But where was the landing?

I groaned as I woke up on a hard and cold ground, or as close to a groan as this new body of mine could actually manage, it being a weird mix of a rumble and a growl. I blinked my eyes and noticed just how sharp my vision was, and how acute my hearing, even if I was in an apparently silent cave now. A cave which was blanketed in complete darkness yet was perfectly visible to me, something I was aware of and yet did not know how I was. I felt a wave of pressure wash over me and noticed as crystals suddenly grew from the ceiling, bathing the cave in near blinding white light, though I suppose the light wasn't truly blinded, more like my eyes just needed a second to get use to the drastic change from pitch blackness to nearly the opposite. Confusion only briefly was felt before some sort of instinctual knowledge came to me and I realized that those lights was a typical feature of any dungeon, a law of nature that had to be followed.

It was as those Bright White Lights bathe the world around me that I realized that my sight, while perfectly able to see the dark, still needed light to see colors, which made since now that I thought it. As the crystals grew and gave off quite a bit of light, I gave myself a look over, trying to see what parts came from which species I had chosen. Most notably in the moment was my neck, as I was able to move it around to fully look over my body, which allowed me my first look at my new body. My form must have been in its 'worm' form as a seedbed was suppose to be firmly embedded into the ground, which I was not, standing up on six large and thick legs. Legs which was smooth, muscular, and covered in iridescent scales. Looking at the rest of me showed a similar tale, a iridescent-scaled body of muscles that was sleek and smooth. My tail was large and even prehensile, as I did test it out when I focused on it, and had a ball of spikes at the end of it. It was weird to instinctively be able to move an appendage of my body which I had not had before. Speaking of which, I looked at my wings and spread them out, all six of them. At the top of them and the parts where my bones in them were, were all golden, yet the flesh in between them, the part of the wings which allowed flight, was a canvas of glimmering, beautiful, and mesmerizing collage of colors, as though my wings was made out of the night sky that was full of foreign stars. The colors slowly shifted from one color to another in a soothing way and sometimes would pulse with a stronger light before dimming down to the normal brightness.

Wanting to see what my face looked like, I peered around the room, taking in all its features for the first time. It was larger than I first thought, and even had some ruins in it, which from its durable look, location underground, and the fact I was in a fantasy world, must be of Dwarven design. Beside the presumed Dwarven outpost, as it was too small to truly be called a fortress, yet too defensible to be called anything else, there was a pond. I made my way to it and peered into its reflective surface, noticing all that which lived in it quickly running away from my presence. My neck was truly long, about three feet from my body and with a thickness that matched the rest of my form. My head was crowned with Two Minotaur horns and between them sat what must be a unicorn's horn, with its spiral design not matching what I assume a dragon or a Minotaur would ever possess. I had a mane of silver hair trailing down my neck and slowly petering out about two feet down my neck. My face was liken to a dragon, elongated snout and covered with golden scales, yet as I opened my mouth, I didn't know which of the monster families I drew my form from, to thank for having three rows of teeth, with the first one being sharp and serrated, the second row being flat and square like, and the last being needle like, with a purplish tongue that I could extend far from my body and was prehensile, even better than my tail.

Overall, despite all its oddities, my body was, in a certain way, aesthetically beautiful. I tried to stand upright, and actually succeeded, with my two front legs raising up, legs which I quickly realized were actually hand, with a thumb and five other fingers. I looked at my other 'legs', and saw that they were all hands, which was neat. Standing up, I noticed that my scales on my underside was golden, yet with streaks of lavender, Ivory, and hunter green scales. And on my wide chest, undoubtedly from my spirit blood, was an orb of softly glowing pale green light, which I would reckon would be a weak spot for me, as tapping it with my very sharp claws revealed it was merely a swirling mass of magic and which allowed my claws to tap into my body in a vaguely uncomfortable way.

I looked at my reflection and hummed in thought. Figuring it wouldn't hurt to try, I cast my God's Eye on it to see if it worked on me-

Cave Pond of Forgotten Water (Claimed as territory of Unnamed Dungeon Master)

-And it did not. Huh, it told me that it was claimed by an Unnamed Dungeon Master, yet I had a name. I was...was...was, wait who am I. I racked my memories and though I could remember most of my earthen life, faces and names kind of...slipped away, even my family's, even my wife and kids. The fear and despair at this lost did not come like I thought it would, no doubt stemming from my monstrous new body, yet it was still discerning.

Before I could think any longer on such topics, or even about choosing a new name, my senses picked up something, or rather somethings. Across my domain, creatures spawned from out of nothing, or they seemed to, and some instinctual knowledge came to me and revealed that of these 240 creatures, sixty was Kobold, another sixty was Skaven, another sixty were sprites, and the last sixty was wisps of Nature. All came to serve my dungeon, and all were chosen due to what my races were. And all proceeded to start a fight with the other if they were close to them, with each race forming their own territories within the scrawling tunnels of my domain.

Just like when I thought on the light crystals, contemplating on the appearance of the creatures brought forth some instinctual knowledge. Each of these creatures started forming in the mana dense air of my domain, beginning as a small pearl of magical energy and rapidly forming into complex being, though pretty weak and pathetic in comparison to most other things. Within these creatures, like all dungeon creatures, lie a magical core that developed during their 'birth', and could be harvested from them after death, or a really traumatic surgery that none of the creatures would go through. As weak monsters, their cores were thin shards of mystic crystals, but other monsters would be different based on the quality of their domain, the personal power their species possessed, and whether those creatures could manipulate magic. My lowly savage kobold would produce a thin 4 inch long mystic crystals, which while 2 inches longer and a little bit thicker than what would normally be expected due to the quality of my dungeon, would be pitiful in the face of a standard minotaur mage, whose core would be more like a basketball sized orb of potent mana.

With this awareness of my creature naturally came an awareness of my domain, so I put aside the somewhat-unimportant matter of my identity or the creatures that just spawned, and focused on what was my domain. I couldn't figure what exactly was the size of my domain at the moment, yet it was large and embodied many tunnels and a few cavernous rooms, yet the one I stood in was the largest of them. There was many types of bugs and spiders all around and mushrooms dotting the place, with the crystals being spread everywhere. My Dungeon Master instincts told me that while I could move the crystals, change their colors and brightness, and so on and so forth, there was a minimum amount of brightness and coverage that I had to make sure was there across my domain. At the topmost part of my realm, was a lake where my Dungeon Senses could feel sun light, and at the bottom of my domain was the ceiling of what must be a truly gigantic cave, full of the sounds of moving creatures. It was unnerving, yet it was the first pocket of what sounded like intelligent life.

I decided that I wanted to take to the sky and see the landscape around my new home, and with my newly gain Dungeon Master instincts and knowledge, I warped and shifted my domain to allow me to leave, sealing tunnels up that led deeper underground to stop anything from intruding into my realm and forming a cave at the bottom of the lake which would allow me to access to dive into the water without it flowing into my Dungeon. I created and widened the tunnel from the chamber I was in to the cave, and with some experimental movements of my wings, propelled myself upwards.

Time to look at this 'Ruyanei'!