Dragonheart Core

I watched my eighth floor begin to spread its leaves.

No predators, not yet, but the buzzing understory already spread to its own fruition. My numerous bugs only grew by the minute as I provided them with such a plant and mana-rich environment, scuttling through painted ferns and laddercaps, encroaching endlessly as they picked their way upright. The cobweb banyans in particular were a miracle of exploration, providing all the vascular veins stretching to the horizon. My tiered canopies, woven through the towering cypresses, creeping vines throughout, funnel gourds hanging like second suns in the emerald green.

The boundless jaguar hadn't yet made her way down, but I was already brimming with excitement for when she did—would she find the canopies too smothering, too dense? Would there be enough pathways for her up, or would I have to construct more available paths so that it was not a land where all of my creatures lived only on the floor and the top was abandoned? Would she make a home for herself here, in the way she hadn't with the Jungle Labyrinth? Would she show me this design was correct?

So many things to ask. And still Nicau had only just entered the Hungering Reef, making his way over to the lagoon with Chieftess holding Kriya. If I could get her on my side sooner rather than later, hopefully I could gather all the mana necessary to bring this floor into fruition into a proper heart tree. A heartwood, the center of a forest.

Hm. Heartwood. I didn't dislike that.

But for now, I flew, touching up waving branches or smoothing down wayward growths. Peeling through Nicau's memories let me grab more accurate pictures of how the jungle had looked, how a proper land untouched by cultivation and precision formed; while I didn't necessarily want mine that messy, I did want it wild, untamed. A proper building of things that were not humans and would never belong to them. My land, my only. My eighth floor and all the death that entailed.

Something trembled through the mountain. A hit, like a skipped stone over water.

I was a paranoid beast, that I could admit—no shame in acknowledging what had led to my survival. So it was me that immediately dropped the mana I had been planning on using to bring about more prey into my burgeoning eighth floor and instead flew to find it, points of awareness spiraling through my halls. A hunt like a predator, too many memories of the Priestess of Abarossa filling me.

Foolishly, foolishly, I looked up. To my Fungal Gardens, to my split entrances, to where I wanted invaders to enter.

Because the stone wasn't breaking there—my Fungal Gardens were a paradise enclosed and encircled by my mana and nothing else. And the Drowned Forest sat quietly within its boundaries, water lapping at the edges of its canals, and the Underlake hummed with reverie and hunger as it always did, and my upper floors stayed content and contained and altogether unharmed.

Because the stone was breaking in my Skylands.

My Skylands.

Five fucking floors down, all of my defenses stripped away, all of my careful planning ruined, because the stone was breaking in my Skylands.

I roared. My mana thrashed.

In damning similarity to the Underlake of months past, I watched a spider web of cracks cross over the limestone, the rupturing of long-held stone crumbling in on itself. Splinter one, two—like some mighty giant had rested its weight on the other side, pressing in like anvils to break. From the depths, the Alómbra Mountains—not humans. Not Calarata, my known enemies, who wouldn't tunnel this deep to reach me.

Would they? I couldn't discount that. I couldn't discount anything, because they had surpassed my first four floors and were coming to my Skylands unhindered. Terror rose through me, and I swallowed it, ground it, gnawed it down to the marrow—because with terror came the raid-frenzy, the mindless fury that filled all my creatures until they could no longer react with thinking or intelligence in the way I needed, in the way I had to have to survive. Already my mana was sharpening, every creature in the Skylands raising their heads with eyes flashing, but I needed them alive—needed them functioning. Needed them conscious.

To my creatures I flew, controlling myself, biting down the fear until focus shone through the gaps. Up, up, up, I pushed, simmering on the broadside of Akkyst's mind. The starwrought bear raised his head, runes flickering off his mangled ear. Before I could impart the situation in full I flew off, brushing against each Magelord—up, up, up!

The Skylands woke, humming at the edges as disorienting fear pooled in the crevices of their awareness. A threat, approaching—I barely had enough time to wake up the goblins, let alone the others, before the stone cracked again.

