Dragonheart Core

Chapter 104: Claimed Epithet

It was, admittedly, a little awkward.

His surcoat was a beautiful thing and it was also a size or so too large, which was the only reason Nicau was able to shove the mist-wolf's pelt, the iridescent feather, the gourd plant, and the mystic scroll underneath it. They clattered awkwardly against his chest, arms keeping the coat tight around them, and either made him look as broad as a warrior or with an impressive beer gut. So.

Suffice to say, Nicau was having a great time.

He'd figured out everything he could for the dungeon—Lluc, under order of the Dread Pirate, was constructing an Adventurer's Guild directly outside the Alómbra Mountains, and when it was open people would be allowed to try for the core. Everyone he talked to didn't know why, considering that was antithetical to every other core out there—the owners didn't want people trying to revoke their ownership, after all—but they were practically vibrating with excitement. Even the Silent Market, staple of Calarata, had its doors closed for the moment in anticipation and preparation.

Nicau had done his best to smile and bob his head and pretend he didn't have intricate knowledge of said dungeon, and considering he hadn't been dragged before Varcís Bilaro in chains, he'd presumably done a decent enough job.

Tough luck, being the emissary of a dungeon core.

But now, with the sun slipping to the horizon and clouds pouring over the Alómbra Mountains, he'd say he had done his task, and he was rather looking forward to sleeping on his nice, soft moss bed for a day. Maybe two.

So he left the open market, buying one last fried dove skin for the road, and headed back for the docks. Hopefully, considering the darkness of night, he'd be able to slip past the construction mages without being noticed. Nicau idly juggled a few plans as he walked, boots clicking in a very satisfying manner on the stone, stomach pleasantly full and pride well-stoked from all the bowing and good-sir's he'd received—it was rather nice to be perceived as rich, it turned out. A lovely thing.

The shadowthief rat squeaked something and scrambled off his shoulder; she skittered down his arm in a frankly rude way and plopped onto the street, tail lashing as she padded forward. Her black eyes gleamed as she got her little paws around one of the street's cobbles, picking and shoving at the rock until it begrudgingly slid to the side. She nosed her way underneath, cheerily ignoring everyone else on the street, her silver fur blending it with the stone until she was little more than a mound in an uneven street.

Nicau lost the battle with his urge to roll his eyes, but his lips quirked up regardless. Shadowthief was a very apt name; he'd had to pry her away from at least two dozen passersby with their gleaming jewelry and trinkets. At least this time she was taking from the street and not from someone that could fight back.

So he just leaned against the back wall and crossed his arms, keeping his treasures pinned to his chest, and watched her. Calarata's streets weren't well-made but they were well-worn, and the stones were embedded deep in the ground. As someone only a foot long, she had to muscle most of her nonexistent mass into getting the thing up to find whatever shiny she'd seen before. Fascinating, honestly; considering Nicau didn't think he'd be doing a whole lot more growing in the future, he could learn from this. Maybe he could–

There was a touch, feather-soft, on his wrist; Nicau's momentum, slight though it was, fell to the wayside. Someone had grabbed his arm.

He was reminded, a little unwillingly, that this was Calarata—a pirate town filled with people who were hungry for gold or prestige or blood.

Things that Nicau, unfortunately, had in spades.

He got a brief moment to remember that before he was unceremoniously dragged into a nearby alley and shoved up against a wall, stars popping behind his eyes as his head slammed into the brick. He cursed, iron in his mouth—what the fuck–

His newest apparent friend, a hunched, gaunt man wearing grey-black clothing and a hyena's hunger, muscled him up against the back wall, bearing his teeth. In his free hand he had a knife, an honestly quality thing with a notched blade and carved hilt, long as his forearm and gleaming in the evening light.

Nicau probably would have spent more time admiring it if the tip wasn't pressed to his throat.

"Gold," the man spat, eyes narrowed and flighty. "Hand it over if you want that coat to stay blue instead o' red—not afraid to bleed you."

