Mordecai’s core chewed on some math to get a rough estimate of the total mana involved in having a duhat had cimed a territory as rge as the kingdom of Kuic. Plus however many floors she had before what ever happeo found the kingdom. The numbers were not small. But despite clearly being a territory, the kingdom didn’t seem to behave the way a dungeon did, so his estimate might be way off. But even if it was a full magnitude smaller, it was still rather impressive.

  While his core ran calcutions, his avatar stayed focused on the versation in front of him.

  “Well, let’s set the stage for this little drama py, shall we?” Kuic said as she dismissed her wings to sit back more fortably, “You’ve probably heard about this a little bit, but let’s make sure we are all on the same page. Mordecai went to war and the his death-dealing monsters behind when he was done. Support had already been on its way from all over the world, and it kept ing. Iermath, all the kingdoms were in tatters even if their royal family still lived, and there were a lot of soldiers with disrupted s of and. There were even ad-hoits made up of the remnants of other units from different tries. And a lot of uncimed nd. It got plicated and messy. To the north, the Trionean kingdom started annexing nd and turning itself into an empire. To the east, the elven kingdom grew in much the same way, but only wheher they were attacked, or when all gover colpsed in an adjat territory. The south was not as affected given the mountain range, but some of the monsters did fly up and over, and had to be hunted down.”

  “If you read a crazy story from that time period, there are even odds it's roughly true. As an example, there’s a story about a would-be warletting killed by a farm’s rooster. Turned out the farmer was a master monk, and his wife was a druid who had awakened some of the animals. And the monk had traihe awakened chi. Now, I’m not sure if that one is true, but there are other stories sistent with a druid and monk training a rge variety of awakened animals.” She gri them, “That is one of my favorites, I have to admit.”

  “Anyway, into this mess dungeons were born, usually in areas most devastated by magic. I mao tidy my area up, and had a own growing nearby which I helped protect, and things were finally beginning to slohen a fox and her boy showed up and wao talk to me about some crazy idea. At least they had the good mao show off by clearing the bottom floor first, though they had a few other people helping too. I think I’ll let Norumi backtrack to the start of her part in all this.”

  The kitsune-dryad smiled softly at Kuic’s avatar, then turned her attention to her father and step mothers. “I had mao establish a small area of prote where the northern edge of the Azeria forest met the river. The forest had acquired the name from a small kingdom that had cimed the area for about a tury and a half, and I took up this role to protect a small town there. I am afraid that I was irely my best self however. In addition to everything else, I’d had my own trauma involvibreak arayal, which I will not be getting into. I was a touch bit feral, and while I was quite benign for most of those who sought my pany, I was often deadly for men whose wives sought succor. Especially those men who cheated.” She bowed her head as she sighed. “I may have ied a touy father’s ability to overreact when traumatized.”

  “And this in turn brought trouble upon me. While only men who mistreated their wives truly had anything to fear from me, this was enough for a y priest of Amirume to begin riling up some of the town folk against me, which created a lot of fri in the unity. He iece of work, I think he was motivated because I had spurned his advances.” Norumi shook her head. “Lay priests may be o take care of some aspects of a church, but as leaders of movements they are dangerous, they do not have the e to their god that a true cleric does. And given the chaos of the time, there were not enough clerics to go around.”

  “Now, my vigintism was not a good thing, but those who made their living in the forest mostly knew of me as a protector, and many knew me more personally than that, however much I may have been keeping my heart secure. These were the core of the group opposing the people that the priest had riled up.”

  Mordecai tilted his head slightly at her w, trying to puzzle out her meaning, and was about to ask when he felt a sharp mental nudge from Moriko. “She’s trying to be i about only casually bedding them, because she doesn’t want to tell her father that directly. And her reasons were different than mine.” Not many things caught Mordecai off guard, but this one was enough to make him slightly flush in embarrassment. That was already more tharuly wao know.

