Heya folks! Hope everyone had a fun Halloween despite 2020's best efforts to the contrary. Here's the next installment. It would actually be a much longer chapter --I have quite a bit more written for Taylor's construction efforts-- but during a revision that ending just kind of... happened. And stuck. It turned out to also be a solid natural breaking point, and I decided what the heck, I'll cut it off there, because I'm evil.
Hopefully though, this'll mean I'll have another update much sooner rather than later, as it's pretty much totally planned out and also more building and strategizing on Taylor's part.
Oh, and one last thing: For those of you who actually find the Codex entries interesting, I'll be FINALLY posting the Rooms, Etc one right after this chapter. All that's left is the formatting, which I'll be hopping right to doing as soon as this goes up. So check the informational threadmarks after you're done reading, if you want 
Enjoy!
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Chapter 13
Saturday, January 22nd, 2011
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"—ylor!"
A worried voice intruded on the pleasant nothingness Taylor had been experiencing, replacing it with something not unlike a series of marching bands having a party inside her skull.
She stirred with a groan, and opened her eyes.
"Oh thank god, Taylor," came the relieved voice of her father. "I was worried that....
Please don't scare me like that again."
She looked... up? at her dad and blinked owlishly. At some point she seemed to have fallen over, and her dad had tried to awkwardly keep her propped up, without a whole lot of success.
Taylor clutched weakly at her head, scowling. "Ow. OK, next time I do that, make sure I have more mana available."
"Mana? What?" her dad asked, looking confused.
"The...
stuff my powers run off, remember?" she replied. "Almaric told us about it. I think I basically pulled my mana muscle. My head is killing me."
She groaned again and struggled to her feet. "At least if its anything like last time, it'll clear up soon enough though. Ow." She clutched at her skull again.
"Are you sure—?"
Taylor waved him off with her free hand. "I'm not made of glass, dad, it's just a headache. I'll be fine. Eventually. How long was I out, anyway?"
"Only about ten seconds," he admitted.
"See? It's fine," she grumbled. "Now... let's see how it all turned out...."
Giving herself a bit of a shake, she looked around her new core chamber.
The room itself was a good twenty-five feet across, and where the dais for her new Arcane Core ended, the floor seemed to have changed into a series of over-large, smooth, dark granite tiles, each with a tiny hexagon of polished amethyst set in the center. Each tile was
also lined with highlights of what, to Taylor's eye, looked to be actual silver, something that made her snort with amusement internally. How and why her power would just whip up silver out of nothing, just for
flooring, but require her to use metal stocks if she wanted to build freely standing decorations, she had no idea.
It was probably something to do with pandering to the whole 'evil overlord' vibe.
Turning her gaze to the walls, Taylor saw that they too were formed of smoothed granite. Here and there were scattered a number of decorative half-columns and archways, each one extruded slightly from that very same granite and bordered with the same thin silver lines as the floor. In addition, every other archway appeared to feature shallow alcoves lined with shelves containing a random assortment of papers, books, and scrolls.
Lighting meanwhile was provided not by torches or lanterns, but by something that honestly hadn't even occurred to Taylor to try. For whatever reason, her power seemed to have taken a cue from both the three huge amethyst pylons that flanked her core, and the upwelling of blue energy that swirled beneath it, and had inserted into the archway keystones what appeared to be large, polished hexagon cuts of
blue amethyst, a rarity that Taylor had only ever seen once in her life, at a geology exhibit downtown. These hexagons were
glowing, radiating a soft, blue-white glow that when mixed with the darkened, angular stone of the walls and floor created a mildly-unsettling atmosphere that nevertheless still allowed for full visibility.
Her father, seemingly reassured at least for the moment, had joined her in her inspection of the room, and chose that moment to speak up.
"Well," he declared, "I have to admit, your power
definitely has a flair for melodramatics. Mind you, I guess that fits the 'evil overlord' theme to a T. I hope you can tone it down a little for the PRT."
"I probably can," Taylor replied absently as she stepped over to one of the shelves lining the alcoves.