Right. Pirates. Fuck.

But he was a pirate himself, now.

Nicau inhaled, air catching sharp and fluttering on his teeth; the ocean-deep pool of mana in his chest stretched at the motion, rising through his throat and coating his tongue; he knew, more than saw, that his eyes were now glowing. The man's face lit up in blue-gold.

"Stop," he said, and pushed the weight of his command alongside it.

The man froze.

A little clumsily, Nicau pushed him away, stumbling away from the brick wall. The knife had never touched him but he could feel its phantom touch on the hollow of his throat, the iron-sharp point threatening to spill his lifeblood over Calarata's filthy streets. But that hadn't happened, and it wouldn't, because Nicau had power now.

He didn't know if he was at rank Bronze—didn't know if he could be, honestly, considering a dungeon's abilities felt not in the human world—but either way, he wasn't the same as he had been before, when this mugger would have killed him. Hells, he hadn't even used his previous power, that of seeing mana trails, in months. This voice was his ability now.

Nicau stepped back, heart hammering in his chest; there was a thread in his chest, something thin and intangible connecting him with the mana. He poked at the feeling, frowning.

It felt like as long as he kept feeding mana into the command, and the man with his weak, powdery mana couldn't fight back, he would stay stopped for as long as Nicau could maintain it. Which, not that long considering he didn't have the largest mana stores in existence, but certainly long enough.

The man was staring at him behind his frozen eyes, fearful and wide—which, fucking deserved. Nicau was short as shit and in a lordling's clothing, but he wasn't weak. Muggers needed to pick better targets.

But now, hm.

What to do with said mugger.

Nicau stared at him, which had sweat beading on the man's brow—probably expecting death at a minimum for his slight, and his eyes flicked down to Nicau's hands. Searching for a knife or sword, most likely.

Not that Nicau did, uh. Particularly have a weapon capable of killing.

But the man did.

So Nicau reached out and plucked the man's dagger from his stiff grip, running his thumb over the carved hilt; a bit long for him, elbow to palm, but it would do. Maybe back in the dungeon, he could dry a serpent's skin and fashion it into some sort of sheath.

Not his staff, bloodstained and cracked as it was, but perhaps something better.

"I won't take your life this time," he said, because for all he'd lost the vast majority of his morals in joining with a dungeon, he wasn't quite at the stabbing-people-in-dark-alleys step of his journey yet. "But remember this. To challenge a–"

He stopped.

Pirate was on the tip of his tongue; an accurate phrase, bursting with potential that still made his soul sing, but there was already a certain pirate in Calarata. The Dread Pirate.

Nicau wasn't him, and he didn't want to be; but he wanted a title for his own.

And his mind slipped, quietly, to another phrase that existed on the Leórian Peninsula; those who commanded a dungeon core.

The High Lords.

Now. Nicau was under absolutely no delusions that he was in charge of the dungeon—gods, he'd had to barter for his own life with a pigeon—but to the outside world, they wouldn't know the difference of being a High Lord or being dungeonborn. And, well—the dungeon had Named him. That was a connection well past what the common folk would understand.

He wasn't the Dread Pirate. He wasn't a High Lord.

But Nicau was a pigeoncatcher no longer, and he would make his own legacy.

"The Pirate Lord will spare you," he said, summoning every drop of charisma and mockery and the distilled arrogance that came from power. "In servitude, you will spread my name; tell those of Calarata."

An opportunity to make his job easier next time.

"Those at the Adventuring Guild," Nicau said, and sharpened the mana that made up his command—maybe? He was a newborn fumbling around at controls, he had no idea what he was doing—so it echoed through the man's head. "Tell them of the Pirate Lord, and that he will speak to them once they are done. Prepare them."

There. Was that dramatic enough? Probably? Maybe?

Nicau was about to throw up and maybe pass out, so instead he tucked the dagger to his side and strode out of the alley. He took a sharp turn left, out of sight of the man, and immediately pressed his back to the wall with a hazy wheeze.

