Dragonheart Core

With careful, creeping steps, a shardrunner spider tugged out a sliver of iron from the wall, its clawed feet skittering over its web for balance as the metal finally gave in and fell away. Without a moment of hesitation, the spider bit deep into the ore and gnawed through it, mandibles flashing as they shredded it to tiny pieces.

I watched with an equal amount of hunger and curiosity. How did iron taste, I wondered? For me now, dissolving iron didn't bring a lot of flavour, in terms of what fleshy mortals constituted taste as. Just the vague sense of strength and the brittle feeling of rust. Nothing that I really imagined that the shardrunner spiders could taste particularly well.

Or were they even tasting? I peered into the intricacies of their schema; maybe not. Spiders already didn't have great taste receptors and shardrunner spiders even less so, and they were only shredding the metal with their mouths rather than swallowing it. Made sense. I wouldn't want to have to choke down iron every time I wanted to build a better web. I had old memories of it, whenever I ate the adventurers foolish enough to challenge me with their armour included in the deal, but nothing new.

I shook my points of awareness. Back on topic.

The shardrunner spiders were spread out over the fourth floor, moving slowly and labourishly. They were not particularly agile creatures, made even slower by the pockets of inorganic materials they stored under their abdomen. Mostly iron, given as I hadn't come up with an easy way to lay the seaglass around, but already I could see the improvement.

Their webs were enormous, slithering things, half white and half deep rust-red, barely visible in the dense foliage. The thornwhip algae did their damnedest to attack but the shardrunner spiders were made of tougher stuff than their unevolved brethren and they weathered the attacks easily enough, just hunkering down until the arms got bored and moved on. Then they stood back up, shambling off into the undergrowth in search of more metal deposits.

Already their traps were catching rats. Only the webweavers had ever been so prolific.

I watched them with a strange sense of paternal pride, though they were as far from draconic as possible. No scales, no wings, nothing even resembling elegance or grace. But they were efficient little monsters, weaving strands of pure iron over the halls, both spread over the ground and up in the air. Sometimes a hungry greater pigeon or baterwaul would fly up a floor in search of the easier bugs present here, and they had never made it back down. The shardrunners were hungry.

Not challenging the serpents yet, but I could see the horned serpent already catching attention of their presence. Their webs, while not as dangerous for slower-moving creatures, were at the height that if she ran into them without noticing, they could remove features she perhaps would want still attached to her.

I was rather excited about what she'd do in return. So far, her journey had been relatively unchallenged; and now I was shoveling powerful bugs and mage ratkins and spiders all throughout her floor. Something would have to give eventually.

And if I'd learned anything from my time as a dungeon so far, there was no better thing to incite evolution than competition.

-

Eyes closed, he breathed.

All around him, Seros could feel the flutter and shift of mana, rippling against the walls like sunlight through water; it was alive and active, thinking, moving, twisting like age-old currents through the mountain halls. Something looked at him, as it always did, one section of the Core's attention locked onto him. Seros basked in the focus.

But for now, he stayed silent, nary a frill shifting, as he tried to pull at the connection in his chest.

Not his Name, not his blessing; but something deeper. An old spot of power, one he'd consumed long ago before he'd seen the Core as anything but a nuisance; there was something within him. Strong. Ancient.

He just didn't know what.

Already his journey had been far different than he'd thought, though he knew he hadn't always been so aware as to be able to think about the future with any real intelligence. Instead of sheltering within the mountainous stone, he was pulled to water now, called by the Core's own love for the sea. He wanted to be… like the Core, if he could.

Underground monitors were solitary beasts. He had not known his mother, nor his siblings, since he hatched from his egg in the depths of the caverns. So at first he had rejected the Core, unable to think about this companionship that it offered, even as his brain began to expand and he could recognize more thoughts and emotions than ever before.

And then it had saved his life.

After being the one to nearly end it, admittedly, which was a thought he did have to battle with, but it had given him a part of its own soul, a tap into this well of raw mana from a land beyond. As turbulent as their introductions to each other had been, Seros couldn't ignore such a gift. Such an offering.

So a seabound monitor he became, and he knew he was powerful here, breathing both water and air as easily as breathing had ever been, water listening to his beck and call and swirling to action at a thought. This was not the simple life he had lived before but it was better, more present, more aware. Dangerous, yes. Seros remembered the black beast of before, too many teeth, too many spines. He did not like the cursed thing.

But in its defeat, he had grown strong. Strong enough to sense this… thing in his chest.

He exhaled, sinking lower into the stone, wrapped around the pillar that housed the Core. Soon he would discover its secrets, whatever they were, and with it, he would become even stronger.

-

The home of the Magelords rumbled quietly, as ever, with motion.

