Worthy Core

It had been a full day since Grizza and Tassa had taken on Roxxy as their new 'guide', and the group was currently taking a break to enjoy a small feast of mushrooms for their breakfast. They were down to only a day's worth of proper rations remaining at this point, so stumbling across the small side cavern and its collection of bioluminescent fungus was a godsend. Tassa's Ranger skills were able to confirm that they were non-poisonous, with the worst side effect being that their shit would probably glow blue for the next few days. Which, frankly, was the least of their concerns for the moment. Still, with their satchels filled and their waterskins replenished at another minuscule pond, the group felt relaxed enough to talk a bit more and consider their options.

They had of course questioned Roxxy on a number of topics soon after she'd formed, but the elemental almost uniformly answered everything with a cheerful "I dunno!" or "Beats me!". If she had any memories from before her core was placed in that treasure chest, she didn't seem to have access to them now. Still, perhaps wandering around for a day had jogged something loose, or at least Tassa could hope. "So, Roxxy, don't suppose anything around here looks familiar in any way?"

The elemental turns back towards the pair from where she'd been standing guard. "You sure ask that a lot! Like I said, I'm as new to this as you are! ...Or even a few days newer from what you told me!"

Grizza pinches his nose. "I've been thinking of every possible method I know of, but I just can't imagine how an elemental would be formed with just a core. Elementals are born from a high concentration of element-aspected mana, but there also needs to be enough raw materials around to form the basis of the body. All the fire element mana in the world won't get you a fire elemental core forming underwater. Cores have to be extracted from elementals who have had their previous bodies destroyed...maybe if someone were to do so at the moment an elemental finished forming, they could do so before the elemental had time to become fully conscious, but it seems like the timing would have to be very precise. Perhaps a dungeon could have the precision to do that, but, why? The odds say you must have had some form of existence before your core was removed and turned into loot."

"Don't know what to tell you, Dad. Pretty sure I wasn't ever aware of anything until you charged me up." Grizza's head jerks in her direction at the terminology.

"Dad? What? I must have misheard you."

Roxxy shakes her head. "Nope! Been thinking about it, and since you guys were there when I was born, I figure that makes you my mom and dad! I can feel that normally elementals don't really do the whole 'family' thing, but normally we don't just spawn around a couple of mortals. So I wanna fit in! Make ourselves a little family!"

The drider chuckles. "I don't know about you, Tassa, but I'm not sure I'm ready for children." When the minotaur doesn't respond, he takes a second look and notices a faraway look in her eyes. "Tassa? Your mushrooms not agreeing with you?"

Tassa looks up and stirs herself, sucking in a breath. "...No, they're fine. It's just...you remember when I told you Ragrush and I weren't a vowed pair? That was why."

Grizza squints for a moment, trying to determine the logic before it strikes him. "...Oh, right. You said you were part dwarf?" The Ranger nods, and he can work out the rest from there. Centuries ago, the Goddess of Love had decreed that differing species should be no barrier to relationships, and cast a massive blessing that allowed the mortal races to intermix. But, only up to a point. A mortal's blood could only sustain the essences of two species at once, and one had to diminish to less than a quarter strength before it could be replaced by another. Tassa would only be able to have children with other minotaurs or dwarves, and if Ragrush had been a fullblood orc, then he was out of the running.

"Neither of us really wanted to rule out the option of children one day, and while there's alternatives...well, it was a complication." Uncertain of what's going on between the two, Roxxy looks back and forth in some confusion.

"Uhhhh, did I make things awkward? I'm sorry! Should I uh, not do the mom and dad thing, then?"

Tassa chuckles as she tosses her current mushroom into her satchel, and climbs to her feet. "I think we're definitely far too early to be talking about adoption. How about we work on getting out of this hole first, and then we can talk about what comes after? Honestly, it's hard to plan anything past that point right now." She stretches, groaning. "So, even if you don't know anything yet about where we are or how this place was made, do you have any ideas on which way to go next?"

Roxxy looks upwards, though Tassa can't see anything in particular that she would be looking at. "Actually, it's kind of funny. When you asked me to find a way out yesterday, I just had this kind of feeling that we were totally sealed in, you know? I mean, I thought that was just the normal feeling for things at the time. But I was thinking maybe we could find someplace close enough to dig out like you said, right? But ever since last night, and I can definitely feel it now, I think maybe there actually is a way out now? It feels kind of far away, but it'd be faster than digging through a thousand feet of solid stone, I bet you that."

Grizza shares a look with Tassa. "Laksha might not even be reporting in until today. We can't entirely rule out that the Rainlanders might be digging into the mountain for some reason, or that a rockslide opened something up, but most likely..."

Tassa nods. "...The dungeon's moving down to us." A hand slips onto the handle of one of her axes, gripping it tightly. "That's fine by me. I still have a complaint to file with that thing."

The Mage sighs. "Tassa...we are in no shape to try and take on a dungeon, just the two...the three of us. Please promise me you won't do anything stupid if we actually find a way back up there."

