Dragonheart Core

Beset on every side, a horde surrounding and a thrall in her mind, the Gold still did not die quickly.

Syçalia, able to drift into clouds of mana and flit from danger like any spriteling in ocean pools, attacking with a fury that didn't reflect to her blank eyes. One word—sarnulakh, in whatever tongue that was—and she'd quite abandoned her desire to flee for something more bloody. Veresai answered her in kind, an endless army of serpents, spiders beyond, the warbling cry of lesser creatures, and the Gold's death was assured.

But I didn't want her to die, because she wasn't the only fucking threat in my dungeon.

Because as Veresa's horde continued their vicious attacks, the mage ratkin launching great beams of mana and tearing free strips of armour, someone continued to descend to deeper floors.

Ghasavâlk.

Deep in the darkness of the den, past the thrall he'd slipped into Syçalia's mind with the command distract—not even speaking to my creatures, just at the clever-fingered Gold he had seen no harm in casting aside like an Unranked commoner. Whatever the language he spoke, whatever mana he wielded, had made Syçalia seem irresistible, a siren's call of mana to hunt, as she spun around their attacks with blistering grace unhindered by mere mortal things like fear and self-protection.

Veresai seemed a monster, with her power to pull people under her command—but I had taken comfort in her being my monster.

Ghasavâlk was not.

Every time one of Veresai's horde made to look back to their den, to follow the screaming commands I heaped in their mind to get them to go fight the actual bloody threat, Syçalia was there, slamming her dagger hilts into their skulls or lashing out with an armoured kick. A living distraction, but the further Ghasavâlk descended, the less and less his thrall held over her—already her movements grew sloppier, mind torn between the dark and the dreaming, between the commands and the consciousness.

Lovely, really. I was so interested in watching how his power worked.

I was just slightly, tinily, infinitesimally more interested in killing him.

Not her, I snarled, the roaring bite of mana sinking through their skulls. Not her. Him! Hunt!

But whatever he'd done, whatever stinking, insidious power that cloaked Syçalia held strong. He turned through the tunnels with careless ease, guiding himself like he had been born in these darkness-choked lands without mind nor care of creation. My hunting mantises and shardrunner spiders were hardly passive prey but that meant all but hells to him with his fucking mind control, the simple little words in his odd tongue that pushed them away like wafting breezes.

I sat overhead, and I seethed, and I felt a fury well beyond what I could have wielded.

A dreadful thing, sometimes. To be a dungeon core. It was to live again, to spread my power as great as the gods above; but all while trapped in marble, in the swirling red-black stone that had been my heart.

Though there would be at least one death to satiate me.

Syçalia wheezed, an empty, fluttering sound that rattled in her chest—blood beaded and spilled over her skin, shallow cuts from where the mage ratkins had billowed apart her intangible form. Still fighting, but now of her own accord, which meant viciousness with one eye pinned to the back of the Stone Jungle like she thought she could escape.

A fanciful dream, but an impossible one. She would not just be leaving.

But that was a question to puzzle over when I didn't have a fucking threat marching its way merrily down towards my core, so I dumped a few dozen points of awareness over her head and flew down to the depths beneath the Jungle Labyrinth.

Down and down and down, Ghasavâlk went, through the tunnels I'd painstakingly carved, the ones that had never felt a human's feet beyond Nicau, until he emerged into the awe of my fifth floor.

There was a part of me, however small, that was more curious than afraid. The Skylands were so recently completed, mana arching together in synchronicity and new godly boons, and it hadn't been tested for a very long time.

I would have preferred some slinking Silver who I could be assured would be stomped dead well before they could make it deeper, but I would take what I got.

And what I got was Ghasavâlk drawing to a halt in the Skylands, steps freezing beneath, looking out over the wonder and splendor and glories of the mist-choked isles forked through with blue-white lightning and the shriek of distant predators.

"Oh," he breathed, something soft and startled—I preened like a luxurious beast. The first time any foolish eyes unaccustomed to my beauty had laid eyes on my floor, and at least he wasn't enough of a coward to appreciate what lay before him. Well deserved.

Short lived, however, as pragmatism took back over; Ghasavâlk hummed, mana crackling around his eyes, spilling from his teeth like fangs. More of his commands, I guessed, more of those infuriating words that kept my creatures at bay; but oh, I rather thought he'd find this floor a touch too much for his liking. This was not the cramped tunnels of the Jungle Labyrinth, where my monsters came at him one-by-one, or those of higher floors, much weaker than those fed by deeper mana.

Gold he was, but a dungeon was I.

In fact, I prowled closer as he took his first steps into the Skylands, eyes still wide and a gleam of confusion as he took in the exotic sights. Already I could see his death playing out before me—perhaps the bladehawk would spear him through the heart, or the storm eel would sink her twin jaws into her first terrestrial prey, or the–

The awareness swept over me like tar.

Akkyst was here.

