Dragonheart Core

Chapter 166: Chosen Leaders

I let the schemas tumble over my core like tossed stones.

Ice-attuned mana didn't hurt, particularly since I didn't have a material body to hurt, but there was an echo of it; I held the idea of their bodies in my mind and felt intangible aches in my fangs and rugged patches on my scales. Potent things, these creatures; while I didn't have more than three, already my thoughts spun together great shining glaciers and towering mountains of nothing but ice. Muskox, thundering over the plains; piercing lynx skulking through the underblow; snowscape beavers carving palaces in the desolate.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a place for them in my current halls—the lesser muskox needed room to roam and while they could potentially fit into the Scorchplains, I doubted their preferred tundra home would mesh well with choking smoke and flame. The snowscape beaver was in the name; I'd make them an arctic, but I didn't have one yet.

The piercing lynx could fit, and I could see them in my unfinished heart tree, climbing through the vascular vines and branches. Invaders who tried to hide couldn't from their all-seeing gaze, and if the humid density of a faux rainforest didn't work for them, I could simply send them down a floor.

That would be the plan, and already my core thrummed with excitement to see those two widely separate ecosystems next to each other. There was so much to do.

But for now, I chucked out one more point of awareness to make sure that Gonçal had left—he had, the tunnel stayed devoid of thieves—before turning back to my Underlake and the changes there. Already the floor was divided up, churning up the existing sandbed into a mess of stone crags and bloodline kelp; not a peaceful walk. Though Gonçal had swam to the surface to let me guide him to a talking point, I had seen him clock the change; no longer would the only threat of the Underlake merely be defending attacks from above as you trotted on through. Considering I was about to lose my armoured jawfish, I needed that.

I didn't have a Named here, which was going to stay that way, despite the two Names I was preparing to create. The third floor was too high for me to be comfortable; I wanted my invaders figured out before they came traipsing down to stick a secret attunement through Seros' ribs. So my commanding creature would instead be the royal silvertooth, whose horde had coalesced from all the silvertooth schools; he would be the main centerpiece through whom my instructions were communicated. Mostly.

He was, unfortunately, a little single-minded on his silvertooths. Mayhaps I would also have someone else.

And, as I dove through the murky currents and tug of the cloudskipper wisp's waves, I found one.

He was positively ancient by my standards, his carapace cracked and milky where it wasn't a brilliant emerald green. His claws seemed to be constantly regrowing even around his molts, whereas his shell was oddly thick, built up like a castle's defenses. He was old but not evolved; a greater crab, one of the rare schemas I'd collected that had evolved outside of my control, which unfortunately meant it took him even longer to evolve again than if he'd just been a baseline crab. But his channels were near full, filling up to near-totality; his evolution was coming soon.

I slipped into his mind, into the chitinous understanding he had of the world; he'd migrated down from the Drowned Forest after encountering one of the lichenridge snapping turtles, watching their shells, seeing their power. Now he plodded over the sand, snapping out at anything that came near; he hungered for strength. For invulnerability.

The royal silvertooth controlled the waters overhead, and this greater crab would command the sand. Commanding his siblings, working with the armourback sturgeons, anything that lived beneath the schools overhead.

To him and the royal silvertooth, I attached a point of awareness in a permanent lock; though it wouldn't be much compared to the thousands I had available, it would cement them as my chosen for these floors; and, considering how I remade raid-frenzy, they would potentially be my full communication with floors. The less mana I wasted on that—the less that the invaders could steal and listen to—the better.

The Underlake, in its new form, would be a force for slowing groups down. Even if they had Therrón's ability to make water a non-issue, they still wouldn't be able to walk across the bottom, not with the crevasses and valleys, and now with the greater crab leading a task force to crack and snap at their legs, they'd feel the urge to swim up, where the royal silvertooths would shred them into mincemeat.

…hm. I liked that idea—if not Named, then leaders, creatures given a purpose beyond defense to guide the others. I split my consciousness into three pieces and left one each with my two chosen, pounding strategies and tactics and intelligent patterns into their heads. Not for the Fungal Gardens perhaps, considering I wanted that competition bred through the shadowthief rats as they hunted for information, and the Drowned Forest had the kobold tribe–

Well, this was going to take forever, but I shattered my consciousness into some dozen pieces; off they flew to my previous floors, taking points of mana with them to build up proper lessons. Those in the Fungal Gardens would create a proper reward system for any shadowthief rats that discovered information about the invaders. Much like the chosen leaders of the Underlake, I permanently attached a point of awareness to that floor; I tucked it in the back of the den that had previously housed the lunar cave bears and was now studded with bug gladiatorial arenas, locking it onto an outcropping of jet. Beautiful, but hidden under Nuvja's shadows. If a shadowthief rat discovered something, they could come tell the rock, and my constant point of awareness would hear it and give them a reward. Probably mana, maybe a jewel or piece of food. Whatever they seemed to want.

