Dragonheart Core

One of my eldest kobolds had made his way down to the Skylands.

I perched overhead, a couple points of awareness swiveling in; he had been a conundrum, never quite as strong as Rihsu, never quite as leaderly as Chieftess, but powerful in his own right. But then he had abandoned his tribe and struck off on his own, which. Was certainly a choice? He hadn't even evolved yet.

But down he had gone, and I could respect that. Going solo meant he could move faster, beating the other kobolds who were still making their way through the tunnels of the Jungle Labyrinth—which was interesting for other reasons, considering in a few hours they would be crossing paths with Rihsu, who was coming up to meet them—and so was well on his way down.

I didn't think he'd be jumping down another floor, though. He was watching the scorch hound in front of him with a determination I'd never seen in him before.

What was it with my kobolds and finding odd, wild missions to swear themselves toward?

He was crouched before the scorch hound, one clawed hand extended, warbling something soft and crooned. The scorch hound was an intelligent beast, for all it—she, I noted—was an unevolved mammal, and she watched him with wary eyes as he tried to cajole her closer. He wasn't even using food, the fool.

She was a hungry thing, as with all of her pack. The Skylands weren't built for her; while the size was right, and her long-legged gait carried her far and fast over the interconnected islands, there wasn't enough prey for her size.

That unfortunately familiar prickle of guilt settled in my core. I'd put her and her pack there because I'd wanted to use the schema, even knowing that I was going to switch the Skylands to a more storm-based floor, but it wasn't built for her. Wasn't set up so that she could hunt and thrive.

But did I want to focus on helping her now, or just rush towards starting the fire-themed seventh floor?

I turned away from them for now, some vague reminder in the back of my mind to help them later, and turned back to what was more immediately interesting; the sixth floor.

The sixth floor that was already filling up with a beautiful cast of characters, actually. Now that I had finished filling in the third room with coral, every new bit of mana I had to spare went towards creating prismatic dartfish; small, slender little things that changed colour in a riveting, rippling wave. Blue-orange-green-maroon-azure, spiraling throughout—with the plain cream-white of the coral below, I'd been needing some colour, and they were absolutely delivering. Mesmerizing in all the best ways. Not dangerous, really, given they were about a foot long and cowards at heart, but beautiful. I'd give them that.

Certainly some of the prettier elements of my new floor. I mentally nudged one of the larger schools into more of a purple-violet-indigo effect and set them loose.

They weren't the last, though. With the coral in place, cream-white, I'd also thrown up a few curtains of bloodline kelp and green algae—not a lot, mind, because it was already so present on my others floors and I didn't want this to become a boring copy of what had come before, but enough to serve as food for those that couldn't nibble at the coral or dartfish. I'd provide some help for those that made the insipid little choice to stay vegetarians, the fools.

Other creatures poured down, summoned by my mana's siren call—Seros had, with great delicacy and posturing, successfully moved my core down to the sixth floor, into a hollow I'd carved right over the den I'd made for the fledgling sea serpent. It hurt, in a weary sort of way, to leave my hoard room in the Skylands behind—I'd worked for those artefacts, dammit—but I knew it had to be done. My coral needed to be fed with mana, and my dungeon functioned best when my core was on the lowest floor.

And. Well. I was still keeping a very, very close eye over my hoard room, with the silver-covered walls awash in draconic runes to a god that no longer watched over me, to stolen—won—swords and rings and staffs, to the delicate little patch of moonstar flowers that had grown two more buds, though they weren't yet blooming. It was still my love and my beauty, but I had to descend deeper.

Eventually, I'd appoint a proper guardian for it. Someone who wouldn't move down when they evolved, so hopefully someone I could get the deity who became the Patron of said floor to appreciate them. That was why I didn't make hoard rooms on every floor. It was actively the worst to say goodbye.

I soothed that old draconic fury by peering back to my sixth floor.