Curious about the books' contents, she selected one at random and opened it to the middle. That turned out to be a mistake, because immediately her headache flared up to a level nearly twice as bad as before: the inside of the tome was filled with an unnatural, constantly-changing script that seemed to squirm and writhe.
She squawked in protest and slammed the book —and her eyes— shut, and the additional pain swiftly receded. Since the tome itself didn't feel like something that was Claimable, she hastily shoved it back onto the shelf where it came from.
"Lesson learned, don't try and read those," she informed her dad, before he could ask. She took a few quick deep breaths and massaged her temples before she opened her eyes again. "Things not meant for the mortal mind, and all that."
Her dad just raised an eyebrow at her.
"And you expected otherwise?" he asked with an amused smirk.
Taylor rolled her eyes at him. "Yeah, yeah."
"So, what's next?" he asked. "Or do you want to take a break? That looked like it took a lot out of you. I don't want you pushing yourself too hard, and you've—"
"Dad, I'm
fine," she insisted. "Seriously. Stop worrying; I just need to sit for a few minutes and let my mana recover."
Suiting action to words, Taylor placed a hand against the wall to steady herself, sent out her mind to the church dungeon —which really needed a name— and grabbed two scoops' worth of wood and metal. Snapping back to herself, she then deposited the ghostly handfuls around her core and used some of it to recreate a pair of the thrones she'd made previously.
She waved for her father to take one, sank down into the other, and then promptly closed her eyes, deliberately losing herself in the mesmerizing
thrum of
power that was exuding off her new Arcane Core.
It was relaxing.
So relaxing, in fact, that it wasn't until Taylor was hit by a succession of completed research projects injecting new knowledge into her mind over the course of about half an hour, causing her dreams to take a turn for the bizarre, that she woke up and realized she'd fallen asleep.
It must have been for some time, too, since her dad was no longer present and to her dungeon-senses was instead sitting in front of the TV in their living room. Somewhat bleary-eyed, Taylor staggered her way back down the too-wide hall carved by her core's passage, where she discovered that the tunnel
down from the basement had seemingly transformed into some kind of magical elevator. To her sleep-addled mind it looked a bit like an overly-large closet, if a closet was a free-standing structure formed of granite archways, and one filled not with clothes but a swirl of purple-blue energy.
OK, maybe it was more of a portal than an elevator, but either way, props to her dad for figuring that out and being willing to just step inside. At least that explained how he'd gotten back to the house.
Steeling herself for potential disorientation that never came, Taylor stepped into the gateway and back out into her basement, which she was pleasantly surprised to see had been completely restored to normal. Barring, of course, the addition of the mystical gateway now standing behind her.
Taylor exited the basement, passing through the kitchen and into the living room, where she was greeted by her father.
"Had a nice nap?" he asked her, looking amused.
"Yeah, yeah, fine, you were right," she grumbled with a yawn. At least the massive not-headache of stressing her mana reserves was gone now. As was the
actual headache that she'd developed from running out entirely.
His grin widened and he cupped a hand to his ear. "What was that? Did I just hear—"
Taylor interrupted him by blowing a raspberry at him, followed by rolling her eyes, causing him to cut off with a snicker.
"Well you looked like you needed it and I didn't want to wake you," he said. "So decided to leave you to it."
Taylor rubbed sleep from her eyes, grimacing as her stomach rumbled. "Mmm. What time is it, anyway? I'm starving."
"Roughly 8:30," he replied. "I made dinner an hour ago. There's a plate for you in the fridge."
"Ah, thanks."
She returned to the kitchen, discovering that her dad had made grilled salmon with mango salsa and rice. Nice. She wrapped the fish in foil and popped it into the oven at low heat for several minutes, and then sat down to eat while she contemplated her next move.
The new knowledge that had been so rudely shoved into her brain covered three subjects.
The first and most important of these was the prison layout she'd asked for, which she
definitely needed to build at the church ASAP. It was a high enough of a priority that she was seriously considering whether or not it might be prudent to go back and take care of it tonight. Unfortunately the buses would be closing down for the evening soon, and she had other things to get done as well, such as filling out her
new dungeon and making sure her spells and schematics were secured first. She'd ask her dad for his thoughts on that in a bit.
