Dragonheart Core

I darted back up to my first floor, prodding curiously at the still-evolving beasts huddled safely in their stone outcroppings. Perhaps my memories were playing tricks on me, but I seemed to remember the original horned serpent and jeweled jumper evolving much quicker than my later evolutions. Would these crowned cobras and shardrunner spiders evolve sooner? I had hopes.

Half of it was my desire for strengthening my floors, and half of it was my inability to wait for anything. I was not a particularly patient creature.

Even with Nicau out in the world, gathering what I certainly hoped would be a worthy return on investment for his Name, I wanted more. And considering I had to also wait for Nicau to return before I could figure out what abilities other than invisibility I had to prepare defenses for, I needed something else.

So it was time to test a theory I'd been working on.

I flew to the back half of the Fungal Gardens, spreading my points of awareness wide as I hunted; no dungeonborn creature would do for my selection. And considering that very few larger beings tended to survive long in my halls in this endless hunt for mana, that meant the insects would have to do.

I chose one thin, spindly bug as my current target, walking slowly with primitive wings on its back. A grasshopper, I thought; some cave variant with a grey carapace and long, feathery antennae. Not anywhere near powerful enough for me to care about. It was meandering near the back half of the first floor, its multifaceted eyes peering towards the insectoid gladiatorial ring as if it wanted to join but wasn't confident enough. Coward.

I wrapped my mana around it, distilling a whole five points into a miasma; it froze, insipid little mind unable to comprehend what was happening. I dragged up all my Otherworld knowledge, swirling around in a mimicry of Mayalle's whirlpool.

I'd thought about this for a while now, ever since I'd really considered what had happened with Nicau and before with Seros. He had been a creature born separate from me, a regular animal who had just happened to have the lucky fortune of meeting me. But before, while I had been able to heal and talk with him, I hadn't been able to influence his evolution or bind him to my mana. Only after I had Named him.

But I certainly didn't want to Name every interesting character I came across. Sheer inefficiency aside, I had mana set aside for other Names; even if some interesting creature wandered into my halls that I wanted to keep but didn't necessarily want to kill, I couldn't afford to just Name them all.

If I were purely focused on revenge, I would have killed Seros, and I would kill all others who came into my halls just for their schema—all the better to kill the Dread Pirate with. Some part of me wanted that, the part of me that was born from deep stone and a crack in the universe where the Otherworld mana came through. It wanted nothing more than raw, empty tunnels with monsters lurking around every corner, birthing new mana into the world and creating new creatures to unleash.

But I wasn't some leyline-born dungeon core. I was a dragon, and I desired things beyond efficiency. There was a reason I strung jewels and silver around my core, why I propped it up on a carved pillar; I wanted beauty. Wanted a home for my creatures. Wanted companions.

So here I was, crouched over a grasshopper like a moray eel ready to strike.

The little bug twitched, unable to flee with my presence wrapped around it. It was full of its own mana, barely a spark though it was, and all dungeonborn creatures were born of my own mana.

So, in theory, if I removed the grasshopper's mana and replaced it with my own, it would become what amounted to a dungeonborn creature. Probably.

There was a reason I was trying it on a grasshopper first instead of any other creature.

I reached out, prying half a sliver of mana into the grasshopper's carapace; it jerked from my touch but I held with an iron grip, narrowing my points of awareness in. Not the time for silly things like flight or fight responses. I entered its primitive mana channels.

When I made creatures from schemas, I was able to influence them slightly, up until I tried too much and their mana rejected me. So far, the most of what I could do was change their colourations, like brightening the cave spiders from ruddy red to a deep, ruby hue, or influencing how green algae released their spores or could be prompted to glow. Little things like that.

Reaching into this grasshopper felt much the same way. I slid a few tendrils of what could barely even be called mana and they entered its channels easily enough, pieces flaking off and entering the grasshopper's channels in what had to be the greatest power boost it had ever felt.

But when I tried to tug at its mana, removing less than a fraction's fraction of a point, it felt like running into an iron wall. No matter how cleverly and slyly I tugged at its mana, replacing it equally or even double what I took, I simply could not take it all. The grasshopper, despite being small enough a single pebble could kill it, somehow had a will strong enough to resist my entire core.

Rude.

I redoubled my efforts, pushing in even more mana, and apparently crossed some line in the sand. The grasshopper exploded.

Hm. There came the power of the gods, what was treated as a gift but was only an annoyance to me. Same with how they prevented me from immediately stealing a sapiant's schema, having to build up to it on my own, it seemed they also kept me from just forcing a creature into my halls.

But if that were a complete law, I shouldn't have been able to Name Seros or Nicau. As powerful as a Name was, I rather doubted it was more powerful than the gods up above. So what was the difference?

They had agreed.

Seros had already been on my side when I'd Named him, defending me from an invader, and I'd struck a deal with Nicau first. Their mana had accepted me, their wills working alongside me instead of against. I certainly hadn't demeaned myself to reach into this grasshopper's mind—or what had once been a grasshopper and was now a smear of blood and guts against the stone floor—and thus it had fought against me.

