn’t have a hope of keeping up with his teleportation.

Rose was the third to reach the lobby where she saw Coal grinning triumphantly with his arms in the air, celebrating his victory. Violet was pouting, but only briefly and soon gave way to a smile as she congratulated Coal. River and Aster brought up the rear, though they weren’t too disappointed as it was the expected outcome.

They met up with Igneous again and the group set off towards the river. The hotel, while not a waterfront property, was not far away from it, it was even possible to see the river from the hotel’s roof, so it was not long before they were standing on the riverbank, staring down at the water.

“How will we know when we’ve found the dungeon?” Asked Violet.

“I assume we’ll be able to feel the difference in mana, like with Magentam’s dungeon,” Rose replied.

“But if it’s in the water, doesn’t that mean we’ll also need to be in the water to feel it?”

“Yes, so we’ll have someone enter the water to check periodically as we follow the riverbank,” Rose explained.

“Why not just stay in river then and swim?” River suggested.

“Because we can move faster on land. We’ll cover a lot more distance if we’re running rather than swimming,” Rose replied.

“Do we need to check here then?” Violet asked.

“No, this is where we usually play. If there was a dungeon here, we would have noticed it already.”

At Rose’s direction, they all began their journey downstream, moving at a steady jog. Violet and Coal started creeping ahead of the group as they became absorbed in a silly game of trying to stay in front of the other, but Rose reprimanded them before they got too far away.

“Slow down. We don’t know how far we might have to go, we could have a long night ahead of us, but we won’t get far if we tire ourselves out right at the start,” she chided.

The two slowed down and rejoined the group. Together they followed the river downstream throughout the night. Igneous occasionally flew off ahead to scout from the air, but he never reported finding anything of interest.

They stopped periodically to rest and to check the water for any signs of the dungeon, a task which River always volunteered for. They were mostly following the road that bordered the river as there wasn’t always enough of a riverbank to walk along, sometimes just a concrete wall with water at the bottom. When that happened, River would just jump straight off the wall after stripping off her clothes, though she always complained about being expected to put them back on afterwards, since she would be taking them off again the next time she went into the water. Eventually Rose just allowed her to go naked for a while, not just to stop her complaining, but also because she was right about going back into the water again and it did save time not having to wait for her to strip and redress every time. River stored her clothes in Violet’s backpack and Aster could hardly keep his eyes off her after that.

They continued in this way until the first rays of sunlight could be seen cresting the horizon. The journey had been uneventful so far, though they were cautious as they approached the bridge, knowing that the humans maintained a presence in the area. The door of their outpost was shuttered as they passed it. They didn’t see any humans and if the humans spotted them, they made no indication of it. In that time they had failed to find any sign of the dungeon or its assumed guardian. Their pace had slowed and some of the imps were starting to complain about feeling tired. Rose couldn’t deny that she was feeling it too and decided it was a good time to look for a place to rest.

She didn’t want to sleep anywhere out in the open so she looked to the nearest building. It was an enormously tall building reaching high into the sky, much higher than the one they lived in, and looked like it was made mostly of glass. They approached the entrance and tried opening the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Rose used her hammer to smash one of the windows, carefully knocking out as much of the glass as she could from the bottom of the frame so everyone could climb through safely.

The imps crawled through the broken window, one by one, with Igneous coming in last, though he had to borrow Rose’s hammer to knock out more of the glass before he could get through. Inside, they found a lobby vaguely similar to the hotel, although this one was noticeably larger.

They took some time to investigate the area, looking for any signs of habitation, but couldn’t find anything to suggest that any animals or humans had been there recently. They found a short hallway with four sets of metal doors, like those in the hotel. Magentam had called it an elevator and explained that it was used to quickly move between floors. But like the elevator in the hotel, these ones also did not open.

There was also one door leading to a stairwell and Rose suggested moving up to the next floor to avoid being seen in case anyone or anything walked past and happened to look in through the windows. She wondered, briefly, if she was being more cautious than necessary, but decided that excessive caution was better than a lack of it.

On that floor, they found an open area with lots of desks. There were also a few smaller enclosed rooms with only a single desk in them. Violet became ecstatic when they opened one door and found a closet full of cleaning supplies, including a broom, which she rushed forward to take a hold of, raising it up into the air.

“I’m taking this,” she cheered.

