Dragonheart Core

The mist-fox yipped. I stared.

It was a smaller thing than I'd hoped for, with a gleaming silver-blue coat and clever black eyes. Moonlight wrought in vulpine form, claws ticking away on the stone and a long, curling tail that didn't seem to end where it should have, longer, trailing off into whorls of mist. It peered around at the Skylands, pointed ears flicking, little ivory fangs peeking out from its black lips.

A hunting creature, one for the moorlands.

Moorlands which I could provide.

I just, ah. Wished I had remembered that a touch earlier.

But it was fine, I was sure. I could feel Khasvar here, that lingering ozone crackle in the back of my core, the star-burn hovering around the Skylands—I had, of course, accepted his boon and then immediately added new creatures. Not the best thing I could have done, in all manners of the word, but there was simply nothing to do about it. I would remember them next time.

Not that there would be a next time.

But for now, five new mist-foxes darted off over the Skylands, some three, four feet in length, with long, writhing fur and a tail that kicked up odd shapes in the mist. With the cloudskipper wisps racing overhead, grey pouring from their amorphous bodies and spilling over the stone islands. They would hunt lesser things, the greater pigeons and burrowing rats, but already I could see the potential—if their illusions could guide others to fall off the islands, the Magelords below would keep a steady diet and gather material to their ugly little hearts' content.

The foxes would do well here. Already they yipped, playful, so achingly close to my wolf-wisp that my points of awareness swiveled away—into the clouds they disappeared, their claws scratching on stone, hunting down food and dens and territories.

I very carefully didn't think about it, because that was a dangerous path to tread, but some corner of the golden lettering over my core wondered, if only for a moment. If Khasvar was so absent a deity, one who would grant me my boon and claim my floor but not personalize it for me, hardly pay attention to my doings and goings, would I be able to change the Skylands more than my other floors?

Rhoborh's redwood smell dogged my movements through the Drowned Forest, Nuvja's rot coiled beneath every shadow in the Fungal Gardens, Mayalle's stone-teeth pull laced through her Underlake whirlpool. They were all present.

They were present.

There were pros and cons to this.

None of them had called in their contracts yet, though I knew they could. Housing for followers or priests, safety from others or myself, and that damnable open call from Nuvja that was feeling less and less worth it by the day. I had been deliciously drunk on the idea of power—a rotten, terrible conceptualization that I could now say, seeing as I was still choking down Bil's alcohol-stained memories—and it had seemed such a wonderful idea. It was not.

But Nuvja had not yet called for action, and I could wait in this truce.

I did not know if Khasvar would ever ask me to house one of his followers, if he would even notice if I slipped more storm eels or mist-foxes into his floor, so long as it was his floor. But while I loved the lightning forking through my clouds, it wasn't mine, so long as another dungeon out there had it. There was nothing about the Skylands in it; just a change to mana that boosted his own power. Of all the boons I had received, his was the most likely to be something I could create myself with enough time.

But he did not seem to care much if I added more creatures to his floor.

I did not know.

So I turned from those thoughts, because they were dangerous and hungry and all things that gods did not seem to particularly like, and I slipped through my floors once more. Back to the Skylands, past the budding clouds and waterfalls of mist, to deep below. Stone burrows, carved deep into the bases of islands and the outer walls, filled with life and mana.

The Magelords, settling into their new home.

I crouched over, points of awareness spilling forth to the only den I really cared about—the largest, near the center of the floor, with an entrance much larger than the others and multiple rooms.

Very large rooms, for its very large inhabitant.

Akkyst sat, head curled in, looking all the world like a stalagmite if you discounted the some hundreds of pounds and bristling silver fur. His singular eye bored down into the old stone before him, that ancient placard, ruins and runes and moss.

Beside him, perched on a stone outcropping that he managed to make, in his own irritating way, look like a throne, was Bylk. Chieftain by his own name, certainly not by mine, but I could admit, begrudgingly, that he was a powerful mage. Wizard. Whatever idiotic categories goblins had.

Bylk held a lacecap in one hand, ears flicking. He picked off the bugs stuck to the lacecap's sticky gills, popping them absentmindedly into his mouth as he stared at the same stone. A verifiable tidal wave of disgust raced through me.

These were the creatures I had welcomed into my halls. These.

Akkyst, because he was an annoying bastard like that, sensed the mana—his remaining ear flicked and his gaze turned upward, to the shadows where I perched overhead. "Welcome," he said, voice a rumble like an earthquake in his enormous chest.

Welcome? This was my bloody dungeon, thank you.

Akkyst, I said back instead of any of my less polite topics, coiling overhead, threading soothing trails of mana through his knotted fur.

