Dragonheart Core

Nicau skittered down the rocky beach, heart ringing in his ears. Technically, he'd succeeded—he'd found someone willing to go into the mountain in search of draconic treasure and not ask too many questions of him once he'd played up the lost, sad boy wanting his friend back, and that had been all he'd wanted.

He fought the urge to glance back at the Bronze marching behind him.

He wasn't quite sure he liked the risks that now came with succeeding.

It wasn't like he'd asked a Gold, to be fair; but also he would have known if he was asking a Gold. They had a presence that unranked people could barely stand in, some outward expression of their power; no one truly knew the Dread Pirate's ranking but if being Gold was anything compared to his aura, Nicau would have certainly never been able to approach the tavern. So he hadn't messed up as much as he'd thought he had. Bronzes were technically just one rank above him, really.

But still.

The Bronze was perfectly capable of squishing him like a larvae if he so much as insulted her, and Nicau knew he was enough of an orphaned streetboy to perhaps not quite know the etiquette required for interacting with someone of her level.

"It was this way," he tried, kicking a few pebbles out of her path with all the subtly of a stone-boar. The noon-rising sun was making him sweat even worse than normal. "Just, ah, past the docks."

"How much further?" The other man whined. "Lady Luthia has many important tasks to be completing!"

Ah.

Nicau had successfully gotten two people—Luthia the Bronze, powerful adventurer who stopped in Calarata to unload the more illegal monster parts she gathered on her journey. The tavern had whispered about how she was attempting to reach Silver, where she could officially claim a title and have the High Lords of the Leóro Kingdom start to squabble over who could pay her enough to join their teams, but she still had a ways to go. Powerful, strong, fearless.

And her lackey, Gui the unranked.

"You don't speak for me," she said, voice bored and monotone.

Gui blinked, head cocking to the side. "Was I?"

She didn't bother with a response. "Lead the way, boy."

Nicau didn't have a rat's chance of figuring out what was going on between them, and as Gui continued to try and both speed up their travel and convince them to turn back, he found he really didn't care.

He led them over the hump of crumbled rock from the dragon's fall, the endless rain of the jungle already sweeping the sand clean of blood splatters and twisted shrapnel; beyond that, hidden from Calarata's gaze, stood the gaping maw of the entrance deeper within the mountains.

It might have been his imagination, but it seemed larger than when Romei had disappeared into it, when Albo had managed to squeeze inside. He didn't know whether either of them were still alive.

Nicau didn't know whether he wanted them to be.

"They went in here," he whispered, hugging his arms closer to his chest. It helped his case he didn't have to pretend to be wary of the entrance. "And they haven't come out since. Please, if you can find my friend–"

"Lady Luthia never fails!" Gui said, chest puffed out for her. "Whatever brats you lost in the mountain will be right as rain once she's done with them."

Luthia hummed, peering into the darkness beyond. Her pale hair matched the sand beneath her feet, skin copper under the sun, eyes dark and focused. She wore only a casual shirt and pants, though still with two short swords slung over her back and wrappings over her ankles and wrists; a Bronze always had be prepared for something, given the life of danger they got their strength from. Gui had a full shield and spear strapped to his back, fiddling with a dagger on his belt.

More prepared than Albo and his crew, but hopefully they would fall prey to the same monsters the others had found. Luthia traveled aboard one of the merchant ships that frequented the area, and Nicau knew he would vastly prefer finding employment on those versus with pirates. He had no taste for killing.

He grimaced. There wasn't any other word to describe what he was doing here.

"This is where the mana came from," she murmured, eyes narrowing. Of course she would have felt it too—Nicau had no doubt that his pleadings for her to find his friend had only been a fraction of what had convinced her in comparison to the energy that had exploded out from the mountain yesterday. He had just been a guide to the right location.

"And you're sure this is where the dragon fell?" Luthia asked, fingering the hilt of her leftmost sword.

Nicau bobbed his head with all the pent-up energy of an idiotic pigeoncatcher. "Yes, yes—it must have dug out this hole when it landed, and some of its scales fell inside." He dragged his shoulders up for a miserable sniff. "Romei just wanted a chance to be on the Dread Crew. We knew that if she found enough scales—or even something more—she'd have a chance."

Luthia's eyes flashed. No one could resist the siren's call of the ruler of Calarata.

She crouched—gods, she was like seven feet tall—and braced her arm on the roof of the entrance, glancing back at him. "I'll find her," she said, and disappeared into the darkness.

Gui threw himself in after her, already fumbling his spear out.

Nicau exhaled. He waited until the ringing echoes of their descent stopped, only the quiet crash of the waves behind him audible, and turned to sit on the boulder resting by its entrance. It would be afternoon before long, and night after—he would wait.