“You really want to carry that around with you for the rest of the time we’re out here?” Asked Rose.

“Yes, I need it,” Violet insisted.

“It might be easier to leave it here for now and you can pick it up on the way back,” Rose suggested. Violet lowered the broom and looked down at it for a moment.

“You’re probably right, we’ll come back for it later, but don’t forget,” she agreed.

They spent a little more time searching the floor, but didn’t find anything else noteworthy. Rose thought that if they couldn’t find evidence of habitation on the first floor, it was even less likely that there would be anything on a higher floor.

“We’ll stay here for a while so everyone can get some sleep. While I doubt anything will find us here, I want someone on watch at all times, just to be safe, but I’ll take the first watch. And River, since you won’t be going back in the water for a while, I want you to put some clothes on again.” Rose announced.

“Do I have to?” River whined.

“Yes, it isn’t appropriate to be naked all the time,” Rose reproached.

“Why not?” River complained

“Because civilised people wear clothes, and besides that, it’s also something Magentam requested,” Rose explained. River looked like she wanted to keep arguing, but she just sighed.

“Fine,” she conceded before fetching her clothes from Violet’s backpack.

Igneous curled up into his rock form while the imps, other than Rose, found comfortable places to sleep. She noticed that River and Aster were so close together that they were practically snuggling, though Violet and Coal are also not far away. Rose had gotten so used to everyone having their own bed to sleep in, that it was sometimes easy to forget that sleeping together in groups was actually the normal behaviour for an imp pack. This is just another example of how Magentam was influencing their behaviour to act in ways that are outside the norm for imps. She wondered if they would still be sleeping so close together if they had found a place with actual beds to sleep in.

While the others slept, Rose took some time to practise her magic, though she periodically took breaks to peer out the windows, but never saw anything interesting. She was practising manipulating the air and just as the female human named Jenna had explained, simply moving the air was relatively easy, at least compared to creating fire. It had taken her a while to grasp the concept of molecules and how they move, even with Magentam’s explanation, but once she understood it, it was a trivial matter to create a breeze. With further effort, she managed to increase the intensity of that breeze into a strong wind, though still not enough to be considered dangerous.

The human had explained that making air into a weapon required either a lot of mana or precision control. She could probably increase her mana by supplementing it with mana crystals. She only has one though, which wouldn’t make a huge difference, but Magentam might be willing to give her more if she asked, since it would help with her magic. She also received a significant boost to her mana pool when she became a guardian, it might be further increased if she dies and is resurrected by Magentam, but that wasn’t a theory she wanted to test.

She couldn't do much about her mana for now, but precision is something she could work on. She started by creating as strong a gust of wind as she could while slowly and meticulously narrowing the stream of air while maintaining the same intensity, though it wasn’t easy and required a lot of focus. Eventually she became too tired to stay focused enough to continue. By that point, she had managed to reduce it to a narrow focal point, which also increased the speed of the airflow as a result of trying to push the same amount of air through a smaller area. It still wasn't enough to be dangerous on its own, but it could surely serve as an effective distraction in battle if aimed directly at an opponent’s face, especially their eyes.

She must have lost track of time while she was practising, because when she looked outside again, the sun was high enough in the sky that she figured it must have already been at least a few hours since the others went to sleep. She wouldn’t even be too surprised if they started to wake soon. She needed to sleep herself now though, and at this point, Violet probably wouldn’t be too upset about waking up a little early.

She crouched beside Violet and shook her shoulder to wake her. Violet flailed briefly as she woke, but then looked around before peering at Rose.

“Oh, is it my turn?” She asked, bleary-eyed.

“Yeah, but I stayed up longer than I’d planned, so the others will probably be up soon too.” Rose replied.

“Okay, you go to sleep now. I’ll keep watch,” insisted Violet.

“Thanks,” Rose said before looking for a comfortable place to lay down. Despite knowing the others would probably wake up soon, she couldn’t help but want to curl up nearby rather than sleep alone.

Once Rose had fallen asleep, Violet was left alone to keep a lookout. She spent her time wandering around the floor and checking out the windows. She wanted to go to the other floors to see if she could find any more brooms, but to do so now would mean she wouldn’t be keeping watch like she was supposed to. She hoped there would be time for it later though. After a while the others began waking up, starting with Aster.

“Good morning,” Violet greeted him.

“Hungry,” was the first thing he said.

