Dragonheart Core

Chapter 50: Reflections

He flew through the forest.

Over one branch, around another—he had no need of webs but his silk still carried him to where he needed to go. Avoid a thorn, twist around a branch, skitter under a stalactite. Faster, faster.

In the Drowned Forest, nothing was faster than the jeweled jumper.

They had no time to run away but he knew they feared him, those furry scavengers and scaled beasts; all slow and lumbering, unable to even recognize him as his shadow flittered overhead. He wasn't looking to pick a fight today, having already drained a rat down to desiccated husk, but he would never reject an opportunity to prove his superiority. For he was.

Though he took care to avoid the more active of the trees, those with treacherous leaves disguising pale bodies. He should have felt a kinship with them, their matching eight legs and eyes, but he didn't. They were slow, stationary, simple. They didn't understand the desire to move.

But he avoided their nests. It would be a fool's death, to die in their webs. If any death were to befall him, it would be one in battle.

And so he patrolled his territory ever on, skittering over stone and branch alike as he raced from one edge to the other. His unenlightened brethren learned not to build nests on his paths, learned to avoid his brilliant red carapace. He punished those who didn't. The other creatures stayed to their terrestrial world, stuck on the ground, slow and ponderous. Never free, never yearning.

He lashed a line under an undershelf and darted around, gaze snapping to any motion around him. The twitch of a retreating spider, the shift of algae blown by wind, the flickering tongue of a rising serpent, the–

The flash of red. He stopped.

Not once had he seen another jeweled jumper. If the voiceless thing that had built him dared to build another, he would not hesitate to consume it whole.

So this was a challenge.

He stabbed his hooked legs into the tendrils of algae and reared, mandibles flashing and grappling at the air—distract them with an outer charge, drop on a line of silk, spin around the side, tuck underneath the rock outcropping, curl around, lunge forward and sink his beautiful fangs into their false body–

He was halfway through with his plan when he realized that his target wasn't attacking back.

It seemed like quite a terrible spider, really. No legs, no eyes, not even a pair of mandibles. All it had was its deep red carapace. And even then it was strange and like water, letting him through to its insides, which were just more sharp lines and angles. Not a jeweled jumper in the slightest.

…it wasn't moving.

He scuttled forward, jabbing it hesitantly with one claw. It stayed still. It hardly seemed to be aware of his presence. Even more of an idiot than he'd thought, then.

It seemed at least somewhat able to protect itself, its carapace jagged and sharp. Rock-like, almost. But he'd only seen this colour red on himself, so therefore it must be a creature.

But what a stupid creature.

He tried not to critique the voiceless being that had made him, if just to avoid them overhearing him, but he quite thought this was one of their worst creations. Even the lizard-beast with its only four legs was better than this. It didn't have a single way to move.

But he was curious.

It was a new emotion, one he'd only gotten recently; it had taken time for him to think of things other than the hunt. First he'd started expanding his territory to new places just to see them, then he'd taken breaks from his patrols to explore around his area, then he'd even ventured back up to his hatchling floor to remember what it looked like. He could feel the mana he consumed expanding within him.

But that curiosity matched his other recent emotion.

Boredom.

Everything in the forest feared him, ran from his presence, and so they avoided him. Even the larger things, those that could reach his fragile body, fled. The only things he fought were those too young or too stupid not to know to avoid him.

He wanted a challenge.

If there were new creatures like this, slow and motionless and terrible as it was, then surely there were new threats. Maybe something as fast as him.

Maybe something faster.

The idea was beyond insulting. This couldn't be allowed to stand.

He scuttled to one of the hidden entrances with renewed haste. Perhaps it was time to delve deeper.

-

The silver krait poked his head above the water in one of the many air pockets around the floor and inhaled hard enough it hurt.

Longer, this time. But as always, eventually he had to come up for air.

It wasn't fair—every other creature he saw could stay beneath the waves without fear, sleeping peacefully beneath the waves until they woke for their next hunt. He could swim through the kelp and tunnels alongside them, but without fail, soon he would have to surface to breath.

The mighty Seros, when he had changed, could now breath without need of air, traveling freely on both land and sea. And yes, while it was Seros, greatest being in these halls, the silver krait couldn't help but feel like he'd gotten the shorter end of the stick.

Why did he still have to breathe air?

