Dragonheart Core

Chapter 79: To Be Ready

I slammed my metaphorical weight back into the Underlake.

The armoured jawfish narrowed his crimson eyes but snapped his bony fangs over merely water instead of the sea serpent's tail, the suction pull releasing the twisting creature as he shot back in the bloodline kelp. The serpent hissed, a dark, violent sound full of promise, and I spat back with all the fury that several hundred years of being alive as one of the most spiteful creatures in Aiqith brought me.

The sea serpent slithered back. Damn right.

This was getting tiring. Seros went back to the fifth floor and the sarco was sunning himself on the ledge, but the armoured jawfish and fledgling sea serpent took no breaks in their somewhat irritating desire to beat the shit out of each other. As much as I loved and encouraged growth from my creatures, I also had a vested interest in keeping the strongest of them alive long enough to actually complete said growth.

Something that these two were missing.

No time to start on the sixth floor, though I'd come up with the general outline; long and twisting, shallower than my other floors but with plenty of room for the sea serpent to stretch out to his full size, which I hoped he'd enjoy. He'd better, with all the grey scales he was going to give me.

I flung an unaimed burst of mana in his general direction that carried all the weight of my frustration and stalked up a floor. He flicked his tongue and swam deeper into the Underlake.

Twin irritants aside, I did have a task relating to one of them—or, at least, relating to the lack of one of them. Mayalle's interest still lurked in the back of my core, uncomfortable with the changes still taking place on her claimed floor, but she'd liked the silver krait when he'd been around, and I was hopeful she wouldn't mind a few more.

And if she did, I'd just take her frustration for however long it took to get the sixth floor up and moving. Which, considering I'd been trying to start that thing for three days and I'd barely finished making a plan, could be a while. Again, I was just tickled pink by all the interferences I was dealing with.

It was times like this that made me truly regret losing my old form. There was nothing quite as good at working through frustration than beating the shit out of something else.

But now I surged overhead in the Drowned Forest, extending gentle little feelers to all things serpentine on the floor—technically, the horned serpent's army on the fourth floor was another resource to tap, but I imagined she'd be displeased with me trying to remove some of her soldiers, and they were too loyal to her to even think of attempting an aquatic life. I wanted kraits that would actually want to be kraits.

Specifically kraits that would stay krait-esque, using their venom and focusing on speed instead of size, because as much as I loved the sea serpent and all his regal beauty, my dungeon was simply not large enough to survive more than one.

For later days, unfortunately. I let myself have a second of imagining a thrashing mess of scales and frills and fangs as large as the mountain itself.

Glorious.

But for now, I poked points of awareness into the various dens filling the floor, nudging luminous constrictors out of their slumber with entrancing little thoughts based around food and other such worldly pleasures. They stirred, flicking grey tongues as they stared at their surroundings—but this wasn't the raid-frenzy, no howling call to engage invaders. Just a friendly little chat.

Somewhat.

By the dozens, they slithered out of their dens, following a trail I carved through the floor to the exit, guiding them over river and root as I spooked other predators away from their path. Not forever, mind you, but at least long enough to get my message through. A few kobolds out on a hunting party watched their progression with hungry eyes.

Before long, I had a writhing pile of snakes all situated around the beautiful water leading to the Underlake, though their thoughts were a touch more focused on the sarco snoozing peacefully less than ten feet away. I was keeping him asleep, though. No need for them to be all worried.

Honestly, he was barely four times their size. What a bunch of overreactors.

I sunk my mana into their head and pulled their gazes away, letting their eyes drift over the new world beyond; the fully wolf-shaped cloudskipper wisp danced over waves she kicked up, dancing in the flashing algae-light, the water hissing and whispering below. Already I knew the serpents could feel the increase in ambient mana from being even one floor lower, thrumming through their channels until their eyes gleamed.

One interest already locked, I pushed their attention back to the water, settling a current of mana within to clear away the bubbles, making it crystal clear just for them. A special little treat that also let them see the silverhead school I'd convinced to swim this way, hundreds of sleek bodies darting around each other less than ten feet away.

Look at the fish, I cooed. All those beautiful fat fish. Tasty. Full of mana.

