Dragonheart Core

About half a thousand feet into the beginning of the tunnel carving through for paradise, several points of awareness flickered to life in the back of my core.

I could not have stopped digging fast enough.

Evolutions. Oh, glorious evolutions, another balm over the vitriol of Ghasavâlk escaping—Syçalia's mana, Gold-powered, in their blinding radiance that spread over my halls. Perfection, or as close as I could get to it, and from a single death that had immediately triggered new evolutions and allowed me to finish a floor within the same day.

What would an Electrum's death do, if I could ever achieve it? Or even a Mythril?

Gods above, how I wished to discover that.

But for now, I flicked my attention up to the Fungal Gardens high above, rooting through Nuvja's shadows and the rumbling snores of the lunar cave bears who preferred sleeping for every hour of the day, to the little pocket of white in the back side. Something large and blooming underneath, curled around the base of a stalagmite.

The light dimmed and died, already a soft thing under Nuvja's protective shadows so as to not draw attention. Considering the last batch of invaders, who had made it down to the Drowned Forest before cutting their losses as the kobold tribe came howling in, hadn't noticed it, that felt like it was working.

A deal I'd made with Nenaigch, and a deal Nuvja had made with me. One of them would be coming to call. As a sea-drake, I'd rarely involved myself with the gods overhead, little more than pious reminders that I was unfortunately aware of. But while I knew that I was to finish Nenaigch's new floors and obtain her followers—quickly—I still didn't know what Nuvja wanted from me. Her changed deal had been vague in ways I was biting myself for agreeing to, but it didn't seem malicious, and any gods who had become my patrons had an implicit reason not to want to smite me.

A concern I, quite truthfully, did not have enough information to properly worry over.

So instead, I pushed past Nuvja's shadows, into the light softening down to gentle white. A mushroom beneath.

A reaper's cap.

It was large and sprawling, no longer limited to a single stalk and cap but instead a rippling forest of them, pale white and ghostly in the shadows. I could sense a web of mycelium under the stone, linking all the different prongs together into one billowing thing. Still pure white, with odd pockmarks over the cap and little marbled lines weaving throughout.

But its gills.

Its gills.

Most mushrooms had gills that served as little more than their names—lines of fabric-like veils under their cap, serving for the release of spores. Already lacecaps had extended them, creating longer, lace-like structures dripping with bile to catch prey, and then this particular one had stretched them further into draping little things with corpses stuck to the tips.

But the reaper's cap took it much further.

Instead of anything resembling normal mushrooms, the gills had evolved into tendrils, spongy white flesh like the thornwhip algae that bloomed beneath each of its many caps. They were thin things, not made for choking—bile glistened over their surfaces, that rich, cloudy adhesive that made any creature quickly regret its life choices. And then, on their ends, was the real prize and meaning behind its name.

I curled my points of awareness around the reaper's cap and crooned.

Little bodies hung from its tips. Some were insects, chitinous limbs poking from the flesh, wings that fluttered and flapped with dazed imperfection. Others were burrowing rats, desiccated fur pulled taut over bones, blank eyes peering through an empty face.

They weren't truly alive, in any sense of the matter, but they were corpses that were now moving, in some mockery of life, in order to attract more prey. Surely this area of mushrooms was safe, with the buzz of dragonfly wings and rustle of rats moving around its base—safe enough for others to come.

And that was with it newly evolved, large but not particularly so—but it would grow, and grow, and grow, past bugs and rats and toads. To invaders.

Oh, I truly couldn't wait. What a little monster of mine, a beast in all shadows and deceit, another trickster to add to my dungeon. Not a living mind, in the way that the vampiric dryad had been before her evolution, but as much as I was loath to admit Ghasavâlk had been right about one thing. All things within a dungeon had a mind, and there was a lingering sort of consciousness to the reaper's cap, a whisper of original thought; most of it was hunger, of a deep and pressing ache for food, something that would never be satiated. One of those who desired strength.