He still remembered what evolution felt like; the raw mana from helping to kill the fish-person exploding through him, reigniting every channel and firing them to new peaks. He'd felt strength.

He'd woken up in a new body, having to figure it out once again. But that joy had now faded, and no longer did the silver of his scales and the bite of his venom excite him. Slow and ungainly before, unable to swim properly and barely able to hold his breath; but now that he was able to do those things, he was once again limited. All he could see were those looming shadows of the beasts surrounding him.

The arrival of the floor's newest threat was teaching him, however.

The crocodile, scourge of the waters, predator of all but mighty Seros; it lounged through the waters with neither fear nor worry. He knew it still breathed air, judging by its resting place up on the tunnel wall, but even that weakness wasn't enough to outplay its size.

Because it was massive.

The silver krait was barely a third of its length and not even on the scale for its weight. He could curl up peacefully within its mouth without touching a single of its enormous fangs.

And with that size, it had power.

The sharks couldn't touch it, the crabs bounced off its scales, the fish fled from its grasping jaws. It commanded a presence through the halls and damn well knew it, throwing its weight around with the simple reasoning that it could. For the crocodile, it didn't have to fight to be strong. It just was, in the same way he had woken up in a new body; it was a fact of these strange halls. But if he wanted to be strong, he would have to work for it.

Well.

He was doing his best to resist it, but there was another option.

Deep below, in the floors too dry for him to want to live in, something sang a siren's call; he remembered her from back on the second floor, with her crystalline horns and vivid white eyes, but she had never tried to hunt him. He'd seen what her powers did, though. Watched many a rat and toad jump cheerfully into her maw without a second thought.

But now she was calling to all serpents to venture to the lower floors and serve her.

He knew others were answering—he had come across the drowned corpses of his unevolved brethren who hadn't known about the secrets tunnels nor been strong enough to survive the underwater journey—and evermore her presence scrapped at the back of his mind, speaking of an serpentine army where he wouldn't have to be strong if he was one of many.

Quietly, he knew that only his strength as an evolved creature had let him reject her call. Even then he barely clung to his own sensibilities, the raw idea that it was him that wanted to be strong, not some formless mass of multiples.

But if he didn't follow her, then he would have to carve out his own path.

Did Seros or the crocodile feel hesitation? He doubted it. So therefore he couldn't afford to. He would have to be bold, challenge something with enough mana to trigger another evolution that would take him far away from the limiting air-filled world, to deeper waters where he could thrive.

He twisted, dipping back into the water; his silver scales caught the light and he knew he would be visible as nothing more than a streak of light. Anything he chose to challenge wouldn't see him coming. He could dart over, sink his fangs into their side, and retreat as they died–

He stayed frozen for long enough that the fear of open water gripped his heart and he disappeared into the closest cavern.

But he was scared.

Not an outright attack, he knew. That wasn't how he fought, wasn't how he would survive. He needed a different angle. But he needed to act.

Something passed overhead.

Against the fear that told him to hide back in the shadows, to keep to the hidden places of the world, he poked his head out of the den, venom already building in his fangs.

A shadow, dark and looming, drifted overhead in low, sweeping movements. Not the crocodile, thank the Scaled One, but almost equally bad for something as small as him.

The largest shark of the third floor, older and rougher than any others. It had survived not only through its massive size but also its wits, quick enough to avoid the mighty Seros or the crocodile and destroy anything else. It was twice his length. Maybe more. A monster of the waters yet unchallenged.

That one, he decided.

If he was going to prove himself, to gather mana he hadn't yet earned and reject the serpent's call for one of his own, he would have to earn it. No longer could he fight merely fish and crabs.

He would defeat that shark or die trying.

-

It sat and it grew.

The stone-backed toad didn't have many thoughts, still young and undeveloped as she was, but sometimes she would find rest beneath rocky outcroppings that let her look out over the floor that had become her home. And there, in that small and terrified place, she could watch. Observe. Learn.

But as much as she tried to watch the other creatures, to maybe find a strategy that would allow her to feed without being fed upon, her gaze slid back to the lacecap.

The lacecap, because there was only one like it.

