Dragonheart Core

With all the delicacy of an avalanche, I bored into the rockface.

All around me, the mountain rumbled warily as I carved deeper into its flesh, twining the tunnel down to give myself some fifty, hundred feet of depth from the floor above—not a chance I would risk a collapse of my lovely paradise above—before emerging onto the plane I wanted the floor to be. I had been planning this thing ever since seeing how dysfunctional the Skylands were, too many concepts crammed together with no thoughts for cohesion, and my mana was bright and sharp with glee as I wove together what I'd imagined.

This would be as stark of contrast to the previous floor as I could get, a claw to the gut of anyone who thought they could merely continue down after braving my pure white sands and glistening waters. Even if the merrow could telekinetically hover their way past my floors in a way I was rather terrified of, this would be what stopped them; even the Jungle Labyrinth was heady with humidity, moisture pooling in oases and trickling down the walls, the Skylands would soon be flooded with clouds and the rumble of approaching storms, and the Hungering Reefs had all they could ever want.

The seventh floor would have none of that.

It would be as close as I would allow myself to get to the preferred habitat of the idiotic fire-drakes. Not exact, because I wouldn't let it be, but significantly more habitable than my previous floors. More adapted to the actual creatures I had, of course, mainly the scorch hounds and bounding deer. I wanted this to be an open plain intercut with furrows lacing through in an intricate spider's web.

In truth, the seventh floor would be rather similar to the Drowned Forest, with one notable difference.

Instead of watery canals, they would be fire.

A spark in the deep darkness, the choking press of smoke and soot; scattered rubies at the base of carved furrows, any pressure enough to set them off, layered around coal deposits and other flammable schemas I'd collected that would burn for as long as I let them. Great belching plumes of velvet-dark shadow with a hellish thrum of fire-red.

Not my preferred appearance, of course. But I could imagine it even now; a vast cavern with a variable landscape, stone jutting up and out to break sightlines, fire burning deep in furrows forking out like lightning. Scattered dens like foxholes throughout, pockets for foliage sturdy enough to survive this harsh environment, stalking predators with paths lit by amber flame.

For now, at least.

One day I would make it even worse.

But not now, unfortunately. I didn't, ah, really have the ability to make lava. Or, rather, I could—overloading stone with fire-attuned mana melted it down and quickly, and I'd created several pockets in preparation for this floor. They'd sat there, gurgling, impossibly hot and glowing like the sun—and then, over time, they'd cooled.

See. It took a lot of mana to make lava, and considering my dungeon was not set at the ambient temperature necessary to keep stone molten, it would just harden. And I absolutely did not have the capacity to just keep making lava constantly.

So. It would have to be fire for now.

That was fine. I could wait. Eventually.

Lacking lava didn't mean I was cutting corners on any other part of the design, though. In sharp difference to, ah, every single one of my previous floors, I wasn't using limestone at all. Back when I was making the Hungering Reef, I'd gnawed my way into a new schema—basalt, a deep grey-black stone that formed strangely geometric patterns. The darkness contrasted heartily with the blue-gold paradise of the floor above, and it was already a volcanic stone; thus it worked perfectly with the dreary atmosphere I wanted, only broken by the fiery plumes of the furrows where, one day, lava would flow.

Oh, what a glorious floor this would be.

As long as I made it so.

Learning from all the mistakes I'd made with the original Fungal Gardens, I was very aware of how invaders would see this place. I wanted it to be all one room, to give the high-energy creatures that would inhabit it plenty of space to grow and sprawl, to make them fight for territories rather than claiming easily-divisible rooms.

But if it was only one room, then came the problem of sightlines. If invaders could take one step in and see all the way to where my core would sit on the other side, then there was all sorts of horrible, wretched shit they could do to get right there, and that was something I did not want.

Therefore, I had two solutions.

The first was easy. It had worked wonders for the Jungle Labyrinth, and even more now—basalt was naturally a dark grey, flecked with glimmering minerals, and it swallowed light as well as anything. Light that I would not be providing. The only glow would be from the fire and eventual lava, tucked away in the furrows, deep below eye level of invaders and casting everything in the understanding that there was more in the shadows they couldn't see. If the light only came from below, with walls of the furrows on all sides, the illumination would be drastically limited. So even if it was a flat plane with my core on the other side, they wouldn't be able to see more than fifty, maybe a hundred feet in front of them, and what they could see would be choked with smoke.

And that was if it was a flat plane, which it was assuredly not.

Basalt had an odd habit, forming hexagonal chunks if it was allowed to cool like drying mud, and as a dungeon, I could skip the tediousness of that and go right to the finished production; which I was plenty prepared to do. An interlocking grid of columns snaking around the room, extending up the walls and mirrored overhead. Every column would be of a slightly different height than those surrounding it, creating an uneven mess of a floor—and some sections I would raise into fifty foot mounds, cresting over top like hills, and others I would drop into what I would one day fill with lava to make lurking pools of impossible danger.