Speaking of schematics, her goblins had apparently finished
both traps she'd requested. The first was pretty basic, and one she immediately realized had potential: a tar trap. It was basically a wide but extremely shallow pit filled with thick, sticky tar. The floor of the pit meanwhile was lined with magic-fueled heating elements that kept the tar —and the floor beneath it— hot enough to make it seriously uncomfortable to walk over, meaning that any attempt to cross it would be seriously impeded, even painful, without actually inflicting any kind of lasting harm.
Just the sort of thing to put in front of her
other new trap: the bombard.
The bombard was a 'trap' that would likely prove equally as deadly as the blade lotus, being effectively an automated cannon turret that shot flaming balls of scrap metal. They were a little over waist-high, with a wide copper barrel and an extremely heavy shield plate that covered the emplacement's lower parts. If Taylor so desired, they could even be overcharged to increase their rate of fire —normally about once a second— which necessitated the opening of panels that lay atop the barrel so it could vent more heat. Doing so tended to cause them to start melting down after awhile though.
Taylor could immediately imagine placing down tar traps in front of something that fired
flaming cannonballs. Get stuck in the tar, and oh look, even if you survived getting shot, now the tar is on fire, with you in it.
Yeah
that was probably not going to be particularly fair. Which was, of course, entirely the point, although it was still a little
too lethal for Taylor's taste. Maybe she should ask about traps that would just tase people?
Well, at least she could mix the tar traps with the gas ones for 'easy' courses. That would
really suck to get caught in, but would be highly unlikely to kill you outright.
Taylor gave a bit more thought to various combinations of rooms and traps while she ate, but ultimately didn't come to any real conclusions beyond that she
really needed to ask Almaric about whether or not her powers prevented mental health issues along with healing the body; after all, falling into a pool full of burning tar was pretty much a one way ticket to some serious PTSD or the like, irrespective of whether or not you survived the experience.
Shaking her head, Taylor rinsed and set aside her dishes, then informed her dad that she was getting back to work.
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"Alright. First things first," Taylor muttered to herself as she strode back out of the lower portal.
Before she could get started, she needed to prevent her workers from wandering too far down the hall. No sense in them trying to reinforce the walls when she wanted them to dig, and she
really didn't want them accidentally wandering into the house above. Or worse,
purposefully, because one of them decided her mother's flute or jewelry box was treasure to process or something.
Fortunately for both Taylor and her father's piece of mind, there was a simple solution to this problem. One of the default spells that Taylor had been given access to, but up til now she hadn't had a reason to use, was the rather ridiculously named 'Impasse': the primary use of which was to designate an area of ground as forbidden to her imps in one way or another. Even better, it didn't cost mana to maintain, and she could drop as many of them as she needed to around the place.
Taylor walked until she was perhaps a hundred feet down the tunnel from her core. There she cast her spell, and Taylor smiled in amusement when she saw that it manifested in a manner not unlike Rally, creating a physical manifestation in the the form of a banner. This one sported a stylized smiley-face that was clearly supposed to be one of her imps, with a large red 'X' superimposed over it.
She reached out with her mind and with an effort of will, toggled the flag from 'prevent territorial claiming' to 'prevent passage', which would bar her imps from stepping anywhere within about ten feet of the Impasse flag.
With the house safely blocked off, Taylor then summoned a solid dozen imps, noting with some surprise that the act had barely affected her mana reserves. These imps she immediately put to work, ordering them to begin carving chambers out of the dirt and rock around her core.
Since
this dungeon would,
hopefully, have no need for byzantine defenses, her initial rooms were relatively simple and well-organized. Each one would be a similar size to that of her Core Chamber, roughly twenty-five feet across, and she ordered them constructed as a ring of eight rooms, with her Core Chamber forming the ninth in the center of the grid.
Taylor's imps cheerfully went to work with a will, practically carving their way through the earth like it was little more than soft cheese. Stone and earth crumbled swiftly, reduced to dust, which itself became nothing as tiny amounts of stone and occasionally even metal appeared in the imps' packs. In only a few minutes, the herd of workers reduced an area roughly equivalent to that of her core chamber to an open space, and began claiming it. Floors, walls, and ceilings melted and flowed, until with the sound of numerous chimes they transformed, taking on the same general look of the rest of the dungeon.