“You can go out to hunt with the others when they are awake,” Violet told him.

In response he turned to River and shook her awake. She frowned as she sat up and peered at Aster.

“I’m hungry. We should find something,” he stated before she could say anything and her expression softened

As he moved to wake Coal, Violet stopped him.

“I wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t like to be woken up if it’s not for something important,” she warned.

“He sleeps a lot. That normal?” River commented.

“I don’t know. He’s a little different from us, so maybe imps like him need more sleep. Or maybe he just likes to sleep. Either way, it’s better to just let him wake up on his own,” Violet explained.

“Will you come with us?” River asked.

“I can’t. I still need to keep watch while Rose sleeps.”

“Oh.” River replied, a little dejected.

“What about him? He watch,” Aster suggested, pointing at Igneous.

“If he’s awake, I can ask him.” Violet walked over to where Igneous was curled up.

“Hey. Are you awake?” She whispers, but doesn’t receive a response. She looked at the others and shugged.

“Still asleep?” River asked.

“Yeah, I don’t want to wake him, but you two can go on your own if you don’t want to wait.” After he had let her sleep without interruption the last time they went on a mission together, she felt it would be unfair to disturb his sleep just so she could go out with the others a little earlier.

“You want to go now or wait?” River asked Aster while finally standing up from where she had been sitting.

“We’ll wait,” he declared after taking a moment to consider the options.

While waiting, River and Aster followed Violet around and occasionally peeked out the windows, until they got bored and instead engaged in a game of tag. Violet participated at first, but soon dropped out due to her superior physical abilities giving her an unfair advantage.

They continued playing until Igneous and Coal had both awoken. Violet asked Igneous if he could watch over Rose while they went out to find food. He agreed and the four imps left together.

When Rose woke up, she found a dead rodent right in front of her face. She sat up and looked around but didn’t see any of the other imps. Igneous was still there though, so she approached him to see if he was currently conscious. He responded in the affirmative and she then asked if the others had gone out to find food and returned, to which he again responded affirmatively.

“Do you know where they are now?” She inquired and he indicated that they had gone up. She assumed they were exploring the building. She didn’t know how many floors this building had, but she hoped they hadn’t gone too far. She was eager to get back to searching for the dungeon and didn’t want to spend too much time looking for them

She grabbed the rodent that the others had left for her and headed for the stairs, consuming it as she made her way up. At each floor she opened the door and called out for the others. It wasn’t until she had gone up four floors that she received a response and the other imps appeared; Violet was dragging two additional brooms behind her.

“I found more,” she cheered as she held them up.

“Oh, please leave those with the other one and we’ll pick them up later,” Rose said, dismayed that she managed to locate even more when she already had so many at home. She wouldn’t complain, because it was normal behaviour for most imps to collect things they liked, she just wished that Violet had chosen something that wasn’t quite so large. But Violet wasn’t the only one who had found something to collect; Aster also had his hands full.

“I have drawing sticks,” he exclaimed, eagerly presenting them to show off what he had gathered.

“Pens and pencils,” Rose corrected.

“Pens…and pencils?” He asked with a confused frown.

“The plastic ones are pens,” she pointed at a clear plastic pen with a blue cap, “and the wooden ones are pencils,” Rose explained. Aster thought about it for a while, then smiled.

“Yes, pens and pencils,” he declared.

“Well, if you want to take them back home, you should leave them with Violet’s brooms and we’ll come back for them,” Rose instructed.

“Yes, I’ll leave them,” Aster agreed.

“Now, if everyone is ready to go, I’d like to continue with our mission,” Rose requested.

“Let’s go!” Violet shouted, pointing at the stairs with one of her brooms.

She charged forwards, the other three imps close behind. Rose chuckled at their antics and followed them. When they got back to the floor they had slept on, Violet put her brooms in the closet with the first one and Aster put his pens and pencils on a shelf beside them. While they did that, Rose walked over to Igneous.

“We’re ready to leave if you are,” She informed him.

He uncurled from his rock form and nodded. They all left the building together to continue their journey. They followed the same pattern as before, with Igneous flying off to scout the area from the air while the imps follow the riverbank. Except now, both River and Aster wanted to go into the water and neither wanted to put their clothes back on afterwards. Rose didn’t want to argue with both of them so she decided to just let it go.

