Dragonheart Core

Chapter 152: Even, Equal

Encased within stone and ancient mountains, the fresh air hit him like a blow to the face.

Nicau stretched out a hand, pushing through the dust and grime as if he could touch the moonlight, silver spilling over his palms. Warmth, brisk and summer-fed. Clouds ringed the top of the Alómbra Mountains, cast like seafoam.

After almost an entire day of pure darkness and dust-choked air, even the night over Calarata was something to behold, gleaming bright and white-tack walls. This high up, the quartz-lights gleamed like miniature stars above the glassy water of the cove, ink-black and lapping at the beach. Too far and too dark to make out specifics, but Nicau knew what clusters of buildings and tangled paths would lead him to safety, to back alleys, to open-air taverns.

He was a man without a home. First, the fishing village both his parents had died in and the ship he'd become a stowaway on just to free himself—then Calarata, clambering out of the cargo hold into a dashing new life as a starving pigeoncatcher—now a dungeon, earned by murder and three-day-old corpse.

But oh, he would always love this. The awe of looking over a city that had fought its way into existence. Not a streetrat, not anymore, but with the grime of hunger still lingering over his bones. He was more a product of Calarata than anything else.

And it was him that had just shown the dungeon had to better access the city in order to fight it.

Well. If anything, that was only more indicative of his personification of Calarata. It was a city of backstabbers and betrayal, even against itself.

The dungeon's presence curled up like a soothed cat, the rumble of mana deep in the stone. Already, he could feel it reaching out to the tunnel they'd just carved through the Alómbra Mountains, smoothing over the rougher passages and beginning to straighten the whole thing out to avoid long travel time. Considerate, especially considering how he'd have to walk the whole way back just to get to the floor that would take away his exhaustion.

A path of my own, the dungeon hummed, a spark of excitement lingering under its tone. Excitement and wariness, almost, like a storm-bell; something was coming, like it could sense when danger approached. Handy.

Nicau did not have that sense, which was why he was blindsided when the dungeon turned its attention back to him. To the jungle, it said. Gather.

On his shoulder, the shadowthief rat squeaked. Bully for her.

Nicau shifted, pulling at the edges of his coat. The Overlook was high enough he could see the jungle—the dungeon still hadn't named it, why—and then back up, like he could see the dungeon. "Gather more, ah, schemas?"

An answering thrum. Trees, it specified, so politely. Large and powerful.

Trees? What in the hells was it making?

More than last, it said, a mild note of annoyance under the mana. Bring more. Trees.

Um.

Nicau hesitated, glancing over Calarata far below, all the bloody switchbacks he'd have to sneak down just to get around the city and then back up. He knew there was a path to do it without garnering much attention, considering he'd spent the entire time before his meeting with the Marquesa de Wolf panicking about everything and anything, but it was a lot of height, and minimal nighttime hours to do it in.

Last time, he'd managed to make a leaf-bag to carry things back, and he'd limped in with a scorched, bitten leg and agony crawling its way down his spine.

For some strange reason, he didn't imagine he'd be able to make the climb if he was on the hunt for specifically trees.

"Ah," he said, cautious, "could I first go back to the Hungering Reefs to gather supplies?"

A pulse. Supplies?

"For carrying," Nicau said, still tucking himself in like the shadows weren't deep enough to drown in.

There was the odd sensation of mana moving, flickering over him like flickering eyes. Arms, it said, in a half-annoyed half-patronizing tone. He was very used to this tone.

"Apologies," Nicau said, because he'd long-since learned that subservience would leave him in a better place than ever defending himself. At least the dungeon rewarded him instead of only not killing him. "But I am– limited to two arms. And trees can be. Large."

The dungeon did what he could best describe as a click of its tongue, some unsurprised disappointment. What supplies?

"Chieftess has been making gourd pods," he said, tugging up thoughts about them so his Otherworld connection would send the images to the dungeon. "Storage, so I can collect small samples and bring back more than just what I can carry." A pause. "And, ah, I can hide better than if I were to just try carrying them back myself."

The dungeon hummed, riffling through his thoughts like strips of parchment. Yes, it finally settled on, power thrumming through its voice. Go. Then gather.

Well. That was as much an acquiescence as he was possibly going to get.

"Of course," Nicau said. "I will do so."