I could see that they wanted that prey, could practically taste it—as appetizing as rats and toads were, they never existed in groups this large. The silverhead school swam away as I let my control over them slip, watching every constrictor track the movement with slitted eyes.

Then, from beneath where the school had been, the gold-black stripes of a triggerfish darted through a tunnel opening, cheeks fat with stored shards of rock. Cantankerous like the rest of its species, ornery at the best of times, and certainly not the type to take mercy on a terrestrial creature doing its damnedest to try an aquatic hunt.

Maybe not that fish, I acquiesced.

I shoved their attention away from the creature that would kill them and back to the retreating school, shoveling information into their heads with as much grace as I could bring myself to muster—how to swim, how to drag their prey out of the water, how to know when they needed to surface to breathe. All basic things that they could probably figure out for themselves, but I was nothing if not efficient. The serpents twitched as I dumped a lifetime's worth of experiences into their head, eyes and thoughts dulling, but they revitalized quick enough. Not like they had many brain cells to lose with my maneuver there.

Then they stared at the water. I waited impatiently overhead.

One of the larger females, nearly twelve feet, flicked her tongue out. Her tail twitched. With an almost hesitant breath, she slithered forward and breached the surface of the water, almost immediately fumbling the landing and slipping fully underneath. She'd figured it out.

Three more joined her but the rest stayed hesitantly at the edge, not retreating back up to the Drowned Forest but not jumping in either, which was disappointing. I was hopeful for more.

They had time. I could wait. Maybe.

Waiting didn't mean I couldn't be busy, though, so I left a few points of awareness and popped back to my other tasks, more of my consciousness spreading out almost without my permission. A few darted all the way to the Skylands, watching over the pigeon-bat-bug war that had only grown more and more incensed as each of their populations increased, with the only real winners being the scorch hounds and mottled scorpions who got to feast on all the fallen corpses. A glance around showed that the fire-tongue flowers were filling the air with an almost choking level of smoke, which would work very nicely if I could ever get around to converting this place to a storm-focused floor. Seros stayed on guard in my hoard room, curled over a lump of silver with a strangely pleased expression stretched between his horns. Brat.

More points of awareness spiraled upward, poking in on the mage ratkin population and the little… I hesitated to call it anything other than training sessions, but it was more of the lead ratkin finding a small enough section of thornwhip algae and bullying it into obeying her, then using that to grab bugs aplenty to feast on. She was a glorious thing—even if she was fleshy and furry, there was nothing else to call her determination than draconic. Her appreciation for the more jewelescent things in life did nothing but help.

Movement, movement, movement—I flew upward, guiding the various greater crabs towards fallen corpses and rebuilding the roughwater shark population now that there were four threats to decimate them. The cloudskipper wisp barked at my presence, a wavering, wind-through-rushes sound, and darted away before I could even try to touch her. She was growing stronger, right on the edge of what counted as a wisp; not anywhere near elemental, but nearing evolution. Which, good, because I still had no idea on how elemental lines worked.

Above that, I soothed and pushed around the lichenridge turtles until their shells were better disguised as stepping stones, guiding the ironback toads to the full dens. Webweavers shivered as my awareness flew over them and I shivered in return, still a little too uncomfortable with how they treated me. Electric eels crisped up a juvenile armourback sturgeon with a strong burst of pride. I ran into the kobold chieftess talking quite seriously with a mangrove, which, sure.

In the Fungal Gardens, I inspected all the creeping vines to make sure they were in the right place, polished up a few exposed gemstones, regrew whitecap mushrooms. Cave spiders by the dozens were weaving a complex knot by the entrance, but without the pheromone communication of the webweavers, half their progress kept being halted by one spider eating the other. Terrible project management. I poked my head into the female lunar cave bear's den, finding her asleep with three cubs lazily eating what mushrooms she'd hauled back for them. They were half of my schema size, still threats but not enough to really hurt invaders, but with how fast they were growing I doubted it would be long before the Fungal Gardens were too cramped and I'd have to send some of them down. Probably the parents, since while I loved having them as an initial defense, I knew their potential was being squandered on such a low-mana floor. Honestly, it wouldn't be a bad idea to send them down now, let the cubs grow into themselves and–

Something like phantom pain lanced across my core. No.

I reeled back.

Okay. What?

