Dragonheart Core

Nicau squinted at the gourd.

It was. Well. Certainly a gourd, which wasn't saying much, but he didn't know what else to say. It was round. Hollow. Curled at the top with an opening below. Orange with scarlet stripes.

He had never been eloquent before, but he was beginning to feel rather foolish.

"Thing," he said, because of course he did, he hadn't embarrassed himself enough already. "Used for storing."

Chieftess cocked her head to the side, golden eyes furrowed in curiosity. She tapped at the one in her grasp, claws clicking over its surface. Not wood, she warbled, pondering. But plant. Storing?

Nicau hummed, fumbling at his waist—his new coat came equipped with pockets aplenty, little things to tuck trinkets and other safeties around. He plucked out a snake's vertebrae, one he'd been planning on sharpening into an arrowhead when he had a spare moment, and raised the gourd—dropped it inside. "Storing. Hold many small things together."

Chieftess perked right up. Storing!

Nicau smiled, despite himself.

It wasn't quite as revolutionary as when he'd shown them fire, when the first orange gleam hit their eyes and he got to watch them understand what true devastation tools and things could wreck; but it was still learning, and it was fascinating to watch. The kobold tribe was still rather juvenile, fumbling through the motions despite being taller and stronger and overall more developed than him. They could rip his arms off with a sneeze, if they wanted. Which was. A very fun thought to have.

But still he could teach them, and each of them soaked up the knowledge like lifeblood, and relished in anything they could have.

The dungeon had grown gourds over their den, strung through the mangrove branches and twining into the stone. They had taken time to fully ripen, but now dozens of them sat ready for the plucking, with enough still left on the vine to continue ripening. He wanted to see what the next progression of them was, what next they could do. The dungeon had whispered something about mana collection, which would work perfectly for the two shamans that were still wrangling a grasp on their more magical abilities. Slow going, with no one to train them and no one who knew what they were doing. Which was great.

But between Nicau and Chieftess, the tribe was sharpening, coming to a dagger's point in this new land.

And what a new land it was.

He'd been beyond exhausted when he'd returned from Calarata, hefting the weight of the new reputation he'd apparently decided to start spreading, and after that, all his thoughts had been focused on not offending Seros as he rode on the draconic monitor's back across the lagoon. He'd seen the beauty, of course, but when you were perched on the back of a lizard that could kill you with a flick of its tail, you tended to hone in on that instead of anything else.

When he'd woken up after two days asleep, he'd finally been able to see what was his new home.

The Hungering Reefs.

This floor was, in all polite terms, insane. He'd thought the underground mangrove canal had been enough to rattle him to his bones, but the dungeon kept finding ways to startle him. One of these days, it would show him a new ecosystem it had built thousands of feet beneath the earth, and he would simply keel over and die.

But there was no time for dramatics, not as he and the kobold tribe had found themselves thrown into this new world where the old rules didn't matter and the threats were higher.

The first obstacle—water. Everything here was covered in it, beyond thin strips of sand and soil where mangroves and palms sprouted. Limiting themselves to land only meant starving much quicker than any of them were necessarily prepared for, and Nicau had really survived too much to go down for a lack of food. So.

Water.

Rihsu, the first evolved kobold with her deep maroon scales and connection to Seros, had shown them the basics, as unwilling as he'd ever seen a lizard be. Claws as paddles, tail as rudder, muzzle pointed forward to limit catching in the currents; the kobold hunters were taking to it with the most grace, which was still unbelievably far from graceful, and the others resembling half-drowned rats.

But they needed food, and food was found in the water, and they were determined beyond belief.

Chieftess had occasionally proven herself to be… distressingly incapable of rational thought when she thought there was a battle around. Already Nicau had to trick her away from the fucking sharks on the floor just so she wouldn't throw herself into the water she could still barely swim in just to fight them.

Life wasn't all challenges, though. The floor, in all its dangers, had amenities to offer.

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They'd found a ruby that seemed oddly large and oddly specifically placed—the dungeon's offering, though it hadn't actually wanted to give it to them easily, so instead of creating it in their den it had shunted it off to the far corner of the second room with some thousand feet of swimming to get there. Lovely.

But with it, and one of the kobold shamans who had claimed the gem as soon as he'd laid eyes on it, they had still managed to cook their food and char their arrow tips. He'd attached the ruby to the tip of a mangrove branch, tying it in place with sap and resin and plant matter; it wasn't stable, but it was close enough.

The other shaman hadn't found a gem of her own yet, and she was rightly pissed by it; in the meantime, since she was frankly jealous of her other, she'd clawed a chunk of coral from the edge of the lagoon and tied that onto a mangrove branch as well.

Little copycats. They had a nasty habit of flaring their feathered crests at each other, for all they never attacked.

But the warriors grew strong and powerful with new fights, the hunters grew lithe and clever with their territory, the shamans grew… slightly less fumbling with magic, and Chieftess bloomed. They weren't invincible, because this was a dungeon, but Nicau felt pride settle warmly in his chest.

