Dragonheart Core

I sat in the silence of the Underlake, glaring at the entrance the beast had come through.

A few days it had been since its attack and I was still on edge, waiting to feel the gurgling roar of Mayalle's whirlpool crumbling under its own weight and the hiss of escaping mana. Nothing had dared slip through my halls since but I didn't trust the silence any more than I'd trusted the fight.

But in the absence of a fight, I could prepare for another.

My previous strategy, ramshackle and stitched together out of desperation, had worked. Seros and the sarco were my most powerful creatures and in tandem, they worked better than I could have imagined—and that was without the fledgling sea serpent still cooking away in a side den and the horned serpent just barely brushing the edge of her own evolution. Soon there would be real power behind me, and not just limited to the water. Which was good, because right now if they made it past the Underlake, I could be in a bit of a spot of trouble.

So. Planning.

Seros and the sarco just needed more training until they could fight together well enough, and if Seros' attempts to get Rihsu expanding her lung capacity were going anywhere, she would probably join in as well. All my other creatures could try the well and true method of throwing bodies at the problem until it went away, at least until more beasts like the royal silvertooth could rear their beautiful little heads. As for my side, the gems had worked. Had worked surprisingly well, really; while my battle with the pitch-shark had still been a net negative, I had survived.

But not fully won, considering all the mana it had. Well. Digested.

I didn't like to think about it. That wasn't how creatures worked; in all my years, I had encountered beings that absorbed mana, from plants with wide, pitcher-shaped leaves, ambient mana pooling deep in their guts to multi-coloured eels with needle-sharp teeth that drained their prey dry of both blood and power. They were far from common, but they existed. Some for sustenance, some for stolen strength. There had been a reason for their thievery, for their unspoken law of stealing what was not meant to be stolen.

I hated them, but I could understand.

I did not understand the pitch-shark.

From its mere presence it had swallowed my power, ripping away at what the gods had given me; and it had stolen Mayalle's power. If a god couldn't defend themselves from this… this beast, what was it doing here? Why had it been allowed to exist at all?

For all that I bowed and scraped and begged pardons from the gods whenever they granted me a boon, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more about this. They should have been able to stop this thing, but they hadn't.

I could say I had, but I knew that wasn't the full truth, either. It had been weak, I knew. From the bare glimpses at its schema I'd allowed myself, it had been young, its true power restrained by the cramped—for it—size of my Underlake. That lined with what I had seen; it had moved in a straight line, attacking only what was in front of it, sticking to no shadows or places with cover. A child's idea of an assault, and it was only my expert planning and immobilizing it that had taken the parasite down.

But if there was one in Calarata's waters, I couldn't let myself hope that it was a solitary hunter.

So I needed to prepare.

As lovely as the piles of hidden gems were, I was still encountering a problem; a problem I had created, really. In my beautiful Fungal Gardens, I had whipped together great hidden dens and patches to entrance invaders within, singing the siren's song of silver veins and glittering diamonds, and with my creeping vine now I could slip the net shut behind. Simple, really. I was rather fond of the elegance.

But those jewels were now being stolen and used and traded a plenty, rather than actually hoarding the mana I needed to keep. Which. Unfortunate.

Don't get me wrong, I was happy that the burrowing rats were taking their slice of the mana they needed to evolve, but it was still a touch irritating to see a rat steal some of my precious mana only to get eaten by a luminous constrictor the next minute.

And that was without invaders, who would happily scoop them up by the handful and cart them away. Also terribly rude, and something I was a touch more likely to reward with death equally by the handful.

No, I needed a safe collection of jewels, and I needed it away from prying, thieving little beasts.

Right now, there was no safer floor than my fifth, and so I flew down to the lowest point of my dungeon. Birds and bats and bugs swarmed overhead, fighting their constant battle for survival and territory, but Seros had grown well used to the cacophony and slept soundly in my core room, wrapped around my pillar. Still recovering from the battle with the pitch-shark, some worried part of me noticed. He had not taken to having his mana drained well.

I could relate. I pushed a touch more into his channels as I examined the room.

It was a basic thing, as far as my pride would allow me to admit. I'd tucked up my silver-flecked limestone pillar to settle my core on like usual, and this time I'd thrown a few raised mounds of raw silver to catch the glowing quartz-light overhead; and there, off to the side, grew a single delicate patch of moonstar flowers. A new bud had opened, pale and growing, and I couldn't have been more excited.

