“The hunger of dragons is slow to wake, but hard to sate.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

  In a spacious cavern, roughly ? of the way up the sky island’s central peak, the cool, dimly lit, silence was broken by a slow, deep, inhale lasting a solid 45 seconds. With a low susurrus of scales sliding against each other and the modest collection of items serving as a bed, she shifted gently, flexing the 2-foot talons on her left foreclaw. The dragon drifted towards awareness, alerted by a shift in the mana currents of her realm.

  Something is happening. I’ll have to check it out. When I get up...

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  “Nothing can be truer than fairy wisdom. It is as true as sunbeams.”

  - Douglas Jerrold.

  In an unspecified location, far from Zaipruniel, a small pale humanoid with glimmering golden eyes and transparent insectile wings was fending off the attempts of its latest charge to devour and absorb it with an irritated sigh.

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  *I’m not food, you stupid dungeon! *

  Evading the grasping claws of a basic goblin with a sneer, Aven Crystalspeck swooped in to slap a small hand against the small, obsidian core – overriding its defensive responses with one of the skills given to all dungeon fairies by their Queen. Having established contact, Aven brought up the dungeon’s basic status, finding nothing of any real note.

  *Fairly straightforward then, though these non-sapient, death-aligned dungeons are always a hassle. It’s going to try to eat me every time...” The fairy muttered to itself. “It’s already opted for goblins, so we’ll start it out with a basic number two package and worry about giving it a more concrete, individualized theme when it’s got more resources to work with. That should be fine for now; and it’s in the middle of nowhere, so I’d imagine its growth should be fairly slow.”

  Registering some basic instructional guidance with the core, Aven flashed back out of the dungeon, appearing nearly instantaneously at the mouth of a forest cave, miles from the nearest significant settlement.

  As though aware its task had been completed, it was at that moment that Aven felt the summoning pull of its Queen. In an emergency, Aven could teleport to the Court of its Queen, but that would leave it low on mana and in no position to do much for days. Feeling no sense of urgency in the summon, Aven began the trek back to court – it would take only hours, despite the distances involved, as it took full advantage of the Ways laid out by the Faerie courts millennia in the past.