And he was hardly falling behind, either.

Two companions he'd made—the parrot, mysterious and entirely unknown, swooped through the trees with piercing shrieks, snagging gourds to eat and smaller pigeons when she felt peckish. The kobolds had been utterly fascinated with her ability to mimic speech, even in empty statements, and she'd been the star of the show for many nights as they crowded around with hooted encouragement.

Then there was the shadowthief rat, who perched on his shoulder most days and watched the world with curious eyes, luck broiling in her gut. He still hadn't figured out if she understood him. Sometimes she did, bobbing her head and obeying, but other times she just chittered with confusion or did the opposite. Maybe purposely. Her species didn't have a language, so he couldn't hear what she responded with, but maybe she could still hear him? Much like how he could command animals with shouted commands, for all they wouldn't understand the word spoken normally?

He certainly didn't know. Pigeons hadn't been this complicated.

She hadn't been given a name yet, either. The kobolds had mostly picked their own, after their position like Chieftess or other idiosyncrasies they adored; but the rat mostly stole and squeaked, and he wasn't quite comfortable shackling her to a name she might not even like.

And his own magic grew, taking root and spreading into something worthy of terror. He had real muscle behind his voice now, though each command still drained him to the marrow; but once he got over the shame of shouting nonsense at fish, he could force them to freeze for just long enough for a kobold hunter to impale them through and drag them up for a meal. The mana was faster to summon, too, rising quick and light to his tongue.

He tested himself on anything that swam near enough the shore, since he wasn't quite confident enough to try using it while swimming. The sharks were brutish and enormous and utterly uncaring about his mana, swimming by in blissful apathy. Maybe the water made it easier to ignore his commands. But the fish he could grab, and the kraits, and the birds overhead.

The new turtle—the reefback turtle, apparently, the dungeon had whispered to him when he'd asked in all shaking humility some days ago—was an enormous thing, its shell eight feet across, smooth and sloped down to a mock island on its back. Already clumps of coral had begun to sprout over its scutes, rooting deep in a way that looked remarkably painful, though it didn't seem to notice.

It hadn't come close enough to the shore for him to try commanding it, but he was waiting. Whatever a reefback turtle was, he was deeply curious in its strength.

In everyone's strength.

In how he matched.

The Hungering Reefs were a nightmare in many ways. He missed, sometimes with a ferocity that scared him, the comforts of the Drowned Forest; of the swaying mangroves and rushing canals and chittering rats. It hadn't been safe, not in any sense of the word, but it had at least been a familiar danger. The kind he could predict, if not avoid.

This land had none of that. Everything was new and terrifying and entirely unknown, even as he clawed understanding from its pure white sands and glistening blue waters.

It was dangerous.

It was more.

He'd mostly silenced it with his own ambition, with the drive for more that burrowed in his gut like a living thing, but sometimes he still heard Romei's voice. It felt like a lifetime ago when they'd first poked their heads into the dungeon, dreaming of dragon scales and joining the Dread Crew; when he hadn't mattered and he'd wanted nothing more than to be someone.

Do you want to be worth something?

Nicau stood in the entrance of the kobolds' den, looking out over the cove, stone overhead and blue beneath. Mana thrummed in his veins, trickled over his tongue, languishing at his beck and call for whenever he needed it; soon. He was approaching a threshold, he could feel it, something within them that stretched and yearned and grew under power he had never known before. His original attunement had been all but burned out under the dungeon's power—the little thing, hunting for mana trails in the air, a stowaway's desperate bid for relevance.

Now mana scorched from his mouth, commands that caught those who listened to obey and opened ears that could never have understood him. Now he talked with monsters and they talked back; now he made monsters friends, and led them, and guided them to strength that would kill other humans. Now he joined with a dungeon.

Now he was the Pirate Lord of Calarata, a mystery from the depths, unknown to any. Perhaps that mugger whose knife he now wielded had spread his name, told the Adventurer's Guild to expect his arrival in the indistinct future.

Now the dungeon spoke through him, a mouthpiece for a well of Otherworld mana and powers beyond human control. It hadn't happened yet, but he knew it would soon; the day that an invader came down to the sixth floor and saw a human, and relaxed, and spoke to him like an ally.

It wouldn't go like it had before, in that frantic night of panic and desperation as fifty invaders poured into the halls and he'd stabbed someone to death in blind terror with a broken spear.

No. When it happened again, he would stand tall, and he would be Nicau, the Pirate Lord, the Communer.

Romei hadn't envisioned this when she'd dragged him to the dungeon; when she sought to make her fortune with a few discarded scales and the prestige they could bring.

Nicau hummed, staring over the Hungering Reefs. He tapped his fingers on the hilt of the dagger by his side, the blue-leather coat swirling around his ankles, the parrot perched on his shoulder, the shadowthief rat near his feet, Chieftess at his side.

If she could see him now.

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