Dragonheart Core

Chapter 114: Storm Call

I stared at the cove entrance for a long time after the bastards escaped.

My creeping vine wriggled around almost sadly, still slowly slithering over the entrance to hide it from the world. A bit late, unfortunately, considering that these invaders hadn't been in for very long at all. Now that I was back to floating ephemeral overhead, points of awareness spiraling around, I could see just how little time had passed—Seros had barely unwrapped from around my core and Veresai had only just started looking through the many eyes of her serpent horde. They'd ran in, killed a few creatures, collected their corpses, grabbed a branch from my vampiric mangrove, and fled. Cowards.

And the one who hadn't been a coward was now being feasted on by many a hungry creature.

I perched overhead, eddying whirlpools of mana coiling around as I tugged his—Bil, ugh—soul out of his body and let it pass through me on its way to the world beyond; knowledge and memories and information flooded through me, everything to bring me understanding of the outside world.

Somewhat.

Well. He was useless. Most, if not all, of his memories were fuzzy and stained, washed together in streaks of colour and the bright, indomitable conviction that he was, really, the best swordsman in all of Calarata. My initial guess had been right. He was drunk. He was always drunk. He was very fond of being drunk.

Dragons didn't get drunk, had no reason to, and I was not particularly enjoying being able to experience that sensation. I spat out the last of his memories with a rippling hiss of mana.

The Drowned Forest echoed hollowly around me.

I curled in around my core, shutting off most of my outer awareness to concentrate, even if I bitched and cursed the whole way. Now I had to… scrounge around for scraps of information off what they said; piece together little bits of what those invaders said when they dared delve my halls. A common thief.

Thankfully they had, in proper fashion, talked loudly and freely with seemingly no concept of an idea that I could be listening. I thought again, of the apparent High Lord Thiago's dungeon. They had spoken of how different we were, and spoken of it at all; not understanding how there could be consequences for them saying things.

Was that dungeon not sentient? Were they completely incapable of knowing what I was?

Hm. There was an internal war between wanting to be known and wanting to be mysterious.

Both, if I could have it.

But that was interesting; my interactions with dungeons before had been extremely minimal, considering few of them were aquatic, but I did vaguely remember them spawning from three-moon eclipses or ley lines, which likely meant a godly hand was involved. I was in no way similar. Mine and mine alone.

The invaders didn't know that.

Thoughts for later; I poured back over what their conversations had been, imagining the curl of smoke from the woman's—Obera, I thought—mouth and the deep timbre of Rordan's voice. They had mentioned they were the first group, implying more, and that there would be invaders once a day. That was… not ideal, not in any sense of the word, but far from the worst; if these two morons would be setting the tone, it was that I couldn't rely on invasions going like they had in the past, when they had snuck their way in and died in neat, manageable waves. No, now there would be constant waves, one group allowed in per day—although presumably, if a group decided to, well, sleep in my dungeon, I could have multiple groups. I'd love to see that happen. That kind of brilliant idiocy would be wonderful to witness—and it looked like it would be smaller groups, not the fifty person party from before. Although I wondered why these three had to pretend to be a group, when it was clear that only Rordan and Obera were actually in a group. Was there stipulations on the size of groups? Or only for the first ones through?

And what was that bastardry about selling my secrets to this so-called Scholar? Bil's soul had a vague memory of the man, if I could get past the lurching movement and hazy vision; a flash of pale skin and red hair and an open coat. He was familiar, in the way all humans were familiar; I knew that they differentiated themselves off faces and hairs and other things like that, but they were just humans to me. Not a single scale pattern variant or horn style or wingspread to tell them apart. Useless.

But the man. I did remember the man, I thought. Something about the way he dressed, or the nervous, awkward energy he had even in memory—a previous invader, maybe. I'd have to think more on it.

Either way, the concept of Scholar was another of those warring thoughts. I was, of course, very pleased at the idea of someone marveling over me and my wonders, standing in awe of my creative genius; but in order to do said marveling, they would have to collect pieces of me to study, which I was rather wholeheartedly against.

But however much I was against it didn't stop them, as shown by the vampiric mangrove branch they'd managed to squirrel out of my halls.

That was the most concerning. Being known for reawakening lost things was not necessarily what I wanted to be free knowledge, not that I had much of a choice. I didn't have much of a choice in any of this, infuriatingly enough; all I could do was prepare my halls and creatures, then wait for the next invader to come in. Hopefully I could figure out a system over the next few days while I kept my halls rumbling on and healed all those who needed healing. A terribly irritating, anxious process.

Well. I did have something to distract myself.

And that something was the beautiful glowing light overtaking my Drowned Forest, from deep beneath the smoking corpse of Bil.

