The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Level 1

Heart 400/400

Experience 65/100

Workers 4/10

Monsters 0/10-2

Traps 12/10+2

Rooms 8

Food 102

Timber 261

Iron 214

Mana 3

Rock 246

Gold 199

Leather 68

Leather Sludge 18

Lava 7

Quest: Make one of your monsters into a boss

Katelyn was working away on her runes, Stephan was out cutting down trees and checking his traps, and that left Robert and Penelope digging. Travis waited for them to ask him to place new areas to dig before doing so. He opened up the planned tunnel from before the sludge traps at both ends and let the pair start digging toward each other.

Rock. Travis kept trying to think of what to do with it, but so far all it was good for was libraries and runes. The latter was only one at a time, though, and at the rate Penelope and Robert were generating it, they were going to end up with a lot more. Essentially, he figured out they would require one warehouse for every three or four other warehouses—just to hold the rock excavated.

When they had it dug out, Travis had them seal up the tunnel nearest to the new warehouse for a square to keep any potential attackers from using the new tunnel to bypass the sludge traps. "Okay, that lets us safely dig out the next bunch of warehouses without uncovering anything that could storm to me and kill me."

"We might be overreacting to this possible threat," Penelope said, "but I'd rather not risk it. Not when it's easy enough to plan a bit ahead and do things right."

Sending her digging down a long leg of the new area, Travis set one of the new rooms to be dug out. As he did, he realized that they didn't have enough room. "Okay, I need this room here dug a little before the other stuff, and we need a warehouse in there."

Robert was working away, enjoying the simple act of doing what Penelope had insisted was what kobolds did best, when the last projected hunk of rock to clear collapsed to reveal a dark cave beyond. "Travis!"

"What's in there? It feels like I should be panicking about something and it's making me panic ab—" Travis' voice cut off when a kobold-sized spider pounced out toward Robert.

"Run!" Penelope's hands moved before the threat was even fully visible. Her daggers in her hands, she slammed both into the side of the spider as it raced past her. Hemolymph sprayed out of where one of her daggers had sunk into the soft body. She had but a moment to consider her options when she found the weapon stuck and gave it up. "Go! Go! Go! Get to the traps!"

"Katelyn made some explosive runes. Just pull them from my inventory and throw them so they break where they hit!" Travis' voice was loud in everyone's heads, but Robert was the first to reach behind his back and pull one out. He paused at the first T intersection and aimed at the wall beside a spider—just as Penelope raced past.

His aim was off, what with Penelope dragging him around the corner, but the runes didn't need accuracy. The blast sent a shockwave up and down the hallway—and he saw the lifeless body of one spider slam into the intersection. "I got it!"

"Yeah, I got experience for that. Damn, I didn't want to do this, but—" Travis' voice echoed to all the kobolds for a moment before each and every one of them noticed a change. They moved faster. "How's that?"

"Great thinking, Trav! Okay, let's get to this next corner and repeat the explosive trick again. I've got this one." Penelope reached the corner first and drew her arm back—turning. "Four of them behind us."

Robert reached the corner and jumped over Penelope's head before landing on the wall. He used his claws for three steps on the wall to get back to running on the floor—then a second blast sounded and he smelled the burning scent of spider and rune explosives. "Nice! How many?"

"I didn't stop to count. That's your job as we pass the entrance. Get a rune ready!" Penelope was legging it after Robert now. "Damn this is a rush, and we haven't even gotten them to our traps yet!"

"The traps will probably be useless, Pen." Robert reached the entrance first and turned. "Six coming." In his hand was two runes. He passed one to his throwing arm and launched it far, then sent the second one a bit closer and ducked back.

Penelope had to drag Robert along the tunnel some more as they passed the dark entrance of their dungeon. "Two? You used two?"

"I knew what I'm—" Robert froze at the sight before him. His sister stood at the corner that led to the traps. Her staff, her hands, and her eyes blazed with fire. "Run past her, Pen, and don't stop until you're past the traps."

The moment her brother and new friend were out of her line of sight—and a bunch of spiders were all that were in it—Katelyn released her magic. "Die! Burn!"

Robert stared. He'd seen his sister use magic plenty of times, but this was the first she'd just let loose with fire. Normally she was all about control and using only the bare minimum of power—now she was all about making the walls of the tunnel glow red.

"I can't see well. How many are there? I just maxed out XP!" Travis seemed to need to shout to get over the roar of fire magic.

Knowing what was coming, Robert waited until his sister's flames winked out—first in her hands, then her staff, and finally her eyes. "I gotcha. Come on, sis, you done good."

"How'd you get past the traps carrying her?" Penelope had been getting ready for the next step of the fight, but in the time it took Robert to dodge past the traps, no more spiders came.

"Don't know, don't care. She used to always be so clever about using the least amount of power to do anything." Robert cradled his sister in his arms. "She's still breathing, just drained everything she had at them."

"Well, get her down somewhere to sleep. When you get back up here, we're going back in. Trav, how many more runes do we have?" Penelope crouched down and kept her eyes locked on the corner ahead.

"I have five more. Katelyn has three on her still."

Sighing in relief, Penelope didn't move from her spot until Robert came up behind her and touched her shoulder. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. Get a rune ready while I get back past these traps." Clinging to the wall, Robert swung past the traps and landed at the other end without incident. He moved to the end of the hall and peeked back toward the entrance. "This looks clear."

Working their way slowly down the tunnels, Penelope and Robert took turns peeking while the other stood back—each holding a rune in their hand ready to throw.

When they reached the tunnel that led to the room that had broken through to the spiders' room, Penelope whispered, "Trav, can you cut off the planned dig areas nearby? At least the bits we can get to?"

"Got it. Sorry, I should have done that as soon as I could."

