Dragonheart Core

With teeth and trial, Nenaigch's mana sunk once more into my halls.

It was less blinding than the first attempt, more cloying, the deepening pull of what was already there—but that didn't make it unnoticeable. She didn't have anything to aim it at but I felt the pressure increase, the rising spots where her mana coiled and hissed like a living thing. Two points, for me to choose as I wished, claws bared and waiting.

I preened.

Nenaigch would get her priests, get her second floor, get her passage—and I would get power. Always more power, the likes of which I could never have dreamed up in another world.

Soon, I would make the haven, the little paradise within a hellscape of my own creation—but I had a greater mission first, one that would also take another's hands in the process, grubby though they may be.

So I pushed vaguely soothing intricacies to Nenaigch, lavishing as much praise as my soot-black soul could muster, and dipped away from her floor, past the lightning-choked Skylands and into the coiling reefs below, the watery paradise with all its extended teeth. The first room, awash in billowing schools, and then the second, with its sprawling lagoon and shifting trees.

And, in the far back, the den, perched on white sands and crowned in vampiric mangroves. Not the vampiric mangrove, the Ancestral Tree still haunted by her vampiric dryad who had taken to dragging roughwater sharks out of the water and feasting on their desiccated corpses to the remarkable horror of her neighbors.

No, for today my focus was for the kobolds, and their companion within.

Chieftess, halfway through pouring over what was a rather juvenile attempt at a carved map of the Hungering Reefs, tilted her head to the side as she felt my awareness slip into the den, the humming buzz of my intensified mana. She warbled some kind of inane question, rising to her claws, gripping her newly-fashioned spear. Still something that could serve as a staff, her commanding call to her underlings, but with the jagged fang of a slain shark affixed to the tip.

I pushed a point of mana into her for little more than general encouragement before diving into the back of the den.

Tucked in his room, resting on the moss bed and sketching little pictures in the dirt on the walls, was Nicau. Bored, from my initial brush of his surface thoughts—there was little to do but fight, rest, and hunt, particularly for one who had been used to more dramatic lives.

Well. When he went to Calarata, he could perhaps finally learn how to read, as I'd commanded him, and bring back books for his entertainment.

You, I murmured, something quick and fleeting. Nicau still shook and jittered upright, because my mental voice was a power deeper than any thought, and he flashed an apologetic bow in what could generously be called my direction if he had recently been diagnosed as blind. Go above. Find an entrance. Find a shadow.

A shadow, something hidden and unknown, where perhaps a quiet little opening could appear and be none the worse for wear. A home for the crawling and skittering beasts, where pirates rather had better things to do than poke their ugly noses in.

Something Nicau was uniquely suited to find.

Because while I didn't want this in Calarata, I wanted it close—I could not simply sit back and content myself on ignoring the pirates, letting them bluster and blow themselves out like storms against an unforgiving coast. They were, very irritably, a threat; and one I was determined in crushing.

Therefore, I needed information. And where better than from the throats of those who cursed my name?

Nicau frowned, tilting his head and worrying his lip with his teeth. "Ah," he said, delicately, like one seeing a garotte that hadn't yet wrapped around his neck but was dallying too close for comfort. "Back to Calarata?"

My mana billowed around his mind, shoving in pictures of the Golds that had poured within my hall, and the deal I'd struck with Nenaigch—a way in and out without the constant threat of discovery or being closed off. A way for him to leave easier, to keep seeing the world, to continue spreading the epithet he'd so graciously given himself. Pirate Lord, I thought. Dreadfully uncreative. It must have taken him all of two seconds to make it.

Nicau's cheeks flushed.

"Of course, o' dungeon," he managed, pushing off from his bed and fumbling for his dark blue coat, swirling it over his shoulders. His blind loyalty was appreciated. "More creatures?"

Knowledge, I said, and then corrected myself. And creatures.

Nicau nodded, a hesitant little bob. "Yes," he said. "I will. Leave immediately."

He did know how to endear himself to me, the little sycophant. I pushed a vague point or two of mana into his channels, a plucked string between our shared souls, and shoved more information to him; he'd have to sneak past the Adventuring Guild and find a place for me to dig my tunnel to, somewhere out of the way and undisturbed, not too close and not too far.

