Chrysalis

Holy mother of all that is good and gracious in this world, puh-lease let me make it alive! I’m burning up! The light is fading! My soul is running before the light! Is that you mum? What is that you say? You wish I’d never been born? Get the hell out of my death vision, human mum! Bring out my real mother, the Queen!

Gawd, I’m delirious. Which is interesting since I’ve actually not quite run out of mana in my core yet. I’m down to vapour, make no mistake, but not quite out of gas just yet.

No, wait. Check that, just ran out.

Oh my word, it hurts! I feel like my soul is suffocating!

[How much further Crinis?!]

[I don’t know master, I can’t see!]

DAMMIT.

[Tiny! Do you know how much further we need to go?!]

[Hurts]

[I KNOW that! More than anything in this world I know it! Do you have any idea how much further we have to run?!]

[... No]

I swear by all that is sacred and loved in this world Tiny, if I survive this, I’m going to shrink your muscles until your arms are limp noodles and you have the brain power of two young Einstein’s. You won’t be able to fight and will have to sit around sipping tea, discussing the latest in particle physics. Only then will my wrath be sated!

It can’t be that far away. I feel as if we’ve been running for ten hours but that can be attributed to my panic and anxiety. If I were to try and guess now it would have to have been closer to two hours.

Argh! Holy smokes! That tickled me right in the pain zone. How do describe the pain of having an empty core? It’s as if my magic lungs are empty and I’m in a vacuum. No matter how hard my core tries to pull mana in it just isn’t getting anything like enough from the air above ground. My monster body consumes far more mana to operate than can be replaced outside of the Dungeon.

get down

little legs until they were on the edge of snapping. I

quite at the point where this is going to be an issue for her but soon enough it will be. Wait, is that sign pillar Morrelia told us

surface. Fantastic! We’re close! I circled around the edifice and found an arrow that pointed away from the road, into the surrounding woods.

sprinted away. Trees and branches flew past my face as I motored with all of my might. I’m not willing to dash in case the drain on my

looking? GAH! Already

GOGOGOGOGOGO.

structure rose before us. A small fort in the middle of a forest. A ludicrous thing in normal times, but now, a lifesaving fortress of blessed

I crested the moss covered stone I beheld the most glorious sight of my life. Inside the walls, cut straight through the earth is a wonderful crack, dim blue

in the ground. Not wide enough to be considered a ’Dungeon Entrance’ and not worth the cost of excavation the Kingdom must

But I will!

I grit my mandibles and bear it. It’s

here is only a foot wide, not enough for me to slither into and certainly not enough for Tiny to

DIG!

of ant living and dig you mana-less

flung into the sky as I whipped my

It still wasn’t enough, each second that passed a new kind of torture as

Dig! Dig! DIG!

threw it over his shoulder. In a short amount of time we had managed to dig out a bowl shaped basin deep enough that both Tiny and I had our heads below ground level but it still wasn’t enough, so we

seeped into our cores until finally sweet

point we collapsed

was a few hours before Morrelia found us. I awoke to the

Ugh.

across my entire body. After a few hours of torpor at the very least I’d managed to recharge my core back up to

exactly causes that damage? Does my body fall apart at the cellular level without mana to sustain me? Does

Interesting questions.

are you