Dragonheart Core

Shoth bared his teeth at the darkness. Even through adjusted eyes and a flicker of mana he grabbed for in the burgeoning beginnings of his Gold-sense, the caverns of Alómbra Mountains were far from hospitable, and those in the path of a dungeon even less so. But it meant progress, when the shadows broke; because, after fighting through the darkness and the stone and the lingering fear past the pride that his lies to Lluc hadn't been successful and the First Mate was about to descend on them with all fangs drawn, Shoth had finally emerged into an opening and found eight souls waiting. The two other groups for their big invasion, the shaky truce that would last all the way until they got to the core, and chivalry descended into who struck first. Adventurers for a dungeon's core.

His party made an impression honed to as sharp a point as it could have; him in the front, head high and shoulders back, even past the performative cohesion of a normal adventurer instead of who he was. Myra at his side, lips pursed and arms crossed. Therrón, always moving, hands twitching at his sides and sapphires swinging from his ears. Even Aedan, threatening as a beaver cub, moss ever-fluctuating down his robes. Silvers all, and some on the cusp of more.

Quartz-lights came to greet him, crackling through the darkness as soon as it was revealed they weren't Lluc Cardena Ferré tromping in to carve open all their throats. Remarkably polite, really.

But it was half the reason they were trying this. The dungeon was new; the Adventuring Guild, moreso. Calarata was ruled by the Dread Pirate but it was still a lawless place, layered over with incompetence and scoundrels who cared more for gold than order. Soon, the Guild would be hammered out, all avenues snapped shut—this was the only time such a blasé scheme could work, and it would only work once. So Shoth had gathered what he thought was the best.

Four of the souls served in the party of Tier de Azkhal, a monster of a man who likely would have cut for quite the figure if he hadn't left his wilderness home to join a legion of pirates and raconteurs. Umber skin wrought with scarlet tattoos, locs drawn and bound with bones, a bitten snarl that matched darker creatures. Likely some woebegotten past, if Shoth gave a shit, but he didn't. Three stood in his side—a tall, thin woman with blue lines over grey-tinged skin, ears sharper than most humans; a pale man wrapped in streaks of black, not quite tattoos but embedded depths, looking at home in the shadows and drifting from the quartz-light; and an outlier insofar as personality, with a half-nervous half-agreeable smile and brown eyes softened at the corners with crow's feet, though the twin rows of throwing daggers over his chest did some work.

The other four belonged to Alda Thrudkurbiz, a dwarven exile from Athábakhanú who'd taken to Calarata much like a fish to the alcohol she drowned herself in. Shoth's memories of this whole plan were stained in the air of taverns and a worrying sentiment that he couldn't quite remember who had come up with this, but little doubt this was where he had met her, tankards piled high and barkeeps kicking her out when she sold her own brew under the table. Her party was stout to match her: a short man with oddly bulbous nose and inhuman quicksilver eyes, clutching two axes and legions of rage under his bitter brow; a lanky woman still littered with a streetrat's gauntness, shadows curling and wrapping about her hands, and–

…and a child.

Small, slight, with ratty clothes and a rattier face. Even next to Alda's stature he was short, shoulders curled in and an unsettling quiet lanced over his face. Shoth remembered him, because it was more a laugh to see such a miserable tyke in a tavern, but he'd rather thought Alda had been using him as a mule or some shit. Not a member of her party.

You didn't bring someone still in bloody nappies on a quest to claim a dungeon core.

"Stars and fucking morrow to you, too," Alda said, smile carved into her ruddy face. "Had a right cheerful trip over, then?"

Shoth squared his stance. "Until I got here," he said. "Why the hells is there a brat?"

Alda elected to ignore him for a moment, pawing over her chainmail to tug out a flask and throw it back. Something strong enough it scorched his nose trickled through the curls of her beard. "Insurance," she said, patting her stomach. "If the dungeon wants to bare its little teeth, he'll put in a good word."

Gods, this prissy fucking bastard.

Shoth wasn't much a fan of grudges. Hard to have them, in a city that demonstrated with crystalline clarity that they were all beneath the boot of the Dread Pirate, no matter if Bronze or Gold hugged their larders and kept them warm. Just Varcís fucking Bilaro, no idea of his strength or his intentions, other than the gore that littered open-air docks whenever someone got too far in their cups to keep their trap firmly shut. Everyone in Calarata hated the Dread Pirate, because of course you did, when his taxes made bedfellows of the Underdark and the Dread Crew had an annual competition for how many poor bastards they could shake down for the greatest prizes. All's fair in love and war, and he had learned to cut love from that conversation long ago.

