I examined the cave that had become my unwilling home.

With the full spread of my mana, I could tell that my size estimates had been accurate; ten feet long, five wide, and maybe three tall with a roof littered in stalactites. Miniscule. Even the lizard would have problems maneuvering within the cramped walls.

With only a fraction of mana left, there were limits to what I could do—but I refused to exist in such a decrepit place.

I gathered almost a full point of mana and slammed it into the wall behind me, filling it with thoughts of gnashing teeth and strength. The stone shivered and shrunk away from me, shreds of mana flitting away with flecks of dust—limestone, I realized. Dissolving the stone granted me intricate knowledge of what it was and how to shape it, endless patterns of great weight pressing together accumulations of old shells and organic material to form a porous grey-white stone.

But with my mana, I could skip all but the important steps.

I turned my attention to my core, deposited so grandly by the lizard in a shallow divot. My mana took on thoughts of architecture and beauty and slowly, rising layer by layer, I pulled up a column under my core. I grabbed at the occasional flecks of silver in limestone and filled my stone with it, twisting the column like an ancient temple's walls, pouring in raw mana until my reserves emptied.

But in the end, my core now perched on top of a lovely silver-white column in a room I'd widened to twice its original size, walls still craggy and rough but alight with the ambient touch of my mana. It was mine.

My dragon memories and my dungeon instincts would agree on one thing, at least. I very much enjoyed things that were mine.

The lizard raised his head, blinking curiously at his newly-changed home. I preened as he padded around the new room, nosing at the column with wide eyes. A lowly admirer but one nonetheless; I would accept his presence for now.

But I wanted more.

I only had a point of mana left and many hours to go if I wanted more, but I loathed to wait. My instincts could only nudge me in the proper directions, instructing me from a distance rather than saying expressly what to do, but I knew at least I needed dead things to copy.

And besides the unfortunately still-alive lizard, there were only two other things in the cave.

The algae was a thin, slimy green I could recognize from the sea, common enough to be found anywhere in the world. The mushrooms, however, were pale spidery fingers poking up from the stone with small white caps, spores sitting under their gills. The basis of a food chain.

Bait.

I reached my mana over and bit into the largest of the mushrooms, filling my power with thoughts of hunger and fire. Nothing happened. My mana sharpened to a point and jabbed again, worming at the fungal flesh.

My old-but-new memories did the mental equivalent of a sigh.

Ah. There was a reason dungeons had to use creations to defend their cores, rather than just reaching out and crushing their opponents– my Otherworld mana was so pure it would only be absorbed by living things I tried to influence, rather than doing anything I wanted. I needed to learn from dead things.

So I shifted my focus around the bed of plants, rifling through the stalks and blades, and found a brown splotch of algae nestled under the broken stem of a mushroom. I devoured.

Both dissolved into sparks of white light, flowing to my core. I saw the true shape of the algae, shallow roots gasping for water and blades knotting together, saw the variants of colour even in the small section I'd absorbed. The mushrooms, with their pale caps and stalks, entwining their mycelium with that of the algae to stay rooted. I saw them.

And thus I could recreate them.

With the splinters of mana I had left I wove them into existence right by the entrance to the cave, layering a bed of algae several feet wide right over a stream of water from a stalactite high on the wall. But I made them of the brightest green I could create from the information I had, reflective and glimmering. For the mushrooms, I elongated their stalks until they could see eye to eye with the lizard, impossibly delicate and trailing their undergills like wisps of smoke.

Green Algae

It grows without the need of sunlight but instead only water, and even then it consumes little. Excess water spills over its interconnected webs, creating an oasis for hungry creatures.