He looked over Calarata, over the home that had been his until it wasn't, until the loyalty that had never been rewarded until he betrayed it. Somewhere out there, Gonçal was talking about the Pirate Lord named Romei who had gotten separated from him in the dungeon, and the Marquesa de Wolf was planning on tricking the Scholar of the Adventuring Guild to take down the Dread Pirate, and the bastard Lluc was pawing through a stack of gold won from a dungeon he thought he controlled.

Nicau nodded.

To the Hungering Reefs, then the jungle, and then back to Calarata. He'd started the dance of a lifetime with Gonçal, and he was going to complete it. It was time to be more than he was.

-

The one nice thing about walking through a twisting path in the mountain was that the return trip was much faster when he didn't have to wait for the dungeon to carve through stone. Still pitch-black, still choked in settling dust, but a pleasant-enough jaunt through that particular kind of hell and the stone switched to the algae-threaded tunnels of the fourth floor. Marvelous.

Then, with the dungeon overhead and guiding creatures away from the new tunnel so it didn't lose one of its Named to a peckish crowned cobra, he popped out of another tunnel onto the sandy beach of the Hungering Reefs.

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Nicau yawned, then stopped, then sighed with something nearing euphoric as exhaustion slipped away from his grasp like water through a sieve. Gods, whatever deity had given the Hungering Reefs their blessing was his new favourite, all the others be damned. The dull pangs of tiredness became little more than memories, two days awake and no worse for wear than if he'd merely woken up a little earlier than normal.

Another mission, and he was ready as he could be for it. The dungeon had even taken him on a tunnel directly to the lagoon, rather than forcing him to find his own way through the first room; even now, it lingered overhead, mana pulsing at his heels.

Hurry, the dungeon said, and there was something– off, in its voice. Need to prepare.

For what?

Nicau frowned—and deep inside, his Otherworld connection flickered. Though it didn't seem the dungeon's intention, he caught a reflection of caution. Wariness, almost.

Huh.

He'd wondered, in the part of him that wasn't consuming itself in fear, how the dungeon had gotten this far. Oh, he knew where it came from, ever since using his defunct mana abilities to follow the trail of mana left by dragon scales, but that didn't answer the question of how—because this was Calarata, ruled by one man and his obsidian fist, and there were no monsters that were allowed to crawl in the shadows without his say so.

But the dungeon hadn't just crawled. It had thrived, and grown strong, and now was settling its fangs around the whole of Calarata in preparation for a bite.

That wasn't a draconic strategy. Wasn't for the beasts that terrorized the sea. It was a far quieter thing, the grind and pull of ancient caverns; the only explanation for how the dungeon had made it this far, when everything it did seemed to go so far from its origins. Instincts from something grander.

Nicau thought that was the case. What other reason was there for why it had been so confident, so prideful, as it dug through to the Overlook, but now was urging for speed and caution?

Hells. Whatever it was, he didn't want to encounter it.

So he bobbed his head, reaching down to extend an arm over the beach.

"Off you go," Nicau said, with far more kindness than he thought he really should have for the creature that had essentially used him as a steed over the past day. The shadowthief rat squeaked, grooming one last lick behind her ears, and scurried down his arm. Her ridged tail flashed as she darted over the white sand, disappearing into the den before anyone had a moment to look at her. A perfect match for him, really.

Although maybe for this adventure he would take his other animal companion, the parrot flying high over the waves—she could know a better way through the jungle, since he had a wonderful history of getting lost–

At the entrance of the den, a scaled snout poked out. Golden eyes, gleaming ringed horns, and a familiar intelligence. Chieftess.

Even just from looking at her, from preparing to talk, he felt the mana in his throat pick up; switch and change form, becoming reptilian, made for hisses and churrs instead of words.

He still dreamed, sometimes, of his Name granting him firebreath and flight and lightning. But then he wouldn't have had these friends.

"Hello," Nicau said, a rumbled half-purr of a sound. "Good hunting?"

Chieftess barked a meaningless affirmation, shaking out her twin horns. "Enough," she said, tapping her chest. "Food is good."

The kobold language was developing, piece by piece. Infinitely better than it had been, but not quite to where he could lament poetry and describe the outside world. They were getting there, though. Soon, he'd be able to properly explain just how miserable it was to pretend to be fancy in Calarata.

Chieftess tilted her head to the side. "Need food?" She asked. "Sleep?"

