Mirzayael leads me back to her chambers, increasingly ratcheting up my confusion.

  “What could you possibly have in here that you want the Dungeon Core to eat?” I ask. One of her weapons, so those could be tracked on the interface? That wouldn’t surprise me, but she would have taken me to the (admittedly meager) armory instead.

  Mirzayael’s room is sparse, though it’s accumulated a couple trinkets since we moved into the palace. In addition to her bed, clothes chest, and weapons and armor display, she now has a handful of items on her otherwise empty stone shelves, including an antler given to her by Ollie. (He had deemed it ‘too pretty to eat.’)

  Mirzayael begins digging through her clothes chest. Given her vanishing few sets of clothes, it only takes her a moment to produce a long black stick. She turns back to me, holding it out.

  Almost as long as her arm, it’s wider at one end and narrow at the other, with a very faint sheen. The wide end appears cracked and cratered. It takes me a moment to contextualize what I’m looking at.

  “Oh my god.” I take a step back. “Why do you still have that?”

  Mirzayael shrugs. “Beryl asked if I wanted to keep it. I said yes. I don’t believe in waste.”

  “You kept it in with your clothes?” I ask, slightly horrified.

  Mirzayael seems perplexed. “I cleaned it first.”

  “That’s not the issue.” I laugh out of bafflement. “Mirzayael, that’s your leg.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Yes, I am aware. Do you think if the Dungeon Core consumed it, arachnoids would populate on your Map interface?”

  I shake my head. I’m all for practicality, but sometimes Mirzayael’s bluntness catches even me off guard. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not using it,” she says. “And it’s not as though a healer could reattach it anyway. This may put it to good use.”

  Most people would so easily offer up a part of their body for a ravenous and inhuman creature to consume. But Mirzayael is not most people.

  “Alright,” I agree. “If you’re comfortable with it, then we can see if the Dungeon Core will take it.”

  We both know the Core will be all too happy to accept.

  When I still hesitate, Mirzayael mentally reaches out to Core. “Here,” she says, drawing its attention to the carapace of her severed leg. “Eat this.”

  The Dungeon Core curiously looks at the leg. Oh, something new! It looks tasty. Okay!

  And Mirzayael’s severed leg vanishes from her hands. I wince as the Dungeon Core makes crunching noises in our head, like someone eating a bag of potato chips. I probably should have specified for the Core to swallow the leg whole, instead of disincorporating it, incase Mirzayael wanted it back, but she doesn’t even blink.

  “Well?” she asks.

  I check the Map interface and sort for living creatures. At the very top, above Felis and Human, now sits Arachnoid.

  “Good lord,” I murmur.

  “It worked, then?” she asks.

  “It did.”

  She brightens. “Good! This is useful. I am starting to understand the appeal of your experiments. We can ask other species to donate limbs in order to complete the catalog.”

  I look at her in horror. “We absolutely will not!”

  “Fyre, you yourself pointed out the usefulness of this feature for keeping the Fortress’s inhabitants safe.” Mirzayael returns to her chest to refold and pack away the clothes she had removed. “I wonder, too, if this might affect the range of your Role Requirement you’ve been experimenting with. Would being able to account for all the people within your domain not classify it as more secure and protected?”

  This is a good point, actually. I should re-measure the range of my Role Requirement to see if anything has changed after these new additions to the Map’s interface.

  “If it does impact how ‘secure’ the System deems the Fortress, then you may be onto something,” I say. “However until I can prove that, I am begging you to not go around the castle asking for inhabitants to donate a limb or two.”

  Mirzayael finally cracks a smile. “Don’t be absurd, Fyre. I’d ask for families to donate their deceased.”

  Ah. That is far less objectionable. Still, though, it’s an incredibly sensitive request. “We can discuss that option if your hypothesis is correct,” I say. “But please allow me to confirm the range before you begin spreading this request.”

  “That is acceptable,” Mirzayael says, still smiling faintly. I suspect she enjoys causing me discomfort.

  I let out a breath, sitting down heavily on the edge of Mirzayael’s bed. I mentally run through everything else I need to do today and when I might have time to head back out to re-check my Role Requirement’s range. So many developments, and it’s not even lunch. What a way to start the day.

  Mirzayael sits down beside me. “We never did get to our daily briefing.”

  I chuckle. “I suspect daily events will increasingly get in the way of daily briefings.”

  “It only seems to be getting more busy around here,” Mirzayael agrees.

  I lean to the side until my shoulder bumps lightly into her arm. She stays still, not leaning into me, but not leaning away, either. “I’m sorry about telling the Jorrians they could have a ceremony for their dead,” I say. “I know that was naive of me. I know how that would hurt everyone, in the wake of the people we’ve lost.”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “You have already apologized,” Mirzayael says.

  “I know. But I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. We’re a team, and I should have conferred with you, first.”

  “Conference is appreciated,” Mirzayael says. “But we need to be able to act independently, too, and trust each other to make appropriate judgement calls. If we stop to talk through every decision, we’ll never get anything done.”

  “Fair point.” I chew on this. “About ceremonies. Or rather, celebrations. I was thinking we were overdue for one ourselves.”

  Mirzayael hums in consideration. “To celebrate the victory? Or the city’s ascension?”

  “Both,” I say. “And to celebrate everyone who fought for this city. A celebration to take pride in what we’ve achieved, against the odds, against those who believed we couldn’t. Too much energy is being wasted dwelling on the Jorrians when we could instead be spending it on ourselves.”

  “It won’t resolve the prisoner issue,” Mirzayael says. She pauses a moment. “But I don’t think it would hurt anything either. You’re right; we deserve something constructive to focus on. What do you have in mind for this celebration?”

