Dragonheart Core

Chapter 53: Old Stone

I spent perhaps a touch too much basking in the presence of my mighty Underlake.

The whirlpool was still settling in, tugging none-so-gently on the bloodline kelp as it strove to pull the entire cove into my halls. My saltwater barrier was still up, thank the gods, but I could already see how I'd soon be collecting more creatures.

Not for the Underlake, though. It was complete now, beyond a few minor touches I would save for later. No, I had my sights set on further floors.

Which. Before I started that, I really needed to finish up the fifth floor.

I cast one last longing look at Seros happily swimming through the whirlpool before begrudgingly trotting down.

The fifth floor, with its iron-rust walls and mushroom-cap islands, was quiet, given that I hadn't actually added any creatures yet. It was rather strange, honestly. I'd gotten so used to the buzz and hum and gurgle of my other floors that my points of awareness actively turned with excitement towards the distant creaks and shifts of the mountain overhead. Not exactly the most exciting of updates.

But now to start.

Flora first; I darted around and dumped an immediate half dozen points into growing razorleaf lichen up the island stalks, covering them in burnished gold and orange stripes with their bony, brittle edges. Hopefully something to slow down or even dismember anyone who tried climbing up the sides, though if they had scales like Seros I'd just have to hope that the fall killed them. A touch more on the underside of the islands, fed by quartz-light, just in case. I wasn't looking to take chances here.

I splattered some jadestone and billowing moss around the islands, just to break up the silver limestone, and a few mushrooms in whatever shadows I could find. It wouldn't be a terribly hue-filled floor, it was quickly turning out to be. Oh, I dearly loved the rust-red patterns on the walls, but the islands themselves had to be flat to work and thus couldn't be stuffed full of mangroves and moss and rolling fields. Fine.

Maybe I'd get another plant that fit, but I'd accept this for now with only minimal whining.

And now to creatures.

Setting a food chain was always the most important step; I dumped sparks of mana into every last crevice I could find and set off a swarm of bugs, every type and shape—with a notable population of eye-spot butterflies, if they were feeling any sort of urge to evolve so I didn't have to wait for my others to give me more—and let them loose with all the grace of a hurricane. Immediately, the silence crumbled away as the buzz of passing wings and the scrape of claw against stone filled the air; comforting, in the way that only thousands of crawling insects could be. All of them were Underranked, barely capable of drawing an invader's attention, but my creatures needed to eat. Bugs, rather unfortunately, tended to draw the short end of the stick when it came to who got to live on top.

I was holding out hope for the hunting mantis. She was already setting herself up as a right little menace in the Jungle Labyrinth.

But my eye was on finer prizes for right now.

Only two flying schemas to my name, with a hopeful third once the caterpillar reached adulthood. But while I certainly hope it wasn't too cocky, I was rather convinced I had enough time to collect a few more before invaders started merrily traipsing their way to my bottom floors.

One day I'd get a massive threat, something to swoop overhead with all the grace and raw fucking destruction of a sky-drake. Something like the sarco, where the pigeons and butterflies only served as distractions for the real beast to come out and play.

And speaking of—I flew back to my various bridges and set about the careful process of removing several strengthening veins of iron from within them, weakening them until they trembled. Now that the sarco wouldn't be making his way down here for a good while, I didn't see the need in leaving them strong. My creatures were more than welcome to break them to send poor little invaders tumbling for a rather nasty fall below.

Though I did leave a path, one twisting and inefficient, strengthened. Seros still liked to curl around my core and I certainly wouldn't make him have to clamber his way through the valley just to get to me.

Enough distractions. I shook a point of awareness to make some sort of declaration and started tugging mana out of my core.

The baterwaul was first; it popped into its brand new existence with a horrible, wailing shriek, floundering its leathery wings until it realized it was, in fact, rather safely situated on an island. Large as I'd remembered, spindly and awkward and dumb as a collection of rocks. Its eyes passed sightlessly over its surroundings, still crying out with that terrible, terrible shrill voice.

Mayhaps I didn't need it on my floor.

But I was brave and strong and would survive the bloody thing's insolence, and so I gathered up the roughly four points of mana needed to create another one.

It came into the world and promptly started screaming.

Gods. I'd need to reduce my points of awareness on this world if I was going to survive the coming weeks.