The minotaur grits her teeth, but eventually nods. "...Right. I was stupid once and it got us into this situation. But one day, Grizza. One day..."

Xenia Worthy, Reincarnator Extraordinaire, does something new for this lifetime and stares out the window. It's a little odd, having a set of windows when you're a minimum of a dozen stories underground, but since it turned out the mountain's internal geography allowed for it she wasn't about to turn it down. As it had turned out, her new elevator shaft had only needed to go down through about three or four stories worth of empty air before hitting a new layer of stone. This wasn't the ground level of the chasm by a long shot, but the side of the impossibly large space sloped downwards in this area, and it would make a good foundation for an eventual Floor Three. For now her core chamber had been moved once again to the bottom of the shaft, pressed up against the chasm wall allowing her to carve windows into one side. No glass yet, but it was a start.

Not that there was much to see at the moment. Xenia's ability to see without actual light only really seemed to work inside of her own dungeon caves, and the torches she'd stuck onto the outside of the enclosed elevator shaft didn't even come close to illuminating the bottom. She'd tossed one out the window which had given her a rough idea of how deep it was, but the magical torch had evaporated within seconds of hitting the ground. Still, she looked out onto the foreboding space and chose to view it as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. "You know, I think this could actually really work for us, Guy."

"I'm glad you're feeling positive, but I'm not sure how we can work with literally nothing, from what I see."

Xenia chuckles. "That's what we've got that no one else does! Empty space! Think about it...we could do fights alongside sheer cliff walls! Bridges crossing into the darkness! Oooh, do you think we'll get lava at some point? We could do bridges over lava, and plant a big-ass demon guy on it, and the wizard adventurers will need to be all 'fly, you dumbass hobbits'! It'll be great!"

The guide does their best to follow along. "I don't know what a hobbit is, but I believe lava is an eventual cave unlock if we don't come across some sooner, yes. And I suppose I can see what you mean. It could take quite some time to properly absorb this entire chasm, but once we can get the proper thematic lighting and such going across the other sides...it could be quite something, indeed. A multitude of floors crossing back and forth across the same space? That does seem relatively unique."

Xenia slaps Guide on the back, almost knocking them out the open stone window. "That's the spirit! Man, I got so many cool trap ideas for how to mess people up, too."

Recovering themselves, Guide gets back on task. "That's good to know, but before we get to that, remember that Floor 2 is entirely empty right now beyond the mechanism. And dear gods, 12 out of your 30 mana cap to keep the thing running? Are you entirely sure about this? Especially since the accessibility requirements aren't allowing you to turn the thing off now that you've moved down here."

"It's called investing in the future, Guy, once word gets out everyone's gonna want one. And if we get really dry, I can always just move back upstairs for a little while. Just thank god you and I can teleport, riding that thing is slow as balls and I ain't even installed the floor traps and ambushes yet. Though speaking of, I wanna show you something I figured out!" She rushes over to the elevator which, for the moment at least, opens directly into her core chamber, at least until there's time to set up a second floor boss room. The giant elevator platform is currently sunk into the ground level, and Xenia points out a tripwire crossing the entire room at a height of about five feet. "You see that wire there?"

Guy nods. "More of a garrote wire than a trip wire, but yes. What does it do?"

"Nothing particularly special, just a dart trap, but watch this." Xenia presses the pressure plate used to send the elevator platform back up, which it does slowly with the sound of clanging metal chains and shifting stone counterweights groaning in the background. Eventually the platform reaches the tripwire...and passes right through it, without disturbing the wire. "You know how I can keep dungeon creatures from setting off traps? I can also do that with dungeon constructs! Which means when the elevator comes down to the ambush levels, there can be a mess of tripwires waiting to go off! They might look like wires, but they're as good as lasers for something like this."

"I'm impressed. If someone happens to be standing on a spot where a tripwire emerges, they'd set it off before they even knew it was there. Tripwires do become more and more invisible as traps level up, but this would be as good as skipping several levels at least! Did you have anything else planned?"

Xenia gives a thumbs up. "I've already got some rooms and platforms looped around the outside of the shaft at a few spots, where monsters can hang out until it's ambush time. Each pressure plate will only move the elevator down like, a fifth of the distance or so, they they gotta fight and all that and find the next button to keep going. But you know what I really want? We gotta get some better spiders! I want lil dudes who can dangle down from the ceiling while the thing's going down, ambush from above and all that. But right now all we've got is shit that would only work for scaring old ladies."

"Well, we can definitely work on that. There may not be any Giant Forest Spiders nearby for us to scoop up, but we can always try to make it up with quantity instead. For something as small as spiders though, it may take quite a few to improve our tiers."

Xenia sighs. "Yaaaaay, infesting my home with hundreds of pests, just what I always wanted..." She takes a breath, and cracks her virtual knuckles. "Alright! Let's head upstairs and catch some bugs!"