The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Level 1

Heart 400/400

Experience 65/100

Workers 2/5

Monsters 0/10-2

Traps 8/10+2

Rooms 5

Food 102

Timber 204

Iron 39

Mana 0

Rock 171

Gold 110

Leather 51

Leather Sludge 3

Quest: Make one of your monsters into a boss

"That's a problem, Pen. My warehouse just filled up." Travis felt an alarming sense of being unable to do anything further. It felt, to him, like he'd eaten way too much and couldn't wretch it up. "You, uh, could use it to fill in the tunnels."

"How many do I need to—" Penelope stopped just as Travis gave the command to fill the first two of the mine tunnels in. "Okay, got it."

It didn't take long for her to do it. Travis watched as rock disappeared out of his warehouse and filled up the tunnel. At the same time he acknowledged Stephan hauling the direwolf corpses back toward the dungeon. There was a lot going on now, with two kobolds, but he thought he was handling it fine. "Okay, we need a warehouse next. I'll put in the plans…"

"Go for it. Ah, there we go. Okay, another warehouse on the way. Thanks, Trav."

It was a relief to hear her thanking him. Travis constantly felt the edge of panic that he was being too controlling. Penelope had dug out the new warehouse—temporarily connecting to the bottom of the S maze, and had set down a new warehouse there when Stephan hauled the direwolf corpses in the front door.

"Pen, Steph will need help getting these direwolf bodies over the pit traps. Can you help him?" Travis asked.

"Sure can. We could even dig out… here." Penelope ran her claws along the edge of the maze wall until just before the sludge traps, then pulled out her pick. Travis barely got the dig order in place than she hacked away the wall for Stephan.

"Oh, that makes it easier." Pulling the direwolves through the gap, Stephan got them out of the way just in time for Penelope to fill the hole back up with stone again. "These should—"

"Adventurers are coming in! Two!" Travis caught sight of the pair ducking under the camouflage and just missing stepping on one of his lizards.

"This is where some direwolves had been killed. Either there's a dungeon here attracting monsters, or we're barking up the wrong… hole in the ground." Robert looked around the forest, not seeing anything moving. "Are you sure we can do this?"

"Legally? As long as we don't destroy the core, we can do what we want. If you're asking do I have enough magic to kill every beast in a dungeon"—Katelyn smirked and produced a wand from a small brace of them in the sleeve of her robe—"I can do that too. You just need to slow the core down long enough for us to make friends."

"You mean enslave it?"

"Friends are friends. We want the dungeon to grow, but we want it to grow on our terms. It has taken so much time to find a young dungeon to try this on, that I was starting to worry we never would." Katelyn drew her book out and started flicking through it. Finally, finding what she was after, she flicked some phosphorous into the air and spoke three words of power.

Robert didn't have words at first. It was a spell his sister had spent almost a year working on while he made the perfect mix of reagents to drug a dungeon heart. A trail—a line of phosphor that glowed in the presence of magic—traced through the air and deeper into the forest. "You did it. We did it!"

Reaching out, Katelyn ruffled Robert's hair. It was something she hadn't done in some time, but this close to their objective she was riding a mental high. "Don't count our dungeons before they're enslaved."

Ducking away from his sister's attention, Robert noticed something moving ahead of them. "What is that?"

Immediately preparing an offensive spell, Katelyn looked around. "You're seeing things. Come on." With a flick of her fingers the inferno wall spell was released before she'd spent more than a tiny amount of mana on it.

The path toward the dungeon was slow and winding. Threads of magic never traveled in straight lines, but rather twisted and wound around based on the magic around them. Eventually, though, the siblings found the dungeon entrance.

"Something's tried to hide this. Look, there are fresh drag marks here." Crouching, Katelyn ran her hand over the entrance where dirt was dragged into the stone interior. "This implies intelligence."

"Not that again. It's just a bunch of goblins or kobolds that have done some hunting and dragged animals in. The branches here look like they were just randomly dropped from a tree. Dungeon. Hearts. Are. Dumb." Pushing past his sister, feeling more than a little annoyed, Robert pulled out a light stick and gave it a good shake.

