Awakening

It was a cold and windless summer night in the wilderness of Mars'dum, a semi-arid wasteland of sand, rocks and grassy plains, deep within the land of Niev. The grassy plains, rocky hills and plateaus and sandy plains and dunes remain ever still under the starry dark night as the Lady in Red hide in the darkness. It was still but underneath the stillness was a reign of murders, hunger and organized chaos.

In a grassy plain, jackals, foxes and hyenas growled, yap and laughed at each other as they fight over the remains of a several dozens corpses, a result of a recent battle while a small, foxlike creature silently feasted on one of the corpses. The animals were so engrossed with their fight and meal that they didn't notice another competitors coming for their meals. This creatures were a pack of five, standing on their hind-legs, looking like a cross between birds and reptiles.

Before the raptors could attack, the ground split open and a wyrm, reveal its head from under the sand and gulp one of them. The whole area suddenly became noisy as creatures frantically ran away from the scene. Fortunately, the wyrm was satisfied with the meal and decided to head down to its tunnels again.

In another part of the wilderness, a wild cat had found her meal, a burrowing squirrel, which will be her first filling meal in the past week. She will be feasting like a queen tonight on her prey, inside her prey burrow.

Over the small cat, an owl was returning from his trip to the river with two small voles in his beak. The owl landed on a tree branch. Sensing his return, his new mate and mother of his new litter flew over and hooted at him. He surrendered one of the voles to her. The mother owl flew to their nest inside a hollow den in the tree trunk . A few seconds later, she returned and took the other vole. The male owl hooted and flew away, searching for other preys to feed their youngs.

In the wilderness of Mars'dum, the day was for the hoofs and the night was for the claws and talons. This was the unspoken law of this godforsaken strip of wasteland, which no sapient race except for the few tribals lived.

Predators, large and small were actively prowling in the wilderness, seeking prey or feasting on the prey they had killed. The night was for the predators. They had to be mindful, though for, in this wilderness even the biggest and baddest predator could become a prey.

One of the successful predator of the night was a little mouse....

In a distant part of the wilderness, which was practically a rocky desert, silence reign supreme as if it was a graveyard until a tiny howling like a screech breach the stillness of the night. A mouse had killed his prey for the night. A black scorpion, after an intense and long fighting and the howl was the declaration of his victory. After his victory cry, he start gorging himself on his prey, under the cover of a dry and thorny bush.

Some of his sense tingle as the poison of the fallen scorpion work inside his body but he didn't give it any mind. His specie was particularly good against poisons. He was no exception. Therefore, the scorpion poison felt like pain reliever to him instead of dead giver.

The little mouse quickly finished its meal, all the while being alert. Even though he was a predator, he was the least of the predator, tiny as he was. He could handle insects or small creatures like himself but he could not fend off the bigger predators. His kind was one of the favourite prey of much greater predators, either with talons, claws or fangs. So getting carried away while feasting was a dead giveaway.

He perked up as soon as he heard a hoot. A talon was nearby. Like a bolt of lightning, he scurried away, bouncing away in a zig-zag direction towards an area of a gathering of large numbers of boulders, where his hole was.

The mouse succeeded in getting away as he plunged into his hole. He ran through his long network of tunnels.He met no other members of his kin. His specie were solitary hunters and were territorial unlike other rodents. So he was the only occupant in the borrow.

After a few moment, he reach his little nesting den, which was made of fur, grasses and leaves. Several items were in the nest, pebbles, shells or pieces of shining gems or metals. One particularly stood out. It was a clear, transparent gem with growing motes of translucent, white material floating inside and the size of a sparrow egg, perfectly oval and smooth.

The little mouse coiled his little body around the gem and slowly dozed off, unknowing of the fact that the gem was giving off small amount of power into his tiny little body. It was the source of his newfound intellect and strength. It was a dungeon core, albeit a weak and small one.

This dungeon core was unlike any other for inside it was a splintered, sleeping soul, which had been trapped there for a long time and now it was starting to wake.

A bright white light pierce the dark den, releasing a small trace of power in the borrow. The bright light dimmed and vonverge inside the dungeon core, which was the source. The glowing motes were no longer there. Instead, a disc shaped white misty field was in the centre of the gem, giving off a faint white glow.

While all this was happening, the little mouse was fast asleep. Sleep has taken over him. The residual poison of the scorpion had forced him to shut off for the night acting as a pain reliever, which also made him sleepy as always.

As the little mouse felt asleep, a new presence woke up in the little den.