Moriko settled down to meditate with what was essentially a giant crystal ball in her p. It wasly the same, in addition to it actually being a liviy its apparent temperature was uneven and ged over time. There was a sort of rhythm to it and a faint vibration as well. She began to harmohe rhythm of her body to that of the core, using that as the base of her meditation cycle, and almost immediately felt a ge in the flow of her chi.

  Normally this sort of eling involved drawing the free chi of the enviro into one’s self. In areas with overflowing natural energy, it was easier than normal. But here, as soon as she opened herself up, the pressure of the chi ractically p into her. It was intense enough that she had to focus uting that flow and eling it through her body.

  Her entire being ached more than a little from letting it flow into her this quickly, stretg her capacity to process and distribute this energy, allowing it to reinforce both body and soul; but she uood that there was a time limit. Mordecai hadn’t seemed panicked, but it was clear that they were going to probably have only one shot at whatever he nning to do. So it behooved both her growth as a martial disciple and the probability that they could escape to take in as much as she could handle.

  But doing so came with the awarehat she was taking in chi that had beloo her host moments ago, and for a creature whose life was tied to magic so intricately, that ractically the same as draining his life energy directly. She tried to not think of hoiric that was.

  It didn’t take Moriko too long to fall into the new rhythm, and practig a new sort of trol was a useful experienormally she would create a routine of switg between purely internal meditation and active meditation where she would gh her stances. In this circumstance, however, that would break her tact with the core and leave her with less chi to work with, so she let herself indulge in the calm portion of her routine.

  Hours passed quickly as she focused uting this influx, and her meditation remained uninterrupted until Mordecai spoke. “Moriko, I am almost ready to start the final part of designing the ritual, but I need your input.” She opened her eyes to look at him, then stared at the intricate diagram.

  “Oh?” She asked, arg a brow. Moriko was still a little uain about how she felt about him, he was taking trol of the situation without much asking. But she also uood that he had a lot of knowledge and experience, and that time was an issue. So she presumed that his taking the time to ask for her input meant that he o decide on something that was going to directly affect her, and this made her somewhat nervous.

  “Well, to cover the basics of what I have been able to work out: In order for me to leave, my core and my avatar will both o be abandoned. I only leave with my mind and soul, which means I need a new vessel. Namely, you. I could possibly entangle myself into a magical object, but I've always existed with a physical brain, whether crystal anic, so I am not fident I could do that well. In order to borrow you as a vessel I’d have to do a kind of ride-along-possession, for ck of a better phrase. I’d be living in your head. And it would tangle our souls. Whatever the long-term oute, getting us both out will leave us ected for the rest of our lives, and possibly a little beyond. And to be clear: I’m pretty certain I enhance you to get you out alone, but I wouldn’t have much time left after that. And I don’t particurly want to die either.”

  She pohat for a bit, sidering all the implications. Being a bit selfish in this situation seemed reasonable of him, but the idea of having some guy living in her head for an indefiime wasly the most appealing. Still, she didly want to leave him to die, especially if he was helpio get out. Well, she could probably live with it?

  “Okay, I’m not saying no, but that doesn’t sound like what you need my opinion on. I mean, other than saying yes or no. So, what else is there?” Mordecai gave her a warm smile that felt approving for having figured that part out, but the look in his eyes made her feel a touervous.

  “Well, anyway you look at it, this is going to take a lot of trust on your part. I’m going to be invading your soul and making a pyself there. Yoing to have to surrender yourself to it eve feels unfortable, maybe even painful. If you ’t keep yourself from struggling in respohen one or both of us may die. So you have to be very, very certain before you agree to the ritual. However, there is another ritual I weave in that might make that easier. It would even strengthen some of the other bonds a me take along some more mana. Normally, it would require some well-built ties of deeper affe, but I partially repce that prerequisite with the other bonds the ritual would be f. As for the rest of the prerequisite,” Mordecai hesitated, then shrugged. “Well, it helps that you apparently think I’m cute.”

