Dragonheart Core

Chapter 156: Meteoric

I watched a brand-fucking-new Gold sprint through my dungeon.

This invasion had been teething at terror I was unfamiliar with feeling. Sea-drakes were paranoid beasts, because they were invested in living, but that paranoia was for larger things and monsters beyond comprehension. Other sea-drakes, sea serpents that encircled archipelagos, understandable threats.

Twelve bastards strolling through my Calaratan entrance were not that.

I'd killed one, and felt comfortable—killed a second, and felt even better—and then they'd torn secrets from my spiders once more, and instead of walking neatly into the trap Veresai's entire domain existed as, they'd found one of the lesser tunnels I'd woven through the Jungle Labyrinth as a way for my creatures to pass into the lower floors without fear. Hidden behind the algae, no living souls within to sense, a perfect disguise.

Up until the miserable cannibalistic brat had stuck his arm into the hole and gotten them out of the way of my mantis horde. Then, not to feel left out, the one with blood-attuned mana—Shoth—had eaten another invader, drank her blood down to the last drop, and reached Gold.

Well, at least I knew what had happened to Kriya some days ago when her mana went haywire. She'd ascended to Silver. Fascinating. Wonderful.

I was not one to partake in fear, for all I became its master when invaders entered my halls. But there was something cold in my core—something wretched—as I watched them. As the four floors they'd passed and left behind, and the fire in their eyes as they pressed on.

Shoth, laughing, cackling, thrumming with mana so bright and blood-stained it lapped at the air like fangs, grabbed Aedan and ran—took off down the tunnel, cramped though it was, sprinting away from the rest of their group. He left choked shouts and confusion in his wake, since apparently this had not been the plan, but Shoth gave less a shit about them. Just racing down through the darkness.

Rhoborh's presence redoubled, the scent of redwoods peering through my halls as he tracked his priest with cautious apprehension. They'd had a half-managed conversation, Aedan murmuring precocious things, before the more hungry of the others came to a head, and Aedan was left floundering. Silver, yes, but decidedly non combative—I had no otherworldly idea why Shoth was bringing him along. Why any of this was happening.

They were skipping the Jungle Labyrinth in its entirety and going to the Skylands. An invader had raised from Silver to Gold within my halls and left his group behind, despite the safety in numbers—something was happening. Something was happening.

I wasn't prepared.

Ghasavâlk and Syçalia had been my latest death approaching—two Golds, the strongest I'd ever faced, and they'd fought and bitched and griped at each other but progressed with terrifying speed through my halls. I had, mentally, set them at the peak of progression. This was what I was up against. This was what I needed to prepare for.

But I'd been an idiot. Because they weren't. Ghasavâlk had held to a strange internal code I wasn't privy to, enough that when faced with Seros, whom his grasp of the mind couldn't control, he'd cut his losses and run. And Syçalia had been vicious and fierce and ultimately treated as fodder for Ghasavâlk to leave.

What if she hadn't? What if she had come in alone, or ran from who was at her side? What if her goal hadn't been merely survival, riches, gold—but instead my core?

Well. I imagined it would go much like it was going now.

My floors, perfect in their brilliance, completely avoided and dodged by two fucking bastards.

All of my attention locked on Shoth and Aedan. Some part of me knew that Alda and whatever her fucking plan with Gnat was were still up there, still scheming, still digging through my dungeon to reach my core—but I couldn't focus on them. If I looked away from the Gold racing through my halls, he would reach me.

And if I stopped him, struck him down before he killed me, then maybe I would open my points of awareness and find Alda with her hand two inches above my core.

I wanted to laugh, almost. They'd fucked me. They'd fucked me so thoroughly I hadn't even noticed until I was drowning.

Down through the tunnels they ran, Aedan tripping and stumbling as he tried to keep up with Shoth's mana-enhanced speed, the moss blanketing his face so securely I could barely see his eyes. The tunnel they were in was one I had made for the original kobold—as such, it was large enough to run in and dropped them right by the entrance of the Skylands. Of course. Of fucking course.

I couldn't afford to give two shits if the invaders sensed me reaching out to my creatures with commands—forsaking the element of surprise for anything to block their path.