Unfortunately, he couldn't bargain for a night's rest before heading out, considering the Hungering Reefs had erased his exhaustion as if it had never been. "I'm leaving again," he said, sighing. "But I'll be back soon. And with new things."

She straightened up like she'd just sunk her teeth into a full meal. "Wait," she warbled. "Plan. See?"

Nicau blinked. "What?"

Chieftess' golden eyes flicked over the lagoon, over the crystal blue waters lapping peacefully at white sand. A little paradise of their own, full of fish and fry for the eating, everything for the teething kobolds just now learning how to swim, to the–

To the island in the center of the second room, large and sprawling. To the mangrove sat in its center, ghostly leaves spread far, thorned roots threaded through the water.

To the dryad that stalked around its trunk, claws up and barked back bristling.

"Her," Chieftess said, ivory teeth gleaming through her hiss. "Cannot kill."

Well. Nicau would admit to being fully biased in the kobolds' favour, ever since they had welcomed him to their den and listened to his fumbled teachings with wide eyes, but he'd still put his silver on the vampiric dryad winning a fight. She moved like an ancient thing, completely separate from both the mortal world and also every single other dryad he'd ever encountered, and he knew it was only how he had the good sense never to get close to her that kept him from becoming one of her latest blood sacrifices to her Ancestral Tree.

Cheery one, that dryad. The dungeon knew how to choose its defenders.

Nicau winced, looking away. "No," he said, because kobolds hadn't really figured out whinging around topics instead of saying the facts, and he desperately appreciated that. "You couldn't beat her. Better not to risk it."

Chieftess shook her head. "Cannot kill," she said, nearly snarling around the first word in her emphasis.

Oh.

Nicau squinted, mana thrashing through his connection. The dryad wasn't Named, not like him, but she was unique and she was powerful.

She was protected.

"She kills my tribe," Chieftess hissed. "Cannot kill her."

Well. He wasn't too surprised at that, to be honest, however unfair it was. The dungeon made a paradise, an ecosystem, but it was still a dungeon; it wanted its strongest creatures to survive, and it had put time and effort into building up the dryad. It would hardly be a successful dungeon if it let its silver kraits pump Seros full of venom and kill him in some meaningless battle, no matter how much mana they'd get from that.

But Chieftess didn't seem interested in logic like that. No, she seemed hungry.

She lashed her tail against the sand, some unspoken signal, because three more kobolds emerged from the den. Two hunters, spears raised and gourds slung over their bodies, and a warrior, standing tall with his claws drawn. Ready for anything, their eyes aglow.

"You go," she said. "With us. Together."

Nicau stared. "I'm sorry?"

"Not sorry," Chieftess said, since that particular turn of phrase hadn't fit itself amidst the kobolds yet. "To the world." She tapped her chest with the ring of scales. "We grow stronger. Even. Equal."

Oh.

Hells, she'd thought about this. Really, really thought about this in the days he'd been absent, the kind of thinking that had led Rihsu to Seros' side and brought Veresai to her tyrant's throne. Ever since coming down to the Hungering Reefs, she'd learned the world was larger than the one she had been born in, and Nicau leaving had only brought confirmation there was even more. She wanted to see it.

She wanted to leave the dungeon to come with him.

And, with some strange certainty, Nicau knew the dungeon would allow it. Of course, it would be deprived of Chieftess for the moment, who spun plans and strategies from thin air and commanded her tribe with an expertise her scant months alive didn't warrant, but it wanted schemas, and Nicau was unfortunately pathetic when it came to defending himself against creatures that he couldn't scream at before they killed him. Chieftess and three other kobolds would make for a strike force to take the jungle for all it had.

By the gleam in her golden eyes, she knew it. And she knew just how much attention that would garner her from the dungeon—for her, for her tribe. Not enough to allow the dryad's death, because the dungeon protected what it had worked on, but enough to get her something.

And for Nicau, who would bring back a king's bounty.

To the jungle, then to Calarata, then to whatever the dungeon feared.

The beginnings of a plan, small and shadow-flecked, grew in his mind.

Nicau nodded, stretching out a hand—Chieftess' claws were too sharp to properly mimic the human gesture, but she could tap palms with him, their own blend of cultures. "Okay," he said, mana sharp over his tongue. "Let's go."

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