All the toads on the first floor knew to treasure those green-white mushrooms whenever they spread, for they lived often short lives—the monstrous bears found them some sort of delicacy and feasted whenever the opportunity presented itself. But when they survived…

A lacecap with full bile-covered traps could feed several toads to completion. In every sense, her discovery of this newest lacecap should have been a joyous occasion, tucked in a corner where it had a chance of surviving, and already full of wriggling bugs.

But in those scant few brain cells bobbing around in her skull, she felt nearly every emotion except for joy.

It looked normal enough, with its squat, inflated center holding an enormous cap with a sprawling web of traps for various bugs. The same pale colouration, the same entrancing bile, the same everything.

She would have trusted it if she didn't know this was the direct path that led back to the bear's dens, and this was a fully grown lacecap. There wasn't a chance that a bear wouldn't have seen it and feasted. She had watched one of them walk by less than a full meal ago.

But the lacecap sat, untouched, and continued to grow.

And now that she watched, huddled as safely as she could under the stony ledge, she saw more. It dug deep into the surrounding stone, far deeper than others, and the algae that grew around its base seemed… weak, a paler green and not spreading like algae in other sections. Leeched, almost. Its cap extended further, its base taller, shifting in an unfelt breeze.

And though its outer tendrils were covered in bugs, wriggling masses of every delicacy, it didn't bother dissolving them down for food. It left them exposed. Like it wanted something else to eat them.

She couldn't help but fear it wanted greater prey.

-

He was the youngest, the last who had struggled from his egg into the wider waters, and already he was behind.

Hundreds of them had swarmed free, shells still soft and untested, hungry for mana and respect and power; and in their first few hours alive, dozens had been snapped up by the various predators of the floor. For newborn crabs were not a threat.

Those a touch smarter decided to stay within the den, but they were still hungry, and so off to their siblings they went. A softened claw wasn't a threat to anything but an equally unsoftened shell, and there went another dozen of their number.

It was to this bloodshed that he finally managed to wriggle free of his egg and emerge into this new world. But it had perhaps only been that he hadn't been focused on killing each other that had let him glance up, where he saw himself but infinitely larger, emerald carapace gleaming in the light, claws impossibly massive.

Or. Claw.

Because of his mother—for that was who she was—hadn't healed yet from where it'd been cut off in some event he wasn't old enough to have seen; and only a thin, still-forming claw extended from the stump of her limb. He was young but instincts already layered fully in the back of his mind, and he knew that for most creatures, when something was cut off, they merely lost it. Perhaps died.

But not him. Not his mother.

He got to watch her give one last look at her squabbling children, maybe confirming they'd at least been born, and then pushed off the stone wall, disappearing back into the murk of the water outside. His instincts also told him that would most likely be the last time he saw her. Greater crabs trusted their young to figure things out.

So he would. He had struggled out of the last trappings of his egg and floundered off to the furthest corners of the den, curling up and observing the world around him with eyes that had never seen before.

But he thought, and he remembered.

After weeks of feeding on only scraps of kelp and dead fish that floated down to the sandy bottom, building hunger forced him out to explore; and there he found vast expanses of water and currents, light streaming in from overhead, amber-gold kelp floating before. Fish by the thousands swam overhead, massive shadows driving him back to the hidden places, smaller threats flashing in and out of tunnels. A paradise.

One with, unfortunately, many predators.

He got to be very good at hiding.

But his kind grew slowly, and impatience burned—he was more intelligent than the other newborns of the floor, and while they concentrated on only survival, he wanted to become what he had seen on that first day, before he'd really understood what he was seeing.

Once more he'd managed to find her in the murk, when she'd snapped her fully-healed pincer through an eel's neck and ripped its head off.

He'd swam away very quickly after that.

But again, the memory stuck with him.

And it came to fruition when one day, as he celebrated his newest molt and subsequent hardening by exploring the farthest reaches of the lake and found a tunnel scaling upwards. His curiosity lasted all of a second before he was floundering his way up, ten legs kicking at the water like it would boost him faster.

This world was new, too, though at least some parts were familiar enough he didn't revert to his hatchling's senses of curling up in the darkest corner. Not open water but canals, swift and narrow, darting through a collection of stone rooms and pale, frothy air he certainly didn't trust.

But there was something else.

While he encountered mostly familiar creatures lurking in those canals, from the bright, flashing fish to the sinewy eels, there was another. One large and towering, just as his mother had been, with the same emerald green and enormous, snapping weapon.

