I awoke, feeling sore, which was expected, but I found it was less so than I anticipated. I hoped that meant all my exercises, both physical and magical, had finally been paying off. I stretched out on my bed till all my limbs shook, as if my body was trying to throw off the last vestiges of fatigue that still hung on.
I sat there for a moment, waiting for the last traces of sleep to leave my mind. I felt off, though. Like that feeling when you know you're going to get a cold in a few days, but the illness hasn't settled in yet. But also, the constant feeling of having forgotten something mixed with a strange sense of being lost. It was hard to connect it all inside my head, and I decided to muddle through it.
I rubbed my eyes, stumbled down the ladder of my bunk bed, and proceeded to gather my hygiene kit, trying my best not to wake my roommates as they slept. I was surprised to see Cori still snoozing. I guess she didn't have any plans with the gadgeteers today. Or she was still wiped out from yesterday's dungeon crawl assignment. I couldn't blame her.
I slipped out of the room and closed the door quietly. There was a note on the door telling me to come pick up my appraised treasures later. I added it to my mental schedule and continued to the communal bathroom for my dorm floor.
Gratefully, it was empty this early, and I was able to clean myself, brush out the wild tangle that was my hair, and make myself presentable. I had no idea why my hair seemed to go wild every morning, but it was a constant struggle for my maids while I was growing up, a challenge I now shoulder alone. I missed those maids sometimes. Most times. Being self-reliant was, in some ways, relieving, but in the early morning hours, I appreciated the luxury of servants all the more.
I finally finished up and returned to the room, saying quiet greetings to Myth as she was the next one awake. She blearily grunted as she exited the room to do whatever morning things she needed to get done. I knew better than to try to make too much conversation early in the day. I dressed, checked my schedule, and planned around it. I looked in our shared mirror, was satisfied with my attire and overall look, grabbed the wrapped crystal I had hidden the night before, and opened the door, prepared to face the day.
Once my morning classes had concluded, I decided to stop off at Professor Andritch's office before heading to devour some lunch, which my stomach was demanding rather vociferously. I never had this kind of appetite normally, and I was more than happy to chalk it up to yesterday's efforts.
I quickly found her office, and noticed that she was in, something I was grateful for. This crystal hiding in my pockets was making me increasingly nervous, and I wanted answers more than anything, even if my growling tummy disagreed.
I knocked on the door, steeling my nerves. I think I was scared about finding out, but my curiosity needed assuaging.
"Come in." The stern, matter-of-fact voice called out. I opened the door and entered.
"Hello, Professor Andritch. I have some questions about the dungeon assignment from yesterday." I said, approaching her desk.
"If you have any complaints about the so-called 'traumatic deception' I inflicted upon you all, I just want to remind you that you all signed waivers at the beginning of the year." She said with irritation, without even looking up from her paperwork. Likely grading.
"No, it's not about that. Something strange happened in the dungeon, and I hoped you had some insight you could share." I explained.
She stopped writing, and looked up at me, one eyebrow cocked upwards.
"Strange? Define strange."
"The core did something I haven't seen in any of the textbooks, and I was wondering if it's something I'm overlooking or is just more advanced information than I have access to." I was beginning to feel nervousness creeping into my tone, and I was trying hard to suppress it. When I wasn't exhausted, I found Professor Andritch a bit intimidating, and coming to her about something outside my realm of knowledge wasn't helping.
I was feeling weirdly out of sorts this morning, and I was hoping it was all the confusion and every other stressor in my life just throwing me off. Getting answers about the dungeon core would hopefully alleviate that.
"Ms. Marchesi, please have a seat, and tell me what happened. Be as detailed as possible, if you would." She raised her hand, and with a flick of her wrist, the door closed and latched behind me. She then indicated the chair across from her. I quickly sat and took a deep breath.
I then told her everything that happened. About the voice from the core, the strange bump, the crystal, and even rattled on about how strange I was feeling today with it in my pocket. I then gently placed the cloth I had the crystal wrapped in, and gingerly unwrapped it, its soft glow pulsing as we both stared at it.
Her expression was one of confusion, which was not an expression I had ever seen on her face before.
