Dragonheart Core

Chapter 172: Guided Focus

"I have been waiting much time for this meeting," the Marquesa de Wolf said, smiling like her namesake. "It is an honour, Scholar."

Ealdhere, feeling about as much out of his depth as when he was dragged out of the dungeon with his party dead around him, shook her offered hand. "The honour is all mine."

Her palm was heavily calloused, written over and over in the scars of battles past. She looked like an adventurer, certainly; a type he'd grown more than used to. Her dark skin was lit from underneath with a mana-warm glow, golden eyes flashing, an untreated wood staff resting at her side. Her accent wasn't native Calaratan, coloured by a harmonic lilt, matched by the melody in her words. Ealdhere could feel how practiced they were, how organized; whatever she was here for, it was something she had prepared for a long time.

He just wished he didn't have to be a part of it.

The Marquesa de Wolf released him, still smiling, and walked to her side of the table; a long one, spread out in the central welcoming hall of the Adventuring Guild, timber magicked from the surrounding jungle and quartz-lights glowing overhead. Four chairs, two on each side, the rest stored for later.

On one side, the Guild. The other, the petitioners.

Ealdhere sat, prim and controlled, and did not look at the man sitting next to him. Lluc.

He looked lazy, or at least relaxed, resting his elbows on the table and letting mana spark over his nail beds in a variety of colours, but Ealdhere had spent an unfortunate amount of time around the man and knew otherwise. His eyes were sharp; cold iron, hidden blades. He did not like what was happening.

And it was more concerning, honestly, that he was here—Ealdhere had lived a remarkably peaceful life the last few weeks, only seeing Lluc in the quiet hours of the morning to welcome in the newest adventuring party. The Guildmaster he was, and every group had to obtain his approval before being brought in—alongside an over-healthy dose of threats to make sure they stayed the line—but past that, he was gone. He disappeared directly after, and only next morning did he collect information and pilfered parts from Ealdhere.

But now it was nearing evening, the sun dissolving down to light the cove up in crimson-gold, and yet Lluc was here, looking across the table like a man over the lands he owned.

"Quite the trouble you've gone through," Lluc said, half a drawl, half apathetic disinterest—both were lies. "It's rare someone takes a bite out of the Silent Market just for a meeting."

Because beside the Marquesa de Wolf, stoic and straight-backed, was Gonçal.

Ealdhere'd had a devil of a time not meeting his eyes, particularly with the vantage of the last time they'd spoken being the scaled man was going to enter the dungeon and attempt to broker an alliance with the sapience within, and he hadn't returned to tell Ealdhere of his progress—except now he was here, stone-faced, sitting beside a woman who prickled every nerve Ealdhere still had to call his own. Concerning, impossibly so; he wanted answers, and reasonings, and he'd gotten neither.

He lived a life not much worth living in a gilded cage, ensnared like an exotic bird for the singing; a single pittance of a message he'd snuck to the Silent Market to barter for Gonçal's assistance, little more than a plea deal, and now the man was just… ignoring him.

It was the right choice, unfortunately, considering Lluc was not the type to take partnerships from his pet Scholar well, but it was remarkably irritating.

The Marquesa de Wolf kept smiling. "He is my friend," she said. Gonçal kept staring placidly forward. "It was only after I learned of his coalition with your Guild; and why, there is no finer place to go than here, if I wish to learn more of the dungeon. And, well; time is of the essence, particularly with the deaths," she said, rather politely.

"The deaths." Lluc's gaze was flinty, cold. "The Dead Man's Raid did Calarata no favours."

"Not those deaths," she corrected, though all with this perfectly subservient, warm-hearted tone. Like she was doing this from her own polished morality and kindness. "Those of the streets; fourteen, throats slit, no suspects. I am familiar with dungeons, and I know that to be a harbinger of a maverick."

There was something about her eyes; something about those golden depths that rose his hackles. Ealdhere was a man that scared often and endlessly, considering he was Unranked and held prisoner by a Gold, but this fear felt different; felt like thorns, burrowing into dead soil.

