Dragonheart Core

With slow, methodical precision, the tunnels moved onward.

It was a soothing sort of thing, which I hadn't thought of at first, so content in the fantasies of Ghasavâlk peering his fat fucking head into the first entrance and being blinded by something different than whatever precious map he'd drawn up, but it was a gentle thing. A rocking, almost, like hatchlings carried along by their first oceanic current. A guiding hand, firm but not coddling.

Not quite enough that invaders would find themselves lost in a twisting labyrinthian nightmare, unfortunately, but certainly enough they couldn't sketch out pathways to carry back for the next day's group. Which was plenty for me.

I spread points of awareness around in dappled attention, loose and drifting as I gathered my wits back about me. The endless engine of my dungeon rumbled ever on, a beast in the shadows, in the depths and the dark of the Alómbra Mountains. Oh, how I dearly loved it, and all the monsters it housed.

Even if it wasn't a prize I could keep to myself. Other bastards had to poke their noses in.

Up above, tucked in the Fungal Gardens, the newest batch of invaders were creeping through my halls. Three of them, lower Silvers, but they moved with the hunched, dogged steps of the wary—news had spread, then. A Gold had died within, and the other had fled like all hells barked at his heels. And oh, I was sure he was telling such lovely darling stories about his own heroism, about the corpse of the beloved sarco he'd dragged out, of the beasts he'd encountered; but that was for cowards.

He'd ran from me, from Veresai, from Seros. What victory he thought he'd scraped from the mind of my empress serpent was useless—what information he'd taken had only been from my first five floors. I had two more below that, filled with monsters for themselves, and now my fourth Named had woken.

No, I was not some baseless thing for them to tame, and I took a great pleasure in watching these new invaders creep through with hackles up. Three of them, Silvers only, and cautious as baitfish in open ocean. They wouldn't be pushing deep, if they made it to the Underlake at all—but I rather hoped they would die, so I could collect more mana. I had, perhaps, not done the most intelligent thing by immediately emptying my mana stores in finishing the Jungle Labyrinth instead of recreating all the creatures I had lost. It was a constant battle, one that my impatience didn't lend well to—one infuriating in all the worst ways. Many things were infuriating. I was an easily-infuriated creature.

But for now, I whispered soft nothings in the ears of the kobolds of the Drowned Forest, warned them of the approaching danger and how it would be in their best interests to avail themselves of such a glut of mana, and then dipped below myself.

A few points of awareness slipped around to my various floors, attention kept just to make sure nothing happened—I was still rather concerned about losing my jeweled jumper—as I settled in for an intensive process.

Akkyst was below, hunched over with Bylk by his side. More silver scraps of information floated off his fur, living wisps of lights—they crackled oddly on the edges, but I rather thought that had more to do with Khasvar's boon, rather than his Name. A lightning flavouring to all mana.

And what curious mana this was. It didn't seem to be any kind of attack, not nearly blinding enough to function like the luminous constrictors, nor as distracting as the mist-fox's tails and illusions. With Bylk blabbering on in phlegm-y monologues and Akkyst walking around to try and find anything new to see what information came from it, they were making some kind of progress, though I couldn't tell what.

Information was, of course, an open thing, free and willing to pour out about anything—but information was rather useful when it was understandable, and there had been the odd choice to have it be a language that neither I nor Akkyst could decipher. A touch targeted, in a way.

Rather rude.

But if anyone was going to figure it out, it would be my one-eyed bear who had carved through the mountains and come back with an army and an evolution.

Seros swam through the Hungering Reefs, hungry and vicious with it, already a roughwater shark bleeding murky scarlet as it tried to flee from his hydrokinesis. He was truly in his element here, much more than the cramped corners of the Underlake. Here, under gleaming blue waters and pure white sand, he was a monster unparalleled. Every section of capturing coral he swam past flickered with sea-green light, little sparks of power from the Otherworld, reflecting off his ivory fangs and glowing eyes.

…he'd faced Ghasavâlk in the Skylands, mist hissing off his scales, chasing him down like a swordfish to bait; but he'd never gotten to fight. Ghasavâlk had fled, and though his mana-filled commands hadn't worked on my Named, he'd managed to conjure up enough distractions to keep from being fought.

Seros hadn't had the chance to truly battle someone, not since the fifty-man invasion that scoured down to a fear I hadn't felt since the Dread Pirate fired a spear of pure nightmare black into my chest. He spared with the sea serpent in the third room of the Hungering Reefs, enormous fights that tore limestone from walls and trembled down to the mountains, but I didn't allow either to kill each other. Just spars, keeping the blade sharp, but nothing more.

The eldest of my Named, wasting away in my deepest floors. He deserved more.

Which brought me back up to my fourth floor, to the plan that had taken root in my core and bloomed to a truly devious plan, if I could pull it off. Veresai was still working with Kriya, giving her a magnanimous tour of the den and beginning to line out just what she would do here, but past that, Nenaigch's power suffused through the tunnels like a living thing. A power, slowly shifting the stone, grinding away in divine intervention.

