Dragonheart Core

Chapter 157: Split Tines

In the wake of that fucking nightmare, they all stared at each other. And at the corpse.

Myra, the poor bastard, was sprawled flat and bloodless over the ground—her long hair tangled into the crevasses of stone where she'd been dropped like a depleted vein, nothing more than a memory. Bloody figured how Shoth made a team.

Alda Thrudkurbiz gave herself half a second to hate a shadow.

The issue wasn't the corpse, which was an issue in of itself. No, the issue was what had made the corpse.

She wasn't scared of many things. Hard to be, when the world outside Athábakhanú functioned like canaries in open fields. Water was safe to drink; paths were safe to walk; skies were safe to admire. Hells, even the cold was the kind for wool blankets and hearthstones, not death. A perfectly soft existence.

But she knew she was Silver. She knew the strength of Golds.

Shoth had been an understandable evil, the kind she'd been familiar with long before coming to Calarata. Make a plan, find a group perfect to slip under the radar of the Guildmaster without being dead weight, drip some of her brew into his drink while they talked specifics, and then set up for a proper launch. He'd played his part in her stageplay with lovely precision.

Up until he'd killed Myra, ascended, and ran.

From twelve to eleven to ten to nine to seven. Not odds she favoured, even when Shoth had been little more than an irritant and bastard. She didn't have much a fear he'd win—you couldn't claim a dungeon core with two people, especially with one of them useless as sand deposits—but his running meant their lack. Seven wasn't a comfortable number.

She didn't need comfort, not in the way high-water nobles plucking their pick of the alms needed it. But she needed a guarantee—because she'd gambled more than she wanted to say on this thing. On the delve, on the numbers, on Gnat's presence.

Shoth noticing her betrayal hadn't been a problem. But what spurred it might be.

At her side, quiet as ever, Gnat stared at the body. His fingers twitched under his rags.

Oh, she'd keep this truce right as rain, so long as Gnat didn't start nibbling on a corpse like that was a normal fucking thing to do. Tier de Azkhal was down to three. She had four. The cards, though cheated, still kept the ace in her grasp.

So Alda exhaled, shaking out her arms. Myra was dead, they were down to seven, and there was still a dungeon left to conquer. "He's a right bastard," she said, with a deliberate bite to her words. "Poor fucker, though. Wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Myra, eyes empty, bloodless neck against the stone.

Azkhal murmured something under his breath, another eulogy in that animalistic tongue of his. Lanc plucked and wove a wreath he blew from his palm; his own kind of death-speech, maybe. They'd only known Myra from the start of the delve, and she'd been a bitter little asshole the whole time, but death like that wasn't something you deserved. Not a fair fight.

But Shoth's party was now gone. Dead or running. He'd been the biggest threat as a leader, considering Azkhal was quiet and hungry for the core in a way that smaller things didn't matter—but it also meant they were all silent, staring at each other, standing over a corpse.

She'd watched entire walls of warriors get cut down in situations like this.

"Our alliance stands," Pau said, purposefully light, like there wasn't a dead member of said alliance sprawled around their feet. Then, just to outdo his faux confidence– "Right?"

Phenomenal. Someone else had done it. "All the better to me," she said, glancing around. Her hand never quite left her vials.

Ossega bared his teeth. "They are not trustworthy," he said, thick in the gnomish tongue grown from the shadows of Ter Asla. "Searching for backs and tendons instead of eyes."

Right dramatic bastard, that one. Lucky his skill with axes outweighed the poetry he seemed determined to spew. At least she was the only one who had to suffer it.

He could've learned Viejabran, or Leórenthan, or any of the languages found outside of Ter Asla, but he hadn't given a shit. Just joined with the first adventuring party that spoke his tongue and called it square from there. He understood them fine enough, time and danger beating it into his skull, but talking was far past his interest.

"He agrees," she said, perfectly blithe. What was Ossega going to do, correct her? He wanted the core as badly as them all. Hadn't told her why, hadn't told her what for; didn't matter. Anyone with a heart to beat and a mind capable of crashing two thoughts together like a drillshaft wanted a dungeon core.

