Dragonheart Core

Chapter 99: Gravitas

Finally, finally, the water splashed up to the mark I'd left in the stone.

One floor, three rooms, a week and a half of waiting—but the water had finally filled it all, and the sixth floor was complete.

My beautiful coral reef.

I swept overhead, every point of awareness aimed in and practically shivering with delight; it was exactly how I pictured, just as wonderful as I knew it could be. The water was a pale crystal-blue, lit up with hundreds of quartz-lights I'd scattered over the walls, the pure white sand gleaming like a second sky beneath. Mica-flecked limestone, brilliant, building into cragged stalactites overhead and all the brilliance that came with it. A paradise for the taking.

And oh, what taking it would be.

For a week I'd busied myself with meaningless little tasks, quaint distractions that came with running a dungeon. My creatures had grown and died and evolved, Nicau had disappeared from my walls to a wider world, new creatures had awoken. The empress serpent—no, wait, Veresai. It was going to take me a while to adjust to her new Name; don't get me wrong, I'd get it eventually, but she'd been merely serpent to me for so long. But now she slumbered, hopefully not nearly as long as her evolution but still adjusting to her new powers. Blessing of the oracle; it certainly sounded lovely. I couldn't wait to see what she did with it.

Well. What she did with it beyond eating in my mana regeneration. Wonderful little thing, that. I was such a fan.

But that had all been leading to this.

I filtered my control into the surrounding granite, narrowing the tunnel that connected to the outer sea; still a little open, because that circulation and added flow helped combat evaporation and keep the salinity from rising too high, but not wide enough for anything but truly meaningless creatures to sneak through. I would allow them to come into my Underlake, but certainly not my lowest floor. I liked at least some protection.

And my floor would provide that.

I swept around, my full mana bursting through me—I'd been saving it and now it flowed from me, wild and free. I poured two dozen points into the second room, over the atoll, and let vampiric mangroves and cloudsire palms root into the sandy islands.

The mangroves were the same as I remembered, though a little adjusted to be more prepared for salty water—tall, twisting, covered in scarlet bark and pale white leaves. They shivered, branches uncoiling and blooming, grown immediately to some dozen feet or so as I fed them condensed mana.

But the cloudsire palms were new.

My previous guess had been, thankfully, correct—I knew from their description that they produced mist from excess water, using it to cover surrounding plants and hide them from the sun. Namely, that meant they had other strategies for competition beyond growing unbearably tall like other palm trees, which you could probably see would be a problem in a dungeon. These would stay at a more manageable height. Very appreciated.

They were thin, stick-straight things, amber-orange bark in overlapping shingles and emerald-green fronds puffing out on top. The room was some hundred feet tall, plenty for them to stretch upward without running into problems, and they rooted deep into the sandy soil and twined with the coral below.

And that was another lovely aspect of being a dungeon. From their schema, I could tell that while they were salt tolerant, they were not necessarily built to sustain themselves on saltwater alone.

But I, with all my brilliance, could alter them. Make them so that they were, in fact, quite willing to live in an atoll.

I could be terribly clever like that.

A few dozen of each tree later, already the sixth floor felt more alive, spots of colours against the blue-white. And that was only above; I dove under the water, through the plateau-reef and barrier-reef and forest-reef.

Though they were lacking what made them reefs. It was time to fix that.

So I tugged deep on another schema I hadn't yet had the chance to use; already I'd made sure this environment was perfect, everything the right temperature and right salinity and right currents. Coral reefs were far too important for me to fuck up simple little things like that. I was a sea-drake—I could certainly make this floor perfect.

So I gathered mana—already down to two-thirds of my storage, apparently I'd made more trees than I'd originally planned for—and, crouched over the first room, summoned my first piece of capturing coral.

Huh.

I'd bemoaned it a little when I'd selected it as my evolution option—for all that I needed coral, my previous two selections had been kobolds and cloudskipper wisps, which were, ah, a little more exotic than coral, especially considering I was literally on a coast. It'd felt like the gods were deciding for me, forcing me to pick the only option that would help, and then didn't even have the decency to make it a good option.

But watching it bloom over the sixth floor, I was starting to warm to it.

Despite being only one schema, it had a variety of it that sang to my soul—every patch came out in a different texture, a different style, practically a different species. One came out in narrow tubes extending upward, catching the quartz-light; another in a wide fan, veins spidered throughout; a lump like living stone; twisting branches like the mangrove's roots; rosettes with hesitant tendrils.

