Dragonheart Core

Chapter 78: Proffered Deal

Unfortunately, just because I'd put Seros in charge didn't mean that the rest of my tasks went unanswered.

I'd only just begun to plan out my sixth floor, carving away at the hunk of stone that served as a facsimile of the mountain, when several alarms went off at once. Minor things, really; rebuilding the cave spider population after a web tumbled to the ground and destroyed the huddled eggs, shuffling an ironback toad away from the empty den she'd been guarding with her insipid little mind, adding more iron to a bridge in the Skylands that creaked worryingly as a scorch hound ran over it. The many tribulations of my existence, really. Sometimes I sat and thought fondly back to the early days, when I had a single section of whitecap mushrooms and green algae and perhaps a handful of cave spiders to manage. There had been time for thinking and scheming and delightful experimentation.

Now I felt more like a much begrudged father with a dozen screaming hatchlings. Multiple dozens. More.

…I had several thousand creatures in my halls, including bugs. Hm. I hadn't really considered that, with how few of them managed to keep my attention, but that was a fair number. Lives under my protection. Enough to make up multiple ecosystems.

Almost comforting, in a way. My death, as bullshit and awful and idiotic as it was, hadn't come with nothing. I was still something, here in this existence after death, and I was strong. Not as strong as I had been before, lordling over the sea, but strong. And getting stronger.

I preened as I flew around to my tasks.

My consciousness diffused like a mist as I split up my main focus, handling tasks that required barely a thought by the dozen; easy enough to do, but something I had to get done first before being able to turn my full attention to planning out the next floor. Hopefully, I would be able to split my attention more evenly moving forward; I would need it if I continued to dig ever down. Seros couldn't hold things down forever.

The thought was uncomfortable. I hated relying on anyone, even if Seros was at least an acceptable creature to do so with, and the weakness was one I knew others could exploit. That was why I needed to keep digging, to keep shoving up defenses one after another to keep people from reaching my core. So. More floors.

As soon as all these distractions went away.

I had still made progress on the sixth floor, you must understand.

It was going to be a glorious thing; I'd learned from my Fungal Gardens and Jungle Labyrinth, and this one would be a long, twisting room, sprawling like a serpent as it snaked through the mountain. I wanted this room to be massive, built to contain my lovely watery beasties as they grew, though perhaps not their permanent home. They all needed different environments; open sea for the fledgling sea serpent and Seros, crushing depths for the armoured jawfish, swampier stretches for the sarco crocodile. There was no way to unify those across one floor. No, I wanted a different theme.

And that would be coastal.

My previous water floors had all been built around very specific water conditions; the Drowned Forest was made of mangrove canals, slightly brackish rivers threaded with roots and dens. The Underlake was just that, a lake; brackish but still mostly freshwater, filled with choking seaweed and billowing clouds of sand. Both glorious, but I had not been a sea-drake to keep to such simplistic floors.

No, I wanted a coral reef.

Was this an impossibly high ask? Yes. Coral reefs were protected by every sapient being with more than a crumb of awareness in their mind; they took centuries to fully grow and settle, each piece of coral growing a fraction of a fraction of an inch at a time and fully prepared to off themselves come the slightest inconvenience. Hatchling sea-drakes were banned from ever going near one, lest they lose control of their power and destroy a fragile ecosystem, and most adults stayed away as their size grew past restrainable limitations. Destroying a reef meant bringing the weight of some very powerful creatures that had previously been neutral down on your head. I should know. I had dominated the waters that made up my territory, had killed thousands upon thousands of beings, and even the thought of watching someone destroy a reef made my mana boil in my core.

So. Yeah. Not exactly a simple thing to construct.

But I was nothing if not stubborn, and I was sick of boring grey-pink-white walls. I wanted colour. I wanted life.

And there was no better place to find it than in a coral reef.

They were horribly fragile but also beautifully alive, in the bright, shining way that terrestrial life just couldn't manage. There were no pesky limitations on moving up or down; everything was free to swarm as their fins commanded, ducking behind massive spirals of brain coral or flame-tongues. Predators and prey swam in tandem, each content to wait until their stomachs rumbled, eels darting between and sharks casting looming shadows above. There wasn't a colour untested, no texture unused; experiences woven and dipped and wrapped around each other in a dizzying, thriving mess of beauty.

Gods, I missed it. It had been too long since I'd seen one of the great reefs for myself.

