Dragonheart Core

Syçalia kicked another stone-backed toad out of the way, the wretched thing croaking in blind panic. Its elder guardian, an ironback toad with breathtakingly hideous metallic growths over its face and squat limbs splayed like some roadside carcass, did nothing to protect it now. Not that it could, on account of being dead.

The second floor of the dungeon was interesting, insofar as being like nothing she'd seen before—and she had been in many a dungeon over her time, at least until her ruse cooked through and the requisite Guild put a price on her head. A life of many extremes.

But this was a place of forests, deep underground and choked by rock; the scarlet-trunked and white-leaved mangroves the Scholar had described, shivering in a fog-pushed breeze. Canals raced through the stone, veins of some ancient husk whose corpse had become the mountain, and danger simmered under the surface.

Or rather, danger, because the strongest thing she had encountered so far had been the ironback toad, and a stunning pommel hit and slice of her paring dagger had taken it out. A dungeon for Bronzes and Silvers, it seemed; the exponential growth up the ranks was not being handled quite as well.

Figured. Maybe Lluc was enough of a coward he wouldn't come in here himself, if he was sending them in to find information no one else had.

Ghasavâlk was still thoroughly and moronically entranced by the whole damn place. His psionic mana guided him to every mind in the dungeon and he strode blithely to it, nearly skipping, and a barked word pushed more irritating creatures away before they could think about harming him. Hadn't actually killed anything, because it looked like he'd been lying when he said he could fight, so Syçalia was left as the one holding this unwilling partnership on her shoulders. Typical.

She pushed a flare of mana through her legs and leaned under a mangrove's grasping thorns, the hunger tangible in the air, spinning her daggers around her palms. Her pockets jangled pleasantly with jewels and scattered crimson scales; nothing much, but the Scholar paid excess for creature parts. She would deign herself to a carrier if it meant coin at the end. On through the fourth room in this maze of canals, a mess of wretched little paths and gaps just wide enough she had to push herself to jump across. If she got her clothing wet on the second floor, she was going to kill something. Not that she hadn't already been planning on that.

Ghasavâlk held up a hand.

Syçalia stopped despite herself, because she wasn't an idiot, and traced where his finger pointed; another mangrove, thorned roots weaving through the sanded stone, though not moving like the others. Or, well—she frowned, peering closer, Gold-sense murmuring to the surface.

Ah. Surprisingly clever. The tree itself was dead, thorns inert and branches unmoving, but what was on the branches was moving, for all they disguised themselves amidst the white leaves and gentle breeze. Spiders, ghost-pale, scuttling around themselves in their web's embrace.

Maybe this dungeon had a singular interesting point to its power.

Ghasavâlk hummed, mana coiling around his tongue. "Spiders," he said, like she hadn't already noticed that, thanks. "Interconnected; a web of minds. Interesting."

Everything in this godsddamn dungeon was interesting to him. Forgive her for not falling over at the shock.

The spiders scuttled on, the click of their clawed legs trembling the web in their absence. She could see little cocoons strung up around them, corpses of lesser animals, though nothing large. Not strong enough to threaten adventurers, it seemed.

Ghasavâlk took a step closer. "I do not believe the Scholar knew of these, or there was no mention." He peered at her, black eyes indecipherable. "Will you look closer?"

There was no commanding mana in the word, no language she didn't understand, and she bristled regardless. Mushrooms, rats, fucking algae—and now he wanted to drag her into it, make her play dress with pretending she gave a single shit about this dungeon beyond the prizes it would earn her. Absolutely not.

"I don't serve you," Syçalia snapped.

"No," Ghasavâlk agreed mildly. "But to Lluc you and I serve, and this is what he wants to know."

Gods, she was going to kill him. If he thought she would bend her knee to him just because he was a Gold, he had another damn thing coming.

"They're fucking spiders," she snapped, and let mana coil through her hands, the world losing its grip as her outline wavered at the edges. Mostly meaningless, a party trick, but a damn intimidating one, especially in the misty gloom of this floor. "Go look closer yourself."

