Dragonheart Core

The mangroves rustled, stretching higher to their faux sky; in only a day of my mana-rich environment, they'd grown to nearly three feet tall, roots thickening and inching their way into my finally full canals.

I kicked up a slight breeze to watch their white leaves dance and shake against the backdrop of their blood-red bark. Ethereal, I could say; one glance and some part of my heart knew that they weren't from this age, born long ago and only brought back by the actions of some bright and bold creature.

Me, of course. The title of Resurrector still sung a merry tune in the back of my core.

But now, with the second floor properly full of budding vampiric mangroves, tangled tunnels and canals a-plenty, and the scant few creatures who had deemed it safe enough to venture below, I could finally spawn the schema I had been so desperately awaiting.

Seros raised his head from the den I'd carved for him, languishing around the base of my pillar with the tip of his tail dangling in the river. Be on guard, I instructed him, and chose one of the closest rooms; its canal was narrow and twisting, deep enough to drag some unwary fool under, but left plenty of land for terrestrial creatures to roam and make den.

Which I very much planned my newest arrivals to do.

Gathering my mana, I set about making them.

Halfway through my first, I earnestly considered waiting longer—even with my heightened regeneration rate and the steady stream my creatures provided me, I'd only gathered seventeen points of mana in-between guiding the mangroves' growth and seeding smaller creatures throughout the second floor to jumpstart the ecosystem.

Five bloody points later, a diminutive creature opened dark eyes and straightened up in its new home.

I guess.

It was short, maybe four feet tall from claw to horns, but its seemingly permanent hunch left it just above three. Scales of dull, pale red covered its body, its horns and claws the rough-hewn grey of igneous rock; ugh. Fire-drake descendents, then.

Better than the whimsical, idiotic moon-drakes, but not by much.

It blinked, awkwardly clasping and unclasping its claws as it adjusted to its new body—her new body, our liminal connection told me. Her mind was soft and unsure, still coming to terms with her brand new existence, but already I could see that was where her strength would lie. Her horns were short and curled back, useless for ramming, and her tail was a mere stub that barely came down to her digigrade ankles, no way to use as a weapon. Even her claws were wide and flat-tipped, like an engraver's tools left in an ocean current, worn dull by time and water.

It would have to be traps.

Hello, I pushed over our connection, taking my sweet time to not overwhelm her; she still stiffened, the spines over the back of her head rustling like they wanted to raise but not quite sure how. Welcome.

After a moment, she opened her fanged little mouth and warbled an answer back, something… almost draconic but lacking any of the actual bite the pronunciation so desperately needed. I decided to take that as an affirmative.

Seemed my mana-translations only extended to humanoid languages, unfortunately. Ah well. It wasn't like her thoughts were hidden to me anyway. I cast a point of awareness around; the snapping turtle had taken shelter in one of the rooms with the deepest canals, tucking itself between a rocky outcropping. I could sense silverhead's mana in its stomach, resting after a hunt; but, well. I doubted it would enjoy the next hunt so well.

Kobolds were creatures built around proving themselves in their desperate hunt to reach their great ancestors. I was beyond curious how this one would do. I gathered my mana and—

And then took another glance at her diminutive, weak form barely capable of killing a burrowing rat.

Fine.

Twelve points left—I did so hate to leave myself empty but it wasn't exactly like one kobold would make any threat for adventurers of the humanoid or animal variety. Their strength lay in their numbers and traps, which she had a distinct lack of the first and another lack in a way to properly set up or maintain the second. Traps were a long while off until my mangroves could provide the wood needed for tools so if she had any glancing chance of being able to kill the turtle, she would need numbers.

So. More time being empty on mana. To my infinite annoyance, I was growing used to the sensation.

She squawked, claws slashing painfully slowly as I wove two more kobolds into existence before her—one had almost dappled red scales, darker at his limbs and near pink at his chest, the other with wildly twisting horns that nearly wanted to escape from her head. Both fire-drake descendents.

Maybe I had to do something special to get actual sea-drake descendants. Certainly it couldn't be that hard to obtain another kobold schema; any dragon worth their salt would only have to flick their tail and an army of kobolds would arrive at the foot of their hoard, desperate to serve with the only reward being a mere moment of their attention. Even I would have been able to gather some at my call.

I paused.