What the fuck had he just done? Why the fuck had he done that? Weren't an increasing number of his nightmares about Lluc discovering his connection with the dungeon and dragging him before Varcís Bilaro?

Pirate Lord.

Too big for my britches, Nicau thought with only some level of hysteria. He'd wandered around Calarata, buying trinkets and expensive food, and he'd fashioned himself as a wandering tyrant instead of a streetrat wearing a lordling's clothing. It was high time he went back to the dungeon where he was surrounded by kobolds and things made sense.

So. Time to go.

The last of his mana drifted away and he felt the connection snap, the man free of his command; so he turned on his heel and made for the outer wall of Calarata, not-quite scampering towards the docks.

Or, he would have, if someone had interrupted him. Someone small, padding up to his feet with her silvertine fur smoothed back and tail curling. The shadowthief rat.

She chittered, pawing at his leg; he knelt and offered her his hand, which she gladly used to clamber up to her customary shoulder perch.

In her wake, she left him a singular copper coin. What she'd found on the street, apparently.

And missed the entire ordeal he'd gone through.

"You're very lucky," he told her. She squeaked proudly.

-

The Alómbra Mountains cast a beautifully cool shadow over him.

The construction mages had left for the night, protective seals engraved into the stone surrounding the dock and building foundations, and he'd been able to slink his way around the pebbled beach and back to the opening. It loomed before him, deep and welcoming.

He wasn't the Pirate Lord in the dungeon, but he was also slightly less afraid for his general health and life, so there were pros and cons.

Pros and cons that were vastly outweighed by the thought of a comfortable, soft bed, so Nicau tucked his various treasures closer to his chest and gave one last look around. Calarata gleamed, white-gold buildings and flickering torchlight; still his home, no matter how it had fallen and he was elsewhere. And to his other side, the distant jungle—still unnamed by the dungeon, actually—hid behind its avalanche border, distant trees poking over the top with great furled leaves and the distant hanging presence of fog.

And it was only because he was looking to the jungle that he saw the red-gold shape emerging from its emerald canopy.

A familiar red-gold shape.

Nicau tightened his grip on his new dagger as the parrot, with its gold-tipped feathers, black eyes and beak, landed on a distant overcropping. Its talons scratched against the stone as it adjusted its position, crest flaring, and stared at him.

He stared back.

Not this again.

"Hello," Nicau said, because his Communer blessing hadn't worked last time but maybe it would now.

The parrot tilted its head to the side and squawked. Just a wordless noise.

But he remembered when it had repeated his sentences back to him with a clarity a bird shouldn't have, and he'd seen too many wondrous and terrible things to trust it so easily. Perhaps he was imagining it, but he thought he could see mana sparking behind its eyes, something deep and pressing and almost…

Almost resonant, in a way, to the Name in his chest.

He could kill it. The dungeon would probably want its corpse, and it would be one more mystery Nicau wouldn't have to worry about biting him in the ass in the distant future.

But he doubted he could, honestly. There was something otherworldly about the bird.

It hadn't accepted it last time, but anything under the sun was new again, so Nicau shifted so his shoulder without the shadowthief rat was angled forward, as open as he could make it. "Would you like to come with me?"

The parrot flared its crest. "Come with," it agreed.

Nicau blinked. What.

It took off in a red-gold burst and landed neatly on his shoulder, wings brushing at his ears and talons catching on the fine leather of his surcoat; it didn't weigh much, standing taller than his head, and it shifted until it settled into a more comfortable position. Its jagged claws curled around the meat of his shoulder.

On his opposite side, the shadowthief rat squeaked, her eyes narrowed. Not a fan of her new companion, it seemed.

Nicau happened to glance down and see his reflection in the cove's water; still gaunt and thin, dressed in extravagant robes, with a rat on one shoulder and a parrot on the other.

This was merely his life now.

To the dungeon, then.