So no, Shoth didn't particularly keep to grudges. Piss on someone when they're below you and weave lovely poems of their death when they were out of earshot, but live your life angry at everyone, and survival won't have room to poke its head into the gap. Better to simply be a cynical bastard and hold a grudge against the world instead of its peons.

But it was rather hard to ignore that she'd copied his fucking strategy. At least Aedan was a near-competent priest to make up for his inexperience.

The pale child blinked up at him, wide eyes dark in his empty face. Something under his lips twitched.

Make no mistake, Shoth knew what kind of corpses he'd be leaving once he got to the core, and he didn't care for foppish fears of karma or soul retribution. Just that he was expecting to have an army at his back, and a prat not yet up to his waist wasn't in the cards.

"That's a bloody child," Shoth said, because she seemed idiotic enough he had to point that out. "Risk your own neck bringing an infant, but I'm not going to have the entire plan crumble because of your sentimentality."

Alda snorted, scratching at the singed hairs of her beard. "He's plenty strong, you rat bastard," she said, not without cheer. "Keep poppin' a nose into shit and wonder why you stink. Settle that head on your shoulders, allqucha, and let me bother up the storms."

Allqucha? Gods, he hated Athábakhanú types. At least with the countries and city-states sprawled around Calarata and Leóro, he could guess the word by its similarities, but he got nothing from their harsh tongue. Easy enough to guess it was an insult, at least.

Across the way, Azkhal just shrugged. Not a Calaratan native himself, though he'd been here for long enough that child endangerment wasn't so much an element but a fact of the universe. Aiqith wasn't kind, and Calarata even less so. And he'd had a day to adjust to the idea, considering they'd all been waiting under the mountain for Shoth's group to come through. So he was fine with it, then.

Shoth was the only fucker here with any sense, and yet with these idiots he had to play. He glared at the child and thought of only the dungeon and the prize that lay golden at its center.

"Fine," he said, like he was conceding only because he didn't care enough to argue. "I'll have the dungeon make you a pint-size coffin when we get to the core."

"You're polite as a street whore, qanra," Alda said cheerily, taking another swig. "And so we're pretty and content enough to weep eulogies, who're you walking with?"

Right. Introductions. The others had a day under the mountain with nothing but company; likely they were familiar with each other, while Shoth only had blurry memories of a tavern to guide him. He grimaced around his name.

Myra flicked a hand up alongside, short and sharp, because her attunement meant she could be as bitter and cruel as she liked and people would still pay a premium to keep her at their sides. Therrón was a shade calmer, tugging a bead of water from his sapphire earrings to demonstrate his powers.

Aedan—the blind idiot—was squinting with some confusion at the eight others, because that hadn't exactly been the deal they'd brought to him, but he was a polite motherfucker and didn't say anything. Shoth was still going to kill him the moment this was over, but he did appreciate these spineless fools that took everything offered to them at face value. Made his life immensely more manageable.

He did try to introduce himself with Rhoborh's name, all the fanceries of priesthood and asking if any were here to offer worship to the God of Symbiosis, but Shoth coughed a dozen times to drown the meaningless words.

There. Introduced. Now their turn.

"Azkhal," the man said, with a voice deep as the mountains they were in. He nodded to each member of his party in turn—Nolla, the grey-skinned woman with blue wrapping around her eyes, twin blades bright in her hands. Hulimat vas-Yohua, whose shadow lurched when he spoke. And Pau, who made up for his entire party's gruff viciousness with a bobbed greeting and warm smile.

"Alda Thrudkurbiz," the dwarf said, scratching at her throat. Ossega, with the quicksilver eyes and rage of a champion. Lanc, who called up puppet illusions woven of shadows. And the infant in their midst, who said Gnat to the ground instead of them. Fucking marvelous.

But that was the group. Twelve strong, ready for a core, ready to fight. Entirely unaware of how the others functioned or how they could work by each other's side.

And glorious to know that problems already simmered; Lanc—light, how uncreative, did adventurers know that not every single one of them had to change their name into something with branding—met Hulimat's eyes with something like derision. Two shadow users, separate schools, both Silvers.

Right. They could fight it over on their own time, which might be nothing, because he was far and above willing to cut through anyone in his path to claim the core.