Of course the sea serpent was among the most ferocious of the new territory—a proper beast in every sense of the word, coiling through the forest-reef of the third floor. He was still a fledgling, still young, but already he was a monster. No murky water to hide in so he swam deep and low, twining around the base of the great pillars of coral with his burnished silver frills extended and jaws wide. Near thirty feet long, sea-green scales catching every beam of quartz-light, golden eyes like lanterns in the deep water.

Gods. What a glorious beast. I couldn't wait until he shed the title of fledgling.

Other interesting characters as well; a triggerfish who was doing his damnedest to make the entire second room his territory and failing miserably; a trio of roughwater sharks, swollen fat and strong with mana; a mated pair of greater crabs scuttling through the lagoon in search of a nest for eggs; a greater pigeon with wings spread wide and scarlet over her talons taking roost in a cloudsire palm. All wonderful little monsters.

Including one lichenridge turtle from the Drowned Forest. She was an old thing, one of the originals from when I'd made the trap way back when—but she'd lived a stationary life on those pillars I'd made for her. It was odd to see her moving, honestly, but she'd followed my siren's call and plodded her way through sandy canals and the murk of the Underlake to go to this deeper land.

And no sooner had she emerged onto the floor, eyes blown wide in the face of her new home, before golden letters flitted their way across my awareness.

I, who had definitely not been awaiting this message with gleeful anticipation, sank into my core to read it.

Your creature, a Lichenridge Turtle, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Reefback Turtle (Rare): Far above mere algae and moss, this creature welcomes all to root over their great shell. Swimming close to the sunlight, they house an army of loyal defenders as they support an ecosystem, creating new and fascinating strands of life.

Snapjaw Turtle (Uncommon): From a beak of stone comes a beak of iron. There is little alive that can escape their feared bite, and most lose their tenuous hold on life if they attempt it. Slow and ponderous, they lurk in murky waters and claim all who stray too low.

Discus Turtle (Uncommon): Only defense no longer, this creature grows jagged scales over their shell and large flippers to propel it forward—one strike of their blade-esque back incapacitates if it doesn't kill, and they are free to eat at their leisure.

Oho. Fascinating.

Interestingly, though they weren't outright labeled as it, I saw that only two of her proffered evolutions seemed in the sea turtle family—the reefback and discus. The snapjaw seemed more in line with her previous hunting strategy, though I absolutely adored the concept of such a ferocious bite.

And reefback; it paired well with the lichen already growing over her back, but I wondered how well that would pair with the evolution. Coral, for all it looked like a plant, was a living thing, and my particular brand of it had a soul I hadn't seen before. Would it be a mutualistic or parasitic relationship? And how did that play into creating new strands of life?

The discus turtle—I had a vague recollection that was a… game for humans, involving throwing a sharpened circle for some inane reason—would be a fascinating beast to watch on my sixth floor. There was plenty of room and depth to build up speed, and most of my aquatic creatures, with the exception of Seros, kraits, and the sea serpent, tended to be on the slower side.

Hm. I loved all the options, but choosing was always something that came with a level of annoyance. There was no way to guarantee that future lichenridge turtles would evolve with these same options, so there always lurked the threat that I'd never seen them again. Which. Unpleasant thought. What if I wanted all of them, thank you very much?

One of my points of awareness twitched.

There came a soft, whispered little hiss. A flicker of movement.

A roughwater shark, some poor bastard who'd had the misfortune of swimming near Mayalle's whirlpool, caught a harpoon through the skull.

Ah, hells.

Some combination of kelp-rope and water-attuned mana yanked the harpoon out of the shark's corpse, spilling scarlet clouds through the water; it raced back to the cove entrance where, with a blistering fury, I could see shapes beyond.

Merrow. Fucking merrow.

They swam forward, emerging through the murk of the tunneled entrance; their finned tails cast flickering shadows, dressed in dried strands of kelp holding pouches and weapons and jewels, their white-ringed eyes broad and searching.

With them came the deep, water-dark smell of the open ocean, currents tossed from alignment and waves lashing at the air—seven of them, seven miserable, wretched little merrow sneaking their way into my Underlake.

