Red, The Dreading Dungeon

Chapter 1: Red's Dead Redemption

The shack creaks and groans under the relentless winds that plague its boards and beams, a constant effort to urge the structure to crumble. This man made thing held on with all its might, despite the ever encroaching destruction that time invites. While its shingles fell one by one, rot slowly but steadily eating away at the ceiling, it does not falter. Its occupants long since vacated, the memory of this place faded even from their minds. Despite its loss of purpose, the onslaught of nature's wrath, and time itself, it remains a stalwart guardian, waiting for the day that it would once again be of use.

A new breeze dances through the shack, not from the cracks of the singular window, or through the gaping holes from where boards and shingles have failed their battles with annihilation. Instead the breeze comes from within, as a single point of energy begins to condense on the moldy mattress. The small point of light sucks at the air, the shack, the very energy that binds the atoms of these things together. The shack begins to tremble, as if this greedy bit of energy would become a blackhole to finally devour it whole.

Despite the moaning protests of the structure, the point of light continued to grow and shape into a glittering red jewel. The light was no more, and instead all that remained was a perfectly round marble of red crystal. The shack was indifferent to this transgression, but it was not truly the same shack as when the changes had occurred. The boards and beams, while still rotten and weak, had stopped their ever persistent march of decay. A strong wind blew against the shack, and no creaks or noisy protests were able to be heard. Suddenly, this place was no longer a crumbling monument to time, but a rigid structure. The start of something new, and a new purpose was given to the structure as the energy within the crystal stirred.

The marble glowed softly, and energy flowed from it to every aspect of the shack, before it suddenly recoiled back towards its source. "Too much..." The inner voice of the crystal groaned as it tried to become aware of its surroundings. Initially the mana had flowed out to give full awareness to the soul within, but it was far too complex for a simple mind to handle. Fourth dimensional space was easy for creatures of that intelligence to grasp, but for the ordinary mind of a human, three dimensions was the limit on what could be comprehended coherently.

Slowly but surely, the energy from the crystal began to coalesce in the small space once again. This time the magic took a more focused approach, where it's awareness could view through the simple third dimension. "That's... that is a lot better." The soul within groaned as it began to collect its thoughts while viewing its new domain. It began to inspect the entire room, and seemed to weaken in disappointment. The presence didn't seem impressed with what it had appeared in. There were four wooden walls, each with differing sized gaps between the boards. Below those boards was a dirt floor, with small puddles of stagnant water dotted about under the greatest concentrations of missing ceiling.

"So I am above ground, and in a single room. The room has a single exit, which could either lead to the outside world, or further into the building." The presence mused to itself, seeming to contemplate the setting it was in at the moment. While it was not much, to the little red ball of crystal, it was everything. It also helped that it was this particular ball's last chance at everything.

The crystal sitting upon the mattress was the core of a dungeon. This beautiful lattice created between the bonding of errant intelligence and a wellspring of magic in the local area, was the secret to the fascinating structures that lured adventurers to their doom. Though the intelligence that lies within this crystal, is not that of a naturally born Dungeon Soul. It's intelligence too great, and it's creativity far beyond whatever basic ideals a nascent core would be able to fathom.

A human soul from another plane of existence was offered the opportunity at a second chance at life, so long as the new life was devoid of who they were in the previous. That soul was taken in by the governing laws of magic that bound this world to its laws, and it was formed into that of a sparkling green core. That soul failed at being a dungeon, time and time again it was crushed, stolen, exsanguinated, robbed... a veritable list existed of how many times this soul had failed to perform as even the most rudimentary of dungeons.