But soon a dozen of them were flapping around the room; they couldn't take off from the ground and had to drag themselves to the side of the island, merrily sliding off and dropping like a stone for a few feet before their wings kicked in and they were able to take off, grey-brown bodies streaking through the air as they hunt through their new environments. The bug populations had all of a few minutes to live in relative peace and harmony before I'd dumped predators on their doorstep.

Sucked for them.

But while I still wanted to bang my non-existent head against the wall, I could appreciate how effective the baterwauls would be; any invader trying to focus on not falling off the edges of my island would have a very rough time of things with these monstrosities flying around making a nuisance of themselves. And that was without my second threat.

Grabbing nine points, I shaped my first greater pigeon.

It was much the same that I remembered from the corpse Nicau had brought; dusty white weathers, scarlet-tipped beak, talons built for grasping. Maybe two, three feet tall, its eyes fierce and hungry.

Alongside a head that bobbled as it walked.

As much as this was now a predatory creature, it was still a pigeon.

But it spread its wings with a shriek and immediately took off, swooping a touch awkwardly as it ducked and bobbed around stalactites, but it soon figured out the space and started circling overhead. With the quartz-light on the ceiling its wings did cast a rather impressive shadow, and the bats were already searching for little dens and nooks to tuck away in.

Not that the pigeon looked to be having any intention of that. It shrieked a war-cry that really didn't deserve to come from a pigeon and charged at the nearest one, wings tucked into a dive. The bat, for its part, shrieked once, paused as it was told it was now in danger, and promptly decided it had somewhere else to be. The pigeon was half a second late from snagging it before it disappeared into one of the iron vein shelters.

Pity. It shrieked again and darted back to its circle overhead, already on the hunt for more prey.

Looked like I'd have to work to keep their numbers up; I would need time to recharge but I could create one more pigeon, letting it fly loose as it surveyed its new territory. I'd up their population over the coming days until I had a proper dive bombing threat, depending on how much mana my upper floors kept giving me.

Sometimes I very much still regretted Naming Nicau. That mana would be so helpful elsewhere.

But for I extended my tendrils upward, letting them worm into those higher floors; I sang sweet melodies of power and mana and victory, of evolutions untold and territories untested. Beautiful little things that every creature hungry for pride so desired.

I knew they would answer the call. They always did.

-

Akkyst was having, to put it lightly, a strange day.

The jaguar had recovered enough from her paralysis to walk beside him, though her front left paw seized up every few steps. Her feather-tipped tail swished with almost excitement as she stayed close to his side but looked out at this new territory with wide golden eyes. Akkyst knew the bladehawk had been captured relatively recently but she had been with the war horde for far longer, too physically weak to be sent out on patrol missions and killed so stuck in that cage for gods knew how long. Even now, with this slight freedom even though she was still trapped under stone surrounded by goblins, she seemed impossibly free.

He'd get her out. Both of them.

But now they walked through the mountain, following the Magelord goblins; Bylk kept up a constant stream of chatter, asking all manner of questions; were all cave bears capable of listening? What mana abilities did he have? Had he ever tried to speak before?

Akkyst tried to answer them, he really did, but with his only communication being various head shakes and rumbles, it was a touch difficult to get his point across.

Bylk seemed to understand it, at least, and settled for just rambling out loud. The other goblins accepted their chieftain's slightly mad trains of thought with an amused familiarity. It didn't seem like the first time he'd gone on a tangent with no one willing to be the one to step in and stop him.

But now, as the stone shifted overhead and they crawled ever on into the quartz-lit land beyond, they finally arrived at the home of the Magelords. One goblin held up her light and rapped thrice on a seemingly indistinguisable piece of stone; an answer knock came back and, with a pale grey glow, the rock melted away into a perfectly smooth entrance, rippling with excess mana.

The goblin made to step forward, paused, looked back. She whispered something.

The entrance widened a bit. Akkyst hoped he managed to look suitably thankful; there hadn't been a chance his shoulders would fit through the original opening. The jaguar waited until the rest of the goblins had filtered in before padding through herself, ears perked forward and tailing swishing; he had genuinely never seen her so interested in anything before. Even her coat, still covered in the gritty grey of dust, seemed a touch more like the green underneath. He muscled his way through.

On the other side was a cavern.

It sprawled as far as the eye could see, the farthest edges lost to shadows that even the quartz-light couldn't reach; along all the walls great stone buildings loomed, windows carved and flickering with movement, meat roasting over ruby-fires, great towering stacks of timbershroom wood and many-coloured caps of a glowing variant. Crystals sat in every corner, some pried from stone and others emerging from the walls, all faint with mana. Goblins by the hundreds darted around, their skin marred with stripes blending with each other as they greeted each other and hissed and ran off to some important task.

