Dragonheart Core

Rihsu hissed against the shadows.

They clung to her, heavy and pressing, the twisting weight that blended with her scales and twined around her claws. Hid prey from her, hid her from prey; they balanced, but they were still at odds, and she didn't like them.

She was finding that she didn't like many things, now.

Lord Seros was still slumbering a floor below her, awash in the changing light, that shining, glimmering, brilliant light—not that he needed to be changed, he was Lord Seros, but she knew that he wanted it. That he welcomed it.

So she welcomed it too.

The platemail bug slipped off her claws, hitting the ground with the crack of splitting shell; a boring hunt, something to test herself once she'd awoken. Without Lord Seros, she hadn't been able to practice her swimming with him, and for all that her claws now pulled her through water and her tail adjusted how she swam, she still didn't know how to do it. She was still trying, because she wouldn't fall behind, but it was hard. Many things were hard.

But it had been hard to rip the head off the turtle monster, and she had done that, so she would do this, too.

She kicked at the bug, tail lashing at the walls. It hadn't put up a fight, only curled up and tried to protect itself, but there was nothing against her claws. Still, there was a reason she hunted in the morning. She bared her fangs at the algae-whips, vines retreating away from her begrudgingly, and sat down, tugging the corpse into her lap. It was easy to shred away its chiton shell and search for the meat within.

In the darkness, sitting across the width of the tunnel with her towering height, tail flicking, she ate her morning meal. Perhaps later she would go to the fifth floor, hunt some of the flying beasts—if Lord Seros had no wings, she had no need of them either, but perhaps this changing light of his would grant him wings, in which case she needed them yesterday—or up to the third, to swim through the murk and find a sturgeon for her claws. She ripped a leg off and crushed out the meat, power thrumming through her with its kill.

But then she paused. She looked up, and there was something calling her, a little ping in the back of her mind, where normally only the call of her Lord Seros sat. Her eyes went up, peering past the darkness and the twisting curl of the vines. Past the tunnels of training.

Something had changed.

She couldn't quite tell what—for all her senses had improved, this was on an entirely separate floor, and all she could do was point her muzzle up and warble at the ceiling. Something changed, something big—there was a lingering pressure in the back of her head, something with words.

It said tribe.

She didn't have a tribe. Hadn't had one since she'd seen Lord Seros, rising from the water, and knew what he was.

But there was a tribe, she remembered, dozens of other scale-kin smaller than her and fiddling with the tools she'd been interested in until she learned that her own claws were tools enough. Somewhere up above, stuck on those powerless floors and scrounging for scraps.

But something had changed.

And within her, back to those Big Thoughts that had pushed her so far, she felt something.

Curiosity.

What had changed? What could they have unlocked? They did not have access to Lord Seros, sleeping as he was, and that meant that whatever they would be changing to would be lesser than her own change. Less meaningful. But for them to have changed at all. Well.

Perhaps they had gotten their own Big Thoughts. Not dragon thoughts, but Big Thoughts. Those beyond what they had had before.

She had not expected them to have Big Thoughts.

She didn't know if she wanted them to have Big Thoughts. Those had been hers and hers alone.

Or were they? How long since she had gone up to the second floor? There were monsters and power on the fourth, water on the third, Lord Seros on the fifth; she had been entirely content to stay there with them, where things were more important. This was where she was strongest, where she would only grow stronger. That was what she needed to do.

But if others were changing, were they growing stronger?

Growing stronger than her?

That was not supposed to happen.

The fourth floor was training. The fifth floor was Lord Seros.

But still, she turned her attention upward, and searched for a tunnel back to the second floor.

It was time to see what was changing.

-

Akkyst lumbered forward.

It was slow, ponderous work; he was still growing used to his new body, and there was something odd in how his limbs moved now, all long and gangling, and his claws kept catching on stone when he expected them to be closer to his paws instead of extending out. Why were his claws so much longer? It didn't make sense—he couldn't pick up prey with them like the bladehawk's talons, nor could he retract them like the stalking jaguar; they were just in his way, now. Irritating.

But that was a question for when there was peace, and there wasn't that now, so on he walked, surrounded by the survivors.

They made for a shoddy group, really. Four dozen Magelords, some in slings to support broken bodies, some walking with splints, some nursing bruises and cuts and exhaustion; Bylk at the front, his jewels not even beginning to reclaim their mana, curled over and hissing with effort even as he walked on. Above the bladehawk flew—he'd been completely startled to see Akkyst awake, crest flaring up, but then he'd recovered back into that gruff persona of his almost immediately. It wasn't like he could be surprised, no. He was very calm, in fact.

