Dragonheart Core

I had been, as a dragon, a rather front-forward type of fellow. Any problem worth having was well and easily fixed by my claws or fangs, and I had no issue with using both liberally and at any opportunity.

So the precision and care I was using now was deeply antithetical to my being.

I nursed a section of green algae, plumping it lovingly with mana even as I snuck a tiny section of jadestone moss around the base of its roots. Half of the section I’d already planted was dead, swallowed up by the algae’s insatiable growth, but damn if I didn’t at least have to try.

Part of the problem, really. It had taken so long for my two new plants to die that by the time I was able to add it to my all-flora floor, that floor was no longer quite as welcoming to outsiders. The algae had done me quite proud, honestly, with how territorial and ornery it was, but that pride which would have been so lovingly lambasted all over a different creature was somewhat wasted here.

Because in all my great efforts to give my fourth floor the same symbiosis of my Drowned Forest, I hadn’t succeeded so much as made stubborn. Stubbornness without even a fleck of intelligence to back it up.

Genuinely the worst. I went back to cramming jadestone moss in and hoping it'd survive.

Algae rumbled and shifted as I scurried my way around its base, leaves trembling with vicious anticipation like I was something they could target. Admittedly, I had already cleared out some of the algae that had once been in my core room. I was rather uninterested in some moronic flora attempting to strangle me as I tried to concentrate on more important matters.

I had to have at least some in the room, though. There wasn't a chance I was missing out on the gently floating luminescent spores drifting over my core. The deep scarlet looked magnificent in the light.

With a shudder and a disheartened flop not unalike a dying animal, another section of jadestone moss managed to survive the rooting process and start growing. Barely. I breathed a sigh of relief.

It was a welcome sort of humbling, though. A nice reminder that no matter how much of the world I could shape beneath my mana, it still wasn't mine to command fully. I'm sure I would have appreciated it a lot more if it were just a touch less irritating.

Irritating it was, however, and I continued to grumble unsweet nothings as I shoved endless plants in the cracks between the algae. Most of it was rooted lightly to the ground, in the thin layer of proto-silt I'd spread over the walls, but certain sections were dug deep as anchoring points; I spread the jadestone moss around that to serve as an extra sort of protection, just in case any intrepid invader or hungry creature tried to dig it up for the juicy morsels beneath. The algae, in turn, took very poorly to anything trying to grow near its most sensitive points, and responded in kind.

The razorleaf lichen was going at least somewhat better; I spread it just beneath the algae, in little clumps like collections of knives. So if something—say, a merrow who had learned to survive the terrestrial air but perhaps not so the mobility beyond dragging themselves over land—tried to just walk over the ground, they'd be slicing themselves to ribbons before they'd even appreciate it. I wanted to try and cover them in a thin layer of the silver krait's venom, the one with the numbing agent to lure the invader into not even realising they were injured until it was too late, but that had been too complicated for the little plant to properly produce. For a later date, then. I was patient. To a point.

But for now, I didn't have to worry about patience, because my fourth floor was wrapping up.

I pulled my points of awareness back with the best mental approximation of a sigh as I could muster, relaxing my mana enough to make the algae surrounding me recoil from the blast. Exhausting work, though. It'd been, what, two days? Three days? Of just pampering the fourth floor as I did my damnedest to feed it more mana in anticipation of welcoming new creatures onto the untouched land.

New creatures I hoped, really. It wasn't like any invaders had wandered in yet. A handful of wild ones, like the sleek, flashing fish with teeth like daggers who had been too fast for any of my current predators or the bulky, wideset shark who had barely poked its head in before swimming out, but no invaders. No real threats.

I had been worried before; I was truly panicked now. Had the merrow told? What about the brat from before? All terrible things that curled my mana in my core. I didn't have the experience to fight someone from Gold or gods, even Mythril down. I just wasn't strong enough.

But I didn't have any eyes on the outside. All I had was Seros, and he was far too bulky to actually be stealthy enough to go see what was going on; so I just had to wait. Wait and hope that my fourth floor would be… strong enough…

Oh?

Past the ever-glowing spores, a new light picked up on the fourth level, starting soft but quickly spreading to a pure white blur; it raced over the floor until the army of tunnels burned like a sun, mana audibly hissing out into the wider world, heat lashing at the ceiling.

An evolution.

And though I waited with excitement clambering at the ceiling, only one message crawled over my awareness; only one for however many thousands of plants I had. Like there was only one evolution, despite this many creatures.

Like it was only one plant.