Ducking through the concealing branches too, Katelyn could feel the essence of the dungeon all around her. She'd been in dungeons before, but never so young and never with just herself doing all the tasks a normal party would. Snapping her fingers, a wisp of flame appeared beside her and just above her head. "Stay behind me, Robert. Even a young dungeon can have surprises."

"Is that food?" Robert looked opposite where his sister was to see a small side room that had a joint of cured meat sitting on a little platform. He took a step in that direction, only to have his sister's hand grab him by the shoulder. "What?"

"That's a pit trap. By the gods, Robert, you almost walked into a pit trap built to literally catch animals." Katelyn stepped up beside him and kicked at the ground just a few inches beyond—and the ground flexed. "This place can't be greenskins, it doesn't smell."

"You can tell just from the entrance?" Stepping back from the edge of the pit, Robert turned and held his stick up. "I figured there would be skulls and bones everywhere."

"Dungeons, Robert, are like a gong farm. They take in everything given and find a use for it." When her brother stared at her in confusion, Katelyn rolled her eyes. "Sewage. Shit. Ugh… Look, they're efficient. Nothing will be left just lying around so long as there's a use for it."

"There's a split ahead. Do we go left or straight?" Robert asked.

"Everyone has a different system. I always take right wall and follow it. Dungeon layouts are never the same, and even if things look better down one passage, you need to map the whole thing." Kicking at the stone floor, Katelyn smiled at the tracks. "Two legs. So if it's not goblins working here, it's kobolds. Watch out for the big lizards, they can be a pain thanks to their scales shrugging off hits. Ignore the kobolds, they will never attack."

Robert snorted. "Right. Throw burning potions on everything."

"No. We don't want to hurt the kobolds. They will be our workers soon."

The reminder made Robert smile and dial back his sarcasm. Half an hour later he wasn't smiling and he was ready to deploy his entire repertoire of sarcasm should his sister try to put things in a good light. "This isn't the core, this is a mine, sis."

"Yeah. I'm starting to think you're right. I was worried we might miss something like a rear entrance to the main section, but this is just mining rock and gold." The gold had been a surprise, but Katelyn was as immune to its luster as her brother—alchemy and magic were their destinies, they had no need of wealth.

"So we head back to that intersection at the front and try the other way?"

"Yeah I—" Katelyn was in agreement, but there was something that had been eating away in the back of her head. Two somethings in particular. "This dungeon feels odd. I haven't seen anything that tells me what theme it might be and everything's so—squared. The tunnel is exactly as high as it is wide. There are only hard corners. It's like someone built the dungeon with a ruler."

"Ruler?"

"I know you use rulers and gradient measurements in alchemy."

"Oh, right. Thought you meant kings and queens. So at least this dungeon can get us some money if nothing else. You saw the size of that gold vein, right? And it was practically pure gold." That was when Robert's light stick snuffed out. Drawing another from his coat pocket, he activated it and returned the used one. "At least I can refill these damn things."

Turning the corner back to the entrance tunnel, Katelyn took the lead down the new tunnel and turned left to a long, empty passage. "I have never seen a dungeon this young. If it is intelligent in any way, we might be able to train it as a pet rather than as a slave."

"I guess we're going to find out just how smart they are, then. Could you imagine the research we could write. Books. Fame!" Robert shivered at the prospect, excitement distracting him as he walked beside his sister.

The first Katelyn knew of the trap was her left foot wouldn't lift up when she tried to step forward. For a fraction of a second she was well aware of what kind of trap it was—as she was pitching forward. "Robert! Get back! It's a sticky trap! Ow."

Robert, though, was having a similar problem—though he was still standing. "It's just sticky, right? Let me get some solvents out and I'll have you free." He started to reach through his supplies and pulled out a vial.

Katelyn shook her head. "No, it's not—Ugh, this hurts. They filled the stuff with caltrops. I've got them sticking in all over and whenever I move more are—"

Poking her head around the bend in the tunnel, Penelope saw that they had two adventurers caught. Ducking her head back, she started running. "We need to get behind them and push the other down into the trap. He's got alchemy supplies."

Pulling out a vial of universal solvent, Robert poured it over his feet and jumped out of the trap. "Okay, I'm out. You know what this stuff does to clothes, right?"

"I know what it does to clothes, but I also know what this trap is doing to me. I won't last another five minutes like this, Robert, get me out!" Katelyn hated the idea of going still, but every movement only dug more of the nasty little spikes of metal into her.