The stalking jaguar had been more appreciative. She remembered how Akkyst had protected her, covered her in shadow, raged against the stone-wurm with everything he had and then some. She'd churred softly, bumped her nose against his, and now padded at his side, feather-tipped tail swishing through the scattered dust. They would stay by his side.

He had promised to find them a way out, one day. To give them back to the jungle where the jaguar belonged, to bring the sky back for the bladehawk; but they were sticking with him. Choosing to travel to his home rather than find theirs.

His heart was large enough to feel something warm at that.

All of him was changed, though. Silver fur, dexterous paws, a gleaming awareness in the back of his mind—they hadn't crossed any rivers or ponds so he could look at himself more fully, but his fur gleamed with some vague sort of light, guiding them through the mountain, and he knew his body was leaner. Still enormous, still broader than any other goblins he'd ever seen, but different. His musculature was different.

Everything was different, it felt like. He didn't know what to think about that. For so long he'd been in this body, content in what he knew, but now it had all changed, and he knew it was for the better.

Whatever better could be. Sometimes this new brain of his threw together phrases and connections he wasn't able to fully understand. When there was peace, he would try to understand.

But there wasn't peace, not in this mountain. Already he'd had to fight off a magma-salamander and boulder-beast, great cavernous fights that pushed his understanding of his new body to the limits; they kept huddled watch in passing nooks of stone, Bylk using his limited mana to map out the area as they walked on. Searching for the Growth.

Not a particularly hard thing to find, to be honest. A gnawing power at the base of the mountain, ever crawling deeper, pulsing out in waves of endless mana—already Bylk had found the edge of the… web, for lack of better words, and simply had to follow the trail of mana back to its source. They were still several days out, maybe longer, maybe closer. Hard to tell in a mountain.

These mountains particularly.

It had been a long, long time since he'd found comfort here, since the surrounding stone and stalactites and roaring rivers had brought him anything but fear—fear since when he was young, stumbling through the darkness, fleeing from pain and only running into more.

But now he was returning home. He didn't know his home, not in the way he had before, not in how it had changed; and he had been gone a good long while. Perhaps it was no longer as comforting as it had been before.

But the Magelords' home was destroyed, and the War Horde ever hungered for more blood, so they had to leave. As few as their numbers were, even if most of them were trained mages, they didn't have the power to just start a new home. They needed to find one to join.

And Akkyst had protected them so far. It was the promise he had sworn, and he wouldn't give it up now.

He was there to protect them. He would always protect them, and before, he had been protecting them by cowering in corners and living in fear of the War Horde—no longer. It was time to give them something that they could actually live in.

Akkyst would make sure.

-

She awoke.

It was a slow awakening, twisted, but as she breathed in, she inhaled with something inside her, not just leaves and branches and roots, and she knew things had changed.

There had been the Before, where there was nothing, just a life, hunting for blood for sustenance. Then there had been the After, where she had discovered that she was she, had looked around her, hunting for not just blood but information.

But this.

This was more.

This was the Beyond.

She was more.

Bark, surrounding her, dark and comforting. But she could feel the bark, both against herself, and also as the bark; she was the tree and she was this new part of the tree. They were together, they were one, they were separate, but they were new. She was in the bark, but she was also the bark surrounding her.

But if she was in the bark, then there must be something outside of the bark, and though it was dark, she had eyes that could see what the outside was. No longer was she limited to only vague impressions of shapes and sizes by the information spread through the web of mana. This was more.

She wanted to be outside.

So she reached out, and knew she had limbs to reach out with, with something sharp on the tips, and there was movement, easy, shifting forward—four limbs, two on bottom and two on top, feeling oddly like those two-leg things that came through the dungeon. Less upright. Less tall.

But similar.

The bark bled away, freeing her from its comforting embrace, and she was in a new world.

Wide, open, free—it spread before her, sprawling, brilliant. There were—things were different, different… appearances. Colours, her mind whispered to her, they were colours. Things were not limited by how they felt, whether rough or smooth or soft, but by colours, too. She watched them, watched the world beyond.

There was bark behind her and she was bark, and they were one—her Ancestral Tree, she knew. The source of her life and her love; she had to protect it, but also to feed it, and in her mouth, which she had now, she could feel something sharp. Something hungry.

The world opened now. No longer was she limited by the grasping crawl of root and thorn, trapped within immobility and the difficulty of movement; there were limbs—feet—that could move and walk and learn.

Sensory organs on her face. They picked up something, distant but present. Something wet. Something red. Blood.

She was in the Beyond, now.

She was more.

It was time to hunt.