I am making grand progress. There is nothing more to say. -102.3 Seconds Post-Integration.

  Could it be possible? Did a leyline tooth move?

  When he talked it over with SIMP after Brenda left, the issue remained murky.

  "My knowledge of the leylines are imperfect," SIMP explained. "I stand by what I said: that it is impossible to move the leyline without administrative input from the store."

  "Can you look at the security recordings and confirm what Brenda saw?" he asked.

  "I do not have access to the security system, Clark, so I cannot do that."

  "I thought because of that time in Qoon you had access, though!" The words stuttered out. He barely remembered what he and SIMP did back then.

  Perhaps because of his ineloquent stuttering, SIMP took a moment to respond. "Our integration into Qoon's headquarters during our brief stint there only allowed me limited access to you while you are within Qoon headquarters. It will not help us with general security. Besides, there are no security cameras within the Interior. Augustford had no investments within the Interior to justify the security measures."

  "So, there is nothing we can do to confirm that Brenda saw what she saw?" He was upset. Why was it so hard to confirm information in the largest, most security prone place on the planet?!

  SIMP considered for a bit. "I can perform a memory scan. It won't be effective for places outside the local space, but it will tell me what and when something was altered within the area."

  Clark gave SIMP the go ahead. He half-expected something like a transparent burst of data-lines to appear throughout the Pod's Chamber, like in certain films Theo had shown him when the hero's computer-based hero performed such scans. Unfortunately, no such aesthetic materialized.

  A couple of minutes later SIMP chimed in with the update: "The scan is complete. I can confirm that a leyline tooth moved. Shifted a little bit. Note that the tooth in question remains in line with the rest of the tooth. The overall placement of the belt remains in the same place as before."

  "So, what you're saying is... the tooth jiggled in place?"

  "Correct."

  That only deepened the mystery. "Why would that happen?"

  Beep-boop: a SIMP shoulder-shrug: "I do not know."

  Clark stared at the leylines which ran throughout the chamber. He thought about how useful they could be if they were activated. "We really need to get these leylines going, SIMP. Could you tell me where the nearest administrative office is? I think it's time we paid them a visit."

  As Clark and SIMP wrestled with the implications of an ancient transport system, deep within the Dungeon Interior, a wounded beast stalked the shadows.

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  The Slime Dragon was a creature unaccustomed to retreat.

  Even in its infancy, the dragon had no reason to ever fall back once its prey was sighted.

  Until it met that party of Humans...

  They had been strong. They had wicked tools and hardened hearts. They were unlike anything the dragon had encountered.

  The battle had been fantastic. Fierce!

  And yet, it has lost.

  And now, it was dying.

  The dragon had held onto life for a long time. By scrounging on the Slimes and Airhearts which infested the interior, it managed to keep itself fed, but it wounded refused to heal. The weapons of the adventuring party had been Blessed by holy purification energies. No matter how Dragon attempted to remedy is hurt, the wound remained open.

  And it would soon perish.

  The dragon had found a nice alcove within the Interior to die. It would be protected in here from wandering predators, thus allowing it to fade in peace.

  Its consciousness was fading... fading...

  When it heard a voice.

  Come to me... come to me...

  The voice repeated itself over and over.

  At first, the dragon tried to ignore the voice. It had death to embrace, after all. But the voice only intensified its calling. Such an intensity only made the dragon irate. What gave this voice the right to inflict itself upon its dying throes?!

  The dragon roared mightily for the voice to fade but it did not listen.

  With anger coursing through its black veins, the dragon roused itself from its death nest. It would chase the voice down, rip it in twain, and then find its peace once and for all.

  As the dragon stalked the shadows once more, the voice became louder, clearer: Yes, good, come to me...

  As the dragon struggled through the bent and misshapen corridors of the Interior, the shadows which embraced it warmed its wounds. That had never happened before. Could it be, it felt, that is bleeding had slowed?

  Time blurred for the beast. Not that the dragon had the best sense of time anyway. Moreso than usual, however, the passage of time felt lost.

  Minutes, hours, days? The creature knew not how long had passed before it ended up in a strange and cavernous place.

  Its kin -- Plague -- infested this place totally. So much so, even an intelligence as primitive as the dragon understood that the scale of the infection resisted classification. It was less an 'infection' and more nature.

  The dragon entered the miniature ocean of plague that was within the cavern.

  At once, the plague washed over its body and it felt, not 'healed' exactly, but refreshed. As though it had recovered its spirit for battle.

  In an instance, the feeling faded, replaced by a tiredness. The feeling of being on death's door once again king.

  Slowly, the Dragon waded through the black ichor slime rot. It swam until it came upon an island in the pitch black.

  With shaking, tumbling limbs, it pulled itself onto the island, the ichor dripping from it as perverse water.

  It sensed... something, in the dark.

  A malevolence with an air of Human. Of desperation, perhaps? The dragon could not tell. Such markers were beyond its ability to comprehend.

  The dragon made its way toward the center of the island in pitch black. It passed strange monuments hidden in the dark, relics, perhaps, from a bygone era of glory and triumph. Bygone or not, the dragon felt no holy energy from these artifacts. Whatever this place was, it long ago ceased relevancy to the human world.

  The voice again: You have come...

  The dragon stopped in its tracks.

  It had arrived wherever the voice wanted it to be...

  Which meant, it was time to rend and bite and kill and eat!

  A glowering grew in its mouth, in its very fangs.

  With a fury unlike since the battle, it lashed out at the strange voice. Its claws and fangs found purchase as flesh and bone were rent from life. It was over in an instant, the dragon bearing its victims blood on itself like a grotesque trophy.

  The images and feelings repeated in the dragon's mind.

  Although the dragon's primitive mentalism made it feel elation at its victory, its victory was a lie.

  The dragon's phantasms were fabrications brought on by the voice ringing triumphant in its ears, its head and residual spirit. Truthfully, the dragon was prone on the floor, in the center of a massive structure unseen by mortal eyes for millennia. Its body thrashed and jerked randomly as the voice ravaged its body, mind, and (what it had left) for a soul.

  Rest, my pet, and recover... for I will have need of you yet...