Maybe this time they would survive.

-

I hated being right.

Less than a few hours after I'd helped guide my new silverhead evolutions to their new positions in the canals, floors still trembling in the wake of my roar, the rumble of footsteps had reached my points of awareness I'd stationed by the cove entrance.

Fantastic.

I wrangled the ambient mana diffused through my dungeon, tuning it to awareness and vigilance; my various creatures raised their heads, peering towards the entrances in their many-faceted eyes. I didn't ask for violence, though; not yet.

I needed to see who was invading.

A woman appeared just outside of my dungeon; she carried two short swords like extensions of her arms, rustling at her sides as she peered into the fungal garden. Her pale hair shone where her eyes didn't, skin bronzed and teeth uncharacteristically sharp for what I thought humans had. Still outside of my awareness—take just a step closer.

She did. Holy shit.

My mana bristled like a spooked cat—I didn't know the exact rankings for humans but already I could sense the power in her, flowing through her currents like molten stone. Not Gold, certainly—mostly because I knew damned well I'd be dead if a Gold invaded this early—and not quite whatever was below that, but one step lower.

Certainly higher than the last group that had challenged me.

A man inched in after her, brandishing a massive shield with what I thought was a lake engraved on the front, a spear's head poking around the right side. Much less powerful than his companion, if the sluggish ripple of his mana channels said anything. "Lady Luthia," he hissed. "Should we–"

"Be quiet," she snapped. He did.

Lady—or was her name Luthia? I had a vague recollection that Lady was a title—switched to holding both of her swords in one hand, raising the other to gently press her fingers to the hollow between her eyes; something flared and her eyes gleamed gold, light blooming over the floor.

My mana burbled, caught in an invisible whirlpool, and merrily tugged itself out of my control and flooded towards her. Gods. Hated that little detail.

No point in keeping mana on hand when adventurers could use it all for their own spells.

"Below us," she finally said, dispelling whatever spell she'd whipped up. "There's an entrance in the far back."

"Do you think scales?" He murmured.

She snorted. "Not a chance. The boy is an idiot—he saw the dragon fall and thinks that's all there is to it." She swept her gaze over my first floor, fingers drumming against the leather-wrapped handle of her short sword. "No, there's something else here. That mana wouldn't come from stone-wyrms or goblin-hordes."

I wrapped mana in a soothing balm around my core. There it was, then. Confirmation of what had drawn them in—alongside whoever this boy was, leading people to my entrance? Bastard—they had felt my mana, and wanted more. I stiffened my resolve.

Time to protect what I had ripped apart.

My creatures stirred, awakening in the presence of new prey. Luthia switched her swords back to two hands and started her march forward, swinging the blades in front of her like an anglerfish's lure—lacecaps stuck their sappy nets to the wrappings around her ankles and stone-backed toads froze, desperate to keep from being noticed, but she was undisturbed. No one yet risked being the first she attacked.

The man behind her, though. He had a spear and a shield, both of which I was rather interested in dissolving to see if I could learn how to recreate a new type of metal, but was also infinitely more wary than her—he kept peering out from behind his oversized defense, fumbling the shaft of the spear against his legs. The two of them looked similar, at least with their pale-gold hair and dark eyes, but their combat experience was leagues apart.

I could use that.

A cave spider, scuttling on the underside of a rocky outcropping, inched closer—whatever part of its brain that registered thought had lost all traces of originality and sought to follow the same path as the jeweled jumper before it, dropping from the ceiling on a thread of silk. It aimed itself at the man's neck, mandibles flashing–

Luthia's sword cut it in half before it had descended even a foot. "Gui. Pay more attention."

The man blinked, pulling his shield closer to his chest. "I– yes. Sorry."

She marched on. Other cave spiders, spooked by their fellow's quick defeat, apparently dropped their various fantasies of evolution and scuttled away to hunt for easier prey. My luminous constrictors, patient as always, slithered alongside them as they waited for an opening—one I worried they would never get. I narrowed my focus in. These adventurers weren't the slow, wary group I'd first had; they knew something was below them and wanted it. They were already halfway through and hadn't been so much as challenged–

The cave bear was still on the first floor.

Gods, I'd forgotten about him—in the aftermath of my tantrum he'd hurried back up to the safety and food of my fungal garden, and I'd been too focused on fixing my mistakes to guide him back down. Even now he was lurking in my little lacecap paradise I've carved out to the right of my rock pond, only vague awareness of the invading threat making it past his hunger.

If they saw him now, he was dead. She would carve him to mincemeat.