"Hullo too," Bylk hacked, scratching at his blue-black skin. "What brings you here, Growth?"

Gods, I despised him.

You are here, I said to Akkyst, pointedly ignoring the wretched little goblin. He chomped more determinedly through the bugs on the lacecap. You have slept. Have you made home?

Akkyst's head tilted to the side, his silver-grey eye peering around as if he could spot me. A rhetorical question, of course, considering all things within my dungeon were mine to see—he and the some four dozen Magelords had carved and sliced through the Skylands. They had grow fields in the shadow of every island, littered with whitecaps and the occasional lacecap, harvested in cycles; they had homes for each, combined or single; they had rooms for storage and for cooking and for sitting and other meaningless things. The ambient mana here was so strong they replenished their powers well before running out and thus they had made months of progress in the week they'd been here, even without my help.

It was a home for them, now. Not the home it had been, the one I had seen in Akkyst's memories, endless and sprawling and utterly destroyed—with the rotten corpse of a wurm in the center. Where in all hells had they found one of those? Wurms were to dragons what eels were to sea serpents; familiar, a mirror's reflection, but pitiable in their folly. A trade for power with none of the understanding.

And, regrettably, not mine. Even if I doubted I had the mana stores to make one, I would have devoured that schema like a feast to feed me for decades.

Akkyst rumbled deep in his chest, closing his eye. "Yes," he said, still in that goblinic tongue. It sounded exactly like what the bug-eating fool beside him would speak. "We are making it home."

Delightful.

I let a half point of mana whisper through him, barely a caress, something soft and soothing. He was a creature of knowledge, I could feel, even if I didn't know what species he was anymore—but I would find out, and now was my chance.

You have settled, I agreed, curling in. Your people have homes, have food. Have rest. Will you rest now?

If I wasn't asking someone to let me give them unfathomable power that they had delayed before, I would have been proud of my eloquence. But the offer deserved it—a Name, a blessing, Otherworld mana. All things most creatures, even those dungeonborn, had no access to.

Akkyst blinked—a hard thing to manage with one eye—and turned to Bylk. The bastard. The old stone sat between them, those ancient symbols that weren't regular runes elsewise I could read them, whatever last piece of crumbled legacy the Magelords had.

A Name could change that.

And for all he had this odd new devotion to helping others not even of his kin, I knew that, so long ago, he had made the choice for knowledge, and that would not stop now.

He rose to his paws, shaking dust off his head.

"Will you guard?" He asked, as if I wasn't right there.

Bylk nodded, a gruff old thing, jewels on his ears swinging forth. "Aye," he croaked, rubbing knobbled fingers together. "Figure I can crack a few knees for ya if any come callin'."

Akkyst nodded. Then he padded into the back of the den, through the massive opening, to the green algae bed I had grown for him and the whitecaps scattered inside that I regrew whenever they got too low—a feast for him and for him alone, considering how I had let them wilt whenever anyone else tried to eat them. They were for the returner, not goblins.

He rumbled again, a soft and weary sound, and curled up. His silver fur cast a brighter glow, spilling over the stone, as he stared.

Outside, the stalking jaguar dragged home the corpse of a platemail bug, gleaming emerald fur in the darkness and her iridescent blue tail swishing against the stone. The bladehawk shrieked, rust-red feathers flashing through the building storm, fierce and indomitable. Magelords raced around, practicing their spells, growing mushrooms, creating a home.

But for now, it was us, and it was mana, and it was more.

Akkyst looked up, and through some twist of fortune, his eye locked onto my point of awareness. The world hummed and buzzed and ceased to exist, melding away, only him and I—the dungeon and the dungeonborn. The core and the creature.

I and Akkyst.

It did not mean runt any longer. It was mine and it was his and we were both together, our souls reaching out, entangling, Otherworld and Aiqith alike–

Akkyst, I Name you.

Starwrought Bear (Rare)

Akkyst

One of thoughts and thinking. A being not of the shadows but of illumination, guiding forth in its hunt; it gathers in strength and in studies. Fear its mind alongside its might.

Blessing of the Scholar: the world and its secrets are revealed.

Welcome, Akkyst.

-

Lluc peered into the dungeon's entrance.

The Adventuring Guild spidered out to it, wooden dock hammered into the pebbled beach, a row of boards snaking into the entrance. A bird's craw it seemed, something dark and hungry, stalactites hanging down and littered with runes made by Lluc's own hands.

He had not come here since those weeks ago, leading fifty men he expected all to die and emerging instead with the first plan he had ever hoped in to push himself from the shadow of the Dread Pirate.