For my creatures, they would have to learn to be spry and nimble, racing over a surface that never worked with them—but the scorch hounds had come from the jungle, choked with vines and roots, and the bounding deer would live up to their name. Scorpions already moved too slowly to care and kobolds were adaptable. Maybe even the goblins, if those with fire-attuned mana wanted a place to train. The roof was low, adding to the claustrophobia of pressing darkness, and flying creatures wouldn't have much space here anyway. Only if they were able to adapt to my creation.

But for invaders, it would be a nightmare. Inconsistent steps in a land choked with darkness, surrounded by the skitter of claws on stone as scorch hound packs circled in for the kill, always the threat of falling into fire, always unknowing of where to go. All the danger of getting lost in the Jungle Labyrinth, but now with openness that allowed for predators to attack from every direction and disappear before they could be struck in return.

One of my better ideas, if I thought so myself.

Now. Time to actually make it.

Gathering my mana once again, I returned to digging.

-

No matter how many times I did it, there was nothing as irritating as how long it took me to carve out a full floor.

Continuing my theme, this one was going to be enormous, so at least it was justified; but surely, a mere ten thousand feet shouldn't take as long as it was. I was barely a fifth of the way through just carving the space, not even starting the process of painstakingly raising hexagonal sections of basalt to scatter over the ground and ceiling, and already new invaders were poking their fat, stupid heads into my dungeon.

Absolute assholes.

Four of them this time, just as wary as the group before. Completely knowledgeable about the fact I was a dungeon. Fantastic.

It was hard to be cavalier about any of this.

One of them was enormous, a sprawling hulk of a person with grey-green skin, horns—no, tusks—curling out of his mouth. The woman next to him was the same, though significantly less brawny, her tusks coming to a more jagged point. He had axes, she had a spear, and both looked unfortunately prepared for me. Orcs, I thought, one of those races mostly found inland—I'd never encountered them much before, but I'd heard they tasted terrible.

In contrast, the other two members were human, much shorter, and so low a Silver rank I was honestly surprised they'd gotten the raise. One with long, flowing hair with hooks woven into the end of the braids, the other's gauntleted fists studded with sparking jewels.

Stronger than the last party, bright and full with mana. Mana that I was rather interested in, considering that carving my way through an entire mountain was a rather costly process. Just so long as I could obtain it.

I'd never failed before, and I wasn't looking to start now.

The taller orc thundered forward, shirtless chest rippling with scar tissue—Nuvja's shadows pulled back to catch the gleam of his enormous axe, alerting all my creatures perhaps too dumb to notice the threat. Not the patient type. The other orc rolled her eyes and padded after him, spear-headed staff tapping on the ground as mana coiled at the top. Not too chatty, unfortunately. Determined, though.

One invading party a day. I'd hoped, with the part of me that refused to listen to anything a human thought or said, that maybe yesterday's group had been lying—that I would still have time to recover after each invasion, to keep my head and allow my creatures to spring back.

It did not look like that was the case.

Well. I hadn't raised a horde for no reason.

Go, I murmured, my mana sinking infesting teeth into the minds of my creatures on the upper floors. Quiet, insidious; nothing to alert the invaders that I was sentient, that I was attacking against them. For all they knew I was a dungeon, they didn't know more, and I was looking to keep it that way. Defend.

As one, they stirred, flashing vicious claws and burgeoning sparks of mana; these invaders were all Silver, which was concerning, but I had six complete floors filled with monsters, and I wasn't overly afeared. And, well—if there was going to be invasions every single day, I couldn't focus on them constantly, not if I wanted to get anything done. Points of awareness following them from the moment they arrived, of course, because I wasn't an idiot, but not much of my consciousness.

If they made it past the Underlake, only then would I devote my attention to them.

But I had more important things to focus on.

I turned back to the growing seventh floor, to the deep basalt caverns and the gloom soon to be filled with fire. Far above, the invaders crossed the halfway point in the Fungal Gardens, the lunar cave bears awakening from their slumber and the rock pond thrashing with silverheads, but they were distant; a distraction in face of the world I wanted to create. I could see it even now, the spiral of mana conjuring beautiful images. Fire-tongue flowers belching smoke to choke the air; scorch hounds slinking around hexagonal pillars with their ember-eyes aglow; bounding deer clattering around as blinding distractions; mottled scorpions invisible in the quiet of their hunt.

With renewed determination, I continued to dig.

I wouldn't ever love fire; but for my creatures, I could learn to appreciate it.