Dragonheart Core

Deep within the Skylands, three invaders thundered to the ground like falling stones. Three more died, cut down by my vampiric dryad; but still three more. Still a threat.

I roared; Alda's soul swept through me, sparking with potential, Ossega and Lanc only a moment before. My Skylands crackled in response, Khasvar's boon tinting everything with lightning. A storm bursting at the seams.

Hundreds of words scrawled over my core in golden letters, mana pouring through me, my Otherworld connection howling like a caged beast; Shoth was dead and the Scorchlands exulted in his death, Aedan abandoned to gibber on the sand, Alda's concoction crashing an island to the ground. But right this second, three miserable fucking invaders picked themselves up and shook dust from their hair, so that was where I went.

Up, up, up, I crooned, softer now, no longer driving my creatures into a frenzy to protect me; I guided their heads towards the humanoids in their midst. Damnably, I was still shucking off instincts from the frantic delve; my obtuse mana use meant all three invaders snapped upright, feeling my wingspan spread over my creatures' minds. Fuck.

But my creatures were still coming. And the invaders no longer had a way to sprint through my halls, not on the ground as they were. Trapped, like prey chased into a shallow cove. They were mine.

All around, already boiled out from their failed attempt to catch Shoth and Aedan, the Magelords emerged with fingers burning bright. Some weeks, months, had they been in my dungeon, and they'd mapped the environment out to their liking. A spider's web of mushroom-rope bridges and carved hollows, an ant's colony so far above what their previous home had been, at least from what I'd gleaned from their memories. Two dozen of them, all battle-ready and determined to fight down to the last drop. They already had a… brood? clutch? was there a goblin word for these things? that they were very invested in protecting, given there was some age of majority before they could properly learn how to manipulate mana. Similar to dragons and gravitas, but unlike them, hatchlings had venom to protect themselves before the world itself bent to their will. Goblins didn't have that. Another addition to their regrettable nature.

I was calmer. Gods, I could think again—could give myself the leeway to mock goblins instead of dissolving into dread as a Gold thundered towards my core. Azkhal and his group were still a threat, yes, because all invaders were; but I trusted I could stop them. I was able to pull back from the mindless terror. To think.

So close to death. Not even to death but enslavement, a destruction of my self and ego and identity. It was only now I was able to concentrate on anything past that.

Magelords came tumbling out, mottled scorpions readied their stingers, mist-foxes weaving illusions by the dozens. From the largest carved room, still guarding his little rock piece, Bylk emerged—stooped and wearied by age, that meant nothing to the constellations glimmering over his fingers, flecked fire-red and stone-grey. And also nothing compared to the beast alongside him.

Akkyst.

My newest Named, my speaker, my learner, my returner; his silver fur streamed with intelligible runes as he padded forward, ear perked and eye narrowed. More runes swept off him as he sized up his targets, huddled together and still woozy from the fall; particularly to Azkhal, largest of the bunch, his club slick with gore.

He stood, helping Pau up alongside; Hulimat's shadow lunged and snapped at the end of the chains around his ankles, hungry for action, but he reeled it back in with a muttered curse. His eyes were different sizes; the fall had hit him hard. Being a Silver didn't mean you could prepare for the ground falling away beneath you.

But they were still alive, just on the ground and surrounded by mana-wielding goblins and a bear large enough to outweigh them all together.

Azkhal snarled. Akkyst snarled back much, much louder.

I felt his thoughts, thrumming through our connection like a maelstrom. For all he was an enormous, bristling monster of a bear, wrought with the stars and burning with power, this wasn't necessarily what he preferred. Fighting in defense, yes, but not fighting.

He'd run away a coward and come back a scholar. Sometimes, I wondered just what had happened to him out in the mountains.

Akkyst started the advance, growl rumbling through his chest like bellows. Azkhal kept his club up, teeth bared, but I didn't have to read his mind to feel his apprehension. Hulimat's shadow lurched and snapped at his ankles, Pau readying his daggers, and–

From far above, the bladehawk loosed half a dozen feathers each aimed for the jugulars, and the battle commenced.