Day by day, adventurers from his own Guild marched in, emerging in blood or victory or death—the dungeon had held up, continued fighting. He'd fed it scraps, keeping the parties small or weighed down with Bronzes, but no longer. The plan did not wait for simpering fools to push all their bait in a line.

It had to act.

Which was why, as the morning crowned early over the Alómbra Mountains and the heady mist dissolved off the cove, Lluc stood before the dungeon with the next party. Handpicked, instructed by Ealdhere yesterday, prepared to march in with blood on their teeth.

Ghasavâlk stared back at him, passive, docile, hands clasped behind his back. He had traded his old robes, heavy and threaded through with the bright reds and blues of Üchlagh, for a tunic more typical of Calarata, though it fit him uncomfortably around the shoulders. Still his accent lingered, heavy and laborious in his words, but Calarata was a land of stowaways; he didn't stick out as much as he could have. And even if he did, the Gold power in his chest would dissuade suspicion from turning into threats.

By his side, looking supremely displeased with the scrutiny, was a woman, tall and slender. She had an expression hard to love and a voice only more difficult, umber skin framed with black hair in tight rosettles and a vicious bite to her pocked teeth. What she lacked in subtly she made up for in glamour, armoured edged in gold and jeweled aplenty, all the various prizes and prices near impossible to wear around Calarata if you weren't content in your power. Which she was.

For Syçalia Celessé Temoro had won her lion's share here in Calarata, and she knew how to keep it. Her soul thrummed with the power of a Gold.

The first two Golds that would be allowed to delve the dungeon.

Not that they had much a choice.

"First Mate," Syçalia said, all teeth, all bitterness untempered by humility. Not that she had any to give. "Is there a reason I'm here?"

Ah. She was still labouring under the assumption she would be delving with the original group she'd attached herself to. A regrettable mistake to make. He wondered how long it had taken before she'd noticed that only Ghasavâlk was here.

Lluc steepled his fingers, adjusted the cuff of his wrist. Spent a wonderfully languished moment with a curl of air-attuned mana to straighten the brow of his hat. "I am aware," he said, slowly, painfully, as if she couldn't understand him. "That you are not particularly interested in what is within the dungeon, but rather what comes in."

He didn't have to connect the dots for her any further. Syçalia was a scavenger, fierce and furrowed as they came in Calarata—her grubby paws were for other humans, not dungeons. He'd seen that glint in her eyes from the moment she'd marched into the Adventuring Guild, hunting for another group to join—she would stay by their side, promising the power of a Gold, then rob them blind the second they turned their back and sprint out of the dungeon. A decent strategy. All was fair in Calarata.

Equally fair was Lluc using her for another purpose.

Syçalia stared at him, jaw flexing, knuckles white in their fists. Asshole, her eyes screamed, but her mouth knew it couldn't. It was a truly wonderful feeling, Lluc rather thought, to watch her seethe.

"But I've found another group for you," he said, and smiled, felt his lips curl at the motion. "One more aligned to your interests."

Syçalia's eyes flicked to Ghasavâlk, who didn't react. But his Gold mana hummed and burned under the surface, something rich and scorching—she didn't know what his attunement was, and couldn't risk robbing him blind when it was only the two of them in a group.

Judging by the fury in her eyes, she could see that.

"Oh?" She bit out.

"Delve as deep as you can," Lluc said, humming, a casual request that was neither casual nor a request. "Report back to the Scholar. Keep what you take."

And there came that flash of greed.

The deepest the other groups had gone had been the third floor, the underground lake, with a cove-facing exit and the stone-teeth of some deep goddess. There were hints that on the fifty-person invasion, others had gone deeper, but they hadn't exactly come back alive to report what was beyond.

Lluc knew the dungeon was stronger. He just needed to know how much.

Two Golds. Well above anything the dungeon had faced before.

Syçalia dragged her eyes up him, brows furrowed—the deal was, in part, in her favour, which was not typical of the deals the Dread Crew extended. But Lluc wanted her alive at the end of this, and he wanted her to spread his name and his power, and he needed more than just Ghasavâlk and his Üchlaghan men to do that.

Two Golds. Powers in conjunction, powers together. It was time for Ghasavâlk to prove himself.

Lluc looked at the man, who looked back, calm. He was a particular kind of calm that rankled, that bit at the nerves of those in frantic Calarata, and Syçalia looked less than comfortable in his presence. But he was strong, and he was powerful, and he had means of escaping this dungeon before it could sink its teeth into him.

She will not make an attempt on the core, Lluc said without words, in the curl of mana, in the power that came from being the First Mate. And neither will you.

Ghasavâlk nodded.

They strode into the dungeon.