But instead of carapace it was a proper shell, and instead of pincers it was wide, gaping jaws.

And as he crouched, huddled in the shadow of the strange stone pillar it sat upon, those memories reconnected.

He'd taken great pride in his regenerative abilities, from his constant growths and molts, to the idea that even if he were crippled in combat, he would regrow all the stronger. But while he'd admired the lizard and krait and eel, he'd never seen a beast quite so similar to him yet different.

Would this beast even need to regenerate? Its scales looked impenetrable. Could even his mother's claw pierce its hide?

…why did he need to be damaged to regenerate?

The thought struck him from seemingly nowhere. Of course he had to lose something to regain it; he certainly didn't emerge from his latest molt with a new claw snapping at his side.

But this wasn't about new limbs. This was just about armour.

What if he could grow his own carapace until it was just as strong as them?

He stared up at the beast. Beyond it, in the current-filled water, he could see more than them; titans stacked upon their towering thrones. So clearly they weren't the top predators, if they hadn't killed each other already. Were there beings with even stronger scales? Enormous scales stacking on top of each other, stretching out until they sat like armoured stones, safe deep within their own protection.

He imagined himself with that. Imagined throwing himself in the middle of his siblings in another of their endless fights for food or territory, when normally he hid and avoided the trouble. Would he survive?

Would he win?

The thought was beyond tempting.

He gave one last look to that beast and scuttled back off to the murk of the open water, to the waving kelp full of predators and prey. Full of all the mana he could need to reach a new potential.

To return as a new threat to the floor that had ignored him.

-

It was very aware.

It hadn't always been, though it hadn't ever been unaware. But there was a distinct difference in the Before and the After. Before, it had hunted off instinct alone, waiting for movement before reaction, feasting on whatever was foolish enough to trust its roots and branches. Absorbing mana, digging deep through soil and water, ever thirsting for more blood. That was all the Before had been.

But then there was the After.

Something had changed in those halls, something it hadn't known but was now frightfully aware of; that call of mana, the one snaking through its roots and feeding its leaves, somehow deepened, extended, burst, regrew, exploded–

And then it could see.

The mana snaking through its roots connected with hundreds, thousands of others, and they all shared what they felt; the brush of a toad's foot against a clump of moss, the gnawing of a rat on a mushroom, the splash of an eel against a mangrove's roots. All connected as one, all aware—and even impossible notices, where spores drifted through the air and sent back their own information, with no roots nor leaves to send, but yet their feelings were sent. They were all sent.

And in the halls it had lived all of its life, it could finally understand. Could see the creatures that crawled so freely over its roots, to the walls and the canals and the light. All the things it had known were there, in the strange way that it had existed in the Before, but now it was aware of them. Knew and remembered they were there, what they did, how they functioned.

From stretching its senses, it could tell it was in the first room of a long path, walled off by stone and water alike; but it alone was the one who faced the deep black entrance, where those with blood came through.

Those with language. Those with intelligence. Beings tall and slender, armed not with gaudish claws and horns but rather words, communicating with each other freely. They spoke and others listened and understood. They had no need for mana or unknown spirits to grant them wisdom of themselves. They merely had.

And it wanted more.

The taste of the outside world had only been enough to show it what it didn't have. The other creatures walked by it, fearing its branches but ignoring it beyond that, treating it like the stone of its surroundings. For all it could talk to its fellow roots, it could do nothing more. It wanted more.

Within these walls, there was nothing it could study from. Nothing like this potential.

The lizard-things—kobolds, it had felt more than heard, murmured along the strings of mana that made of these halls as it tried to understand the language of the world outside—had the beginnings of it. They were brutish and foolish and could only hack at branches and pray to escape unscathed, and their communications were minimal at best. Guttural grunting and hissing. One had perhaps more status than the other, with her long staff and authority, but they were lesser beings. Scampering descendants. Not worthy for it to learn from.

But whenever those beings came through, they came bearing blood, fresh blood with more mana than it had ever found on creatures within. And it had to feast. So it did.

But not now.

For there had been one of those beings, though perhaps more shrunken and gangly and not nearly as flawless as those that had come before, that had come through and survived. For the Connector below had decreed it; so while creatures gnawed at the bit for their own taste of blood they stayed, and the being survived.