Then, in the Drowned Forest, I flew up to the kobold den, where they were already beginning to dig fall-traps with sharpened spikes—lovely, I knew they would do it—and attached a point of awareness to the leader. Inevitably he would evolve and I would have to switch, but for now it would suffice. I started blasting him with my developing script of strategies and commanding, as well as spending a full point of mana to carve an intricate map into the furthest-back wall of the den—while it could be usable by invaders, the kobold den was already in the last room of the Drowned Forest, so they would likely not need it. But now they could plan out traps, constantly check and reset them, as well as set up proper charging lines to counteract lesser invaders. Phenomenal.

My core strained as I stretched myself so thin, but I took the bulk of my consciousness down to the Jungle Labyrinth, alongside most of my mana. Because Shoth—more of Gnat, really—had displayed that I wasn't as clever as I wanted to be, and by all hells would I allow that any further.

The auxiliary tunnels. The multiple passages I had created to move my creatures around, allow them to avoid the aquatic floors, to avoid danger, to traverse like ghosts through my boilpot. No longer. The single one I would allow would be for moving the lunar cave bears around the Underlake, which I would be collapsing the moment they made it to the tunnels of their new home. In all likelihood they could swim, and I probably should make them, but they were already on their way; I'd already closed it off from the Fungal Gardens entrance, and I would enlist Nenaigch's help to make sure it was nothing more than a memory once they were through.

Gods, the memory of Shoth just—running around Veresai and completely ignoring one of the most dangerous creatures in my halls infuriated me to no end. The thought that I could build a death trap just for someone to use the fangs as stepping stones across was murder on my mind.

Actually—midway through destroying one, I stopped, glancing around at the rough, cragged stone all around. Originally I had made it so the Jungle Labyrinth was a tangled mess of tunnels, one entrance and one exit, and with Nenaigch's boon everything shifted and moved until Veresai was the only way out. Combined with the utter darkness and thornwhip algae, it was a hell unlike any found on Aiqith.

All I needed to do was funnel them towards Veresai and the Stone Jungle at the end of the maze, and kill off as many as I could in the process.

I finished destroying that tunnel which had previously connected to the Skylands, because of course it did, of course I had so many cheating pathways throughout my dungeon without a thought that the invaders would find it.

The floor itself didn't need much, beyond regrowing a couple of sections of thornwhip algae that Alda had so lovingly burned with her alcoholic fires, and I turned a few of the previously-existing tunnels into dens for the still-evolving mantises. The stalking jaguar had spent her time sleeping in the Skylands with Akkyst, though I didn't know if she would still do so as a boundless jaguar; I carved out a den for her regardless.

Through the tunnels I flew, silent and indomitable; over blue-eyed serpents and all the echoes of Veresai's presence, untested by the invaders. Then, out of the darkness and into the Stone Jungle, that false collection of trees and moss-woven trees, littered throughout with serpents. Another prickle of annoyance; my mage ratkin and, more particularly, my forestfall ratkin, hadn't fought anyone since Syçalia. Already they were undergoing a territorial issue as Veresai's horde grew larger and larger; they could defend themselves, but they couldn't really compete, meaning it was an uneasy truce that ended with Veresai getting all the mana-rich food while the ratkin merely survived. Maybe I could move them to the heart tree.

Into the den, past my empress serpent with her four eyes glowing and crowned head held high, the horned serpent waiting by her side for any further instructions. Serpents resting with full stomachs, jeweltone serpents gathering more gems, stockpiles of shed skins.

Then, in the far back, Kriya was asleep, her scaled face pressed to a bed of moss beneath glimmering quartz-lights. She seemed– tired, in a way. Worn, not like eroded stone but instead sifted sand, too many minerals plucked away and leaving only grit behind. Veresai's horde was a monstrous, enormous thing with a population ever-growing, and she was only one human, new Silver though she was.

Still under a geas, still loyal, still controllable; but I felt the faintest stab of pity as I dipped into her thoughts, as shared memories of constant bleeding and pain and death that was on her narrow shoulders drifted back to me. She lived in a cavern where her only interactions were either those wounded and dying she needed to save, or the empress serpent who had taken her.