  Moriko stared at him for a long moment in silence. "You have got to be kidding me. You are propositioning me right here and now? Seriously?"

  Mordecai couldn't help a small ugh. "Oh, it's worse than that, I'm teically proposing. And I admit that it sounds ridiculous, but the full marriage ceremony includes the entment s and another yer of bonding." He held up a newly formed ring of purple crystal. "This is made of the same matrix as my core, but does not carry my energy signature. I pack a good k of my memories into it, and access them ter if circumstances ge, but I have to have a e to make it happen. This means I use less energy to hold those memories in an intangible state, and our additional bond yer would allow me to pack more energy into it temporarily." He gnced up, eyeing the hole. "Hmm, if I were to give the unmodified ritual about a y pert ce to escape and plete the ast, then I would say that adding this yer would increase it to about y-five pert. Not huge, but not insignifit."

  His tone became very somber as he looked at the woman staring at him with her eyes narrowed. "A marriage of venien exge for an increased ce of survival for both of us. I wouldn't hold you to the normal ventions of marriage of course; we wouldn't be f this bond from pure emotion aher do we have some legacy to uphold through iance. However, it would need mating as part of the ritual."

  Moriko sighed, then pted the orb in her p for a while before looking back up at him. "I admit that I do ly hate the idea of bedding you, and in aime and pce might have pted hitting on you in a bar, especially if I knew you were a dungeon avatar. And I am not foolish enough to let my pride stand in the way of my survival over something like this. But why exactly does it o be mated here and now?"

  "First, we're at the low end of emotional e, ao build up positive emotions to finish the link quickly; and sed, I won't have a body afterward to mate with ter. Missing both the emotional e and the intimacy e would make for a weak bond. I don't really want to find out what happens if a link in my hacked ritual breaks." The ritual was really meant for bonding people with deep love and affe for each other. Using it for things like political marriages only worked if the couple at least didn't hate each other and were willing to it to the retionship. Physical intimacy with mutual e was less than ideal, but it's not like he had the time to romance her.

  The half-elf made a face. "I hate that it's such a cold proposition though." A glint of humor and mischief appeared in her eyes, despite the circumstances. "Prove to me that it's worth it then. Warm me up to the idea without removing any clothing or toug the obvious areas, and I'll say yes."

  Oh, he liked her. Sexual drive wasn't a deep-rooted need for a dungeon core, but he had been around long enough to learn some things. He started finalizing the adjustments to the ritual, then rose to approach her.

  Ideal aodations would be too wasteful, however he did start by f a simple bedroll as he k dowo her. A soft kiss to start off with, theook his core from her a aside before he began to explore her skin with light touches, finding where her nerves responded happily, and drawing her slowly into the mood. No rush, nency, just the mutual eai of getting to know her. And while his avatar had her distracted, his core started spending power to etch are symbols in an intricate patterered on them.

  When she said "Yes", more power started flowing from the core and charged the inscriptions while running patterns to repce the normal words, ts, materials, and as, paying a pri power spent to make up for some of the missing pieces. Wheime was right, at the pitch of heighteion, he asked for her to be his and him to be hers as every level of the bond formed in glowing lines, ready but holding back for this sed yes, then snapped fully into pce.

  Sometime ter, Moriko angrily pulled herself together while swearing silently. What the hell had she been thinking? Oh wait, had she been thinking? A pretty pair of golden eyes, a ve excuse about bonding them more strongly together, and she’d let that bastard…

  "Hey, I’m in here you know. When you are thinking that loudly, I ’t not hear it."

  “Shut up you. Let me grump a. Hey, wait a sed, what did you do to my dress?” She stared suspiciously at the knee-length garment. At first she had been distracted by the fact that the entire area was covered in purple dust from when his core had basically exploded, but it felt like there was something different about the cloth.

  "Once I knew how much magic I could bring with us, and how much I needed for the ritual, I used as much as I could to upgrade year. Your dress will now act like lightweight armor, and your bracers and boots have new entments too."