Something to be learned from.

But the being had been taken to the back of the stony halls, to be hidden away with all the brutish lizard-folk and the idiotic creatures below them. A place where not only could it not learn from the being and its ease of speaking, but others would learn from it first. Learn faster. Learn better.

That was merely a future it could not accept.

But it needed to be elsewhere. If it was going to learn to see and listen and talk with more than just the connections that had given it just a taste of the outside world, to truly understand itself, it would need to learn from the being. If not this being, then the next, or the next.

It had gotten just a touch of the wonders of talking. It refused to be limited by that. It needed to become more.

More like the beings. What did it know about them? It knew that they had names, clothes, skills, genders, thoughts. If it wanted to be stronger, it would have to learn.

Not it, then. Something more.

She exhaled, twisting her long branches, and shifted the first of her many roots forward.

-

He sat in his den and pondered.

Spears littered the ground, all the cast-off remains from other kobolds who kept upgrading theirs, but he had never found one that fit; bone upon bone he'd tried to sharpen and affix to the tip, branch of wood after branch of wood he'd tried to replace, but none of them were right. All awkward and stiff in his claws. It wasn't right.

He was one of the firstborn, the same clutch as the Chieftess and Rihsu, but here he sat, messing with spears. That wasn't right, either.

He didn't think he wanted to lead. Being Chieftess had the temptation of power, but it also meant dealing with the decisions he had no interest in, like managing hunting parties or territorial expansions or food storage. That didn't appeal to him.

And Rihsu, well. She had never been a part of the tribe, even when it had only been the three of them; she had run off to fight and train and swear herself to Lord Seros, and came out stronger. He liked that. He liked not having to worry about dealing with other kobolds, to run and be free over the plains, but he did still want companionship. There would be no companionship in the presence of a dragon, not unless he evolved into a dragon as well.

Already his den was at the very front of the kobold cave, and he was often the first to leave and the last to return. He spent his days scouring the forest, finding new materials for spears that wouldn't work and scouring for glances of any new creature that might have been born. But it seemed like this floor was no longer the place of excitement and action; everything was happening further down, in places he wasn't yet strong enough to explore.

That was painful. He wanted to see more creatures, to find these new beings, but not enough to die in the process.

And, quite unprompted, his mind flickered back to the first attack he had ever survived.

He carefully set down the serpent's spine he was sharpening, setting the wood against the stone wall; he got off his algae cot and paced in quick, narrow little circles around the resting place, clicking his claws together.

It had been ages ago, back when there had only been three of them and new life still arrived in this hall. Invaders, the strange, fleshy beings like the one in the back of their den now, and the Great Voice had told them all to attack.

But he had known he couldn't win in an attack, not against their blades and magic. Not charging them.

He had known, however, that if something else charged them, he could take a win.

And thus the plan with the rats.

It wasn't a good plan, looking back. It had been born of desperation and the vague idea that he could scare them in the proper way instead of just frightening them back into their caves. But it had worked, and he had scored his first proper kill, pushing the fleshy thing into the water where the hungry things lurked.

But creatures.

That hadn't been a companionship there, but there had been working together. But what if he could take it a step further? What if instead of him just choosing to make a creature do his bidding, they could work together, side by side?

Creatures had no need of poorly-shaped spears nor the need to find one that could match them; they came with weapons, be it claws or fangs or size. And he had planning, had intelligence he knew they didn't yet have. In tangent, it would be power combined for a new peak he had never seen reached yet.

If he found something small, it could dart between hiding spots he saw and strike from the underside, letting him be the distraction in a mainside charge while it whittled their opponent down from the sides; something of similar size, running in tandem to strike, focusing on finding its weak spots and crippling it for a worryless kill; something larger, a tank to meet it in a front-line charge as he clawed at its back. Either way, a kill would be assured.

But what creature?

He only knew of those on his floors, though he'd heard rumours of those below. Neither rats nor toads would help him, and the spiders were the same. Too small, too flighty. The serpents, perhaps, but they fled deeper into the floors by the droves, called by some other spirit. He wasn't aquatic to work with those in the canals, and the turtles were too stationary to help.

The ironback toad, maybe? It already guarded others in something like he wanted, but it never attacked, only in defense of those it protected. Not the kind of thing that would bring him to the lower floors. And he wasn't strong enough himself to ask the bears to join him, and they only stayed on the first floor, besides.

