Dragonheart Core

Syçalia stared forward, into the darkness yawning before her like all hells made tangible, but her focus stayed arrowed in on the man beside her. She hadn't exactly given a rat's ass about her previous group beyond the jewels she'd have wrung them dry for, but at least she had known she was more powerful than them—she had no such idea for this stranger.

Ghasavâlk, no family names. Decidedly not from Calarata, although that meant nothing in a city of stowaways. Dressed in common enough garb, broad-shouldered in the way of all adventurers, thick hair piled loose on his shoulders. His eyes were strangely dark, even in the shadows of the caverns, twin black pools peering out at her. She disliked his eyes. She disliked his face. She disliked him.

But the First Mate had told them to delve the dungeon together, and Syçalia preferred to keep her throat attached.

The wooden boards thinned and disappeared as they went further in, the Adventuring Guild not giving enough of a shit to build a path all the way to the entrance of the dungeon. Figured. Syçalia hadn't been in Calarata long, only a handful of years, but the Dread Crew seemed the kind that would cover shit in gold. Any corners that could be cut would. Quartz-lights flickered from corners of the cavern, protective runes carved into stalagmites, the hum of mana racing under her tongue.

And all too soon, the path ended, a too-smooth opening into the stone before them.

"Hells," she muttered, crossing her arms to flick two fingers off each side of her throat, one of many symbols appealing to the goddess of luck. Technically that one was more used for avoiding storms, but she didn't know any specific ones for don't let this fucking dungeon kill me, so it would have to do.

Ghasavâlk merely blinked at her, the bastard. "Are you ready?" He asked, his first actual damn words to her, Viejabran thick with an accent that curled over the consonants.

No. She'd been ready when her plan had been to wait until her adventitiously-formed group had been suitably distracted, rob them blind, and get out before anything could challenge her. "Yes," she said, because there wasn't a chance she'd spill truth now. "But we should have a plan. What did the First Mate want?"

Beyond the obvious.

Ghasavâlk tilted his head to the side, examining her. She could feel his mana, irritably Gold, coiling in his chest and spilling up to wrap around his head—psionic caster or enhancer, if she had to guess. One of the many boons she'd come to love as she'd grown in strength. Becoming Gold wasn't like a creature's evolution, with a definitive jump from one level to the next—for humans, it was more of a general ranking that came with mana density and control. But the Gold-sense was a lovely thing from said control.

It wasn't flawless—few things were, in Aiqith—but it made it much harder for things to sneak up unawares on her. Sensing mana made it wonderfully easy to pick marks as well, when she could guess what attunement they had and choose those that couldn't harm her.

Psionic was, unfortunately, one of those that could. Not that she would have been able to rob him blind, being in a group of two and both Gold. Too dangerous.

As if a fucking dungeon wasn't dangerous enough.

"He wanted information," Ghasavâlk finally said, when it became readily apparent Syçalia wasn't going to answer her own damn question. "For us to delve as deep as possible, no?"

Deeper than the three floors that had already claimed lives. Fantastic. Gods, Syçalia was going to wring Lluc's shitty little neck.

"Yes," she said, and added in an imperious sniff for good measure. There was nothing frightening her, not for her fellow Gold to know. Absolutely not. "I know that. But is there anything specific?"

Ghasavâlk hummed. "Reports for the Scholar," he said, and drummed gloved fingers over his side. "Knowledge of the distant floors. The creatures there. How it is dangerous."

What a way with words he had. Little doubt that was the reason Lluc'd had to pluck Syçalia from her group and drop her with this loner. Gods, if he wasn't at least competent, she would be turning around and swimming out of the cove to avoid all of Calarata. She hated this gods-cursed city.

Only one she hadn't gotten a reputation in, though. Beggars couldn't be picky, even as a Gold. She could always pledge herself to Leóro and erase her past for a cushy job under some tyrannical and self-important High Lord, but her fingers fluttered too much to surround herself with such luxury and have it stay in the pockets of those that thought they owned it. She'd made that mistake a time too often to let herself fall for it again.

But if Ghasavâlk thought she would be hauling his ass through this dungeon, he was sorely mistaken.

Something that could almost be a smile flashed over Ghasavâlk's face, a quirk of the lips, though nothing particularly amusing had happened.

Hells. She'd have stolen her mother's eyes if she could get away with it, but now she had to play team. "What can you do?"

Ghasavâlk tapped a finger on his temple, black eyes fixed on hers. "Ukhân-analt," he said, and his voice purred over the word. "Grasp of the mind. I can influence those around us."