Reaching in and grabbing another solvent—his last—Robert pulled the stopper out. "I only have one of these. What part do you want out?"

"You are fucking kidding me?! I thought you were prepared for this!"

"Well, you didn't tell me I'd need to bring a dozen of the things!" Knowing his sister's preference for casting, Robert leaned over her and poured the solvent along her right arm. "Once your arm's free, use it to—"

"Not that arm! All my wands are in that sleeve!" Despite the loss of the wands, Katelyn pieced her mental state back together. "Okay, okay. Sorry, Robert. Can you grab my cloak and pull me out of this when I say so?"

"I can try. It'll cost you a pair of boots, because I'm going to have to step into that crap again." Taking a step forward, Robert bent down to get a firm grip on his sister's back. "Are you ready?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Robert said. "One, two, th—" Something shoved him hard in the back, pushing and tipping him forward and over Katelyn, at which point his trapped foot spun him to land on his back in the next trap along. "What the—?" His brain caught up with him and he felt pain lancing all down his back, legs, and arms.

"What the hell did you do?!" Katelyn asked.

"I pushed him. That's my job." Jumping in, landing on Katelyn's back, Penelope reached down and shoved the wizardess' arm back into the slime. "Sorry, but this is how it has to be."

"You can speak?" Robert asked, eyes locked on the ceiling because his head was literally glued to the floor. Trying to reach his hand to his vest caused a bunch of the caltrops to press a little harder, but it was the new one at his neck that had him worried.

Jumping onto the wall beside Katelyn, Penelope landed next on Robert's stomach. "Of course. A mage and a chem nerd. What's got you two peeking down here?" Reaching into Robert's cloak, Penelope fished around until she found what she was after. Holding up the recall talisman in her claws, she showed it to him. "More importantly, who knows you are here and what will you do now?"

"Why should we—?"

"Robert, shut up." Katelyn's mind was racing. Either this dungeon was something really new, maybe a new type of theme, or the monsters were just super smart. She definitely didn't want to answer the first two questions Penelope had asked. "Well, unless you dig us out of this goop, I'll just activate my final stand spell and we all explode."

"That's a bluff. You're not a sorcerer—not with all those wands I see melting by your hand—and I don't think a smart wizard would have entered any dungeon with just an alchemist to help them. Where's your melee?" Penelope picked through Robert's things, slipping potions she recognized out and tossing them to Stephan—who was now waiting at the other end of the line of traps. "And the talismans will only work if you die with them on you."

"Y—You are going to offer us an alternative, right?" Robert asked.

Tapping her chin with a claw, Penelope looked over to Stephan. "What do you think? Would we get any use out of an alchemist and a wizard?" When Stephan shrugged, Penelope sighed. "Steph thinks you aren't worth saving. I guess we'll leave you here and then feed you to the dungeon heart once you're… not stuck anymore."

When the kobold jumped off him, Robert shouted, "Wait!" Panting, feeling blood leaking from a dozen wounds, he stammered. "W-We don't have anyone waiting for us. No one knows we came here. Please, we can help you!"

"Shut up, Robert!" Katelyn would have loved to have two hands free right then—one to zap her brother and the other to facepalm with. "Don't tell them anything. Something weird is going on in this dungeon and—" She winced when a weight landed on her. She couldn't see what it was, but she knew claws when she felt them on her back.

"You're making this a very easy decision. Steph, grab our little brewmaster over there. He's valuable if he wants to make a change. This one can die." Penelope hated the decision, but Katelyn was giving her no choice.

"Sis! Give it up! Even if they use us as slaves it's better than just dying." Robert winced when he heard cutting along his cloak. All the way down his back a knife worked to sever his clothes—he even felt the kobold's scales against his skin as it got to his legs.

"Sis? Sister?" Penelope leaned over Katelyn's shoulder. "That changes things, little wizard. These traps will bleed you out—slowly, it's not a fun way to go—but we aren't looking for slaves. We want allies."

Penelope watched Katelyn's eyes widen and, for a moment, she saw calculation in them—then Katelyn closed her eyes.

"Crap, she's bleeding faster than I thought. Toss him down over there and help me with this."