And. Well.

There was a certain type of creature that he wanted. He brushed his claws over his speckled red scales, over the pocket in his throat where he knew flame had once sat. His ancestry was of the fire-drakes.

He knew the Chieftess ignored it, and Rihsu seemed determined to follow the watery path of Lord Seros, in the scant few times he saw her now that she traveled to the lower floors. But he still felt the call of fire deep in his chest, remembered old memories of smoke and heat and ash. He wanted that.

No creatures were right for him, not yet.

But he would find one.

-

The silverhead was a small thing, old in terms of general life expectancy for her kind but not yet fattened by mana, too willing to stay safe within the protective bounds of her school. But then one of her siblings had evolved into a silvertooth and swam off to join the far more deadly school, and another had swelled to a massive armourback sturgeon, and she was suddenly full of a determined spirit she had perhaps never felt before, and off she swam to new adventures.

Water parted before her and she swam down, darting through a current, tail whipping to push her farther; a nimble little twist and she shifted to hide in the shadow of a passing roughwater shark, too small to attract its attention and suitably frightened enough to not draw attention. And on she went, marveling at the world spreading before her, uncovered by the spiraling bodies of her school. It was a beautiful thing, for she was small enough to see all the details and perfections that larger creatures missed; the silver veins rooted deep in the limestone, the dunes formed in the sand below by currents, the ripple of algae-beds straining at the ends of their roots.

But before she'd truly had time to find a chance to prove herself, she faced the kelp forest.

It had grown, even just since her hatching; where once it had stood stark in the middle of the floor, amber-gold fronds trailing delicately in kicked-up currents, now it sprawled over the entirety of the cavern. The farthest stem brushed at the farthest wall on each side, and only the diligent efforts of the fish had kept it from swallowing the floor entirely. Even sharks, drifting silently overhead, had to nose their way through the kelp. It consumed all.

But she was here to prove herself, to evolve, and she pushed her way into the forest.

Gold surrounded her, twisting stems and air bladders and all manner of things she recognized from an outside view but was very much overwhelming in the thick of it, the water stiff and unmoved by currents within. On she darted, drifting up, drifting down; her mind was filled with a world she had never known existed.

But something lurked underneath, in the far-off flashes of other colours she could see past the endless wall of gold. She tried to turn and catch it, but it was always gone, though always present. It felt beneath her, crawling through the stems, and above, leaking down the fronds. She swam faster.

But now she was well and truly lost, the forest endless before her, and now she could feel something, a thought worming into her head. She hadn't considered it before but her entering this forest was truly an invasion, wasn't it? A betrayal, an attack. Hatred trickled through her thoughts, and worry after—well, she certainly hadn't meant it to be an invasion. But it was. She swam faster. Something loomed behind. More gold and amber and stems and fronds and gold and leaves and water and dirt and gold–

And so paranoid was she that she caught the slight movement, the barest twitch of colour, and flung herself out of the path of the jellyfish's reaching tendrils.

Water hissed with paralytic acid where it passed but its hit caught nothing, and its amber-gold disguise rippled in what could have been disgust; it drifted away, back into the endless tangle of fronds and stems, and was gone.

The little silverhead righted herself, eyes wide and her quota for adventures suitably filled, and promptly darted away to find the quickest route out of the forest. But she was glad, at least, to have found the source of the malice; perhaps her evolution was psionic, for her having been able to sense the jellyfish being out to catch her before it had even attacked.

And so she left behind the bloodline kelp and counted the mystery solved.

-

Apart, they were weak.

But together, connected by the strands of their beautiful web, they were strong.

They scuttled over tree and limb, weaving more and more, killing those caught and consuming their corpses. Ever more they expanded, ever more they found new trees to reach and cover, and ever more they lurked, waiting. They had a task to follow.

They were merely legs of the Great Spider, following his guide and consuming lesser beings to sustain him. Each of their bodies had no separation, no thoughts beyond those born from the web. They moved and worked for him.

There was no need for names or differences. They were identical with their pale white bodies and their thoughts all came from him. Perfect synchronization. And with that came a harmony that other squabbling beasts did not know, too focused on their own petty thoughts and ideals. Did they not know of the Great Spider? Did they not hear his voice?