Azkhal surged forward, a flash flood, club raised—but instead of scattering a Magelord's skull over the stone, Akkyst slammed into him. The bear bellowed, loud as a mountain, back claws digging in; Azkhal's tattoos glowed crimson with the stench of old iron, lips peeled back, club gleaming. He leaned in and grabbed Akkyst, ducking around his claws and fangs; wrapped up his bulk in his enormous arms and ground his charge to a standstill. Hells above hells, what was his attunement?

In the back, Pau hurled daggers every which way, slamming mottled scorpions to the ground and forcing Magelords back; but with such a horde, he had no time to retrieve them, and his supply ran more and more dry. Panic seeped into his face.

Beside him, Hulimat was a one-man army. His shadow hungered and destroyed all those in its path, just a writhing mess of black and grey; it leapt further and further for targets, dragging Hulimat behind it, even as the man grit his teeth and heels in.

"Back," Hulimat snarled, half under his breath; at his ankles, his shadow rippled like a stone over a pond, ragged tatters of his silhouette with pale white eyes. It gnashed black teeth and sunk them into an approaching mottled scorpion, puncturing through its carapace with ease, but the chains at Hulimat's ankles stretched taut. The man reeled it back, muscles straining.

And it didn't go unnoticed. High over the battle, perched on one of the mushroom-rope bridges and raining death from above with a piercing accuracy, the eldest of my creatures raised a bushy eyebrow.

"Oh!" Bylk croaked, grin settling over his snaggled teeth. "Got a li'l biter, dontcha? Not too good a handle?"

Hulimat didn't understand him, because why would anyone willingly choose to speak the goblin's tongue, but the address was clear enough. He sunk his fingers into the shadows bristling around his feet and barked more commands—it reached out with terrible jagged claws, parsing through clouds of mist and launched attacks.

But Bylk flicked a hand up, drained enough mana one of his earrings went dim, and threw a blast.

Or, not a blast—it certainly looked like one, and Hulimat flinched like it was, but once the burst of light finished what ended was a thin, narrow beam of concentrated mana that sniped over Hulimat's ankles. The man yelped, leaping back, smoke bleeding from his armour; and Bylk hit him again. Same spot.

Azkhal kept hammering against Akkyst, trying to get to the weaker Magelords, but Akkyst had taken down a stone-wurm and a man was nothing. He fenced off, using his massive bulk to push them further back, closer to the others, hemming them in—Pau was getting cornered, dancing and weaving around the web Magelords were weaving for him, already half a dozen pitfalls as they tried to drop him into the stone.

Hulimat was quite alone, and Bylk snapped at the offensive like the finest meal. Even I felt the mana grow sharp, grow bright, as he drained it faster than it could refill on those narrow, biting beams of pure light. The invader fell back, again and again, trying to find some crevice to hide in—but Bylk, loathe as I was to admit it, was too clever for that. He spidered his way over the bridges in constant pursuit.

It didn't have a voice but I watched Hulimat's shadow wail as he struck it again, tatters of intangibility flapping around his ankles as it thrashed and writhed. Hulimat, past the black lines over his face, went dreadfully pale. Catching on, then. Realizing what danger he was in.

Bylk laughed throatily. "Tha's it," he said, and snapped his hand down again; one last beam, even brighter than the last, shot forward and cleaved through Hulimat's chains.

His shadow, freed.

It took all of two seconds for it to spin around and eviscerate him.

It sunk its jagged claws into his guts and tore them out; spilled steaming grey intestines over the stone as Hulimat screamed, tumbling over with his fingers tangled in scarlet. It pounced again, ripping at him, his skin, his chest, his face—soundless it howled, furious, fury incarnate, and split its master in half.

Then, right as it killed him and his mana exploded through the air, it twitched, shook, and disappeared itself.

Consequences. It hadn't developed enough of its own soul to stay alive past its host; just enough of a soul to be angry. I could respect that.

Bylk laughed again, last of the mana flickering around his hands. But his eyes were different—a surge of regret, seemingly out of place. Curiosity got the better of me and I peered into his head, into the thoughts tucked up under a surprisingly organized mind—he'd learned those tactics, how to separate beast from master, back when he fought the War Horde. He had used them against Akkyst. The ever-present lingering fear of what if he had killed Akkyst, so long ago.

