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 mont. 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 ford, but the elental almost uniformly answered everything with a cheerful "I dunno!" or "Beats !". If she had any mories 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 sothing loose, or at least Tassa could hope. "So, Roxxy, don't suppose anything around here looks familiar in any way?"
The elental 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 !"
Grizza pinches his nose. "I've been thinking of every possible thod I know of, but I just can't imagine how an elental would be ford with just a core. Elentals are born from a high concentration of elent-aspected mana, but there also needs to be enough raw materials around to form the basis of the body. All the fire elent mana in the world won't get you a fire elental core forming underwater. Cores have to be extracted from elentals who have had their previous bodies destroyed...maybe if soone were to do so at the mont an elental finished forming, they could do so before the elental had ti to beco 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 so 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 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 elentals 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 rember when I told you Ragrush and I weren't a vowed pair? That was why."
Grizza squints for a mont, 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 so 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 cos 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 to find a way out yesterday, I just had this kind of feeling that we were totally sealed in, you know? I an, I thought that was just the normal feeling for things at the ti. But I was thinking maybe we could find soplace 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 so reason, or that a rockslide opened sothing 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 . 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 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 sothing new for this lifeti 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 mont. Xenia's ability to see without actual light only really seed 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 co 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 so 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 co across so sooner, yes. And I suppose I can see what you an. It could take quite so ti 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 sothing, indeed. A multitude of floors crossing back and forth across the sa 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 ss people up, too."
Recovering themselves, Guide gets back on task. "That's good to know, but before we get to that, rember that Floor 2 is entirely empty right now beyond the chanism. 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 requirents 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 sothing I figured out!" She rushes over to the elevator which, for the mont at least, opens directly into her core chamber, at least until there's ti 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 tal 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 ans when the elevator cos down to the ambush levels, there can be a ss of tripwires waiting to go off! They might look like wires, but they're as good as lasers for sothing like this."
"I'm impressed. If soone happens to be standing on a spot where a tripwire erges, they'd set it off before they even knew it was there. Tripwires do beco 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 so rooms and platforms looped around the outside of the shaft at a few spots, where monsters can hang out until it's ambush ti. 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 so 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 sothing as small as spiders though, it may take quite a few to improve our tiers."
Xenia sighs. "Yaaaaay, infesting my ho 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 so bugs!"
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