"Move," Shoth commanded, because he'd be damned if any of these other fuckers were going to be taking leadership of this adventure.

Alda laughed—gods, he hated her—and with twelve as one, they moved into the dungeon.

Immediately, the air warmed and coiled, awareness like mana slithering over his skin; there was something there and alive, and it saw him. Eerie shit.

The floor, at least, was what he expected—a long, shadow-drenched place filled with flowing straits of mushrooms and algae. Gold and silver gleamed from every wall, stalactites littered with gems and jewels a-plenty, but that was how dungeons got you; slowed you down with lesser treasures to keep you from their depths. Once Shoth got his mitts on the core, he could command it to make him a legion of diamonds big as his head, and he'd never struggle again for anything.

His gaze did linger on the clutch of fist-sized brilliance right above, but the fantasy dream pushed him onward. The Scholar had told them of five known floors, and likely one or two unknown below that—they had to move quickly, before their energy waned and problems rose in their wake.

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And move they did.

Shoth was a hardass and proud of it—his party, as such, was honed. Therrón played for defense, calling up water from some distant pond to coil around all their heads and feet, defense from those unseen, and Myra pressed a strand of mana into his back to feed his concentration so he didn't even have to think about maintaining it. She was a gift any party would kill for—the ability to hold entirely separate tasks, so that Therrón could still wield great whips of water for those that got too close; a walking defensive wall, held intact by only one water mage.

The others were hardly slacking, either, even in the unthreatening realm of the first floor.

Ossega had a viciousness to him that was only matched by twin axes; Silvers were they all, where lesser things were just that—lesser—but he didn't give two shits. Anything that came close was carved open, bone to metal, their corpses tossed behind. Hells, Alda and Lanc barely did anything, tossing up shadowed puppets to distract larger groups or stomping over those stealthy, and Gnat was a ghost at their heels. Whatever ancestry Ossega had with his quicksilver eyes and short stature, axes were his real strength.

Azkhal's party, regrettably, was strong enough Shoth kept on his toes. The man had an animality to him, something fierce and claw-bound, and the edged club he carried did a remarkable job of crushing prey into gore before they had much a chance to fight back. Nolla was a dancer fierce as ocean currents, twin blades, though she did hold herself to more poise than the toothed Ossega, only focusing her energy on those that needed it. Hulimat stayed to the center, but his shadow reached out with these terrible long claws, sinking into the deaths of those that got too close.

Pau had a reason for being on Azkhal's team, beyond his agreeable personality that likely kept them from being kicked out of every building they entered—his throwing daggers were never wasted, because his mana suffused through the room like a living thing. It wasn't just awareness, the way that Gold-sense was; he could feel eyes, he described it, the pulse of sightlines on his skin and others. So if ever there was a beast in the shadows looking to make a snack, he could feel it, and either throw a dagger or alert the rest of them.

Such as now, when his finger drifted over to a flash of pale white scales tucked in the grey hollow of a den near the ceiling. Invisible under Nuvja's protections, beyond Pau's attunement. Not one to waste a dagger, considering the height to claim to retrieve it, he didn't move.

But it was there, and none of them were in the mood to be blinded.

Shoth felt the simmer and pulse of mana. The thing under the surface of his own skin, the waking awareness of a body that had drowned itself in mana, and sent a command.

From his lips, his left incisor launched forward and slammed into the luminous constrictor.

Scales were scales and bone was bone but his was mana, and his fang punctured through its skull before it had but a moment to realize its impending death—a half-martyred hiss and it slumped over dead, the flash of its scales ended before it could begin. There, a thread between them; Shoth tugged, mana coiled like a web between his hands, and his tooth shot back into his mouth. Settled right in, and injected him with a pulse of mana from the scarlet coating its surface.

A bloody kind of attunement. One unfamiliar and unwanted.

Everything he preferred to be, and he did nothing to hide the pride in his eyes as he turned back to the group.

Alda had hesitance scrawled over her lips, enough her beard couldn't hide the expression. Shoth preened.

"Well?" He said, eyebrows raised. "Have you anything to offer for yourself, or am I to defend both you and the child?"

The hesitance drained for ire. Alda raised a hand to her waist, where numerous vials sat in anticipation; but rather than pop one open, she turned to the side, to the slight thing that trotted at her heels. "Oi, Gnat," she called, though he wasn't much more than a foot away from her. "Get us a lead, will ya?"

