Well. I had little cause to compliment the lesser, scuttling things of my dungeon, particularly when they lacked finery or elegance—but to their own damning credit, at least the webweavers had managed to construct a passable shrine.

A collection of intricate webs, melded together into the faint reminiscent ideal of her symbol of worship—I'd originally thought it as a needle's point, but now that it was before me, it shaped itself like a spider's mandible, thread unspooling from the base and scattering around. Nenaigch, the goddess of weaving, with her newest followers.

And they'd already done what I'd chosen them for—namely, sacrifice. Though I hadn't started to fill the Haven with populations of creatures I wanted to live there, mostly because I wanted to save my mana until I knew if a threat was imminently banging on my door, I had built up the beginnings of the prey populations needed to support them.

So, in fine fashion, they had immediately butchered a burrowing rat and strung its desiccated corpse up on the marble platform.

That was probably about as close to prayer as a bunch of identity-less spiders could manage.

My confidence in the plan to avoid humans and go right to spiders was waning, just a touch.

But that was a question for when I had alternatives, so for now I pushed more worship into their insipid minds and moved elsewhere.

Time was an ancient enemy of mine, particularly when my distractions numbered painfully few. Until Nicau returned, I couldn't work on the new tunnel branching out of my dungeon; until Seros returned, I couldn't talk to him about my future plans; until both of them told me of the outside world, I couldn't prepare for my retribution.

When I had torn out my own heart to wreak vengeance on the man who had slaughtered me, I hadn't exactly anticipated the waiting.

In the future, I would work on limiting the number of my Named I sent into the wider world at the same time. I hated being stuck without intelligent conversation, which was in short supply with Veresai busy compelling Kriya and Akkyst having long, meandering talks with Bylk about their ancient stone plaque and his blessing.

Which meant I had to go entertain myself. Horrible.

My attention was neatly divided between the Jungle Labyrinth and the Scorchplains, the targets of my design. For the Jungle Labyrinth, it was relatively plain—wait for Nicau, finish the Haven, and then carve a twisting escape far through the madness and the depths of the Alómbra Mountains.

Then potentially go steal some priests, because while I wouldn't put myself in the alien mindset of a deity with nothing to worry about but sycophants, I also wouldn't call the webweavers particularly respectable followers. Nenaigch had been calm for the moment, the spool of iron-threads in the back of my mind, but I doubted she would stay so forever. No, I needed a better plan.

I glared a little harsher at the scuttling, ghost-pale bodies in the Haven.

But the Scorchplains—they were the next floor to truly work on finishing. The Hungering Reefs were well on their way, three rooms of impossible danger and beauty, from the swarming swallows of the first to the elegant lagoon of the second to the crushing depths and many-fanged jaws of the sea serpent in the third room. My own little paradise, though I doubted many of those who died there would see it as such. I wasn't quite ready to finish it yet, considering I could see little pockets where new creatures could fit, but it was working there. The Scorchplains were an untapped spring of potential.

And, well. I was impatient in all the ways that a dungeon core could afford to be. The sooner I strengthened the Scorchplains and made them a land that would survive, the sooner I could begin my eighth floor, and I had many wonderful ideas already scattering through my thoughts. But not until I got this one to a serviceable level.

The Scorchplains were, at their core, a very mean-spirited place. The basalt columns, never equal, always a tripping hazard—and tripping that could go right into a magma pool, coal-filled chasm, or waiting stinger of a mottled scorpion. Smoke in the air and darkness all around, no water beyond little oases of mushrooms, rampaging packs of scorch hounds and herds of bounding deer whose preferred response to threats was to trample them.

Fire-tongue flowers belched smoke into the air, choking the land in smog where the burning coal didn't. Already the magma salamanders had blossomed in size, from hatchlings to threats, bulbous bodies pouring molten stone from their skin and wrapping near-toothless maws about anything that entered their pool's surroundings. Death and devastation made pairs.

There had been some interesting developments—namely, the splitting. The Scorchplains were enormous, some ten thousand feet long, but not divided into rooms or areas like my previous floors. I had imagined it as more of a threat of endurance, where invaders had to struggle across a field of pure darkness with danger on every side, a race of attrition.

But my creatures had a different idea, it seems.

The elder scorch hounds who had known the starvation in the Skylands, who had their pack whittled down from three dozen to half the number without the stability to support pups, had claimed the back half of the floor; had staked out their territory and defended it. And then all of the new scorch hounds I had created had been entirely kicked out to form a pack of their own, more in the front of the room, separate.

Which. Fascinating.

Made even more fascinating by just what was happening with the older pack; most notably, their newer member.

The beast-tamer kobold.

After several long, long stretches of failing to convince the eldest scorch hound onto his side—particularly in the changed environment, where he could no longer as easily hunt food to give her—he had switched his strategy. Now he tried to join them to, honestly, much better success.

He slept in their huddled piles, hunted alongside them with his spear and warbled shouts, bound their wounds. But in direct comparison to Nicau, who had been showing the kobolds how to become more humanoid, instead he had becoming more bestial to match them. Still with his spear, but now he sharpened his claws and tried to use those, bared his teeth and snarled, devoured meat and abandoned mushrooms. Not quite Rihsu's strategy, where she was following draconic urges; no, he was committing quite hard to his fire ancestry.

Smoke trickled from his mouth when he concentrated, and the embers of his eyes matched the scorch hounds. I hated every moment of it, but it was irritatingly possible that he was going to unlock his fire upon his evolution.

Quite possibly the worst, but fascinating.

And to match, the Scorchplains had grown and split around this new divided territory; multiple herds of bounding deer darted to and fro, mottled scorpions who would sooner eat each other than team up, magma salamanders living endless gluttonous lives without ever seeing another of their kind. The spined lizards at least formed small familial groups, three to five, darting around like knives in the dark.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

With weeks to change, already great things had emerged; and it started with golden letters crawling over my core.

There was a genuine part of me that almost sidelined the message; it had been so long since there had been anything new, that wasn't just shuffling silverheads into new silvertooths or armourback sturgeons and luminous constrictors into crowned cobras, that I wasn't prepared for anything new.

But this was new, from my deepest floor.

Your creature, a Lacecap, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Houndspore (Rare): In partnership with carnivorous brethren, it has grown into a worthy ally. Its bulbous form billows constant spores that can grow on the fur of passing beasts, hardening into protective armour in return for living off some portion of its nutrients.

Magmacap (Uncommon): Fire begets fire. Its cap reverses to form shallow bowls, while its mycelium erodes stone to transport up its stem to melt within. Little pockets of pure lava in pale white caps, heat to dissuade predators and light to attract prey, serving as explosive traps for those who never look down.

Tumbleshroom (Rare): From lace grows a tangle; its gills have grown and hardened into a protective coating, many times larger than its previous form. The slightest movement is enough to move it around, where its bile-coated armour picks up all prey in its wake to consume them.