Ghasavâlk stayed looking at her with apathetic docility, then nodded, then walked over to the tree. Syçalia seethed. A murmur of ûldekhe and the spiders froze, scarlet eyes trembling as they watched the human approach their nest, but did not retaliate.

She spun on her heel and marched into the next room. Any distraction from this idiot of a man would be ideal.

As if one of the numerous gods she prayed to only to cover her bases was listening, she got an answer. In the next area, tucked back against the far wall, a burrowing rat's corpse hanging from its claws, a scaled figure blinked at her with true bafflement.

Ah. Kobolds.

Syçalia hadn't exactly parlayed with too many dragons in her time, but she was familiar with their fallen kin, and this one looked like all the others. A dusky scarlet spoke to a fire ancestry, its charcoal horns well-grown and golden eyes bright, but still a kobold. Hardly anything to get excited over.

For the principle of the matter, and also because this was likely a hunter scout, she moved. Mana blurred on her heels as she leapt the canal, avoiding the inviting rock her Gold-sense had already informed her was too good to be true, and lunged—the kobold dropped its corpse with a squeak and fumbled back, but her twin daggers were faster. A quick blip out of the world as its claws swung shoddily through where her chest had been, and then she handily separated its head from its miserable little body. Syçalia dipped back into pure mana again, if only to avoid blood getting all over her arms. There were pros and cons to fighting up close.

Ghasavâlk entered after she'd already cleaned her knives off on a patch of billowing moss beside it, the feathery fronds drifting away from her ankles. "Ah," he said, tucking a white corpse into his pocket. "A tribe?"

"Likely," she gruffed, cracking her back as she stood. "S'one seemed like a hunter."

And you didn't have hunters without more mouths to feed.

Ghasavâlk hummed again. Did he do anything else? "We must look out, then."

Right, like she'd been wandering blind before this. Syçalia swallowed poisonous vitriol with the effort it took to move mountains. No sense in pissing off the psionic mage while they were in the dungeon together—she'd wait until they got out before tearing his head from his shoulders. Perhaps metaphorically, perhaps literally. She hadn't decided yet.

But more dungeon still waited for them, so on they moved, the number of creatures picking up—another guarding walls of ironback toads, burrowing rat dens behind, emerald-carapaced crabs hauling themselves from the canals. They died just as easily as before, considering none could touch her as she danced between body and soul, and Ghasavâlk stayed painfully fond of simply sending them away instead of collecting their corpses. The bastard.

More kobolds, though still traveling hunters; a pack of three once, but most often singular, skittering through the mangroves underbrush with food in their claws. Still dispatched without difficulty, but they were moving with more of a purpose, eyes fixed outward—something had alerted them there was an intruder. Wonderful.

But the second floor melted away under the power of two Golds, even if only one was actually doing anything, and Syçalia could have purred as she felt the mana increase in weight around them—the end of the floor. The final area.

Halfway through entering the last room, Ghasavâlk paused. It was an odd sort of pause, the kind that didn't come willingly; his mana pooled and bunched in his head, spilling through his channels like he didn't have a stable grip on it. He widened his stance, like he was scared of falling over—there was a punch-drunk twist to his steps, eyes empty as the mind behind them flew elsewhere, hunting for something she couldn't see. Couldn't sense. Her back prickled.

"There is something," he murmured, and his lips moved slower than the words that reached her. "Something… hungry. It is familiar."

Oh, fuck that.

"Keep your godsdamn wits about you," she barked. "Or am I leaving you?"

She'd love that. She'd love to.

Ghasavâlk frowned, and peered into the room, a wide, cavernous thing with a hulking den entrance in the back, littered with scarlet scales and movement within. More mangroves, more canals, ending in a tunnel in the farthest back that gleamed black with promises. "It is not here," he said, electing to ignore her because he was ever so polite like that. "Or, not in this room. But it is within dungeon. What should not be."

Gods, she'd rather pull her own teeth than listen to him blabber on. How he'd gotten to Gold when it was far more apparent he'd rather dally around with books and scholars and lesser things was a mystery to her. "Fascinating," she bit out, and poured as much of the opposite into the word as she could manage.