My mana snaked through the endless clouds of mist and thunder, the booming echo of Khasvar's presence and lightning-touched mana. The raid-frenzy roared in my wake, the ancient hunger of the Otherworld racing through all my creatures; the defense of those who cultivated it. My storm eel raised her pitted head, sparks crackling around wicked fangs—half a dozen mist-foxes emerged from sheltered burrows to trail illusions in their wake—swarming wasps by the colony took to the air with the demented buzz of murder on the mind–

All waking. All rising to my command.

All slow to react.

Because Shoth wasn't taking to this floor how he had to the others, when they sat in the entrance and dithered and formed a plan off their party's abilities. I'd watched them take their time, plan out actions, divide up who would charge and who would defend the back; it was the reason they'd gotten as far as they had, unlike the blind massacre that had been the fifty-person raid. Parties worked together. It was how they survived.

But Shoth wasn't. He kept his grip tight on Aedan's wrist, ignoring the moss crawling up his arm, and never broke his stride as he sprinted out of the tunnel onto the first island. A latent familiarity in his face—had Ghasavâlk told the Adventuring Guild of my fifth floor?—but more present was hardened determination. Stopping meant giving me time to catch up. To kill him.

So he just wouldn't stop.

That was why he had abandoned his group—why he had reached Gold and immediately changed his plan—why he was surging forward with this bitten kind of excitement–

He wasn't trying to beat me.

He was trying to outrun me.

Beneath the islands, the Magelords took to the endless rope bridges and stone ladders they'd constructed all over the floor—a thousand winding paths hidden from sight that led them all over the Skylands to gather materials and harvest food. Bright lights lit up their fingers, mana sparking as they prepared to launch spells at–

At nothing, because by the time they'd reached the top, Shoth had already raced over that island and made it onto the next.

His attunement was perfect. Every tooth in his mouth circled around him like a matching swarm of wasps, firing at anything directly in his path—mottled scorpions nestled in rock-like disguises, greater pigeons swooping in, even deflecting fired feathers from the bladehawk. He didn't focus on the goblins below, the shrieks of the baterwauls, the distant roar as Akkyst felt my panic reflect through our connection. He pierced through the line over the islands and ran.

Halfway. A cut on Shoth's cheek from a loosed feather and Aedan nearly getting stabbed by a hiding mottled scorpion. Two-thirds. A brief delay to crush a thrashing colony of groundbreaker ants. Three-fourths. The stormcaller sprite howled as a flurry of fangs battered back her ten-legged form. He kept running.

They were going to make it past the Skylands.

A horror deep as the oceans sank into my core.

They were going to make it past the Skylands.

Freshly finished, powerful, arching with creatures—designed to be a threat. All of my floors were. I counted their potential off of the monsters in their midst, how many bodies I could throw at my enemies. I had laughed as I built the Skylands, imagining invaders tumbling off the islands as my flying beauties picked them off, or being struck underfoot by those hidden in the clouds, or merely getting blasted with lightning before they could make themselves nuisances. What about the eyeblight butterflies, whose psionic hypnosis could trick invaders into falling? What about the mist-foxes, weaving illusions of floor for those unknowing to walk on?

Shoth ran, pulling Aedan behind him, and never slowed down enough to encounter any of them.

All my points of awareness lit into volcanic fire—I raced overhead, tracking them, gathering my mana, but there was nothing I could do. My floors were built like iron traps, teeth closing around hapless prey; but only when they were there to be bitten. All I could think of was my Fungal Gardens—the time I'd spent to painstakingly hide the lunar cave bear's dens, keeping them tucked away so only invaders trying to make it back out would be stopped by them. A way to keep those from escaping with information.

Why the fuck did that matter? Let them leave, let them scream my name from the mountaintops—what I needed to build my defenses against was letting them get to what mattered.

Shoth had eyes only for my core.

With the grace of avalanches, they charged into my hoard room, alight with gold and silver and jewels and a tiny, quartz-light fed growth of moonstar flowers. The bounty for any adventurer, ripe for the plucking. Luck-attuned mana hummed over the air.

Aedan's eyes, hidden behind moss, widened to fill his face. Surprise struck him like a meteor. His free hand reached out, trying to reach one of the delicate blooms–

But on they ran, because Shoth didn't stop, because he knew that his advantage was time and even a second's pause could push the bait back in my net. So he didn't stop. He laughed instead, a piercing, half-mad thing that echoed up his throat like magma. "Soon," he shouted to the ceiling even as he ran, because he could feel my mana, because he knew I was listening. "Soon I'll make you grow a field for me. I'll wear them like a crown!"