That, of course, came to my current few problems. Schemas I had by the armful; triggerfish, roughwater sharks, mimic jellyfish, and greater crabs were already saltwater based, and I had little doubt I could adapt the silverhead line to live in saltwater. The sea serpent and Seros would no doubt love the new land.

But I, ah, didn't have any coral.

I'm sure you can see why that would make constructing a coral reef difficult.

But my testing hadn't been for naught, even as I worked to rebuild after the pitch-shark. Seros could safely leave my halls through the entrance on the third floor, winding his way into the cove and heading off; I'd never sent him out for more than a few minutes, too scared of a retaliation, but it had been enough for him to bring word of our surroundings. Not a coral reef unfortunately, but coral was still present; and if my expedition with Nicau had taught me anything, it was that I dearly loved when my Named creatures went out and gathered me things.

So. I'd build the outline of the floor, slap together all the walls and dens and general outline, and only then would I send Seros out. He'd gather all the finicky little coral bits I'd need to really begin shaping a masterpiece.

Some part of me fluttered warmly at the thought. As much as Seros was a seabound monitor, he had stuck to the mountain he'd been born in; what would he think of the sea? And more pressingly, would he like the coral reef I would construct? For too long had he been burdened by merely brackish waters; I wanted him to swim through salt, to feel the buoying levity and the rushing pull of the currents. I wanted him to know the sea.

Soon, I knew. Soon I would give it to him.

-

Chieftess considered herself smart.

It was an interesting thought, one rather recent; but she knew she had thoughts now, and thus could think about them, and eventually she had thoughts about thoughts, which was a funny little circle that kept spiraling the more she focused on it. Her fellow scale-kin had thoughts and she talked to them about it, but they had less thoughts than her, and they were simple. Food, hunger, danger, sleep. Still thoughts, but they weren't Big.

Rihsu had Big Thoughts, she remembered. She had continued having Big Thoughts until she had a big enough one that led her to strength and Seros, and now she had Big Thoughts all the time. Chieftess assumed, at least. It had been a long time since Rihsu had come to the den.

But if Chieftess was starting to have Big Thoughts, surely that meant something?

She pondered this and stared at the only other being she knew well to have Big Thoughts.

Nicau. The Named.

The… not-scale-kin-fleshy-thing. He wasn't kobold, what the Great Voice called her, missing protection and horns and claws. He looked so weak.

But he had Big Thoughts, and he was sharing them openly. Fire, something that awoke some ancient memory she had never seen before but felt through each of her scarlet scales, used for food and weapons and warmth. Construction, piling up sticks and stones until they formed not-cave walls, protection and disguise. Weapons, both spears and little blades and sharp rocks to throw.

And now traps.

Nicau was hesitant as he worked, like he was trying to trap his Big Thoughts inside, but he still shared them. They were mostly little things, carving out hollows where the moss would cover the hole and lining the bottom with sharp spikes, or finding dead trees and rigging stones to fall if they were pushed. Little things, just breaking on the edge of nuisance. But they were a start.

Chieftess watched it all. She sent out hunting raids and gathering parties and kept their food up and their den guarded, but she watched. Traps were good, she realized quickly; she liked them. A way to keep their forest safe against those that dared attack. Another way for her to keep her tribe safe, even though she knew that it was just keeping the mana further and further away from her.

If an invader died to a falling stone or hole, the mana wouldn't go to her. But she wanted it.

Chieftess bit back a hiss, scraping at the haunch in her claws with more force. No, she had made her decision. She was Chieftess, commander of the scale-kin. Nicau and Scratch and all the other scale-kin would go out and gather mana, but she would stay to her path. Because it would work. She knew it.

Nicau would set traps, as she had told him to. Because she was the leader, she was Chieftess, and she would command.

But if she wanted power, if she wanted to rise above those that the Great Voice ignored, she would need to command more than scale-kin.

So Chieftess tore off the last charbroiled rat leg, chomping down the meat, and rose to her claws. Her spear—not spear, now staff—came with her as she marched outside, to where the mana whispered and ducked around her like it was aware, like it was listening. She heard it once again, the faint murmur on the wind kicked up by the mist-spirit. Kobold.

Like something was keeping track of her.

It hadn't always happened. She'd only noticed it recently, both from her own growing awareness and also the knowledge that this didn't always happen; the last time she had seen Rihsu had just confirmed it. There was something alive in the forest, noting every movement of creature and being until there were no surprises.

