Dragonheart Core

Chapter 24: Waters Below

Bubbles meandered their way up to pop cheerfully against the ceiling, kicked up by the armourback sturgeon shuffling through the sand for food. He had been joined by one of his brethren, a foot shorter and even less attentive to the dangers surrounding her, and they both swam merrily on without a care.

The rest of the inhabitants on the third floor couldn't say the same.

The school of silverheads had already done what most in their position would fulfill over the course of years; they'd found nests to lay eggs, got around to doing that, and then almost immediately were killed by the new tyrants of the silvertooth swarm. One blood-frenzy that had taken hours for them to come out of and the silverheads were still cowering in the little nooks and crannies they'd managed to find so far, maybe half surviving.

A good sign my third floor was working. I couldn't have been more proud.

The greater crabs had poked their antennae around, curious, but found the second floor more to their liking, and Seros had taken approximately ten seconds to run the quick errand of bringing my heart down to a hollow on the third floor before never leaving again. His hydrokinesis ran wild with so much water surrounding him, endless and flowing; I'd never seen him more happy.

Unfortunately for me, there were still tasks to complete on the floors above.

I slipped a point of awareness into a den just as a pale glow subsided, five spiders shaking off the last of their evolution to look at the world with new eyes. Webweavers.

They had stayed about the same size as a cave spider, half a foot in diameter—maybe that was normal for spiders? Growing massive might take a very specialized evolution—but instead of a ruddy red they were a pale white, scuttling like ghosts in the night. Even their eyes were milky, the exact hue as the silk of their webs; better for disguise, I guessed. I certainly enjoyed it more. The same claw-tipped legs, the same jagged mandibles.

The real change was in their intelligence.

Even as they just woke up, I could see them communicating; their thoraxes trembled and little puffs of pheromones drifted out, quickly caught by the others with the favour returned. In seconds they had all grouped up, twitching legs and mandibles as if explaining a plan.

Utterly fascinating. I dragged more points of awareness in to watch from every angle.

They didn't seem to talk in a manner I recognized, not looking at each other or really even acknowledging other presences, prodding their front legs around their den. But still, all of them patiently took in the pheromones and sent their own back, clearly saying something.

Hm. I looked closer.

There were the pheromones, yes, microscopic specks I could only see through my omnipresent gaze, but there was something else; a thin little trail of mana, anchored at the heart of one webweaver and connecting to the others. And again. All of them had it.

As they spread out around their den, the connecting strands of mana woven between them all almost looked like a web.

That was absolutely worth looking more into. I pressed a soft, guiding influence into one of the webweaver's minds, nudging it to look to the great outside; it followed my hint blindly, scuttling outside with its eight eyes looking everywhere. Her four fellows were right on her trail.

I led them along a little march, sending pulses of soothing mana to the horned serpent in their path; she raised her antlered head, watching the little process of ghostly spiders scurry around her. Her thoughts were lazy contentment, an enormous stone-backed toad dissolving away in her stomach. She flicked her tongue at the new creatures before curling back up to sleep.

They arrived at a stalagmite, tucked away in a corner relatively safe from the larger dangers of the floor; right above the still bloody evolving ironback toad, actually. Gods if the little bastard hadn't taken forever. His metallic coat must be the reason for the delay; it had better be worth it. At this point my kobolds would start mining themselves before they could get access to the new material.

The first paused at the base, mandibles not quite twitching as much flailing, and started to scurry up its base; her clawed feet dug into the stone and propelled her neatly up the shear wall, her milky white carapace blending in with the silver-grey of the limestone. Her brethren waited until she sent some clarification that it was safe and then they all scurried after her, examining what would be their new home.

Temporary home, though. The stalagmite was large but not immensely so, enough that one or two spiders could cover it in webs. I had five webweavers and a hankering for more; I would need to find them a larger spot to rule over.

Although– how effective would they really be? That had always been my problem with my various cave spiders in the past. With the notable exception of the jeweled jumper and his bullshit venom, none of my spiders could really do anything against adventurers. And as much as I relied on the steady stream of refilling mana my spiders reclaimed for me through insects and larger creatures, it really wasn't so much that I could afford to devote myself to working on them instead of my other creatures. Maybe I should just stick to giving them the stalagmite for now, wait for more to join their ranks or another to evolve—

Something new darted through my first floor entrance.

Or– new in a relative sense, insofar that this little bastard had been bugging me for days now. It was a bat, small and wretchedly shrill, screaming as it bobbed and swayed through my fungal gardens. And, as always, it managed to find a spider perched on the edge of its web and promptly snagged a midnight snack.

But unlike the other times, something actually noticed.