She did. Gods, how she wanted one. The dream that'd lived in her skull since she'd lost her ancestral helmet—get a dungeon core, take it to Leóro, demand a territory—sure, be a High Lady and play by their rules, but to a point. The core gave her power. Gave her everything she could want.

She'd claim her land, sprawl it over the mountains ripe and unmined, and make it what Athábakhanú should have been. Already she knew what she'd call it—At'aba Qanu. The original name, before it'd been grinded down for the wider world to speak without its true meaning; the sword rejoiced. Named for the victory they'd finally scraped from a land so unforgiving all others had failed and given up—but not them. Not the dwarves of At'aba Qanu. Not the conquerors.

Then they'd grown fat and lazy and content, and changed their name so others could know it, and brought in rules from the outside world, and forgotten that it was supposed to be just them in the mountains, the only ones who had surmounted it.

Alda reached up to her hair, to the braids she'd woven down the length—the specific placement of knots and beads through the coils, the one element of her language that had never been known by outsiders. The promise she'd threaded into her very being, since she'd been exiled and had the previous strands cut from her head.

Let Shoth drink scarlet and run away. Let them squint suspicion at her back and ready their blades. Let them try.

"There's nothing to it," she said, shrugging. A grin was easy enough to give life to. "S'either pushin' on or goin' back, and I know my answer."

Shoth was too bitter to be needed, and Aedan was dead weight at best. Twelve or seven, she'd get the core.

At her side, Ossega matched her stance, the leather of his axes creaking. No words necessary for the fire in his quicksilver eyes to be answer enough. Lanc gave a similarly silent nod, plucking more shadows to gather between his fingers in preparation. Gnat didn't respond, but he didn't need to. He followed her.

Azkhal glared at the surrounding stone, waiting for Shoth to come try and bite someone else's neck, like the same trick would work twice. Hulimat reached down to his legs, a coil of his shadow lurching up to press against his palm, pale white blotches where eyes should have been. Nasty fucker. Alda didn't trust that attunement any more than she could blow it up.

Pau exhaled, rubbing at the back of his neck, dust fluttering off his boiled leather armour. Still cautious, since he was an oddly paranoid beastie for being so open, but he nodded. "We're ready," he said, fingering the hilts of his throwing daggers. Speaking for the group, it seemed.

How lovely. Decided and declared. Alda spared one last glance behind, just to make sure Gnat was following with his miserable dead eyes, and strode on through the tunnel.

Though it could have been similar to the floor they'd just escaped from, it wasn't—no more of that reaching algae, ridged for nothing more than a better grip around their throats, and the mantis count stayed firmly at zero. The mana was softer even, no more the dungeon focusing on; though likely that was just because it was chasing Shoth and Aedan, wherever they were. It left them walking with a near quiet through the shadows, only Pau's gaze and her stone-sense to guide them.

It hurt more than she thought it would to be underground. Even in this baffling array of pathways and switchbacks and not a hint of symmetry, cold stone and darkness sung to her like a mother's lullaby. The outside world saw her as an amalgamation of dwarf, laughed at her height and demeaned her beard, but they didn't understand what that meant, not really.

Athábakhanú could exile her, but it couldn't remove the roots it'd grown in her soul. She'd fled for, and from, and to—but still she traced a hand over limestone changing to basalt, over amygdaloidal deposits of epidote, calcite, agate.

She'd have this again, one day. She'd remake what the others forgot.

The tunnel was longer than she thought it would be, a twisting maze through the darkness; no more algae meant their guards could be lowered, but now there wasn't even the drifting spores to light their path, and Hulimat was still too tetchy to call for quartz-lights. Alda kept clicking her fingers together for sparks just to make sure she didn't fall flat on her face and blow the entire group up. Could be considered a bad look.

Standing in the center of them all, foot raised to take a step forward, Pau went very still.

A little too quick after the jaguar—Alda uncorked her vial of cthonian russets, her only, and readied her rings for a spark long before she consciously realized it. It paid to be alert but hells, she was bordering on jumpy.

"Oi?" She snapped, twitching a finger for Ossega to keep his axes up. They weren't having another Shoth poke his malodorous head into the mix. "What is it?"