I poked and prodded at the thought, examining it with perhaps a touch of worry—why was I so opposed to moving the bears to a lower floor? I'd be keeping some of them in the Fungal Gardens, because that floor still needed a powerhouse of sorts, but surely there wouldn't be any problem with sending them down to the stone jungle, or even just the Drowned Forest? What was the problem?

No, the floor wasn't the issue—I agreed with myself that any of those floors would be better for the bears, and that didn't prompt the pain. Problems only came when I thought about moving them now.

For just an instant, I felt the heave of a scaled chest and the weight of enormous wings.

I hadn't been a dragon for almost three months now and I'd almost forgotten what it felt like, lost to the memories and instincts of a dungeon, but my soul still remembered the tug and pull of deep sea currents, the shaft of light through twisting waves.

It also remembered why dragons were long-lived creatures—they were paranoid as all hells.

I had flown to every floor in my dungeon, inspected all my strongest creatures, made sure they were in peak form and ready to fight. At the barest thought of weakening one of them, it had been a physical reaction.

Some part of me, unconsciousness and barely functioning, knew there was danger approaching, and it would be here soon. Not strong enough to count as true prescience, since I could recognize that these habits had been happening for roughly the past week and it was only now that I was noticing them, but my paranoia had kept me alive as a sea-drake, and I would be damned if I ignored it now.

So I exhaled a whorling spiral of mana, setting up points of awareness around every entrance, a few more hovering over the heads of my strongest creatures. Mana, bright and powerful, sung through my halls as it prepared for something, anything. My sixth floor plans drifted to the background as I focused on the present, on the now.

I was ready.

The invaders awaited.

-

Lluc strode forward.

Behind him, nearly fifty adventurers crowded, swearing heartily as they slipped and skidded their way down the pebbled beach. The most he'd been able to wrangle, given that his mana had only been able to convince those that had even the slightest chance of wanting to fight themselves; as powerful as his words were, they couldn't force a pacifist to take up a sword or an old man to regain the strength in his legs. At the end, even in blasted Calarata so full of idiots and ravaging dreamers, only a sixth of the original crowd had followed him.

But that was still fifty, and they weren't all useless.

The vast majority were, but he'd spotted gleams in the shit, a touch few that stood taller than the rest. Some with old, combat-born scars and bodies that had seen more fights than their fellows had even dreamed about, others with archaic tools and symbols strapped over their bodies, others still with merely an awareness in their eyes Lluc recognized from the mirror. True adventurers, although drowned out by the screamers who had never so much as felt the hilt of a sword in their hand.

A shadow-robed man with shrouded, narrow features stuck to the back of the group, inspecting fingertips as black as if they'd been dipped in ink. A tall, almost frail seeming woman with curtains of blonde hair that nearly hid the mask bolted to her face, bone-white and melding with her skin. A lithe, silver-streaked man with a bow strung over his shoulder and the eyes of someone who was well familiar with struggling to survive. A duo casting wary glances at the rest of their team, she studded with scars that arced and crackled over her skin and he with a thin black cloth wrapped over his eyes. A man with a feather-filled hat, fingering a thin rapier, surrounded by a party with more gold than real adventure in their eyes.

Not exactly the same bites of potential Lluc looked for when hunting down new blood for the Dread Crew, but enough. He wasn't expecting many of them to survive.

Which was why he already had invisibility coiling at his fingers.

Lluc wouldn't consider himself a coward, but he was realistic, and Varcís had not instructed him to take the dungeon. He was rather positive that the man would be a touch displeased if Lluc dared try to claim a core that could threaten his power, actually, and Lluc was overly fond of his head being situated on his shoulders instead of elsewhere. The previous First Mate had taught him that lesson.

So he would shove this group of idiotic dreamers into the cave, watch them tramp through from a safe distance, and wait for them to break through to the core. Then he would stop any who attempted to claim it, forgoing on the promises he'd made just to whip them into action, and he would wait as patiently as he was able until Varcís showed up to claim the core for himself.

He'd thought about it, just a hair—could he challenge the Dread Pirate with a dungeon core of his own? This dungeon, while young, had strength behind its bite; maybe he could whip it enough until it produced monsters fitting to fight Varcís.

And then he remembered beasts from the Dead War and shadows and darkness and the horrible, uncomfortable fact that no one knew how strong Varcís was, and he found himself content to merely listen to his commands this time.