Around midday, they encountered a pair of dogs that were tearing at the remains of some small animal. There wasn’t enough of the carcass left for Rose to be able to identify what it used to be, not that it really mattered. Once the dogs noticed them, they started growling. They made no attempt to approach, but they also weren’t backing away, possibly not wanting to give up their prey. River, Aster and Coal growled back.

“Stop!” Rose commanded as Coal took a step forward.

“Why?” Coal demands, turning to glare at Rose.

“Because these creatures can also have a pack, so there may be more nearby,” she retorted.

“You seen them before?” River inquired.

“Yes, me and Violet had to face them once, before any of you were summoned. There were a lot of them at the time and we only managed to fight them off because we had the hellhounds with us,” Rose recounted.

“Why they not attack now then?” Aster asked.

“If they’re survivors from the last pack we faced, they could be wary of us because they remember how it went last time, or if it really is just the two of them, maybe they are smart enough to not attack a larger group,” Rose theorised.

It’s unclear how much of that he understood, but Coal looked like he still wanted a fight. Violet put a hand on his shoulder.

“Please, it’s not worth the risk.” Violet pleaded. It looked like he was considering it, before a malicious grin spread across his face and he disappeared.

He reappeared right in front of the dogs and screeched as loud as he could. They yelped and bolted away, leaving Coal to laugh hysterically at their retreat. He teleported back to the others where River and Aster were also laughing. Violet, however, was not laughing and Rose was furious, not just because of his disobedience, but also because he’d potentially put them all in danger.

“Why did you do that?” She demanded.

“Fun,” he replied, still grinning.

“No. Not ‘fun’. That was stupid and dangerous,” Rose rebuked. His grin dropped and he turned to Violet.

“Help,” he implored, but Violet shook her head. Coal pouted but he did not argue any further. Sensing the shift in the mood, the other two had also stopped laughing.

“Let’s get out of here, in case they come back with reinforcements,” Rose ordered and they started moving again, though now with a much more sombre mood. Rose and Violet kept an eye out behind them as they went in case more dogs appeared.

As they continued, Rose eventually calmed down and even apologised to Coal for being so angry since she knew he probably didn’t understand at least half of what she had said. But she knew he at least understood ‘stop’. She tried to make him understand that she wouldn’t tell him to stop something unless it was for a good reason, so he needed to listen when she did. She could only hope that she actually managed to get through to him.

Later, when Igneous returned from one of his scouting trips, he informed Rose of a human vehicle approaching. She asked where and he pointed across the river.

“We need to hide,” she instructed.

Even though she said that, in reality, only Igneous and Violet actually had to hide as there was a concrete barrier that ran along the side of the road, presumably to prevent vehicles from plunging into the water if something happened. Violet was the only imp tall enough to see or be seen over the height of the barrier, though only just. Igneous curled up into a rock and Violet crouched down while the other imps stayed close to the wall.

They soon heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Violet briefly stood up to peek over the wall, but was quickly pulled back down by Rose.

“Don’t do that,” she rebuked.

“Sorry,” Violet apologised and Rose sighed.

“What did you see?” She asked.

“Just one car, one of the boxy ones,” Violet replied.

“Do you think it was going somewhere with a purpose or just a random patrol?” After staring at Rose blankly for a moment, Violet shrugged. “I suppose that was a silly question, sorry,” Rose said.

As they waited, they listened to the sound of the car as it moved past them and drove on. Rose let out a sigh of relief when they could no longer hear it. This day had already been far more eventful than the night before.

Nothing else interesting happened until it began to get late in the afternoon. As River and Aster prepared to dive into the water once again, Rose noted the position of the sun and thought they would only have enough time for one or two more stops like before they needed to start heading back.

As Rose watched the two imps in the water, River dove beneath the surface for a few seconds and emerged holding a flailing lizard in her hands.

“I found a lizard!” She declared.

It certainly wasn’t the lizard they were looking for, being only about as long as her arm, from head to tail, but that didn’t seem to matter to River right now. She was so excited about her discovery that she brought it with her when she exited the water.

“Any sign of the dungeon?” Rose inquired.

“No dungeon, only lizard.” River exclaimed, presenting the lizard in front of her.

“Eat?” Coal asked.

“No! No eating. This is my friend,” She hugged the lizard tightly, despite its struggling, and glared at Coal.

“I thought the big lizard was your friend,” Violet remarked.

“I can have lots of friends,” River insisted.