Ah, shit. Small wonder he hadn't had a group before Lluc shoved them together—it took a special flavour of person to attune themselves to such a power, and those that did were often not friendly, amicable types.

Fitting, that for Calarata's first two Golds invading the dungeon, they were both far from what bolder kingdoms considered heroic.

Syçalia just shrugged, like the information didn't bother her. "No actual combat, then," she said, and took a languished second to thumb at the base of her chin. "Got a blade somewhere in there or just the stick up your ass?"

Ghasavâlk's almost-smile stayed perfectly agreeable. "I can fight," he said, nodding, and did not elaborate. Bastard. "And you?"

Syçalia tapped her waist, where twin daggers sat, and called on her mana—it sprung ever bright and hungry to her summons, swirling through her, not frivolously thrown around like casters but harnessed in the perfection of an enhancer. It thrummed hollow in her bones, that diver's deep weight, and ignited.

She smiled and disappeared from the world.

It was the kind of attunement you had to be lucky to encounter, and luckier still to claim—and she had wrangled it up to the strength of a Gold. She could throw off the shackles of Aiqith, fade beneath air and lesser things, to slip by unopposed. Mana could still impact her, since she couldn't actually remove her spirit from Aiqith, but she could get damn close. Brutish creatures with their claws and fangs were the least of her worries.

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She landed lightly on the cavern floor, mana whispering through her braided hair. Ghasavâlk's eyes snapped back to her, eyebrows to his hairline. She preened.

He just nodded, though, instead of fawning over what was little doubt the rarest attunement he'd ever encountered. Maybe she'd find something in this dungeon worthy of killing a Gold and shove him into it. Ghasavâlk hummed, motes of light spiraling over his fingers and from the corners of his black eyes, and turned to the dungeon. Stared at it for a second, like its mysteries would fall at his feet, before entering.

Syçalia scowled at his back. Gods, she was going to hate this.

But with that, she drew her daggers and strode inside.

Another tunnel greeted her, small and cramped, Gold-sense showing her sparks of mana overhead as cave spiders scuttled to and fro on their scarlet-striped legs. But it was merely another fake, a wall layered over another, and she rounded the corner and emerged into the dungeon proper.

The Scholar's drawings, though sketched, were accurate; a sprawling field of algae and mushrooms, ringed and woven through with stalagmites, shadows heavy and pressing in every corner where the glimmers of algae-light weren't enough. A massive serpent's skeleton wound its way through the stone, jaws angled at throat height on the nearest wall, empty eye sockets glaring balefully out at her. Humidity poured over her skin, that heady water-sickness of the air, as contrasting to the dry caverns behind as could be. An entirely new world.

Maybe it had a name—she remembered High Lord Thiago's dungeon having one for each level, and the one crippled by its taming in Abhalón having one for different areas. No way for her to figure it out, though.

Ghasavâlk's mana barked and spun, spiraling out as he cast some general spell; a sensory one, if she had to guess, with how his eyes flashed to various corners of the first level. Not one to be outdone, Syçalia coiled mana and fed her own Gold-sense, heat building behind her eyes.

Shadows stripped and fled as she pushed into her power and simply elected to ignore them, though not all—a few were strangely obstinate, clinging to corners and the overcroppings of dens. Maybe the dungeon's power, or the faint star-burn lingering on the edge of her awareness. A deity-blessed floor. Hells, that hadn't been in the Scholar's drawings.

Well. No time better than now to note it for later and get out of here.

Syçalia tapped her dagger blades against each other, one curved, one straight; both paring knives, for cutting and slicing, built for combat. She could strengthen them with her own mana in a pinch, so long as they were connected with her, but she'd prefer to use that on her own abilities. And considering her Gold-sense was feeding her a collection of burrowing rats, luminous constrictors, and other scuttling things instead of threats, she wouldn't need either here.

So she adjusted the tops of her boots and strode onward, staying close—but not too close—to Ghasavâlk's back. His sensory abilities were, to her muted fury, more advanced than hers, likely due to being able to sense both mana and minds, and he guided them through with a casual precision she refused to be impressed by. Luminous constrictors coiled over stalactites, stone-backed toads pressing flat in the algae, even cave spiders pausing in their webs to glance down with apathetic curiosity. She regarded them much the same, though she did turn intangible a time or two and pluck a few choice gems from a burrowing rat's den. Sycophants they seemed, with their gleaming hoards; maybe those on the lower floors would have even greater prizes. But that was for when she got there.

Or at least, if she did, because Ghasavâlk kept stopping.

