Dungeon of Doors

~ Vivian, Flathoof Haven ~

I watch with a vague air of concern as the two youths work to save their collapsed friend. His back has been gouged open by the rok's talon, and he's lost a frightening amount of blood. The way his neurons are firing make it clear the injury has paralyzed him almost entirely.

"G-Get a potion out!" The short guy—Teddy, pleads.

Will shoves his hands into his pouch, rifling through it in search of a potion. He finds regular bandages, the seed of the healing flower, and a few scraps of stale bread. He looks up toward Teddy with a forlorn look on his face.

"I don't have one! They're in your bag, Ted."

Teddy clams up as he quickly shoves his hands into his own storage equipment. He fishes out a healing potion, nearly dropping it due to how sweaty his hands have gotten. He rushes to Andy's unconscious form and tries to tilt his head up to feed him the potion. It looks painfully difficult, and Will steps in to grab the bottle from Teddy.

"Just do it!"

Will moves forward to help, but in his desperation he knocks the bottle out of Teddy's hand. The both of them watch, pale faced, as the bottle twirls upwards before spilling all over Andy's open wound.

It heals slowly, the healing potion forcing the flesh to close slowly. I watch in fascination as nerves twirl themselves back together like fraying wires reconnecting. Pulses of electricity flow through Andy's prone body, and the bones are set right as the meat of his body closes the wound. Fresh skin coats the tender raw wound once things are finished internally. He's stable, but unconscious.

"H-He's breathing…"

"I didn't know that would work," Will murmurs.

The two boys take some time to rest. They've both been through a lot, and I'm surprised they managed to make it through that ordeal without losing anyone. Andy would have died if not for the masked girl's last minute sacrifice. If Andy hadn't snatched her up she would have probably died, actually.

With their safety taken care of the boys finally take a good look around the room they're in. They stumbled into the tower where the rok nests, and as per the obelisk's rules the rok is unable to attack them right now.

"I hope this reward is worth it…"

Teddy murmurs to himself as the two boys approach the large treasure chest I put in place. Will watches on as his friend pulls the lid up to reveal a sizeable heap of silver coins. Their eyes quickly lock onto the treasure half poking out of the silver—the haste boots.

If I was in my body I'd be smiling. Teddy grabs ahold of the matching boots and pulls them free with an awestruck look in his eyes. They're light in his hands, and he tosses them up and down as if testing their weight. Will watches with a brow raised.

"These are like paper!"

"Paper?" Will grunts, doubtful.

"They're as light as paper, anyway. They feel like leather."

Teddy sits down and pulls his boots off one at a time. Will looks on nervously as Teddy slips on each of the feathered boots. They suit him well, stretching to fit his feet perfectly. I hadn't intentionally given them that feature. I suppose it is a happy accident, since it would suck for the boots not to fit whoever got them.

Blinking several times, Teddy rises on shaky legs. Will has to reach out and grab his arm to stop him from falling back on his ass. I watch on anxiously as some adverse effect takes hold of Teddy. It's like all his nerves are firing in his legs at once.

"Are you okay?"

"I-I'm fine! My legs just f-feel funny!"

"Maybe you should take off-"

Before Will can finish what he's saying Teddy pushes off the bigger boy and takes a step on his own. There's a subtle snapping noise in the air as the much shorter boy goes from standing by Will to being across the room. He's fast, so much so that Will only saw a blur pass him by. From my perspective it looked like Teddy sprinted across the room as fast a roadrunner or some other fast creature.

Teddy turns around to give Will a thumbs up. Will looks almost as pale as he did when Andy was on the ground bleeding out, though for completely different reasons. Teddy sucks in a breath before attempting to run again. His legs move a lot faster than the rest of him. He's forced to limit his speed a bit to stay upright. He skids to a stop close to the wall on the far side of the tower, nearly tripping into a somewhat difficult to spot stairwell.

"Woah! These things are awesome!"

"They're terrifying…"

"Hey, Will, I found a way back out!"

Teddy doesn't even notice Will's misgivings as he peers down the stairs. His intuition is correct, this is the exit route I put in place so the adventurers can leave the tower without getting hunted by the rok. It is all but impossible to use the passage to reach the tower, but it is easy to leave. Lots of slopes and drop-offs in the winding stone tunnel make sure of that.

It might be worth adding some sort of automated defender to discourage anyone crazy enough to try and use the exit tunnel to cheat the intended path. But that can wait for another time, as for now I need to attend to Aquartis.

I give the three boys and the masked girl one last look before moving my mind elsewhere. They're most likely going to take a break before they come back for another delve.

The stone and rock pass me by as I float through the ground toward Aquartis. I pass by each level, until I finally pause in the as of yet named home of the tengku. I've left them to adjust to their environment all this time. When I created them I intentionally made their origins ambiguous. My hope is they will be more independent than my other creations, and therefore relate to the adventurers more than my custodians and the wildkin—not to mention the gremlins, whom I hesitate to allow to contact people from the surface.

