No Need For A Core?

Mordecai smiled at Moriko's expression. "I acknowledge that this is a lot to ask of you. Please, hear me out, and I will explain everything."

Her expression was still dubious, but Moriko nodded.

"My intent," Mordecai said, "is to imbue you with as much of my power as I can. Your training will allow you to capitalize on it in a way that most can't, so some of it will become a permanent gain in power. But that is not enough to get us out of here. I can transfer more into you temporarily, but it will be painful at every stage: taking it in, holding it, and using it. I don't think it's beyond the capabilities of a martial disciple to handle, but you should be aware of it beforehand."

Moriko rubbed the bridge of her nose and said, "Alright, that does not sound fun. But I am still more concerned with the matter of hosting your spirit."

"That," he replied, "is where it gets complicated. If we do this and win free of here, I don't have a body to go to, which leaves me riding in your head. Ideally we'd find some appropriate vessel I could inhabit, but that would take some mixed luck. The ideal vessel would be another core of course, but we're unlikely to find a situation where that would be ethical."

She frowned and asked, "I take it there's no chance to find or make a core that doesn't already host a dungeon's soul?"

He nodded and said, "Correct, cores are much like organic bodies. You generally don't come across one that is alive but uninhabited. However, core matrix is different from organic brains, so I could, in theory, share a core with another dungeon, but there are problems there too. For most dungeons, they have little incentive to host me. It would in many ways be even more intrusive than my current plans with you."

"Oh?" Moriko said.

"Yes," Mordecai responded. "With you, I can relegate my spirit into roughly the role of a familiar or similar. A core would be a more natural home and would likely grow to accommodate me. This would leave me with partial control over the dungeon environs and inhabitants."

"I can see why they wouldn't want to do that. That would be like me giving you control over part of my body."

"Exactly. Now, there might be cores that would be happy to host a more experienced nexus soul to help them out, but those would be younger, more naive cores. This is what the one above us sounds like, based on your description. I would feel too much like I was taking advantage of the situation."

"Agreed," she said, "but as difficult and constraining as all of that sounds like it could be, it doesn't seem complicated. What's the part you haven't said yet?"

Mordecai sighed and said, "Well, the problem is what I have to do to attach my soul to you before entirely detaching it from my core. In order to anchor my soul to you, I'm going to have to entangle our souls a lot more thoroughly than something like a familiar bond would do. Even if we found a proper host for my soul, we'd remain connected."

Moriko's eyes narrowed as she studied him. "What, exactly, would that do?"

"Well," he said, "on the positive side, long distance mental communication can be useful. On the more mixed side, we'd always be able to feel that bond, even if we didn't want to, including the emotional state of the other."

"So, even if we find you a new body of some sort, I would still have you partially living in my head?" Moriko frowned as she thought that over. Her gaze floated over to the couch they'd been occupying not so long ago. "I can't say that I am thrilled with that idea, but I wonder if that scenario might not be more, um, difficult for you. After all, I can always find a way to distract myself if necessary, but what escape do you have? "

He'd been wondering something similar, and nodded in agreement with her statement. "While I enjoyed our dalliance, and I certainly have had other encounters of that nature before, having to 'overhear' your other dalliances would be different. Listening to others while not participating is not something most people enjoy and this would be much more intense, as I would be feeling echoes of what you would be feeling. I've also generally enjoyed long term pairings more than temporary groups, so imagining myself as a participant wouldn't help either. On the other hand, my alternatives are not exactly spectacular." Mordecai gestured to the stone chamber that would otherwise be his tomb.

"To be clear," he continued, "I also would not place my preference as an expectation upon you. It would be my place to adapt to your needs, and it was fairly clear to me that you prefer to remain unattached."

"Mm," Moriko replied as she stared off thoughtfully. Then she froze before looking at him with wide eyes. "This wasn't exactly your only choice, was it?"

Mordecai hadn't been expecting her to realize that, but she was correct. "No, though that time is gone, at least, to do so easily. I didn't realize that option myself until we were already deep in our game, but I would never consider doing so. I'd rather expend the last of my power attempting to get you out alone than do that." He shook his head and said, "I did some things I greatly regret doing, but that sort of violation is beyond even the terrors of war. Death truly would be the better alternative than to become the sort of person who would do that."