  She grunted in response. She hadn’t chosen the dress expeg to o be able to fight in it. And it flowed well enough that if push came to shove it wouldn’t hinder her; so it wouldn’t promise her fighting style for it to protect like armor as well. Just, well, she’d chosen it to be pretty whe home, not to be a bat outfit. “Fine, whatever.” She paused when she heard the ground shift, and looked up at the hole she had e through earlier. “Um, is it just me, or…”

  "No, you are correct. It is closer. The wards are eating the st tray energy, and the earth is shifting bato pce. You should probably hurry."

  The monk jumped up onto the small boulder that had preceded her entry into this ir and crouched, preparing herself for the leap. Mordecai pulled together a weave of elemental chi and handed trol of it over. As she leapt the air chi surged around her, helping unch her upwards and into the small void beyond the chamber.

  Another pattern of magic was hao her, and she let it activate as she grabbed for a rock surface. Her fingers and nails shifted inton-like cws to gouge the rock, and she felt the entment on her boots give her more tra thaerial alone should have been able to provide.

  All the power surging through Moriko made her entire body ache. Her partner had brought along a lot more mana than they could actually hold on to, and it was leaking out through her flesh. bined with the rapid-fire magics she was not used to eling, it made for aremely unpleasant experience. Her mood was not helped by the sounds of earth and rock slowly crushing closed below her.

  Moriko began swearing agaiing her frustrations at everything as she tihe climb. A stupid baby dungeon with its stupid cute rabbit monsters. A bsted deep hole in the ground that shouldn’t be here. Bloody a old pervert. This did not slow her down in the least, however, as the eime she was tinuing to climb and leap, accepting the spells being hao her from inside her head by the creature she’d let possess her. All the while her flesh strained and tore uhe bined pressures, and almost immediately healed. Not that the healing leasaioher, a burning itch as a raw overflow of energy was used to accelerate some processes while simultaneously reversing the creation of toxins and other waste products. It fueled both her strength and hastehe healing, but it was not a nice experie all. At least her new frie his mouth shut and did his job smoothly.

  Eventually, she reached a point where she could pause on a ledge and catch her breath. Okay, she didly o catch her breath with all that chi surging through her, but she just needed a break from both the monotony and the awful sensations. She had been climbing for hours, and probably had hours ahead of her. This would be impossible without the power she was getting from Mordecai.

  “Look, sorry about being so angry earlier. It has been a very long day, and having your core kind of explht after and then seeing you turn into little motes of energy was not the best ending to a good y. I mean, I should have figured out something was going to happen, your body had to die somehoart of the ritual, but since I didn’t think to ask, you could have given me a bit more detailed of a warning, you know?”

  "I’m sorry as well. I have to admit, I was a little worried about how you’d react if I gave too much detail, and, well, I hadn’t realized the rea with my core was going to be quite that thh. But if you had asked for more detail, I would have told you. I just didn’t want to volu." That st part had just a hint of guilt in its tone.

  She frowned for a moment, irely pleased. But, well, “Eh, I guess I kind of get it. Maybe it was best that I wasn’t distracted in any other ways, but it doesn’t sit very well. I’ll get over it, just, don’t do anything like that again, got it?” Moriko felt his agreement and was satisfied with that for now.

  The rest of the climb was much more pleasant. Not only was there a lot less overflow leaking out through her flesh, but she was in a better mood and the two of them could talk. Most of it was just an exge of information; she learned a lot more about living dungeons, and Mordecai learned a bit about the modern world, especially the Kuic Kingdom that the little dungeon far above had appeared oskirts of. Finally, they reached the end of their jourhe narrowiical tunnel she’d been climbing ended in a smooth ‘roof’, and he’d already pointed out the sensation that indicated she’d reached the edge of a dungeon’s territory.

  There really wasn’t the leverage to try anything fancy with popping the trapdoor open, so Moriko called out “Sorry about this, kind of in a bad situation here. ing through!”

  Zagaroth