Late iernoon, on the day before the summer solstice, Mordecai’s avatar was taking a slow walk in the vilge ‘outside’ the more obvious dungeorance. Moriko was taking some time to train with Kazue’s avatar, gently bringing her back up to speed. The cepts were there, but Kazue’s muscle memory was go was almost the inversion of certain types of rare amnesia, she’d kept her memory but lost her skills. Mordecai had been through the process many times before, but it was a necessary thing, it was hard to learn new skills while old ones were in the way, and for her first inate Kazue had to learn how to do the same things she’d been doing, but without her core bag her up.

  At least they shouldn’t have any visitors for a few days. They’d been very clear about that to their previous visitors, for the moment they were not pnning on doing anything special for the holiday. Which was weird to even have to crify, at least, from his previous point of view. Holidays had been things his inate avatar had participated in, not something for the dungeon. But Kazue had been a shrine maiden, the cycle of seasons and holidays were important to her. She’d died on winter solstice, and been reborn on the spring equinox. She pnned on enjoying her solstice, but none of them felt like hosting others if they could help it.

  They were of course still hosting Li-Zarb, and Mordecai had no idea how long the ratling god-shard was going to stick around. Or if he’d left and e back several times already. Some of the things that Li did were creepy if you thought too much about them, so it was best not to worry about it. Thankfully, most of their inhabitants adored Li and were willing to py with him or talk with him. Somewhat wly, Li had found an audiehat would listen to his stories for hours on end: the fairies. And their instinctive aimless chattiness was being honed by the experience as an endless stream of sciousness spilled forth.

  And somehow they were multiplying. Mordecai retty certain they didn’t uahere didn’t seem to be baby fairies, and without examining them closely they all appeared to be female, though if they were like ‘real’ faeries that could be hard to tell sometimes. There were just somehow more of them. His best guess was that it was happening because Li thought there should be more fairies, so there simply were. And they were beginning to spread. There were more than the puzzles needed, so they had begun wandering around more. He was just gd that they had no bat potential, the only thing they could do was turn into random pnts and flowers. He had briefly toyed with the idea to evolve some of them into a bat-capable creature, but quickly decided that it was far too risky. They were far too touched by Li’s essence of chaos, there was no way for him to reliably guide their evolution.

  The inhabitants were still busy though, they wao celebrate the solstice too, aing up for themselves art of it. The height of summer was cimed by the god at the height of power, and Zagaroth’s holiday reflected that in a way. The a was to celebrate by reizing your own strengths and aplishments and to aowledge the strengths and skills of others and ence everyoo ever work on improving themselves in whatever skills they chose to practice. While some found this a good time to retreat in quiet ption, many enjoyed a more boisterous dispy.

  The results were quite simir to the games found at many faires and ivals. However, no cleric of any of the Empyreal Pilrs would bless such games uhey were absolutely fair tests of skill and strength, and it was rare that anyone was charged a fee to py these games anyway. Most ods would have their devotees act the same.

  Oh, if they had visitors, the dungeon would set up a token fee of a copper for ten tickets or something, for even a celebrating dungeon still had to be a dungeon. But most celebrations sponsored by a religious anization were free.

  However, even with providing a little bit of guidance for setting everything up, both core and avatar had little to do at the moment. So he was just enjoying the downtime as he examiheir ‘floor’. Both the warrens and Saraag’s mycelium had woven into the grouh the vilge, and every building was having colpsible escape tunnels installed. If there was a direct assault, everyohat was supposedly outside was to pretend they were desperate to escape and run for safety. It would be rather hard to maintain the illusion otherwise.

  And Saraag was ing along quite nicely. His mind still teo be a little slower in lihought than many others, but he could hold a lot of threads at the same time. And he’d found a way to unicate with others thanks to the glowing mushrooms he could sprout. The easiest thing he could do was simply ge the colors of a mushroom to represent his mood or a yes/no response, but he could also grow a bunaller ones and give them different colors. A half dozen ways of eng words into that had e to mind, but that would have been just using structures from uages that he’d learned previously. So Mordecai had withheld that knowledge and enced Saraag to work with Kstoria in f a patible code that she could dispy on her surface, and for them to also work with the other inhabitants to make sure that they could uand the code too.