But the scale-kin and the trees did not fight. Chieftess sent her followers to gather fallen sticks and logs, careful to avoid the thorns that were growing sharp enough to dig past their scales, and they were too large for the trees to properly kill. Not a truce, nothing as kind—just an inability to properly kill each other.

But they could be more.

As many Big Thoughts as Nicau had, Chieftess knew she could have more. And what use were traps if they went unsprung?

She marched to the closest mangrove, its bone-white leaves rustling in a misty breeze. The echoing cry went up again for every step she took, crushing moss beneath her claws; kobold, kobold, kobold.

Chieftess stopped and stared at the tree. She was close enough to poke its trunk with her staff, though far enough away it couldn't catch her in its branches if it moved. Its roots writhed against the water.

"Hello," she warbled, and forced every ounce of mana behind her words. "I have a deal."

Silence.

Then, slowly, slowly, the whisper rose again. Not just mana, but nearing a voice, faint and dripping like resin.

Deal?

-

A skittering little thing poked its head through my entrance.

Frankly, it'd been so long since a new creature had entered that I ignored it at first, content to be busy around my other floors and think long and hard on my coral reef. Maybe I could start with a narrower passage, split up the invaders and give my creatures some room to hassle them before leading into a larger cavern with a full coral spread, plenty for the sea serpent to stretch and grow? He needed plenty of room to really use his full potential. The pitch-shark had been limited in its strength by my Underlake; I wouldn't have that happen to my own creatures. I'd give him all the room he needed, though I'd be keeping things relatively shallow to supply the coral with the light it needed to grow. Maybe a raised section with a–

A poor stone-backed toad died a squeaking death. My points of awareness flared to attention.

It had already skittered halfway through the floor, grey-black eyes roving for threats; not enough to actually stop it, though. Every time it noticed another creature, it would pause for a quick little second, tail flicking, before its hunger for mana took over and it continued charging.

Though not without launching one of the many spines over its back. Anything it hit was very neatly pinned to dying a slow, twitching death to the stone beneath.

Brutally effective. I could respect it.

It was scaly and reptilian, maybe three feet long and a deep gold-brown, a band of black around its neck. Hooked claws for clambering up stone, forked blue tongue, and a set of interlaced black-white spines that a porcupine would flirt with nestled over its back. I perked up despite myself. A lizard.

Very welcome, even with the circumstance of its arrival. I'd been deprived of them for far too long—make no mistake, I loved my serpents and crocodiles, but I wanted those a touch close to my old form. This lizard, at a brisk three feet in length, wasn't quite there, but the familiarity was pleasing. The spines down its back could even look like wings, maybe. If I really squinted and flexed my imagination. And maybe had a stroke.

I'd take what I can get.

It crawled onward, answering the siren's call of my mana with its own hunger; I watched it for a second, pondering the beast. Another ranged combatant, though not large enough to pose a real threat without the element of surprise; similar to the triggerfish, but terrestrial. And considering how many eyes the triggerfish had popped with a well-aimed chunk of stone, I had little doubt that this lizard would be an equally useful schema to gather.

But as much as I wanted it, my curiosity beat it out.

It wasn't the only thing I wanted to test now.

My creatures relaxed as I pressed soothing mana over their backs, tugging at all the anger management I had learned when my fury could summon hurricanes. Luminous constrictors flicked pale tongues but stayed curled in their dens, watching with lidless eyes as the lizard scuttled past; toads and rats alike stayed frozen as the intruder raced by, hardly daring to breathe for fear they'd be noticed. They probably wouldn't.

I wanted to wake something else up.

My attention flicked to the back of the cavern, slipping into one of the twin dens poised right on either side of the entrance. In one, the female slept, her massive, bristling form stacked high with more muscles than should really be feasible, three cubs curled within her legs. They were growing like weeds already, fed by the steady supply of whitecap mushrooms I had to manually replace in order to keep them on this floor instead of seeking the more mana-rich food on lower floors, and soon I'd had to carve them their own dens or let them venture down. A question for a later day.

But while the female was more focused on brute force, the male leaned into his shadow-attuned mana, and that was what I wanted. I pushed into his brain.