Like fucking hells he would. I roared, my mana thundering through the rocks—he laughed louder and ran on.

My entire dungeon quaked in face of my rage, but it could only smother the fear so much. Ghasavâlk had made it to the Skylands and turned around—Shoth and Aedan went further. Kept going. A Gold and Silver, willing and unwilling, and my potential death lay gasping in their hands.

Because I hadn't yet moved my core down to the eighth floor, given there was nothing living there. I was still in the Scorchplains.

Shoth and Aedan were a single fucking floor above enslaving me.

Composure was for those not about to die. I slammed my mana into the Hungering Reefs like a hurricane, sharp and heaving with raid-frenzy—Abarossa's boon kept all awake and alert, and they thundered to my call without a second's hesitation.

Back at the den, packing supplies and gathering food, Nicau and the kobolds raised their heads, confusion warring with understanding—those that had come from the Drowned Forest found familiarity quickly, but Nicau's thoughts rippled with shock. The sixth floor was he on, and rather content that he wouldn't have to face another invader unless he went higher. Even two Golds had only made it to the Skylands.

Not anymore. They'd exposed a weakness I didn't know I had.

The rest of my creatures rose to the bit, ceasing all other useless hunts as my mindless terror dove into their minds. They were a floor above my core. They had made it further than any invader before. They were still coming.

Go! I shrieked, pouring every point of mana I had into the call. Kill! Defend! Destroy!

Everywhere, water lurched and thrashed as life erupted beneath it; an explosion of everything clawing out to find what needed to be killed. And just in time, as footsteps pounded over the stone and two figures emerged onto the white sand of the first room.

Shoth stopped for the first time since ascending to Gold—he stared over the pristine blue waters currently thrashing with life as everything in my halls raced for him, rapids lurching and hunting cries filling the air.

There was no sprinting over islands here, not when I'd flooded the entire floor beyond a few scattered islands, and I watched him consider that. His water mage was dead, and both their attunements weren't meant for aquatic combat—a brief spark of hope bubbled up inside me, though the fear dragged it down again.

Maybe I could stop him. Maybe I could save myself.

Shoth hissed something wordless, shifting his weight between his feet. His fangs encircled around his head, dozens sharpened to a blade's point, blood splattered through his beard. He was far from dungeonborn, but I could almost see him thinking, searching for the fastest way forward.

At his side, Aedan heaved for air, ashen and drawn.

"We should turn around," he said, half-babbled. I didn't have to be tangible to feel the panic he oozed, a viscous sort of thing that would little doubt truly endear him to Rhoborh. He was shaking in his priestly robes as he looked over the madness ahead of them, panting hard from the run. "Back to the others—strength in numbers–"

"Getting cold feet?" Shoth sneered, fangs on full display. "And here I thought you were so fucking happy about getting to meet your god."

The water lapped at the sand beneath their feet. Aedan stared at the blue of certain death.

"We are not made for fighting underwater," he said, grasping for arguments like smoke. "We should wait for Therrón and–"

He stopped, paling.

Not one used to combat, it seemed, if he couldn't remember the corpse bloating up in the Underlake. I'd killed Therrón, Nolla, and I would kill them. They wouldn't reach my core. They couldn't.

Shoth's sneer didn't die so much as deepen. "Tough fucking luck," he barked. "We go to the end."

No time for thinking. My mana encircled him, a whirlpool, a hurricane—still holding onto Aedan's wrist, Shoth leapt into the water.

All around them, the Hungering Reefs erupted into action. Abarossa's boon crackled to life, hunger and hunter entwined, this ancient awakening as blood dropped into the water.

Shoth splashed into the reef and sunk like a stone—Aedan floundered down with him, dragged by the hand around his wrist, eyes wild with panic. They slammed into the sandy bottom with a burst of white, dusting through the currents, mana swirling over their lungs as it held air in their throats. A Calaratan perfect fucking defense against my aquatic floors.

Was this better for me? Worse? Easier to get them in an aquatic world they weren't honed to fight in, but every frantic stroke from Aedan or mana-boosted kick from Shoth pushed them closer to my core. Too close.

A floor above enslaving me.