Now. I was no coral expert.

But I was pretty sure they were supposed to look similar to each other.

Fascinating, really. I poured back through the schema as I worked—it spreads and collects; anything it grows over is stored and kept safe inside, creating dizzying patches of reef where attunements run wild and spirits howl for freedom. Maybe that was what it meant by dizzying patches of reef? Or was each section I created attuning to a new… dialect of coral? But it was growing over the same limestone and granite as its neighbors, and it hadn't had any time to collect specific attunements or spirits. So. What?

They were all the same colour, though.

A pale, almost cream-white, bleached like bone. Old memories told me that was what dead coral looked like, but I knew this was alive, feeling its mana resonate with mine and watching it grow as I fed it more. It looked dead, but was still plenty alive, and all plenty different.

Utterly fascinating. Did it collect colours as it attuned to its surroundings? Would I end up with the kaleidoscoping rainbow I'd hoped for, or would it all be one colour, just with thousands of shapes and styles?

Life as a dungeon. There was always something new to surprise you.

On and on I wove through my floor—the first room, with its plateau-reef that dropped off from fifty feet deep to a hundred, received great, interlocking piles of coral, woven throughout the granite cradles I'd shaped to support them. Again, not entirely accurate to proper coral reefs, but mine was better. No, I wasn't biased.

The second room needed more care—in the lagoon, I sprinkled pockets of coral, scatter-reefs, shallow to keep under the mere ten feet of water but sprawling wide to take in as much quartz-light as possible. Places for smaller creatures to hide, for babies to be spawned and survive, for kobolds to hunt and get used to the water. But then, past that, in the three hundred feet deep area surrounding the atoll, well.

To put it politely, I went buckwild.

Enormous mounds, nearly scratching the surface of the water, rippling with fans and shy rosettes; deep, cavernous valleys, threaded with tubes and twisting fingers; sprawling pillars, full of nooks tucked away with carved dens and places to hide. A paradise.

Such a paradise, in fact, that I ran out of mana before I could finish.

Blasted regeneration rate. Don't get me wrong, I loved Seros and Nicau and Veresai, but the mana they took from me was very, very unwelcome.

I glared at the floor like it would finish itself for me. The third room, what would become a forest-reef with deep, trembling water and coral lining the sides, sat empty and waiting.

But oh, even half complete, it was beautiful. Cream-white, spiraling over the five thousand foot long room, crystal-blue water splashing over in a slow and steady current. Cloudsire palms that were already exuding a pale mist, barely there, simmering on the edges of waves lapping at the sandy atoll, vampiric mangroves with their thorns searching for blood.

I wasn't done yet. There was still more coral to add, as soon as I had the mana to keep making it; but the sixth floor was well on its way to perfection, and it was time my creatures adjusted to its brilliance.

So up I flew, to the tunnel connecting it to the fifth floor; with only a moment of hesitation, burrowing my mana into the granite barrier I'd made, I broke the wall down.

My core was still on the fifth floor, ambient mana curling outward, but I could feel the reverberations echo through my dungeon; every creature, no matter how engaged, stilled. Lifted their heads, peering at their surroundings like the sixth floor was directly in front of them. They felt, soft and humming, the siren's call of deeper promises. Of greater strength.

No time to waste—just the last scraps of mana to my name, which was probably a bad idea and I should have just waited until I regenerated a bit more, I darted upright and bored into the stone. From the base of the Underlake, right under the sarco crocodile's den, I carved a tunnel that wound around the Jungle Labyrinth and Skylands to emerge into a pocket in the first room of the sixth floor, a narrow little thing right near the entrance. A way for my creatures to make their way down, and I did, unfortunately, had to make it wider than I wanted for things like the fledgling sea serpent to venture below.

I'd be narrowing that right back once he made his way down. Not a chance was I letting a merrow slip their way through while I was distracted.

I hadn't finished the tunnel for more than a few seconds before curiosity arose—an armourback sturgeon who'd happened to be in the area crept closer, nosing at the tunnel with her shovel-shaped nose. I'd sprung up a barrier, a pocket of my awareness filtering the salt so it didn't bleed through the brackish water, but the sturgeon was apparently too picky for that and turned away.

Hmph. That was fine. I didn't want her on my sixth floor anyway.