  The fungal boss had also found his way into the sewer route. The iion of slimes, oozes and molds; crystal flowers; the sewer-focused bunbees harvesting from the crystal flowers; Saraag’s mushrooms; and the rotatis of bunkin and rabkin hunting in the sewers; were all adding up to a fast-paced arms race fueled by the dense mana of a dungeon.

  Oh, and this was the ‘mudslide’ Li had mentioned before. Thankfully the ratling always went somepce to get as his stop. Unfortunately, Li’s nature ossibly letting him bypass the sanitizing corridors they had spent some effort to set up. The inhabitants were aware that there was now the onstrous invaders spawning from ient spores, along with all the possible diseases. Mordecai sidered the monsters more likely simply because of Li’s nature, normal probability be damned. In any other ination sario, he’d be more ed about potential diseases.

  With all the chaos geed by the power of this divine shard, one might expect the duo be raking in mana. And one would be wrong. Li ted as roughly a strong delver, but only when he was actively iing with the dungeon’s puzzles or traps or sarios, or the occasional py duel with wooden daggers. Basically, whenever he was doing something that would be expected of a delver. The rest of the time he barely geed enough energy to t as a positive. As to why it worked this way, Mordecai would guess that it was because of Li’s perspective and instincts.

  Mordecai paused in his meanderings to watch a faerie gring at a mushroom. She puffed out her cheeks like she was trying to imitate the mushroom’s red cap, then transformed into a slightly strange-looking flower. She seemed to be trying to turn into a mushroom instead of a pnt.

  Now, normally Mordecai liked to have a certain amount of trol over what was going on with his inhabitants. Kazue was generally more rexed about the details, but still had direvolvement. But right now her core joined his in watg the faerie practice with a feeling of .

  This was the reason why Ozuran had been smiling when he’d said Li would be visiting. This was exactly the sort of thing that happened around him. Mordecai’s dungeon had been much bigger and much more ‘normal’ when he’d first received a visitation from Li. He’d been able to cope with abs the randomness better. But now they had this sort of stuff happening. Mordecai didn’t know what was going to happen when a faerie first mao turn into a mushroom instead of one of the flowers for Kazue’s puzzle.

  “Um, should we do something about that?” Kazue’s core asked.

  Mordecai shook himself out of his brief reverie and tinued with his walk. “No, I don’t think so. Our flower faeries are flightier than real ohey’d never remember a request. We’d have to actually enforce a and in order to stop them. We’ve not had to issue an actual and and I’d rather not start now. It does mean we are in less trol over what is going to happen with some of them, but it should be fine. Li’s chaos is influenced by his nature, so while the ges might be inve or strahey won’t be harmful. We’re his friends.”

  There was a moment of silence before she responded. “I didn’t even realize we could do that. Um, yeah, that’s kind of icky. The ingrained loyalty kind of worries me sometimes too, but actually f a and like that? Eww.”

  Her response made him smile. He’d been expeg her to agree with him on that point, but her way of expressing it made him happy. Kazue’s personality was a bright light in his world, and just being with her and Moriko helped him be a better person. If he’d somehow started over as a single-floor dungeon without panions, it might have been too easy to fall into brooding and dark thoughts.

  His meandering walk had taken him toward the border of their territory with the border of Kuic, aarted walking along that border. It had actually stopped a few yards shy of where they had calcuted they should extend their borders to, though their other borders had grown in respohey’d put it down to being some iion with the treaty keeping them from encroag on Kuic and them miscalg oly where those borders were, but it still bothered him.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m not quite sure.” He responded as he came to the er of this border and where it curved toward the mountain. “Something just doesn’t feel quite right.” Mordecai bent doicked up two small rocks, real pieces of earth not made from their mana. He tossed ooward Kuic, and the other toward the uerritory. Both pebbles flew as they should, nothing ued about their travel path.

  , he created two pebbles out of their normal mana. The first he aimed out into the uerritory. It began disiing as soon as it hit the border, and most of the motes of mana fell back to the duo be reabsorbed.

  The sed pebble he tossed toward Kuic. It flew passed the border and nded on the ground unharmed. He could feel their total mae by the proper amount, this wasn’t some extension of their territory. Mordecai stared at the pebble, stunned as he tried to process what had just happened.

  Zagaroth