No Need for a Core?

The new prison cells were filling in at a steady rate, and Mordecai was satisfied with how things were going even now that the remnants were gathered together. All told, over a third of the invaders were now in the cells, and they hadn't even cleared the mushroom forest zone. He was getting a good feel for how strong the invading force was; most of the people in prison cells were about Shizoku's current strength, while most of those who remained were stronger. This still put them as individually weaker than the small force that had previously attacked them, but quantity had a certain quality of its own. Of course, when it came to quantity, he and Kazue had the advantage there.

Which left him with another problem to solve. The talismans this lot had on them were different than the ones that had been carried before. They did carry some of the same detection enchantments, but they were not designed to act as scrying foci. Instead, each carried a single charge of a teleport spell designed to bring one person to the area of the token. There was an interesting and slightly nasty rider on the teleport: if the talisman didn't have enough stored power to complete the teleport, it would take the power it needed from the person activating it. And it came with a trigger to activate upon its bearer suffering a mortal wound, finishing the bearer off in order to summon its target. And neither Antoine nor Akuma had been carrying one of the talismans. It could probably punch through the wards they had on their inner chambers but at the cost of the life of the person carrying it.

He could just break them of course, but that would leave an unknown force of twenty-three people somewhere. He consulted with Moriko and Kazue, and they agreed that it was probably best to deal with the problem now when they could set up a trap.

With that decision made, he directed Zushi to the center of the arena and called upon Sarcomaag as well. He instructed Zushi to focus on his ability to absorb energy; Mordecai wanted Zushi to exude an aura of void energy.

Sarcomaag's part came from his ability to incorporate so many other fungal species into his makeup. Mordecai and Sarcomaag worked together to find fungi that were less adversely affected by Zushi's void energy, and then evolve them into species that incorporated that energy.

When they were finished, a small field of nearly-black mushrooms sprouted in the center of the arena, with twenty-three of them growing taller than the rest. These were the heart of the trap that Mordecai was setting, along with carefully altering the triggers on the talismans.

After he had finished those preparations, Mordecai double checked that all of his forces in the arena were ready for battle and then moved the talismans out from the dungeon storage and onto the target mushrooms. He used a twist of magic to remotely trigger them, summoning the intended targets into the dungeon. The first part of his trap triggered when each target accepted the summons and the energy cost to teleport this deep into a dungeon's territory was paid by the summoned person. This left them enervated and deep in a field of void mushrooms, with Zushi at the center.

And towering over the other twenty-two forms was a demoness.

Mordecai's battle form slammed into the figure at full speed, carrying them across the arena and shoving her several feet into the reinforced wall. The action stunned his avatar as well, and even while weakened the demoness recovered faster, kicking him off to begin working her way out of the rubble.

But Mordecai's core had not been affected, and he was already coordinating an assault on what he'd immediately recognized as a powerful dungeon avatar. Enki's hands grew out of the wall and grabbed the demoness's head and slammed it back against the hard-packed earth. Hellfire erupted from her form as she began tearing at the earth elemental's fingers, her claws gouging the stone while the heat of her hellfire worked at melting his hands.

Twin streams of caustic brine blasted into her, and the steam that resulted was no less corrosive than the original liquid.

Mordecai's avatar had recovered while the demoness flailed, and he used one of the most powerful attacks he had. He merged a spell and breath weapon into one attack, creating a ray of ice shards charged with lightning magic. It was a tiring attack that he wouldn't be able to repeat during this battle, and technically an inefficient use of his resources. Efficiency was not his current concern.

"Target her limbs!" his core commanded before the first volley of arrows and bullets was fired at her. As dangerous as the enemy avatar was, she could not be allowed to die. Her soul was not here, and he didn't think the avatar would be caught by the same magic that allowed them to save the troops that would otherwise be dying.

He left the rest of the summoned enemies for Kazue and Bellona to coordinate the attack on. He needed to focus his attention here and had to take away a portion of the forces that should be firing into the enemy group. But it was worth it, just with that volley. Both cold iron and silver had inflicted searing wounds upon the avatar's flesh. Even if he had wanted to model his avatar on a demon for some reason, he would not have deliberately inflicted that weakness. And only one of those weaknesses should have applied to any given fiend. Two bandoleers filled with poison-coated silvered and cold iron spikes appeared on his avatar, and he closed with the injured demon to set about grim work that would hopefully be a mercy in the long run.

Nezha and Ysi, the eletsima dragons that normally guarded the wetlands zone, moved with him. Enki had not released his grip on the demoness's head and now the two dragons were attacking her wings and arms. The hellfire had only been temporarily suppressed and only Mordecai was able to entirely resist the heat radiating off of her even now. He knew his flesh would begin to slowly scorch if she had a chance to release her flames again, so he wasn't going to give her that chance.

Disgust twisted his guts as Mordecai drove a spike through a wing membrane, temporarily pinning it to the stone of the wall. Then he drove another spike through that wing, and another; continuing until the limb was completely pinned. Even with the aid of the others, he was taking a beating from her flailing limbs, and her claws and spikes were able to gouge furrows through his scales. Those attacks would have flayed normal flesh open and scored the bones beneath.