"Don't worry, we were all in a bit of a panic. Hey, there's my knife." Penelope walked over to the wall where her dagger was buried—to its hilt—in the stone. "I think I'll have to dig around it to get it out." Walking cautiously to the room that had broken open the spider nest, Penelope peeked around the corner.

Inside the room she could see a much bigger spider.

"There's one left. Really big," Travis said.

Turning her head only enough that she could direct her mouth to the hallway and not into the nest, Penelope whispered. "Okay, we repeat what we just did. Corner-by-corner, hurling runes at this thing. Ready?"

"Wait, why don't we both throw our first one at the same time?" Robert asked.

Penelope smiled and nodded. "I like that idea. Okay, come on. I'll take the first corner—you keep running to the second, okay?" Gathering at the corner, spotting the huge spider and getting a nod from Robert, Penelope drew her arm back and together they threw their runes at the giant spider's many feet.

"It's pissed!" Travis told them both.

Having spent more time as a kobold than Robert, Penelope reached the first corner quickly, drew another rune from behind her back and prepared to throw it.

Running past, Robert let out a bark of excitement as he raced past Penelope, the hot wind of the explosion on his back.

Waiting until she saw the huge shape leap out of the side room, Penelope shuddered at how fast the thing seemed to move even as she tossed her rune right in front of it. "It's coming!" she shouted, racing as fast as her legs could carry her down the hall and around to the next corner.

"Those are your last two runes. When those are done, lure it to the traps," Travis said.

Robert threw his rune at the beast's feet and ran off as another explosion sent a concussive wave of pressure through the dungeon. "Get ready, Pen!"

When Robert ran past her, Penelope saw the spider round the corner he'd just vacated. To her left was the entrance of the dungeon and, behind her, she knew the traps were carefully placed to catch most foes. "Keep moving"—she threw her rune and started running too—"I'll keep it busy at the sludge traps, you get ready at the crushers."

Neither looked back, taking the U turn before the sludge traps as fast as they could and running along the thin ledge on the side until they landed back on the clear side.

"Go!" Penelope turned to face the direction the spider would be coming from. She had just one of her knives left, but hoped she wouldn't need to use it.

The spider, still moving rapidly, rounded the corner. Spotting Penelope, it leapt forward with blinding speed and landed so that half its legs were in the penultimate trap while half were in the one bordering Penelope. When it pulled at its blackened legs, one ripped free but the other seven held fast.

"Yeah! Got you!" Keeping her dagger out, Penelope backed away from the spider. "Trav, can you figure out how hurt it is?"

"Hurt… Hurt… Hurt… Oh! Health bars! It's three-quarters dead and its dropping!"

Crouching, her leg muscles coiled like springs, Penelope watched as the spider ripped another of its legs in half trying to get out of the sludge. "Rob, I think it's safe. It's mired down in the sludge traps!"

Almost at the same moment Robert rounded the corner, the spider strained to get clear of the sludge traps and ripped two more legs off. Now its abdomen was pressed down in the muck. "It's dropping faster now. I hope it hasn't messed up the traps," Travis said.

"Trav?" Penelope asked.

"Yeah?"

"Remind me never to question your odd building system ever again. You warned me about this and I wasn't really seeing what you meant." Advancing on the spider, its body stretched out and stuck down in the muck, Penelope reached over its complicated mouthparts and eyes—then brought her dagger down into the middle of its head. "Wish it wouldn't have taken something this nasty to show me that."

"More adventurers?" Brayden asked his friend. "Looks like they have the sort of makeup to deal with that vermin dungeon." He was sitting in the adventurer tavern and enjoying a beer with his friend.

"Two fire wizards, two clerics, and a shaman. That's definitely what I'd want to take into a vermin rot dungeon." Brolly Windchime nodded to one of the clerics when they looked around. "You going for the new vermin dungeon we got?"

"Vermin and rot, yeah? You're in the city guard?" Walking over, the cleric nodded at Brayden too. "M'name's Nathaniel. Our party is Felna over there, Ogmera, Stratus, and Tom." He pointed out the other cleric, the shaman, and then the two wizards.

Being a half-elf, Nathaniel wasn't exactly stand-out among humans, but the classical beauty that all half-caste elves shared was marred by a huge scar over one ruined eye.

Felna was an odder sight for being deep within the predominantly human lands—a tiger-striped cat woman wearing chainmail and a breastplate that completely belied her kind's normally high reflexes.

Ogmera wore a simple shirt and trousers, but her fetish-covered staff gave away her profession to any who knew about shamans. Somewhat like Felna, though, she wore some chainmail that looked like it could do with a good clean.

The two wizards, Stratus and Tom (elf and human), were dressed similarly in singed and smoldered robes that bore softly glowing runes around the hems. They were leaning together discussing something.

"Captain of the Guard," Brolly said, "and it's good to have some specialists to deal with such a nasty combination. You'll be the first to explore it, and there is a bounty for doing so."

"Glad to hear that. We're about to head off. The local priestess was mighty happy to allow us to bind at her temple. Right-friendly place you're building here. Do you have a list of anything in particular you want mapped in that dungeon? We had planned to clean it all out clear to the core, then leave it to grow back."

"You're free to clear it as often as you like. We haven't had any parties who've been up to such a nightmare." Leaning back on his chair, Brolly looked over the party again and had to admit, they definitely had the skills.

"Thank you. We'll be heading out, then."

Waiting until the whole group left, Brayden cleared his throat. "That seemed to go well."

"Better than the two the other day. We're still not sure where they got up to." Brolly hefted his glass up and swigged down some short beer. "I'm worried they—"

"If they died, they'd have wound up back here with their talisman missing. That's the great thing about adventurers, Brolly, you never have to worry if they've gotten themselves killed."