In the time I have left the tengku to grow they've transformed their environment. The basic flotsam amalgam I gave them of wooden floating platforms and a few very bare bones shelters has been upgraded to something unrecognizable. The central platform has a variety of stalls set up with canvas woven out of processed seaweed. Tengku man the stalls with enthusiastic shouting dominating the space. Customers mill about the space. Everyone is trading using various goods. Mostly plant matter and meat from caught shine koi, along with a few hand crafted items.

My attention slips from the marketplace to look at the floating section of the city I initially placed the shelters upon. The little single room hovels have been demolished and replaced with expansive precarious looking houses. Flat wide homes are cobbled together like bricks, with wooden blinds used to obscure windows when they want them shut. Walkways made from wood I don't know the source of connect the area. In fact, the amount of wood they've used to build all this shouldn't be available to them.

I take the time to find the source of the wood before I continue my tour. It is remarkably simple, and yet unnerving. The impassible foggy openings in the stone borders of the region occasionally produce things. Driftwood comprised of the same material as their city, as well as fish in rare cases.

I've wasted enough time observing this phenomenon. Back to touring their city!

The furniture and possessions of the tengku have evolved somewhat. Wooden carvings are a popular decoration, and they use aqualilies as a decorative light source. I'm not sure what technique they used in creating their paper lanterns. It looks like they've somehow condensed aqualilies into a bulb housed in the paper lanterns. It makes for nice lighting.

What surprises me most in the houses the tengku have constructed are the eggs. Several of the homes have eggs housed in cozy looking nests made of fibrous bedding made from wood and seaweed. Some of these nests even have tengku resting on or beside them like they're babysitting. No young tengku are present yet, but I imagine there will be soon.

There are a few more additions. New floating platforms connected to the ones I initially gave the tengku, as well as simple yet practical boats. Tengku use the boats as a means to float across the surface of the water for both leisure and business. While they're great at swimming they can't carry much when swimming alone. Boats solve that issue by keeping items all in one easily moveable package.

Seeing all this makes me think it is time I pay the tengku a visit with Pearl. She has yet to be informed of the new weekly meetings, so I need to talk to her regardless.

Before I can pay the tengku a visit I need to attach their region to the dungeon proper. This starts with a spatial connection between the various regions of Aquartis and the tengku. Each fog filled waterborne exit in the stone boundary is going to be a path to someplace else.

The first path I make is one leading to Rushwater Canyon. To facilitate such a connection I move the obelisk to deep in the silt beneath the waterfall, and open up the space behind the waterfall into a passage. New runes etched into the respective obelisks for each region make it a controlled connection.

Fog and murky water connect the two spaces, giving the illusion of passing through a vast sea clouded by the unknown. Of course this sea is nothing but a farce. If someone were to stray from the path they'd find themselves coming back out the way they came. I'm curious how it would feel to try and swim down in that scenario. Hopefully I'll get to see that someday.

With the runes for the special connection complete I start to work faster. Rushwater Canyon now connects to the tengku via an obscured passage, which prevents things like flooding or current from affecting the tengku despite both being common in Rushwater Canyon.

The second passage I add is one leading to the lower section of Upper Gunkthick Sewer. I tear up and make a few person sized spaces in the bars blocking the passage I'm using for the connection, meaning anyone could go through if they were willing to risk the rusty sharp metal and the darkness of the passage. Luckily for the tengku the smell nor filth of the sewer will spread through the fog sea to their region.

The third passage is simpler than the rest. One portion of the already foggy Farumi is given an extra helping of obscuring clouds. This bulge in the gaseous barrier is the only indication of the passage to the tengku being there. Hopefully the sea dragon won't attack the tengku on sight when they inevitably explore Farumi.

I decide not to connect Kagami Sea directly to the tengku. I don't want to risk the more dangerous area swallowing up any unwary tengku.

With these connections made I can finally accompany Pearl into the as of yet unnamed region the tengku populate. I return to my body, floating back into myself. My breath comes in a sharp gasp as I return to flesh and blood. My catalyst glows as I touch it. I've signaled Pearl, so she should come running.

I step out of the true core chamber and into the larger scale false one. It doesn't take long for Pearl to arrive. I hear the splash before I see her, and she gives me a bright smile.

"Hey, Mom! Long time no talk, and gosh I have so many ideas!"

"That's lovely, Pearl, but I do have plans for us today."

"Really? Is it another one of those meetings?"

Pearl's tone makes it clear she is dreading having to stand around—swim around, in her case—and discuss things rather than do them. I smile slightly before revealing the new scheduled meetings to her.

"Every seventh day we're going to have a meeting, Pearl."

"What?! Mom! You're being such a dragon right now!"

My brows furrow as I look at her. What kind of figure of speech is that? I never taught her to say anything nonsensical like that. She sees my expression and waves her hand flippantly.

"It's just a saying I came up with after meeting Levithan. He's a real piece of crap!"

"Well… Hopefully the tengku are more pleasant than the sea dragon was."

"What's a tengku?"

"You'll see. Follow me."

Pearl opens her mouth to comment on the fact she can't really follow me when I step forward and fall into the water beside her. She goes wide eyes, watching me sink down before raising my hand to float in place. I turn to her, smirking, enjoying the look on the mermaid's face.

"Since when can you do that?! How are you breathing, Mom?"

"I'll tell you on the way, honey."