Dragonheart Core

Chapter 127: Strands Between

In comparison to all my floors, the Jungle Labyrinth was remarkably defined already.

Whenever I'd decided to make the last push before, it had always come with the understanding that I had to make changes, to pour deep into the mistakes I'd made in its initial form and carve out the perfection that was hidden underneath; but not so for this one. The Jungle Labyrinth had held its weight under the charge of two Golds, and it was already a beast of tangled vines and impervious passages. A hellscape of my own design, if I did say so myself.

Which I did.

I poked my way through with numerous points of awareness, tense on the pulse of mana since I couldn't well peer through the darkness, and poured through the endless tunnels. The floor was enormous and it was content with it; hundreds of separate pathways that all interwoven and connected with each other, forking in and around until it formed a maze so densely layered any invader wouldn't be able to tell one path from another. Connection points had the thornwhip algae fade and soften so I could create small pockets of safety, with oases of fresh water and soft glowshalf to give my creatures some respite, and half to terrify invaders, to make them linger in these exposed areas for fear of delving back into the surrounding darkness.

It was glorious in every shade of the word. Oh, how I dearly loved this floor.

Creatures plodded through the shadows, only those sturdy enough to ignore the lashing arms of the thornwhip algae or cleverly quick enough to avoid them. The platemail bugs, trodding on in their never-ending search for sustenance, or the hunting mantis with their sickle blades and ferocity. Shardrunner spiders, weaving rocky webs between pathways, a promise to cut the head from anyone who ran through with too much vigor. Already some had rust-red iron threads, sickly in the dim.

And then, a whisper in the night, the stalking jaguar.

She was a monster here, and one well-adept at holding her title. Already she'd grown, reaching some four feet at the shoulder, and her amber eyes were twin torches in the gloom she claimed as her hunting grounds. Still an adventitious thing, unwilling to give up her allyshipshe took to dragging a platemail corpse down to the goblins in the Skylands, keeping what friendship she'd made with Akkyst and the Magelords he commanded, but she always went back up to the Labyrinth.

She was the first creature of mine beyond Seros that had tasted the mana density on deeper floors, but still chose to rise back up. Peculiar. I could tell she was powerful and looked to become moreso, hunting more and more dangerous prey, but she hadn't yet tried to go lower.

Maybe she was waiting for a floor more closely aligned to her hunting style. The darkness was perfect for her, but the cramped tunnels, some ten feet, didn't allow her to build up any speed or clever maneuvering. She'd carved out her territory, once I shoved into Veresai's head that she wasn't to be attacked like an invader with a serpentine horde until she died, but their truce was shaky. Any serpents that ventured too far into the tunnels away from the Stone Jungle died in the attempt.

The midnight cave bear as well, stomping through the dark. Away from Nuvja's blessing, he'd taken some time to figure out how to wrangle his shadows, but he was well on his way to becoming little more than a memory of visibility as he stalked. A predator in nearly every sense, considering he still quite preferred snacking on fungal delicacies, but one with teeth that never hesitated to carve victory from the world around. I loved him dearly.

still no jeweled jumper. His absence was beginning to gnaw at me, to scour at my composure; he was too powerful an ally to lose like this, to simply disappear to the shadows of my halls. I knew he wasn't dead, because I certainly would have felt a soul like his entering my core, and his schema would have been mine. But he was just gone. Even with all my points of awareness, I couldn't find him.

He had evolved at the same time as Veresai, in the same battle against that original cave bear. But his growth had been stagnant, kept to these dark tunnels without greater prey to fight. Veresai had grown through her horde, through her Name, through her spars with my other creatures. But the jeweled jumper hadn'the fought solo, he hadn't been Named, and his spars were always fatal so there were minimal options for him to train repeatedly.

Now he was gone. Worrying.

But I couldn't sit here and panic over a ruby-red ghost in my halls, no matter how much I wanted to find him. The Jungle Labyrinth would be in a fine place for him to return to, whenever he found his way back.

So through the tunnels I went, and if I poked my way into the mind of every shardrunner and cave spider I passed, then that was my business, and I busied myself with it as I dove through the tunnels to arrive at the final room.

The Stone Jungle.

Oh, what a nightmare made incarnate, my beloved. It wasn't a particularly large room, not when looking at the floor right below, but compared to the cramped tunnels it was an elysium. Rocky trunks draped in green algae like leaves, billowing moss creating pillowy clouds underneath, jadestone moss lacing up the walls to entangle the quartz-lights overhead. Dens on every wall, water pooling in corners, a last few glowing spores from the thornwhip algae floating in from the entrance.