I wanted her and Nicau to meet, both for understanding's sake, and also to give her more. Geases weren't invulnerable, no matter how much Veresai seemed to preen about how hers was, and if Kriya grew unhealthy or sad enough, she could shatter it without even knowing what she was doing. She needed more, in the way that Nicau had; to his mind, he was the lone human in a mass of monsters, but he had friends, had missions, had adventurers. He had a life.

Kriya didn't.

I swooped overhead, to her curled-up form beneath gentle fronds and waving moss, and made the first of a new schema.

It wove together slowly, piece by piece, sucking up my mana with a tremendous pull; almost immediately I backpedaled, digging through the schema to find a younger, more affordable age to create it at, but still almost twenty points disappeared from me in a snap.

But there, right by her clawed hands, a restorative aloe grew.

Small, it was made of pale green fronds lined with dull spikes, curving up and in to collect falling water. The mana in it was a blessed, honey-bright thing, exuding serenity and calmness even to me; it knew it was important and knew it would be protected, and thus had no reason to appear dangerous. It was what it was.

And what it was, hopefully, was an opportunity for Kriya to recover. To take this as a way to give herself a break, do more with her time than simply heal serpents; I couldn't afford to have her break her geas and betray me, not when she had figured out so many of Veresai's strategies. No, I had to make her happy.

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Which was odd to think about, both in terms of merely thoughts and also actions. The sea-drake I had been would never have considered wasting twenty points of mana on a healing plant when Kriya was already a healer; but the dungeon core I was becoming knew that there were more important things than simply letting her burn herself out. Knew that keeping a human happy, even one with naga ancestry, meant survival.

Gods. I was doing it, and in truth I'd already been doing it before realizing the implications, but the knowledge of how much I'd already changed was quite startling.

But the Jungle Labyrinth was, mostly, perfect; without a doubt my most powerful floor of the top five. It was only my shitty choices that had led to it being avoided.

The Skylands, though, needed some help. I left a few more points of awareness over Kriya—I was curious how she would react when she woke up—before diving below.

The clouds greeted me with their typical blustering depths, Khasvar's mana crackling through the ambiance with the distant roar of thunder; my stormcaller sprite with her amorphous canine form, galloping overhead, the storm eel coiling her sinuous form through the stalactites, the bladehawk swooping with rust-red feathers.

And a massive desolated crater from a vial of cthonian russets that were just too destroyed for me to get the schema of. Forget everything else Alda had done; that was what made me hate her. I'd collected a few other crops from her vials, a handful of plants that would do nicely to fill in the gaps around my jungle heart tree, but I'd wanted that destructive potential.

Alda had used that to level my island, sent it tumbling down—actually crushed some of the Magelord bridges, terribly rude—and while my immediate reaction was to save it, I didn't. Shoth had sprinted through the clouds like a miraculous thresher, leaping from island to island until he reached the end. I'd thought of caution, when I'd made the Skylands; that the choking clouds and distant boom of thunder would keep invaders scared and slow. And it had, for everyone else; but Shoth had ran, and he had nearly enslaved me.

So instead of forcing them to keep their balance atop spindly islands with narrow bridges, I would be forcing them to go down.

I leeched my mana into the stone and dissolved it, careful not to hurt any more of the Magelord's carvings; the limestone drifted away in peals of light until there sat perhaps a sixty-foot gap between that island and the next. I knew that enhancers could make the leap, but that was with sunlight and knowledge; my cloudskipper wisps and stormcaller sprite would make damn sure that other island was never visible through the mist. To invaders, all they would see was their perfect path suddenly disappearing, and their only option was the jump blindly through the clouds—which had a much higher percentage of sending them spinning off to other abandoned crevasses—or braving the climb down to the ground, which would drop them solidly into Magelord territory.

Akkyst was the Named on this floor, no matter how he was still making his way down from the Underlake, rumbling appreciatively to the parrot who, for some inexplicable reason, decided to join him; I would give him the same knowledge I was giving my chosen leaders of other floors, though I would wait until the Magelords finished evolving. They were intelligent enough for it.

The path, disrupted. The islands, unsteady. The air was still less full than I wanted it to be, which had more to do with how the many species I had were small themselves; greater pigeons and baterwauls and swarming wasps and eye-blight butterflies were numerous and powerful, but the largest was the bladehawk with an eight foot wingspan, and the others were much smaller. I wanted more.

And if it had worked in the Fungal Gardens, my floor with the least ambient mana, I had little doubt it would thrive here.