Go! I screamed again, hurling my mana in useless spears through the water. For many creatures here, this was the first time seeing an invader, but my raid-frenzy filled them with a rage that couldn't be smothered by confusion. Triggerfish, yellow-black stripes cutting through the water, boiled up in disquieted schools; the gold-edged parrot shrieked overhead as she darted through the cloudsire palms; roughwater sharks, grey shadows traveling like ghosts to the entrance; the reefback turtle, normally quiet and content to let the world drift by as she carried coral-life on her shell, rearing back. Hundreds of reasons to stop the invaders. More. I needed to kill them.

Nicau, back in the lagoon, paced with a reckless energy that hummed and crackled through our connection. All around him, kobolds dove into the protected waters, scarlet scales beneath blue, heading for the threat I screamed into their minds—he and Chieftess hung back, barking orders, sending the rest in.

They were still too far away. Shoth bullied past the first room fast enough my mana ratcheted up to terror loud enough for Calarata to hear—he just held his breath and sprinted over the sandy bottom, dragging Aedan behind, kicking up clouds of white as he ducked and wove around predators and coral alike. The first room, still absent a roaming predator I had been relying on Abarossa to bring me, but she wouldn't, because she couldn't, because I was going to be enslaved–

But for all the kobolds were just making it out of the lagoon, my roughwater sharks were faster. Abarossa's blessing made them sharper than before, made them starve—a female with brutal scars from a narrow escape from with the sea serpent dove, mouth agape. Shoth snarled and threw a flurry of fangs at her, bludgeoning the flat of her face; but he was still gripping onto Aedan, tugging him through the bottleneck I'd carved between the first two rooms, and her charge was only thrown off enough to slam her fin into his side. More boiled out to match, half a dozen, full, the entire population of the Hungering Reefs. Shoth only had so many teeth, and water made him too slow to run past.

I watched him choose.

"Up!" Shoth roared, more bubbles than words. Caught between death by adventurer and death by shark, Aedan flailed to get his feet underneath him and kick off. Water, swirling, another shark ricochetting past—but a Gold was exponentially more powerful than the majority of my creatures, no matter how much mana I shoved into them, and he kicked the approaching shark in the fucking nose and made it to the surface.

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And luck of all lucks, they'd drifted enough during the fight to be near an island, one of the dredges of sand I'd tugged up to have a place for my trees—and Shoth hurled Aedan forward and swam to it like his life depended on it. Both of ours did.

Aedan splashed into the surf, dragging himself up with shaking limbs. The ambient mana suffused around him to replace what had been lost but he was a wretched miserable shape of a thing still, deep in my hell-paradise, fraught with hysteria.

"We must go back," he croaked, digging his feet into the sand. "This is not safe."

In another time, I'd have found his utter terror at adventuring entertaining; humourous, almost. But not now. Not in the Hungering Reefs. Not a floor above my core.

And I wasn't the only one ignoring the gibbering priest—because Shoth wasn't looking at him. Shoth was looking at the denizen of the island they'd just clambered up on.

The vampiric dryad.

This wasn't the isle of her Ancestral Tree, that being safely sequestered away in the lagoon, but she hunted free across the Hungering Reefs and this pocket of land was blood-splattered in her wake.

Elation. She'd murder them. She'd strip them down to the marrow and drink what was left.

Three on one island. Two that needed to die.

The dryad cocked her head to the side—the last time she had interacted with humans had been when she was only a tree, albeit one with Rhoborh's blessing of almost-sentience. But now she stood in a form that matched theirs, if a macabre reimagining of limbs and joints and claws. But past the hunger, the desire to feed her Ancestral Tree, I sensed a curiosity. She wanted to learn about these creatures.

But not more than she wanted to kill them.

Shoth stared at her. At the matching tones of her bark and thorns, so similar to the mangroves of a floor above and those dotted around here. He wasn't an idiot, no matter how I wished him to be. He could guess what she was.

And unfortunately, he'd also caught her fresh off a hunt, with water dripping through her bark-like skin and around the points of her crown of thorns. He knew she could swim. He knew the water wasn't safe.

And, wretchedly, he knew the longer he waited, the less advantage he had.

Shoth bared his fangs, half floating around his shoulders and all dripping with scarlet. A plan, ramshackle and boiling, spat itself into existence; one of his incisors darted forward and settled itself in the hollow of Aedan's throat, pricking blood when he swallowed—the priest froze, moss crawling over his robes in patches of sickly green.

"Swear to your god," Shoth snarled, hands outstretched warily towards the dryad. "Get us protection from it."

Oh, I didn't fucking think so.

