Xir’ain watched his new creation float languidly in the inky black. It was small now, but he knew that was temporary. Given food, it would grow. It had the appearance of an eel, with the same black skin and yellow eyes as its creator, but its jaws were larger, made to swallow things much larger than itself. It had the same teeth as well, a thousand sharp needles all pointed inwards, made to pull in and never release out. Its metabolism was unsustainably fast, meaning it would always be hungry, eating all that it could, never stopping eating, and not caring what it was that it was eating. Though shaped in the form of a carnivore, it would eat anything to fill its stomach. That was exactly what Xir’ain had wanted.

Xir’ain held the creature back from eating the first imp it saw, telling the ravenous thing to not touch the imps unless he told it otherwise. The imp would spread this act of benevolence to the others later, but it had come to the master with new. “Master, the room you commanded is this way,” it spoke in a garbled voice, not used to speaking underwater yet. None of the imps were, but they would get used to it with time. Xir’ain followed the imp into a large cavern, part natural cave and part excavated by the imps while he had been in the heart. The cavern was huge. Most of it was underwater, a giant tunnel that went straight down to the bedrock and all the way up to nearing the surface, a roof of rock all that separated the sunlight from the dark. Above the water was the rest of the cavern, a series of ledges and crags and steps, ending with a rocky sloped beach into the bottomless water.

“Perfect,” Xir’ain praised. Black water whirled and boiled around his outstretched hand, and he grabbed the eel in the other and plunged it into the frothing blend wholly. The eels’ black body was shredded and blended, deconstructed in the whirl. Xir’ain added his golden light to the mix, and yellow lightning from inside the mess of water and ink and eel body marked the creation of the first piece of Xir’ain’s army. A second later, another flash, and another eel emerged from the swirling mass, and then another, and another, and another. With each flash of golden lighting in the black water, more was changed into more and more ravenous black eels.

The eels darted through the blackness, melting into and out of it with the absolute camouflage of total blackness. They rubbed up against Xir’ain, whether out of curiosity, gratitude, or affection he did not know nor care. “Go now my beauties, down the tunnels. I know you must be hungry, but you must work for the feasts this world has to offer. For now, eat the earth to satiate the pains, and later you will be rewarded.” The writhing mass of newborn eels charged through the small opening to the huge summoning chamber and outwards in every direction. With the eels and the imps both at work, the tunnels would spread even further, faster. 

Another imp swam into the chamber, obviously disturbed by the swarm of eels that had just passed it by, the command on the original all that kept them from decimating the working imps. The imp reported to Xir’ain,” Master, a creature has been seen about the surface. We know not what it is, but it circles the lake.” 

“Finally, to find out what it is this world has to put forth in defiance,” Xir’ain hissed eagerly. Faster than the mass of eels had, he darted through the black water, going up, down, around, and through the maze of tunnels until he reached the lake far above. Waiting just below the surface, he watched and waited. Sure enough, not an hour later, he saw the creature as it came to the edge of the lake. It was small, about the size of one of the newborn eels, but golden in color, like his eyes, with black dots all about its skin. No, that wasn’t skin; it was fur, like the grass but on a creature’s body. It looked unpleasant. Then again, almost everything about the world above seemed unpleasant through Xir’ain’s golden eyes.

Xir’ain pulled himself up onto the surface of the lake, startling the creature. “What are you?” he asked it. The creature crouched low, an act of submission? No, for the next second the creature was gone, darting away at a blinding speed. He followed it with his eyes and then sent an order through the water below. The ground in front of the creature fell away, a plume of black water splashing up as the earth fell in. The creature, unable to stop or turn in time, fell in and sunk beneath the surface. “Do not eat,” he ordered the eels. He wanted to know what it was first. Such a quick creature on land, but dead the moment it lost the ground beneath it. A design flaw for sure. “I will know what you are,” Xir’ain decided, slipping beneath the surface once more. He ordered the drowned body of the creature brought to him, and then he shut himself up in the heart once more. The eels, denied the meal from above, instead were forced to fill their stomachs with rock and dirt, ever expanding the dungeon’s reach.

[hider=Status]
[b]2nd Minion Creation: 5/5[/b]

Location: The center of the grasslands on the southern end of the continent, S17E02.
Dungeon: An underwater maze of black water, the only visible sign from above being a black lake with a diameter of a half mile. The tunnels spread just below the ground in all directions.
Minions: 
100 aquatic imps
20 black eels (and counting)
Infrastructure:
Dungeon Heart (underground spring)
Summoning Chamber
Resources: All the golden grass you could possibly want and an endless source of water from deep below the ground
[u]Compendium[/u]
Xir’ain, the dark abyss. A layer of black skin over a bottomless void, Xir’ain is the soul of an old keeper of the void, but he merged with the first thing he came into contact with in this world: water. Now he is of the abyss, the void at the bottom of the blackened sea. Though his body is close to that of a human, any who see him would be put off by some unnamable wrongness in the fluidity of his movements. His black skin pollutes all it touches, and his mouth is the bottomless pit of the night sky. To look into his eyes is to be reminded of your childhood fears of what lurked in the dark, and to lose the false notion that you had somehow conquered those fears. [/hider]