First a stalagmite here, strung with gleaming pieces of quartz, hardly enough mana to power even one of his spells yet he still stopped like they were the most interesting things in the world. Another for a stone-backed toad frozen under his shadow, trying with all its might to be so still it could simply disappear off the face of Aiqith. A third as a flare of mana revealed a larger, though empty, den in the side.

She could excuse a few, especially when the First Mate had sent them in specifically to gather information, but they were Golds. Let the Bronzes and Unrankeds squabble over the first floor. Not them.

"Supposed to go deeper, aren't we?" She huffed eventually, fingering the edge of her leftmost dagger. The faster she could dump this deadweight, dump this entire city-state behind, the better.

Ghasavâlk looked at her, eyes black. "Are you not curious?"

He had a way of speaking that made her feel like an idiot. Syçalia bristled. But before she could retort, Ghasavâlk knelt, tunic wet over his knees where he was against the damp algae, and peered at the shadow beneath a cragged stalagmite.

Syçalia leaned in despite herself.

A mushroom—a lacecap, she thought, if that idiotic baron who favoured himself a genius had explained it correctly—sat in the darkness, great trailing gills beneath its cap sticky with trapped bugs and their desiccated remains. Certainly larger than the others they'd encountered, white flesh quivering with excess mana. Nearing full, if she had to guess, and Ghasavâlk seemed to agree, if how he stared at it meant anything.

"It is hungry," he hummed, more motes of light sparking from his gaze.

What.

She stared at him. "It's a mushroom."

Ghasavâlk reached out, not touching it, but running his finger over the air above its cap. "All things within a dungeon have minds," he said, like that was a perfectly normal statement. "And it is hungry. More than those around it."

Syçalia looked at the fungi, which hardly came up to her knee. Hungry. Right.

Ghasavâlk pursed his lips, more mana sparking behind his eyes—then it traveled, slow and ponderous, to his mouth, gathering over his tongue. He looked to the side, still crouched, and his mana twanged with a soft, discordant note.

"Nhâsa," he said, in whatever tongue he had, and held out his hand.

And then, from the shadows, with the stiff, uncomfortable movements of something who did not want to do what it was doing, a burrowing rat emerged from a den. Its ears were pinned flat, forked tail lashing, black eyes quivering—but still it marched out, nosing through the green algae, and perched on Ghasavâlk's palm.

Syçalia felt something cold sink talons into her spine.

Ghasavâlk lifted his hand, the rat steadying itself as its platform moved, and, quite casually, dumped it right at the base of the mushroom.

The thing twitched, in what could be excused as wind if it weren't a fully underground cavern. It wasn't moving but the bugs caught in its lacy gills were, caught in some horrible, twisted form of life, little more than traps in of themselves. Their wings fluttered and thrashed and before the rat had a moment to shake itself free of Ghasavâlk's thrall, the gills of the mushroom had been spilled over its back, rooting it all but into the mountain itself.

The rat shrieked, animal brain finally catching up to the scenario, frantic squeaks that had reflective eyes disappearing back into shadows in other corners of the dungeon, and died a slow, thrashing life as the mushroom's reanimated bugs wound tendrils over its mouth and nose.

Her Gold-sense showed her as the rat's mana fled its corpse and went to the mushroom, but her eyes were only fixed on Ghasavâlk.

That was… significantly more powerful than she'd feared. Golds were, by their very nature, but that was steps above; to command a creature with a single word, mana laced throughout, and cajole it into its own death without a fight.

Ukhân-analt, he'd called it. Grasp of the mind.

She tightened her grasp on her daggers.

Ghasavâlk stood, wiping off his tunic with disturbing peace. "Interesting," he said, pondering the death. It was only a rat and they were both Golds, and she knew that for all his power she still had the edge to escape, insofar as her intangibility would not let this mountain hold her—but still, his black eyes taking in the corpse, she felt unsafe.

But she was Syçalia Celessé Temoro, and she wasn't scared.

"For rats," she said, and simpered the word, taking great pains to elucidate to this man how much she was comparing them. "But I'm interested in something else."

And, just to amuse herself, she flicked one of her claimed rubies through her fingers, bouncing along her knuckles until it secured itself in the drawstring pouch by her hip. A spark of warm mana sunk into her channels.

Ghasavâlk inclined his head. "Of course." He took in the rest of the floor, to the glassy pond in the back and the three beasts she could sense in the walls, watching them from the shadows that refused to retreat from her Gold-sense. "After you."

What an asshole.

Syçalia marched on. Time to find her crown.

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