It worked. Ghasavâlk glanced back at her—the first visible reaction, what joy, she was going to strangle him with her bare hands—before shaking his head, clearing whatever gunk and cobwebs hid behind his eyes. Mana pooled again over his tongue, her Gold-sense lingering on the edges of her awareness as she realized how little mana he had to use to control those lesser creatures, and he turned to the den in the far back of the room. They'd have to walk past it to get to the next floor, but he could pull his weight and command them to stay back while they went past. It wasn't like base kobolds were worth much of anything, and she'd already picked up her fair share of scales. They were meaningless threats.

Ghasavâlk stayed staring at them. "The den," he said, brow furrowing. "What is inside?"

A den, presumably.

He stepped forward, murmuring something under his breath as the raid-frenzy bled off the surrounding creatures under force of his mana. Billowing moss creased and bent under his boots, tunic swishing about his ankles, and golden eyes lit up in the den's entrance. His approach wasn't exactly going unnoticed.

That was the problem with fucking psionic casters. They got so comfortable in their power they never seemed to remember that it only took one mistake to cut their little escapade short.

"There is something inside," he declared.

Yeah. Like bones and rotten meat and nests. Her nose wrinkled. "They're kobolds," she stressed, like he had somehow missed that fact. There was a chance of it with how he spent so much of his time lavishing over mushrooms.

Ghasavâlk nodded like she'd made some revolutionary statement and marched over. Mana coiled bright over his eyes, over his mouth—a barked ûldekhe and the kobolds shivered, freezing, one by one as he faced them all.

Then Syçalia was standing alone.

There were not enough curses in Viejabran for this. She did her best to fill the gap and stalked after him.

A fool's prize but she did get to see a crack in the man's armour—as they entered the den, there were some two dozen kobolds within, scarlet scaled and furious, and Ghasavâlk's mana could only stretch so far. They stayed still, or at least what she presumed the command was, but did not freeze—they clawed their way closer to him, step by meaningless step, trying to brute force past his mana. A pitiable effort, but an effort nonetheless.

It wasn't the choice she would have made, either way. Staying still and avoiding a harsher command would have made more sense. For the kobolds, they could fight and die, or flee and live. The choice was up to them, if they could pull their heads up and understand they were in the presence of a Gold—two Golds, whatever, Ghasavâlk was a lumbering fool with a power she did not trust—enough to realize this was unideal for them.

Syçalia dragged the edges of her knives over each other, the shriek of metal echoing through the den. The kobolds watched her with truly delectable fury and the inability to do anything.

A welcome break from her new position as a Gold's watcher.

The man was in the far back, neatly sidestepping smoldering firepits and surprisingly organized stacks of meat and pelts, an efficiency she wouldn't have thought from the primitive species. Mayhaps the dungeon had some fangs behind its bite; or these were well-fed on the Bronzes that marched cheerily in to do nothing but die. Hard to tell.

But harder still to tell was Ghasavâlk's fascination with the very furthest back of the den, past overcroppings he had to duck around and more kobolds that snapped and raged on the ends of the leash he'd roped them in. A simple room sat there, a moss-covered bed and pool of fresh water at the base, a thin crack in the stone as an entrance. Syçalia peered in despite herself.

On the wall, crisscrossing over the greyish limestone, were lines. Crude drawings, of lines and seas and creatures; no words to accompany them and each scratch done with an inexperienced hand, but drawings. Recognizable shapes and things.

Not the work of fumbling beasts.

Ghasavâlk's brows furrowed until they formed an impressive caterpillar crawling over his forehead. "These markings," he said, slow, thumbing at his chin. "Do you think?"

He was trying to pull her back into the mystery. And worst of all, it was working—she kept looking at the drawings, at the height off the ground, at the size of the bed. It could have been a particularly intelligent kobold, even if that statement was comparing dirt to mud, but there was mana here, something soft and lingering on the edges of her Gold-sense. Not the same as what she'd felt in the den.

It felt like more.

Hells, had the dungeon taken a human?