I took a great heaping of mana tinged with the fear-stained word hide and shoveled it into his brain, ripping past all the thoughts of food and mushrooms; he stiffened, ears swiveling to point towards the approaching duo. Even as massive as he was, he was still a juvenile unused to fighting, and she was a ranked Bronze. He was an ambush predator.

The great fool paused, ivory claws carefully lowering his bulk until he was flat on his stomach. Whitecaps rustled by his nose. He closed his eyes and the vague power I knew he'd never used before surfaced, tugging on my ambient mana to change it, speck by speck, into the shadow-attuned style he could use to hide himself.

Luthia hadn't turned off her mana-detecting spell. She'd only turned it to a weaker version, one that let her apparently still see the normal world past the mana—I figured that out a second too fucking late when her head snapped in the cave bear's direction.

Up! I bellowed, and he roared to match. Luthia kicked off a rock outcropping and charged, Gui panicking behind her; the bear barely managed to rise to his back legs before her swords lashed at him.

He howled, massive claws ripping through the air where she'd been—she carved open his front leg and danced back. True pain met him for the first time; Albo's fists hadn't done much but these were real blades, cleaving fur and fat alike. He lumbered forward and swept out again.

Compared to her, he wasn't moving.

Luthia leapt over his extended claws, mana exploding up her legs as gravity just apparently decided not to work and let her switch to perching on the ceiling, bracing her legs against the various stalactites. "Gui! Get over here!" She bellowed, switching her stance.

The man yelped but charged after her, slamming his shield down below her. The bear roared, trying to back up but hedged in by her slices and Gui's spear pokes—however thick his coat was it wouldn't protect against steel, and already blood gushed hot and heavy over the surrounding mushrooms.

But they were situated towards the rock pond.

Run! I shouted, and jabbed the direction into his brain; he roared, thoughts full of agony, but managed another wild swipe to clash against Gui's shield and send him stumbling back. Luthia moved in to box him but the bear threw himself off of the plateau, bulk crashing through a stalagtite. He half limped, half charged but got himself moving, sprinting towards the entrance deeper into the mountain.

And then he was gone.

My connection with him splintered away, only catching vague glimpses of pain before he left my zone of control, running further until I couldn't even confirm if he was alive. I knew nothing of his whereabouts, his thoughts, even if he was going to bleed out. He was gone.

Mana spiked around the invading duo like a forest of knives.

Luthia sighed, kicking off the ceiling as her spell faded away; she touched down on the algae-covered ground with all the grace of a landing bird. "Don't chase it," she said, even though Gui looked perfectly content with doing nothing of the sort. "A baby. It couldn't have hurt us if it tried."

The gash on her arm spoke otherwise, but she had a very uncomfortable point; he hadn't injured either of them to the point of taking them out, or even chasing them away. Both were very much still in the running. I grabbed my mana and pushed it into the surrounding creatures, urging the serpents to slither faster towards them.

Luthia's eyes flashed again.

"Come along," she said, glancing around with her swords pointed at the ground. "That's a good sign that whatever is watching us doesn't want us to go further."

I stopped. Gods, was there anything that mana-vision couldn't see? I remembered the mage from the last group performing roughly the same manevour, eyes glowing gold and all; was it so common a spell that anyone with an inkling of magical ability would be able to tell when I tried to guide my creatures?

All I could hope was that the cave bear had been so unused to using his magic he'd done it incorrectly and thus been seen—none of my creatures being able to use mana at all without being detected would cripple me beyond compare.

Gui stumbled, eyes wide and white-ringed, but dutifully made his way after Luthia as they stomped deeper into my dungeon. A luminous constrictor raised its head, ready to explode into light; Luthia stiffened and shoved Gui over the rock pond.

Her sword cleaved through its neck before it could even try and attack.

Gui helped pull her across the pond, both casually avoiding even getting their toes wet with a little jump, and just like that they were through my first floor.

I gnashed teeth made of mana in their general direction as they marched through the sloping tunnel to my second.

But then they would face my maze—not a proper maze, true, given it only had a handful of rooms and not necessarily a complicated way of following the flow of the canals to find the end, but still certainly more of a challenge than the straight shot of my first floor.

I darted around before they could see me meddling, waking up all the creatures meandering around—the stone-backed toads and burrowing rats were still too fearful to serve as any sort of attack and my aquatic creatures were rather useless unless they got in the canals, but my kobolds raised their head with a confused warble. Seros bared his fangs.

It was time.

They paused at the entrance to the next floor, peering out at the… well, a bit pitiful mangrove trees, really. I'd mentally clocked them as further grown when comparing them to the diminutive kobolds but they really were only a few feet tall.

Something to fix after I survived this.

