Dragonheart Core

The thornwhip algae had finished evolving.

What?

It'd been… maybe a day since that pale glow had overtaken my fourth floor, the algae retreating into a faux-slumber to be reborn. I'd been quietly profoundly pleased even with the failure of integrating the jadestone moss and the razorleaf lichen, but I'd also realized that I'd been neglecting my other floors a tad with the new focus here. It wasn't the same as the early days, where I could afford to just dig away at my second floor and let Seros manage the first; too much going on, nowadays. Good, though annoying at times.

And then I'd gotten promptly no time to baby my other floors before the algae had finished evolving.

It'd gone from its previous bright, almost spring green to a rich emerald hue, deep with shadows and lined with… well, the thorns from its name. I frowned, angling a handful of points of awareness around its base; from its description, I'd imagined them to have taken inspiration from the mangroves, great mighty thorns several inches long and ready to stab.

Instead, as I poked my way around my new creature, I found them to be sharp in the manner of coral, each "whip" ridged and sharp with narrow little edges built into the stem. Maybe it had taken more inspiration from the razorleaf lichen than I'd thought.

It was nice to see a reminder from my old days, though. I was still holding out hope that old memories would join me as schemas—whether coral, if not for my Underlake than for a massive reef floor, or some variation of the old growing stone, shaping underwater empires of tunnels and pathways where no living thing had dwelt for centuries.

And, well.

Who knew? Maybe, even after I'd been killed, I could solve the mystery of those great sea-titans. The beasts that fed on whales and dragons, that terrorized the seas without fear, up until it had died in the hidden trenches of the world and had never been seen again. With my Resurrector title, if I could just revisit the spot I had struggled a week to reach, the dark place under the world where I'd found its bones.

If I could have. Before the Dread Pirate killed me.

I spat a blast of mana as if that could clear out the violent thoughts wriggling their way through my mind. Not the time, no. Revenge would come later.

It had to. I refused to believe that everything I was doing was for nothing, that I would learn to love these creatures and build homes for them just for the damned man to stomp his way back through my carefully-constructed world and murder me again. I refused.

But now wasn't the time.

So I forced myself to relax, let my mana unsharpen, and focused back to the thornwhip algae.

In its evolution, it had shrunk—somewhat—and no longer filled the entirety of my tunnels, returning their diameter to not quite the original ten feet but close enough that creatures could walk through unhindered. Jadestone algae still protected its bases and razorleaf lichen still guarded the ground below, but the thornwhip was the true master of these halls. Already its thousand arms twitched and lurched as if searching for prey.

And in the cloaking, vivid darkness only broken by its glowing spores, it looked truly like a beast of nightmare. I couldn't have been more proud.

Time to focus, though. My beloved thornwhip algae wouldn't exactly survive long if I didn't give it some food.

So I wandered my way through the endless tunnels, appreciating once more the wild majesty of these halls I had claimed and built, and approached what the entrance would be. Just a simple tunnel, wildly sloping and absolutely dripping with excess water from the Underlake it emerged from, but still decidedly unfriendly to merrow.

For one last good measure, I grew a few batches of razorleaf lichen on the path down. No need to let invaders relax.

And then I broke down the stone and rewelcomed the new floor to my others.

Immediately, my creatures stiffened—closing off my core and the fourth floor had vastly decreased the ambient mana found and they could feel it return to my halls, just enough of a taste that their thoughts would turn towards trying to make it lower for a feast. I purred. From the entrance room, I carved a dozen smaller tunnels, far too little for an invader but enough for a creature or two to slither through, connecting them to dens on the second floor; if someone wanted to make their way down, I wouldn't force them to learn to swim first. Maybe.

For a future floor. I was still a sea-drake at heart.

Also immediately, I saw Seros' head snap upright from where he'd been curled up in the third floor den, eyes going wide and tail flicking; he dove into the surrounding water and not so much moved but charged for the new entrance. He wriggled his way up the narrow tunnel, arrived into the dry section, and dropped into the new floor. His eyes widened further.

He'd seen the original section when he'd brought my core down, but not the overgrowth and the evolution. I was very well pleased by his awe.

Seros flicked his tongue out, head cocked, and something deep in our connection twanged; his eyes slid to the rightmost tunnel and he started through it, nosing curiously at the walls and floor. His scales protected him from anything the lichen would dream of and the thornwhip algae, while certainly not what I'd call intelligent, did seem confused about him. Their first real prey encounter.

One grasping tendril emerged, almost hesitant, and Seros wasted not a second before he'd sunk his fangs into the proffered limb and torn it clear out of the wall.

The thornwhip algae decided it had better things to do and retracted its arms.

Good man.

Even with his innate sense of where I was, it took him almost twenty minutes to find his way to me, and that was without any wrong turns. I couldn't wait to see how long invaders would take.

Seros poked his head into the ending room, eyeing his surroundings curiously; the thornwhip algae in here was too far away to be a real threat, with how massive the cavern sprawled, but it did provide an interesting emerald backdrop for the spectacle within. I'd carved up limestone and regular green algae into approximations of trees, gentle rolling hills of billowing moss and lacecaps curled in stony shadows; a forest, of sorts. I was still rather low on flora schemas to make that work.

But his awe warmed the cold jewel of my heart.