Rose inspected the lizard and frowned. It had a long sinewy body, pale brown colouring, bumpy ridges running down its back, webbed claws and a vertically flat tail.

“Violet, does this thing look familiar to you?” she questioned.

“Sure, it’s a river skulk, right?” Violet replied, also peering at the lizard.

“It looks like it, but they shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?” Violet queried.

“Did Magentam explain to you how this is a different world from where we came from?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t really get it,” VIolet said with a confused frown.

“It is a strange concept,” Rose agreed, “but it means that anything that came from the same place as us shouldn’t be found here; unless something brought it here,” Rose explained, a grin tugging at the corners of the lips. Violet thought about it, then her face lit up with a wide smile.

“Like a dungeon!” She exclaimed.

“Exactly. I don’t know how much farther it is, but I think we’re going the right way.”

They were all more excited now as they moved forwards, believing that their objective was near. River was still holding the lizard and it eventually calmed down enough to allow itself to be carried without complaint. Rose thought she should probably inform Magentam of their progress

‘I think we’ve found something,’ she reported.

The dungeon?

‘Not yet, but we’ve found evidence of its presence. I believe we’re getting close, but we may have to keep going for a bit longer than planned,’ she stared.

If you think you are on the right track then that is fine. Let me know what you find.

The next time Igneous returned from his aerial scouting, Rose instructed him to stick with them from then on because they were nearing their objective.

It was shortly after nightfall when they finally found what they were looking for. River paused as she entered the water, with Aster right behind her.

“I think it’s here,” she called out to the others.

“Are you sure?” Rose asked.

“Yes, lots of mana here.” River confirmed.

“Wait here,” Rose told Violet, Coal and Igneous as she stripped off her clothes and carefully climbed over the wall and down to the river below. As soon as her foot touched the water, she could feel it; there was indeed a lot of mana here. While not exactly the same, it did feel very similar to the mana in Magentam’s dungeon. With that she was certain that they had found the dungeon they were looking for.

She looked out to where River and Aster were splashing water at each other and noticed numerous tiny heads breaching the surface all around them and slight ripples in the surrounding area that indicated more were coming.

“We need to get out of the water, now!” Rose warned.

River and Aster stopped playing and saw all the lizards around them. As they swam back as quickly as they could, the lizards casually followed them. There were few things faster than imps on land, but in the water, the lizards clearly had the advantage. River skulks would not usually attack imps under normal circumstances, but they also would not usually congregate in such large numbers. If they did decide to attack the imps in the water, they would be helpless to do anything about it.

But they did not attack, they just followed River and Aster until they reached the wall and started climbing up. From that point the lizards just stared up at them, occasionally sticking out their tongues to lick the air. River stared wistfully back down at them.

“I lost my little friend,” She lamented.

“Igneous, can you try communicating with them?” Rose asked.

Igneous looked down at the lizards below and became motionless for a few moments. He turned back to Rose and shook his head.

“What do we do now?” Violet pondered aloud.

“I don’t know. We can’t fight them, not when there’s that many,” Rose stated.

“Maybe they friendly,” River suggested, “they didn’t attack us when down there.”

“Would you like to be the one to go down there and find out?” Rose retorted.

“Yes, I’ll go,” River volunteered.

This left Rose speechless. She had meant it sarcastically, but either she wasn’t very good at conveying sarcasm, or River just wasn’t good at noticing it. But they did need to do something; they weren’t going to make any progress if they just stood around staring at the lizards.

“Fine, you can go, but you need to be extremely careful. If even one of them makes any attempt to bite you, you get back up here immediately,” Rose commanded.

River made her way slowly down, the lizards doing nothing but watching her the whole way. At the bottom, she anxiously lowered one foot down, hoping she was right about them being friendly. When she made contact with the muddy riverbank below, the lizards had made no move against her. She bent down to pick up one of the lizards and it didn’t even try to stop her.

“You’re my new little friend,” she cheered, gleefully hugging it.

“Looks like it’s safe then,” Rose observed. “Can you swim?” She asked Igneous and he nodded, “Good, you might need to for this.”

“BIG FRIEND!” River shouted, attracting everyone’s attention.

Looking down at the water where River was still holding the lizard she had picked up, but nearby was the dungeon’s guardian; the big lizard. River was eagerly swimming towards it with the smaller lizard under one one arm.