Your creature, Green Algae, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Thornwhip Algae (Rare): United as a thousand vines, this plant takes a more proactive approach to hunting; it extends long, grasping tendrils to snatch at prey, dragging them back where other, shorter arms with do the dirty work of providing fertilizer.

Green Riverweed (Uncommon): The name is a misnomer. Instead of being found within a river, this plant instead coaxes its environment to match itself, filling the air with a humidity so dense breathing is painful and all of its many fronds shifting in unison with a current nothing else feels.

Radiant Algae (Rare): Blessed with abilities opposing its core nature, this plant glows with a constant, soothing light, up until predators or prey approach; then it burns through its outer layers in an explosion of heat and light, cooking those approaching before they have time to reach.

United grasping vines, feeding as one, shifting in unison—oho. Ohoho.

I'd done it.

Nothing to beat Rhoborh's blessing, of course, but I'd done my damned best to replicate it; all my plants were grown together, strung together on the same roots and the same walls and pressed so close together it wouldn't be incorrect to call them one plant. And that was what I wanted; one plant, working in unison. Thousands upon thousands of little fronds and blades and thalli, but counting just enough as a cohesive unit for evolution to hit them all at once.

And what evolution options they were.

Riverweed immediately grabbed my attention; drowning on land sounded all sorts of horrifyingly lovely and I wanted it immensely, but unfortunately another thought was quick enough to clear it for me. I wanted this floor to be strictly anti-merrow, not enough for them to survive while just dragging themselves through. Unfortunate.

Then it was two. Thornwhip or radiant; the radiant would somewhat undo my little trick with the darkness for the level so far, but I didn't have anything that worked with heat before; steam-broiled merrow sounded delicious and well what my creatures deserved.

But then thornwhip.

Reaching hands from the dark that couldn't be harmed so much as removed; what plants felt pain? And there would always be more hands, always be more replacements. I could imagine trying to creep through the dark, hunted by the shrieks from a creature you could never see and trying to avoid the blades hidden beneath your feet only for a limb to grab your neck, drag you down, drown you in endless greenery and–

I had selected it before I'd really even finished the thought.

The green algae's glow softened somewhat, sinking down to a more manageable level that wasn't frying all the moss and lichen I'd worked so hard to plant, and settled it on itself. Its endless growth ceased, movement stilling, and it merely existed, evolution churning inside. Thousands of feet of tunnel, all glowing in readied hunger.

Holy shit. I'd done it.

Mostly.

I scuttled a point of awareness around one of the plant's bases, where the hard little armour of the jadestone moss sat quietly undisturbed. Not symbiotic enough to count either that or the razorleaf lichen in the evolution, I suppose.

Damnit.

-

"Up! Up and go! Up and go!"

The goblin shrieked more than spoke, voice shrill and piercing; but still Akkyst rose to his paws, far more scared than tired, and shuffled to the front gate. The bladehawk—sharpwing?—wobbled upright, managing to flap up in their cramped conditions and land on Akkyst's shoulder in a sort of practiced exhaustion even as his wings sagged. The stalking jaguar loped out alongside them as if nothing bothered her, but he could see the great tear still healing in her side.

It had only been getting worse.

Listening, listening, listening; the only activity he could do that was safe and unharmful. His fellow captured ones couldn't do it, only hearing the goblins' tongue as squeaks and mutters, but that same power let him understand.

Something was moving against the horde.

Stone grew from stone like plants, covering old entrances and blocking tunnels the goblins had used for centuries; and as the war horde of the mountain, these goblins knew damn well it wasn't them that had caused that to grow, and the miner goblins wouldn't have left their endless mines long enough to do anything. It had to be the mage goblins.

But the problem was the growth had blocked off some of their tunnels as well.

That, of course, wasn't enough to stop declarations of war, and the horde goblins were determined to win.

Akkyst rumbled as a goblin got too close, but even as he towered over their spindly height they laughed at him, jabbing their bone-tipped spear at his side before losing interest and sauntering back to the training groups. Endless squadrons trained, jabbing weapons at empty air, hurling themselves at each other in massive, screaming dogpiles as they tried to bite eye from face in a mockery of a win, shoveling more and more creatures into cages as their army grew. It always grew.

Even as the creatures died, it grew.

They were being sent on patrols, loops of the mountain searching for even the tiniest hair of a mage goblin out of their territory, and then sneaky ways into said territory as well; anything to claim back what they had lost to the Growth. The mountain wasn't supposed to grow.

But Akkyst remembered when stone grew, when it bloomed like mushrooms and extended before his eyes. He remembered home.

There was no home now, though. Just the endless bite of spears and fangs and deeper things in the dark, and the creatures he had to protect alongside himself to survive.