But it was plain. I felt a momentary burst of frustration. Had I really neglected my living quarters so much? While only Seros was ever the one in here frequently enough to see it, I certainly needed to remind him that I was a dungeon core, lest he go off and bumble his way into convincing more kobolds to swear to him.

No, this wouldn't do.

He'd already awoken by the healing mana I'd pressed through our connection, raising his head off the stone with a sleepy yawn; he looked around curiously as I darted back and forth, measuring the current size of the room with various points of awareness. Not too large, considering that most of my core rooms were carved out to become the entrance to whatever tunnel I made leading to the next floor. I winced at the thought.

Gods, I was getting predictable. That was so boring.

There wasn't a lot of room to expand, not with the massive Skylands right next door and my half-cooked plans for the next floor, but I did start chiseling away at the wall, opening a second hollow that connected to the fifth floor proper. This would be the tunnel downward, whenever I needed it; I carved a basic circular hole and left it before I'd gone more than ten feet sloping downward. For a later day.

Then I returned to the previous room.

It was maybe thirty, forty feet in diameter, high, stalactite-studded roof arching overhead and silver mounds below. Only one entrance, maybe ten feet high and a few feet long, connecting to the Skylands. It was shaped in such a way that invaders would have a moment to adjust to the shrunk dimensions of the entrance tunnel before the room could open back up to the splendor of my core; at least my previous self had had some interesting ideas. Just not enough.

Well. It would all have to be redone.

First thing first; I threw up a layer of granite, curled around the moonstar flower patch. It would survive a few hours without quartz-light and there wasn't a chance on this green Aiqith that I was letting some spare piece of stone tumble over and squish my most expensive creation. Seros fully stood as I started working, churring a question as he unwrapped himself from around my pillar. I shoved a vague impression of hoard room at him, points of awareness spiraling around as I smoothed the floor out.

To my surprise, he actually perked up, flicking his tail out of the way as I dissolved a chunk of silver down to mote of light. Something through our connection lit up; he was curious about hoards, particularly those that dragons kept. I puffed up. Little bastard wanted to know more about me, hm?

Well. Who would I be to ignore such a willing student?

I spat all of my hatchling lessons at him as I worked, smoothing out the walls and polishing them with a thin film of silver so that they gleamed, pulling up the act of an entire room made of silver without having to quite bankrupt my mana stores to make it. Everything I remembered about the mana-gathering powers of metals and jewels, how dragons often got so large they needed to use mana to move, and it was rather exhausting to always hunt down mana using mana. So by creating hoards, they could go off and hunt for meals, feed themselves, and then sleep for a few months on their mana-collecting hoard until their stores were nice and full again. Of course, they weren't immobile without mana to the point it was actual weakness—in my eyes, dragons had no weaknesses—but it was certainly easier to drag a several ton body into the air with some mana rather than twin flimsy stretches of skin. Wings were more useful as channels for said mana, anyway.

And of course the power that came with a hoard. Nearly every draconic territorial dispute was over hoards, the theft and building and maintaining of them; a right of passage was to try and steal someone else's. I myself had claimed plenty from my lowly cousins, the fire-drakes; their breath weapon meant little to my watery self. Fantastic sport, that was. I missed it.

Seros listened with rapt attention as I flew around my little hoard room, making silver bloom from the walls and jewels unfurl from granite rosettes. I had no ancient weapons or relics to place and it would be rather tacky to try and fake them, so I just went for a quantity over quality approach; silver and gold and gems, piled carefully high in every corner, quartz-light gleaming from hidden pockets until everything glowed.

I even dissolved my original pillar, getting rid of the limestone entirely in favour of the purest silver I could muster, carving away enough of my mana I had to wait a day to finish it in its entirety. But there it sat, marbled scarlet-black on top of the most beautiful silver, etched in old draconic charms.

And for a final touch, I carved a small pocket for the moonstar flowers, leaving them plenty of room to grow but surrounding them in a little ring of gold, just to contrast their pale petals. Tasteful, really.

Then I sat back on metaphorical haunches and basked in the beauty of my hoard room.

This certainly wouldn't be something I would repeat on every floor; sheer cost alone, most invaders would be happy to leave after gathering the prizes within this room, even if I tried to tempt them deeper where they could perish. But I could also feel rather annoyed if I kept digging down and left such a beautiful place for my core so out of reach.

I liked things that lined up, some part of me realized. Maybe on my tenth floor, I would shape another hoard room and fill it with glittering treasures a plenty.

Ah well. A question for another day.

For now, I sat back and watched Seros explore this new location, eyes alight with awe.