Dragonheart Core

Chapter 154: The Boy

Shoth wasn't here to pick favourites, in no small part due to how he was looking forward to killing most everyone here if they dared stand between him and his dungeon core, but he would perhaps allow Pau to swear subservience to him.

Of the twelve there, half were silent, half were bitter, and only one was both helpful and kind, because Aedan was currently a shivering wreck as his impending morality descended on him. Pau walked in the center of the group, head raised, and his hands constantly flicked about to indicate any predators in their mix. Much the same as the previous floor, though with some evolutions—ironback toads, shadowthief rats, and all manners of aquatic beasts lurking in the canals. Cheery fucking place.

Pau held his weight and didn't bitch about it. Shoth would be pirating him from Azkhal's side the moment this adventure finished.

Gnat had done his spider-fuckery again, this time with a collection of pale-bodied things lurking on a dead tree. Once more they came scuttling up to him like he was a spider himself, all black eyes and ghostly legs, and then the twisting maze of canals and mangrove-filled rooms was revealed to them. Helpful, maybe. Shoth didn't trust the little bastard.

Gnat just blinked at them with black eyes and an impassive face. He was as opposite a boy of ten summers as he could be.

But on they went, Ossega clearing any who got close but not taking the time for proper investigation, no matter how Ealdhere had urged them to collect more samples for him to finish his first round of dungeon-made enchantments and alchemic solutions. They'd have all the time in the world for that when the core wasn't wasting away beneath the stone.

Alda raised her head. "Two more," she said, fingering a cork of her vials, taking command like she wasn't just parroting Gnat's lead. "Left, I s'pose, then straight after–"

"Not that room," Aedan said, very quietly.

Oh, was he now being helpful? So polite.

Aedan's pale face was drawn, the moss crawling over his cheekbones and down his braided hair like he wanted to hide beneath it. "There is… something there," he said, with obvious hesitation. "A tree, but not one connected to Great Rhoborh's voice. Separate."

Gods, what a coward. Blood-sucking thorn-wielding trees, yeah, but trees. Hard to fear the stationary things. Even the borwood tree in the center of Calarata that only the fear of the Dead War kept from being cut down wasn't all that terrifying.

Maybe. There was something about its dark blue-black bark and silver leaves that made him look away; something older than him.

Shoth had survived as long as he had by not being an idiot, even when faced with exceedingly idiotic things. He sighed, meeting the eyes of both Alda and Azkhal—if Aedan said not that room, then they wouldn't go to that room. They were only on the second floor, after all, and making good time despite it; a small detour wouldn't hurt.

"Then left instead," Pau said, and on they strode.

Aedan looked feverishly grateful. Why any god wanted him as a priest was truly beyond Shoth.

Their detour did lead them past a scuttling tribe of kobolds, who lived up to all their reputation as Shoth impaled the braver ones through the eyes until they fled, hooting and warbling, and left their path clear to the end. Pau peered around a corner, gaze snapping a few luminous constrictors hanging by the ceiling and a den of burrowing rats guarding something shiny, and, most importantly, the tunnel entrance in the far back.

The one with a pit in the center, filled with water.

Well. Forget what he said about Therrón earning everyone's grace by keeping them from soaking their armour through—seemed they'd be doing that anyway. Shoth remembered Ealdhere talking about it, shitty maps pulled up, but there was something different for thinking about it and then really confronting you were going to have to drag your waterlogged ass through the fight of a lifetime.

All twelve of them circled around the hole, keeping Pau in the back to make sure no one crept up on them. Everyone had an identical curl of irritation to their jaw.

"Right," Alda said, patting at her waist. With deft fingers, she traded around the various vials she had there, uncorking a few to sniff at their contents before deciding on a new place for them. "I've got shit that burns underwater better than air, and Ossega's not kept down by anything."

The man muttered something in a tongue Shoth didn't recognize, quicksilver eyes narrowed. His grip on his axes never loosened.

Alda nodded. "And he's willin' to keep playing group defense, so you lot don't lose your fat ugly heads to something coming up from behind. What do you have to offer?"