Aedan clasped his palms together, eyes so wide I could see the white in a perfect circle around the brown—he tried to bow his head but remembered the fang at the last second, more crimson dripping down his throat. A prayer hit the air.

Rhoborh's scent flooded the floor, mist over redwood forests. Because of course he was here. How polite. He'd get to watch me kill his priest with a perfect view.

Aeden stiffened as his god floated down around him, what would have been soothing if not for the situation. Even Shoth seemed aware, eyeing the water and circling shark fins with his fangs twitching.

The dryad sensed the change, and took it with all the lovely murderous tendencies she'd had well before she'd sprouted legs.

Through the high-arching terror that stained all of my thoughts, I felt her notice the scent, notice who it came from, and move.

Shoth immediately threw half his fangs at her—she wove and bobbed around them with a willow's grace, limbs clicking and switching. I sang a song of murder overhead, driving her on, spreading intangible wings wide over the floor. The island was small and her speed made it smaller—she leapt at them with a warbling snarl and claws extended–

Stop, Rhoborh murmured. High above in the Drowned Forest, the canals thrashed.

Excuse me?

If Aedan made it to my core and enslaved me, Rhoborh would lose his floor, his blessing, his mana on Aiqith—it was therefore in his best interest I killed these invaders before they got the chance. I did no such thing as stopping.

The dryad kicked up, slavering, blood dripping from her fangs as her prey got closer. Aedan managed half a shriek around Shoth's fang. All around, the star-burn crackled, picking up like lightning about to strike.

He is not here to claim your core, Rhoborh said, echoing and jagged.

What fucking confidence. I didn't care how pious priests were, any human would be overcome with avarice when they set eyes on my core. If Aedan made it to my seventh floor, he was going to enslave me, and this stupid motherfucking god was trying to stop me–

Shoth lurched back and slammed a kick into Aedan's back, hurling the priest forward, a blockade between him and the dryad. The longer she spent killing Aedan, the longer she was distracted, the more time he had to reach me. The closer he got.

Panic drained me down to a basal thing. My dryad, unnamed though she was, felt the reflection and reached out—her terrible claws arched over Aedan's face, fangs bared–

Mana, freed from some unseen shackle, crashed into the dryad.

She shrieked, thrashing, but whatever had been unleashed into my dungeon was invulnerable—it pinned her in place as Aedan breathed terror into her bark-covered arm. I lurched and spiraled around, digging sharpened mana into the blockade, trying to free her, to let her defend me, to help me survive–

Redwoods swarmed me. They sank into my core and grew roots like chains.

He is not yours to kill, Rhoborh boomed, terrible in his wrath. Our deal was signed before the God of Magic—you will not break it.

I babbled like a baitfish between a hunter's fangs, throwing myself with useless repetition at Rhoborh's mana. I didn't fucking care he was a god, it wasn't his life on the line, it was mine–

Rhoborh's voice softened—not soft, but more gentle. I will not allow him to take you, he said, and once more his mana wrapped around me, snaking past the jagged edges of my terror. But the other is not under my control. Go! Defend!

He released me like a fire-drake's breath—I crashed outward, slamming back into my dungeon. Aedan stayed frozen beneath the dryad, waiting for a death I wasn't allowed to give him, but much like Syçalia before he had been changed from ally to distraction. In the time Rhoborh had taken from me, Shoth abandoned the priest and dove into the third room of the Hungering Reefs.

Gone. Going. Faster.

The vampiric dryad snarled, wrestling with invisible bounds, unable to attack Aedan but unwilling to leave him—I fled from the scene and followed the Gold, the monster, the killer, into my third room.

The last of the Hungering Reefs; my room of predators. The sea serpent was here, twisting through the false pirate shipwreck I'd sunk in the center, and Seros, bracing himself beneath the quartz-lights in the far back. Two monsters, fast, lethal, dangerous—my greatest defense against those that sought to consume me. To control me.

Eldest was Seros, and he had felt my fear when Romei had stretched her hand out to grab my core—ever since Shoth had drained his teammate dry, ascended to Gold, and my terror sang through my mana, he had been alert and hungering. Even now, he watched the water before him with bristling tension, iridescent frills extended and mana lapping at the air. His tail whipped against the stone.

He was guarding the tunnel down a floor, down to where I was, to where I waited, defenseless, exposed. But his true strength lay in the water, in the Song he had only just learned to sing—I coiled through our connection, pouring plans into his mind. He needed to press forward. He needed to fight.