It mattered not. For the webweavers would be rewarded for their service, and they did it gladly.

But while the Great Spider knew all and could never be wrong, he was still limited. They watched as he created other beings, shaped them from nothing and let them live free, but while others evolved to join their pale ranks, never had he created one of them from nothing.

And thus they would help him in any way they could.

They had watched as other species lived and died, but upon occasion, a creature would die and would not be eaten by other lesser beings; instead they would be ripped apart by mana, consumed in pale light, and then the Great Spider could recreate them.

And now it was time for them to follow that path.

The oldest of them all, stronger and more powerful, had chosen themself to be the one taken. An honour beyond honour; the most purest form of sacrifice to the Great Spider. Their body was merely one of his legs; they were just returning to the source from which they had come. No greater gift could they have been offered.

Others hissed and spat at the choice deprived to them but understood. In order for the Great Spider to gain this power, it needed to be the strongest of them all, and they were not strong enough yet. Perhaps later, as an offering, they too could be sacrificed; but not now. There were more legs needed to continue to feed him the lesser beings.

There was no time to wait. They moved with all haste.

The other bodies gathered round, housed safely at the center of their web; the eldest stretched out and laid flat on a bed of silk, mandibles pressed tight to their body. The others scuttled around, dragging forth the other caught fools of the day; weaker spiders, smaller bugs, and even a whole rat, dragged up from a hidden web near the roots.

As one, they were slaughtered. The power burst through them and hopefully it was enough to attract the Great Spider's attention, so that he might see what they were doing, that he might gain the power of their body. And so eight other webweavers grasped the limbs of the eldest and the strongest and ripped them free, biting deep into their body and flooding them with venom, pulling them apart so that the Great Spider could see every aspect of their body, could know perfectly what made them so.

The webweaver died quickly in glorious service to the web.

And now they waited, for the Great Spider to create them anew.

-

She exhaled.

Once more it was time to explore.

Her den could barely be called that, just a hole in the side of the tunnel where the thornwhip algae hadn't fully covered the entrance, but even though she was large for a rat, she was still a rat, and could successfully get inside. She would have to abandon it soon, given as the algae was growing closer to the entrance with frightening speed, but it would do for now.

After tasting the potential down here, she knew she couldn't go back to the upper floors. This was where she found her life now.

And that life was filled with endless explorations for the jadestone jewels that grew with abandon in these halls, in the thin corners where only moss and not algae grew. She had only been able to bring one of her jewels, the largest jadestone down with her, but now she could rebuild her collection. It had hurt to bring only one down, though. Her entire history was probably gone and stolen by the others.

But she had struggled and worked and now she could carry three jewels with her at a time. It had hurt at first but now she could walk safely on her back legs like the lizard-folk of her old floor, and that meant one for her mouth and two for her paws. Plenty of gems to gather before she needed to head back to her den.

And she needed to gather more.

The others of her kind wanted the jewels because others wanted them. They had no respect for the power she could feel in them, the budding potential racing through her at every touch. They didn't know.

But she did.

She was nearing full, she knew; her channels burst with mana more and more, every time she woke up from her slumber directly next to her pile of jewels she felt it was close. So close, so painfully close she didn't know why she hadn't evolved yet, but she would keep working for it. This was something she would never be able to ignore.

She poked her head out of her den, sniffing the air; still no other creature. Only the serpents and the rats lived in here, alongside the one enormous lizard-folk, but there were so many tunnels they rarely saw each other. She had freedom to run, as long as she could avoid the thornwhips.

Which was why she always brought a jadestone with her.

She chose a small one today, one replenished after the times she'd used it on adventurers past, and gripped it awkwardly in her left paw; it would be her guiding force to get her past the algae. She knew they were linked and she could use both its magic and her own to force the thornwhips to ignore her, to turn away as she scampered through their midst. It was her only way of venturing deeper.

So she grabbed that, gave one last glance back at her pile of jewels, and set out to find a new tunnel in the darkness. Time passed without difference, without notice; onward she crept, paws over moss, ears pricked and tail quivering.

Something shifted ahead of her, looming in the dark with only little sparks like stars illuminating its grasping reach; she threw her jadestone forward and let the emerald light overtake her, draining her own channels and tugging out the nature-attuned mana, filling the air with raw power. Her tail lashed.

