Mordecai shook off his thoughts about the fairies, he was in the middle of showing off the floor-building process to some of their guests after all.
His part was almost done. First, he gave bunyips a nudge: If any of them started to feel their current zone to be confining their strength, they could travel down to the wetlands. They were still new to their roles for it to come up anytime soon.
A new type of drake: swamp drakes. Unlike the modified river drakes that were adapting to silt and salt, the swamp drakes were going to be surface creatures, capable of dwelling and traveling in water, on land, and up trees.
The body plan was simple enough, making large reptiles that were about as long as crocodiles but that stood four to five feet tall at the shoulder. Unlike crocodiles and alligators, the drakes had longer, more flexible necks and a much higher metabolism. Their feet were webbed and had powerful, hooked claws; this would enable them to both swim and climb with alacrity.
Their tails were slightly flattened from side-to-side, to be used to aid their swimming, but they also had small, sharp spines along much of their tail. The spines were designed to snap off easily and regrow, and carried a small amount of a paralytic toxin each. The toxin was also present in the drake’s saliva and could be injected from their claws as well.
After a little more consideration of the results, Mordecai gave them three more abilities. The first was a breath weapon that blasted thick, viscous mud over its targets and the ground. It clung with disturbing tenacity, but shearing force made it instantly thin out, rendering it incredibly slippery.
The next two abilities were appropriately scaled minor magics. In contrast to the slippery mud of the breath weapon, the first spell fired out a web of sticky vines that could tangle or even immobilize a foe for up to a minute before the magic faded. The second spell simply conjured and flung a small glob of acid.
And of course, the swamp drakes needed to be able to find their prey in the swampy environment. Enhanced vision, hearing, and sense of smell covered the basics, plus a sensitivity to vibrations in the water and ground nearby.
Now, bosses. Mordecai was going to let himself do something he wouldn’t normally do for a boss at this dungeon tier: he was going to make a true dragon. It would be a young one, just barely old enough to be considered mostly an adult, but a dragon nonetheless. The reason he wouldn’t normally do this is that it would trap the dragon at this stage of growth unless he had another young one take its place and migrated it down to a lower floor.
But with this new growth plan Kazue had formed, they were going to be slowly making this zone deeper. If anything, this would accelerate the dragon’s growth rate, compared to a non-dungeon dragon. So he started looking over all the river drakes that had been ready to migrate down, examining them to get a feel for which ones would adapt best.
In the end, he selected a mated pair. He’d originally been thinking of either a mud elemental or a swampy version of a treant, but having a matching pair of bosses would be a nice change and they both had suitable personalities.
The pair made their way to the small, briny lake at the end of the level to prepare for the transformation. Once they were settled, he began his work. Finding the vestigial nubs to regrow into their legs wasn’t difficult, but it was significantly more complicated to grow their wings. Their bodies slowly bulked out during the transformation and they gained a distinct neck and tail, though their final build was still going to be relatively sleek.
Now, for a breath weapon. He was building a variant of a masima dragon to make them suitable for a briny environment, so he kept the attack the same: A narrow, caustic blast of salted water. While normal salt wasn’t terribly corrosive to flesh, some salts were and this blast used a concentrated amount of them. Their saliva was of a similar consistency, causing their bite and even their spit to be corrosive.
And like all true dragons, they needed some proper magic. He started with the basics, allowing them to manipulate water into blasting upward, creating a dangerous geyser that could batter those caught within, or create blasts that could knock foes away. As water-based dragons, the ability to call upon deep mists to cover the surface was a natural fit too. For a final touch, he added a spell that could create fresh or salt water in small amounts, and another that could destroy all the water in a small area, which would also attempt to sap the moisture from living creatures.
He threaded his attention through their bodies again, making small adjustments and fine-tuning their metabolism until he felt a subtle vibration as everything synergized and the menacing aura of a true dragon began to manifest around them. Perfect.
He’d even been able to keep the senses and abilities of their river drake forms, and had been able to give that as a form that they could change into, in addition to elven forms with aqua-blue hair that matched the color of their scales, and faded to an almost frosted white to match the scales of their undersides.
They would be more powerful physical combatants if he hadn’t given them quite so many abilities, but he felt this was the better choice for now. Their physical combat prowess would increase slowly as the dungeon grew outward, and the extra breadth of power would slow down their effective age as they had to catch up to the proper depth of power. It wasn’t the way it worked for normal dragons of course, but giving them more time to grow into the wisdom of older dragons seemed like it would be a good thing.
Hmm, he should give them a slightly different species name. Electro-masima dragons? Perhaps. Well, it would do as a placeholder at least. As for their personal names, he suggested Nezha for the male and Ysi for the female. It took them only a moment to confer and agree; like many of the inhabitants who hadn’t become part of more complex social structures, they hadn’t really felt a strong need to decide on a name before now. Over time, Mordecai expected that to change, but sentience alone does not always imbue a strong desire for individuality. That usually takes exposure to enough social interactions.