"Ms. Marchesi- can I call you Alta?" I nodded at her question. "Alta, you've discovered something very rare, and frankly, not something I've seen in person. I can't believe this happened in the Corridor, right in Revenstahd of all places!" She began to grin excitedly.
"Is this good rare, or bad rare? Am I in trouble, or in danger?" I asked, feeling increasingly unsettled.
"You're not in trouble, no. Not from me or the school at least. As for the rest, I can't completely say for absolutely sure. What you have here, Alta, is an infant dungeon core. Possibly." She explained, her voice turning to her lecturing mode.
"A what? An infant dungeon core? I didn't know cores could reproduce!" I was stunned. I had, for lack of a better term, delivered a dungeon core? And I've just been keeping it in my pocket the whole time!
"I said possibly. Infant cores are rare in the extreme. With this one here, it would likely be the tenth one that has ever been found in all of recorded history. How you were able to remove it safely without causing untold damage in your amateur levels of dungeon pruning, I do not know, but it is a credit to your skills! I didn't think you had it in you, to be frank." She continued, moving past the slight insult.
"So, what does this mean for me?" I got straight to the point.
"Well, for you, not much. This will have to be researched thoroughly. You, of course, will receive credit for any discoveries we unearth, which could ideally prove lucrative for you!" She smiled. She reached out and touched it.
I felt my body recoil, as if all my nerves had been replaced by hot wires, and my mind was filled with a horrified scream, which my mouth echoed, and I felt myself fall off the chair in agony.
"Alta, what's wrong?" She ran over to me and helped me up.
"When you touched it, it hurt. It doesn't do that when I touch it!" I gasped and felt my heart calm down as the feeling of pain and fear subsided.
"Oh, this is interesting." She poked the round crystal gently, and I let out a whimper instinctively. "Oh, this is very, very interesting. Just stay right here, Alta. Don't let anyone in here unless they are with me. I will be right back!"
She dashed out of the room, and the door latched with a firm thunk. I sat there in silence, just me and the little glowing orb. I touched it, and instead of the sharp pain, I felt comfort, like I was petting a fuzzy critter, and I could feel the warm sensation of being petted at the same time.
"A tiny dungeon core, huh. Without a dungeon to call home. I wonder what kind of dungeon you could grow into. A little one like you, I guess I could call it your mother? One that could house a dragon? Wouldn't that be nice?" I cooed at it before I realized how ridiculous I was being.
Soon, I heard the door open, and someone in a white coat entered. They were a male human, with graying hair at their temples and a similarly colored beard. Their eyes looked bright, excited, a little wild even, and looked right past me to the orb on the desk.
I didn't recognize them at all, and I looked to Andritch for some kind of explanation.
"Alta, this is Professor Calderon, the head of the dungeon research department, and he might have some insight for us, but he wanted to get a look in person," she said quickly, as the man approached the orb and crouched down to get a better look at it.
"Please don't touch it," I begged. I was not in the mood for another trip to the floor.
"No, no, of course not. Touching dungeon cores is dangerous at the best of times." He scoffed as he put on some kind of headpiece that looked like a jeweler's loupe, twisted it, and looked intently at it.
"So, touching them is bad?" I asked Andritch. She just shrugged. Very helpful, professor, thank you.
"Perfectly spherical, glows minimally, no flaws or deviations with the internal crystalline structure. No variance in dungeon mana levels, minimal leakage of dungeon mana into the surrounding area. Astounding." He stood and removed his eyewear.
He sat at Andritch's desk, adjusting her seat, an action that irritated her, but she said nothing. He looked at me like he was analyzing some kind of specimen. He then reached out and touched the orb in a movement so quickly I had no hope of stopping.
I cried out again, and bent over double in pain, my head crying out in fear, like the voice of a scared animal begging for safety.
"Interesting." That was all he said as I calmed down.
"I would prefer it if people would STOP DOING THAT!" I shouted, unable to calm down my anger.
"My apologies, erm, Ms. Marchesi, was it?" He asked, to which I nodded as I glared at him, straightening up.
I could tell I was going to be increasingly irritated with Calderon. He was one of that kind of researchers you encountered sometimes in my rare interactions with mages, the kind my father had contacted for some mystical matter or another. They got so interested in whatever their specialty was that they forgot how to properly interact with other people.