Pau swallowed. Unease dripped from his eyes.

"Ah," he said, dithering on the spot. "We've… lost a member, I think."

The fuck?

A headcount, fast and practiced—Azkhal towering overhead, Lanc the next highest, Hulimat slouching with his shadow crawling up his ankles, Pau with nerves crevassing into his face, Ossega's bared teeth, her own unimpressed expression.

Her own empty heels.

No Gnat. No lynchpin.

Alda slammed her fist into the wall.

He was a clever brat, with how he'd found her, convinced her, dragged a promise that seemed too good to be true to lay at her feet like carrion. Slipped away right as their attention pointed forward; only Pau's ability to sense sightlines, used to make sure the party didn't get lost in the dark tunnels, meant his escape was noticed.

Too late by far, though. They could see he was gone all they liked, but he wasn't coming back. He'd found what he was here for.

She hadn't challenged him, not the way he'd assumed; no intentions to meet Gnat's overseers, whoever or whatever they were. The deal stood. He protected her down to the core, and then she'd feed him eleven corpses and bind the core to give him what he wanted. The presence, he called it, with a startling reverence in his dead eyes.

Then he'd found his bloody presence much higher than the last floor, and disappeared off to poke his nose into it. Of course. Of fucking course.

From twelve to eleven to ten to nine to seven to six. Just one above a group Guildmaster Lluc would have allowed in anyway—and none of the trust and certainty that would've had. All of them waiting for the next Shoth to emerge, hands on their blades.

Gnat, gone, which meant she no longer outnumbered Azkhal's group.

"Fucking hells," she bit out, casting a mighty glare around like a brat with bones in his teeth would come a-crawling out of the darkness. He didn't. What a surprise. But weakness wasn't an acceptable outcome—so she swept that glare over the rest of the party. "Anyone else want to run?"

Wonderful blunt Ossega just shook his head; Lanc, a moment after. Azkhal fixed her with a dark and heavy look.

She met it right back. Gnat was gone. So? He'd been protection, a connection to this mystical presence; she'd been perfectly content to throw him to the dungeon so they could chat and she could go deeper, but that had fallen through. All plans did. Not everyone had to go bite someone's neck just because they got pissy about being betrayed.

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Gnat was gone. Fine. She'd let the others weep over it. They seemed like the sap-souled gentlings who did that.

"Didn't need him," she gruffed, turning her gaze back to the path ahead. "Spider tricks won't get us to the core. We push on."

Azkhal didn't say anything. She took that as confirmation and kept walking.

Slowly, the others followed.

The tunnel bucked once, diving down, before straightening out; humidity slunk through its entrance like a living thing, heavy over the air, and light flickered in the distant turns. Alda tightened her grip on a particularly nasty concoction.

Pau, stepping to the front, stuck an arm around a turn—waited a second, then pulled it back. "We're here," he said, shaking his hand like he could still feel the eyes on it. Tetchy kind of attunement. She'd leave it to him.

But blessedly useful. If he survived the delve, she'd allow him to serve in her dungeon.

Ossega bristled with axes drawn, Azkhal thumping his club to the side wall like it had personally offended him; Lanc dismissed his few gathered shadows, waiting to gather more information, and Hulimat let his reflection lash out with jagged claws towards the entrance.

Then, as one, they strode around the turn and emerged into the fifth floor.

It made quite an impression.

Like a myriad path of stepping stones, islands snaked off into the floor, clouds boiling right up against the edge of bridges spidering between. A storm reversed, almost, mist below and half-clear skies overhead, all the way up to green-choked stalactites and rusted iron veins. Through the grey swooped arrows—creatures, birds with dusty white feathers and bats of brown-black leather. Everything crackled and hummed like a mountain-peak in monsoon season; lightning, or something close, raising the hairs on her arms.

So this was the fifth floor, madness and storms. The dungeon kept them on their toes. If the fourth had been a copper mine, all snaking pathways and double-backs, this was more a karst cavern—limestone dissolved by constant water and steam for sinkholes, streams, poljes, enormous fucking monstrosities that'd take a joint cabal of mitmaq a full month to carve into stable, symmetrical paths. A nightmare in of itself.

