The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Level 1

Heart 400/400

Experience 35/100

Workers 2/5

Monsters 0/10-2

Traps 5/10+2

Rooms 5

Food 92

Timber 219

Iron 24

Mana 0

Rock 133

Gold 110

Leather 39

Quest: Gather 100 Food

Travis was in a panic over how fast things had happened and how completely helpless he'd been once the coordination process of getting Stephan back to the dungeon had been accomplished. He'd barely noticed when twenty experience had poured in for the dead direwolf in the pit, and had assumed it had been for both. "Are you sure? It must be the carbon dioxide."

"Carbon what?" Stephan asked. "I don't know what it is in their breath, but I can definitely smell it coming from down there and from Pen's breathing. So one is still alive. How do we kill them?"

"It's—" Travis tried to work out how to describe what he knew of breathing. "When you breathe, you inhale good air and exhale most of the same but with something else in it. That's what you'll smell. I think."

"Is there anything else that will smell like that?"

"Bad air in tunnels. I guess that's why kobolds can smell it at all." Focusing on the vision from one of his lizards, Travis could see the slight rise and fall in the wolf's side. "If this is going to become a common thing, we need spears. Even if all they are is sticks with a sharpened end."

"The trap is fifteen feet down. Even if we had spears that long, we couldn't angle them down far enough in the tunnel. What we need are shortbows." Penelope was going over the traps, resetting them back so they could trigger again.

That's when it hit Travis. "No, even better. We dig the traps deeper and fill the bottom ten feet with water." He remembered rat and mouse traps that worked like that. "This is just like building mousetraps."

"Whatever you plan, that doesn't help us right now. We need some way to kill that direwolf that doesn't involve climbing down there or waiting it out," Penelope said.

Stephan looked around, then up. "Why don't we bury it and then dig it back out after it's suffocated?" He pointed at the ceiling. "We could just collapse the tunnel down. It'd probably ruin the pelts, but the meat will be fine."

When he tried to give the order to break the ceiling, though, it wouldn't take. Then he remembered the rule with dungeons: you can't block the path to the core. Three dig orders and some quick work by both his kobolds freed the pit to be able to be collapsed.

It didn't take them long to drop the ceiling in and then dig it all out again. The downside was they'd lost the trap itself. With some wood, Penelope rebuilt the trap and put plenty of spikes in the bottom while Stephan hauled the two bodies out.

Stephan couldn't help but feel a connection with Penelope now. He pondered on how it took life-or-death situations for both to forge that, then shook his head and got back to showing her how to hang and skin the wolves. "Now that we have them draining, we can start working on the pelts."

"But didn't you say they'd be worthless with holes and rips from rocks?" Penelope knew about knives and other blades only from her dungeoneering work. She'd gotten Stephan to explain each that he'd carried and what they were used for.

"Worthless to sell. You can always stitch holes together or trim several damaged hides and make a blanket out of it. Their fur kept them warm during winter—it can keep us warm too." Stephan performed his trade, emptying the entrails into a second tub to where the blood was pooling and then started to cut the hide loose. "And now we pull down. Try not to pull the carcass away from the tub—that blood can be used for cooking or weapon smelting."

"Just checking, is that what we use to make leather sludge for Sludge traps?" Travis asked them.

It was hard to get his head around, but when Stephan focused on the blood he swore that—for just a second—a little box appeared. "It—Yeah, it's leather sludge. No idea how that works, but it works. So we can make traps with this?"

"We can! Pen said that this style of trap is really effective and doesn't need resetting. We're running low on iron, but Pen found gold so hopefully some more mining and we can get some iron too." To Stephan, Travis' voice sounded excited and hopeful.

It was a little odd for him, given his lack of usual contact with others, but hearing Travis feel inspired also reassured him. He explained what he was doing to Penelope as he worked, and even that gave him a good feeling. Not that he had any designs on Penelope, just having another person—another kobold—to talk to.