And monsters within.

The mage ratkins, a bolstering community of little mad mice who had determined their best chance to get ahead in life was to swallow magic stones in the hopes it'd improve them before it killed themand they were, to the world's detriment, correct. Their leader slumbered now in unconsciousness, the light of evolution settling on her umber fur, but she'd wake soon enough, and I had little doubt that they'd strike out for greater shores with her at their helm. Hells, maybe she'd take the strongest of them and descend to the Skylands, to partner with the Magelords. What a tribe of insanity they'd become.

Burrowing rats, stone-backed toads, lesser scuttling things who did little more than die to become food; food for one creature in particular, my tyrant and her syncophantic horde.

Veresai, the empress serpent.

I layered her back with points of awareness, curling contentedly around her mind. She was still reeling from Ghasavlk's invasion, even as her army picked their cut of flesh from Syaliathe last time she'd encountered another psionic creature had been one of those annoying brutes from the enormous invasion, the one with the blindfold around his eyes. A terribly human name. Uninspired. The same attack she'd gotten Kriya from, who even now was still asleep and looking all the worse for it. But that had been her only other time facing someone who held the same power as her, and she'd crushed him easily.

Not so for Ghasavlk.

He hadn't dominated her, I'd been very sure to confirm; and it seemed he couldn't control my Named at all, if what had happened with Seros was an indication. But he'd certainly talked to her, and taken something from her mind, with how he ran perfectly through the Jungle Labyrinth on his way to escape. After talking with her right after the event, she couldn't sense anything lingering he'd done to her, nothing that would facilitate crushing him even more than I was already planning on, but still frightening.

The blessing of the oracle had stayed relatively one-minded, in an annoying way. She could see through the eyes of her followers when she took hold of their mind, could flick her awareness throughout the entirety of her territory. But I had been hoping for something more, in the way of Seros' mist manipulation or Nicau's commands, or whatever Akkyst's Name would end up being. Maybe she could learn from Ghasavlk, or from his mana, when I tore him down to rubble and marrow. Soon.

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But she was a power above powers, an apex in this land, with her hordestill mostly luminous constrictors, who never lived long enough to really become much of anything, either killed in the hunt or eaten for failing to bring food. But those who survived long enough were powerful, more than any other serpents in my floor had become; crowned cobras, hoods flared, venom lancing through the air. Jeweltone serpents, pale white with scales flaking off, a few jadestones embedded around their neck and eyes flicking green. The other horned serpent, still treading on a fine line as she tried to grow into her own power and avoid Veresai's wrath by pushing too hard. And now the spectral serpent, coiled up under white light, preparing to evolve into a form that let it slip from the world. Her army, growing stronger and stronger, ready at her beck and call.

She wouldn't stay here forever; this land was her palace, but I wouldn't have it become her prison. No, as she grew stronger, as she evolved, she would descend to the lower floors; but there would always be a horned serpent to haunt the halls of the Jungle Labyrinth like a ghost, and that would be powerful enough.

So it was time.

I gathered Syalia's mana, the Gold power that hummed through my core like lightning, like something aware and crackling. This floor was nearly perfect, was carved from power and understanding; it had, perhaps, always been perfect, but I had delayed it again and again as I dove into lower floors. But no longer. It was the last of my first five without a title, and I would be giving it one.

Action.

All at once, I begannew passages, combining some and destroying others, until I had hammered out the problems; too long of an unconnected stretch here, not enough oases here, too straight of a path in this side; I hollowed out faux dens around the oases, shallow enough to seem tempting but with nothing inside but more death; I dipped into the stalking jaguar's mind and let her guide me to where she wanted to sleep, an outcropping in the deepest blackness of the twisting tunnels; I pulled down more bugs from the mana-gauntlet in the Fungal Gardens, larger varieties of useless things to fill the air; more thornwhip algae to patch up the gaps, twisting ridged arms to grasp for prey; silverheads to splash through the empty oases; dimmer lights in the thornwhip algae's spores. Little things, but things that had piled up, becoming not yet problems but something holding it back from perfection. Something I'd always been too busy to properly sit down and do.

But now I did, and I watched those rough edges of the Jungle Labyrinth smooth down, those minor annoyances wilted down until they became just another strength. More distractions in the halls, more death traps masquerading as safeties, more fatality laced up as comfort. Exactly as I liked my halls to be.