Shoth hurled more fangs at a swarm of greater crabs, puncturing emerald carapaces and sending those younger drifting down to the sand in lifeless heaps. My fear ratcheted higher.

Seros hissed, a rumbling curse straight from his budding draconic legacy, and dove into the water.

Half a room away was Shoth and still the water was instantly no longer his to partake in—a melodic roar and currents sprang into existence, weaving through the tower-reefs, a labyrinthian nightmare for any that didn't know the Song. Seros lashed his mighty tail and created something to rival Mayalle, every drop of mana spun into maelstrom all creatures of the deep oceans feared. Even the sea serpent bucked and swerved against it.

And made himself weak.

It happened too fast to stop.

Seros wove a trap, a perfect prison, an impossibility to defeat the invader—and changed the sea serpent from ally to hindrance, fighting against the new currents he whipped up. He was used to the Hungering Reefs as it typically was, the only currents from the temperature differences I'd woven through rooms; what Seros created was far beyond that, and he didn't know how to deal with it. How to swim around that which tugged and pulled at his enormous length.

That was how my dungeon worked—I kept my stronger creatures from killing each other, because I needed them, because I wanted their strength; but a lack of murder didn't mean companionship. Seros and the sea serpent dueled, fought each other, sharpened their fangs on each other's scales—and when they approached death, they pulled back and went their own way. They never hunted together. They never worked together.

And as Seros changed the Hungering Reefs into a death trap, something to stop Shoth from ever getting close to my core, he both stopped the invader and my sea serpent.

Shoth saw that.

Free of Aedan's dead weight, he moved with a deliberation and agility that suggested a finer control over his body than even his Gold strength should have provided; over the white sand he ran, heading straight for them both and heedless of the water, eyes burning.

Shoth opened his mouth—a gummy maw bleeding scarlet—and fired every single fang he had at the sea serpent.

Impossibly great though he could be, he was still mortal. He shrieked and fell back in a cloud of crimson, unable to dodge, scales torn free and frills shredded and–

And one eye shattered and popped, spilling gore into the water. Gone. Destroyed.

Just like that, the two-pronged approach of two of my fiercest creatures was missing a side, leaving an opening in the gap.

Shoth's mana lurched and all his teeth returned to him, slotting into his mouth, and I watched him almost fucking glow—the sea serpent's blood filled his mouth and funneled mana into his channels, bright and impossible. He kicked off the ground in a false enhancer's move, no precision or intention beyond just shoving mana into his body where his attunement didn't normally put it, and he exploded upward with all the strength of a volcano.

He shot out of the surface of the water high enough his feet cleared the waves—a perfect arc high above all danger—and slammed back in on the other side of the sea serpent, who thrashed through half-blindness and pain.

Seros whipped around, our soul's connection lighting up like a storm, but while Shoth would never win in a fight against him, his plan didn't rely on that. Didn't need strength, didn't need clever tactics, didn't need everything I'd spent months of my new life devoting myself to.

He just needed speed.

And with the mana boost from brutalizing the sea serpent, Shoth kicked through the third room of my Hungering Reefs faster than Seros could dispel his own currents and make new ones. His plan had been to create a funnel, to shove anyone in the floor directly into his fangs—but his grasp on the Song was still new, still tenuous. Stronger than currents, stronger than the cove outside, but Shoth was a damnable fucking Gold; the mana he held was loud and shrieking and powerful.

He pushed through the currents, kicking off the ground with a blast of white sand, right as Seros' fangs snapped through where he had been.

My mana screamed.

Shoth clambered out of the water, laughing. Laughing, a deranged, astonished kind of laugh—he hadn't expected that to work, to escape nearly fucking unscathed, to make it through an unknown floor with no more loss than a man he'd dragged alongside him. Behind him, the water boiled, Seros' fury as he dragged himself up to the ledge—but Shoth just picked himself up and ran blind into the tunnel, never stopping, never slowing.

There were no words in draconic, Viejabran, runes, or anything else in the world to explain my terror. The sheltered world I'd existed in, waiting for invaders just for the mana they'd provide; the paradise I'd made for myself, creating Havens, shipwrecks, hoard rooms. A thousand things for comfort.

Not enough for survival.