Almost at once, Lanc and Hulimat bared their teeth—while cloudy grey kept them half covered, quartz-lights were a rampant presence here, and already their shadows twisted and weakened beneath it. Bloody wonderful. At least Azkhla seemed unaffected, even less than her—his thin armour meant the humidity didn't hug to his skin like a scorned lover. Lucky bastard.

They herded out onto the first platform, cautious, bristling with nerves. What the Adventuring Guild's Scholar had mentioned of this floor was little, considering they knew little; just that it was a land of storms and flying creatures, choked in mist and unseen projectiles. And that another Guardian had been seen here.

Alda doubted the dungeon was too pleased they'd avoided its first. Avoiding its second might not be an option.

Ossega switched his grip on his axes, pushing the blades flat, and swept his arms out—size over strength and his attunement helped him kick up a solid wind, pushing the clouds back even for a second so they could see. More limestone underfoot, the bridges much less wide than the mist made them seem, and the bases narrowing as they went down–

Narrowing.

Every instinct she'd ever had lit up like a coal-burst.

What she'd thought were islands were more akin to mushrooms; thin, stretched stems blooming out to wide tops. The bridges between weren't supported, not by the bases, by the sides. She could see veins of iron threaded through the limestone, additional load-bearing, but nothing invulnerable. Nothing trustworthy.

She'd been right on one thing—this was a karst cavern, unpredictable, constantly dissolving and eroding. The problem came when you shoved a mind behind the thing instead of a mountain; she doubted a dungeon wanted to keep its islands stable. Not when adventurers would use them to cross.

With the storm overhead and clouds lapping against the bridges—bridges without support—all they'd take was the sneeze of a half-weight to go toppling. And there'd be no way to know that, because the dungeon could just rebuild them back up to pretty perfection for the next party.

Hells. Whatever mind was behind this thing, she'd beat the fucker into the ground to make sure it obeyed only her.

"Slow down,"Alda hissed, hackles up. "This isn't good stone."

Hulimat mouthed good stone? to Pau. A true prissy idiot. Whatever half-noble or noble-dressing vas-Yohua family he came from, they would be better for the loss when she killed him.

Azkhal was less stoic. "Explain," he said, voice gruff as an avalanche.

Explain? The fuck was there to explain? Were they honestly asking a dwarf to prove her distrust of stone?

She smiled wide enough to peel her beard from her cheeks. "Stone bad," she elucidated, dragging the sound out. "Not good. Some might even call it unacceptable, but if that's too long a word I can go back to 'bad'."

Azkhal's brows furrowed to meet in the middle. "Explain why," he said, like it was her that had been confused.

Hells, she'd never say it, but she knew Shoth would have laughed. There was no point in insulting people too thick to understand the excellence she wove. At least that bastard had been appreciative of her cracks.

"Llantuykunamanta ninata tapuy," Alda hissed—trust her to know stone. She'd been raised in it. "Walk on ahead if you like, ch'usaq uma, but I've more a mind to go careful."

Well, that got through the thick bone he had for a skull, at least. He kept squinting. "What is wrong with the stone?"

In any other world, she'd leave them free to plummet to uphold her honour, but she did want them alive, unfortunately. Alda sighed. "The bridges," she said, gesturing, though the clouds had swept back in to cover them. "No supports, and I'm guessin' the dungeon's ready to let them collapse so long as we go down with them."

Azkhal nodded, because apparently he hadn't just trusted a fucking dwarf on stone. "I see," he said, a master of verbosity. "Then you should test."

Alda smiled. "No, you should go first," she said, sweet as butter. "Maybe they'll see your gob and be so disgusted they won't attack."

Looked like if she was more direct, he'd get it, judging by how Azkhal dropped his face into a mighty scowl. She'd get her entertainment somehow.

With Ossega in the back, a whirling dervish of protection, Pau took the front alongside Azkhal—the taller man tapped ahead of them with his club, pressing weight down to check its stability, and Pau kept his head high to sense any approaching. Clever enough.

Alda clicked her rings together and cupped a spark between her palms, hissing against her skin. Smothered it. Followed them into the mist.