It wasn't much, but there didn't need to be. The floor was near perfect, and I just made it perfect, and I honed it to that point. Every creature within raised their head as my mana flowed through them, threading into the stone of the place and reawakening what had been left to curdle, but now spread its wings.

The Jungle Labyrinth, infinite and choking, land of mystery.

Crack.

Congratulations! Your floor has attracted the attention of the gods.

Some wish to become Patron of the Jungle Labyrinth. Please choose from the boons they present.

My mana curled around my core in purred contentment.

The star-burn crackled to life around me, endless and calling, and my mind opened; popped right off like it had never been contained, drifting up to the wild galaxies over us all. There was nothing quite like it, nothing in any of my time as a sea-drake that I had tasted anything like this this ease, the way they summoned me, the way the world slowed to a crawl for them to talk with me.

Gods were gods, at the end. The nameless world in which they lived, apart from Aiqith, the Otherworld, the Underdark, the world beyond worldssomething more than what mortals could understand.

But I wasn't quite mortal anymore, not with a marbled red stone where had once been a heart and a dungeon for limbs and wings. I was something more.

And that more lifted me up, far above Aiqith, into a land full of stars.

With my mana fluttered docilely at my command and what served as approximations for my eyes lowered, I flitted from bubble to bubble, with great yawning presences that peered down at me with an eldritch understanding of amusement. Little more than a sniveling beast I was to them.

But one they would be granting power.

A god with a coiling presence that hummed with a lizard's scales promised me to turn every creature within the jungle into something reptilian, the better to serve Veresai; one with teeth and fangs and hunger granting it to all those within, from paralytic venom to numbing to blood thinning bites; a goddess whose voice thrummed with fire and death showed me visions of each glowing spore from the thornwhip algae changing into burning sparks. A goddex of wary and worry, of calling invaders to lost tunnels like grief; the goddess of fireflies with the thornwhip algae spores flickering in false life; a god of brimstone and smoke who seemed a touch more eager for my seventh floor than this one.

And then one in the back, one with a curling voice.

Nenaigch, Goddess of Weaving.

Her star-burn was something light and airy, a gentler touch that curled around me with the flick of silk and satin; but her proposal came to me with the pleased thrum that said she knew exactly how much power she was offering, and that she had no doubt where my choices to settle. The assumption was enough to twinge every sense of annoyance I had left.

But her power.

Oh, her power.

She was the goddess of weaving, of threads strung together to create something new; but of the act of it. She was not of tapestries, of silk, of anything else that weaving was a process for; just the weaving.

Just the movement.

And through her star-burn, the agonizing ache of her presence, she showed me a world in which my tunnels were no longer static, an endless maze snaking through the world; instead she showed me how, with her power woven into their core, they would move.

Not fast, not with anything resembling speed or urgencyshe wasn't able to push her true godly power into my halls, unfortunatelybut they would start sliding and carving and shifting. Piece by piece, overlapping each other, entangling each other in a web.

She showed it to me, and though she was intangible, I felt the jagged tips of a spider's mandibles.

Weaving.

Ghasavlk had stolen the layout of the Jungle Labyrinth from Veresai's mind, and then escaped. He'd taken that knowledge to the outside world.

But oh, if I could claw that victory from him, claw what insipid little plan he'd made, then I would certainly do so. And she was a smaller goddess, one who was looking at me, seeing what I wanted, what I needed.

Well. I was ever so happy I'd spent all that mana rearranging my tunnels so they worked better.

But to her I reached out my mana, and to her I gave my acceptance.

Nenaigch laughed, a tinkling sound like the shattering of glass, and tossed me back down to Aiqith. I slammed into my core, awareness shuddering back to life, my creatures perking up and looking over as they felt the changeand the change that was still to come.

Nenaigch's mana coiled through my floor, loose and wandering, in threaded movements and the deep, unspooling power of something hooked from the bottom of the world. The Jungle Labyrinth awoke at her call, the stone trembling as something new laced through it in all power it had never felt before. Something moving. Something alive.

And there

A low, grinding rumble.

One of the tunnels, one near the beginning, the thornwhip algae shuddering as its anchor moved. Barely anything. Just a gentle shift, the slow rocking of a boat over midnight tides; but change.

It wouldn't be everything, wouldn't be a perfect solution. Little more than a pressure that never let them walk the same route between days.

But oh, I would dearly love to see Ghasavlk try to show those fucking pirates just how he thought they could reach my core now.

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