Lluc would pay out the ass for information like that. The whole Adventuring Guild would—that was marking the dungeon as a threat more than lesser things, more than a nuisance, more than the claimed lives of Bronzes too foolish to understand they weren't strong enough; this was something beyond. Something that didn't happen.

Ghasavâlk's lips thinned, and he turned on his heel; marched out of the den, still keeping his stranglehold over the kobolds as mana sparked and crackled in the corners of his eyes. Syçalia rolled her own pair but followed him, fingering the hilts of his daggers. If he gave her but a second more of being distracted, she could have slipped out—given Lluc that information and claim that as enough to get out early.

But still the jewels jangled in her pockets, the gold nuggets weighing down at her waist. Those had been on the first two floors. What was below?

And it wasn't like this dungeon had been particularly difficult, in any sense of the word. Not the first floor, not the second. Still not a challenge, not even related to one; the toads and rats scurried around her boots, clawing for victory with mana that couldn't scratch her even without slipping from the tangible world. Ghasavâlk had kept strolling through like some noble's gardenkeeper and she kept hauling his ass through, but the second floor had been much the same as the first, even with the horde of kobolds. She tried to imagine how fifty adventurers had met their end here and couldn't come up with a single thing that would have killed them. Perhaps they all fell into the canals and drowned.

That thought did change as they emerged from the den, kobolds still snarling and hissing behind, and strode to the exit tunnel, where Syçalia got to face what the next floor would be.

Ah. Water.

The Scholar had told her of this, but she hadn't really… thought about what it meant. It was exactly as he said, a narrow, dark tunnel sloping downward for some dozens of feet until it came to a rippling pool, coated in silver-blue of a light she couldn't see.

Deep below, the water thrashed, boiling in on itself in some great shoving force. She could taste the mana with her Gold-sense, that hum on the back of her tongue, something deep and gnawing like old teeth.

Ghasavâlk peered at it, making an oddly pleased noise in the back of his throat. "Fitting," he said, because he certainly was feeling verbose. Then he slipped into the third floor with a heady splash of water and the rush of mana, disappearing beneath the surface before she'd even had a moment to ask what their plan was.

Syçalia stared, teeth grinding in the back of her skull. He was gone. She could turn around, slip away, fade back into the shadows she so loved and make her living there. She was a thief, not a fighter; her attunement was one born of scraping and scrapping and scavenging in the forgotten corners of the world.

Jewels burned a hole in her pockets.

Hells above hells. She jumped in the water.

It hit her like a shock, that cold explosion of twin extremes before her body realized what was happening. She sank like a stone almost immediately, falling in a crouch to the sandy bottom, silt swirling around her—swirling past her, actually. Her Gold-sense took over as her eyes adjusted, feeding her strands of mana curling around her in a whirlpool, tugging her further into the floor.

Old, gnashing teeth lurked in the back of her mind, lined in star-burn. Interesting.

Ghasavâlk was some feet away, tunic swirling around him and fitting oddly on his body now that gravity couldn't pin down the looser fabric. His hair floated up, black eyes like voids in the water. His mana seemed almost colourless here, the absence of there, darkness with light. She didn't like it. She didn't like him. She was getting the feeling it was mutual.

Behind him, instead of more limestone, was an opening.

An entrance.

Past it, a tunnel sloped outward, but it was a cragged, broken stone unlike that within the dungeon; something external, then. Another mystery to fill this damn dungeon, as if it hadn't had enough. A caught human, a third entrance, monsters the likes of which she'd never seen before. Fucking fantastic.

But that entrance—she'd spent a year researching Calarata after she'd gone to ground after her last unfortunate incident with the Wandering Empire, and she knew there was a merrow city deep under the cove connected to the Illera Sea. Arroyo, she thought, or whatever word they had that Viejabran had translated.

It looked like this entrance connected directly to it.

And wasn't that interesting.