The first platform had been remarkably deceiving; the second they stepped into the clouds proper, they were swallowed. Grey in every direction, coiling like a living thing, and stability didn't much matter because now they needed Azkhal to check if the floor was even before them.

Gods if a Gold-sense wouldn't be lovely here; though it didn't work well on terrains, it could at least cut through the worst of the mana-storm surrounding. Maybe Shoth had made it past the fifth floor.

Alda thumped her feet into every step of the island, half a jump; it held without cracking or creaking, which she'd expected. The dungeon had too many creatures to risk crumbling down to rubble whenever they needed to hunt.

The bridge was a different story.

The bloody thing groaned when they all stepped on it; party of one, two, it'd be fine, but six was a nightmare waiting to crumble away. Hairs she didn't know she had stood on end, every muscle tense; she only started breathing once they made it to the next island.

Hells above hells. She hated this place.

Hulimat exhaled, shadow lurching at his ankles. Azkhal clicked his tongue, another bestial calling. The tattoos on his arms twitched. They were crawling on like cavern-moles, blind in the clouds and cautious; so far there'd only been the distant swooping figures of winged creatures, always on the peripheries, but not yet striking. How soon until–

A chirp, like the call of a young bird. More came twittering through the clouds, low to the ground, peeling through the mist as if bells. Not a subtle hunter, whatever it was; it wanted their attention.

Pau flicked the tip of his dagger to their left—the edge of a bridge, wavering right over a very unfortunate drop.

There stood a fox.

Alda actually recognized it—despite the name, mist-foxes weren't from the Mistlands, because very few mortal things could acclaim to that. But they were from the surrounding lands that had survived the fallout but kept quite a percentage of the danger, adapting to similar styles as the mind-fuckery that went on in that ancient battleground; which she knew, because that was what Athábakhanú was. There was a reason it had been so hard to survive in.

The mist-fox yipped at them, a bright, cheery little sound as its tail wisped away into writhing illusions. Its clever black eyes never moved from their faces—used to humanoids, or at least familiar. Either Shoth, if he had even made it this far, or the one other adventurer that had made it to the fifth floor.

Alda switched her grip to a vial that had a marvelous reaction when thrown into clouds.

Pau hesitated. He dragged up his shoulders, eyes fixed on the distant mist-fox, apprehension crawling over his face. "It's… real," he said, with as much confidence as the pebble holding back the landside. "But not all of it."

Because it was an illusionist. She'd thought that was pretty clear.

Lanc twisted his hands—a mirroring fox slipped through his fingers, grey-black instead of grey-silver, and trotted out to the edge of the island. In the thick of the clouds, it blended in like the shadow it was, ears perked and tail wagging.

It wanted to be seen. Why?

"Careful," Alda said, never removing her eyes from the thing. It tilted its head, an illusion of four tails spiraling around its back. Pau fingered a dagger like he wanted to split its head open, but he knew better than to waste it—while he could feel where its eyes were coming from and strike past the illusion to hit where it was, they weren't particularly dangerous on their own, being about the size of a normal fox. Better to save his daggers for more appropriate targets, particularly when there was a lack of guarantee about getting them back on this floor.

"Onto the bridge," Lanc whispered, more foxes spilling through his fingers. Pau jerked his head to the left one instead of the right, one snaking deeper into the mist but opposite the fox; it'd do for now. You didn't trust anything that wanted to be seen. Dungeons didn't do that.

Azkhal growled, a rumble deep in his chest. He took up the back as Ossega and Alda switched positions to the now-front, eyes pinned on the mist-fox. It wasn't even dangerous, not to a group of Silvers—but something about the way it watched them made her skin crawl. Intelligence it shouldn't have.

The bridge was thinner than the last; Pau went first, cautious, head on a swivel. Azkhal followed, thumping his club over the stone ahead, Hulimat murmuring things to his shadow as it scrapped and slavered at their wake; Ossega flinched as a bird swooped in overhead, the buzz of distant wasps picking up with a frenzy. Even without the dungeon's mana surrounding them, the floor was sensing their presence.

And doing more than sensing.

