Dragonheart Core

Seros swam down as a ghost through the currents.

Tail flicking and webbed claws tearing at the depths, he slipped past the evening-dark waters and into the grey-blue far below, to the base of the mountains that housed his target. It could not be truly called shelter, really, even for one like him who had spent much of his life in a rocky crevice and thought it paradise; the mountain had been notched, a strip carved out and hollowed near the base, with a city shoved into the place left behind.

The merrow had never been unconquerable, even past when they had opened a new hell into the dungeon, but Seros had at least thought they'd be more capable than this. A cold world, tucked away from the sun and the current, deep below a fragile kind of existence. There was still no mana here, nothing but empty grey and a drag against his scales, the tug of a current without a dungeon to guide it. What existence was that?

And what existence was the force behind the current he could feel, in a part of his brain that murmured only into gentle blue-green for the blessing of the depths? Not the Otherworld, not the dungeon, he knew—but some twisted reflection. A mockery.

He shook his head, bubbles twining through his fangs, and entered Arroyo. The merrow haven, land of their birth; where they lived and fought and died.

The city was barely standing.

Seros knew destruction; he'd seen the wreckage caused by the high invasion, where fifty souls marched in with death on their minds; he'd watched the dungeon carve through stone with deliberation or shriek and wreak havoc until the mountains trembled. And this city had felt all of that and more—a shell of a place, still standing with none of the deliberation that needed to some with it. Just husks, where memories of life had existed.

What had happened here?

Movement, from the corner of his eyes.

The last remnants of Otherworld mana hummed in his chest.

He paused, letting the current tug him further along; another flicker of movement below, a reflection off something further within, but he kept his gaze fixed forward. The light didn't move, didn't reappear further within. Just one flash and then gone, the only lasting effect being a curl of mana, slowly filtering through the surrounding water.

It was an illusion. There wasn't a merrow there—there had never been one. Seros twisted, rotating around with eyes narrowed; but every flash of scales and pale light was nothing. The tunnels stayed empty; the dens stayed hollow. A lifeless city in what had once been something sprawling and enormous.

…where were they?

Seros had come to investigate, to scrape the mystery free from the marrow, but excitement in his chest was from the hunt. The kill, if he could find one deserving from it, something to test his fangs against before dragging their corpse back to the dungeon. And when he'd been near the surface, hovering in the cradled arms of a current that didn't seem to listen to him, he'd seen movement. Flash of scales and a many-armed beast, slinking from tower to tower, grey stone against the darkened overhang.

But now that he was here, there was nothing. Just shadows and their memories.

A rumble built in his chest.

He stopped looking for movement and looked instead at what was left—at the towers, spiraling upward and out, the majesty of pillars that would never again reach the peaks they had once been. Delicate strands reaching up, anchored to stone above and below, with holes for traversal but now holes from powerful blows carved through their supports until they broke beneath them. Furrows, plowed into fields of sand. Grey stone blackened and warped under power.

Ruin and rubble, riddle and raze.

Familiar.

Seros' tail lashed—he had felt fear for his life until he was elevated beyond it, when mortal worries stayed in the hands of those who perished beneath his claws and fangs. When the dungeon with its unconquerable power wove together stone into paradises from the corpses of those fallen.

But there had been one such corpse that had not received a victory upon its death. One that had only brought fear back from the death he had torn from it.

A corpse black and endless, with twin maws.

Pitch-shark.

This wasn't what it had wrought, what destruction it had leveled within the dungeon—because he knew that what it had fought had been young. It had to be, to fit through the entrance at all, the dungeon had told him; that what information learned from its corpse had said the one he encountered was little more than a youngling chosen for how small it was.

What had happened here was more.

An adult.

Seros didn't feel fear. He didn't allow it, not with his power, not with the dungeon.

And so it wasn't fear that made him latch onto the closest tower and splay his neck around, tendrils of mana racing out from his scales as he sought to see if anything was around. Any last remainder from the carnage.

From the old carnage, in truth. Ruin and rubble, but the kelp forest had returned, and the place had been swept clean of jagged edges until water-softened ones remained. No, this destruction hadn't been recent, though he didn't know enough about ocean patterns to know how long ago it was. But long enough for the merrow to move elsewhere and fake living here.

Where had they gone?

Anything to flee the pitch-shark, that much he could attest to; but close enough to leave their spells here, to still invade the dungeon en force and trade with Calarata. What could they have left behind to show where they went, without being enough to summon back the pitch-shark?

