Chapter 2 RETCON // The Interface Wars

Okay, continued  the retcon a bit today. Along with making Cara's interactions a little less.. bitchy? and generally improving grammar and what not, here are the "major" changes I made. Once again if you don't read the changes it won't be story breaking. 

TL;DR is that I changed the way bonding works to reflect the death of the interfaces and blue menus and changed around some character interactions a bit to better reflect their personalities.  New chapters are going to be released publicly on Saturdays, with the retcon being released all at once with a change-notes probably next Saturday. I am going to try and write a bit more and get a lead on the story here when I feel motivated to continue.  I also was considering releasing a bit of a short story here on how Manning and Cara became trapped in the first place, incase you all did not want to sit on your hands for me to figure out how to integrate the flashbacks in. A large portion of that short-story/back-story would never appear in the flashbacks anyways, so I'd like to know if thats something you would all want.

Chapter 2 Changed

"Of course! I am so confused, and we could use all the help we can get! The little fairy man said you could answer our questions." 

"I’ll try to answer any of your questions to the best of my ability. Some things you should know first. As your companion, I won't be able to hurt you, and you won't be able to hurt me. My job is to help you develop into a thriving dungeon so that nobody comes to kill us. Anyways I can explain more as we go along, there is a lot and I won't be able to remember it all at once anyways, but I know quiet of a bit from my time in my mother’s dungeon. Okay, so to bond I am going to have touch your core and we need to exchange mana. Do you know how to control your mana yet?"

“Yep! Cara showed me when we first woke up, she is very smart.” There was no way to be sure, but something told me that when a female was angry at you it was a good idea to layer on the compliments. In my soul I could feel that it was the healthy approach.”

What followed was Ash’s hand descending and covering our core. I felt her mana trickle in through my casing and it tasted much better than anything I’d been able to harvest from around me so far. In order to make room for it in my mana pool I had to expel some of my own first. As I pushed my mana back out into the hand, more flowed back into me even faster. This proceeded for a while and felt exhilarating. After a minute or two of exchange I felt something change and I knew that the bond was complete. 

"Okay first things first, my mother told me when a new dungeon forms, it is often very small and non-symmetrical. That means that both sides match if you cut it in half by the way.” Ash paused briefly as she got a good look at the core. “It looks like you are already the correct shape and a bit larger than I was expecting though..."

"Oh yeah! We was an oval and I pushed us into this shape. Cara showed me how to do that too, like I said she is very smart," Cara was still silent and it was mostly the truth. "What's next?"

"You... You seem a lot more aware and intelligent than I was led to believe you would be. You must have retained some memories from a past life or something, usually baby dungeons are nothing but bare instincts. Well maybe not usually, but often. There are a lot of stories I’ve heard of dungeons who are wise beyond their years, or days. Anyways, now we need to decide what kind of dungeon you'll be, and I still need to put my roots down. That is basically planting my hearth tree and claiming my, our, domain."

"What kinds of dungeons are there? Also, no. Cara has her memories, but I don't. She's been super helpful. Cara?" I tried to reach out to Cara, but instead I felt a wall. How did she build a wall in our coffin? "Ash! I can't talk to Cara, there is a wall in the way. How do I get to her? Is she going to be okay?"

"Well, umm. I've never heard of two Cores sharing the same Vessel before. But I know that you have an ability to Segment your mind. As a dungeon you will need to be able to concentrate on several rooms at once, as well as maintain continuous processes like ventilation so that the explorers can breathe. She probably segmented herself off from you. It's actually a lot like what you were doing when I showed up I think." Ash sounded a bit nervous. I guess her job was supposed to be answering my questions, yet here I was asking her things she didn't know already. "I'm sure she will come out eventually. While we wait you should use your mana to spread your influence and we can talk about dungeon types."

"What's that, and how do I do that?" As concerned as I was about Cara, Ash made a lot of sense. There was no sense waiting around for Cara to talk to me, if she was giving me the silent treatment the best bet was to wait.

"Okay first we need to pull in some ambient mana, you can do this by-" Ash stopped half way through her speech. Instead of waiting for her to keep going, I started sucking in the energy from the rocks all around me and started to cycle it around in my core. I was already full up on mana so it started to leak slightly, but I did what I was told to.

"Now what?"

"I definitely need to exchange words with Cara. Somehow you two managed to go from a tiny oval to your first level with no companion. Not only that, but you seem to have already tapped into your affinity and, from the looks of the swirling mana in your core right now, learned to cycle and refine. Ugh this is so frustrating! You are supposed to need my help for this stuff, now what am I going to bring to the partnership!" Ash was angry now? Females make no sense to me! I was starting to think that I just had no luck with the ladies. Both of them were angry at me and I had no idea why. I decided to adapt my previous policy of waiting out the silent treatment. The silence stretched on for what felt like an eternity, and I broke first.

"Err, Ash. I still don't know how to spread my Influence. Could you help me figure that out?"

Slowly, as if unsure of herself, Ash started speaking again. Well, more of a mumble. Either way- "Just... I was taught that you would be able to look inside your core and imagine that your mana is a liquid around your shell. Let it melt away from you and coat the surface around you."

So that is exactly what I did. At first, only a little of my mana seeped away before I recoiled and my concentration broke. I had been shocked when the surfaces my mana melted onto became a part of me. I could see a bit more properly now, a lot like the area that had already been touching my core. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling that I’d already been inefficiently spreading my influence while cycling.