Come down, I crooned, spreading tendrils through my creations' minds; showing them the tunnels that connected below, the wide open water and cradled lagoon.

Creatures answered my call; roughwater sharks forced their way through the tunnels, spiraling down through the murk with a sweep of their power tails. Lichenridge snapping turtles, so unused to moving, stretched muscles that hadn't seen action in forever and made their way below. Several silver kraits inhaled for the long journey and slipped through the tunnels. Greater crabs, full grown now for all their numbers had been decimated, scuttled over sand to the tunnels.

With a low, bellowing roar that exploded out in a wave of bubbles, the fledgling sea serpent coiled in on himself and shot below, twisting through the tunnels with nary a thought on the lesser prey traveling with him. I'd filled his head with the wonders of the third room of the sixth floor—for all it wasn't, uh, actually filled with coral yet—and he hungered for it, frills extended and eyes wide.

This would be his territory, his hunting grounds. He exploded into the coral reef with a hiss.

He wasn't the only ones—in the Skylands, a few greater pigeons tucked their wings and dove through the tunnel, spiraling out onto the new floor with wild, piercing shrieks. Scorch hounds looked almost interested until my mana reminded them that this was a water floor and curled back up. Bugs and other skittering little things made their way down.

And above, tucked in the Drowned Forest, the kobolds made their decision.

If reptiles could cry it would have been a teary goodbye, but given as they couldn't, they just warbled at each other with hunched backs. So recently had the new kobolds evolved, showed off the strength that could be obtained—and now they were leaving. Heading below.

Heading below quickly, actually, so I could stop worrying about Rhoborh poking his godly head over my metaphorical shoulder as I worked. That redwood burn in the back of my awareness was not going to be missed when it left.

Chieftess understood that. She hissed, a much more threatening sound now that she was nearing eight feet tall and had the strength to back it up, and her tribe snapped to attention. The evolved kobolds fell in beside her, two shamans protected in the middle, warriors taking up the back, hunters filling in the flanks.

It was time to depart.

She faced her tribe, shoulders broad, spines rustling over her back. To the younger kobold she'd chosen as her successor, she held out her staff; the crimson stick from a vampiric mangrove, carved over with the best symbols clumsy claws could make. Her symbol of power.

She needed a new one, given this one barely came up to half her height, and so it would be passed down.

He took it with hesitant claws, marveling at it like the most precious thing in the universe—it was a piece of wood, he needed to raise his expectations—and warbled at her. She warbled back.

As one, the tribe clamored, loud and hooting and squawking—some sort of primitive bestowment ceremony, maybe? It would certainly help if they could scoot along with their sapience so I could actually understand their language.

But the successor had taken his role, and it was time for Chieftess and her kobolds to move below.

Hm. Maybe I should have told Nicau that before he left. He'd be in for a surprise when he got back.

But that was a worry for a later me—for now, I spiraled overhead as the kobolds filed out of their den, out of the home they'd had for so long, and made their way to the back of the Drowned Forest. They were too large for the tunnels I'd carved past the Underlake, and besides, I wanted them to become sea-drake descendants. So they'd be swimming their way through the water on their way down.

Served them right. Why they had to be born with the garish crimson scales of fire-drakes, I had no earthly idea.

But fire-drakes were the last thing on my mind as something finally, finally, stirred.

Tucked away in the Skylands, in a room filled with silver and carvings of ancient draconic runes, with moonstar flower buds and frivolous artefacts stolen from invaders, someone awoke.

Seros.

He was–

Oh.

He was brilliant.

Lost were the pebbled scales and unshapely horns—he loomed now, raising his head off the silver floor. Iridescent scales, sea-green-blue-teal-turquoise, a rainbow caught over his form. Horns, two, curled to a perfect tip, gleaming with burnished silver and the faint hum of power. Frills, racing over his spine and limbs, spikes on their tips. Fangs, enormous, with the rumble of something in his chest. Twenty feet long, maybe longer, lithe and vicious and regal in ways he simply hadn't been before. His thoughts rose through our connection, refined, elegant, clever. Elevated above.

And I felt, curling at the edges of my awareness, the first taste of the power of a dragon—the bare, whispering feeling of gravitas. Of authority. Of power, claimed over life and Aiqith itself.

Not yet manifested. Barely there.

But growing.

Draconic monitor, beast-to-be-born, legend awakening. Seros, dungeonborn, blessed by the depths.

Welcome back, I said.

Seros crooned.