Azkhal beat the butt of his club against the ground. "Strong anywhere," he said, the longest sentence he'd managed since introducing himself. Right verbose bastard, that one. The blood-stained tattoos over his arms seemed to twitch. Hulimat vas-Yohua didn't add any ringing endorsement of himself, but from what Shoth had seen of his attunement, water likely didn't matter. His shadow lurched and crawled like a living thing, battering back approachers with jagged claws and pale holes where eyes would sit—hells of an attunement, really. There was a wariness in how he treated it, always commanding it to stay at his heels despite how it reached out like it wanted to split from him and chase distant prey, and Shoth had been around the mortuary in Calarata enough to know a rebelling attunement when he saw one. Hulimat was Silver, so he'd clearly come some distance, but if he wanted to reach Gold he'd have to figure out how to put the shackles on his shadow.

Half the reason sentient attunements weren't worth the trouble. Get powerful enough, and sooner or later they'd start wondering why they were the one getting commanded.

Pau shrugged, tapping near his eyes. "Much the same in air or water," he said, offering a grin. "Can't say the same about my daggers, though. I'll serve better as a guide."

"And I will lead," Nolla said, a lyrical tune in her voice. Elven ancestry, maybe. "Water is my domain more than air."

And then she crooked a finger, and the three blue streaks beneath her eyes moved—they rippled and reached up, twining peaks, the call and pull of ocean currents. The twin blades she carried lit up, revealing sapphires set in their hilts; and as she kicked up a palm, blue trailed in its wake.

A wave-dancer, one of the famed elemental enhancers—using a typical wizard or mage attunement internally instead, so she danced and moved quick as the water she called home. She'd been holding back, then, letting Ossega's brute force clear through the first two floors without revealing her expertise. Clever.

That had been Shoth's strategy, and it would've stayed so, if Therrón hadn't stepped forward with stars in his eyes the moment he saw Nolla reveal her attunement.

"We shall lead together," he said, chest puffed up. "Water answers my call, much like it does you."

Ah, fuck.

There was a painful moment of silence after his declaration, which did nothing to wilt Therrón's burnished optimism. Shoth fought the urge to punch him.

Water attunements and Calarata went together like pirates and ale, and there was no short supply. But Nolla wasn't Calaratan, so maybe she wasn't used to other water mages, and she was, in the part of Shoth that wasn't just repeating dungeon core in the back of his mind, extremely beautiful. Tall, slender, with those rippling blue lines over her face and arms.

Therrón kept staring at her.

Gods, he was going to be showboating now, wasn't he? Therrón was a newer addition to the party, one who didn't much care about Shoth's attunement or Myra's chronic foot-in-mouth approach to life; a Calaratan native who came with a perfect defensive skill set to round out their spread and the hunger that was a necessity to keep up. He was a mid-range Silver who'd been stuck there for nearly as long as he'd had it, and rather than going the way of the fairytales and butting his head against the mountain until it broke, he'd joined with a party in hopes of finding a large enough deposit of rare water-attuned mana to crash into Gold. Clever, really.

But while he was mature there, his personality left more for the squalling brats underfoot. One of those that became an adventurer for the bravado and popularity it granted.

And Nolla, powerful, quiet, and dashingly gorgeous, had made the unfortunate error of existing in his presence with a shared attunement.

For her part, she caught onto his intention, because she wasn't fucking blind. "Together?" Nolla asked, like she was hoping he would correct himself.

"Together," Therrón repeated, and twisted his head just so that the sapphires dangling from his ears caught the light—much like those embedded in her blades. "While others flounder, the water will not impede us."

Bloody fucking hells, this wasn't the time to drop your skivvies and find a bedfellow. Shoth glared at him hard enough his attunement would switch to firing from his eyes instead of his fangs.

But Therrón just stepped forward, mana rippling from the corners of his eyes, and called.

From the hole rose a spiral of water, large and encompassing, and it swirled to meet them—wrapped around them, weaving together like a fisherman's net, all loose coils and empowered demands. It kissed the stone at the bottom and swirled overhead, forming a perfect sphere to surround them, air in, water out. A shield against the world.

Alda raised a single eyebrow. Shoth felt her judgment blanket over the dungeon.

Therrón was merrily unaffected, digging his heels further in to tug more mana from the air, replenishing his stores as his gaudy, ostentatious, useless display drained him. With a muttered curse strong enough to singe the hair from a baby's head, Myra stepped forward and slammed a palm into his gut—he winced, but her mana joined with his, holding the concentration so that the shield could hold itself perfectly stable.

Not hiding any of his strength or skill. In fact, overdoing it, just to show off for a woman he'd met maybe twice in the middle of the most important mission he'd ever undertake. Fucking children. Even Gnat was behaving better.