His thoughts roiled at the memory. But he knew the pitch-shark had eaten mana, drained its surroundings to desiccated husks of corrosion—so perhaps it was magical. They could leave a mana-filled trail, content in the fact that the pitch-shark would destroy it with its presence long before it could discover where it led.

But what trail could be left in open ocean?

Seros let go of the tower and drifted back, twining around a crumbled ruin of a den and the remains of fish skeletons not yet swept away. Perhaps runes, those ancient traditions, or something more physical, in whatever language those under the water could carve out?

Swept away.

Currents.

If there was one thing that could be followed in the sea, one that layered with mana just indecipherable to those who didn't understand how to taste for it, how to feel it—one thing that answered something greater and obeyed, even if not him.

Or, perhaps, not him yet—lost to their foolish ideas of personhood and freedom when a budding sea-drake swam in their midst. But for now, they followed the song of some false master, and to that tune they danced.

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A dance could be followed.

It was antithetical to all he knew, to the gravitas that built and spilled forth like mist from his scales, but–

Seros closed his eyes. Extended his fins and webbed claws, the frills lining his tail, and let the current tug him forward.

It was slow, meandering, and infuriating—there was none of the elegance when he controlled the water, when a thought meant he spiraled up or around his enemies, when a single flick of his tail lashed him forward as though lightning; this tripped and fumbled and stumbled along like a newborn, egg-fresh, incapable. There was nothing here he would be happy to let the dungeon see.

But forward he moved, in flawed pattern, tail flat and claws bound outward, and the current pulled him. To the kelp.

His tail lashed.

The bloodline kelp back in the dungeon was a distraction, a block; enormous lines of amber-gold from sand to surface, nearly filling the Underlake, swaying and latching with the whirlpool. For those larger and inelegant, it was merely a blockade, something to swim around as they hunted for lesser prey. For those smaller, it was a place to hide, to tuck away like cowards until the threat moved on.

But it wasn't normal.

The algae, green and endless, filling the walls and sand; the moss that grew in abundance in terrestrial worlds, the trees. Seros knew plants, how they worked; and he knew those that were elevated above base plants. The kelp wasn't beyond, like the mangroves were, but it wasn't… below, either.

Some kind of awareness. Something that gave teeth to the amber-gold strands.

And the current, dragging him along in dreadful apathetic langunuity, was taking him to the kelp. Seros tensed up, tail lashing, but didn't stop it; wherever this would go would lead him to where the true merrow lived, beyond the broken remains of a pitch-shark attack and faked flashes of scales. He was going to find their secrets.

Or, at least, he would have, if something hadn't wrenched the current out of alignment just before he could disappear into the gold.

Seros fumbled, limbs spreading wide, the flat of his internal mana snapping out to hold him in place—his gravitas hummed and rachetted to life, the near-imperceptible command to kneel, bubbles exploding from his maw.

A merrow swam out of the kelp.

Seros narrowed his eyes.

It was an ungainly thing, even scaled, with its thin, lopsided arms and fragile chest, the tail of a fish stretching up to meet a stretched, sinuous body like an eel. A deep teal, green-blue-green, with silver etchings over the edges of its tail's scales and the claws of its grasping hands. Something of… coral was clutched in its webbed fingers, etched with a design, and amidst the dried kelp strapped on its body and layered over its weaker parts—all of it—there was a ring of jewels perched on its throat.

A merrow.

The first he had seen since entering the cove.

Seros hissed, the only thing of his terrestrial ancestry he had been unwilling to give up; bubbles trickled through his fangs, echoing oddly in the water.

The merrow lashed its tail, clutching the coral thing even harder. Its eyes flicked around them, scanning the hollowed ruin of what had once been a den to rival all other dens, but there was nothing—just Seros. Just death, imminent.

Seros coiled around himself, claws churning at the water. Was this the moment they fought? The merrow before him was weak, perhaps on its first evolution—or Bronze, whatever moronic names humanoids came up with—and without a metal claw to wield. Mana, yes, but it wasn't fed by a dungeon's song; it would run out.

But he held, at least for a heartbeat. He did dearly want to rend the useless thing's tail from its chest but the dungeon had sent him for answers, and he was not as skilled as it; he couldn't get knowledge from corpses. He had to discover why they had done what they did.

The merrow screeched at him.

Seros nearly killed it on the principle of the thing.

It repeated the sound, a deep, bubble-filled screech that echoed through the waves—irritating and meaningless. Seros wasn't Nicau, aided in all words and expressions and other things to communicate when fangs would do the job well enough. After a moment where Seros continued to gather all mana within his channels, the merrow switched to something else; clicks, low and sharp, resonance against the water. Interesting. Still meaningless.