By the time he punched the hide off the second wolf, he nodded to the two hides. "Now we gotta dry these. That takes time. It also gives us a chance to find holes and marks that need removing." He tossed the first hide over a drying rack and let Penelope do the second. "Holes here and here on mine. You can see that neck wound where the spike got it."

"This one must have been the possum-player. Look at all the abrasions." Penelope was brushing the fur aside with her claws to see where all the damage had been done. "You know, both heads are fine. We could make some great helmets out of them."

"We could do that. Let's get this all sorted out so we can get those new traps built."

"Where'd they go?" Jack, the party's ice mage, asked. "There was meant to be a dozen of them got stirred up by that rot dungeon, right? The reports said—"

"We all read the report, Jack, and the quest. Also, I doubt there was a dozen. If there was a dozen direwolves in this forest, the village would have heard from the local trapper. One or two, maybe, but not a dozen." Fife often resented Jack's wordiness. She knew he'd been to a magic college and she didn't need him to show off his smarts every time he opened his mouth.

"But—"

"Jack," Brayden Smith said, "shut it. She's been in this game longer'n you have. Remember what I said? You can't think your way around a sword-strike."

The intense desire to argue that point filled Jack, until he remembered how much he depended on Fife and Porter to keep things at bay from him. "S-Sorry, Fife."

"We'll get you broken-in eventually, lad." Porter reached out and thumped Jack on the shoulder. "But there was one thing—what if the beasts killed that self-same trapper? Bray, your buddy say how fast this guy can run?"

"No one can out-run a direwolf, Porter." Brayden had been about to say something else, but in the short moment between one breath and the next he realized the forest was dead silent. "Ware. Something's here with us and it's got the animals shit-scared." He drew his morningstar as the rasp of two swords coming free met the air.

Not having as much experience as the others, but having enough sense to remember his role, Jack cast the barrier of protection that froze the air around them into a fine lattice of invisible ice. He let the three turn their backs to him while he spread his awareness around, fighting to hear or see a disturbance that would tip him off.

"I've got two circling around this side," Porter said. "Tell me you have more than that shield, Jack?"

"He's got more than that shield. Four here," Fife said.

"Lord of Honor! Hear my prayer and guide our weapons!" As he called out the plea to his deity, Brayden's weapon began to glow, as did the swords of Porter and Fife. "I have three. They're getting ready to dogpile us. Jack, you have something?"

"Yeah. Yeah I do. I gotta time it just right, though. Don't move out of this circle and don't try to hit them. Let them come to us." Jack had been practicing a new spell he'd come up with and now he was going to use it for real.

When the direwolves charged, everyone felt it as the beasts as big as donkeys rushed forward. Brayden felt a chill in the air that always came before Jack worked some heavy magic. When the first of the beasts got close, a tiny dart leapt from Jack's staff to it.

"Gotcha." The strain on Jack's mana was immense. He'd practiced the spell on rabbits in a burrow, but the difference between a bunch of tiny bunnies and direwolves was felt in every fiber of his being.

"What—?" Fife didn't get a second word out as the direwolf less than ten feet away suddenly exploded into shards of ice.

The shards wasted no time. Some bounced off the shield Jack had put up, while the rest spun around looking for targets. A shard connected with another of the wolves, the beast stopping for a moment before it too exploded and added more magical shrapnel to the air.

One after another direwolves were hit, were frozen, and were exploded. When the fifth exploded, Jack dropped to his knees as his magic load became too much. The shards circled, but their strikes no longer instantly killed—but another direwolf was felled by them anyway.

"Three left by my count." With the spinning shards all gone, Brayden stepped out of the circle and engaged one of the wolves.

"I like that spell, Jack! You should use it more often!" Fife stepped out of the circle too, crashing her shield into one of the wolves and slicing the throat of another that over-extended itself toward her.

Porter held back. Standing closer to Jack—who was spending the contents of his breakfast onto the forest floor—he trusted his companions with the remaining threats. "You good there?"

Wiping his lips on his sleeve, Jack struggled to see straight when the world wanted to keep turning. "How many'd I get?"