The thought was a little too similar to Ghasavâlk's mushroom-investigating lines, so she looked away, back towards the floor itself. A kelp forest loomed through the mist, amber-gold fronds waving gently, clustered schools of silver fish overhead, the cast shadows of sharks circling overhead. About what the Scholar had said, though no sign of the armoured fish he'd had plenty of concerns about. Silt and sand and murk gleamed everywhere, the quartz-light not nearly enough, though little could hide from her Gold-sense.

No sense in waiting around for deaths. She widened her stance and started to stride forward. Ghasavâlk fell in beside her, a follower with no soul of a leader, water tugging at his clothes. Gods. Soon she'd be rid of him.

As long as she cleared all these little monsters first.

More of the crabs, just as quick to come and be slaughtered; silver fish that swam to and fro in dizzying patterns that meant nothing as she faded out of corpality. Even the sharks, heavy and hungry overhead, meant nothing between Ghasavâlk's dissuading commands and her twin daggers. Onward they swam, around the amber kelp that sang to her Gold-sense in a way most unsettling, past nooks and crannies and a mind that Ghasavâlk motioned for her to avoid on the far side of the floor. Pity.

And then, in the back, the wall sloped upward, arching out of the water. She could see a den up there, and feel the mana press heavier on her shoulders; the end of the floor and the weight that came with it. The furthest point any other surviving adventurers had made it to. Excitement flickered through her mind despite it all.

Although it seemed there was a reason no one had made it this far, as a shadow cast overhead.

Ah.

The Scholar had told her about a crocodile corpse that had been discovered, though it hadn't been seen alive by anyone who had also made it out alive; but it had seemed monstrous even from his laborious descriptions of a beast he had never seen and had no authentic drawings of.

Well. Perhaps that was fitting; it certainly seemed a beast more of nightmares than reality.

Some thirty feet long, heavily armoured, green-grey scales, claws like daggers, fangs like swords; it hung heavy and powerful over the top of the water, snout narrowed down to look at her, eyes furious and cold. A reptilian hatred curled through its mana.

Quite the creature. Quite the prize. If Lluc didn't care about the human, he'd certainly care about this.

Syçalia kicked off the ground, floating upward, hair spidering around into a halo around her. She tightened her grip on her daggers, letting the water move her instead of fighting back, watching the crocodile as it accepted the challenge. And a more blatant challenge there hadn't been; she was removing herself from the ground, from her more comfortable land, to enter its territory. She was spitting in its face.

Ahd she had ever loved those so quick to react to it.

The crocodile moved, monstrous tail lashing side to side, webbed claws hurling it through the water. Speed above speed, the kind she hadn't expected from a beast of its size, a predator the likes that would consume the world if it had the means.

Come here, she hummed, mana coiling through her channels. She grasped at the world's hold over her, loosening its grip, light burning through her awareness.

The crocodile, enormous, bulla on its snout glowing, furious, hungry, lunged for her.

Syçalia disappeared.

Pure mana was all she was—and where she had been was now empty, but there was water, and water always made to fill. It rushed in to fill the space, a draw more powerful than the whirlpool, and the crocodile lurched, momentum thrown off.

And then Syçalia coalesced, and suddenly that water had to go out.

It exploded out, pushed away by force of mana and the raw understanding that there could not be both Syçalia and water here, and she won the pissing contest—so the water blasted out in a desperate attempt to flee from occupying the same place as her.

It wasn't a terribly effective attack. But it was enough.

The crocodile went low, Syçalia kicked high, and she slammed her daggers into the scaled plates over its back.

It roared, an explosion of bubbles, and thrashed—she slipped from the world and darted back, another blast of water pushing it further away from her, another tear down its tail. Its tail lashed and nearly caught her—or, it would have, but she was made for martial combat, no matter whether in water or in air. She disappeared from the world again and drifted under its claws, pushing it back, and carving up its stomach. Powerless it was against her, and the feeling was intoxicating; she swam faster, cut harder, disappeared faster. Fire burst in her veins. A dance the likes of the Dead War.

"Khangûi!"

And then more.

Ghasavâlk, hovering in the water, mana surrounding him like a crackling storm; his mouth hadn't moved but she felt the world echo through her nonetheless, a powerful, hollow thing like the ring of a gong. The compulsion sunk its teeth into her awareness, urging her to stop, to lay down, to simply cease to be.