"Keep your guard up," Luthia murmured, eyes narrowed. "I don't know what this is, but something is aware here that shouldn't be."

Gui seemed to have shaken off the worst of his panic, raising his shield. "Of course, Lady Luthia."

They crept forward, even taking the time for Gui to dip the butt of his spear into the canal and inspect it for poison, I assumed. Finding none, they continued along its bank, hackles raised and blades ready. They stuck to the first room, moving slowly enough to barely make shift the stony dirt beneath their boots. One of my mangroves shifted as if in a breeze, deep underground; one of its thorned branches drifted closer to the adventurer's unwatched backs–

Luthia stiffened, sword going wide as a sound emerged, throwing her attention to the left as a… rat leapt at her?

I paused.

No, that was definitely a burrowing rat, roughly a foot long with its forked tails, charging furiously at her ankles with high, panicked squeaks echoing against the algae-dampened ceiling. She swept her sword but the bugger was fast enough she only cleaved through the tip of its tail, steel bouncing off the stone below.

"Lady!" Gui cried, lurching forward—his spear impaled it against the ground.

The rat continued to twitch and squeak through its death throes.

Huh.

"More monsters," Luthia spat, bringing her blades low as she scanned their horizons—and right on cue, another rat erupted from behind the wall separating another room, eyes rolling and tail lashing. She snarled and ran to meet it.

Carrying her just slightly out of view of the room behind them both, where now only Gui could see.

Something stirred.

With a slow, methodical pride, the serpent who had hidden herself in the loops between a mangrove's roots raised her head. A spark of mana traveled up her diamond-grey scales and her horns began to glow.

The man paused.

I could feel more than see the psionic mana drifting through the air, something soothing and rich; he was getting the full blast of it, eyes already losing their wary edge and his grip loosening on his spear. The horned serpent rose to her full height, horns level with his eyes, and began to hiss. It sounded almost like crooning, a song that only the two of them knew.

Gui had no defense.

His shield dropped with a clatter as he shambled in her direction, eyes fixed on the pale glow of her horns; she slowly uncurled from around the mangrove's roots, her scales protecting her from its deadly thorns, and started to slithe further back. He followed her blindly, footsteps muffled against the algae, and disappeared fully from the room.

And his partner's sight.

Luthia stomped on the twitching remains of the second rat and glanced back, short swords dripping with blood. "Gui?" She shouted, only to curse and whip around as another burrowing rat, driven mad by fear, charged at her ankles.

Okay. I was immensely proud of the horned serpent, already pumping poison into the man who hardly seemed to notice her fangs embedded in his calf, but I really needed to figure out where the rats were coming from.

I spread out my points of awareness, letting them filter through the surrounding rooms like pollen on a breeze—there. Hidden in the shadows, pale red scales crouched outside of a den of burrowing rats, the kobold owner peering through the leaves of a mangrove at the human invader. His fellow was in the opposite side of the room with her own den of rats, and the third–

Nowhere near. I could get a vague sense that she was awake and hunting, but she was on clear the other side of the dungeon, ignoring the humans entirely. But wasn't she the leader of the little trio? I peered into the thoughts of the first kobold, the one with the variegated scales; he hadn't seen her since the new hollow I'd carved for them.

Then I got to see him reach into the den of rats, his scaled hands protecting him from the furious little scratches and bites, and grab one. He dragged it out, the massive rodent nearly the same length as his whole arm, and promptly proceeded to shake it. Hard.

After a minute, the poor rat was so confused and panicked that when he set it on the ground, aimed at Luthia, it took off in her direction with a wild shriek and attacked.

Huh.

Maybe they would be just fine without the other kobold.

Luthia killed another two rats, but her swords were, well, swords—they weren't meant for slamming against the ground as she tried to kill opponents less than six inches tall. She snarled, sweeping lower and lower as she tried to keep up with the numbers.

The kobolds locked eyes from across the room.

Carefully, the male slunk his way closer, hiding behind the protective trunks of the mangroves; he waited until Luthia turned, still unharmed but now significantly more frustrated than before, and charged.

He didn't need to attack her, to try and claw her up with the little nubs he had on the tips of his fingers; all he needed was a push.

And Luthia the Bronze, off-balanced by the monsters built exactly of the wrong proportions for her to attack and confused about the lack of her companion, was just a second too late to turn when the kobold emerged from the underbrush and pushed her into the canal behind.

She sunk to the bottom of the fifteen-foot-deep water immediately, bubbles shooting up from her shout—she might have even made it back to the surface if she hadn't had the open cut on her arm from the cave bear's attack.

The silvertooths' blood-frenzy activated.

Bronze-ranked mana exploded through my dungeon, and I could have wept.