She shuddered and closed her eyes before saying, "I hadn't fully realized what my surrender was going to be like. With your knowledge and power, you could have bound me easily enough, shaped my will to make me what you wanted, or even simply possessed me and walked out of here in my body."

Moriko snorted with amusement and opened her eyes to give him a wry smile. "Though to be fair, I hadn't given it any deep thought; my mind was rather preoccupied at the time. Hmm, wait a moment."

He sat there patiently as she considered the thought that had just come to her.

"Mordecai," Moriko said in a carefully gentle voice, "if we do this, and you are bound in a familiar-like state, how much would that position be reversed?"

"It wouldn't be exactly the same," Mordecai replied calmly, "but if there was a dissonance between us that couldn't otherwise be resolved, it would be my will that would give way, and if needed, my personality that would be reshaped. This would not be the situation if I had my own body while being your familiar, but if my soul is housed inside of your spirit and mind, then in the end my will would be subject to yours."

Moriko swore for a moment and then fell silent.

After several minutes, she said, "Alright, I am probably going to agree to this. There's several things I don't like about it, but in the end, I simply can't deal with the idea of leaving you here to die. I can promise that I will do my best to respect your feelings and compromise as much as possible. So let's get this part of it over with; tell me what else I need to know and do."

"Thank you," Mordecai said. "There are a couple of things. One of them is simply that I need to store most of my memories, and the easiest way to do that is in core matrix. It would only be a small amount, insufficient to make a true core out of, and it would be 'dead', lacking any of my personal energy. It just would be accessible to me with the right technique."

He took a moment before he continued, as part of this was going to place another burden on her. "While I can keep my personality and a working amount of my memory active in spirit form, the vast majority of my specific memories will need to be stored for later retrieval. A normal brain just can't hold that much information. So my intention is to create a piece of jewelry and then technically curse it, so that it can't be removed. Will you let me do that, and if so, do you have a preference?"

She considered that for a long moment before she sighed and said, "A mix of annoyance and amusement makes me want to suggest something inappropriate, but I've never been into body piercings anyway. I can't believe I am suggesting this, but it might be useful. You should make it a ring for my left ring finger."

Mordecai stared at her in surprise.

Moriko chuckled. "I know, but I am not proposing actual marriage. Just, if it can't be removed, I might be able to use it as an easy excuse for a change of behavior. Mordecai, I can't imagine me being celibate, but I also don't like the idea of making you feel an echo of me enjoying myself. That feels possibly abusive, but I don't know what I am going to do about the situation. This gives me an easy option when talking to people who know my normal habits. I may not use it, I might explain the ring away instead, I don't know, but being able to shorten a conversation on the topic might save my sanity a bit. So lets do that. Now, what was the next thing?"

It was obvious that Moriko wasn't entirely happy or comfortable with her suggestion, but he couldn't argue with her logic. He took a moment to gather his thoughts and then said, "It would probably be best to make this a formal contract, partially to establish an initial connection. Normally, a core's contractor can not benefit from the rewards that the core can craft, but that is because there are other benefits to the situation. I have been testing what my options are in this scenario, and it turns out that with the right wording I have almost unlimited options within my normal limits for what I could grant to a delver."

Mordecai smiled at her raised eyebrow and answered her unasked question. "You would be agreeing to an ongoing burden that would save my life, but in return I can only offer immediate rewards instead of continued rewards. With that limitation in place, I can't actually offer you enough to balance it out. So the restrictions on rewarding contractors just faded away when I structured the contract to fit our context."

Moriko's eyes lit with curiosity and perhaps just a bit of entirely reasonable greed. "What sort of rewards are we talking about?"

There wasn't much negotiation to be done from there, Mordecai had already mostly decided on the sort of equipment that would suit her best. The biggest limitation was simply how much energy he was going to have available, though Moriko had to decide which outfit he was going to enhance.

After several minutes of debating back and forth with herself, Moriko said, "Gah, make it the dress. My uniform is already made from reinforced fabric and has a minor resilience enchantment, but the cost of that dress came out of my pocket. Fix it up and enchant it as best you can."