Her eyes flashed. "Of course, that's nothing but rumours. I apologize for taking up your valuable time with mere gossip."

"Yet you continue," Lluc snapped, drumming his nails over the table harsh enough they dug divots into the wood. "Are you going to blather on still?"

Something in her face flashed. "I only mean to inform you," she said, quiet, but mildly indignant. Likely not intended, but peeking through. A return to her softer nature in an attempt to appease, which wouldn't work, because Lluc took offense at anything and everything and she didn't have a chance for a proper conversation.

Lluc and the Marquesa were going to keep verbally sparring until it switched to actual sparring and then he died in the unfortunate crossfire. Ealdhere had played parliament through enough of the Darlington family councils to know what was needed to cut through the verbage—he shifted, settling forward, smiling with vapid stupidity. "I apologize, Marquesa de Wolf, but did you mention a maverick?"

"Ah." She crossed her arms, robe rippling—something in the dark pocket over her breast shifted, moving more than cloth, a faint rasp underneath. "Of course, good Scholar. I came here because I wish to warn you, and offer my services against them."

Maverick. The word was vaguely familiar, insofar as it meant something, but not in the way she was using it; a general noun, rather than something specific. Ealdhere tilted his head to the side. "What are they?"

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Her eyes gleamed. "They are dissenters," she said, and more of this pre-planned speech came tumbling loose, each word carefully chosen. "Those who stand against Guilds and all their meanings, who wish to see dungeons as free territory to fight in without the command of Guildmasters. It is a position fed and built by greed, a want not to pay the taxes of a Guild."

Ah. Something that Calarata in particular would marinate in, even with the Dread Pirate overhead.

The Marquesa de Wolf smiled, a plume of pride settling over her face. "I am from Leóro," she said, and ah, there was her accent; the lilt of a more civilized country, though without any of the corded strength of Viejabran. "And from there, I stopped a maverick from nearly killing High Lord Thiago. Now I come to Calarata, and I see you about to suffer the same problem. I am willing to dedicate myself to your Guild to stop all attempts to dethrone you."

A smile, dagger-sharp. "I assure you, my fees are quite reasonable."

Ealdhere winced. Maybe she thought that was a fair bargaining tactic, a way to sell herself; if she did, then she didn't understand who she was dealing with. Next to her, Gonçal carefully averted his eyes.

Lluc stood. His chair screeched back over the wood, the whine of something disintegrating, and then he towered over the rest. Mana, bleeding through his eyes. The First Mate of Calarata. The Guildmaster, earned in blood and death.

"Mavericks are ghost stories," Lluc said. He was cold. He was iron. There was nothing benevolent in the gaze he fixed her with. "A fright thought up by lesser men to believe themselves superior. They are not here, and if they are, they do not threaten me."

Lluc hummed; something soft and mana-tinged floated around his mouth, trickling through his teeth. "I have no need of your services," he said, sharp. "And I will sooner slit your throat than allow you to enter my Guild and speak as if you know more than me, as if you are important. Do I know you, Marquesa de Wolf?"

She blinked. A raw kind of affront flashed over her face, though she smothered it a second later. "No, Guildmaster."

"True." He tilted his head to the side. "And I don't plan to. If I see you here again, either as a panhandler or a delver, I will make your death slow."

The Marquesa de Wolf sat there, frozen. Eyes wide.

"Not just slow," he corrected, head tilting further. "I will break you. I will shatter you to the spines and the seventeen seas there. I will destroy your name so thoroughly your precious Thiago will rue the day he knew you existed. Do you understand me, wolf?"

The air lingered, heavy as chains.

The Marquesa de Wolf shot from her seat and left—not-quite ran, not-quite stumbled out of the door, leaving it clattering in her wake, the Guild echoing. Whatever persona she'd inflated thoroughly popped.

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Ealdhere inhaled for the first time in minutes.

Lluc growled something under his breath, digging a hand through his hair, adjusting the seat of his wolf-brim hat. Fire, still burning over his mana, lashing out at the air like it wanted something to attack. Unfortunately, it had another target.