There was no great field full of soldiers hacking heedlessly at the air, no cages filled with starving beasts in the corner. All the goblins he saw moved with purpose but cheer, and there was comfort instead of weapons.

But it was far from perfect.

The cavern was enormous but it was empty, barely a fifth occupied, the quartz-lights trailing off until the far corners were inky black. Stone houses were cracked and crumbling, melded with fresh stone tugged up by mana but not enough, and more cracks came on top; the meat cooking was a pitiful amount and the mushrooms beside it even less so. Every goblin seemed thin, hungry, even if they used their mana and chatted freely.

A society, but not one thriving. Something had gone wrong.

The bladehawk swooped overhead, immediately taking off in this new, enormous area to stretch his wings with a pleased shriek; the jaguar purred, ears flicking, and stayed at his side. Not up to explore until she was fully recovered, he guessed. Paralysis had a nasty habit of predating death.

Bylk clapped his hands together, grin stretching to those same impossible limits, and gestured broadly at the cavern. A few goblins hissed some sort of illegible greeting but scampered off to do other things. "Welcome, lordies, to the home of the Magelords."

Akkyst tried to make his rumble sound as impressed as possible. Bylk's ears perked up. He waited a second and then went for a confused head tilt, adding a questioning grunt at the end. Gods. He needed to learn how to talk sooner rather than later.

"A beaut," Bylk agreed. "But one that needs fixin', aye?"

In a manner of speaking. Akkyst nodded.

The normally cheerful goblin's face turned pained, just for a second, and he looked across his home. At the stone crumbling in the corners, at the far too small population, at the cavern space they could barely maintain, let alone expand in. He jerked a thumb towards a small, open-air hut off to one side, some sort of pelt spread over the ground and a stone pillar behind.

"Come," Bylk said, and there was that same touch of sadness from before. "I'll tell ya a bit more of our story." He coughed wetly into a gnarled old hand, one of the glowing jewels in his ear flickering as if about to go out. "It ain't a happy one."

Akkyst was pretty sure he could have guessed that. Anyone that had the goblin war horde gunning for their backs wasn't bound to have a pleasant time. He trodded after the Chieftain, the jaguar close in his shadow, and peered into the room; it was a tiny but well-kept thing, dust swept out, the pelt on the ground properly fluffed. On the stone pillar rested a circular stone, about the size of his paw pad, covered in strange writing—except it was cracked in half, the edges worn by time. An old, troubled piece of stone. He rumbled.

"Started as one tribe, peace, harmony, all that shit. But when the miner sect got greedy and left, the mages tucked away to study mana. Right normal thing, but it made them blind. Couldn't see what the others were doing." He kicked a stone like it had offended him. "So when that bloody war horde decided to take over the mountain, they didn't know shit. Couldn't prepare."

"Got attacked and the survivors ran out to the wider caverns, scrappin' out a living. Got just happy enough they decided to do the same bloody thing. Surely the war horde would leave them alone like they'd done for the miners, huh? Why attack twice?" He spat. "Bah. Idiots. They started working on their mana instead o' keeping on guard."

"But they did have something," he mused. "We ain't never been able to figure out what, but they had something, and it was almost done. An… engraving, ritual, something like that. Was big. Would've changed everything."

He grimaced. "But when ya spend all your time doin' one thing, ya skimp on others. Like defense. So the war horde came, burned it all, ate us whole, and spit the scraps back into the destroyed home." One crooked finger jabbed at the stone. "That's all we have left of that big ol' thing they thought would save us. Fat lot of good, now."

Bylk did carefully wipe a speck of dust off the stone as he turned to leave.

"Ain't never been a big group, and ain't no time to expand when we're fighting off the bloody horde. So I hope you're here for a reason, lord, because we've got need of help."

And with that, he left back to help his people.

Akkyst rocked back onto his hind legs.

His storytelling needed some work, but it painted a very sad picture. On the run, never able to recover, working to defend against an enemy that seemingly hated their existence. That was no way to live at all.

But they had to, because the other option was death.

He had only just come from the war horde's caverns, but the sentiment rang too familiar and too true. He had only fought because it had been the only way to survive; he didn't want to fight. He just wanted to learn. But that hadn't been an option.

Akkyst stared at the engraved stone, at the work of decades never to be completed.

Maybe there was one more fight in him.