But what if the creature wanted to join me? If it could quell its unconscious will to not combat me draining its mana?

Hm. This required more testing.

-

Nicau peered through his cover of leaves.

The scorpion, blissfully unaware, continued nibbling at the exposed leg of the hound.

It was large, easily three feet in diameter, covered in a brown carapace dappled like a blanket of rotting leaves. Enormous claws gripped at the semi-fresh corpse, heavily armoured like a knight's platemail, with a bladed tail twitching overhead. A single drop of inky black venom dripped out of the dagger-esque tip.

All in all, another one of the beastly predators that were much too common in the jungle, Nicau was finding.

It had come when he was only halfway through trying to decapitate the hound to bring back with him, likely smelling the smoldering blood leaking over the soil; Nicau had just enough time to grab his spear and disappear into the closest bush before it had strode into the little clearing, tail lashing and claws raised like it owned the place.

Thankfully, it seemed to be mostly a scavenger type, without the highly honed senses that came with active predators or prey. It didn't notice him just awkwardly standing off to one side, hidden underneath a flower-studded bush, too busy ripping away at its found meal.

It also hadn't noticed Nicau sneaking away and finding the largest rock he could carry.

Nicau narrowed his eyes, bracing the stone against his ribs; large enough to heft, though the throw would be difficult. It was the same strategy he used against scorpions back in Calarata, though those had, admittedly, been a few inches wide at most. His spear was too weak and his leg, while bound in the thickest leaves he had found, wasn't strong enough to maintain trying to circle around the scorpion to dodge its attacks.

So. Rock.

Before he could lose his nerve, he braced his injured leg against the trunk behind him and heaved the stone forward. Mana burst through his channels, the few flecks remaining after his command and patching up his leg, and the rock tumbled through the air before slamming into the scorpion's back with a crunch.

It screamed, legs splaying flat and body disappearing under the stone; one exposed claw twitched, grasping aimlessly at the air, legs skittering. Its death throes continued with the horrible chittering sound of chitin against stone, trying to rip itself free. It failed.

Black venom and blue blood spilled out from underneath the stone.

Nicau exhaled seemingly all the air in the world, slumping back against the tree trunk; another kill. One a little less impressive than the hound's, but he'd bloody take it. Already he could feel fresh mana returning to his channels, soothing his strained muscles and taking away the bite of his healing injury; but he was exhausted. Only a day he'd lasted in the jungle, far too scared to sleep and very much unwilling to try eating anything for fear it was toxic, and it was getting to him. His limit was quickly being reached.

But now, with two beasts and as many plants as he could stuff into his sling, surely this would be enough. And even if it wasn't, his fear of the dungeon killing him for failure was losing to his desire for sleep.

So he picked up the spear he'd set down to handle the rock, padding cautiously back into the clearing; a few other creatures had come over the past day after smelling the hound's corpse, mostly small, monkey-like beings with multiple tails, but they were far too skittish and he hadn't managed to kill any of them. And with his mana going towards trying to heal his leg, all his attempts harnessing any Communer shout had come out as a pitiful squeak.

He needed more training to figure out what that was, and he needed mana for that training.

Nicau crouched by the hound's corpse, holding his breath against the sickly-sweet stench filling the air—the raw humidity of the jungle made everything decay at an uncomfortably quick rate. Using the sharp edge of his spear, he returned to sawing at the beast's neck, coming at the opposite angle so he didn't have to stand in the puddle spreading out from under the scorpion's body. He didn't trust that black venom at all.

Another hour measured by the growls of his stomach and he had the canine's head fully off its body, hanging limply by its horns. It easily weighed ten pounds on its own, but he'd much prefer shoving the thing into his sling than trying to drag the whole thing back. The dungeon had only specified he needed multiple bits of a creature. Which he had.

He shoved the dripping, stinking thing into his sling, plopping on top of the moonstar sprouts, palm fronds, and vaguely smoking red-black flowers he'd already gathered. Then, using a few sticks he'd grabbed, he managed to shove the stone off the scorpion's body with a squelch.

Nicau shuddered. Horrifying.

Only half of it was covered in the black venom, the tail's gland exploded underneath the rock; he used more sticks to drag the upper section of its body closer, prying off a few limbs. Grabbing another section of finleaf to avoid getting the blue blood over his hands, he dropped them into the sling.

Almost immediately, he could feel the liquid press against the sides of the leaf, trying desperately to worm its way through. He needed to get back to the dungeon as soon as possible—there were plenty of scavengers in the jungle who would smell the blood and come looking for a meal.

Nicau knelt, picked his spear back up, turned to face the wider jungle, and paused.

Ah. Which way was it?