He ignored it all, trusting to his own regenerative powers and the small squad of bunkin healers he'd redirected to support this specific fight to keep him healthy enough to function. Her other wing was his next target, driving in more spikes until he was certain she couldn't free her wings. The demonic screams of rage that Enki's fingers muffled were now tinged with notes of pain and terror. Mordecai hated every moment of what he was doing, but he had to immobilize her.

The next stage was going to be worse, but he shied away from thinking about it until he was finished nailing her arms and legs to the wall. The paralytic poison on any one of those spikes would have been potentially lethal to a normal human. For this avatar, they barely managed to weaken the muscles local to where they'd been driven into her flesh.

By the time he was done with that grim task, all of them were badly injured. Nezha and Ysi had broken her spikes and claws with their attacks to enable him to work easier, but all three of them were still bleeding from the attacks she'd managed to land previously and Enki was missing two fingers. At Mordecai's mental command, Enki shifted his grip to reveal the demoness's face and Mordecai met her eyes. "I'm sorry. I hope I can make this better before too long."

Mordecai shifted into his ambassador form and focused his spirit and chi into a single claw. With that claw, he began etching runes of control and binding into her flesh, ripping apart her armor in the process. The avatar cried out in utter terror as soon as she fully realized what he was doing, and he had to ignore her screams and sobbing as she begged him to stop. She swore and promised so many things, and he'd have been much happier taking an oath from her instead. But the moment he'd seen her, he understood that there was another dungeon, almost certainly located in the lands owned by the Puritasi. And Mordecai was equally certain that the core was bound and enslaved. So long as that was the case, the avatar's oaths and promises could be overwritten.

The first rune bound and forbade her hellfire. The next did the same for any ability to charm or hypnotize. And he had to continue to add a rune for each fiendish power he had ever heard of because he had no idea what had actually been built into this avatar.

But he did not bind her mind or her voice. Her movement he restricted in speed and force, and forbade violence in any form. There was one power that he did not completely seal and instead limited its activation to his explicit command. Mordecai didn't know for sure that she had the ability to shape change, but it was an easy guess.

The final rune was scored into her flesh directly above her heart, marking her as a defeated prisoner of the dungeon. Empowering that rune to activate upon a person as powerful as her who had not actively surrendered was a painfully draining experience. And now her aura no longer prevented the dungeon's magic from working near her.

"I'm sorry," he whispered again as he began removing the spikes from the sobbing woman's body. The battle had come to a stunned halt when she'd begun screaming in terror and the surviving enemy forces had surrendered when they fully realized that they were the ones who had been tricked and trapped. The rest were already in their prison cells.

"Support her carefully, and heal her wounds." His commands were soft-spoken, but they were obeyed. Enki did his best to gently cradle her body while others did their best to support her limbs while the spikes were removed and healing magic was applied to each wound in turn.

She collapsed to her knees once she was fully freed from the wall and set down. "I am truly sorry," Mordecai said again before giving her an order, "Now, change to your human or most human-like form."

The demoness's form shrank and shifted, leaving behind a nearly naked woman. Mordecai's core clothed her directly, forming robes out of mana to cover her. The robes were beautiful and soft, but he also deliberately made them layered in a way that hid the gender of her body. None of the other prisoners had such care taken for their modesty, but he had an ugly suspicion that she needed a lot of very tender care.

The robes interrupted her crying, and the woman stared at her robes with a blank expression. Mordecai shifted back to his normal form and sank to his knees in front of her. Binding her had devoured as much mana as he'd spent during the battle with Gil, and that fatigue combined with his emotional exhaustion left his hands trembling. "I wish I could have taken your oath."

The woman's blank expression didn't change as she looked up at him. How much had she suffered to have mastered that look? Mordecai continued talking to her. "I can only imagine that your core is enslaved. If my assumption is true, no oath by your avatar could be binding. And your invested avatar is stronger than my internal avatar. This was the only way I could secure you without endangering others that I care about. You do not deserve what I have done to you, and I am so very sorry I had to do it, but I could not let you escape, not even into death."

Still, her expression did not change. "I plan on finding and freeing your core, and once that is done you can reunite with your core, freeing you of all my bindings. I hope on that day you will be able to forgive me for what I have done today." But he would not be questioning her any time soon. Getting information from her was going to have to wait.

"My name is Mordecai. My wives are Kazue and Moriko, with Kazue being the other dungeon core. And these two women are Bellona and Fuyuko." His core had already told the two of them what he wanted of them, and he'd felt them approach. "We are going to do our best to treat you as a guest, and in one thing we are going a step further. Kazue has made you a room in the area normally reserved for contractors, instead of the area that guests usually stay in. They are going to show you to your room and stay with you for a little while. I don't have a plan beyond that yet, but..." But what? What promises could he offer after effectively enslaving her, compounding the trauma of having her core enslaved?

He shook his head and sighed. "I don't know. I do not like what I have done to you. I'm sorry." What useless words. Mordecai dismissed his avatar and reformed in their main bedroom. There were many hours left until he would need to take action against the remaining forces. He could let everyone else carry on with the plan until then. So for right now, Mordecai curled up on the bed and wept for the suffering he had just inflicted. He had to grieve at least this small amount right now and clear his emotions, lest they cloud his thoughts later.

Bellona and Fuyuko very gently helped their guest to her feet and quietly walked with her to the newly created room. Everyone else in the arena was quiet as well, even the recently surrendered prisoners. Most didn't understand exactly what happened, but all knew that whatever Mordecai had done to the woman had terrified her.