I was resting a worrying amount of responsibility on the shoulders of a mere human, but, well. I'd saved his life when his own kind had sent him here to be killed. Inept though he might be, I could trust he would at least try.

Nicau straightened, brushing a hand through his hair, which had grown long and ragged enough to brush the top of his back. He hadn't cut it, though, in part at my behest—though I couldn't understand why humans allowed such an odd, stringy thing to grow from their heads, I could appreciate that it disguised his face, though few would be on the hunt for a pigeoncatcher.

He stared around his room, tightening his grip on the knife he'd won on his last trip. Something old entered his gaze.

"Ashes to ashes," he murmured, drumming his fingers over his side, eyes pinched at the corners. "Back to the before, I suppose."

Was that an attempt at eloquence? Had he truly gotten so bored in my halls he'd fallen into poetry?

Well. I'd leave him to it. Because he wasn't the only one I was sending out.

It was, in some kindness, not the most intelligent move I could make, but I needed to. Nicau was my ears on the ground for Calarata, for the vibrant little pirates in all their glorious failure that was unfortunately dangerous; but just as I couldn't afford to ignore them, neither could I elevate them to apragons of lethality. My existence had to be for more than killing the Dread Pirate, though I very much would be. I needed to know more about the world around me, about the jungle I still had yet to name, about the humanoid politics that I hadn't paid much more attention than debating which colour of flag looked nicest as I dragged their ships to the murky depths, about all manners of creatures and connivers and wretched little thieves with wisps in their paws.

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And if Nicau would be diving into the city and unnamed jungle when I was feeling peckish for more schemas, there was one more realm I had need of exploring.

So further into the Hungering Reefs I went, around the liquid blue and whispering sands, a scarlet flash of the parrot overhead and the shine of hunting triggerfish. And, in the third room, with its towering pillar-reefs and choppy waters, another predator lurked, training himself in the swirl of currents off his vibrant scales and wavering frills.

Seros, the first of my Named.

His head flicked up as I dipped into our shared connection, the humming melody of our entwined souls; he let the last roughwater shark he had been toying with the idea of hunting slip away, flicking his tail to latch onto the closest pillar of coral for a grounding hold as his head swiveled fruitlessly in an unconscious desire to see who he was speaking to.

Hello, I murmured, gentle as the westerlies. He was, as always, my much beloved—the draconic word for friend, when I had been still foolish and unable to spend more time giving him one to strike the same fear as a proper dragon's name should.

Seros churred, bubbles rippling out of his maw—his claws flashed and he dove deeper into the water, currents swirling to life as he tore out of the third room and hauled himself into the tunnel in the back, heading down to the Scorchplains, though he merely rested on the stone with his tail still hanging in the blue. He rumbled something deep and welcoming in his chest, reverence and amiability in one.

He'd come so far, from the little underground monitor scurrying for rats in the depths of ancient mountains.

I sunk into his mind, curling mana around the jitter and snap of his thoughts, and pushed blue to him—ideas of waves, of currents, of tossingly bitter waves and the sanctuary they protected from foolish terrestrial beings. A seabound monitor he'd been, and draconic now—but all he'd tasted were the tamed places under my control, and he could not become a sea-drake with only Mayalle's whirlpool as the idea of the ocean.

Or, at least, I certainly wouldn't let him.

Being a sea-drake didn't mean merely having green scales, or an appreciation for something with more depths than piddly little flames or high flights. It meant being a part of something eternal, something that had existed longer than the oldest forests and mountains and lands and peoples and beings and would continue existing for longer than they could comprehend. It meant being more. It meant being immortal, in a way no others could achieve—immortality by giving up yourself. By being a sea-drake, one claimed and held by the sea, merciless as she delighted in being.

I had prostrated myself before only two. The lord of dragons, father of the scaled, as my creator; and the sea, as my existence.

So you could be damn well assured that I would be shoving that understanding into Seros' skull well before I let him evolve into one.

Seros perked up, ivory fangs flashing. He wasn't like my other Named, who tried to speak to me in words and speech; his thoughts flowed through our connection without censorship or diffusion. Open.