Their numbers had been reduced after another patrol attack, too many of the War Horde to fend off and leading to a retreat; the first retreat Akkyst had ever seen, which only doomed them more. They relied on their healing, on letting themselves get hit so that they could be aggressive in attacking, knowing that their healers could get them back up later.

But without being able to go back for the injured and dying, that was another knife to the heart of their defense.

Akkyst bowed his head. They were weak, now.

He helped on as many patrols as he could, his form towering over the goblins to ward off other predators and scare off smaller War Horde patrols. He was much larger than he had ever been before, fed by this fight for survival, stuck in an endless wave of fighting and healing. The others helped when they could; the jaguar went hunting as much as her body could handle it, strength returning so that she was now a proper threat of the mountain halls, dragging back fang-rats and magma-salamanders with a pleased purr in her throat. The bladehawk helped with the children, keeping them entertained so that their parents could work, even if the gruff old bastard would never willingly admit that was what he was doing.

But it wasn't enough. Ever churning in the distance Akkyst could feel the rumble of stone-wurm, could see the patrols returning injured more and more frequently. The War Horde was closing in on their location. It wouldn't be long.

He sat now, curled outside a healer's tent given he was much too large to fit inside, listening to Bylk mutter as he worked his magic. The gems that hung in his pointed ears were almost always without light now, any mana they had time to gather being immediately used for healing. Bylk, with his white tufts of hair and stone-shaped cloak, wore the weariness of being the leader of the Magelords with dignity. It was more than Akkyst could say, moping as he was.

Bylk tutted out an apology, laying a gnarled hand atop a shivering goblin; with a dim flash of light, her arm righted itself, crunching back into place with a snap. Both she and Akkyst winced.

"Keep focus on your side," Bylk chided, helping her back to her feet. She'd been injured on a hunt, though she'd gotten the mossling and dragged it back even with her broken arm. "Steady eye on the prize and yourself, get me?"

She hissed, prodding at the discolored splotch on her arm, but nodded in agreement. One of the silent ones, then; lost the ability to speak or didn't want to.

Akkyst was rather the opposite, which was why when she left, he rose to his feet and nosed his way into the healing tent as best as his head could fit. "Good?"

It still didn't sound right, too growl-y and rumbling to be perfectly understandable, but Bylk had enough time and practice to get the gist of it.

"Could be better," he said, waving a gnarled old hand. A cough rose to the back of his throat, phlegm caught in the crook of his elbow, but he waved that off too. "I'll be fine. Don't worry your pretty little head over me."

Akkyst chuffed in a way he knew sounded like laughter, pulling out of the tent; Bylk padded out to join him, squinting up at the quartz-lights lining the distant ceiling. He was comfortable here, though, in a way Akkyst had never really managed.

Again, he wondered whether it was because of the place, or because of the goblins there. Would he be as happy in another cavern, without the War Horde knowing of their location and with more food and mana, plentiful even if guarded by fiercer prey? Was it worth it to even think of bringing the goblins back to his home, wherever it was?

He shook his head. Bylk would never listen to him, not now at least. For while the stone-wurm lurked, ever hungry and hunting, all goblins knew it was only a matter of time until it rebelled against its captors, slaying them in spectacular gory fashion. It had been under their control for weeks now, grinding away at the cavern walls in reckless abandon, but whatever whips and spears the War Horde used wouldn't control it forever. It would break free soon.

It was odd, really. Akkyst had only enough time to finish that thought before a low, thrumming boom echoed from the cavern.

Every goblin froze.

Past the sound he could hear another: the low, screeching cry of goblins, racketing up to an audible pitch despite the stone between them; stone that was getting thinner.

Was getting eaten.

Bylk snapped to attention, eyes narrowed despite their panic, snapping fingers and hurling orders. "Get ready! Arms up, children back, barriers raised! No time!" Goblins scattered as his commands, light springing to their fingertips in glowing horror; for what they had prepared for had come.

The stalking jaguar and the bladehawk snarled to attention, lashing her feathered tail against the ground and flaring his sharpened wings. They would fight. Though Akkyst knew they still longed for the outside world, this had become a home of theirs, and they would defend it.

As for him.

Akkyst roared, booming and powerful, and felt the air flee before the sound; the goblins on the other side of the stone stopped for just a second, even as their stone-wurm continued to grind horribly away at the wall, the raucous cheering dimming in the presence of another predator. A second and they were screaming again, even as the far wall cracked and revealed spiraling teeth, a scaled maw, bloodshot amber eyes as large as his paw–

With a boom, the stone-wurm broke through the back wall.

Right at its sides was the War Horde, clad in stone armour and brandishing spears, their bodies painted with streaks of mud and decorated with bones; with a howling, earsplitting cry, they charged alongside their beast.

Akkyst rose to his back paws, feeling mana thrum in his chest.

The last time invaders had challenged his home, he had fled.

No longer.