He'd only come an hour or two into the dungeon proper before being attacked, but that didn't help when all the emerald canopy and bristling underbrush looked exactly the same. Nicau had tried leaving marks, right up until the hound had attacked and he'd turned tail. The mistake could be forgiven—he'd been a touch more worried about his life when he'd ran away from the beast's initial charge—but that didn't mean this was good.

There were plenty of horror stories he'd heard from Calarta's taverns running through his head. The jungle wasn't tamed or civilized, getting lost didn't just mean a rough place to sleep overnight until you could wake up tomorrow and keep going. It meant wandering forever, trapped in by the dense undergrowth until eventually you ran out of luck.

His kills no longer seemed that impressive. In all his rush to do the big, important thing, he'd forgotten the far more pressing basics.

Nicau spent long enough wallowing in his fate that something flew overhead.

He flinched, jerking his spear up—bright red and fluttering, eyes and beak black, wings wide and outstretched—and promptly yelped when it landed on his shoulder. His fists flew wildly.

The parrot took off. It landed on an exposed root, feathers poofed, and gave a disproving squawk.

Sure. Yeah. Right. Nicau panted, trying to recontrol his frantic heart. He was in the wrong for reacting like that in a jungle full of things that wanted to kill him. "What's your deal?" He gasped, hand splaying over his chest like that would help.

The parrot—a rather pretty thing, really, two feet tall with brilliant red feathers edged in gold that pirates back in Calarata would kill to put on their hat—cocked its head to the side. "Deal?"

Nicau barely bit back a curse. Not this bloody thing again—he thought his Communer blessing only worked on sapient creatures, which this bird certainly didn't look like. At least his words were coming out normally instead of squawking back. "I mean, why did you land on me?"

It shuffled its jagged talons. "Land on me?"

"Oh." He let his spear fall back into a more neutral pose; he should have remembered this with the other parrots he'd heard around Calarata. "You're just repeating me, aren't you?"

The parrot squawked wordlessly.

"Alright." Nicau glanced around, but no other creatures seemed nearby; or at least nothing attacking them. And some part of him liked hearing Viejabran again, his mother tongue. When he spoke to the kobolds, all his words came out like theirs; this was a welcomed return to normalcy. "You're the first friendly face I've seen. Why did you land on my shoulder?"

"Friendly face I've seen," it agreed, flaring its wings until the golden edges gleamed. Something in the back of his mind told him that the dungeon would appreciate its beauty; he shook it off. Not a chance he'd be fast enough to get it with his spear, and he rather doubted that something he could kill would so willingly land on him. It had some secret it wasn't revealing.

He wouldn't challenge it.

"I'm trying to get back," he said. "But unless I'm willing to just pick a direction, I don't know how I'll get there. And I don't know if I'll survive more attacks at this point." He exhaled into a grimace. "The mana from the scorpion will keep me up for another day if I need to, but I don't think there's anything past that. Funny, isn't it? Got this far just to get lost in the jungle."

Nicau sighed, rubbing at his chin. "Isn't like one of those adventure stories, either. Where I traveled to the center and fought some… forest-drake, or something. Just got lost an hour or two in. Fitting."

It mimicked his self-pity, lowering its crest and pulling its wings in. "An hour or two."

"If only my Name had given me wings like yours," Nicau said, feeling a snort building up. His small, bedraggled body beneath two magnificent feathered masses. A right treat he'd look like. "Then I'd be out without a problem."

"Wings like yours," it agreed. "Then I'd be out."

It hopped higher on the exposed root, eyes bright, and bobbed its head in a seemingly random direction. A flick of its tail at the shoulder it'd originally tried to land on, wings spreading in some mockery of flight. "Without a problem?"

That was… oddly cohesive. Nicau narrowed his eyes. "How intelligent are you?"

The parrot bobbed its head, clacking its white-black beak with an earsplitting squawk.

Definitely some secret there. But was it offering to help him out of the jungle? If it had wanted to kill him, he imagined it could have, unless he was too large and it was leading him to a trap to pick at his bones later?

Alright.

Nicau hesitated, then shifted his sling so his shoulder was fully protected and offered it back to those jagged claws. He'd trusted a living rock that had used to be a dragon—what was a bird in comparison? "You wouldn't happen to know the way to the mountain, would you?"

The parrot cocked its head.

He squatted, grabbing the first rock he saw and holding it up; the parrot's black eyes stared keenly at it, red-gold crest perking up. "This, but big." Nicau spread his arms out, really thankful that no one else was around to see him trying to talk with this bird. Maybe one day he could upgrade his Communer ability to speak to regular animals, too.

But the parrot squawked again, spreading its wings; it took off and, with a quick circle overhead, landed on his shoulder. Heavy, but less than he'd expected. The leaf sling barely did anything to protect him from its talons.

A bird on his shoulder, monster parts in a makeshift sling, injured and hungry and tired. Gods. What a day.

Nicau flicked his spear up, using the butt to push the foliage away from his path. "Alright. Lead the way."

The parrot squawked.