Dragonheart Core

The half of my mind I'd rather tossed to the whales came spluttering back to my consciousness.

I pulled away from the webweaver, who had taken to my mana's attention with a kind of fanatical clarity I… was a mite concerned about, really, and shifted over to where it was calling—threading through the Alómbra Mountains, deep in the twisting paths and all the madness there. Nicau, holding the shadowthief rat and looking rather put-upon, and my mana, paused in grinding through the stone.

Because through the stone was something else.

Fucking fantastic. A fitting distraction. I hadn't even had invaders to hold my attention—the last two groups had been large, enough of them I'd felt a stir of actual focus instead of letting my creatures handle themselves, but they'd both behaved oddly. Hardly poking their head into the Fungal Gardens, gathering a few creatures, before retreating. They didn't even get their blades dirty.

Useless humans. I needed their mana. And they'd been very rude to deprive me of it, considering what I had to my core wasn't much, with how much was going into carving this path to Calarata. But I had a steady ten points to spare. There were plenty of other things to be doing—namely with whatever the fuck was going on with Kriya, her mana trembling through a new influx and my tertiary connection to her humming with pride—but I rather felt the use was worth it.

New schemas. Gods, how I loved them.

Stand back, I murmured. Nicau nearly tripped over himself in his effort to move further back into the tunnel, clutching the shadowthief rat to his shoulder. My mana swirled around the stone, the jagged prongs of white-ivory gleaming through the rock; I brushed against the surface and then pushed in.

I was far below where the sarco crocodile had been and the distant memories of tropical jungles were gone; what met my core was cool stone and deep blackness, identical to what I had now, the marinating depths of old mountains. Mana pulsed through the bones, through what had been calcified in its tomb, and pushed marrow to move again—plucked memories and ideals and shapes from the rock—found the identity within the corpse–

Click.

The end of all things is patience. It has entirely adapted to the life of ambush; it will spend eons digging caves large enough for its enormous body, fitting itself inside. When it opens its mouth, it appears as if a normal cave—but where prey think to find a haven, they instead find a stomach.

What the fuck.

These existed? This was a thing?

Gods, the oceans were at least up front in the numerous ways they'd kill you. It was easy to rest assured you'd get a glance at the thing rending your head from shoulders before passing from this mortal plane.

I prodded around the schema newly-settling into my core; an impression floated back to me, something large and grotesque and uniquely suited for murder. Nearly all of the creature was mouth, enormous and, well, cavernous, four stubbly legs underneath and pale eyes. Jagged, unsymetrical teeth—mimicking stalagtites, maybe?—and a tongue like a boulder. Hells, that thing was a nightmare.

My nightmare, though. Already I could feel the potential.

It really, really wouldn't fit in my planned eighth floor, at least not as a showcase; I could litter a few around the bottom, but I was already predicting that the mana cost on something large enough to pretend to be a cave was going to be more expensive than I wanted to spend on testing. I'd hold off on this schema for a moment before sinking my fangs into it.

Excitement still flickered through me. Maybe it could be one of the last finishing touches on my Scorchplains, with the darkness that would hide the beast from even the most perceptive of invaders; or perhaps my ninth floor could be based around them, a maze of dens armed with teeth.

I hadn't added a single tree to my eighth floor and I was already daydreaming of the ninth. I was nothing if not consistent.

But for now, I consumed the last of the fossil, breaking down the beast frozen in the walls for the trickles of mana from the bones. Nicau watched, eyes wide, as the enormous shape of the thing revealed itself; its mouth was wider than the tunnel, sloping down for edges and teeth, basalt locking its maw in place.

I imagined Nicau would be a little more wary before entering his den back in the Hungering Reefs from now on out. Good. When next to Seros or Veresai, he still hardly acted as was befitting one of my Named. Even Akkyst was working with Bylk to claw out understanding from his blessing faster than Nicau had.

But insults aside, I couldnt let myself get too distracted here. I still had to finish the tunnel and heart tree, preparations nonwithstanding. So very much to do, and none of it ending.

I left half my consciousness back with my Named, the shadowthief rat squeaking at shadows, and flew back up to the Haven. That webweaver, still twitching through thoughts much too large for its insipid head, was going to evolve into something worthy of Nenaigch, and by the gods, it was going to do it soon.

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Deep in the shadows, Shoth peeled his lips back from his fangs.

It had been a particular kind of misery to dress himself up as a passing adventurer—to shave away recognizability when his attunement made for a martyr. His fangs, garish and extended, always visible no matter how he closed his mouth. Nails grown as claws, clothes dripping with crusted scarlet—thrown aside for leathers and a purposely-overgrown beard to hide the contours of his face.

But that didn't matter. What mattered was that he stood on the wooden dock of the beach outside Calarata, and he looked up to the mountains before him.

Because it had worked. Because it had worked.