"Down!" Pau barked, leaping back—and there, right at his feet, from an innocuous rock that was no longer innocuous as it uncurled claws and legs and a tail longer than her leg; a scorpion, chittering, lashing through the mist.

Ossega moved with the violence he'd become; one axe deflected its stinger and another battered it back, pushing it to the edge as its chitin splintered under the metal. The thing hissed, bleeding black ichor, scuttling back—Azkhal lunged back to avoid its frantic charge, club raised high.

He overcorrected.

All it took was one step further onto stone of the bridge they hadn't tested yet, one wobbling step too far in an effort to move from the beast, and Alda felt more than heard the crack.

Instincts older than she was crashed through her limbs—Alda threw herself forward, vials dropped, rings clattering. Hands met stone and she clutched to it, hauling herself up, hair tangling in front of her eyes and beard dragging on loose chips. Her party was attuned and moved when she did, Ossega thundering on frantic footsteps and Lanc windmilling with a bark of surprise.

The others weren't as lucky.

Azkhal roared—the blood tattoos on his arms moved, lurching up, lashing beyond his skin. It dug deep through the scarlet to slam into the stone, but that wasn't anything to hold onto. The iron veins threaded through its length snapped and splintered, false security broken away for less than rubble. There wasn't a bridge, and soon there wasn't an Azkhal.

Hulimat's shadow erupted, jagged claws and blank eyes and hissed fury. It swiped at the sky, at the stone, at the island; but for accolades deserved, Hulimat had done quite a magnificent job tethering it to his ankles for fear of it getting free. It struck out for anything, failed, and tipped the man right over into the clouds.

Poor Pau, so devoted to others his attunement was mostly for their benefit—he'd been leading the group onto the bridge, searching for more hidden scorpions, and hardly had a moment to realize the danger before he was gone.

The bridge finished crumbling away, stirring up grey, and left a lingering echo of a crash far below. The clouds never parted enough to see to the bottom—the other adventurers disappeared.

In the distance, the mist-fox yipped with laughter.

Alda panted, wanting to back up but unwilling to move her feet from land she'd at least fucking confirmed as stable. Two vials had shattered and the brew seeped into her armour, cloying and cold; but though her heart imitated a rabbit in her chest, it was still beating. She was still alive.

The bridge, gone. The other half of their group, gone.

What had she said? Stone bad.

From twelve to eleven to ten to nine to seven to six to fucking three. Her original party, beyond the scab they'd hired to crawl outside and spin stories of a massacre, but now five floors deep and still not at the core.

Lanc groaned, pressing a palm to his forehead, grit encrusting his face. Ossega bullied his way up to his feet, axes clenched in a deathgrip. His quicksilver eyes were wild; not the kind of death he'd prefer. No fight, no battle, just a fall.

If the others were even dead. Alda had a sinister kind of sense that the dungeon didn't rely on the height killing adventurers; doubtless there was something else down there.

But that was Azkhal and Hulimat and Pau. It wasn't her.

Four floors conquered. The dwarves of At'aba Qanu had done so much more.

"Up," Alda bit out, clawing to her feet. The scorpion was gone, scuttled back to whatever burrow it hid in, and the mist-fox wasn't visible; but they were stuck on an island halfway through the floor with one bridge broken. Their pathways shrank further and further the more time they wasted. "Lanc, surroundings."

Nothing.

Alda cocked her head to the side hard enough her spine resettled. "Lanc," she said, firmer now, though she kept a beatific smile. "Surroundings."

He twitched—thoughts returning, how lovely—and spread his hands; half a dozen shadows sprang from his palm, skittering over their territory with the wild, jumpy movements of injured things. Any predator worth their salt wouldn't pass up such easy prey; but they went unhindered, even as the clouds swept back in to cover them.

Temporarily unhunted. Perfect.

Alda grappled for her waist, tossing aside the broken vials and adjusting her current set. Ditch the weak ones, the ones she'd been using while the others were around; no point in hiding her true power, not anymore. She had a legacy to claim.

With only a moment's hesitation, Alda uncorked the vial of cthonian russets. The pungency struck her like a blow, fetid potency—destruction for whatever met its flames.

Like hells was this dungeon keeping her from its core. She hadn't come this far just to die.