The electric eel.

She was a cantankerous thing, unsatisfied with her current position; one of the older eels, bitten and made vicious by age. Immediately after launching her attack, she'd fallen back into the water, gasping for air and letting the soothing canals dampen her dried skin. Her school of electric silverheads had scattered, utterly baffled by her actions, but they'd come back eventually; this was the first electric eel of mine that would be evolving, and they wouldn't want to lose their position serving her. And considering that Rhoborh had really reached his limit on changes allowed to his floor, they'd also likely be going down a floor. I peered into the light of her evolution with glee.

Your creature, an Electric Eel, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Iridescent Eel (Uncommon): Learning from its reptilian brethren, this creature launches a scintillating display of light from its sides, luring in all that quickly fall prey to its electrified bite.

Chargescale Eel (Uncommon): Master of canals, master of schools; though its electric silverheads are loyal, it demands more, and now grows electric scales. By shedding them in strategic locations around its territory, it can always boost its own power whenever needed.

Storm Eel (Rare): No longer content with electricity, this creature climbs to the sky to harness lightning. Swimming through air and coiling around clouds, it hunts in the streaking, violent manner befitting its shocking aura.

Oho. Fantastic.

Iridescent immediately stood out to me—it seemed to be inspired by both the luminous constrictors and perhaps a touch of Veresai, although I didn't see an explicit mention of psionic powers rather than merely pretty lights. But in the gloom of the Underlake, I could see the explosion of light to draw everything in, and an electrified bite to kill them—still something very few aquatic beings could defend against.

Chargescale was also fascinating; the concept of abandoning her electric silverheads for traps scattered around her territory, able to be launched off at a moment's notice. I didn't think she was particularly smart now, but maybe this evolution would awaken that.

But the final one.

In the electric eel's mind, though muddled and sleepy with evolution, she was still thinking of the above, the amorphous existence beyond the water that she had never experienced. Well, now she had—and I didn't think it was a coincidence that the first time she poked her head above the water, she had evolved.

This was what she was interested in. She wanted to fly.

And it just so happened that I had a floor that needed a change.

The Skylands; I had the skies filled with glorious flying beasts and birds, from the scarlet feathers of the parrot to the rust-red of the bladehawk, to golden carapaces of the swarming wasps to the feathery antennae of the eye-blight butterflies. But that was above; if the goblins were going to live below, I didn't want them exposed, so that any invader could look down and see their dens free for the looting. So my plan was to fill it with cloudskipper wisps, maybe cloudsire palms; anything to fill the air with the mist and the haze and the grey necessary to hide the danger below.

And if, perhaps, in those clouds something were to be hunting—well.

Well, I liked that idea very much.

I selected storm eel.

The light overtook her, floating gently down to the canal floor; I layered a few spiraled nets of points of awareness around her, as well as a pointed call to her school of electric silverheads. Unlikely they would follow her after evolution, but they could certainly protect her in the meantime.

Well, maybe they could—I had a glorious image of an eel spiraling through the clouds, followed by dozens of points for her lightning to fork off of—but that would take another evolution. If they really wanted to stay with her, then they would figure out how to evolve and join her. The choice was up to them.

But with her evolution, I had little doubt more would follow, and I wanted them. Skies filled with tumultuous, lightning-wielding monsters; a paradise for me, one of many hells for my invaders.

There was certainly a lot to do here, made more pressing by the fact I now had a consistent, ever-infuriating timer in the back of my core to keep track of. One day was really not a long time when you think about it. Which I was. A lot.

And, well.

Sitting in my core curled a new strand of mana, only the Bronze of Bil, but that was mana, fresh and potent. And I had been needing potency.

Akkyst, the bastard, was still helping his goblins build their new home; but all of their progress was constantly hampered by the hundreds of other creatures on that floor, some that belonged, some that didn't. I'd managed to keep them separate by having the goblins stay beneath the island, since I was a touch concerned on how the singular kobold there would interact with them, but that couldn't last forever—and I didn't want it to. I wanted brilliance, and that mishmashed collection of ill-thought-out plans wasn't it.

But it could become it.

So I gathered up Bil's mana and the sparks from the Otherworld, leaving fifteen points because I was never allowing myself to go empty ever again, and I dove through the Hungering Reef; past all the glorious creatures and the ravenous maw of the nearly-not-fledgling sea serpent, past Seros curled around my core, and I paused before the stone behind.

More invaders would come tomorrow, and more after, and more after; and they would learn more about me due to this Scholar, and they would keep coming, and I wasn't a secret any longer.

But I had always worked best under pressure.

It was time to begin my seventh floor.