Hm. I still didn't like him, and I didn't like the attachment he had over Akkyst. As if he thought he could ever kill my bear.

Down one, the other two invaders floundered. Hulimat's shadow had been taking the brute of the smaller crawlers by the feet while Azkhal was busy with Akkyst and Pau dodged the Magelords, and now they came swarming in; mist-foxes, hopping down the bridges with their tails high and their illusions higher, greater pigeons swooping in with shrieks and flashing talons, and, mostly damningly, the bladehawk.

He came in from on high, rust-red wings spread wide; in the choking cloud and mist, no one really saw him, not since he'd started the battle with his launched feathers. But though he'd tried again, the others had been dodging him; keeping themselves light on their feet to jump out of the way. Specifically by Pau's commands.

The bladehawk wasn't particularly tested, unlike my other creatures. He'd only ever lived in the Skylands, high above the rest—but he'd come from the War Horde, and he knew how to kill. How to adapt.

Pau could see his eyes; could sense them, even through the mist, through the choking storms that had disguised him into an untouchable monster for so long. That was an established fact. So the bladehawk changed.

I watched him tuck his wings, study the field, and look up. His mind, racing, complex equations and calculations and every breeze taken into account; without seeing Pau, he let himself fall back, gravity hurling him down, until he knew he was at the right angle. No eye contact. No sightline to notice.

Nothing but four feathers skewering through Pau's chest.

He croaked, air punched from his lungs, and couldn't dodge; an older Magelord caught him over the thigh with a twisting bolt of fire, boiled leather hissing and smoking, Pau choking out pain and blood. Froth to his lips. Falling.

The clouds swallowed him, mist-foxes moving in, but the bladehawk high above got the last blow with another loosed arrow to the throat.

Two down. Mana, singing a victory's cry through my halls, bursting to full with potential rampaging around my thoughts. Just one left, the last leader of the three-pronged group, the strongest but still no match for my entire floor, not when I knew how he worked, not when my Named was so close to killing him–

And then Akkyst, his ear perking up, pushed Azkhal away.

What?

My lovely starwrought bear reared to use the flat of his claws on Azkhal's chest, not an attack, not a second vivisection, but merely a shove. Azkhal stumbled back, readying his club, but Akkyst didn't pursue. Just stayed back.

Excuse me? Was he giving up?

Our connection thrummed, and I felt a strange pride; satisfaction, in a way. And I watched him look to the others, to the Magelords, who now were two dozen to one vastly injured invader.

Ah. He was giving them the kill, so that they might get more mana and learn from it. Cooperation, more than any of my other creatures, excluding the kobolds. Helping everyone improve, instead of just my Named, just my favoured.

And learn they did—while Azkhal's brow pinched in confusion and he wavered, the Magelords were seemingly used to this strategy. Each raised their hands, at least those who weren't healing others, and launched a starfall of attacks.

Azkhal was a physical beast, able to shatter any Magelords that got close to him. But he was exhausted from wrestling with Akkyst, and confused, and alone.

He dodged the first nine. He didn't dodge the six after that.

Fire swallowed him whole, blooming scarlet-crimson against the grey mist; he screamed once, a howling dirge of a sound, and his mana exploded through me—filled the air like a hurricane, like a storm touching down to undisturbed water.

And then, in wake of that, the Skylands quieted back to normal.

Okay. Okay.

I'd survived.

Twelve invaders, armed to the teeth with weapons and mana and a plan beyond what I thought they could do, left as eleven corpses and one fool. Mana, bright and soul-rich, flooded through me and lapped at the edges of my awareness; golden letters, godly focus. I'd survived. I'd survived.

Some part of me bemoaned the loss of my physical form. I wanted nothing more than to curl on my hoard and block out the world for a decade; to rest and refill my mana in the comfort of dragon-dreams and undisturbed peace. To let the terror that had consumed me fade away like just another memory.

But I wasn't a sea-drake. Not anymore.

And dungeon cores didn't rest, didn't stop, didn't leave themselves defenseless. Instead, they recovered. They cleared away the rubble. They grew stronger.

