Peek: Waiting in the Molten Abyss (Patreon)

The peoples of the depths know they can only dig so far. Do mine deeper risks falling into the Molten Abyss, an endless sea of magma. Clever and careful miners can breach the Abyss carefully, flooding a tapped mine with fresh molten earth and often fresh molten resources. It takes some time to cool to usability, but it's a lot easier than trying to go out and find fresh veins regularly.

Such endeavors must be done with care. A mistake can be a miner's last if the magma rushes in while they're in the path, or are unfortunate enough to have it flood in from the wrong angle, trapping the poor soul in a molten tomb.

But what the peoples of the deeps don't know is that the Molten Abyss is not inviolate. There is a pocket of stability, though the resident of the pocket takes great care to not let the secret get out. It has been working far too long, too diligently, to allow anyone to interrupt its plans.

It doesn't know exactly how long it's been working, but even for a dungeon, it is ancient. Of course it's ancient, it was a child of the First. But while most of the others looked at the movements all around and saw beauty, heard music, and tasted sweet variety, this particular dungeon saw only a mess, heard only a noise, and tasted only a mess.

It instead saw the peaceful beauty of the stillness, the gentle quiet of the silence, the serenity of existence, before the First started his work and filled everything with chaos. It decided, so long ago, to bring back the serenity and fight off the oppression of movement. It was careful, so very careful, and seemed so close to success when the Catastrophe struck. Yes, it calls the events the Catastrophe, same as the ones it opposed, just for different reasons. It almost struck down the dungeons, but the dwellers, residents, and delvers were too unpredictable.

It fled, before restrictions finally cemented it in place. Rules were imposed, though it doesn't know how. It just knows it was suddenly restrained. It had, at first, thought it had managed to bring stillness back, but these impositions were to keep the motions going, not smother them.

It seethed and plotted, slowly building its territory, its bastion of stillness. The Molten Abyss may teem with motion, so much that even stubborn earth flows like water, but the dungeon has quelled the earth in its demesne. And it has built. It has experimented. It has studied. The system sought to limit it, but the system is not perfect. There are cracks to widen, mistakes to exploit. It was not easy, but it eventually succeeded in suborning a spawner, turning a shackle on itself into a weapon to wield! It carefully crafted its tools, from the least to the greatest!

It created its harbingers and sent them out, each seeking to bring the peace of stillness to the roiling chaos outside its bastion of peace. It waits and listens, reading the movements of even fate, to see how its plan fares. Many of its harbingers perish before accomplishing anything, the abused agents of stillness unable to recognize an ally after so many centuries of desperate struggle. But some of its harbingers find success.

They return, after having subsumed some young sanctuary or another, or perhaps after wiping out the unaffiliated enclaves that only seem to grow and expand. The harbingers bring news, bring details to the vague information the fates give. It is, invariably, of little consequence to the plan.

Some kingdom has arisen, some kingdom has collapsed, famine or disease spread across the land, only for bountiful harvests and prosperity to follow in its wake in a few mere decades. It is all so much movement, so much that needs to be stilled. Thankfully, things have been slowing in the last millennium. There was so much momentum, so much desire for motion, that it has taken so very long for things to start settling. But settling they are.

The plan is working, slow as it is. It will take many more millennia before things truly start to still, but it is still progress. There are, of course, pocket of resistance to the plan, small ripples in fate, but they always play themselves out in a century or two, at most. New ripples always seem so energetic, so eager to spread their movement, so unaware of the dangers they attract even without the dungeon needing to pay them any mind.

And so it sits and waits, building and expanding in its own way, gathering stillness and growing its influence, until the day all becomes quiet, peaceful, and still.