The entire process took maybe five minutes. Taylor wasn't sure if she should be impressed, or appalled. The sheer scale of destruction just her
imps, the lowest of her minions, could cause was, well... frightening, to say the least.
Not that she was going to let that stop her. Thus it was that roughly thirty minutes later Taylor had carved out her ring of eight rooms, and then for good measure added an additional four, extra-large, rectangular rooms that formed a square ring around the inner eight.
Once that was done, she unsummoned half of the imps, leaving a basic workforce of six to deal with any grunt-work needed, like maintaining the meat cannon she'd need to install to provide meals for her researchers.
Then it was time to start filling out the rooms. First, Taylor used a chunk of the remaining stone and wood that was still sitting in her core chamber to conjure up a proper treasury, one made from simple floor of tiled marble, which she placed down in the center-south inner room. Or at least, south from the general perspective of where her core had moved to. It wasn't exact, but Taylor knew that the front door of her house faced more or less to the west, and when her core had begun plowing sideways through the earth it had moved in the same direction, thus placing the exit tunnel on the 'eastern' side of the dungeon.
As far as Taylor's own mental map was concerned, that meant the treasury was placed to the south.
Once it was in place, Taylor began shoveling resources between the church and her new dungeon. The lion's share of the gold and metal from Squealer's truck was shifted over, which cascaded out of thin air into several impressively large piles coins and metal ingots. This was followed by roughly half her available stone, and
all of her remaining wood.
The wood in particular she would need to prioritize replacing, as she'd been using it fairly liberally ever since rooting up several overgrown bushes in the docks, and hadn't acquired much more than a few logs during her earlier experimentation. That, and what she expected to need for her new dungeon was going to consume a fairly significant quantity of the stuff.
The next few rooms she laid down covered the essentials: A lair for her researchers to sleep in, which she placed in the southwest room; a tavern to process food, placed in the southeast; and a slaughterpen which was placed in the room above the tavern, in the eastern room of the inner ring. That would cover immediate needs of food, rest, and presumably, wages.
Next Taylor began constructing her research rooms in the larger outer ring. She began with a foundry in the western wing, which was then followed by an archive in the southern one, thus placing her two primary research rooms as close to the living spaces as possible.
Here it was that Taylor ran into an unexpected problem: she ran out of wood before the archive was complete.
She grumbled to herself a bit at that, realizing that while she'd scavenged quite a lot of metal, gold, and stone over the past few days, she really had kind of slacked off on acquiring more wood apart from the handful of bushes and loose bits of wreckage she'd unearthed whole wandering around with Aegis. She'd gotten
some from Squealer's truck, because apparently plastic counted as wood, but it hadn't been much, and she'd been critically low to begin with.
Ah, well. She was moving her research program over here anyway, right? She could just sell off the old archive and use that wood to finish this one. No sense leaving the wood spent there at the church on something she wasn't going to be using.
Taylor snagged Almaric and transferred him over. It took the warlock a brief moment to get his bearings, after which he turned to her.
"Mistress?" he inquired.
Taylor gestured around them. "As you can see, I am preparing a new, safer location for you and the others to perform your research. As we are currently low on the required resources, I will momentarily be dismantling the old archive to reclaim its contents. I want you, the nagas, and the goblins I have on research duty to round up the scrolls so that they can be transported here and bound to the new archive once I'm finished."
"Certainly, mistress."
"Last of all, is there anything special that needs to be done to station you and the others here on a more permanent basis? I recall you implying something about my servants being bound to a specific dungeon."
"Ah... yes, Mistress," the warlock replied with an apologetic bow. "While there is nothing stopping us from performing our duties here, in order to be able to draw upon the mana of a new Dungeon Core instead of the previous, you would need to bind us to it with the spell known as Transfer Creature."
"How soon could you get that done?" Taylor asked him.
"Relatively quickly, my queen. Several hours, at most; much sooner with additional aid. As I mentioned previously, I am well-versed in magical contracts, and the process is highly similar."