To Shoth's extreme enjoyment, Nolla only nodded, taking in the change. She looked neither pleased or displeased. Better for them all.

A bit of a hassle to all jump down the hole in a way that kept them in the bubble—because again, it was a terrible strategy—but Shoth took up the rear, Ossega in the front, and Pau firmly quartered in the middle, and then they were all landing on the sandy bottom of the third floor in a perfectly dry circle.

Therrón looked much too proud of himself. Shoth was going to shake him until his neck snapped.

But as useless it was to waste all his mana on this without confirming that they were close enough to the core for its mana to refill, the third floor was made a leisurely place. Everywhere they walked had fish flopping uselessly in the sand if they were stupid enough to charge or swimming fruitlessly around the edges if they weren't, kelp sagging in miserable gold-amber piles to the ground as they walked around the edges. Larger shadows, those of sharks and sturgeons, kept to their distance but watched them with wary eyes, Pau going into overdrive with how exposed they were. Shoth kept his teeth halfway detached, almost vibrating with their readiness to launch, but there truly wasn't a need. Therrón kept all of the floor's denizens from harming them.

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Up until he stopped walking, confusion flashing over his face.

"Wait," Therrón said, still with the stupid gravitas he was injecting into his voice. "I sense a powerful water-attuned presence here—something to investigate."

Shoth smiled tight enough every fang was bared. "Plenty of time to explore after we claim the core," he said, incisors rattling inside his skull.

Azkhal shifted, a growl under his throat as Therrón didn't account for his height and water spilled down his locs. All around, more silvertooths swarmed against the edges of the barrier, hunger lighting up their blood-hued eyes. "Later," he gruffed, tightening his grip on his edged club.

Pau bobbed his head. "The Scholar said crocodilians and armoured beasts lurked here," he added, ever so polite. "Likely that's what you sense."

But Therrón stayed frowning. Some of the bravado left as unease entered his face, digging into the crease of his brow. "No, it's more," he said. "It's– searching, I think. Not what Ealdhere described."

Nolla hummed, a gentle, lilting sound that matched with the sharpened points of her ears. "Yes," she agreed, and Therrón's worry couldn't keep him from puffing his chest out as she acknowledged him.

Myra's palms redoubled their glow as Therrón turned fully away from his spell, leaving her to hold concentration for him. His back to the water, he faced them with a frown drawing his face into ridged lines. "We should investigate," he said. "If I can use it to break into Gold then we'll have no problems claiming the core–"

And then he didn't have problems anymore, considering a pair of jagged fangs cleaved his chest from his legs.

-

Invaders.

The armoured jawfish moved, because he felt the raid-frenzy fill him, the insight of foreign mana and the promise of battle; all things which awoke him in the way lesser prey never could.

That was the world of the Underlake. High where the mana was thin; high where the invaders were plentiful. The world he had fought so hard to reach—the world he was now trapped in.

Prey to prize to predator to forgotten. The Reawakener had not called him below.

He knew his weakness. He knew the world was not made for him; that his armour dragged him to the sandy depths, if the goddess he tasted all around did not lift him. He was made for strength, for power; he could not swim any faster if he wanted to keep his bite, his fangs.

And now, entering his territory, were those with mana. Not old. Not Old. But mana he could recognize—water, fast and sharp, used to hold up a shield and control its movements. He swam overhead, even his shadow hidden in the pull of the goddess' whirlpool, and watched it; watched the one with the mana move its odd, fleshy fins for the water to obey. Like the wave-runners overhead, those that trailed mist in their wake and guided the currents. But mana. But tangible.

The Reawakener had not called him below. It wanted him here, where he could freely swim, where the goddess had to hold him up so he didn't fall.

Here was one with mana to move the waves and water. To control.

He lunged.

-

In a welcome break from the panic of expecting another weak invasion and suddenly finding twelve invaders armed to the bloody teeth marching through the Fungal Gardens, I got the privilege of watching my armoured jawfish shred an adventurer to mincemeat without a heartbeat's hesitation.

Neither of us saw it coming. One moment they were walking through the Underlake as I seethed, unhindered by predators or water, courtesy of this bastard Therrón's mystical water bubble—I hated him—and then he was missing the most vital part of his body.

Vindication.

Regret came quickly for both sides—in lunging through the shield to get to the invader, my armoured jawfish had found himself quickly out of the water he so relied on for life, flopping to the ground with the shudder of ancient civilizations.