Already I had a template, and this I wove again; I made three of them, one in the corner of an island tucked between boulders so as to be hidden, one up in the rusted iron veins that littered the far walls, and one on the floor proper. Three points of mana each, a more-than proper reward for murder, plenty of moss and other food for those that needed to whet their appetite before diving back into the fray.

There were already evolved insects in this floor, a mix of groundbreaker ants—and the cleaver ant that had finally made his journey done, towering over all the others in his mix, a proper defender whose thoughts were only joyful at surviving—swarming wasps, eye-blight butterflies, and other Underranked scuttlers that did little to nothing. That would change. And I had–

Movement, overhead. My points of awareness, stretched thin, tugging at the edge of my consciousness as I pulled myself into too many directions at once; they lurched back as something appeared, swiveling in towards the Fungal Gardens.

Oh. Well, if nothing else, that was a good indicator for how much time had passed, considering three invaders poked their heads into my halls.

All humans, no ancestry or interest in sight; plain armour, a glowing amulet around one neck, hands clasped on halberds and swords. A typical party as to what I'd seen over the previous weeks, nothing more than mid-ranked Silver. Either looking to collect creatures or enslave me, hard to tell.

But my plans were already working.

As one, all the shadowthief rats turned to look, their clever black eyes lighting up with an internal glow. The two poking around my communication rock—gods, I needed a better name for that—peeled away, slipping under Nuvja's shadows as they encircled their new prey. For their part, the invaders seemed to sense them, though they couldn't see; I watched their mana prickle uncomfortably as dozens of unseen eyes raked over them, searching for attunements or armour or hidden weapons. Glorious.

I did want to use this for experiments—there was no group safer to work on reducing or remaking my raid-frenzy than three Silvers with middling confidence—but I needed to rebuild first. Later.

Points of awareness littered over their form, I dove back to the Skylands. The gladiatorial arenas came into focus, already a shuffling thing with numerous legs and long, feathery antenna poking its head into the one on the ground. The island, crumbled; a way to go down and then up, walking the thin precipice between falling and overcorrecting. No longer would Shoth be able to just walk through.

One more floor. I pushed another point of mana into the still-evolving Bylk and disappeared down the tunnel, the humidity rising and light gleaming around the limestone. My Hungering Reefs, my array of paradise; what had failed me. Or I had filed it.

That was the problem, I was finding. I kept designing these beautiful, lovely, masterful floors—but without invaders actually invading it, I never found the weak points until it was too late.

Perhaps, if I could show Kriya the benefits of working with me willingly, she could be persuaded to walk through my floors with the eyes of an invader; show me what I needed to change before I became enslaved because of it.

But for now, I dove down into the splashing water, dipping in and around the tower-reefs and atoll and iridescent stretches of capturing coral. With Nicau, Chieftess, and three more kobolds gone, the remaining tribe was a touch hesitant, absent their leader and commander; but they would be fine.

All I needed was to give them the chance for it. I needed to slow invaders down.

The first stop was the lagoon, that peaceful stretch of pale waters over the rest; while it was far safer than anything else on my floor, excluding the kobold tribe it housed, it was made up of solid barriers to hold up its atoll. That I extended, carving more and more throughout as I dragged up heaps of capturing coral and limestone to wave a faux barrier across the second room of the floor; now invaders couldn't swim across, forced to clamber across. A temporary delay.

Then, between all the cloudsire palms and vampiric mangroves, I threw up pillars of limestone like bleached coral; all the pockets and holes and cracks of dried-up reefs, creating the illusion this place was ancient instead of merely created by me. And inside I layered moss, algae, all manners of green things—and obstacles.

No longer would it be open stretches of beach to merrily parade across. No, they'd have to pick their way around the rubble of a ruined reef, avoiding jagged stone and hidden predators, and then dive back into the water to make it past the second room.

And into the third, where my greatest failure lay.

He was curled up within the shipwreck, the rotten timber and decayed canvas I'd had so much fun shaping as a snubbed nose to Calarata; and now my sea serpent was within, missing an eye, missing his bravado. Shoth had dealt with him where Seros hadn't stopped his attacks, and now he didn't know what to do.

Healed? I murmured, soft and soothing. The sea serpent hissed at the sky, frills flaring up, but he was more hesitant now—not scared, because it was hard to be scared when you were as dangerous a creature as him, but cautious. Nervous, maybe.

Losing an eye meant more than partial blindness. It meant he had been touched; meant he had been harmed. Meant he wasn't the undefeatable legend he had thought himself to be.