He trotted up to me, eyes bright; his thoughts spoke merrily of the going-ons of the first floors and everything he figured I should know. The society of rats had started to explore the Drowned Forest in search of more gems; the greater crab's eggs had finally hatched and were terrorizing the third floor with all haste; several kobolds were expecting eggs of their own.

What made it all the more endearing was that this wasn't like the case when I'd first claimed my title of Resurrector, when I'd been closed off to the wider world; I still very much had my points of awareness out as I worked on the fourth floor and knew everything he was telling me about. I certainly didn't tell him that, though. I just basked in the report from my first friend.

I did truly care for him.

It was a thought I hadn't anticipated; of course I cared for him. I'd Named him, given him a piece of the Otherworld mana I survived on, protected him since my very first day. But no. I cared for him. He was precious to me.

Seros' thoughts drifted off as he felt my attention on him deepen, reaching through our connection. He churred in that facsimile of a draconic language and curled up around the pedestal of my core, settling back into the nap I'd so rudely interrupted. I hesitated a second but pressed a soothing curl of mana around his body, settling over his iridescent sea-green scales until they glowed.

Gods. I was such a hatchling.

I left far too many points of awareness around him than was necessary but flew back up to my other floors, extending my mana out to my other creatures; I couldn't just have Seros live here. He liked the Underlake more, anyway.

And the thornwhip algae needed both competitors and prey.

First was the creature I'd had in mind since I first came up with this idea; the horned serpent raised her head as I called to her, crystalline antlers flashing in the algae-light from above. She was wasted on the second floor, unfortunately. Psionic mana worked best when it came from places unknown and while the Drowned Forest had plenty of areas for her to hide and capture prey, everything else was just too busy. Half of whom she could properly hunt as prey promptly went off into another room or remembered their path and wouldn't be strayed from it, or were just killed by another, more proactive predator. She needed a maze of confusion, where her guiding call would be met with relief instead of suspicion.

So. The fourth floor.

She hissed, forked tongue flashing, but rose; her growth had slowed since the kobolds had truly taken over the second floor, eating all the smaller prey and being just a hair too intelligent to wander alone, but she was still a massive seventeen feet long. All smaller creatures fled from her as she slithered through the mangrove roots and slipped into the river.

Ungainly as the silver krait before he evolved, but she managed to wriggle her way through and emerge onto the fourth floor. Mana visibly flowed through her channels, deep and rich, and she stopped for a second to take it in—then continued, more determined than before, in search of new hunting grounds.

The next to call was Rihsu. She spent most of her time blindly following Seros, even with her more-than-subpar swimming skills whenever he hunted in the Underlake; but I wanted to see how she performed in this environment. A warrior was built for more open plains-esque scenarios, but she had proved herself nothing if not adaptive. I had hope that even if she didn't choose this area as her current haunting grounds, she'd at least gain something from the experience.

And by the next to call, of course, I meant prodding Seros until he eventually unwrapped around me and went to go grab her. The whole not being connected thing wasn't exactly beneficial to either side.

But she had sworn to Seros, and I wouldn't take that away from him.

She raised her head from her curled up position on the second floor, the closest den to the water that she could get whenever she wanted to sleep but at least knew her limits enough to not try sleeping in the water when she was still very much terrestrial. All sleepiness disappeared in an instant as she saw Seros crouched awkwardly to shove his muzzle through the opening in her den, scrambling to her feet.

The den was far too small for either of them, with Rihsu's new, towering height of near nine feet and Seros' own excessive length, but she seemed content with the struggle. Not a creature who spent much time lounging about her den, Rihsu. What a surprise.

She immediately jumped into the canal to follow her lord, floundering awkwardly even as her tail beat in rhythmic patterns and the thin, budding webs between her claws helped her downward; it'd take another evolution before she really started to learn the water.

Not that Seros would help in that regard.

Honestly, he wasn't even a dragon. I had no idea why she had sworn to him instead of me.

I shoved that thought deep down.

She wriggled her way up through the tunnel, shaking water off her dark scales and peering around at the darkness. Dragon at heart, it seemed, given as she used her forked tongue and heat sensitivity more than her eyes, but from the bare thoughts I could still gleam through my connection with Seros, she seemed uncomfortable with the darkness.

Made sense, after the permanent algae-light of the Drowned Forest. There was no darkness there.

But still she marched determinedly inside, claws raised and tail lashing. Ready for prey.

Prey that I, ah, hadn't added yet. Would the rats fit better? I'd leave a small trail of jewels leading to one of the tunnels. The ironback toad needed dens to guard, the constrictors would thrive in the gloom, maybe the spiders…

It was at that moment, of course, right in the middle of my musings, that two distinct alarms went off.

The first was the silver krait, who spent his time curled up around the bloodline kelp forest in the Underlake; his eyes, built for motion, flashed towards the cove entrance. Something was entering.

And then Rhoborh's blessing, the great symbiosis of the flora, was also promptly tested as something ripped a piece of glowing algae out of the ceiling, the cry of alarm filtering through the roots of the area.

Two invaders.

Half panic arose first, of course—it'd been a mighty two weeks since the merrow attack, and I hadn't seen hide nor hair of anyone since. That was plenty of time to amass a Silver, Gold, or Electrum to come kill me; or hells, even the famed Leóro Mythril if they were feeling extra spicy.

So it was with not a small portion of relief that the two presences I felt were still firmly Bronze or below.

One was small and screeching, one was large and looming; but both non-sapients. Perfect.

My halls could use a bit of sport.