Luckily for him, he'd rather vivisected the mage holding back the water, and it came rushing in.

Unluckily for the other adventurers, that meant they were once again underwater, and now with a predator in their midst.

With a bubbling roar, Azkhal slammed his club into the back of the jawfish—his bone-armour kept him from even thinking that would be enough to kill him, but water or not, Azkhal was a monster of a man and his grip burst with power. The armoured jawfish spun away, his bulk thrown off, twisting around as he tried to regain balance. Mayalle's whirlpool tugged at his weight, tried to draw him up and active, but the short man with quicksilver eyes kicked off with a burst of sand and slammed both axes home in his back. Myra's mana lit up like a thunderstorm, holding enhancements in place, and then they were all moving—fleeing Therrón's corpse, diffusing scarlet into the water, following Pau's frantic gesturing.

But the armoured jawfish wasn't the only predator here.

Roughwater sharks surged from distant tunnels as scarlet filled the water, greater crabs scuttling off the sand to snap for any concept of prey;

Nolla—a wave-dancer, the perhaps single human attunement I'd known as a sea-drake—lunged forward, twin blades tugging her up like current. The royal silvertooth, his horde of fang-pierced silvertooths swarming, darted for her; she was made for single targets and he brought an army.

Like lightning, twin fangs sprung through the water. Shoth, mana bleeding from his eyes, commanded them to crash through the silvertooths, impaling each through their miniscule brain. The royal silvertooth ducked and wove around the attacks, too clever by half for something slowed by water to catch him, but his numbers decimated around him—and then fell further, as Nolla descended on those too far from his protection.

He wasn't one to give up. Blood-attuned mana boiled from him—enough Shoth's eyes widened in surprise—and as one, his horde surged forward.

And Hulimat answered.

The pale man scoured through with black lines roared—bubbles exploded from his mouth and his shadow tore itself upward, a macabre mockery of him, stretched and jagged in places it shouldn't be, and the claws it wielded were truer than shadows should be. The last of the silvertooths fled in its wake.

Then Lanc, whipping together a horde of false shadowed baitfish to spill through his fingers, threw them all to the south—a rippling cloud of distractions, fast and frantic and limping in the way all predators loved to see. Alda tore the cork off a bottle with her teeth and slammed her palms together; two rings of flint and steel caught, even underwater, and she hurled the spark at the billowing liquid mixing with the water.

Boom.

An explosion behind, a swarm of distractions all around, and no less than four melee combatants piercing through the western veil to hurl them to safety. They swam like their lives depended on it, because it fucking did, and my creatures were useless in their raid-frenzy to see past the petty illusions—they chased the wrong prey. They chased the wrong prey.

And so, gasping, all eleven hauled themselves out of the water and sprawled on the ledge lit by flickering quartz-light. Out. Alive.

I seethed overhead.

This party was wrong enough it raised every intangible hackle I had. Not only were they thrice the numbers of any invasion I'd had since the day of fifty men, they moved with a deliberation and unease with each other that didn't escape my notice. And there was Aedan, whose mana rang with a familiar redwood scent, the first actual priest of the gods who had become patrons of my halls.

Seemed Calarata wasn't a particularly pious place. What a surprise.

One of their number was dead from a failed mating call so blatant even hatchlings would shy from embarrassment, and it seemed there was a division—three groups, four each, one now reduced. Shoth, I thought, blood-attuned mana lurking under his skin, had been the leader of the water mage whose corpse was now being snapped down by a peckish armoured jawfish, hunger crackling through his thoughts. And where in all hells had his charge come from? While he certainly hadn't been a pacifist, I was used to him choosing his prey with more deliberation. What about Therrón's mana had he been so interested in? Why had he chosen that time to attack, instead of waiting for a more opportune moment?

Gods. Too many questions. And no time to answer them, considering I was rather more focused on the fucking invaders in my halls.

The dwarf, whose mana reeked like Ten-Fingered Bil and the alcohol he'd replaced his blood for, stood up and stretched, though her blasé cheer didn't fully cover her wariness. "And then there were eleven," she said, bright. "Not bringing much of'a power to the tavern now, eh, Shoth?"

The man with a beard and fangs and boiled leather for comradery just growled, low and irritated. "He was useless," Shoth snapped, shoulders bristling up to his ears. "We don't need him."

Alda hummed. "So your party's useless," she said. "Any reason we shouldn't cut you out here?"

Both Shoth and Myra looked ready to murder her. Aedan looked ready to melt into the ground.