It would stay on this floor for now, perfect as it was, but I could see a future in which it moved down. Not the Hungering Reefs, where mushrooms were rather an unoptimal choice, nor the Scorchplains, where the smog would keep others from noticing the entrancing corpses. But perhaps something lower. Something in the future.

I still had no real developed ideas for other floors, nor for how many I would want in total. There was still a faint push from my dungeon memories, the thoughts that weren't mine, telling me that I couldn't be greedy. Godly patrons would lock in mana for the floor they gave boons to, allowing me to move my core lower without subtracting mana, but it wasn't a permanent balm—if I descended too deep, then my upper floors would lose first mana, then awareness, and then my ownership over them entirely.

So no. I couldn't dig forever.

But I could dream, and I had many of those.

The reaper's cap shivered, a stone-backed toad corpse making a lurching jump forward in its mockery of living. One day, I would give it a paradise to live in.

But for now, I simply pushed a soothing point of mana into its channels, enough to encourage it, and then dove down three fours to the other change in light from within my halls. The Stone Jungle, and all those within.

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Luminous constrictors reached crowned cobras, unfurling their new hoods and hissing around flexing fangs. More ranged attackers for Veresia's horde, and those that could be healed if they were injured—Kriya was tucked far in the back of the den, watching with wide eyes as the evolutions completed around her, mana thick and choking in the air for the little Bronze. Doubtless another reason to stay obedient even if the geas broke—it was rather clear who held the power here.

But crowned cobras, nearly a dozen, slithered off to test their new bodies, and two more jeweltone serpents shook their pale heads and flicked their forked blue tongues. Kriya's clever hands would be the ones to push jewels into their scales, granting them the power they hadn't been able to fully master yet. Glorious.

One more serpent lurched from unconsciousness.

He was tucked in the far back, in a room that had once been left alone but Veresai had allowed him to use for evolution, the spectral serpent awoke. The beast who had taken Syçalia's attunement, the beat and bulk of her power, though he had been just a lowly luminous constrictor before. In truth, I would have preferred if perhaps Seros or Veresai would have gotten her power, but I could also see why this was best—both of them had attunements already. To take her intangibility would be to weaken themselves, rather than combining into perfection.

In an ideal world, I would strike out to go kill draconic creatures and psionic monsters like Ghasavâlk, anything to grant Veresai and Seros the perfect mana. But I was unfortunately limited to whatever strode blithely into my halls.

Well, perhaps if Nicau was successful, I could certainly choose certain targets to try and lure within. But for later.

For now, I watched the spectral serpent awoke.

He was some fifteen feet long and thin, clever as a whip, with mottled grey-white scales like shadowed seafoam. His eyes were a pale blue, fangs of pure bone, and an odd, black-lined pattern down the center of his spine. Curious. I peered closer.

Mana positively thrummed through that mark, choking in it, barely present in the rest of his body in comparison; the black line twined up around his eyes to the tip of his tail, only a scale or two wide, and crackling with power.

He uncurled from his slumber, tongue flicking out, head lilting as he raised it up. He peered around him, mana flickering with mana as his first evolution settled through him. His thoughts, still hazy, hissed with excitement.

Still a scar sat over his head, a patch of miscoloured scales. One of Syçalia's attacks, the one he hadn't been able to avoid, to flee from.

But no longer.

With a completely subtle prompt from me, the spectral serpent tensed, mana wisping over his scales like mist over water, and then disappeared.

It wasn't like Syçalia, erasing herself from the world and existing as little more than mana—instead, he became transparent, the white of his scales bleaching until only the memory of them remained, wavering and inconsistent. His face was a smear of white with two pale pinpricks of blue, wavering fangs beneath—and then one solid black line, hovering in ghostly space.

His anchor point, what kept him locked to Aiqith. Fascinating.

He appeared back with a rattling hiss, exhaustion pulling on his thoughts—something that would require training. Unfortunately understandable. This was a hells of a power to give to a creature in their first evolution, when before he had been little more than a snake overfond of brutish biting. He would need time to master it.

