Mordecai raised an eyebrow, w what Moriko had in mind now. The woman roving full of surprises. Ohe half-elf had decided she had both his and Kazue’s attention, she tinued.
“I want to ge how our bedrooms are set up. Namely, I think we should have one primary bedroom, and then a small bedroom for each of us, if we need some aloime for whatever reason, and maybe some extra closets or ste space.” Kazue bounced up from the bed at the idea and ran to hug Moriko, clearly pleased with the idea.
“Hmm," Mordecai said thoughtfully, a smile flickering on his lips as he watched his wives, "I don’t have a bedroom. I made the offi case I need a workspace, but sihat’s also inteo be where we could do business with visitors and such, I don’t think we want to move it.” Kazue nodded in aowledgment, but Moriko seemed to have other ideas given the look on her face.
Then she sighed at him and he couldn’t help but wonder what he missed. “You never did have mu the way of normal retionships, did you?” Well, she wasn’t wrong so far. “Okay, so here is why yoing to create a bedroom for yourself. If you don’t have a bedroom of your own, and we are all sharing a primary ohen it will feel like that tral one is chiefly yours, and ours are merely attached to your space.” She raised a hand to interrupt him before he could even open his mouth. “I know, not your i or thought, but it is both how it would appear, and how it would feel, even if you never used the bedroom in any capacity without one of us here. Sometimes the i is what is most important, sometimes not, and you have the resources. It’d be different if it was a house with limited space.”
The resources bit was certainly true. It would have a minimal oime impa their growth, but they had already done a lot more to their living spa the st few days that had used their mana, and this was a lot less mana in parison. Mordecai pondered what she said, and he could see the logic to it. Admittedly, it was logic based on a way of thinking that wasirely natural to a dungeon core, but he could see from Kazue’s expression that she’d gotten what Moriko meant immediately. “Alright, I’ll think about the details of my room ter then, you two feel free to design the rest uhere is any specifiput you want.” He paused, then took a breath, which was a useful mental tool he had to admit. “Was there anything else before we moved to other matters?”
Moriko shook her head, and Kazue just watched him. The kitsune was unusually silent. Well the’s start with some basics befetting to the part he didn’t want to talk about so much. “So, once I had an ied avatar I had the potential to have children. Our initial internal avatars are as much a mana struct as they are flesh; males are uo be fertile and I have never heard of a female internal avatar ceiving. For a male avatar, it would take at least a few days of not ever unsummoning their avatar form to potentially get a regnant; for female avatars, it would take weeks just to get everythi, and then still their avatar would have to remain physical at all times to not disrupt the pregnancy, and even doing all that, it’s still far less likely than with normal people.”
He waited a bit to make sure they uood before moving on. “The mana struct aspect is why we literally ’t leave. Eventually, the core develops the ability to form a more ‘real’ body. This takes a rger initial amount of magic, but these ied avatars support their owend do not draw much magi the dungeon when not ihis still takes up a certain amount of our core’s ability to process information, sihe two are still linked, so generally a dungeon only have one avatar at a time. And being real flesh, they are generally fertile with the species they appear to be.” He was rehashing to dey, and he k. It was time to get on to the part that hurt.
Mordecai’s gaze fell to the floor. “I had a lot of ied avatars over time, and as I learned more about the world I experimented with a lot of ary types. Through them, I eventually had a lot of children, though not at first, and never quickly. I wasn’t ied in romance when I first started expl the world outside my dungeon, and even when I did learn the joy of that sort of personal retionship, the type of people whom I met and spent time with teo be the sort who were not immediately ied in kids; they wao explore the world too. I also had a lot of resources, and no one articurly ied in raising their child inside of a dungeon, so I made sure to trade for stuff that could be used to set up a home in a somewhat secluded valley not too far away when one of my lovers wao have a child, but not be in one of the cities. I evehe energy te a tunnel and sed entra that way so that I could see them more easily or they could visit me."
He took a slow breath to maintain his calm as he got closer to what he preferred to not think about. "The turies that followed are somewhat of a blur, the majority of my memories are still folded up until our crows signifitly rger; but suffice it to say over time the unity grew, children fell in love with people they met outside the valley and brought them home, more children and lovers that were mine joihe unity, and so on. Upon occasion, we would have other travelers and dispced folk e to join the unity as well. Especially early oionships rarely survived the retirement of an avatar and f of a new o’s often difficult for young dungeons to maintain their personalites exactly between avatars, and if nothing else, lovers found the sudden small differeo be off-putting.” That personality shift primarily affected the avatars; he anticipated fewer if any issues with this retionship as it was tied to his core.