Seros was already plunging his way down to the Scorchplains—but he was behind, and Shoth ran faster. That was it. I had no one else to speak with. All creatures in the Scorchplains were unnamed, untested, little more than those I'd wanted to fit the fiery place. I shared no connection to the Otherworld with any of them. No Named. No Seros.

My strongest creature, my first, my most precious; left behind. In the water, he was lightning—pulled by the Song and the currents and the miraculous abilities he'd woven from understanding—but on land, he was limited by four limbs and weight. Shoth ran like the hells bayed at his back. Seros wouldn't be able to catch up.

An invader on the floor of my core, and nothing before him.

Panic spread over survival like an insidious infection, but I lurched past it—grappled for a plan past anything, everything. I hadn't stopped Shoth, but I had gotten him to pause; broken his concentration, if only for a second. I just had to do it again for longer. For fatally long.

The Hungering Reefs had slowed him down by sheer presence of something he couldn't just run over—the Scorchplains would have to do the same. Choked in darkness and omnipresent smoke, it had something—even the strange awareness that Golds had only extended to mana, sensing living things and what they wielded, not environments. So perhaps he could sense the bounding deer and scorch hounds charging for him, but not where my core laid.

Unless he could sense the mana spilling out of my core and follow that.

I didn't know. I didn't know.

There was no subtlety, not anymore—my mana roared over the plains with no heed given to whether Shoth would hear it.

Deep in their lava pools, magma salamanders raised their bulbous heads, skin cracking and weeping molten rock. Spined lizards flecked their detachable darts and skittered forward, following my cry, snaking through the darkness on clever limbs; scorch hounds by the litters, the packs, the dozens, came trotting out of their hunt with their ears raised and eyes lit with embers. And–

The kobold. One of my first creatures, from so long ago when I'd only had two floors, never evolving, never following the others of his creed—he'd come down here to stay with the scorch hound he'd chosen to tame, for what little progress he'd made. Bestial he'd become to match, hunting with claws and a fledging smoke-breath, eyes wide and black in the darkness. In the eldest group of scorch hounds he came running, loping over the basalt with his claws near dragging and horns thrown back.

All of them. So few evolved, so few tested; the problem with lower floors, where the mana was more dense and the invaders non-existent. All they had ever fought was each other.

Strategy. Strategy. I didn't have anything—my raid-frenzy was a blanket thing, a summoning cry for all dungeonborn to defend. But I relied on my Named to spearhead the charge, to lead those with lesser intelligence into clever twists and backshot attacks. No longer. They weren't here.

All I had was those that were.

The magma salamanders were slow, hideously so. Shoth would make it to my core long before they got out of their lava pools. The spined lizards were fast and ranged, but not enough for someone with a Gold-sense. The bounding deer were beings made of fear and built for running away. The mottled scorpions stayed for stationary, hidden attacks.

The scorch hounds. It had to be them. They raced forward, clawing up grit and dust, an echoing charge past the din. Fire choked in their throats, these burning bites to latch into unknowing flesh. Their hunger. Their drive.

Shoth's plan relied on running. On speed. No matter the death lurking in every corner, he wouldn't stop to examine it, to come up with tactics through the dark; he just ran blindly on.

But he had a Gold-sense.

My scorch hounds reached him, a thundering charge over the stone; the eldest, the largest, the one the kobold was determined to train, ran to him, ears pinned back and fire in her throat. Her claws pushed off the uneven pillars, maw agape, death in all of her thoughts–

Mana redoubled, bouncing off Shoth's awareness. His head whipped in her direction.

He snarled at the smoke. Three fangs burst from his mouth, snapping through the air like ivory thorns, thudding into her chest—the scorch hound yelped, thumping to the ground, and–

And stood back up.

She seemed as surprised as I was—because instead of gaping holes pouring blood over the basalt floor of her home, she was just flinching from budding bruises. Yelping, whining, but clambering back up to her paws.

I wasn't bound by the darkness and smoke that filled the Scorchplains; my mana saw more, saw all. And I was the only one to see what had happened.

Shoth's fangs were just that—fangs. Small and sharp enough to pierce through most creatures, because the vast majority of creatures only grew enough armour to the point that it didn't stop them. It was the reason my armoured jawfish had died out; too much weight, too thick, and the creature couldn't hunt enough to support it. In much the same vein, my scorch hound only had fur.

And the houndspore mushrooms.