There was a certain relief, though. Nicau hadn't reported back on the state of affairs in Calarata, and unless he had been captured—which he better not be, I hadn't given up mana regeneration just for his fumbling mortal self to fall prey to Lluc again—he hadn't gotten back to me with a speed that suggested the pirates were gearing up for another mass invasion.

Merrow, though? Handleable. Especially with only seven of them—though all rich with the flavour that spoke to their Silver-ranked mana—and with my newfound strength.

A pity the sea serpent had already descended to the sixth floor, though.

The seven of them fanned out, still tucked with the entrance for all Mayalle's whirlpool was starting to tug them lovingly into the open water; three mages and four warriors, spaced with the familiarity that spoke of previous combat together. The one in the lead, a tall, muscled thing with twin harpoons just burning with water-attuned mana, swam forward, gaze fixed into my Underlake. She looked, to put it lightly, pissed.

"We are here for Abbarosa's staff," the merrow snapped, her white-ringed eyes impossibly wide in the gloom of the Underlake. I couldn't be positive if she was addressing her team or me.

The message was received either way, though.

That staff was starting to become an annoyingly repetitive issue. I didn't know the entire politics of the merrow city—Arroyo, I believed it was? It had been a while since I'd consumed the souls of a merrow and some of their memories were getting fuzzy—but I was pretty sure there were Thirteen Priests of Arroyo, connected to the thirteen deities that… led? sponsored? the merrow population. And the one who had made the brilliant, wonderful, much appreciated choice to blow a hole in my Underlake had been the Thirteenth Priestess, the youngest of the group, the most hungry to establish her rule. What better way to prove herself than by claiming a dungeon core?

Well. I'd had several thoughts about that, and thusly stopped her. But in the process, I'd dissolved her staff to learn the diamond schema, and apparently the rest of the merrow had problems with that.

I peered back into my core, tugging up the memory of the staff—I could recreate it, I knew, but that deep, dungeon-dark part of me knew it wouldn't be the same. There were some enchantments on the staff, some faint star-burn of a divine presence, that I couldn't make.

But I wanted to. Much like the necrotic ring and the rune-covered staff I had in my hoard room, I had a fine eye for enchantments, but no way to make them. Even if I recreated things with all the runes in place, there was no mana there, no blessings.

How did I make those abilities? I wanted them.

And maybe, if I figured it out, I could create a new Thirteenth Staff, and these bloody merrow would get off my godsdamn back.

But that was not the case now.

Seven of them, all Silver-ranked. When their apparent declaration went unanswered—what, was I going to bring Veresai up here just to speak into their insipid little minds? It wasn't like they could understand me anyway—they took that as an invitation and swept forward as one.

A webbed fist summoned a wall of water to halt a triggerfish's stone barrage, twin harpoons slashed through an approaching greater crab, an armourback sturgeon blocked a trident-strike with her scaled head; we were testing each other, sticking metaphorical claws into the fight without any blood behind it. They clearly knew what I was and Mayalle's whirlpool kept them from retreating without having to turn their backs, so onward they charged. Two water-attuned mages and one with something deeper, flickering coin-gold over his webbed fingers, though I couldn't see exactly what he was doing. Tridents, spears, harpoons fended off the endless barrage of roughwater sharks, proving once more why they were idiotic enough to have never reached the point of evolution as their corpses drifted to the sandy floor.

A silver krait, still small and flashing in the quartz-light overhead, darted forward; she flew past the water shield and nipped her fangs into the back merrow's tail. She wasn't as agile as her predecessor and this merrow saw her do it, the numbing properties of her venom meaning nothing when her prey saw her inject it. A pity.

Slightly less a pity as I absorbed the schema from her corpse after the merrow tore her head off, but still annoying. I tucked the knowledge of needle-thin fangs and dissolving venom away, but depending on how much mana it cost, I would absolutely be making a few for my sixth floor.

Luminous constrictors could be such cowards. Even with all the information I'd shared, only a handful had made the jump to swim in the Underlake. Bastards. Did they not understand the beauty and power that came with being aquatic?