He cleared his throat, as both my and Andritch's irritation finally caught his notice.
"Um, yes. Apologies again. So, what you have here is indeed an infant dungeon core. And for reasons completely unknown, it has attached itself to you, Ms. Marchesi." He explained.
"Define attached, please, sir. I don't think I'm quite ready for motherhood just yet, even if it's to a stone." I sighed, leaning back.
"Well, I hate to say it, but in a way, yes. Dungeon cores are, in a strange way, alive. They have intelligence, but it is very alien to our way of thinking, and it's hard to say for sure why they do what they do. From what we do know, however, in the few cases we have seen of infant cores they tend to latch on to whomever found them, or in your case, delivered." He explained, slipping into the same sort of lecturing patter I had heard from all my professors.
Hurray. Even when I'm not in class, I'm getting lessons.
"So what does this mean for me? How much is this going to upend my life?" I said bluntly. As if my life needed any more upending, I groaned internally.
"For now, it doesn't mean much for life, except that you will likely need to carry it till it matures a bit more, and then we can find a place for it to flourish. It's much like a seed. It needs to germinate and then become a proper dungeon."
"Carry it? On my person?" Oh, that was going to make life interesting.
"Not all the time, but it is possible that it could develop a sort of separation anxiety, for lack of a better term, that could cause issues, both for the core and yourself, if you spend more than a few hours apart." He was hiding something.
"Define issues, please." I felt my annoyance turning into anger. He kept coaching things in euphemisms, and I was getting tired of it.
He looked at me seriously and sighed. "It could turn you into a monster, and it could go wild, turning Revenstahd itself into a dungeon, with you as the guardian at the center."
"Are you-are you actually serious?!" I stood and snapped at him. That was the last thing I needed. One little mistake, and I could inadvertently doom myself and my new home!
"Alta, please. He's got the worst bedside manner, I admit, but he is trying to help!" Andritch put her hands on my shoulder and eased me into the chair. She offered me a glass of water as well, which I downed. I was starving as well. So very hungry.
I took a few breaths, trying to rein in my emotions as best as I could.
"What do I need to do to keep that from happening?" I asked finally.
"Fortunately, nothing much. Keep it with you, even when you sleep. Keep it near something you have with you often, some clothes or something, when you have to be away from it. Touch it, talk to it, that sort of thing. In a few months, it should be ready to be planted somewhere. We'll likely add it to the Corridor if no other place else can be found." He assured me.
I felt better. That wouldn't be too hard to do.
"Anything else I should know? I don't want to mess this up." I asked, trying to keep my tone even.
"Well, I admit we don't have enough records to be one hundred percent certain, but you will likely need to increase your food intake. The core is likely going to use the mana you rebuild through sleep and eating to assist in its growth, and that is going to wear on you physically and mentally. Lots of sleep, lots of food, and regular check-ins with the research department to make sure everything goes smoothly, and so we can properly document it. We haven't found an infant core like this since the invention of modern monitoring equipment, so please excuse my excitement!" He rattled off as I had a dawning realization as to my constant hunger.
It was the core that was doing it. You little stinker, I thought as I stared at it. It seemed to pulse in response. I was going to assume that was a dungeon core's version of an apology.
I had a sudden thought pop into my head.
"So why did I hear a voice when I touched the original core?" I asked, as he continued to talk, cutting him off.
"Now that, my dear Marchesi, is the real mystery I want to get the bottom of!" He wrote something on the back of a card and handed it to me. It had the room number of his lab in the research building and a time and day of the week. Every Fourth-day, you will report in for a check-up of the dungeon core's progress. And you will of course, report immediately to me or Andritch if anything interesting happens."
He stood and smoothed his lab coat out.
"And of course, I don't think I have to mention this, but don't let news of this get out. Dungeon cores can be valuable things, and I don't want you or our school to become targets." He said before leaving, Andritch followed behind him.
"Of course. Another secret to keep. Why is this my life?" I moaned as I put my head in my hands.
My head was full of secrets, and I just wanted them to go away. Why wouldn't the world just let me be a regular exiled noblewoman trying to make money in strange dungeons? Why?!