Back to the wall I darted, intangible wings spreading and claws hooking on the air. My core, brimming with prickled fear. Not the rad-frenzy. Focused. Scared, but focused. I could do that. I had to do that. Ꞧ

The wall trembled. Another blow, another ramshackle power billowing through the darkness. Khasvar's mana crackled in the distance with the rumble of thunder, the storm distilling overhead. I prepared myself as best I could.

The stone shook.

Then broke.

Dust exploded outward, choking the air—my points of awareness scoured through the grey to the darkness at the center, to the movement, to the action. Because not a second after the rock crumbled did there come things, creatures, beasts clawing through the gap and howling fury–

Goblins.

Goblins?

Diminutive, hunchback, yammering; they piled over each other as they flooded in, uncaring of the way ahead so long as it had a path for them to run upon. Waving spears, claws, fangs. A monstrous race for their ilk.

This was the War Horde.

I could tell the difference—instead of the blue-grey skin marbled with black stripes of my Magelords, they were a pale green, their eyes bulbous and their claws sharp. Stronger, with arms for tearing and ripping rather than casting, teeth bared and hackles drawn.

But, strangely enough, it wasn't the only difference. My core lurked with another collection; one of deep grey skin, with clever fingers and all-black eyes. But I hadn't seen them before, I knew that. Still the knowledge held within me.

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Later. Time to focus on the godsdamn threat first.

Which, damningly, wasn't only the goblins. It was the opening they'd popped right through the fucking wall of my dungeon.

I remembered this, at least—the immediate whirlpool of my mana, tugging away from my command as a hole punctured through my fragile control; but I remembered what this had felt like, and I remembered what it did. Long ago, in the Underlake, allowing the tunnel's construction and all that entailed—not this time. Not this fucking time.

They wanted another entrance? They wouldn't be getting one.

I threw every point of mana I had at the problem; the Otherworld roared as I wove it together, as I slammed it down and told it that this was stone, this was rock, it was insurmountable and not an opening and not a break–

My mana shivered, trembling. It didn't want this—it was like water, more than my sea-drake origins. It wanted to flow, to fill each space I gave it, to pool in my deeper floors and hang heavy in the air. It wanted to escape. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

I would not allow it.

That gap was not a gap—it was stone. It was as much as a wall as the areas around it, as the perfectly-carved halls of my making; it was stone and it was stone and it was stone–

My mana held. The hole disappeared from my awareness; what trickles of mana I'd lost to the mountainside were gone but no further left to join, staying within my boundaries. To my awareness, it was like nothing had happened, no further could I see past my halls than ever before.

There. Fucking there. The break was still there, still allowing these wretched bastardly monsters into my halls, but it wasn't another entrance, and as soon as I murdered them, I could close it, and it would hold. Okay. Okay. Okay.

One problem solved. A hell's load left to work through.

My points of awareness spiraled, what few left I had after shoving all my mana into holding the barrier—they looked at the War Horde, the braying mass streaming through the gap in my walls. Goblins—not evolved, still baseline highland goblins, that at least I could take comfort in—all hooting and hollering, brandishing raised spears affixed with bone tips. Their pale green skin, their hooked claws; a warmongering race, yes. Not particularly strong by themselves.

Their companions, more so.

Streaming through the gap was a hulking monstrosity, insectoid in build but utterly reprehensible; enormous mandibles reached down to its thorax, amber-gold chitinous carapace embracing stocky limbs, eyes like the pale width of the moon. It chittered and snarled, rushing mindlessly forward, goblins slamming the butts of their spears into its flanks to push it on.

A trio of beasts that moved on four limbs, heavy and low to the ground—and crystalline. They seemed like quartz, like mica; their armour was angular and reflective, working like an outcropping of ore, no living pieces visible underneath the geological glow; but with my spiraling points of awareness I caught a glimpse of jagged claws and a wide, yawning mouth, insatiable, though I couldn't tell for what they ate.

And the third; a gelatinous, shuddering mass of pale grey-blue. It dragged itself forward, no eyes or limbs or anything functional beyond its body, sliding and moving as needed. A slime of some variety.

Hells above hells, that was an entourage. And between them all, howling madness, were the goblins; armed to the teeth and furious.