He didn't remember whose idea it had been. Something shared over pints of ale, when the Dread Pirate seemed very far away indeed—because Shoth wasn't a fucking idiot, thank you. For all Varcís Bilaro could say that he was allowing anyone to make an attempt at the core, you only needed to be Silver for so long before you learned no one ever gave power up easily. Shoth's attunement was a sharp thing, one he was very proud of, and he'd torn the secret of how to achieve it from a dead man's throat the second before he killed him. No one would ever be allowed to follow in his footsteps.

To offer up a dungeon core was a fool's belief.

But what happened was that three adventuring groups, bound together only by Calaratan standards, had decided on a plan that seemed uniquely foolproof and fantastically rewarding, and now they were enacting it.

The first step—easy. Gather the crews, the supplies, all the various things necessary for certain miseries. Lock down three sequential days of delving the dungeon.

The first group went in. Poked their head into the dungeon then left immediately, no risk, and drew straws for who would stumble out of the mountains, covered in blood and shaking, tale of a massacre on their tongue.

While the others stayed within the mountain itself.

The second group went and followed the pattern. Another group as large as they could manage, another solitary survivor with woe and fear.

And in the end, what happened was that there were some eight adventurers hidden within the mountain, a combined party stronger than Guildmaster Lluc would ever let inside the dungeon, and now the third group was set to join them. A total of twelve, thrice what the Adventuring Guild said could delve, ready to carve through the heart and claim the core at the center.

Already that was a plan for creative minds, but Shoth was smarter than that. Or at least he would say he was. There was some discontentment in his gut in how he couldn't… really remember who had come up with the finer details; why there was only faint memories of pints and taverns and a plan scraped from hangovers. But it was fine. What mattered was that there was a plan.

And the plan was safety.

Shoth wasn't wet behind the ears. Though he hadn't had the privilege, he knew the stories of High Lord Thiago's dungeon—and the gods that roosted in its floors. The divine intervention, the prayer-places, the mana found in the depths.

Which was why in his party, a ramshackle bunch of equally-hungry fighters who took blood as an answer, there was a new face who decidedly did not fit in.

Tall, thin, and layered in nature, standing on the pebbled beach like a king's throne room and rotten dungeon combined, was Aedan.

A priest of Rhoborh.

Aedan tilted his head back, hair tumbling over his shoulders. There was a kind of serene clarity in his face—fitting, that a priest would marvel at clouds and giants and death with the exact same infuriating calm. Moss grew over his robes, bracers with tangled greenwood, a diadem of seeds. Shoth couldn't have found a more perfect pacifist if he'd tried.

But of the three deities known to inhabit the dungeon, Rhoborh was decidedly a better choice than Nuvja or Mayalle. Bit less bloodthirsty, that one. All Shoth had needed to do was spin some bullshit about protecting the priest in his descent to honour Rhoborh, and he'd been plenty ready to trot along.

So—if the dungeon got snippy with them before they snatched up its core—Shoth would neatly kick Aedan forward and make him do some godly fuckery to keep them from getting killed.

Twelve adventurers and a priest to boot. The core was as good as theirs. And because he'd made Aedan do the talking to Guildmaster Lluc, they'd been allowed to delve, the First Mate none the wiser. And he'd stayed unknowing up until the dungeon rose beneath new leadership.

The idea was more delicious than ale or wine or blood. Shoth stood a little taller at the thought, let it trickle over his mind even as he completed the last of his preparation for the delve. Lluc had already cleared them to enter, but there was nothing under checking for supplies. Particularly with someone new to adventuring in the party.

At his side, Myra kept Aedan fixed with a lukewarm apathy.

Shoth's group was strong, brutal, and gnawing at the bit for power. As his second in command, Myra had teeth enough for them all. It was only the dream of the plan that led her to allowing untested Aedan in their midst.

His attunement made him very good at barely moving his mouth. He leaned down under pretense of adjusting his armour, whispering out the corner of his lips. "Does he suspect anything?"

Myra raised an eyebrow, a dark and bullish laugh echoing in her throat. "Not a chance," she murmured back. "Right fucking idiot, that one. We'll get in fine."

Shoth grinned.

The plan. Enter the mountains, meet with the rest of the stragglers within, and then break upon the dungeon like a hurricane.

Shoth flexed his attunment—his fangs rattled, sharpening, mana coating their surfaces to turn them into flying daggers. Myra's own mana lurched to follow, a strengthening call of an eaarthquake; even Aedan's, the smell of a forest after rain.

The Alómbra Mountains before them, and the dungeon beneath.

No longer would he scrounge for scraps in the cobbled streets and miseries there. It was time to become more.

-

The rasp of many-segmented claws against stone—the hiss of pale breaths in the dark. Spears and garbled tongues.

Something rising beneath the mountains, caged by mercurial madness. Caged for years beyond reckoning.

Something being woken up.

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