Nuvja's boon was a flickering, hazy thing in the edges of my awareness, tasting like star-iron in the back of my core. The effect hadn't been immediate, not like my other floors; no whirlpool or symbiotic alarm system, but instead more… movement, for lack of a better word. The walls crawled oddly, the algae-light no longer keeping a steady hold on light and darkness. Shadows twisted and writhed around my various predators, hiding the glint of their fangs or the rustle of their tail until they had already struck the killing blow. My gems gleamed brighter, hidden pockets of greed and temptation, but the surrounding dens filled with nasty little venomous creatures were dull and drab in comparison. Anyone marching up to claim a pile of rubies would be in for a rather rude awakening, preferably of the fatal variety. The shadows didn't have an awareness, not like Rhoborh's system, but they listened to what I requested them to do.

My core prickled a tad uncomfortably as I remembered Nuvja's added clause. If I fulfilled whatever she requested of me, would my shadows gain sentience? Even sapience? Was that possible for something originating from just a god's boon?

A question for another day, truly unfortunately. I can't even begin to express how badly I wanted to answer it.

But how would those same shadows react when actively harnessed by one of my creatures?

The lunar cave bear rumbled to consciousness, raising his massive head up and lumbering up to his paws. He was enormous, undoubtedly so, but it was clear that he had stayed more to the mana side than his mate. She was easily a size and a half larger than him. His eyes blinked slowly at his surroundings, still waking up, but the foreign mana skittered over his awareness before too long.

Which, good, because the lizard had nearly made its way to the rock pond by the time my laziest creature rose off his ass and moved to confront it. He tracked its movement, ears perked forward and lips drawn back; but just as the lizard's eyes roved over its surroundings, a shadow dropped from the ceiling and draped itself over his form.

In an instant, his earthen brown fur was a splotched grey-black, indistinguishable from the darkness of the den he'd emerged from. Even the ivory of his fangs was barely visible as more than a slight discolouration.

I leaned forward. Well done. Hiding from sight wasn't the end-all in any form of the word, but my Fungal Gardens creaked and groaned and shifted enough that the soft rustle of the bear's claws moving through algae went unnoticed. Of course, that was doubtless helped by how most reptiles had the auditory abilities of a corpse. A corpse of someone who had previously been deaf, to be precise.

Not dragons, of course, but lizards most definitely.

The bear loomed closer, ears flicking; more and more shadows rose from his surroundings to wrap, almost comfortingly, around his bulk as he slid forward. The lizard finished its little adventurer's journey and now paused uncertainly at the edge of the rock pond, its spines rustling almost nervously on its back. Not an aquatic beast for certain.

With only the whisper of fur against fur, the bear's claw rose. The lizard got a second for a truly pitiful squeak before its head was unceremoniously removed from its body.

A touch overkill, in hindsight. The bear's paw probably weighed twice the lizard's entire body, but ah well. I'd wanted to test something.

And test something I most certainly had.

The issue with the lunar cave bears in the past—including the one who got away, which I still felt a twinge of pained guilt for. I had been too weak, unable to protect him, still so young and unknowing of the world—was that while they could use mana, the cost wasn't normally worth it. Their bulk was around muscle, not mana storage, and summoning or controlling shadows took plenty to properly manage. Tugging up a quick distraction while being pursued by a larger predator or hiding the entrance of a den while huddled inside, sure.

But actively using it while hunting? Much less common. The mana cost was merely too great.

So when the shadows themselves were cooperating… well.

I flashed sharpened mana throughout the Fungal Gardens. Well, that would be an entirely separate story, wouldn't it?

Pressing appreciative mana into the bear's head, I released him from his summoned service to lumber back to his cave, curling up to digest the meal. He'd barely glanced at the lizard after killing it—too small for his tastes—but I did bloom a little patch of whitecaps inside his den as a thank you. He chewed them without ambition as he sprawled over the stone. Lazy bastard.

Then I turned to the other prize. Its body dissolved into motes of white light, brilliant and flickering, and a few sparks of mana divided between both me and the bear. Its schema settled pleasantly alongside my others.

Spined Lizard (Common)

Curiosity rarely a long-lived creatures makes, but being armed with launchable spines and the aim of a champion gives this creature a fighting chance. They scuttle through forests and caverns alike, feasting on whatever they find.

About what I'd expected, then. Aim of a champion was certainly a lovely turn of phrase I was very willing to use, and I'd always take more ranged combatants. Probably both the fourth and fifth floor, depending on how fast the little guy could go when I put some real mana through its channels; and more food for the thornwhip algae if nothing else, which was also appreciated.

It was nice to get a new schema from just a regular invader, in a way. It'd been so long I'd almost forgotten the sensation.

No time to delve on that, though. I had floors to plan.