Lluc canceled his invisibility only once he was outside of the mountain proper.

The mana diffused around him with a hiss, settling back from the active incantation he'd mapped out with such care; he'd been proud of it. Canceling sight, smell, sound; he'd been a true shadow, simply not present to anything that wanted to find him, and it had been going so well.

Up until it wasn't.

The first floor he had passed through, quiet and uncontested, and it had looked about what he'd expected. Large, open, filled with mostly scuttling beasts and a few serpents. Not a particular challenge, though underranked fools would struggle. He'd called up an air-based platform to walk over the rocky pond and padded down to the second floor.

Now that one had been unique; trees somehow grew underground, great towering trees like nothing he'd ever seen before. Deep, wine-red bark and pale leaves, seemingly ignoring most standard laws of plants. How had the dungeon gotten a hold of trees? They had the basic form of mangroves, with their roots exposed and tangled in the surrounding canals, but certainly not the species found around here.

Was it an old dungeon? One of the ones born and formed eons ago but then sealed up, stagnant, unable to grow or expand but not dying either, lying dormant beneath the stone until something broke through their exit once more? He'd heard of those before, pockets of ancient worlds kept and stored with creatures never heard of before.

But then why would they only be hearing of it now? He rather doubted an ancient dungeon wouldn't have exploded onto the scene, trying to claim Calarata outright. Instead, it'd only eaten what wandered into it and mostly kept to itself. Almost polite for a dungeon.

But that didn't explain how it got those trees.

He'd been so focused on that he'd stayed in the first sort of "room" of the second floor, the canals rumbling alongside him and the twitter and hiss of creatures in the further halls. There had even been a thought of indulging in his invisibility, harvesting a portion of a mangrove to examine in further detail, when the mana around him had changed.

No longer ambient, no longer passive; instead it moved, fluttering around the first room like a confused child, but active. Shifting.

And, to his great horror, it was looking. Not just reacting to stimuli, not just hungry for mana; it was searching with the sort of deliberation that only came from aware beings, hunting for signs of something. It knew he was there.

So he turned and ran, and now he glared at the sun as the last of his mana fluttered away.

That hadn't gone as hoped.

Lluc exhaled, rubbing at his eyes; his soul ached. He was a wizard, not a mage—he didn't have one of those fancy little attunements that made it so much easier to cast magic of a certain type, but his internal mana also wasn't stuck to only using said type. So while it was harder for him to use invisibility for as long as he had, mages with a different attunement wouldn't be able to do that at all.

It was a cold encouragement from the mana-exhaustion he could feel at the corners of his thoughts.

Barely a glance at the second floor before he'd decided to cut his losses and run out. All of that from the week of planning, the hunt for two inmates idiot enough to agree to this foolhardy scheme, the time spent dodging Varcís who wanted a report.

Well. He'd certainly learned some things, at least.

The two idiots—or the one who had actually listened to Lluc's fucking instructions—would be let free, no need to drag him back to the brig. Lluc wouldn't bother with him. They had only been shoved into the dungeon as a distraction, something to keep it from awakening on the further floors. Lluc wasn't a novice when it came to dungeons; they were mostly filled with an animalistic awareness, reacting to stimuli and filling all of their creatures with the raid sickness, a furious hunger for blood that only ended when said stimuli went away. He knew this. He'd tested it time and time again on other dungeons, even those controlled by High Lords, like Thiago's back in the Leóro Kingdom. It was a tried and true strategy.

So to have the dungeon work up a strategy to deal with those blabbermouth fools while immediately seeing past his invisibility spelled something very bad indeed.

Lluc knew himself. He'd only worked up the grit to enter the unknown dungeon himself because of the strategy he knew worked, content in its previous successes. That had failed.

It was no longer up to just him to discover what was hidden in Alómbra's shadowed halls. He would be going to Varcís and admitting his defeat, because if Calarata was going to survive, they needed this fucking thing controlled now.

-

I absentmindedly ate the man's corpse as I pondered what had happened.

Two invaders, told to stay outside of my halls and distract the creatures on the first floor, while someone turned invisible and tried to creep further in. From the memories I'd salvaged from his soul, he and his companion were foot soldiers, told no more than their instructions. Useless on that front.

But the man in their memories, tall and tanned with a tricorn hat lined in wolf fur, seemed familiar. Pressingly so. I tore through my other memories and kept coming up with flashes of him, little bits seen from across Calarata or ducking away from his presence; not on the same level as the Dread Pirate, but worryingly close. Who was he?

That was, admittedly, the problem with consuming people's souls. While I got plenty of memories, the only ones I collected fully were those closest to the time of death, with everything past that growing hazy and disjointed. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

So while those I'd eaten had memories of seeing this important man, they didn't remember him with the same importance they gave to the Dread Pirate, nor did they do the helpful little job of remembering his name. Brilliant. I'd make sure to berate the next invader before I killed them.

But he had gotten out and exposed a weakness in my dungeon. I was pretty sure I could safely rely on Rhoborh's blessing to keep other invisible beasties from strolling through my floors down to my core, but that made me consider other types of spells. What about teleportation? Flight? Charming my creatures?

If only I'd paid slightly more attention to humanoids when I was a dragon to know what kind of magic they had access to.

Once Nicau got back, I'd sit him down and grill him on what those in Calarata knew. If I needed to try and get a god with some sort of disbanding blessing for my first floor, something to ward off pre-cast protection spells, I'd like to know that now.

But that was a question for when Nicau returned. I could wait. Maybe.

Waiting that would certainly be made easier to bear with the messages crawling over my core. Only a handful, but an exciting handful nonetheless; two beautiful new strands of evolution.

Your creature, a Luminous Constrictor, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Colossal Boa (Uncommon): Growing to titanic lengths, this constrictor lurks in the shadows and strikes at passing victims. With its immense strength and size, there is little that can successfully fight off its fatal hold.

Smoldering Serpent (Uncommon): Taking inspiration from its latest kill, this creature burns with an internal flame, superheating its scales until they scorch its surroundings. Though water spells its doom, its ambient heat means its territory is never challenged.

Crowned Cobra (Uncommon): Where once it waited, now it strikes. Armed with venom-launching fangs and a flared hood, it stalks through the undergrowth in search of richer prey.