And where my plan would take root.

Ghasavâlk had escaped, and he'd murdered his way out.

New invaders, back to a level of threat I was comfortable with, but if they were sending in Golds then I couldn't be content in this pitiful display of lacking power. More Golds would come, those with expectations tempered by whatever Ghasavâlk had managed to bring out, and I would have to meet them with teeth and trial.

My first five floors were locked and settled, more than any others. Even as I kept digging deeper and deeper, their godly patrons would mean that their mana levels would stay consistent, fed by more than my Otherworld connection, and the creatures there would continue to grow and thrive. But Ghasavâlk's delve had shown me where I had made mistakes, and I was rather interested in cutting those loose weights away.

And there was one place that had opened a new avenue of potential.

I drifted to my core, to the golden runes wrapped around the marbled red-black surface; the housing of my soul and the connections within. In particular, one connection newly made, still humming with excess energy from the unnamed world.

Nenaigch's presence curled around me, eight-faceted eyes flickering with star-burn. Interest, curiosity; a faint amusement at me calling upon her. She peered down.

I, with an uncharacteristic hesitance that truly pissed me off, extended my proposition upward. It was a fragile sort of offering, because in truth it brought me brilliant rewards and gave her little. Which was, ah, certainly a choice of mine to do, a mere day after she had agreed to become the patron of the Jungle Labyrinth. Hardly enough time to build up a geniality for me.

And particularly so for the goddess whose presence clicked and skittered like a spider, mandibles whispering with the cloying brush of silk.

But I needed this plan to work.

The Golds would be coming back, and they were strong; more than I wanted to admit. The entrance was marked and known, a hole through what had once been security, and I couldn't maintain it. Sending Nicau out, collecting new information or schemas; all of that was hamstrung by how they knew my entrance and could track it, watch it, see what I was doing. That couldn't be allowed.

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But the cove entrance in the Underlake was another sort of weakness, a way for merrow to slither inside without facing the dangers of my other floors. Not what I wanted.

And that was why I needed Nenaigch.

The Jungle Labyrinth was a mess of tunnels, ones that now changed. It wouldn't be mapped, not in a way that would threaten me; and it wouldn't be discovered, not with how many I had.

So what if there was one more tunnel, inconspicuous, that didn't lead deeper into the floor, but instead to the outside world?

Small, indistinguishable from the others. Still on the fourth floor, so even if someone snuck down it they would still have a gauntlet to traipse through before making it to my core, but something that I could have emerge anywhere. A way for Nicau to leave without drawing suspicion, to collect more wayward creations that the Adventuring Guild wouldn't kill before they reached me to keep from my grasp, to learn about the Dread Pirate and Calarata and the eventual way to defeat them.

A fourth entrance, for the fourth floor.

The Goddess of Weaving listened to me. Her amusement left for a trader's calm, the discerning weight of eyes larger than creation pressing down on my core. A thoroughly uncomfortable sensation.

More potential for discovery, I tried, with a kind of desperation that didn't cover up the terrible deal. I was, after all, trying remarkably hard to keep invaders from finding this pathway, rather than having them traipse through with open arms and a mind for accepting a new godly presence in their life. Not what most gods wanted.

Nenaigch's presence ruffled, the spinning click of needles against each other.

And words, eldritch and abominable, a language both comprehensible and not, the same power as that shattered rising sun rune from the long-dead scroll and the memory of a beast that devoured stars, echoed through my core.

A path for thee, Nenaigch murmured, coalesced in glimmering teeth. With gift for me.

Oh.

Oh!

She had, unfortunately, discerned the deal wasn't equal—but she'd given me an opportunity to sweeten it.

And in her words, in the jagged, humming things that forked like coiled webs more than speech, she had sent ideas; she wanted more. The Jungle Labyrinth was enormous, easily one of the largest of my floors with how many tunnels there were, but gods were ever greedy, and I had asked for quite a boon alongside what she had already offered me.

But oh, I could work with this.

Because I'd had another plan, one I had originally been planning on implementing by myself, a half-shackle job dug into the base of the Skylands for lack of anywhere else. But if she was offering, then I would provide, and glory in it.

She wanted more floor?

So did I.

And, in the back of my core, where still my soul raged over the death of the sarco and the wretched unfairness of having to stay put and die as Golds clawed for prestige from my youngest creatures, a glimmer of an idea took root and bloomed, great spreading tendrils of potential. A solution that would solve another problem for me, and get me the acceptance of a goddess.

I did so love when my plans came together.

Taking some inspiration for her illusions, I wove together an image, the idea of what I would create—first was the path out of the dungeon, emerging in some hidden structure I would have Nicau find, far from prying eyes but still capable of being collapsed if discovered. Her power would suffuse the entire path, both for my creatures and anything within, power above and beyond—but that wasn't it.