Once that was decided, Mordecai needed to finish constructing and implementing the ritual, which took most of another day, including some additional distractions. Moriko was determined to enjoy herself thoroughly in the now, given that she was uncertain how much she was going to let herself indulge in the future. Mordecai certainly enjoyed his part, but he was also pleased for other reasons. The additional layers of emotional bonding, however light they might be in this situation, would help with the bonding part of the ritual.

For the ritual itself, well, helping her to relax into surrender again certainly helped as its nature was somewhat invasive, but this time Moriko needed to remain more cognizant of what was happening during each moment.

The experience wasn't entirely pleasant for either of them, despite the method he used to harmonize their spirits, and Mordecai had to effectively suicide by self-destructing his core while trusting that his untested ritual would hold. Fortunately, it did, and he found himself now riding along inside of Moriko's head.

Moriko gasped for a few moments before sitting up with an oath to stare at the fading motes of energy and sparkling crystal. The room had otherwise fallen dark again, and Moriko recast her minor spell to create a floating orb of light.

While she didn't say anything out loud, Mordecai could 'hear' the swirl of her conscious thoughts as she started getting dressed, and a lot of them involved her being angry about being seduced by a 'pair of pretty golden eyes' and 'the rolling of his back muscles'.

"Hey, I’m in here you know. When you are thinking that loudly, I can’t not hear it," Mordecai said, though he was more amused than anything.

"Oh, shut up and let me vent. I never knew my soul could bloody hurt like that." Moriko said. "Now, this gear better be all you promised or I'm going to be even more upset."

Mordecai had not only repaired her dress, but improved the quality of the fabric before he had enchanted it. It should now be very hard to tear, cut, or stain and he'd added some minor self cleaning magic along with a general purpose environmental comfort spell. It was effectively very light armor, but a sword could still be deadly even if it didn't cut a person.

The bracers he'd enchanted would help with that. They provided a tight aura that could deflect an attack or other impact, though the aura could only deflect any given object by a limited amount. But they were also both sturdier and provided better cushioning than before, so they could be depended on for normal direct defense and blocking.

He'd also added an enchantment for storing weapons, which would appear in the matching hand when called upon, and added a few weapons based on his conversations with her. While Moriko generally preferred unarmed combat, she was comfortable with a fair number of weapons, so he'd created a bo staff with metal capped ends and a compound bow suitable for her height. Given her enhanced strength, he was able to design it for a two hundred pound draw weight, before enchantments that amplified the bow's power.

Both of those were in her left bracer. Her right bracer stored a set of throwing stars, along with a large selection of arrows.

The bo staff and the bow were given straightforward enchantments, rendering both of them more durable and amplifying the impact of strikes or shot arrows. The throwing stars had the same offensive enchantments, but replaced durability with a rune that would return them to her bracer after being thrown and striking an object, whether it was her target or not.

Her boots were enchanted for durability as well, and he'd also given them nearly spider-like traction on any surface, though she had to maintain a certain amount of pressure. They would not help her climb along most ceilings.

The last permanent piece had been her backpack, which was now several times larger on the inside. It was far from the largest spatial expansion magic he'd ever crafted, but it was the least critical piece and he'd only used what he'd not been able to cram into their method of escape.

The rest of her prizes were much more temporary in nature, and were part of how he was bringing along so much of his left over energy, though he hadn't been able to make the storage of that energy static.

Moriko's body ached and burned from the constant flow of power between all the various adornments, and he had no doubt that was part of what was souring her mood. Even just the echo of the sensation that he could feel through her was more than a little distracting.

As Moriko was gathering her gear, there was an ominous creaking sound. She glanced up and asked, "Um, is it just me, or..."

He could see through her eyes, and he responded to the rest of her question, "No, you are correct. It is closer. The wards are eating the last traces of my energy, and the earth is shifting back into place. You should probably hurry."

Spurred on by a touch of visceral fear that she quickly tamped down, the monk jumped up onto the small boulder that had preceded her entry into this lair and crouched, preparing herself for the leap. Mordecai pulled together a weave of elemental energy and handed control of it over. As she leapt, air chi surged around her, helping launch her upwards and into the small void beyond the chamber.