The thornwhip tried to hold against her, stubbornly crawling closer, but her light flared and it begrudgingly slipped back to lay flat against the wall, letting her creep through without attack. She could feel it watching her as she turned the corner and let her power drop.

Always nerve wracking, walking these halls. There was always the threat that she wouldn't be fast enough, that the thorns would reach her and her journey would come to a stumbling pitfall of an end.

But the algae was quiet today, and her jewel stayed full of energy as she scampered through tunnel after tunnel, turning all directions to try and find something new, ignoring the safety of random dens and avoiding any scent of other creatures as she ran down, down, down.

Until at once, she inched her way down a harshly sloped tunnel and emerged into open air.

Her eyes burned from actual light instead of glowing spores and she jerked, turning away, but had to look back the second she adjusted; it was an enormous cavern, walls stretching away forever, massive stone trees growing from the ground and covered in moss like fake leaves. Water trickled over the walls, coalescing in shimmering pools, and at the very far back, she could see the red-black core of the Old One that ruled this land.

It felt like returning back to the second floor, where the ceiling and walls were far away and trees filled the air, where there was light and water and freedom, but with the impossibly rich density of mana that she loved.

It was paradise.

And even more like paradise, while there wasn't thornwhip algae growing over the walls, there was jadestone moss.

She ran to them, scampering over flat river-stones and fake stone roots, finding the nearest section that looked old enough to have those precious gems; and there it was. Larger than the one she had, that deep, beautiful green, with a fellow growing right next to it.

That was a new jewel.

The gems in the algae-filled tunnels were ripe and full, but protected by the thornwhips she could only just scare away from actively attacking her; she hadn't managed to yet get them to move away from their base so that she could take the jewels they protected at their cores.

These were free and ripe for the taking.

But how worthy were they? She reached forward and pressed her paw to the closest one, eyes closing, and tried to tug just a hint of magic. A current welcomed her touch.

She squeaked and pulled back, feeling the spark flow through her channels before settling in her chest.

And they were full.

Her den would be swallowed by the algae, more rats would come and stake their territory in the farther halls, but it didn't matter. She had this.

This would be hers.

And that led neatly into her new problem.

At her old den, she had her pile of jewels, and she'd made this choice before when dropping down to the fourth floor; in giving up her old collection of gems, she'd lost all the progress she'd made and had to start over anew. That had crippled her. She couldn't do that this time.

But there'd been a reason she hadn't been able to bring them down; there were too many to carry.

She dithered there, circling them with her forked tail twitching—she hadn't sensed anyone near her den when she'd left last, but she couldn't just leave them here. She needed to go back to her old den and bring all of her jewels here, to start her newest empire in this strange stone jungle, but if she left them here, then someone would steal them. That couldn't be allowed to happen.

And even if she had a plan to bring those down from her old den, she couldn't very well just leave these three new gems behind for someone else to claim.

They sat in their little pile, mocking her.

Maybe she could hide them up in one of the fake trees? She hoped there weren't spiders up there like on the second floor. Or bury them in the ground?

She could only carry three at a time with her back from her den, and she easily had twelve of the dark green gems. That would be four trips when another rat could steal her power. One jewel for her mouth, one each for her hands, and…

She paused. There was another way to carry them, if she could find a way to get them out. What if she just ate them?

That was a question she hadn't asked before. Maybe she was nearer to evolution than she thought, if she was getting this smart. But her stomach could easily hold all twelve. This was genius.

She should probably test it first.

The open was still too dangerous to try this; she gathered her group of gems and scampered off to a den in one corner of the room, huddling underneath the fake root of a towering stone tree. She set all of her gems down and stared at them, nose twitching; one was her previous one and only partially full of power after the journey down. Not worth the test. Another was large but half drained from her test.

Only the last and largest, a deep forest green with cloudy streaks of white, was full. That would be her test.

She picked it up, sniffing curiously. It didn't smell like food, but she did consume mana, so surely it was the same principle. She swallowed it whole.

Mana roared through her.

Power, the likes of which she'd never felt before; every time she touched her jewels they'd only given her a fraction of this, what little she could siphon. This was the pure experience and it hurt, her channels bursting with power, mind cracking under the pressure;

And she felt the light of evolution explode around her.