Because I also showed her another tunnel, one forking off beneath with an entrance that constantly shifted and moved, nearly impossible for any invaders to access in the constantly spinning tunnel. But past the tunnel, separate from my Jungle Labyrinth, a floor between floors, I showed her a paradise.

…a haven.

Patchwork, stitched together in every type of land; a mangrove forest here, deep water pools here, open stone here. Small, comparatively to the rest of my floors, but content. No traps, no danger, just fresh-grown mushrooms and clear water.

Antithetical to a dungeon.

But perfect for an ecosystem.

My creatures were growing more and more powerful—and more and more rich. For those I had the schema of, I could barely afford their mana costs, and that was even without the evolutions soon approaching; Veresai was one of the most powerful creatures in my dungeon, but if I wanted another to join her, all I could do was start at luminous constrictor. And that would take a wretchedly long time to get anywhere, and in the danger of my dungeon where death stood tyrant, it would likely die well before it reached those impossible heights.

Consequence was for strength. They could only grow power, could only evolve, through combat. I knew that, reveled in it, appreciated it—my dungeon was not a place for coddling protection and gentle morning lullabies.

But still the sarco's death hung and bit at my core. She had been so dangerous, so powerful, so desperate to grow strong—and she would have, if she hadn't been alone.

But a haven, a room for peace, would let more sarcos grow old enough to defend themselves, and then go into the wider world.

The sarco wasn't the type who would have stayed in this room I was planning, not with her drive to grow stronger, to gnaw and bite and devour her way into power—but others would be. Others that would stay in the haven, away from danger, away from the steel and swords and spells of invaders, and their offspring would go out to the dungeon proper. It wouldn't be a place of growth, not like my dungeon. It would be soft and weak and pathetically friendly, predators settling for glaring at each other rather than tearing each other to shreds. No evolutions would happen here, not now, not ever.

But they could live.

Nenaigch shifted. Curiosity, in some sense of the word—I was not particularly subtle that both of these offerings would be phenomenal for me and only mostly beneficial for her, which. If someone had brought this deal to me as a sea-drake, I certainly wouldn't have taken it.

But Nenaigch was the Goddess of Weaving. She was not powerful, not in the way that gods could be, and her followers ranked few in comparison to deities of silk or rope. To work with a dungeon was a claim to power that very few could have, with how limited their number was, and she'd clearly wanted it, with how much thought and power she was pouring into her offered boon. So a second deal with a dungeon was only more prestige.

But not one this uneven, unfortunately.

Nenaigch's presence shifted. More, she murmured. Ones who sing my name; who rejoice in me. Who call upon me as Mine.

What?

I had to get her priests?

Hells, how was I supposed to do that?

All invaders could pledge themselves to any patrons of my floors, which would earn them a fucking irritant in the form of protection, though certainly not to where I would allow them access to my halls. But that was not a thing I could plan for, could organize.

Unless.

Far above, a point of awareness flicked up.

In the Drowned Forest, cradled by Rhoborh's boon, dead mangroves stood stark and pale in the mist. Instead of leaves they had only webs, careful things stitched together, white bodies scuttling over in fanatical fervour.

The webweavers.

They were devoted, certainly zealous, and rabid in their desire for following. To me they served, killing numbers of their own to sacrifice, growing enormous spiraled webs of power—weaving, a spider's greatest offering.

They wouldn't be priests, not in the typical humanoid sense.

But oh, they could be something.

I pushed them up, showing the detailed intricacies they made and marked and protected, the memory of them ripping one of their own to shreds so I could obtain their schema. Power, rabid loyalty, and her own name in theirs; a better gift.

It would be up to me to make them follow Nenaigch, to shift their focus from the being that had created them to a distant god, but I could do it. I'd never been tamed by a challenge before, and the prize was too great to ignore.

Nenaigch hummed, a rustling sound that choked out ambiance—I felt her attention press futilely against the restraints of the Jungle Labyrinth, trying to peer up to the further floors, but they weren't hers. She could only truly see them through the memories I offered.

But the webweavers, and a haven floor, and a pathway out. Gifts and glories, the most I could give.

I could feel her interest.

This was like what Nuvja had offered me—a changed deal. Not our original contract, not what we'd agreed upon. A chance.

And, far above, in the unnamed world incapable of being understood by mortals, I felt a presence even greater than Nenaigch, than Khasvar, than any other god I'd made a deal with—something big and ancient and Old, more than existence, more than Aiqith.

Something observing the changes. Deciding if it would be allowed.

I didn't have lungs, but I was holding my breath.

The presence looked in. Tilted its awareness to the side, a flickering curiosity, a whisper of a mind I couldn't comprehend.

It drifted away.

Approval.

The deal would be allowed to stand.

Nenaigch's mana coiled and curled. Silk, wrapping around me, the rumble and grind of tunnels.

I accept.

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