This particular silver krait hadn't necessarily shown that, given she was dead, but the merrow she'd bitten would die soon from her venom, and that was at least worth something.

First kill, though it hadn't happened yet.

The merrow slid into the bloodline kelp forest, swallowed by amber-gold strands and flotation sacks; my points of awareness curled around them, watching curiously. They weren't enough of a threat for me to call Seros nor re-widen the tunnel leading from the sixth floor for the sea serpent to come back, which was great, because there was not a godsdamn chance I was letting the merrow skip merrily past my Jungle Labyrinth and right into the floor housing my core. That was not so much a disaster as a massacre.

Something I, decidedly, did not want.

The bitten merrow had already started to slow down, tail jerking instead of flicking smoothly; but he'd noticed the bite and thus diagnosed himself correctly, the bastard. Fumbling at his sides, he pulled a piece of rose quartz—of course—off the kelp-strands wrapped around his body and pressed it to the wound, coiling ropes of venom tugging themselves out. The absolute bastard.

Didn't matter much as a trio of roughwater sharks came through in a surprise charge and took neat advantage of his distraction. The raid-frenzy kept them hungry and vicious even as they vivisected him, the merrow spinning around; but in the crowded depths of the bloodline kelp forest, they couldn't see exactly what was happening, and their once-neat coordination shattered.

Beautiful.

Two of the mages banded together, warriors slipping away as more and more bodies moved through the kelp; one with a trident got separated, spinning with high, rhythmic clicks from her tongue, some sort of underwater summoning cry. She certainly summoned something.

The royal silvertooth—he'd been acting strange recently, bashing his face instead stone to try and knock fangs out, or something—swept forward, all red eyes and streamlined fins; with a flick of his tail he activated the blood-frenzy for his school, and it was truly over for that lone merrow before she'd even had a chance to react.

More creatures came to the call of blood and sensation of my interest; they swept in as the merrow started to fall apart, clearly unprepared for the close quarters that the bloodline kelp forest forced. The sarco awoke from her sunning rock, slipping into the water with a beastly crash and immediately shooting forward; her eyes latched onto one mage drifted away from his team, at the edge of the kelp. He did his little magic routine again, that mystery attunement, and his gaze snapped to the back of the Underlake, where the tunnel would extend down a floor. Her thoughts coated themselves in hunger.

I had other ideas, though.

Hold, I murmured. Kill the others. Let that one pass.

Was it a stupid thing to do? Most assuredly. But I had made this strategy what felt like years ago, and I was determined to see if it worked.

The sarco hissed, bubbles filtering through her fangs. She was a vicious thing, moreso than her predecessor; while he had been angry and snapping, he had been ultimately content.

She fought like she had something to prove.

Which was something I could get behind.

But still she listened to me, pulling away from the green-scaled merrow; her gaze landed on the water mage who had led the charge, tail thrashing, and the little fool had all of a second to understand she was the new target before the sarco charged.

That merrow with the coin-gold magic slunk forward, seemingly convinced his stealth was simply so great I hadn't noticed him, abandoning the rest of his team—maybe they hadn't been as close as I'd thought—and broke free from the kelp, darting through the rest of the floor with as much haste as he could get from his sea-foam green tail. A few greater crabs snapped at him, armourback sturgeons watching warily, but the majority of the action was still back in the bloodline kelp and his path was relatively clear. I was also helping with that.

Three merrows left, two—one of the warriors got stabbed with her own trident as a mimic jellyfish's stinging tendrils caused her to fumble, ouch—but he swam onward without hesitation. Up through the winding path until he arrived at the end of the Underlake, to the water-dark den at the top where the sarco rested.

Where the tunnel to a deeper floor sat.

Whatever attunement he had was clearly something guiding, because without hesitation he swam upward, breaching the surface of the water with a whistling gasp—his eyes, white-ringed and flashing, arrowed onto the tunnel.

I got the steadfast enjoyment of watching him visibly swallow.

What, did he think I limited myself to only aquatic floors? I was hardly so one-dimensional.

