The days that followed were a blur of fire, steel, and single-minded purpose. The cave, once a simple refuge, became our forge, our shipyard, the crucible of our rebellion. There was no time for tears, no space for the crushing weight of memory. There was only the work.
It began with a roar and the searing blue light of my Plasma Katana. For three days, I did nothing but carve. The automaton-piloted Mark II, with Bob inside, hauled away tons of rock as I expanded our shelter, transforming the shallow cave into a vast, echoing cavern with a ceiling high enough to accommodate our ambitions. The hum of the portal was a constant presence as I brought out the necessary equipment from the workshop.
A magitech furnace, its design a fusion of dwarven ingenuity and my own advanced principles, was the first thing we built. Soon, its hungry roar filled the cavern, consuming the iron ore Bob procured and spitting out refined, glowing ingots of steel. I had built two more Mark III engineering automata, and now the trio worked in perfect, tireless unison. They were a symphony of production, their hydraulic limbs moving with inhuman precision as they operated the forge, hammered the steel, and began laying the first structural ribs of our vessel.
Weeks bled into a month. A grim rhythm took hold.
At dawn, Bob would depart in the Mark II, a silent, hulking giant lumbering toward the nearest Dwarven mining town. His cover story held. He became a familiar, tragic figure to the locals: the burned man in the strange armor, a quiet but reliable buyer of scrap iron and raw ore. The dwarves, a people who respected hard work and tragedy in equal measure, asked few questions and offered him their pity, never suspecting the priceless automaton they saw was being used as a glorified pack mule.
Patricia, cloaked in the Mark VI and her own shadowy skills, would melt into the port cities. She moved through the grimy underbelly of the coast, a ghost gathering whispers. Her network grew, a web spun from the desperation of out-of-work mercenaries and the greed of dockside informants. Her reports, delivered nightly, were our only window to the world we had fled a world that now believed us to be dead.
One evening, her report contained a piece of news that cut through my haze of work like a shard of ice. “The Cinderfall Hegemony has made a formal announcement,” she stated, her voice flat and devoid of emotion. “To solidify their new alliance with the subjugated houses of Aerthos, a marriage has been arranged. Lady Nyxia Black will be wed to Crown Prince Ignis Flavius upon her coming-of-age ceremony.” Patricia paused. In this world, with its longer lifespans, nobility is considered to reach adulthood at thirty. “The ceremony is scheduled for her thirtieth birthday.”
Nyxia, shackled to that gilded peacock. The news should have been satisfying, a small victory. Instead, it just felt like another piece of my old world being twisted and broken by my enemies. It was a problem for another day, but a problem that now had a deadline.
And I worked. Aided by the tireless Mark IIIs, I lost myself in the schematics, in the precise calculations, in the visceral, satisfying reality of creation. The submarine Project Leviathan, I’d named it began to take shape. It was a monster of steel and defiance, its curved hull plates meticulously welded together by plasma torches wielded by my automata. Every rivet hammered into place was a nail in my enemies’ coffins. Every completed circuit was a promise of retribution.
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Kaelus was my constant shadow. He found his cat-sized form most comfortable, a perfect counterweight of shimmering cosmic scales perched on my shoulder as I worked. He couldn't see the memories that haunted me, but through our soul-bond, he could feel the crushing waves of grief that sometimes threatened to drown me in the dead of night. He couldn't understand the pain, but he knew it was there. Whenever the silence became too heavy, he would nudge his head against my cheek, a silent, unwavering presence that kept me anchored to the here and now. I could hide my pain from Bob and Patricia, but never from him.
One evening, I stood back to survey our progress. The outer hull was nearly complete. From the black sand of the cavern floor rose the skeletal, sixty-meter frame of a predator, its form sleek and deadly even in its incompletion. It was a magnificent, terrible thing. I ran a hand along a cold steel plate, and for a moment, the iron mask of my resolve cracked. I saw Lyra’s face, her eyes wide with glee, shouting, “Make a really, really big boom this time!”
This was the boom she had wanted, wasn't it? A machine of silent, world-ending power. The thought was a fresh stab of agony.
“Master?” Bob’s voice, filtered through the Mark II’s external speaker, broke the spell. “The final hull plating is secured. We are ready to begin work on the internal systems.”
And there it was. The problem I had been deliberately ignoring, the gaping hole at the heart of my grand design. The space where the engine, the reactor, the very soul of the Leviathan was supposed to be, was empty.
“We can’t,” I said, my voice quiet. “We have no power source.”
Bob and Patricia fell silent. They knew, on some level, what a project of this scale required. An engine that could propel this monster through the crushing depths of the Maelstrom Sea and power its weapons systems would need an energy source of unimaginable density.
“We need a dungeon core,” I stated the impossible truth aloud. “And we don’t have one.”
To go hunting for one now would be suicide. It would mean revealing ourselves, spending months on a dangerous expedition we couldn't afford. We were trapped. My perfect plan had run aground on the one resource I couldn’t build, buy, or steal without compromising everything. A wave of cold, helpless frustration washed over me. To come this far, only to fail…
[Master,] Tes’s voice was a stream of pure, cold logic in my mind. [There is a solution.]
What solution? I demanded, a flicker of desperate hope igniting.
[The dimensional workshop is powered by a fully functional, stable dungeon core. Its primary directive is to support your objectives. Currently, your primary objective is survival and transit.]
The implication hit me like a physical shock. You want me to cannibalize the workshop? My only safe haven?
[The core’s energy can be re-routed to power the submersible. The dimensional space can be collapsed, and the core itself can be physically transferred. It is the most logical and efficient application of available resources.]
The choice was brutal. To power our escape, I would have to sacrifice my sanctuary. I would be severing my connection to the one place I could truly create, the last remnant of the life I had built. It would be like cutting off a limb to save the body.
But there was no other choice.
“Change of plans,” I announced, turning to my two stunned retainers. “We’re not going dungeon hunting.”
I walked to the empty space at the back of the cavern and set down the folded, four-bar frame. With a touch, the portal to my workshop shimmered into existence one last time.
“We already have our core.”