"You took six on your own. Even Fife can't complain." Years of honed reflexes were all that saved Porter—and Jack. Turning to the side as he noticed the slightest flicker of shadow, he got his sword around first and fell backward as another of the beasts landed on him. When it snapped at his face, he got his sword—sideways—into its mouth and braced the sharp weapon with his other mailed hand. "One more!"

"Get on it, Bray!" Fife felt teeth clamp down on her shield arm, using the distraction to thread her sword through Brayden's direwolf's head. Releasing her grip on the hilt, she reached behind her back and drew her long dagger.

"By Brogdar's might I smite thee!" As Brayden's weapon arced toward the wolf on top of Porter, it started glowing brighter and brighter until it lit the forest with a near-blinding light.

The weight of the beast, its head now staved in by his companion's morningstar, fell down on Porter with even more solidness. It was no long an active, shifting mass, however, and he was able to shove it aside. "Fife?"

Panting, Fife had wrestled with the wolf. She let the thing have her armored arm while her weapon-hand brought the dagger down into its throat over and over. Kneeling on it, she kept stabbing and stabbing, finally using the knife to slice the beast's jaw muscles so she could get her limb out.

The forest was still quiet, but it was no longer the dead silence of earlier. The predators were all dead and bleeding.

Leaving Brayden to help Jack up, Porter approached Fife and reached down to her. "You got three of them?"

"One got my arm pretty good. I'll be paying a visit to that priestess in town when we get back." Reaching to take Porter's hand with her good one, Fife snarled as she stood up. "Jack! Where's that brilliant bastard?"

"Magic feedback got him. Give him some time and he'll be good as new." Putting one arm around Fife and hugging from her good side, Porter kissed her cheek. "Nice work."

Jack took his time standing up. The world wasn't rotating quite as fast as earlier, but he didn't like the way he kept listing to one side. What he didn't expect was for Fife to offer him her shoulder to lean on. "Thanks."

"Leave the scalping work to the other two. You done good there. Never seen a spell like that before." Fife felt every bit the adrenaline-fueled battle-high. She knew it would crash at some point, but she didn't care.

"Been working on it. First time using it on big things." Reaching for his water bottle, Jack used the first few mouthfuls to rinse his mouth of the horrid taste. "Glad it worked so well."

The "donation" clinked into the little stone well. "That was getting nasty. You shouldn't wait so long to seek healing." Fairheart withdrew her divine magic from Fife's arm.

Trying to fight the urge to punch the preachy priestess, Fife shrugged her shoulders. "Couldn't be helped. It's a long walk back from the south forest. Besides, I had to shove something in the bloody direwolf's mouth and it didn't look like my shield would fit."

Sighing at the reply, Fairheart used her most serene smile. "If you ever need more care, please don't hesitate to come to my temple."

Shaking her head to clear it of the last vestiges of the magic, Fife stood up and pulled her leather shirt back on. "Yeah, yeah. If Bray would just learn a damn healing spell, we wouldn't have this kind of problem."

"I told you, Fife, I'm not that kind of priest!" Brayden shouted.

Despite their loudness, despite Brayden Smith worshiping a different god to her, and despite the mage who wove his own magic, Fairheart had to keep smiling. "There is so much life in you. Have you considered paying for full coverage?"

"Bray thinks we should. Your town's growing and can support a few adventuring parties now. Would you take that healing cost as part payment?" Fife was all business when money was being talked about.

"I would. There would also be a discount, too, if you're taking jobs from town itself." It was a deal Fairheart had worked out with Brolly Windchime. Hands washing backs and such. "The offer is open until you leave town again."

"I'll talk to the boss. I don't like the idea of needing too much healing, but better to have it and not need it…" Fife lifted her mail over the top of her leather and settled it into place. "Thanks."

"Blessings upon you!" Fairheart walked slowly to the collection bowl and fetched the gold coins—mentally counting out the share that belonged to the town on Northridge.