Dragonheart Core

Chapter 148: Black Flag

Progress was irredeemably slow, and also lightning.

I was a spiraling tower of deliberation as I burrowed down, twisting the tunnel back and forth in unending switchbacks as I skirted the line of how close I could dig to itself as I wound my way through the mountains. Five hundred feet below the Scorchplains, then six, seven—and I still hadn't left the tunnel and started the floor proper.

No, I had plans for this one, and that required a settled base. One deep enough the limestone left and only basalt greeted my mana-hooked claws.

My eighth floor, my answer to the smoke-grey above, and one I burned with excitement for.

Jungle I had said, which was evocative enough on its own, particularly when even bare trees fascinated the sea-drake of my mind who had only known fields of swaying kelp and coral reefs before this, but I wanted more. I had already made myself a creature of originality, with floors that were never quite expected—the only one to skirt that idea was the Fungal Gardens, and that was with the inherent idea it was supposed to play pretend at being normal so lesser creatures wouldn't bother me more than necessary. Then came a floor of canal-carved rooms, endless twisting tunnels, islands in a sea of storms, choking blackness and lava pools–

Thus, it couldn't be just a jungle.

Which was why I was digging a mountain's depth, and cursing out my own genius as I worked.

By the time invaders reached my eighth floor, they would have proven themselves adept. Surviving two aquatic floors, a labyrinth, a sightless place—they'd be prepared, at that point, for new and unique dangers. And that I would provide. Armour was heavy, supplies were heavy, and you could be the most powerful adventurer in the world and still fall victim to gravity like all the others. So they would emerge from the tunnel, eyes smarting after the darkness of the Scorchplains, and find themselves very small, in face of the tower before them. A channel carved through the mountain, taller than impossibility, and all they would have to do would be find the exit.

The exit.

Well. I was particularly proud of this idea. I'd disguised them in the past, hidden in the darkness or made a maze to reach, but it was never particularly difficult. General intelligence said that I should place the exit as far away from the entrance as possible, and that meant it was possible to simply take the long path in a roughly straight line and find your way out of the current hell.

Invaders would expect that. Would take comfort, likely, as the seven floors above worked in the same manner.

But not here. I'd have a tunnel on the ground—it'd even go back into the stone some fair bit, just enough for adventurers to lower their guard—but the only thing within would be a den, one of luxury and comfort for the largest of my creatures, and those adventurers would find themselves on the opposing end of many fangs. No, there would be no escape there, no exit out.

Because where did jungles go?

They went up.

So my eighth floor would be a heart tree.

They were one of the concepts that only revealed themselves to me once I became a dungeon core, once the instincts lurking in the back of my memories pried open my consciousness to dump themselves inside. Forests were not as old as the seas but they were old, or had the potential to become so—and all that power had to go somewhere. And it went to heart trees, the emperors at the center of a territory, and they became the guardians for all those around and made themselves unconquerable.

But because they were in the center, rather choked out in saplings and underbrush and trees, they couldn't use that power to go out, so they went up. Taller and taller, until they filled the sky, until the mark of a powerful jungle was the ability to blot out the sun.

A heart tree, large enough to fill the entire floor, impossible except within my halls.

Did I have the schemas for this? Partially. The wonderful thing about being a dungeon core with mana at my beck and call was that schemas did not have to be perfect things to fit into the puzzle I'd constructed—I could weave and dissolve them as I saw fit. There would never be a tree tall enough to take up the room like I wanted, never something that could stretch the hundreds and thousands of feet up to the ceiling, but I could make it look like it. If I shoved enough cloudsire palms or vampiric mangroves or whatever Nicau would collect on his next mission out to the unnamed jungle, it would eventually look like one tree, the beating hearts of terrestrial forests, older and more powerful than all its fellows.

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It wouldn't be a heart tree, because I couldn't force one—they took centuries to grow, to gather, and I was not near patient enough for that. But I could get damn close.

Then, bring the goblins in, with their wretched dexterous fingers—or the kobolds, who had the decent sense to at least appear subservient to me even amidst their growing sapience—and make it a floor possible for more than those with wings. Vine-fibers woven into rope bridges, houses carved into the base of petrified wood, stalactites wrapped together—a verifiable disaster spidering its way up to the ceiling where the exit laid. The floor would have a surprisingly small footprint, likely under three thousand feet, because I wanted this land to go up, and I wanted it to be perfect.