"And you," Lluc snarled, glaring down Gonçal. "Bring me another miserable fucking wretch and I will make the Silent Market wish they had strung you up as another prize for the selling, do you understand?"

"Yes," Gonçal murmured, head bowing down. A prickle of fear over his face, not hidden by his trader's apathy. His bronze scales went dim and flat as his mana tucked itself back in his chest.

Lluc hissed, and– something shot out of his mouth, bright and boiling—it carved a line over Gonçal's cheek, peeled through flesh and skin and crimson blood flooding through the gap. A cut as wide as a hand, stark.

Gonçal didn't react beyond a flinch. Used to receiving pain. Something lurched in Ealdhere's gut.

Lluc stalked out of the room. The sound of his boots faded away, leaving the building trembling—the crack and rumble of mana, a Gold, a god amongst mortal men; the threat Ealdhere had been caged by. The threat that had just attacked his own ally, the one who served him through the Silent Market.

Gonçal, bleeding, sitting still. Eyes fixed on the table.

"Are you okay?" Ealdhere asked, hesitant.

Gonçal didn't respond, lifting a careful hand to press to the wound. It came away scarlet, trickling down the stubble of his beard and threatening to seep under his armour. He made no effort to block it, to heal himself. Just observed the blood.

Then he looked up, met Ealdhere's eyes, and stared at him. Really stared, in a way that made him shift and prickle heat under his collar; a look from his past, when he was near royalty; not for now, when he was Unranked and a cage bird for viewing.

"Does our alliance stand?" Gonçal said, slowly.

Ealdhere blinked. "Why, of course," he started, a frown building. "The dungeon is still far too important to destroy, not with its potential."

Gonçal kept looking at him. His trader's apathy was a solid, constructed thing, carved over his face like a promise rather than a persona. The bland, passive face to make any seller squeal. But now it wasn't there, dissolving away as his eyes sparked with mana. His injury kept weeping.

"Your goal is to ally with the dungeon," he said.

There was a manner in which he said it; a strange emphasis on dungeon, above the others. "Alongside you," Ealdhere hastened to correct.

Gonçal didn't react. "You are trying to ally with the dungeon," he repeated. "Are you keeping its secrets?"

Its… secrets?

Ealdhere knew precious few, caged as he was. The sapling in his room, growing larger than its ceramic pot by the day as he cut his own arm to feed it; the crocodile taken by Ghasavâlk and his black eyes and empty smile; the inner works of the first floors; those were not secrets but facts, knowledge he gave freely to Lluc and to adventurers who bought the privilege. He knew more, with his hunch the dungeon was born from the corpse of a dragon and was sapient, but that was it.

He wanted to know more. He wanted to know it, whatever the it was; to find something new about Aiqith no others had yet devoured for petty power.

"Yes," Ealdhere said, and felt the resonance of the statement. A promise to protect a murderous, hungering dungeon above his fellow man. "Yes, I will."

"I am not friends with the Marquesa de Wolf," Gonçal said. He picked his words carefully. "She contacted me because of my connection to the Adventuring Guild through the Silent Market, though there is no world in which she should have known that. She gave me knowledge of another nightmarket in order to secure me accompanying an adventurer into its halls, a boy named Romei."

Ealdhere frowned, thinking back. "The Unranked?"

Gonçal's lips tightened. "So he seemed. But when we traveled inside, he led me below with a familiarity and stopped before the third floor, asking if I would cooperate so he didn't have to kill me."

Ealdhere swallowed. His memories of Romei had been of a young boy dressed to appear old, half-drowning in a blue leather coat and exhaustion that hung gallows below his eyes. More nervous than an adventurer ought to be talking to lluc, but then the revelation of his mana—and his apathy about his apparent lack of strength. Enough that even Lluc had assumed he was hiding his power; a miracle in Calarata, where appearing weak often led to a shiv in the kidneys or some other regrettable manner of death.