"Pick your pissy heads out of your arse, it's a jape," Alda snorted. "Llullakuna llullakuna hina kachun. We're still going."

Shoth bared his teeth, a drop of scarlet trickling over the white.

Oh, she'd played it off, and while I didn't know the intricacies of what had brought this party together, I could see how the tides were shifting. Azkhal stayed silent—though it seemed he always did—and his group of four didn't poke their head into the mix, but where Shoth had been the one to march with directions, now their gazes went to Alda. She'd cut off his leadership not quite at the knees, but at least down to match her height.

A volcano fit to burst. Maybe they'd all kill each other before I had to lift a claw, and I'd both get their mana and some quality entertainment.

But nothing perfect came quickly, and instead they all picked themselves up and faced my Jungle Labyrinth, the endless dark with only floating spores ahead. Already the thornwhip algae sensed their presence, its many arms flicking and coiling in; and since it didn't exactly have eyes, I was very curious to see if Pau could do anything against it.

Ossega took the lead, spinning his axes over his wrists. Azkhal to his side, Nolla light on her feet, Myra snapping with mana. The dwarf lingered behind for a moment. She watched the others move forward into the darkness, only the quiet drift of spores to guide their path. But she waited, the last of the quartz-light from the Underlake over her back, until it was just her.

Just her, and the child at her heels.

He was a small thing who hadn't done much of anything beyond ask my spiders for guidance, and they'd actually answered, like the useless beasts that they were. Anyone came a-crawling up with a spider attunement and they forsook their loyalty in an instant. I didn't like that, and I liked him even less.

But something about this gathering sent ice over my core. The dwarf and the child, alone in the dark, watching their party move on without them. Gnat stepped forward so he was even with her, arms curled in, ragged hair dripping water over the stone.

"Did you get some?" Alda murmured, quiet enough the others wouldn't hear.

Gnat nodded. From underneath his ratty shirt emerged three hands.

Two of which were his own, pale, with jagged fingernails and multi-faceted spinnerets carved through the center of his palms.

The other was torn from a human's corpse. Therrón's, to be precise, with blood freshly dripping from the stump at the other end and fingers twitching through the last throes of death and removal.

All my mana sharpened.

I'd experienced quite a variety of adventurers, all their own flavour and discipline. There were common denominators, because it required a certain level of avarice, overconfidence, and hunger to want to claim a dungeon's core, but the way they went about it was often unique. I'd learned more about humans in the past months than in all my time as a sea-drake.

But I was not prepared when Gnat raised the hand and bit.

From under his lips came mandibles; these twisted, warped versions of teeth clawed forward and dragged the meat to his gullet, bones and skin and nails, larger than it should have been and with his eyes gleaming black. Click-click, awakening, the last of the water mage torn and removed. Two bites. Gone.

Hells. Whatever he was, I wanted him dead.

Alda watched this active act of cannibalism with a strange expression of horrified fascination—I got the idea that she'd seen him in action before, but still couldn't look away. The wrongness dripped from him like venom.

Gnat scrubbed at his face with one over-long sleeve, gore and grime on the dripping edge. His pale hands disappeared back beneath and then he looked up at her, unmoving, entirely unconcerned with the bullshit he'd just done.

For her part, Alda was tense as a wire. The jovial, insulting bastard she'd been around the rest of the group was gone for wariness in its wake, this inherent understanding that she was juggling fire but unwilling to drop it,

"Keep to the deal," she said, just as quiet. "Not challengin' you nor your bastard overseers. Get me down there, and rockfalls couldn't beat the truth outta me."

Gnat nodded again. His lips rippled again, like he hungered for more, and then he was padding into the darkness of the fourth floor. Off to rejoin the rest of the group that clearly didn't know what he was.

Alda exhaled, pressing a palm to her forehead. After a moment's deliberation, she tugged a fresh vial out of the many adorning her belt and downed half of it; something sharp and bitter filled the air, enough her pupils dilated to pinpricks, and then she shoved it back in its sheath and stomped after the party.

Overseers, deals, and a boy that didn't seem much like a boy. Fucking hells, though I'd known I was in trouble when I saw their number enter my halls, I hadn't expected this.

Twelve down to eleven—they weren't defanged yet, and while the water mage hadn't been weak, he'd certainly been the most unserious of the bunch. They had four more floors to face, and all the monsters I could summon in their path.

They were here to do something. I wouldn't let them.