For the crocodile, it couldn't resist. It froze dead in the water.

Syçalia, swallowing her retorts she didn't need help until she was out of the water, swam up and merrily slammed her daggers into the beast's skull. It tried to thrash, to defend itself, blood smoking through the water; but Ghasavâlk's command hung. She did it again.

Irritating. Her daggers were slightly too short to get neatly past its scales. It took another two strikes before the thing had the decency to die.

Then its corpse drifted to the bottom, to land amidst the silt and the sand, and mana burst outward. She shivered as the kill washed over her, a glorious sensation of victory and pride, even ignoring how much the corpse would net her.

Ghasavâlk drifted down to peer at it, still beautifically unconcerned with any other creatures—not that he had much to be. The sharks and schools of silverheads had fled from the crocodile's first attack, not wishing to be in its presence, and with its kill they seemed as though all their spirit had left them. Pity. She could use another kill like that.

But it was dead, and she would take that. A fine reward to show the dungeon just what it had underestimated of a Gold.

Ghasavâlk looked at her, hands before his chest; he turned and twisted them in a way that was probably supposed to mean something. Syçalia raised her eyebrow.

The man sighed, bubbles drifting from the corners of his mouth, and moved a laborious finger to point towards the den the crocodile had come from, far up through the water's surface. She could have said that.

But up they drifted, uncontested, and emerged out of the underground lake.

It wasn't a pretty thing, unfortunately. With clammy fingers Syçalia dragged herself up, mana aching, cold settling in like a living thing. The second she was on the stone she gasped, a low, sweltering sound that hung heavy in her lungs—gods, she hated holding her breath for that long, no matter how viable. Bloody fucking water floors. Every other dungeon she'd been to hadn't had them for good reason.

Beside her, Ghasavâlk spat out a mouthful of water, dragging his hair back. A bit of kelp hung in his mane. Blood had misted around him in the water and now it hung heavy on his clothes, the leather stained—blood she had spilled, blood she had won.

A thief she was, and proud of it; but there was a fervour from killing that nothing could beat. And that crocodile—it had been a kill worth a song. She'd preen when there was someone without a stick up their ass to preen to.

But for now, Ghasavâlk drew himself up to his feet, shaking moisture from his head and adjusting his sopping clothing. Still he stayed looking at her, and she couldn't shake the feeling he was seeing something more, than her thoughts were not hers alone. Ice gripped at her spine in a way that had nothing to do with the chill.

"We go onward," he said, and looked to the tunnel past the den. A dark and festering thing, alight with movement but no glow; whatever fresh new hell they had no preparation for. An unknown mystery. A place of death and punishment.

"Oh?" Syçalia said, because she had always enjoyed twisting the knife. "And if I think that crocodile is information enough for your beloved First Mate?"

He looked at her, eyes hollow, void in his empty face. "I am not done," he said, and there came his almost-smile. "And the body is heavy. Not something to take out alone."

It was an odd thing. A threat or a statement, or neither, or both. Syçalia's mana thrummed in her chest.

But he wasn't incorrect, which was irritating. She was an enhancer, but not for strength; she could only haul the damn thing out so long as she had time to do it, which was a precious resource not given lightly in a dungeon. She'd want his help.

And, more accurately, she'd want him alive so Lluc didn't cut her apple to asshole when she emerged alone.

So she bared her teeth, sneer firmly affixed, and jerked her chin towards the tunnel before them. "I'm not done."

Ghasavâlk inclined his head. Bastard.

Time to live up to her challenge, then.

Syçalia peered into the darkness, into the hungry maw of thorned algae and the promise of wayward souls never laid to rest. Not a cheerful place, not an inviting one; in essence, a dungeon within a dungeon. Little wonder no one had come back alive to report to the Scholar what was beneath the water.

But they hadn't been Gold, and they hadn't been her.

Gold-sense leapt at her call, the world blurring and bleeding off her outline. It was time to descend.