The boy nodded and dropped to his knees. Azkhal almost stepped on him.

He stretched out his arms to settle them on the algae, cushioning his wrists in the green. Alda took a step back and Ossega took up a stationary guard, apparently used to this, though the boy couldn't have been more than ten summers old; however long he'd been in their party, he'd made quite the impression.

And he certainly made one now.

"Hush," Gnat murmured, soft as morning mist. He uncurled his hands and there, sat in the pale skin of his palms, were clustered spots of black; they twitched and moved and were almost like eyes, which was enough bullshit Shoth was willing to take the risk to just kill him there, until white bled through the holes. Silk.

Hells, the little bastard was spider-woven, or some shit. Enough that every cave spider, less than a problem, less than a concern, immediately scuttled over to him with beady eyes upturned. The walls, the dens; they bled through their previous shadowed disguise to swarm at his sides.

From under his lips, his teeth moved in a way Shoth—who counted himself as knowledgeable of teeth—knew they weren't supposed to move. Mandibles, pressing against his skin.

He clicked. They clicked back.

"There," Gnat said, and now that Shoth was looking for it he could see how the boy's mouth moved, how something lurched under eloquence and traded instead for a lingering bite. "Follow the fourth stream to avoid the beasts."

The beasts? Ealdhere had mentioned lunar cave bears, tucked in dens in the back. Had he asked the spiders for a path through the floor?

"Right," Myra said, dubious. "That's your fucking attunement?"

Gnat blinked at her. Pale skin, black eyes.

You didn't make it as far around the block as she had without learning to shut up and accept some things. Myra sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "'course. Lead on."

The boy pawed over the algae, spiders clambering away now that his… rain dance summons had finished, and indicated the fourth stream they were supposed to follow; it was a thin thing, dancing through the algae and mushrooms, tight in the center and unwavering. Good as any.

Alda had a grin on her face. Shoth wanted to tear it off.

But the path was fast enough, and the critters no larger than those they'd already encountered—up until the end revealed a rock pond, matching Ealdhere's maps, hiding the back tunnel from them.

Myra pressed a new strand of mana into Therrón's back as he dropped the overhead shield, and instead reached into the pond to pull—it wasn't terribly deep and he didn't have to drain his stores to tug all the water to the side, silverheads flopping pathetically in its wake, so they could walk over without incident.

No one thanked him, because they were all caught up in a pissing match to prove which party was strongest, but Therrón was likely the favourite at that point. Adventuring in sopping wet armour was a unique kind of irritation.

Off they went down a tunnel, deep and deep and deep, winding around itself with little more than Pau's quartz-light as a guide, until they emerged into a new room full of light and wind and gurgling canals.

And trees, scarlet-barked and white-leaved, towering overhead.

Aedan exhaled like the air had been punched from his gut. Immediately, he began a near-silent prayer, words bouncing and ricochetting off each other as he wove them into the air alongside knotted fingers—and in answer, the breeze carried with it the smell of redwood trees ripe in the summer sun, green through the mist.

Well. A bonafide priest they'd found, then, though Shoth had half-expected Aedan to turn around and betray them the second the time came for him to speak to his deity. Sometimes it paid to be cynical; you got polite surprises more than those that blindly believed everyone around them.

The tree definitely wasn't Rhoborh's, though. Shoth wouldn't call himself pious, but he knew enough to go snatch up a priest on his way to the dungeon—and Rhoborh had already introduced himself with redwoods instead of whatever these fuckers were.

Mana, pulsing through his mouth. Shoth fired a canine at the tree.

The white slammed into the bark, a panicked yelp from Aedan, and immediately pulled out to return to him; it settled into his mouth coated in mana and depth.

Well. Despite the Scholar being a twitchy little fool with the pale skin of those that saw Calarata as a place of exotics instead of murderers, he had been correct in this manner—where Shoth's tooth sunk into the bark, scarlet bubbled up in its wake. Blood.

That explained, at least, the tug of kin he'd felt in the Adventuring Guild; blood-attuned mana was rare to find and rarer to wield, considering it had minimal benefits beyond adventuring, and for all he hid his attunement under mere control of his teeth, it was impossible to ignore that answering pulse of resonance. Little Baron Ealdhere Darlington had a sapling tucked away in his room, and he was feeding it what it desired. Curious.

