Zagorath was finally beginning. Lilith’s plan for me was in its early stages of fruition.
Bertha shifted from her meditative posture when I greedily ate away at the walls behind her. I divided the obsidian from the regular stone, then worked on hollowing out a space as my facets flooded with more essence.
Time didn’t seem to have any kind of measure—I was enjoying myself too much. I made sure to keep an eye on my essence-counter this time, and before long, the size of my original chamber increased substantially. It was now thirty feet high, almost 200 feet long, and 100 feet wide. A large empty space, sure, but I would section it off into separate chambers and fill it with dungeon goodies eventually.
I polished the floor to a glassy sheen until it looked like black marble streaked with veins, and I did the same to the walls. While finishing the final wall, my core detected an entirely different substance—something sweet and irresistible ignited my hunger like never before. I attacked the wall instinctively, ignoring the polishing I’d done on the surface.
I only got through the first foot and a half of rock before it gave way to a small alcove. It didn’t look like a natural pocket of air, so I guessed it had been dug out centuries ago. Maybe even millennia. Faint circles were imprinted on the wall, and extending my core’s senses revealed them to be magical seals. They were too faded by time for me to examine closely, and my core could only pick up partial lines of individual symbols.
This had been a magical chamber of some sort, maybe a place of arcane rituals. Was this part of the reason why the trolls thought the mountain’s peak was cursed? If this had once been a place of power, then it explained the chained varidus outside that functioned as aerial defenses. Was it a palace, or a fortress of some kind?
Then it dawned on me.
The reason why Lilith wanted me to plant my core in this place became so very clear.
This room was the remnant of a previous dungeon.
My theory was further confirmed when I expanded out and found something utterly alien to the obsidian and bread-rock I’d been melting down and reforging. It was almost completely buried beneath rubble, and I consumed a little of the debris to reveal a smooth, curving, metal structure.
I let my consciousness swirl around the thing, the floor, and the roof above it. The walls of this new chamber were now a part of my dungeon, and I could perceive them with total awareness. I manipulated them until they were smooth and structured, just like I’d done to the antechamber of Zagorath.
Another core had carved out this space some millennia ago. But what was this object that defied my attempt at decomposition?
“What is it?” Bertha asked after wandering over to the newly discovered room. She was staring at the tiny fraction of the object visible above the rubble, her mouth agape.
I responded to her through MindSpeak.
“This is the reason why your people made up those legends of a cursed magic peak. I think it’s something a previous dungeon left behind.”
“That explains a lot,” she relayed back. “There are many strange rooms throughout the mountain, and we were always warned off them with similar tales of curses and hexes.”
“This object could help my dungeon progress. I need to understand it,” I added.
I tried to absorb it, but it was too difficult. The complexity of its composition prevented me from consuming the object. I simply didn’t understand enough about it, and didn’t know how to break the material’s internal tightness.
As I ate away at the rock burying the structure, I started to apprehend it. It looked like a demonic hand of black metal with clawed fingers grasping at something that should have been between them. The hand’s craftsmanship was intricate, comprised of many tightly-bonded materials—too much detail and complexity for my core to handle. Even my total knowledge of everything inside my dungeon couldn’t quite manage this structure.
It was arcane and powerful, that was for sure.
But what did it do?
Why was it here?
I asked Bertha those same questions, and all she could offer was a shrug. She was clearly out of her element, so I didn’t begrudge her ignorance. The half-troll returned to the antechamber and resumed her meditative position.
I wasn’t happy with leaving those questions unanswered, so took in as much as possible of the surface, before finding something on the insides of the fingers. Writing. It was alien to me, and unlike any script I’d seen back on Earth. The design looked similar to the magical seals imprinted to the cable cars leading to the mountaintop.
This thing was powered by Infernal Essence. Maybe I could give it a whirl? I ran through the worst possible scenario in my head, imagining the demonic hand coming to life, crushing my jewel in its palm, and reducing me to dust. The more positive scenarios, however, were endless, and I’d always considered myself a risk-taker.
Before, I’d been able to push the arcane energy into the cable car as Von Dominus. How much more capable was I in my gem form, all gorged on the stuff?
I checked my Infernal Essence stats again.
Current Infernal Essence Total: 1,037
Then I pushed the energy into the complex demonic structure until it wouldn’t take anymore. It flared with boiling crimson light, and I felt Bertha suddenly break free of her meditation and sprint toward my core. Although my consciousness was still in the alcove, I could feel her callused hands snatch up my jewel.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m unharmed. I just activated the object,” I messaged her.
“You believe it safe?”
“I’m not really sure. I think it’s powerful, and I wanted to test it.”
Yeah, maybe it was a little stupid trying to take the mysterious object of great power for a spin…
A fluttering of wings disturbing the air within my entrance told me