  I shrug. “I’ve never been much of a party person. What would you do?”

  Mirzayael looks down at me with an incredulous laugh. “And you think I am?”

  I can’t help but laugh along with her. “What a pair we make! We’ll end up establishing the most lackluster kingdom in the world if we don’t find someone to intervene. Let’s put out a call for external input, then. This is a task to be outsourced.”

  “I’m more than happy to let others plan festivities,” Mirzayael agrees.

  “Great. Who should we ask?”

  We’re both silent for a moment.

  “Nek?” Mirzayael suggests.

  “Dizzi?” I wonder. We desperately need to broaden our friend circles.

  Mirzayael snorts. “That girl has far too high of an interest in explosives. I don’t know what sort of festivities she’d come up with, but they would be liable to blow us all up.”

  The joke tickles something in the back of my mind. “Explosives…”

  “What?” Mirzayael says. “No, no explosives. How are bombs festive?”

  I leap to my feet. “They’re exactly what we need. You’re a genius, Mir!” I throw my arms around her.

  Mirzayael stiffens beneath my hug. “Fyre, what are you talking about?”

  “I’ll show you.” I let go, grinning at her baffled expression. “Just give me a day to work out the kinks. It’ll be fun!” I dash for the door, excited to try something new. Maybe I needed a break from everything, too.

  “Explosives are not fun,” Mirzayael calls after.

  I’m already hurrying down the hall. “These ones are!” I mentally reply.

  “Dizzi is a bad influence on you!” Mirzayael says, but I can feel her amusement and curiosity.

  #

  Despite my eagerness to create some basic fireworks, I first perform the responsible action of flying out to test my Role Requirement range. (Besides, I can mentally sift through the chemicals available to me in the Dungeon Core’s interface while I fly.)

  I highly doubt I’m the first person in this world to create firecrackers, given their extensive history on Earth, but I’ve yet to see the technology used by Fyrethians—or Jorrians for that matter. It makes sense if most people from the arctic don’t have fire affinities; they’d focus their technology on that which could be powered by types of magic they specialize in. Not to mention, the Fyrethians were underground, so explosives that shot into the air would have been highly inadvisable. But now that we’re in the sky and living in a city of stone, such creations would be much more safe to play with.

  [Role Requirement,] Echo warns, and I stop my flight. I pull a rock from the Dungeon Core’s Inventory (it grumbles mildly) and I Check the distance from the city’s center of mass.

  [Distance: 1623 meters.]

  My heart leaps. Mirzayael was right. More situational awareness of the Fortress classifies it as “better protected” to this system.

  Echo, I think. Is there a way to quantify how ‘protected’ the Kingdom is?

  [Bounds undefined,] Echo says.

  I try a different approach. Can you associate a Stat with the range I am able to move from the kingdom’s center of mass without activating the Role Requirement warnings?

  [Affirmative,] Echo says. [Define units.]

  I think about that for a moment. Ideally, 100% range would encompass anywhere on the planet’s surface. However, given my current range is something like 0.01% of the planet’s diameter, it wouldn’t be a very useful metric to gauge on a local scale.

  I suppose I can always redefine the variable later. Let’s start with a goal. Ten kilometers would provide me significant flexibility.

  [Stat defined,] Echo says. [Role Range: 16.23% of Target Radius]

  Excellent. Now perhaps I won’t have to go flying around and pushing the boundaries of my Role each time I want to check if the range has increased.

  “You were right,” I report to Mirzayael as I head back to the palace. “Adding more species to the Core’s list counts as fortifying the security of the Fortress. My range has increased as a result.”

  “I’m glad it allotted you more freedom,” Mirzayael replies. “Though I care very little about what this System of yours classifies as secure or not. Even if it hadn’t increased your range, it still would have been to our advantage to add species to your Map. Things can be useful to us, even if your System doesn’t deem it so.”

  It’s true; the System can be fairly arbitrary at times. And while the way it quantifies and restricts things can feel artificial, that doesn’t negate the value of things it overlooks.

  “You still wish to ask Fyrethians to add their deceased to the Core’s Inventory?” I asked.

  “I do,” she says. “And if you do not feel comfortable doing so, then I can make the request in your stead.”

  “Let’s just keep it quiet and respectful,” I say. “I don’t want to make a general announcement. Let’s only speak to families who have lost members on an individual basis.”

  “Understood.”

  I still can’t say I’m wild about the idea. But Mirzayael feels this is important, and it can’t be denied that it will help us if and when we encounter land and other people. If we are going to lead together effectively, then compromise is something both of us must be willing to engage in.

  When I make it back to my workshop, I find Dizzi already inside, doing some artificing work on a piece of cloudstone. A layout of runes and spell circle sketches are stretched across the surface before her, which she pauses to check as she carefully etches a design into a smooth face of the rock. It might be the only time she’s careful about anything.

  She looks up after a moment. “Oh, hey! Thought I heard someone come in.” She lifts the stone and her engraver. “I’m making a toy. Want to help?”

  I eye the stone in amusement. “Hard at work on the plumbing designs, I see.”

  “Hey, I gotta do something creative sometime or I’d lose my mind.” Dizzi sets her work down and scrunches her face in disgust. “Plumbing is boring.”

  “Well I’ve got something more interesting than plumbing you could help me with,” I offer.

  Dizzi eyes me skeptically. “That’s a low bar.”

  “It involves controlled explosions.”

  Dizzi slams her hands down on the workbench. “Tell me everything.”

  Discord

  Patreon.