“Do you think you could communicate with that one?” Rose asked and Igneous shrugged. “We should go down and find out.

Rose climbed down the wall while Igneous glided from the top and landed in the water. As Igneous approached the guardian, River was already sitting on its back. He stared at it and the lizard just tilted its head.

“Getting anything?” Rose asked, treading water beside him. He shook his head and indicated to her that this creature was ‘too simple’. “What about the dungeon itself?”

After a moment, Igneous dunked his head under the water for a few seconds.When he brought it back up, he shook his head.

“I haven’t heard or felt anything that seems like the dungeon reaching out either. Maybe it just doesn't want to talk to us.” Rose contemplated.

“Violet, can you bring the mana crystal here,” she called out.

Violet quickly stripped off her clothes, then, instead of climbing down, she simply jumped from the top of the wall to the muddy ground below, landing in a crouch. Coal, on the other hand, teleported out over the water and curled up into a ball as he fell. Violet swam out to them holding the mana crystal.

“See if you can make the big lizard understand that this is a gift to help the dungeon,” Rose suggested to Igneous.

Violet held the crystal out towards the lizard. It tilted its head to the side but moved forward to inspect the crystal, poking its tongue out repeatedly to taste the air around it. It soon lost interest in the crystal and turned to swim away, with River still on its back.

“Don’t go too far,” Rose warned her.

“Okay,” River called back.

Rose swam back to the riverbank with Violet and Igneous following behind.

“What now? It didn’t seem to want the crystal,” Violet inquired when they were in a shallow enough area to be able to stand.

“I’m not sure. I’ll ask Magentam what she thinks we should do,” Rose replies.

‘We found the dungeon and you were right about it being full of lizards,' Rose reported.

Were you able to make contact with it?

‘Unfortunately not. Igneous tried communicating with the dungeon and the lizard but didn’t get anything back.'

It was unresponsive?

‘Not entirely. When we first entered the dungeon, we were surrounded by the lizards, which could be considered a response, but nothing beyond that.’

That is a little disappointing, but not unexpected. Are the lizards hostile?

‘No, they seemed completely docile, even the guardian, which, as you suspected, is the big lizard.’

Having creatures that are docile to defend a dungeon seems a little counter-productive. Do you think that the dungeon is incapable of communicating or just unwilling?

‘I don’t know, it could be either, but I’m not sure what I could do to confirm it. What should we do with the mana crystal? Should we just leave it here anyway?’

For now, yes. If the dungeon is sentient but just does not want to communicate, leaving a gift might make it more cooperative in the future. But if it turns out to truly not be a thinking entity at all, then we can come back for the crystal later. Just bury it somewhere inside the dungeon so the humans do not see it and take it for themselves.

“Magentam says we should bury the crystal in the mud and leave it here,” Rose relayed.

“Why bury it?” Violet questioned.

“So the humans don’t find it.” Rose explained.

“Oh, that makes sense.” Violet swam out into the water again and dove to the bottom. She surfaced soon after without the mana crystal. “Done,” she reported.

“We should probably start heading home now; it’s a long way back,” Rose recommended.

“Right. I can’t wait to tell Magentam about all the things we’ve seen and show her my new brooms,” Violet agreed and quickly scaled the wall with Rose following behind. Igneous unfolded his wings and flapped them a few times to shake off the water before launching himself into the air.

“It’s time to go home, please come back now,” She called out to the others from the top of the wall.

Coal appeared beside her a moment later with water dripping off him, but they had to wait for the other two to swim back. When they climbed over the wall, River was still holding a lizard with one arm.

“What do you intend to do with that?” Rose asked, staring at the lizard in confusion.

“I’m keeping it. It’s my friend,” River declared. Rose considered that for a moment.

“That might be a good idea. It would allow Magentam to see what they look like directly. But if you’re going to keep it, you have to look after it. Do you understand?” Rose told her.

“I will,” River insisted.

Violet offered River and Aster their clothes back, which had been stored in her backpack and River stared at the backpack for a moment.

“Do you think little friend be more comfortable in pack than carried?” She asked.

“Maybe, let’s try it.” Violet placed the backpack on the ground and held it open.

River carefully lowered the lizard into it. The lizard shuffled around to investigate its new confines but soon settled without even trying to escape and River beamed at the success.

Once everyone was dressed and ready to go, they began their long journey home.