Akkyst, asleep, slumbering under the weight of the new Name I'd so graciously bestowed upon him, unconscious to the world. He would be out for days, if what had happened with Seros and Veresai was any indication, and in that time he was pressingly, achingly defenseless.

A starwrought bear, silver-furred and scholarly-minded, but that meant nothing if he was asleep.

Ghasavâlk did not seem one much for killing—that had only been Syçalia, for all he held my creatures still and docile under her knife. But I wasn't much interested in finding out if that stayed true.

Akkyst was little more than a body to be slain now, and that meant I had to find him guardians.

Ah.

My mana coiled to a dagger's point.

There was someone in the room with him, who had sworn to protect him, for as much as one was a humanoid and one was a cave bear; and he was the only one around, the only one with the teeth that I could manipulate enough to listen beyond the raid-frenzy.

Gods, I hated this.

But I was not quite so proud as to abandon my newest Named.

Rise, I snarled, fierce and desperate, into Bylk's mind. The faux-leader of the Magelords snorted, mana popping lazily to his grasp. Rise, you blinding fool, defend!

The ratty, disgusting goblin drifted out of unconsciousness, one hand resting on Akkyst's back, stripes over his skin rippling as he sat upright. Geriatric toddering idiot, but Ghasavâlk was coming, and I didn't have the luxury of choosing my army. Defend!

"Danger," Bylk rasped, phlegm thick in his throat and crust over his eyes but listening, hearing my words. "What?"

Hunter, I said, mana jolting through his mind. Hunter above. Keep from Akkyst.

Bylk's shoulders stiffened, dragging himself upright as his lip curled. "Supposed to attack it, then?"

Gods, how I wanted them to—ripping Ghasavâlk to shreds under elemental powers and the bite of a thousand-coloured fingers would bring me joy well beyond what I had felt in a millenia. He deserved it, the fucking bastard.

But I had seen what simple work he had made of my monsters, of Syçalia, and there was something I was not willing to risk.

No, I said, though it was active poison to admit such weakness. Keep from Akkyst. Do not let reach.

I didn't want it to reach such depths, but I had two more floors beneath this one; better to push Ghasavâlk down to the Hungering Reefs then pull him between the islands of the Skylands, where Akkyst was an abandoned hatchling in the deep sea. He would not survive it, even if the Magelords managed to kill Ghasavâlk afterward.

Bylk squinted, scratching idly at a tuft of white hair. "If you're sure," he said dubiously, which did make me want to flay him alive. "S'not like we can't hold ourselves in a fight."

I wasn't worried about him, the blundering idiot. So I didn't bother him with a response and just darted away, back up through the mist, through the crackling clouds and the energy that seeped deep and heavy through the air. Already Khasvar's boon made a name for itself, my ambient mana forking out in jagged blows that caught and redirected themselves in electric fragility. A hellscape I couldn't be more pleased with.

Without Syçalia, Ghasavâlk was not the untouched god he had been before—his tongue only moved so fast and these were flying predators, those with speed and storms on their side. Already some greater pigeons flew with lightning that crackled along their wings, the bladehawk's feathers taking a thundering echo, and these were not what psionic powers could fight against.

Ghasavâlk snarled, tearing a baterwaul out of the air when it flew too close—he crushed it between his palms, viscera splattering under his boots, and marched on.

More points of awareness spiraled over him, my attention hanging heavy—because he was still moving, stumbling through my islands as more and more of my creatures came alive in the frenzy to attack. Beneath him, mirroring his movements under the stone, Bylk led a collection of Magelords—the cloudskipper wisps had woven a tight enough net of mist to keep them hidden from Ghasavâlk, even with his Gold-sense, since it seemed he still had to focus his attention in whatever direction he was suspicious of to use it, and my lovely wisps had made the clouds thick enough he clearly didn't think there was a drop there.

Lovely to know that was how it seemed to invaders. I'd be remembering that.

And then, some hundred feet from the end, dripping scarlet from dozens of minor wounds and shoulders slumped with an exhaustion I took exquisite satisfaction in, Ghasavâlk paused.

Mana lit up the corners of his eyes, something deep and thrumming—before him, some stars aligned and softened the mist just enough to let him look past the last island, to see the room that hummed and sparked with mana. The room that had housed my core for so long, the longest of any of my floors, and still held the remains of my presence.

But Ghasavâlk wasn't looking at it with hunger, with the foolish bite of adventurers looking for whatever would satiate their fill.

No. He seemed almost curious.

"Draconic," he murmured, hands clasped before him like an idiotic human's prayer. His head tilted to the side, static energy crackling up his long loops of hair. "I see."

Just what did he see? I was ever so curious, and my curiosity had always come with teeth.

Ghasavâlk hummed, something flaring in his black eyes, and made to move closer over the islands—another snapped word kept back a cloud of swarming wasps, nearly invisible in the cloudskipper wisp's wake, but the stupid Gold-sense seemed irritably apt at detecting them. He padded over another island, staying tight to the center, even as Bylk guided Magelords to mirror his movements beneath the stone. Nearing the end, well over halfway there—he was so fucking close to my hoard room, awash with silver and runes. Already my mana surged beneath, waking Chieftess and Nicau in the Hungering Reefs, preparing for him to make it below.