Now it was Kazue’s turn.
Kazue’s attention had been wandering from her husband’s work as she prepared for her own, so it took her a moment to re-examine everything he’d done and make sure they were on the same page, though she still wasn’t entirely sanguine about his crabbits. Moriko had promised to help her extract some sort of revenge later.
And back to the fairy that had been the focus of her attention. She’d finally nailed down how to sense the little shadow fairy, who was squirming guiltily now that Kazue could see her properly, “Now, why have you been trying to hide from me?” The fairy hadn’t actually left the dungeon at any point, just stepped slightly sideways into the shadow realm. But Kazue was still new to figuring out how to see into the adjacent layers of reality, even when they overlapped her territory.
The fey creature huffed, “You keep giving us boring things to do. I’m not one of those ditzes, I don’t want to be stuck as a flower or selling stuff to idiots.”
If Kazue had her avatar here, she would have smirked. She already had a position in mind that would be perfect, she just hadn’t figured out her candidate until now, “Oh, I only come up with boring jobs? I guess you wouldn’t be interested in being a wicked and clever swamp witch that messes with travelers then?”
After a moment of silence, the shadow fairy responded, “I’m listening.”
“My game for this level is going to be that the townsfolk tell visitors that the only way to get through the swamp is to please the capricious witch of the swamp. The witch lives on an island that slides through the swamp waters, making her notoriously difficult to find, and there’s no telling what she might ask of strangers.”
“Hmm,” The fairy thought about it for a moment, then asked, “Does that mean I would get a big form? I don’t want to be a normal human or elf either, I want to be a tall fairy. Oh, I want to be a really tall fairy, like, taller than your new orc lady friend.”
Taller than Bellona? Yeah, Kazue was pretty sure she could manage that, “I’ll have to give it a try to make sure I can make you quite that tall, but if I have trouble, I will at least make you as tall as I can. And I think I can give you the ability to change to any size in between.”
“And I get cool magic spells? And a familiar? Yes? Then I’m sold! Show me the way, boss lady! Oh, and my name is Carmilla!”
Kazue was kind of amused, this was absolutely the most irreverent of their inhabitants, but she also found it kind of endearing, “Alright, here’s where you need to go.”
After some discussions, Kazue modified three wisteria trees to grow in the swampy environment of the slow-drifting island, growing them at equal distances around the edge of the island. The bright purple colors of the tree contrasted with the surrounding dark foliage, but the ‘weeping’ structure of the tree gave it the right atmosphere.
Several wooden walkways meandered between the trees and the various buildings, which were themselves built in odd shapes and strangely proportioned. The soft, muddy ground beneath the walkways was home to moss and fungi that made it look significantly more solid than it was.
With the basic design of her new home completed, Carmilla was eager to get her new abilities. Kazue started with the size-changing ability. She left the flower-shape aspect alone, it had already mutated into enabling a variety of purple flowers, and naturally, this included nightshade.
Keeping the fairy’s ability to fly when she was fully sized required a little extra effort, but it wasn’t difficult since she wanted to keep the wings too. Carmilla also wanted the ability to freely change her hair color and length, a demand that was easy to meet. For the moment the fairy settled on black with streaks that faded from swamp-green on the edges to a bright, almost-glowing green at the center. Kazue felt a little confused about how she felt about the colors. Part of her said it should be awful, but it was also fascinating and kind of just worked for the shadow-touched fairy.
Carmilla also got a dress she could alter on the fly, and quickly settled on nearly-black purple with dark red fringes and a bright red lining that would flash occasionally from the inside of the sleeves or through the carefully ‘slashed’ hem. Also a pair of long boots with extra thick soles and a slight raise on the full-width heel. Kazue was beginning to suspect that this appearance was related to Li’s influence; Mordecai had previously explained that Li’s shards existed in very different realities as well, but to the divinity, they all seemed like the same world so he made no differentiation. This was why he sometimes referenced nonsensical seeming things.
Now for actual witchcraft. “We’re going to be filling the role of your patron, so your witch magic will only work in dungeon territory until we’re much larger.” Only very powerful entities could normally act as a witch’s patron and empower their familiar, though a strong enough witch could become their own patron, no longer requiring outside aid. Or become a patron in their own right, but Kazue only knew of one example of that, albeit a terrifying example. “Do you have any ideas for a familiar?”
“A cool dragon of course,” Carmilla said, “And I don’t want it to just be a tiny familiar, I want to have a big dragon I can ride around on. Oh, and umbral of course. I gotta be able to shadow-jump with it!”
Uh-huh. Kazue considered that for a moment, this seemed more complicated than anything she and Mordecai had previously gone over, “Love, is this doable?”
Mordecai’s presence filled the witch's hut as he considered the question, “I think I can do something similar. Mind if I take over for a moment?”