And talking.

"Growth!" They roared, again and again, as they poured into my halls and screamed vengeance. "Growth, Growth, Growth!"

What in the hells was that? Was that me?

No time for that. No time for anything.

Go! I roared, but separate, keeping my mana from entering anyone's mind—instead I just called for action, for action of their understanding, and my creatures moved.

The Magelords coalesced, whipping together as a collection of their newly-evolved forms. Their tails, grey-tipped and corded, lashed the ground as their hands lit up with mana, bright and sparking. Bylk stalked to the front, weighed down by age but not yet weary, eyes sharper than I had seen from him before. His evolution had served him well.

"Goblins," he said, brows furrowed. From his perspective, they couldn't see much but the tips of spears through the mist, but it seemed he recognized their calls—all the Magelords glanced at each other, confusion, unease.

Then Bylk's gaze hardened to steel. "War Horde."

As one, the Magelords awoke.

Mana crashed over their hands, spiraling up their fingers—fire-heat and electricity, the crash and brilliance of light in all powers. They remembered these foes; they remembered what they had lost to them before. They remembered losing. They would not lose again.

My voice still simmering through our connection, Akkyst roared, rearing to his hind legs. He towered over all the rest, the mist swirling around his flanks as his power hissed through the Skylands. The War Horde he had been captured by before, that I knew from his memories; but no longer. He was no longer the same bear he had been, weakened and pained and terrified of the wider world. Now he was strong, even more than his evolution.

I froze.

His evolution.

Akkyst had left my halls, disappeared to the wider mountains, and he had come back evolved. He had faced the War Horde, stood strong before their indomitable force, and emerged victorious against–

Against the stone-wurm.

The War Horde didn't fear the Magelords, not after nearly crushing them thrice before, from what history I had gleaned from Bylk's mind. But they had still brought a stone-wurm, a tyrannical beast of the deep mountains to crush them and their home. For a known threat, they had brought a monster.

The insectoid creature, the crystalline constructions—they were powerful, yes, but not monsters. And I was entirely an unknown, the Growth, as they insisted on calling me—but that was all they brought. This couldn't be it.

There was something to being a dungeon core. Aiqith functioned oddly around me; I was a omnipresent being within the constraints of my halls, able to see all my mana touched, able to commune with gods in the nameless world that held them, to wield Otherworld mana that had never before touched Aiqith. In particular, time was an ally more than an enemy. With my consciousness spread so far, split between points of awareness and my eight building floors, I could coalesce just enough to make time slow to a crawl as I thought.

Every sliver of my consciousness came together and time inched along as it did so, as I focused on not what was happening but what would. This couldn't be it.

The goblins, entering my halls, interwoven with beasts I had never heard of nor seen before in the Alómbra Mountains. They shouted about the Growth and seemed feverishly determined; but not to the point of suicide. One death meant little to them, that I knew, because they were goblins; it was how they worked. Even the Magelords, who kept to a smaller population to aid in their casting, worried little over singular deaths.

But this strategy didn't make sense. They wouldn't throw all their lives into the unknown and trust it to be enough, not if they were even remotely familiar with dungeons. Which they seemed to be, though their word was wrong.

My awareness quivered. This was wrong.

Akkyst bellowed, rearing up—runes flew off his fur in a silver explosion, inscribing facts of Aiqith upon the world around him. My storm-eel snaked through the air, my stormcaller sprite calling down a thunderwave to broil between her fangs. The Magelords gathered in a final stand, the preparation for a champion's fight now that they had a home that would defend them back rather than leaving them out to die as it had before–

Another boom.

Every meager point of mana I had to my name went very still. The goblins halted in their entourage—Akkyst's roar froze in his maw—lightning arched ice-slow over the sky. Time crawled alongside me as my attention traveled down.

I had panicked over the Skylands, over invaders entering five floors below where I wanted. But now the Alómbra Mountains trembled from an unseen death, a promise I couldn't parse—and the walls were shaking, and I did not have time to react. Another attack. Another break.

Far below, in the entrance of my Hungering Reefs, the wall exploded, and a monster entered my halls.