Alda, who had been brutish and bullish and entirely uncaring, snapped towards the tree like it had just spoken. Her eyes tracked the sap spilling down its side, scarlet-thick, bleeding over the ground with the tang of iron.

"Urqukunapan mamam," Alda breathed, soft and reverent.

Hells. If she wanted to stay down here with the tree-hugger, he'd normally be glad to let her, but he wanted twelve to guarantee reaching the fifth floor.

"We're not here for collecting," Shoth hissed, low under his breath. "The Scholar won't parlay when we come out with three times the group and a dungeon core in our pocket."

"Don't matter," she said, waving a hand. "M'talking right now. Can you even imagine the kind'a shit I could make from that? The fucking intricacies?"

Shoth frowned. "Blood's not exactly fermentable."

Alda fixed him with a look of such derision his teeth rattled in his skull.

He was going to burn this entire dungeon down so long as she was in it. But arson didn't match the fantasy dream, and victory did, and victory only came when they traveled deeper.

Aedan was still twitching a bit—cut one nick into a tree and nearly startled him into passing out, gods was he useless—so Shoth reached out, finger curled, and rapped him neatly on the shoulder.

"Pick it up," Shoth said, bright and jagged. So far, Gnat had been a picturesque little adventurer even as a shrimp not yet large enough to be caught in the nets, and he wouldn't have Aedan embarrassing him in front of Alda. A priest he was, healer of some renown, and they had many more a floor to go. "We're going."

Aedan's brow creased. The moss, spidering over his face, crawled further down his cheekbones like his god was speaking straight through him, the smell of redwoods redoubling. "There is no need to go," he said, still perfectly fucking serene, but with confusion lingering on the edges. "I am here."

What a marvelous walking idiot. Did he honestly still believe they were here to escort him to speak with his god? Did he not understand what was happening? Or, more accurately, what would happen?

Shoth didn't feel anything resembling pity. Priests had a golden path through the world, lit up with this farcical understanding that the divine itself was on their side. No need to train your own powers, your own abilities, when your deity wove through mana through you at whatever strength they wanted to grant. Aedan was a Silver, but strip away Rhoborh, and he'd plummet right back to Unranked. He hadn't been born with a silver spoon, but he hadn't exactly had to look that hard to find one.

"Sure are," said Myra, cheerful as the ironback toad corpses littered at her feet. "And soon you'll be even lower, yeah?"

Aedan, for the first time, seemed to realize the position he was in. That perhaps the three adventurers who had come to him with an offer to meet his god, guards included, wasn't quite the divine intervention he'd likely imagined it as. And then they'd met up with eight more souls, all of the hungry variety instead of the pious, and the only way out was alone in a dungeon that seemed bursting with teeth.

Shoth smiled at him. It wasn't a polite smile.

"This-a-way, your priestliness," he said, and for all he and Alda hated each other's guts, she appreciated a good jab enough to let out a snorting laugh. "Much further to go before you're going to leave his presence."

Aedan hesitated. Drew back.

And Shoth saw a lovely little opportunity.

He'd worried that Alda or Azkhal might snatch up leadership while he carved himself to fit the so-say of a normal adventurer—that he had made himself seem so harmless to Lluc that they looked past him. That they thought their own attunements were enough to walk on. But no longer.

Shoth reared back, sunk his heels into the stone, and held out a hand. Everyone's eyes flashed to his teeth, readying themselves for more launched incisors, the flashiest of his powers—but he was a Silver. He'd torn the secret of this attunement from the man who became a corpse faster than he could escape. That was not all he was.

Aedan twitched. He opened his mouth to respond but broke off, a wet sort of wheeze spilling up his throat—and more alongside, because from every gum, blood beaded over the pink. Drops of it, then rivets, then streams; pouring from his mouth in a scarlet slurry, gagging, choking on it.

Shoth tightened the mana, enough Aedan croaked, and then pulled back. The blood slowed to a trickle, red over the green of his robes.

Everyone was looking at him. Wariness hung in the air like the sun.

"Let me explain in more detail," Shoth said, sibilant and soft. Myra and Therrón were stiff with anticipation, used to his tricks, the reason they ran beneath him instead of splintering off as they grew stronger. "You are coming with us, or you are feeding your god with your corpse. I don't much care for which you choose."

Aedan swallowed. Moss, crawling up his fingers.

And he turned away from the tree.

"Wonderful," Shoth said, still smiling. "Let us go on."

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