I slipped into Veresai's mind, humming over our shared connection. Let him train, I murmured, because I knew damn well she wouldn't if I didn't tell her to. Tyrannical overlords were not particularly forgiving, even if I hoped that Kriya would teach her about the importance of offering kindness alongside cruelty.

Although not too much. I didn't want Veresai to lose her violence; it was what made me love her. But a touch of forgiveness so that her followers would stay loyal rather than only fearful would go a long way, and a nervous, quiet human who had chosen to become a healer seemed like the most likely opportunity.

Veresai hissed at nothing, tossing back her crown of antlers, but pushed begrudged acceptance back to me.

Glorious. I grew more moss around her scales before flitting off to the other side of the Stone Jungle, still recovering from the Gold invasion, to a pocket far from their rivalry with the serpents.

In the largest side den, guarded by other mage ratkin who hissed at anything that got close with bared gnawing teeth and a flash of mana up their little hands, their leader awoke.

The forestfall ratkin.

Her emerald green eyes flicked open, a gentle flutter, thoughts stirring alive. With careful precision, her whiskers twitched and her ears raised. The other ratkin squeaked and scurried around her, paws grasping futilely as they kept from touching her. Which was exceedingly fair—she had been kind to them, taking them from the empirical nepotism that had spawned on the first floor, but she was also the one who had swallowed a jewel and descended four whole floors just to get more power. Evolution could do strange things to the mind, particularly when the one it was strengthening wasn't the most stable to begin with.

Their caution was warranted.

The forestfall ratkin squeaked, ears twitching, as she rose. She was enormous for a rat, oddly hunched, until she pushed up from her front paws and rested fully on her back. Her spine straightened out, tail lashing, and she looked almost at home standing like a humanoid. She and her other ratkin had risen to their back paws before, but it was often a limited gesture, little more than grabbing things or casting spells; now she looked like she wouldn't be going back to all fours.

Curious. I'd thought ratkin were still more rats than kin, not up to the level of sapience as kobolds; but much like the kobolds, in her evolution, she had only changed the specific epithet, not the species. Her other ratkin still had a ways to go before rising to her level of strength, but perhaps they were closer than I thought.

The forestfall ratkin shook herself, deep earthen-brown fur rustling—and rustling, because over her flanks and spreading up her back, was moss. Little flecks of jadestone moss, the same she'd swallowed the jadestone from, barely starting to grow but clearly rooted into her fur. The same colour as her deep green eyes.

Light crackled over her black nails, down to the fork in her tail, over her muzzle. Dangerous, particularly as she stood at over four feet tall, nearly the height of the original kobolds. A proper threat and a beast—one that Veresai wouldn't be able to intimidate quite so easily, especially considering that I hadn't named the Jungle Labyrinth for only its maze of tunnels. Someone who commanded plants would have plenty of strength to pull from here.

And that was before she could get the rest of her little tribe to evolve.

I pushed more consoling mana into her, a bright encouragement, and then dove down to my own project with reinvigorated vigor. Hells, my floors were getting stronger, day by day—it was time I gave them more tools to succeed. Not the fourth exit, considering I needed Nicau to tell me where, but certainly the other.

My plan for the paradise was rather simple. It wasn't going to be an enormous floor, one fraught with territorial disputes and madness, because I rather explicitly was going to be layering my ambient mana with enough innate compulsions not to fight that it would have quelled a siege. This was to be a haven, for raising families rather than raising strength.

Excluding all the shriveling little prey creatures that would be there to serve as food. Bully for them.

I hadn't ever had a problem before, considering most creatures overfond of dying often had reproduction rates to match, but perhaps I would make a smaller outcrop for rarer prey creatures, so that they could recreate without fear of death.

Maybe.

But it would be enough. It had to be.

I continued digging, my thoughts full of emerald-eyed rats and necromantic mushrooms.

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