  Norumi tinued without apparently notig his distra. “Things might have gotten ugly if a warrior-priest and champion of Zagaroth hadn’t arrived in town. Haolong was the name he had been given by his master, and his arrival had me quite on edge I have to admit.” She fshed a brief grin. “While he was certainly too young to have been involved iermath of your war, I had seen what happens when something calls the church of Zagaroth into a. Some of the most powerful priests and champions had been able to engage solo with one of the big monster dragons long enough for others to plete ritual castings capable of dealing a death blow. It was costly of course, in addition to lives. By the end of it, there were shattered relid artifacts that had been overwhelmed when used for defense or ed to fuel the rituals. So having one show up to iigate me was nerve-wrag. But it also created enough dissoo make me take a good look at how I was living my life.”

  “Wheered the woods to seek me out, I pyed games to buy time. I he time in order to think, so I did what kitsune are most infamous for doing: I used illusions, charms, and beguiling magic to distrad dey him. They were all harmless ones of course, I didn’t want to provoke him, but even so, he took them with surprising grace. He atient, often amused at situations others would have found embarrassing, and plimented my tricks that fooled him even briefly. It was infuriating.” In trast to her words, Norumi was smiling in fond memory.

  Kazue had lifted her head to look at Norumi, then she exged a look with Moriko before they both looked toward Mordecai. “That sounds familiar,” Kazue’s core ented dryly. “It’s like she’d looked up to a man with that sort of personality before.” Mordecai briefly sidered responding but could find nothing to say that wouldn’t be digging a hole, so wisely took the better part of valor and didn’t engage.

  Norumi tio igheir bypy. “But his careful deliberateness was also f. I knew Haolong wouldn’t just try to attack whe face to face. When we did finally talk directly I found him just as pleasant as he had seemed so far. We discussed the situation aiated for almost a week before we agreed on a solution, with some caveats and personal promises. After preparing myself, I walked bato town with him, to present an offer to the y priest: I would leave and travel with Haolong, putting myself entirely under Haolong’s authority, but the priest would travel to the church that Haolong had trai for his owraining. Or he could be officially and publicly stripped of his titles for abusing his authority. But one of those two things would happen.”She shrugged. “He chose to take the penance route of course. He wasn’t a plete fool, and pying watchdog over churches is one of the duties of Zagaroth’s priests. All the primogeies aowledge the power of his church to do this, though not all new gods do. So Haolohe geas on him, and we had him publicly leave town first, with Haolong promising the town folk to find them a cleric as soon he could.”

  “After that, well,” A warm smile curved her lips. “We did travel, a lot. It was tense for quite some time, for while we both knew what we both wanted, I had my own issues to work out first. But ohat was worked out, well, it took less than a month before we decided to get married. Once we had taken that step, we were already both fully itted.” Her eyes unfocused as she looked off into the distance. “In some ways, it was slightly unfair to him. Once we had expressed our feelings and I had given my love to him, I was very vulnerable. He’d already had to promise his iions to me, I wasn’t capable of having a casual dalliah the man. If that promise had broken at any point, well, I think it would have gone very badly for me.”

  Her gaze returo those before her. “Thankfully, there was never even a hint of that. He was always so sincere in his love for me that I was more amused than jealous the couple of times that a young woman threw herself his way. And during our journeys, we helped a lot of people. That was good for me too, to just help and not try to punish. But there was always more to do, and nothing was stable enough. So we started to work on how one might create a defensive entment tied to the founding of a new kingdom, something that would grow with the kingdom but not provide the means to quer other kingdoms. After several years of w on the problems involved iing a sustainable entment with that much power, we realized that most of the properties we were looking for were present in a dungeon’s territory.”

  She gestured towards Kuic. “It took a few more years to decide on a didate for our project, we wao be sure of the dungeon’s personality, but eventually roached Kuic as our best option.”

  The avatar snorted. “I was almost certain that I had been invaded by a bunch of lunatics when you told me your idea. And for some parts of that ritual,” She shuddered. “You might as well have asked a human to accept grafts of random animal parts. I don’t think you realized at the time how deep into myself some of those proposed ges went. But then that high priest of Ozuran showed up.”

  Zagaroth