He prepared another pattern of magic and handed to her, and she let it activate as she grabbed for a rock surface. This spell shifted her fingers and nails into dragon-like claws to gouge the rock, which combined with the traction of her boots to make her climb faster and easier than it would have otherwise been.

Despite his skill, the situation made it difficult to perfectly control the energy flow of mana and chi, so everything he did also came with a small discharge that seared her flesh and cracked her skin. At the same time, her body was capable of healing itself faster than someone without her training, an ability that was amplified by the presence of so much raw chi arcing around her figure.

Beneath them, the world groaned and rumbled with ominous sounds.

Moriko began swearing again, venting her frustrations at the situation as she continued the climb. Stupid baby dungeon with its stupid cute rabbit monsters. Blasted deep hole in the ground that shouldn’t be here. Bloody ancient old pervert. This did not slow her down in the least however, and Mordecai ignored her occasional insults while he made sure to keep weaving spells and chi manifestations to boost their speed and power the occasional leap.

As they worked their way up the tunnel, they slowly gained distance from the sounds and rising dust below, but there was a distinct sense that things were collapsing behind them. They were also bleeding off the intensity of the overcharged items, which reduced how much damage Moriko was taking. When he felt the balance worth it, Mordecai wove together a slow healing spell that would last for most of a day to assist with her natural healing, which was slowing down as the density of chi dropped.

After several hours, Moriko paused on a small ledge to take a brief break. After a moment of composing herself, she said, “Look, sorry about being so angry earlier. It has been a really long couple of days, and having your core kind of explode right after and then seeing you turn into little motes of energy was not the best ending to that scenario I’ve had. I mean, I should have figured out something was going to happen, your body had to die somehow as part of the ritual, but since I didn’t think to ask, you could have given me a bit more detailed of a warning, you know?”

"I’m sorry as well. I have to admit, I was a little worried about how you’d react if I gave too much detail, and, well, I hadn’t realized the reaction with my core was going to be quite that spectacular. But if you had asked for more detail, I would have told you. I just didn’t want to volunteer it."

She frowned for a moment, still not entirely pleased. But, well, “Eh, I guess I kind of get it. Maybe it was best I wasn’t distracted in any other ways, but it doesn’t sit very well. I’ll get over it, just, don’t do anything like that again, got it?”

"I understand," Mordecai replied, "and if faced with a similar dilemma, I'll give enough information to at least let you know there is information I am leaving out and let you decide if you want to pursue it." In his experience, people rarely wanted to really know everything, and Moriko seemed satisfied with that for now.

Before they continued however, Mordecai pointed out something that he'd spotted from the edge of her vision. "Moriko, could you pick that up and take a look?" Her light spell had long expired, but one of the spells he'd woven for her to cast enabled her to see even in perfect darkness.

The item in question was a long black hair, and Moriko frowned at the end of it, where several inches were a bright red instead. "This is definitely not mine."

"No, it's not," Mordecai said cheerfully, "but we should take it with us. If nothing else, it would be a nice token gift for the dungeon above."

"Oh?" Moriko asked as she tucked the hair away, "I wouldn't think a single hair would be worth much."

"That depends on who the hair belongs to. In this case, I am very certain I know that owner, and I am glad to know someone has been checking in on me occasionally. But that's too complicated a story to tell right now; I think you'd want to give it your undivided attention." He was rather certain that the two of them would get along in the right circumstances.

The rest of the climb was much more pleasant with her improved mood and reduced pain, and the two of them could talk. Most of it was just an exchange of information; she learned a lot more about living crystal cores and other genius loci, while Mordecai learned more about the outside world, especially the Kuiccihan Kingdom whose southern border lay close to where Mordecai's core had been resting, and thus the dungeon above them. Finally, they reached the end of their journey. The narrowing vertical tunnel they'd been climbing ended in a smooth ‘roof’, and he’d already pointed out the sensation that indicated they had reached the edge of a dungeon’s territory.

There really wasn’t the leverage to try anything fancy with popping the door open, so Moriko called out “Sorry about this, kind of in a bad situation here. Coming through!”