Was it trying to communicate? Foolish. A predator did not spare prey for reasons of sharing the same tongue; if it thought it would squawk at him and he would curl over, it would not have long to regret that decision.

And then the merrow… rumbled.

Seros paused.

There was no stopping in open water, but he stopped deliberately holding his position still—he drifted up and around as his head swiveled in towards the sound, eyes narrowing. It hadn't been the screeches or the click-language, without words or understanding, but something… older.

He didn't know what.

The merrow's white-ringed eyes—and not white like humans, with colours intermixed and sharpened, just pure white with drops of black in the center—narrowed, its clawed hands raising. It rumbled again, something deep and thrumming. Almost melodic.

Almost like a song.

Seros flicked his tail and drifted down, doing his damnedest to seem composed despite how the current fought against him. The merrow's eyes locked onto his, despite being half of his size, a batifish against the predator—but it rumbled like a song, and it spoke to him. Not words. He had never seen any point in words, in the fleeting construction of sounds for organization—meaning would come where meaning was needed.

And the rumble had meaning. Faint, indistinct, coming through murky waters—but a feeling of wariness. Tension. Battle-ready.

Not a challenge, but a statement. The merrow was not one to flash its stomach, even though it must have known there was no chance for it to survive against a draconic monitor.

The last time he'd fought merrow, it had been in the murk of the Underlake, with a goddess-made whirlpool and dungeon-fed mana. Seros had been a god there, undefeatable, a monster of teeth and claws.

But here, surrounded by currents that listened to a song apart and waters without easy obedience to his calls, Seros was no longer above and beyond. He was no longer the first Named, not to this merrow that had no idea of the honour.

But just because it was not his home, did not make him weak.

A life he had spent weak. This merrow would not be the one to take that from him, no matter how quickly and lithely it moved through open waters—it had secrets, secrets of the sea, and Seros would claw them from its corpse.

The dungeon had sent him to the cove to learn the sea—to learn that which he would become. Already he had seen the majesty of the cove's size, felt the disobedience of the currents, heard the murmur of a distant, ancient song.

Seros would not fail.

The merrow saw this, perhaps, widening its white-ringed eyes—and then it turned, tail lashing, and disappeared into the kelp. Trusting whatever defense was within to protect it.

He pursued.

-

The beast wasn't sea-born.

Cássio darted through the bloodline kelp like the night itself chased him, wave-warden gripped tight in his fist and every drop of mana urging the current to take him faster; he could hear it behind him, the savage speed of a monster, even one untrained and fumbling.

Katharra below, why did this happen to him?

It had been as it always had been; swimming through the remains to harvest the nets they set up in Katharra's currents, for his goddess to deliver them what food she felt they deserved. Expertly hidden, tucked away in corners and crevices, both to hide from the prey and the predators; for Arroyo could not be discovered. Not again.

Arroyo was less than a sea turtle's shell, a shattered piece of legacy now little more than a shield. Great, once, and every memory of that greatness made raw by its current lack; by the fragile hope that perhaps one day they could reach those heights again.

But not now, and not while the tyrant who called himself Lord lived in the cove above.

So Cássio crept through murky waters to the surface above and took fish below to his people, through endless disguises and defenses and an existence that didn't feel like existing. Survival.

But now there was a beast. One of the sea, with blue-green scales and water attunement and the faintest grasp of the sea-tongue, but it wasn't sea-born; it didn't know the push and the pull of currents, didn't know how to movement and twist, trying to stay locked in place. What would have seemed like a harpoon loosed from a hunter's hand to terrestrial creatures was clumsy ungainliness as it swam, no true knowledge, no understanding of where control ended and the Song began.

To be discovered was a dangerous thing. Fatal, if it came to that.

Arroyo would not be discovered by a beast like this.

Cássio reached out and grasped for the Song, for the melody Katharra offered with the love of an ancient. The currents opened before him, tugging him to follow—one spiraling up, one curling around and out of the bloodline kelp, a third twisting through the old shattered towers.

But no.

The beast was not sea-born; it didn't know the Song, know the call of the inevitable, know that the world gave what she gave and all there was to do was respond. Sing back the Song.

Cássio darted down into the hidden current, the one protected by Katharra—the one that headed down into the true Arroyo, past the façade shown to the outsiders, to the Dread Pirate and his monsters.

Let the beast meet the true power of the sea-born.

Let the beast meet its end.

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