Would I? I knew that aquatic kobolds existed, though they were evolved past the base form; but surely even for those evolved I still would have been a powerful enough dragon for them to serve.

What was I saying? Of course I was. I had hunted the great whales of the Ilera Sea, had gathered silver from civilizens dead long before the awakening of the sun, had swam to the bottom of the hidden trench and seen its lost dangers. Kobolds would have counted themselves lucky to even be in my presence, and I knew I was powerful enough to not need their praise or adoration, not when my only strength was warning enough to my enemies. If I had wanted any of their sniveling presences, I would hardly have needed to string the thoughts together before they would have swam their way down to my hoard.

…but I didn't know for certain.

The thought struck me with all the grace of a misplaced lightning bolt.

And I wouldn't be able to.

Because I was dead.

Because the dragon that had ripped his way up from the bottom and claimed his territory was now just some trophy in a pirate's bedroom, the claws that had cleaved thousands of lives from bodies carved down into swords, scales plucked from the skin they had once protected and woven into armour for the being that had killed me. Because I had been him but now I wasn't and there was nothing I could do.

Danger had kept me focused in the beginning. It was easy to lose myself in fiddling with mushrooms that didn't kill and snakes that didn't listen because there was always the thought of adventurers finding me, of the Dread Pirate returning to finish the job. That had kept me focused. Unconcerned.

But in staying focused, I had lost the only remnants of who I had been.

Where was my corpse? I had been right next to it—inches away from what I had been, what I had grown up to be; and my new title showed me that I could bring things back to life. Could I have shoved my soul back into my body, reawakened myself from an impossible death to rain fire and hell upon the city? Could I have stopped this whole mess from happening?

I would never fucking know, because I was dead.

The three kobolds, from where they had gathered to warble and croon at each other in their strange half-language, paused and glanced in my direction—some part of me could feel my mana sharpening to a dagger's point, my floors trembling as I latched deep into the mountain that had trapped me in what had so far been a willing prison; because I hadn't tried to escape. Hadn't tried to understand the soul magic I had undergone when I'd torn out my heart, hadn't wondered why or refused to do what my instincts had said.

I had been a good little dungeon core, doing everything needed of me.

Because I was dead.

What fragile hold I'd had over my constraint snapped.

Only two points of mana to my name but I raged with them nonetheless, thundering against stone walls and hurling tsunamis throughout my canals, ripping lacecaps loose and trembling mangroves down to their budding roots—the kobolds fled, scrambling and tearing at the ground to curl inside a den, my snakes latching tight to their outcroppings, the cave bear bellowing as falling rock struck his side.

Seros rose to his claws in a flash, nosing at my core with a panicked hiss; I hardly noticed. My mind focused on the one thing I couldn't see, the one thing I had hidden from myself in the midst of my plan to take revenge; the man who had killed me.

Because I was dead.

I howled, and the world shook in tandem.

-

Nicau felt, more than heard, the rumble spreading over the cove.

The hour was already late and he was picking his way back up from the docks, heading back to the alleyway he curled himself into at night to avoid any slavecatchers selling him for a quick goldpiece on the next market. Another dreadful day selling pigeons to pirates who didn't give a damn about him, about any of the others. Another day earning barely enough to pay the tax he owed for living.

The rumble, low and howling, echoed over the night sky.

He stopped, somewhere near the heart of Calarata, and glanced back to the cove; the water, mirror-black in the rising twilight, rippled like some great wave had slammed into the Alómbra Mountains opposite the city.

The place that Nicau knew sat an opening. An opening where four people had disappeared and never come back.

His mind raced.

Romei would go missing and stay so. Nicau had been the only one to mourn her, a wooden effigy carved from bone tools set adrift in the Ilera Sea, because even past her manipulations they had been friends.

But she was just a pigeoncatcher; the others were not.

Even if Albo was alive, he had never returned to claim his supplies, nor his position on the Diving Darling. If only one pirate disappeared, the captain would grumble, blame a whore with a knife that wasn't paid, and keep the crew understocked. Maybe even for a handful.

But if pirates kept disappearing, and soon there weren't enough going around to replace the more important positions, then captains would have to turn to other means of filling their ships. Perhaps people they never would have considered before.

Nicau waited a moment, just a moment, to see if he would disagree with himself. If he would search for another answer.

And then he turned on his heels, heading back to the shore where already the taverns rang with drunk patrons greedy for gold.

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