Shoth had almost enslaved me. I wouldn't allow that again.

So instead I shook myself free of the stupor, letting the mana diffuse around me as I opened my consciousness beyond my points of awareness. Immediately, my core snapped to the forefront of my thoughts as it lit me up with messages, with golden runes; little doubt I'd have had evolutions after that, but even I wasn't quite expecting as many as were floating around my core.

Although it made sense—the death of one Gold and ten Silvers, all further down than most other had reached. Even if they'd avoided Veresai, they'd given the Skylands, Hungering Reefs, and Scorchplains a feast the likes of which they'd never had before. Lands untested, now tested.

Tested and hurt. I glared at the shattered island of the Skylands, where Alda's mysterious concoction had burned hot as a star and twice as deadly. The limestone, my fanciful iron veins, half a dozen creatures crushed underneath its collapse. That'd be a pain to remake.

…wait.

My islands, snaking over the Skylands; a pathway of interconnected bridges all poised to collapse with too much weight or to entrap others off. Shoth had ran right over it before anyone had been able to make it to him.

If this island was broken, no bridges to connect or build off of, wouldn't that force invaders to find other ways across? Wouldn't that slow them down?

I was going to have to sit on my dungeon and think about it, massively restructure things so that a lowly fucking Gold couldn't sprint through and make it to my final floor, and maybe this was the first of the new changes I would be bringing to the hunt. Already my mind rang loud and true with ideas; coordination between my creatures, something better than the raid-frenzy, blockades, alliances, assessment, testing, keys, traps—but no. Not now. I needed to recover first.

But maybe I'd be leaving this island broken.

Later, later, later. Right now, I could feel the mana surging at the limits of my pool, too much absorbed for my capabilities to hold; I needed to evolve my creatures right now so I could use some of that mana and then find other pockets to hurl the rest. On my last massive adventure, I'd come up with a strategy, and there wasn't a reason to change now—I went to the highest floor and parsed through the messages there. Better to save the more explosive changes for the end, in my opinion, which was naturally correct.

The Fungal Gardens didn't have much—Ossega and his axes had made quick work of anything that had gotten close to them, leaving any hopeful evolutions as little more than corpses to dissolve into mana. The first floor was in an odd place; it would never be strong enough to defend me, because any creature that was strong enough to defend went below for more mana. What could I do with it?

Later. I shoved the few evolutions into shadowthief rats and ironback toads and guided them to the second floor.

The Drowned Forest had more, if only because there simply was more; all those twisting tunnels, slowly grinding away under Nenaigch's influence, thousands of pockets and crevices for my creatures to tuck into. And, well—in a completely unexpected but painfully obvious conclusion, it turned out that having creatures other than Veresai's serpent horde fight invaders meant others could get evolutions. Curled up in the empty alley, claws bristling, an entire legion of hunting mantises lit up in brilliant white-gold; so long ago, evolving from the Fungal Gardens, and now a plague upon my Jungle Labyrinth with their jagged claws and relentless hunt. Fascinating.

Congratulations! Your creature, a Hunting Mantis, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Mantis Hordeling (Common): In learning from its neighbors, this creature loses most of its sense of self but sharpens to become a claw to serve the Horde, great roaming packs that devour all those in their path.

Iridescent Mantis (Uncommon): Bright of scale and mind, it stalks through the darkness and readies its wings for unsuspecting prey; with but a flash, it can blind any before it, and feast upon their remains.

Bladesong Mantis (Uncommon): There is no need for defense for those who kill first. Growing tall and upright, so as to mirror its preferred prey, it fights with arm-like claws and dances away from anything that could strike its brittle body.

Their evolutions, even moreso. The iridescent mantis threw memories back to my luminous constrictors, whose evolutions mostly lost the shine of their past and focused on more deadly abilities, but I could see it working well for a creature with the speed mantises wielded. And the bladesong—taken from Nolla's attunement, no doubt, though without the water aspect. They would be coral, then, prone to breaking if touched but devastating in all other circumstances; rather perfect for my Jungle Labyrinth.