But I gave him credit; he swam forward, bracing his forearms on the stone, and hauled himself up.

And up.

His tail lashed at the air, water droplets scattered like falling stars, as he pulled himself out of the Underlake. But instead of landing on the stone in an ungainly pile of limbs not made for terrestrial movement, he instead climbed into the air and started swimming.

Um. Was that.

Could all merrow do that?

The fuck?

It was an inelegant, uncoordinated mess of movement; mana so thick and bright it actively buzzed floated around him, all of his concentration clearly poured into the technique, but that beautiful dry environment I'd shaped meant nothing as he levitated above it. I already knew merrow could breathe air so that didn't surprise me, but everything else certainly did.

You know, I'd really thought my merrow problems were over with the Jungle Labyrinth. Add one non-aquatic floor and stump all merfolk from ever making their way down. In much the same way that sufficiently-powerful adventurers could use mana to augment their breathing and thus could go through my Underlake without drowning, it looked like I wouldn't be able to so easily avoid my problems.

But I wanted to.

This was beyond infuriating.

Points of awareness by the hundreds swarmed over him, analyzing the technique as best I could—it looked like he simply diffused his own mana, filling the air with as much of it as he could summon, and then used that to support him. Extremely high cost and difficult to master, but he didn't need to master it to move. Even the basics were enough.

The godsdamn bastard. Who did he think he was?

It made sense I hadn't seen it before, though. These were the first Silver-ranked merrow I'd seen, and this absolutely wasn't on the level of Bronze. Maybe someone ranked Gold could do it as easily as adventurers could hold their breath, though I doubted it ever wouldn't be a draining tactic. But still he floated in the air, fists clenched and rippling with coin-gold mana, and with a slow flick of his tail, he started to drift forward.

Just a shame that all of his attention was dedicated to levitation, because my Jungle Labyrinth was not so forgiving.

He made it several hundred feet, the pressing darkness seemingly unaffecting him—they were used to dark waters, that made sense—before he reached a patch that was heavily overgrown. Thornwhip algae coated the walls, shivering, and sensed prey.

And for all he could use his mana to levitate himself, he couldn't switch from that to defend himself fast enough.

An arm lashed around his back, ridged blades tearing at his scales; he made an odd, warbling bark of surprise, mana spilling from his lips, and lost his focus. He fell to the ground, razorleaf lichen shredding his tail, and his hoarse shout caught even the shardunner spiders' attention.

Didn't matter much as the thornwhip algae enveloped him before they could even begin to get off their iron-shaped webs.

The algae was a vicious, hungry thing, choking the life out of him with its jagged whips; he fought back with great spiraling blasts of mana, scorching the green with something like the sun's radiance, but for every arm he rotted away there were dozens to take its place. More and more blood spilled, blooming over the tunnel, and I perched overhead with grim satisfaction as he slumped more and more until he stopped moving entirely.

Fantastic.

Terrifying, because I'd thought he never would have made it this far, but he'd still been stopped.

A point to think of, though. I'd been blindsided when adventurers had used mana to hold their breath and traverse through my Underlake; I had, rather naïvely, thought that the water would stop them altogether. Such cheap tricks wouldn't keep proficient adventurers out, and neither would terrestrial floors keep merrow out.

But frankly, if they were that limited in their movement, I still wasn't too scared of them.

I dissolved his corpse into motes of brilliant gold, consuming; oh, it had been a sunlight-attunement to his mana? I'd never seen that before, but he used it for sight and warmth. Useful in an aquatic setting, it seemed.

The other six merrow were dead as well, though they'd taken down dozens of my creatures with them. They'd tried to flee right at the end, understanding they were a touch out of their depth, but Mayalle's lovely whirlpool had rather removed that option. Glorious thing, that.

Another successful invasion. Wonderful. More mana for me, plenty to create some silver kraits for the sixth floor and more prismatic dartfish, and I had once more proven the might of my floors.

And I still had to pick that snapping turtle evolution.

All in all, I was rather pleased with today.

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