The webweavers stiffened, raising their heads off the stalagmite as if they could see up a floor. More pheromones drifted through the air, but there it was again– the little bolt of mana colliding with the rest of the group like lightning loosed from a storm.

Like they were connected.

I wished I could have gone back in time to prove whether there had been a connection of mana from when the cave spider died, but I'd bet gold there had been; a communal species both to themselves and others on their evolutionary line. Okay.

And there was always the counter to how ineffective spiders were against humans; where one failed, a whole fuckin' bunch of them probably wouldn't.

A coordinated attack of spiders, whether stationary in a web or scuttling about on the floor itself, could devastate a group of invaders. Spiders were naturally easy to overlook, both camouflaged and rather small, and so they could sneak up on unassuming invaders shooting for the more visible threats of serpents or crabs. That could be their undoing.

And if the webweavers could evolve to the point of not just connecting with their evolutionary line but commanding them…

Well. That settled it. So far I'd been content to have spiders as a roaming threat of my floors, letting them fight for scraps or control a limited territory, but no longer. I'd give them a proper place on the second floor and I'd really start thinking about building my fourth with them in mind.

Also, I wanted that bat.

-

Velesso swam closer, twisting prone to avoid scraping his lower fins against the rough stone; he disliked swimming so close to the walls of the cove, without the freedom of open depths and nothing to tear at his scales.

But in a case like this, he was certainly willing to ignore it.

Himself and Chelle were at the front of the pod, leading the others to where she had watched her nightmarketers go, with three other merrows taking up the back. Other guard-patrols, he didn't know them, but the weapons they gripped and the magic they wielded told him they were plenty strong enough for the mission.

And in the center, the Priestess.

Taller than any of them, fins draped in strands of pearl and amethyst and fossilized kelp, an enormous staff with a diamond worth more than his lifetime salary, she swam peacefully as if this was a normal morning's call. Not the potential discovery of a new dungeon.

More to the point, a dungeon that merrows could actually access.

Their pod slipped through the rising dawn waters, dodging around the Dread Pirate's underwater shelters and the posts embedded in the ground from the docks, Chelle leading the rest. He followed at a distance, running his claws over the kelp-wrapped trident over his back.

Until eventually, they came across the slump that stood for the eastern side of the cove.

Chelle nodded at the shear wall ahead, rough and cragged; it descended almost straight down, smoothed by time but still holding the original shape of the meteor that had carved out the cove, the mountains lying beyond.

If the dungeon was like any of its brethren, it would dig down; dig down to an area where it was below sea level.

An area they could access.

The Priestess swam forward and all the merrows dutifully parted before her, bowing their heads before her dignified approach. She inspected the cove wall curiously, white-ringed eyes narrowed. She swept her staff forward, the diamond thrumming with magic as she sent some sort of detection spell deeper into the stone.

Whatever it was, it came back positive.

"To obtain a dungeon's core…" she hummed, clicking her claws together. "To become the first merrow High Lord of the Leóro Kingdom." Her voice was nothing but quiet awe. "Our own dungeon. Abbarosa above."

Velesso knew damn well what she meant.

There was no king of Leóro, not since the elder days of the Last King; his descendents still lived as the prince and princesses of the realm, having nominal power over the Citadel itself, but that wasn't where the true authority rested.

No, that was purely with the High Lords.

The Last King had made the decree that those who held power equal to him could join his royal ranks, a workaround for the archaic dynasty laws; a way for even the most peasant-born of Leóro to rise to the upper ranks. The exact meaning of power equal was made pretty clear when set next to his obsession with the dungeon he controlled below the Citadel.

If any member of the kingdom obtained a dungeon core, they would be raised to High Lord and given a territory to rule over.

For the merrows that had gone so often overlooked by the Lords that tried to take their oceans and refused to trade with them, that would give them true power.

And while they might not have had the best grasp on the inner workings of Calarata, Velesso was still pretty damn sure the dungeon was new and unknown. For there not to be a massive rampage of unranked adventurers with gold in their eyes swarming it, they had to have been relatively quick in discovering it.

The other High Lords—most of them, at least—left their dungeons open to adventurers, either to train or gather mana-rich supplies, but with the harsh restriction that there was never allowed to be an actual attempt on the core. Death was the kindest punishment for such a crime; the Lords were not fond of anyone trying to remove their power.

So for a baby dungeon with its core still intact, it would be nothing but a beacon call for any adventurers with half a rusty dagger to their name.

And thus the perfect target for the merrows.

The Priestess swam forward, closing her eyes. She pressed her palm flat to the stone, angling her staff so the diamond pointed deep to the waters below, light splashing through the currents around. "Abbarosa, lend me strength," she murmured.

Boom.

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