The horde did speak to me, because I had seen how easily it overwhelmed invaders so long as there was a chink in their armour—but no. It was just shitty luck that they had found a way around Veresai, and I didn't want to rely on the same trick twice; more styles of hunting than hordes. Even if I wanted to see a massive, crawling wall of sickle-bladed hunters.

There were some dozen of them awaiting evolution—I selected bladesong mantis for all and let the light consume them. Hopefully it would be fast. I wanted them to quickly establish themselves before Veresai could kill their indisposed bodies.

And then, far away, hauling Nolla's corpse in preparation to bring it below, the jaguar.

She was grooming herself, licking away gore and dust to reveal her rosetted coat to the world once more; a purr, deep in her chest, and pride throughout her thoughts. Her first time facing human invaders, and she'd killed one. She knew that meant power.

From power came evolution.

Congratulations! Your creature, a Stalking Jaguar, is undergoing evolution!

Your Title of Resurrector bestows a path.

Boundless Jaguar (Exotic): This creature will hunt and forgo all else; with six legs and incredible agility, it is not bound by wall or floor or sky in its relentless drive to consume its prey.

Well. That was unexpected.

Six legs and boundless agility; it wasn't the perfect evolution for the Jungle Labyrinth, and she'd likely have to move below, but oh, I could taste the potential. She was already the most effective of my ambush hunters, able to stalk and move and destroy, and this added power would do nothing but improve her capabilities.

…it was curious, though.

She was my first evolution that wasn't dungeonborn, excluding Seros, though I'd Named him so he hardly counted. And I remembered one of Akkyst's memories, where she called herself one of the old ones, so perhaps there could have been a touch of ancestry in her; but this didn't feel like that.

My armoured jawfish had earned his evolution by going against his passive nature and becoming a predator. But the stalking jaguar had done nothing but be what she was; so why did she have a resurrected evolution? Why do this?

I didn't know. But I had a feeling that it was a thread that I would one day have to face.

For now, I selected boundless jaguar and let the silver light wash over her, thoughts smoothing out to peace and anticipation; she knew what it meant and what would change when she woke, and I could feel how badly she wanted it.

Beyond her and the mantises, nothing had truly evolved; a couple more cave spiders into shardrunner spiders, a burrowing rat into a mage ratkin in what felt like a coincidence for timing; and then, between the floors, two bodies. One humanoid, dead. One arachnid, alive. And glowing.

The webweaver who had killed Gnat. Mana so thick and spider-tainted I could practically taste it flooded the air, sharp and coiling; whatever Gnat was, he wasn't a normal human, and he'd tried to do something here. But my webweaver had killed him, and earned an evolution instead.

I reached out, hovering my awareness right over their glowing body, and then paused.

They were crouched over the corpse of Gnat, twisted and contorted with venom still pumping sluggishly through his veins—and their thoughts were downright exultant. They had killed what they thought was upsetting the weave, in what they thought was a mission from me, and were hoping this would grant them the ability to understand the shape I'd shown them.

The mandible, the needle; Nenaigch's object of worship. My near-failed attempt at turning a bunch of spiders into priests.

But now one of those spiders had gone and killed a spider-woven invader and reached evolution off his mana, and I was suddenly very intrigued as to what their options would be. Because I rather thought that there could be a solution to my answers there.

So I would come back to this later. I had a feeling that their evolution would take a more deific touch—and I had spent far too long bemoaning a lack of arachnid priests to simply waste this evolution on a stronger webweaver. It needed delicacy, and I was currently being bombarded by messages draining half my consciousness, so after it would be. Damn.

Instead I traveled down to the Skylands, where my creatures were picking themselves out of their daze. I felt a surprising shock of regret as I watched them; my raid-frenzy had been so strong it had essentially shredded their strategy, turning them into beasts and bodies, at least until Shoth had been killed.

I needed to be better. I couldn't become so scared my creatures were useless.

Three more floors; three more groups of evolution. Then my dungeon would stop being a sea-drake's lair and it would become a dungeon, where everyone worked together to take down the real enemy and I stopped faffing about with fanciful dreams of bringing invaders further in so as to claim their mana; no. They came here, and they died. That was it.

I was a dungeon now. It was time I acted like one.