I'm sorry, I said, and meant it enough it ached. I couldn't regrow his eye anymore than I could regrow Akkyst's or give the vampiric dryad her arm back; that went beyond my capabilities.

But I could give him a choice.

This floor I am changing, I said, pushing him images of the new atoll barrier and tangled boulders. The exit I will also change—do you want here to be respite or treasure?

His thoughts wavered, confused. I sent over my murky imaginings.

The exit for the Hungering Reefs was much like it was on every other of my floors—a tunnel in the back, sloping down. But what if it wasn't? What if instead, I carved a tunnel beneath the shipwreck the sea serpent lived in, forcing them to not only find it, but also make their way inside?

But I could also see where the sea serpent didn't want to lose his home to these invaders, to make it a constant battle to survive and fend, feeling like he failed every time they made it past. I would leave it up to him.

His mind snapped onto that point, on the tunnel I presented to him, arcing down and winding through the stone. Of himself, strong and brilliant, coiling up as invaders tried in vain to enter but never making it within—and, rather critically, never having to expose himself to fight. Always coiled through the twisting galleys of the ships, through the captain's quarters, under the storage; the only part of him out was when they tried to fight him, and he ate them.

Acceptance simmered through our connection.

Thank you, I murmured, and hesitated, before pushing on. And soon, we will work together; we will train. You will not be stopped by Seros again.

Because as I stepped back to carve a tunnel beneath the shipwreck—ignoring Abarossa's tetchy star-burn, what was she going to do, break our contract? This was a minor change in the grand scheme of things—I was going to be leaving the original tunnel entrance as a den for my other aquatic beast. Seros, pride of my core, first of my Named.

He still preferred it here, I knew. The water, the quartz-light, the presence of Abarossa; he traveled below to defend me, but he was sea-bound, and he wanted that life. Perhaps my tenth floor would take me back to aquatic levels for him.

That was just like me, to start planning the tenth when I hadn't even started the ninth nor finished the eighth. Gods only knew how I could never truly change myself.

But if he wanted to stay here, he had to train, and he had to train with others. A sea-drake he would become, I knew, but a sea-drake of a dungeon; that meant he couldn't be the solitary, isolated beast of legend he had seen me be. No, he had to be cooperative. He had to be my Named.

He had to be a leader.

The tunnel rumbled as water flooded in, forcing me to wind it away and up and backwards just to make sure it wouldn't flood the Scorchplains below, carving auxiliary tunnels far too small for even a burrowing rat just to feed it with air; the den I made large and sprawling, similar to the hoard room fo the Skylands above, complete with its own pool of water and quartz-lights for when Seros needed to shed. When Chieftess came back and my evolutions finished, the training would begin; I wouldn't be caught unawares again. I wanted every creature in my dungeon to work together to defend me.

And I wanted more creatures.

I flitted off to the lagoon with my last points of mana held like treasures in my grasp. The lagoon was already a place of growth, allowing young fry to live without constant roughwater shark deaths or triggerfish punctures, but those were for established species; it could also prompt more, greater, more powerful creatures. Already I was growing impatient with how long Abarossa was taking to give me the schemas she'd promised, and considering Nicau would likely only find terrestrial beings, I would have to create my own.

In the Fungal Gardens and Skylands, I had created gladiatorial rings to prompt evolution for those often overlooked. Here, I would do the same.

I selected a crumbled piece of limestone as my canvas; half a point went to hollowing out the rock, littering it with tunnels and a cavern within, just small enough that kobolds couldn't stick their unwanted gobs into the mix when they had other bounties to explore. I raised it slightly so that just the top of a tunnel poked out of the water—if an insect wanted to become aquatic just to claim the mana, I would welcome them—and then I dropped a full five points, more than any others, into the mix.

Baitfish, aquatic insects, lesser crustaceans; anything of the myriad species that invaded my hall without me ever giving them a second glance would have the chance to prove themselves now. Five points of mana for an Underranked equalled evolution, there was no other way around it, and that meant power for me.

And then I floated back, preparing to do one last sweep of the place before settling in, when my core flared twice.

All around my halls, excess mana sparked and thrashed and thrummed—I had seventy-five points I could absorb, and I'd taken that in, leaving the rest to fly free. And where it had gone, overwhelmingly, was to my evolving creatures, drifting onto their glowing forms as they changed to be remade.

It meant that after only a day, nearly all were finished.

I settled in to welcome my newly-reborn creatures with glee; because now it was time to pick my Names.