Those strange, bristling masses over her chest and back—organic black-grey growths, with a hardened exterior and spongy interior. Thick enough she'd had to figure out how to walk again, how to hunt, how to move—and thicker than any other creature would have, because it was two creatures in one.

Thick enough that Shoth's fangs sank into the mushroom flesh and got stuck.

I didn't know what I was thinking. I didn't know if I was thinking. All I knew was that there was something to stop Shoth from enslaving my core less than a thousand feet away, and it was all I had.

Go! I howled, a canine warcry—there was no time for packs fighting against each other for territory, for prey, for food; there was just the monster in their midst, and the death that hung imminently over us all. The strategy came to me and I plunged into each of their minds, tearing through their memories, their understanding—those with the houndspore armour lunged to the front, becoming as shields to those without, a legionnaire of protection.

Shoth ran on, stumbling and tripping over the uneven pillars. He fired more fangs; scorch hounds fell and stumbled as fangs embedded in their armour tugged them in the opposite direction, some pulling free, some firmly stuck. But my plan, fledgling though it was, held—the shield hounds protected those without the mushroom, giving them opportunities to lunge around the back and cut off Shoth's charge, force him to change directions to avoid running into them. With his Gold-sense, he could feel them, but not the terrain. Slowly, slowly, they started to push him away from the dead sprint towards my core.

But it was a stalemate. They couldn't attack before he would fire on them with his fangs; and for all their armour protected them, it wasn't infallible. Already two had died, and the scratches one had struck over his calf hadn't stopped him. He kept running. He kept running.

Shoth, blind, missing half his fangs, stumbled over the halfway point in the Scorchplains.

And suddenly I was young again, trapped in a mountain with a single room as my halls, the den of a lizard that had no reason to help me, and there was a human named Romei with a torch that burned my spiders and feet that squashed my mushrooms, and she saw me, and she knew what I was, and what that meant, and she reached for me, and she tried–

I roared.

It wasn't like before. What I'd had wasn't a dungeon—just a room a dungeon core lived in. Shoth existed as an untouchable mass, a siphon for any mana that couldn't raise a stone tomb or hurl stalactites from the ceiling or spawn a sarco crocodile right on his toes. I couldn't.

But I had creatures now. And they heard my desperation.

The Scorchplains awoke.

A truce that had never existed and likely never would again surged as the bounding deer charged, fast and impossible—their towering leader, twelve points along his antlers, led the stampede with a throaty cry. Prey they were, but not when their very existence was threatened; not when I needed them.

At their feet, darting around hooves and baying murder, the three packs of scorch hounds became one. Those that had armour, those that didn't; pups and elders and hunters and everything. Everyone.

Shoth flinched, the stampede erupting through the darkness. I felt his Gold-sense go wild, screaming of the dozens of lives racing for him, all directly ahead. His choice was to puncture through or turn back.

His plan only allowed for one.

He dug his boots into the stone and ran.

They met him with the crash of a storm against the coast; blood against blood against blood. The leader of the bounding deer died—gurgled around a punctured throat, hooves scratching at the basalt to kick up sparks. A scorch hound clawed through the wound in her lung to snap her fangs into the muscle of his leg, fire and burnt flesh crackling between her fangs, before incisors spilled her guts over the stone. Spined lizards, skittish and small, answered his swarm of weapons with a cloud of their own. Darkness for all, but his progress slowed—slowed–

And then, from the darkness, deep scarlet scales and twisting horns, my kobold slammed into his back.

Down in a thrashing pile of limbs—far from the whelp who shook rats to fight his battles for him, he was built by hunting alongside the scorch hounds in the unforgiving world of the Scorchplains. Shoth was taller than him, and stronger, but he was caught unawares and blinded by the smoke—the kobold crashed them both into the ground. The invader bellowed fury, twisting around to lurch back to his feet; but my kobold weathered the blows, tangling through his legs to keep him down. To struggle around to get on top.

We didn't have a connection through the Otherworld; no soul singing alongside mine. But I felt the victory burning through his thoughts regardless.

Shoth was dangerous. Impossibly so. He'd found a weakness I didn't know I had, evolved to Gold, and made it less than half a floor away from my core—but he had gotten there by being fast, by being untouchable, and I had finally slowed him down.

When I was a sea-drake, I had been immortal, every time except one.

Shoth was unstoppable, up until the beast-tamer kobold sank his claws into the Gold's throat and tore it open.

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