The one tiny, minor problem with wanting a tower that rivaled the height of the mountains was that I had to dig the damn thing.

Hells, I'd send Seros out to drag home the stone-wurm corpse I saw in Akkyst's thoughts just so I could have a creature capable of boring through rock alongside me.

It was made worse by how half of my consciousness—and more than half of my mana—was currently following Nicau through the Alómbra Mountains, picking their way around the rotten corpse of a pirate city to reach the Overlook at its peak. I wanted that other path out, and I wanted it before Nenaigch got too pissed at the current priests I was giving her, and that meant I was splitting focus in a way that made large-scale projects, to put it lightly, difficult.

Eventually I would sink my teeth into becoming powerful enough to truly spread my wings. Another evolution, maybe, with an increased regeneration that meant digging new floors wouldn't leave me dry and empty—or an increased capacity, so I could rest for a few days and then have enough to finish the entire thing in one go. Multitudinous options, so long as I evolved.

…it had been quite some time since I'd been tested, though.

Oh, Ghasavâlk and Syçalia still haunted me with what I refused to call fear, but though they had been Golds, they had been only two, and one of them with an agenda beyond capturing my core. The Adventuring Guild was hungering under the rabid dog that was its Guildmaster and the Dread Pirate hadn't so much as poked his head into my halls.

Complacency made me nervous. And when I was nervous, I covered myself in protection.

A heart tree, to mark the descent.

Three thousand feet down, my tunnel weaving over itself like a serpent in death throes, I finally settled deep in a pit of basalt and looked outward. So far from my core, mana came sluggishly, struggling to fill the new space I'd carved for it. But already I could taste the potential, could see how impossible this new floor would be.

Abarossa said she would hold the merrow back, and through my strained connection with Seros I knew he was already swimming back to me, her staff dumped in the water to be picked up by the first one who swam by. Veresai was working with Kriya again, healing her horde, and Akkyst was practicing his blessing with Bylk, and my dungeon thrummed with a hunger.

Something was going to be striking, and soon. I hadn't lived—or died—as long as I had without paranoia.

So a heart tree I would construct, and hide my core within its endless boughs, and rain death on whoever thought they could take me.

-

The jeweled jumper, in absentia of boredom, became death.

It was easy. It was simple.

He had followed these grey-green-beasts deeper into the mountains in hopes of a threat, in hopes they would be more than what they were, and found them lacking. They were not the tall-long-invaders, those with only four limbs but silver-sharp-claws to make up for it. They were not like the scaled-beast, with bulk and brutality to make up for a regrettable limitation of bones.

He killed them, and they died. One bite. One shadow.

Ikiar, they cried, with stupid flat mouths and inefficient teeth. Ikiar, they cried, as he slaughtered them indiscriminately and drained their corpses dry.

But it wasn't enough. Battles in the shadows, battles in the grey—they knew he was coming, because he was always coming, because there was nothing he could not watch his venom wither away to nothing, but they didn't know he was there. They feared every shadow, instead of knowing when he was hunting them. A general fear, instead of something condensed and rich.

The had-been-home was filled with dangers tamed and understood. It made him and changed him and left him behind. He had learned from it, much as it had tried to learn from him, and he had left—because only out in the shadows had he discovered emotions and thoughts and memories.

But the jeweled jumper knew how to recognize power. The voiceless thing that had made him was mighty; think-words were useless; the scaled-beast had potential. These things he kept killing were not powerful, not by themselves, and barely with each other. Only two eyes, but enough in groups that he had to stay hidden, and that was it. One bite. Click-click. Dead.

And it was some time later, after a few no-eye-sleeps, that he crept down a stalactite and saw one grey-green-beast standing above the others.

It was just as weak—just as short—just as few-limbed—but there was something about it that made him look again. Something in the way it screamed, how it shook its odd-flat-claws.

That one, he decided, pressing four of his claws to the stone to get a closer look. The way it held itself, the way its think-words bounced through the air and ricocheted off the others like bites. It was powerful, or at least thought it was. Something to test for himself.

And the jeweled jumper never failed.

-

Deep within the Alómbra Mountains, the goblin tyrant of the War Horde died.

His followers did not take that lightly.