That set the stage. Now for the events. “There have always been people with strange ideas about races and purity and such. It turns out that those who think this way tend to sider dungeons to be ‘monsters’, not ‘people’, and as such had a much more ferveion than they did to normal mixed ary. I was unaware of this until it was too te; several groups including oh a strong influen the kingdom nearby had gathered their resources and mao assault the valley while my avatar was oher side of the ti. The first I knew of it was when a survivor mao get to my sed entrance. I acted as swiftly as I could, but at that moment it was already too te, and the halfling who had mao reach me was not one of my desdants. I was… well, you saw, you felt much of what I felt in that moment. This was not a memory I dared tuck away, but I have also done my best to not dwell on it.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. “That pain, that fury, it gave me the power to do something I should not have been able to do. Living dungeons have a st resort meism to defend themselves, a temporary surge in power and capacity sometimes referred to as a dungeon break. Normally it only be used in direct defense, but the pai like an attack upon my very self, and I used that ter a Breach. Only the threat wasn’t i was outside, and while the Breach was active, I was able to call upon all of my retired avatars. I used sg magic to quickly figure out the source of the attack, and when one route was blocked I could use another avatar to scry ily, trag the movements and iions of sedary figures. During all of this, I held the Breach active, forced it to st beyond its normal limits, and used that power to gee wave after wave of the most powerful dragons I could design. I thehese beings to assault that kingdom, all for cover so that I could use my avatars to assassihose most responsible. And they weren’t kills, I used magic to rip information I needed out of people’s heads, to gee more leads, to hunt and kill the set of people responsible. I didn’t run out e, I ran out of targets that I could justify. Only then did I pull bay dungeon, recalling my avatars then cutting off the monsters I had spawned only for this war, letting the Breach finally end. The rest you know in rough detail: Kingdoms across the world respoo this a people to try aroy my core. Even while being passive, my dungeon was too deep and my inhabitants were too eager to defend their home and me for any group to successfully reach me without massive sacrifices. So they finally figured out a way to seal me, and I slept until Moriko came ae.”
Mordecai finally opened his eyes again to look at the two women listening to him. “I am not proud of what I did, but I am not certain that if such events happened again my response wouldn’t be simir. It’s a selfish sort of pain and anger, I admit that, and I will do much to prevent ever experieng it again. At the same time, I never even suggested that you not go home Moriko, nor would I ever try to trap you here, despite the worry that g me. I kept it hidden because I did not want to burden you so unfairly with my issues, and I know the world does not revolve around me. I care about both of you, and if either one of you was seriously hurt, I am not sure how rational I would be. I may have slept through the worst of my grief, and processed it in what dreams even a ay have in that state, but I have been awake for only a short while. This is probably my biggest weakness, and that was the worst thing I have ever done.”
There was an unspokeion of ‘ you live with that?’ unspoken in part because everyone’s options were limited. He kept his st resort option to himself; they were too kind to let him do that, but if his presence became painful for them, he would do what he had to do to free them from it. Mordecai didn’t dare search for their feelings across the bond, and just simply let his owions show sincerely. “I would never willingly hurt either of you nor any whom you held dear. I want to be my best self for both of you.”
Silence held for a long moment before Moriko moved, stepping up to where he sat on the bed. Kazue trailed behind her a little bit, less certain of herself, ahe other eak first. “You loved them, yes?” Moriko asked, staring into his eyes, and Mordecai just nodded. “And you,” she paused a moment, sidering her exact words, “are ing to feel the same for us?” Again, he nodded, feeling his eyes watering. Damn it, that was the problem with avatars sometimes, too proo reag when you didn't want them to.
“Okay then. You acted in anger, however justified. You did things that you should not have, and is got caught in the crossfire. But it was a war of sorts, and is always get hurt in a war. They started it, you fi. You could have doer though, you could have thought and takeime to create more subtle creatures, and you could have huhem over time. But maybe that sort of prolonged revenge would have twisted you. I am not sure I would have liked the person you would have been after that, though I doubt that I would have existed in that world. I don’t like what you did, but I like you, and I accept that it happened, so long as you try to bee better.” She leaned down and kissed him lightly on the lips, then sat dowo him. The surge of relief he felt at that was staggering, almost painful in its release.
Moriko looked to Kazue, and his own eyes followed. The kitsune shuffled iill thinking.
Zagaroth