I would not die here, that was for certain. Psionic powerhouse though he might have been, that did not mean he would defeat me.

And then, from the depths, from the darkness at the back of the hoard, a monster emerged.

My monster.

Seros, droplets sparkling off his scales and horns thrust back, stalked forward from the mist. Gravitas spilled from him like a struck bell, the ringing of power beyond that Aiqith lent out to mortal creatures, a gleam in his golden eyes like inner fire.

Ghasavâlk went very still.

Whatever confidence he'd had shriveled away as Seros prowled forward, claws tearing furrows in the stone, tail lashing behind in slithering fury. "Another Chosen," he whispered, barely a sound in the air.

Damn right I had more Named.

The invader stood there, knuckles white, breathing in gentle, rhythmic patterns that did little to stave off the panic I could smell building within. "Thank you for your care, dungeon," Ghasavâlk said, leaning his head back to widen his gaze, through the trembling clouds of mist like I lurked beneath the grey. His attention did not leave Seros. "I will not bother you further."

Oh, he'd certainly been bothering me.

Seros felt that sting of my fury through our connection and rumbled, something deep and thunderous in his chest. He didn't have wings but gravitas flared behind him, spread to capture the scene, mist swirling at his beck and call—not his typical hydrokinesis, but still something within his power.

He'd grown quite far from the cantankerous brute of his past.

"I do not mean you harm, dragon," Ghasavâlk said, palms out. He took slow, careful steps back, eyes fixed forward, and wariness curled around his shoulders. "Your master will not be troubled by me today. I made no attempts on the core."

Oddly presumptuous. Oddly specific.

Seros hissed. He agreed.

Ghasavâlk inclined his head, as if a dueler to another, and started walking backward. A fool's retreat. My creatures sensed weakness and darted in, feathers bristling, claws extended, talons poised—another Magelord, clinging to the side of an island. Her claws bit into the wall and skittered, barely out of adolescence and with a burning desire to prove herself, slunk up the stone gripways her kind had built, blue-black ears pricked and mana humming over her fingers—one lucky swipe, barely a scratch, anything to break his concentration.

Seros snarled and lunged—Ghasavâlk gathered his mana and threw.

"Khangûi!"

The Magelord froze, tumbling off her precarious perch—the storm eel shuddered to a halt, fangs bared—eye-blight butterflies collapsed under their own unmoving weight. The Skylands creaked and crashed in absence of movement.

My beautiful, lovely, wonderful draconic monitor stayed charging.

True, honest fear flashed through Ghasavâlk's eyes and he ducked under the attack, almost throwing himself off the island—Seros' tail lashed and mist swirled around him, breaking vision, scattering composure. Ghasavâlk's eyes burned with Gold-sense and he threw himself back, limbs clattering over the stone.

After him! I shrieked, voiceless in fury—my creatures lost themselves to the raid-frenzy but then Ghasavâlk abandoned all poise and ran, the cluttered, awkward movements of one unfamiliar with it, and threw himself into the tunnel. Greater pigeons and bladehawk feather skunk into the stone a heartbeat after he had been there.

Seros howled, a terrible and furious sound, and pursued.

Up Ghasavâlk ran, panting, mana coiling through his limbs in desperation strength—into the Stone Jungle. Syçalia was still there, though hardly for long, eyes blurry with fatigue and losing blood far faster than she regained it, slinking back from the serpentine horde like it would save it. She stared at Ghasavâlk, mouth dropping in shock, before fury overtook it.

He didn't care. Just jerked his arm out at her, fingers curled. "Sarnulakh!"

Once more the thrall overtook her, irresistibility coiling over her skin, and he sprinted past her with harsh, wheezing gasps.

Seros exploded into the Stone Jungle, fangs bared and a curtain of water swirling over his scales, and promptly fell upon Syçalia with a roar.

No! I screamed to him, but Ghasavâlk's thrall was a wretched thing, and even as she lost an arm in the process Syçalia threw herself at Seros with fury artificially manufactured in her slashing daggers. Ghasavâlk disappeared back into the tunnels.

More and more of my creatures awoke, hungering, but still he'd memorized the tunnels in whatever he'd ripped from Veresai's mind and he hadn't lost it yet, darting his way up and through with frightful precision. He dodged the stalking jaguar, the shardrunner spiders, even the midnight cave bear that lumbered from the shadows—and then he dovely freely into the Underlake.

The armoured jawfish lunged for him, the royal silvertooth gathering his controlled servants; but Ghasavâlk was only wearied by exhaustion, not defenseless. Psionic mana curled insidiously over his tongue.

And then he grabbed the sarco's corpse, the lovely, wonderful thing I had grown so fond of, and dragged her through the cove entrance, and disappeared.

Well.

Shit.