So on he strode, evening sun knifing through the clouds to scour against Calarata and the ramshackle group he led towards the crack in the Alómbra Mountains. He kept his head high, ignored the faint sting of ribs that hadn't yet finished their riveting complaints, and marched on with all the poise and grace Calarata had come to know him for. The Gold wizard, the second-in-command, the leader.

Movement, from the corner of his eyes.

Lluc didn't stiffen, because he was too strong to show such pitiful weakness when surrounded by fodder, but he did allow his gaze to flick to the side. The sun curled to the horizon, high-mountain mist that had survived the morning burn off trickling down the sides, cloudsire palms trembling in a racing wind.

And a parrot landed neatly on an exposed frond.

It tilted its head at him, squawking twice—it was a sightly enough fellow, large and broad, with red-gold feathers lesser pirates would be willing to shoot the thing down just to stick in their hat. Not one of the more dangerous flamesoul parrots, nor even a greater variant; just one of the common birds that so pestered Calarata. For all reasons, a typical menace from the jungle.

But it wasn't in the jungle, and it was watching him.

Its black eyes stayed fixed on him as he strode further alongside the cove, wrapping its talons around the palm frond as it adjusted its position to keep him in its sights. Decidedly not normal bird behavior, even ignoring the fact it was out of its home territory. There was something strangely intelligent in its eyes, a lingering awareness as if it was analyzing what it was seeing.

But Lluc Cardena Ferré certainly didn't spook at birds, so he kept marching.

Another shock of movement as it leapt from its current palm to land on one ahead of him, the younger tree swaying under its weight. It didn't look like a ploy to get him to stop, not making any aggressive moments or swooping at his face, but it was watching. His back prickled uncomfortably underneath his crow-wing coat.

He chanced a look around—no one was watching him, too busy chattering to their team or preparing weapons—and activated his mana sight. A stolen, bastardized version, considering he didn't need the crushing headache that came with activating true mana sight so near the Dread Pirate's cove and the monsters he hid within it, but plenty to investigate. His eyes flicked to the bird.

It was lit up in spirals of red and grey, typical enough attunements for something living in the jungle, but there was something… off. Too much mana, even with it being fully grown, centered in whorls around its eyes and beak. Its feathers gleamed strangely, talons spiraling in on themselves, wings great expanses of flickering energy.

It looked like it was made of mana.

Lluc almost missed a step.

Shit. He knew how dungeons worked and how their creatures were born; he'd known that the dungeon would recognize his invisible investigation as just that, an investigation, but he hadn't considered the possibility of it posting up guards to watch for new invaders. Fucking hell. He switched off his mana sight and chanced another look at the thing, still perched unwaveringly overhead. Had it already reported back about their arrival, able to do it from a distance, or did it need to fly back to the dungeon?

His hand twitched for a coil of mana.

With a piercing shriek, the parrot spread its wings and leapt off the palm, spiraling away in a blur of red and gold—heading toward the jungle, instead of the dungeon. Lluc frowned.

When he emerged from the dungeon, he'd take the time to kill the blasted thing, just out of principle.

The dungeon that was now uncomfortably close.

He watched as the crack emerged, narrow and surrounded by sand, torn from the mountain's side after the beast had fallen. Old air whispered through, kicked up by some unknown threat within, and Lluc got the honour of watching the posturing of the adventurers die to a trickle.

Though it was nothing but a cave's opening, they understood, at least a fraction, of what they faced. There was no Adventurer's Guild to maintain the safety of the dungeon, to patrol and figure out the dangers of each floor, to whip together escape teleportation or offer high-ranked guides. This was just raw adventuring, true as the days of old.

What they had fled Leóro's endless list of rules to find.

Lluc watched the void as if it watched him back.

"No mercy," he intoned, staring into the depths of the mountain. The jagged maw yawned invitingly. "For it will show us none."

The crowd shuffled, murmurs breaking under their bravado. But those star-shined few he'd noticed perked up, eyes bright, and gathered their weapons and wits about them. Lluc calmed his own breathing, tugged up the mantle of the First Mate of the Dread Crew until it sat comfortably around his shoulders, broad and stretching, ready to perform.

He was ready.

The dungeon awaited.