Excitement, bright and burnished, at the memories I was giving him; the Hungering Reefs were the closest I could give him and he delighted in them, rarely extending down to the Scorchplains except to sleep, wrapped around my core's pillar in slumbering guard.

Schemas, I said, because of course I wanted more, and as with the burrowing rat so long ago, Seros had proven himself capable of restraint in devouring his kills to bring me corpses. But knowledge. Learn about the things within.

Curiosity. He tilted his head to the side, horns catching the light. Vague memories of the wretched merrow Priestess and her diamond staff, the fight he'd had after they tore a hole into the Underlake, and then become worryingly silent after.

Yes, them, and what I hoped was only them. Most aquatic races were fiercely territorial in a way that terrestrial creatures simply couldn't understand, with their open skies and ample resources. Oceans were, by definition, rather empty and yearning—for those like sea-drakes, who slated our fill on other equally large creatures, it was of little concern. But for merrow, mermaids, aicaya, and other like, they needed reefs and kelp forests and shallow lagoons, which were mere pockets in the pressing emptiness. Thus, fiercely guarded.

No, I had little doubts that the merrow were the only ones in this cove, but that was what made it all the more concerning that I was seeing so little of them. A dungeon with water access was a thing unheard of, and certainly not one without a claimed core. They should have been clawing down the mountains in their effort to reach it.

Seros' nostrils flared, tail lashing. No, he didn't think of them with much kindness of any regard. We were quite similar.

Them, I said, still gentle. And more. What is within.

And, with a kind of care deeply antithetical to my being, I pushed the vaguest recollection of the nightmare to him.

Twin maws. Black skin. Hissing through water, through air, through mana, consuming star-bright mana and decaying it to emptiness.

The pitch-shark.

It had come from the cove, from somewhere within the water, and it was not of Aiqith in any way that mattered. Nicau's mysterious rune had spoken of the same idea, the world that had existed before Aiqith, before the Otherworld, before any of the others—up until the Breaking, named so with emphasis, but undescribed. A terribly wretched thing.

And much like the merrow, it didn't make sense I hadn't seen another.

Something was happening in the cove. And I needed to know.

Seros hissed, claws rooting into the stone. But fear, barely a whisper, lurked under his fury. He knew the strength of a pitch-shark when it was caged within cramped corners and belied on all sides; out in the cove, in the openness, it would not be so limited.

But he was Seros. None had ever defeated him, and it wouldn't happen now.

Pride flowed through me, the kind I couldn't have snuffed out and muffled if I wanted; matching bravado in equal turn. His Name had so far manifested as hydrokinesis, the rush and pull of surrounding water; but Nicau could command, and Akkyst could instruct, and I had little doubt there was something more to the blessing of the depths.

The draconic monitor nodded, his iridescent scales catching the light as he slipped back into the water. He'd have a hells of an easier time getting out than Nicau, given there wasn't a great fat Adventuring Guild perched over that entrance, but he'd still have to be quick and clever with it. I had no doubt in him.

I told him so, as he swam up through the coral reefs and into the Skylands, and he preened as he clambered higher through my dungeon. Other creatures watched him with a wariness characteristic of gravitas, budding though it was; they knew he was a threat, long before their eyes registered his size and might. An unconscious understanding of danger.

Draconic monitor for now.

Dragon, soon.

Already outpaced by Seros' elegant movements, Nicau was fumbling his way across the Hungering Reefs, the kobold's prototype raft lashed together from fallen cloudsire palms and desperation, a few kobold hunters doing their best to swim alongside. Neither group was moving particularly fast. But he would make his way across and then clamber up through the rest of the floors, emerge out in the tunnel, and strike to the shadows until he was out in the wider world. Back to Calarata.

And return with schemas and knowledge aplenty.

Now, with my Named striking out for greener pastures and threats embodied by every kind of nightmare, I could settle in, wrapping my sparks of mana around my core in a fruitless little lightshow that did nothing but make me preen.

I had made a goddess rescind her previous deal and strengthen it; to grant me even more power than she had originally given. Made myself strong. And yes, while I would little doubt have to go bother myself against the webweavers and bring myself down to their scuttling level, I had some time before I could do that.

And my sights were set on my side of the bargain for now.

Nicau to Calarata, Seros to sea—and me, to paradise.

I grabbed my mana and started to dig.

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