Taylor hummed to herself in thought.
"Is there anything else I could summon that might have a related specialty?" she asked. "I have yet to decide on the full extent of what I will be building today."
"I'm afraid I can only think of one that is readily available based on your existing dungeon, Mistress. My somewhat less mystically-inclined counterparts, the cultists, sometimes specialize in various types of summoning rituals to be performed in their sanctuary. Their expertise on summoning and binding creatures could perhaps be of some use."
"What of ones I can't currently summon?" Taylor asked.
Almaric thought for a moment, stroking his goatee. "Well... ideally for such a spell you would want a Dark Angel, as they are potent spellcasters who are infinitely knowledgeable when it comes to spells in general, second only to an Archon. Most of them are also quite skilled in the area of summoning magic, much more than any mere cultist. However, uncovering the means of acquiring such a being would likely require a significant investment of time, for an Archon even moreso, far more than you would save by including one."
"And less ideally?"
He inclined his head slightly. "A succubus might be able to assist in some minor way, as their specialties are somewhat related to my own. There's a species of ghost called The Black Death that specializes in teleportation, which is also loosely related; if memory serves the spell is often used by Dungeon Lords whose conquests take them far from their home realms. With a Sanctuary and a Graveyard, you could also create vampires, who have a rather...
esoteric skill set that would also be applicable."
Almaric then made a face of disgust, one of the first genuinely overt expressions of emotion Taylor had seen from the warlock. "Alternatively, you could acquire the services of a wizard; some of them specialize in the conjuring of elementals, and they make for excellent researchers in general."
Taylor pursed her lips, considering. A cultist sounded the simplest; as Almaric said, she could create one of those easily enough. And it wasn't like she planned on showing
everything to the PRT. A few more human-likes weren't going to be a big deal as long as she kept them out of view.
"Ah!" Almaric exclaimed. "There
is another that I just remembered would be particularly useful, although they are a bit further out of reach than most of the others. A Spirit Chamber would allow the recruitment of Witch Doctors. While their normal repertoire of spells is limited to healing and physical enhancement, they are also experts in manipulation of the soul, which is, more or less, the root of binding oneself to a dungeon core."
"... what
kind of manipulations?" Taylor asked cautiously.
Because that sounds kind of dangerous, if true.
"Generally speaking," Almaric told her, "their primary focus is channeling the knowledge and experience of the deceased into their allies, thus preserving it for the tribe across generations, but they have other, related talents. Particularly adept ones are occasionally known to be capable of resurrecting the dead."
Taylor stilled.
That... that was
huge. There
were supposedly capes out there capable of reviving themselves after being killed, and of course there were the Butchers, who allegedly
kind of lived on after death. But outside of cloning Taylor didn't think there had ever been any capes who could bring
other people back to life, and cloning didn't really count anyways.
Healing was a big deal in general, but
resurrection? That was so huge that it rocketed right past 'Wow that is a really valuable power' straight on to 'people will
literally kill to get access to this.' If that got out the reaction would be
insane. Certainly Taylor herself would have given just about
anything to—
Her thoughts screeched to an abrupt halt. Sheer, overwhelming, unadulterated
emotion welled up within her, and Almaric tried to ask her something with a concerned look on his face but she didn't notice as all the fear, sorrow, bitterness, and resignation that had haunted her over the past few years came suddenly crashing back. Except that this time, all those negative emotions she'd been drowning in for so long were met by a pure, shining
hope the likes of which she hadn't felt in, well,
ever.
Taylor began to tremble violently, and her limbs felt like lead. Her eyes filled with tears, and she was forced to covered her mouth to hold back the sob threatening to break free. She had to ask. She
had to. The very
idea of the answer she'd probably get terrified her, because there was no way in a million years she could ever be that lucky. Miracles like that
just. didn't. happen. But she couldn't
not ask. She
needed to
know,
craved the knowledge on a level that she simply couldn't deny.
She asked.
Almaric answered.
For the second time that day, Taylor's eyes rolled up into her head as she slumped to the floor and blacked out.