"Kill you," he said, hesitant. "It was not in jest?"

Because, well. For all the boy had been hiding his strength, Ealdhere would still believe Gonçal to win the fight.

"Not him," Gonçal said, grim. "The dungeon. He was its voice."

What.

Ealdhere, for a brief moment, imagined he was floating out of the Guild.

Ghasavâlk had mentioned sensing a human presence within the dungeon, and Ealdhere had dared to hope it was sapient enough to study humans, perhaps attempt to learn their language, not– not partnering with one! Not perfectly obtaining an ally capable of both infiltrating Calarata and serving as its voice!

Was Romei its only one? Was there an entire cabal of dungeon-sworn adventurers out in Calarata, waiting for their mission to set? How powerful was its mind, to create things not supposed to be created? An explanation for Romei's Unranked status; he was powered by a dungeon's mana, not his own. Similar to priests, in a way; his body was Unranked, but the mana he wielded came from a stronger power. The stronger the dungeon got, the more he was; and if he felt comfortable enough leading Gonçal into the dungeon, it was likely he was quite strong. And the dungeon as well; to give him power, to instruct him, to speak through him. To exist. To think.

"Gods," he breathed, impossible to wrangle back his excitement. "Gonçal, I– hells, it's true! It's possible! This is a fully sapient, fully understanding, dungeon—what did it want? What did it say to you?"

"It wanted to kill me," Gonçal said, a little tightly in face of Ealdhere's exuberance. "It was only through my offering of… gifts that it allowed me to leave." He wasn't wearing his necklace; the thin crystal held by bronze links. It was gone, and his palm sat over his throat like he regretted its absence.

Ah. Interesting. Susceptible to praise, then, or at least material goods; that implied a more… worldly consciousness in a way, rather than one fed by mere cause-and-effect. Another point for a dragon-born dungeon. Ealdhere nodded. "What did it say?"

"It said I would be allowed to speak of an alliance, and bring more gifts."

An alliance. An alliance! The dungeon was open to the idea, to the suggestion; a proper gathering of minds, one entirely alien, the rest human.

"Oh, you must have said yes," Ealdhere said, half a plea. "Have you gathered any gifts? Have you made plans to delve again?"

"I already did."

Ealdhere froze. There were no words to describe his mind, what thundered through like a herd of horses; the dreams, the possibilities.

"No," he breathed, pure awe. "Did it accept?"

Gonçal nodded.

He wanted to laugh and he did so, bright and burning. "This is– this is more than I could have hoped for, Gonçal; gods if I don't wish I could march back to its halls myself. To speak to a dungeon! To speak to a being formed of pure mana, an immortal in a mortal world; what it would think! What it would say!"

Gonçal's lips twitched. Amused, a touch peeved. "It spoke mostly of wishing to kill me."

Ealdhere flapped a hand. "It was our first attempt," he said, bullrushing on. "Our second, we will supply it with great treasures, the most I can gather; offer it a contract open and entirely affixed to it, merely in return for information. For knowledge! To speak to this– this being, learn of its mind, of its thoughts!"

Gonçal raised an eyebrow. "And how will you—the Scholar of an Adventuring Guild whose mission is to claim the dungeon's core—encourage it to speak to you of its secrets?"

Ah.

Ealdhere rocked back, frowning.

"I will come to it as Ealdhere instead," he said, though without the confidence he wanted. "Anything it tells me will be kept to myself, never to be shared with the delvers. And, well." He brushed a hand through his hair. "If it can offer me– even a chance of a way out of this Guild, to escape Lluc, then I will be able to offer complete secrecy. Its secrets will be forever locked within me, not for anyone to take or to try and claim it."

Gonçal looked away.

Something oddly… hesitant about him, even with the injury bubbling scarlet over his face. The way he'd looked at Lluc—the way he'd looked away from the Marquesa, the myriad ways he had done his best not to exist in that room despite being the reason she had an audience at all. Ealdhere sobered, looking at him. "What is it, my friend?"

Gonçal inhaled. Steadied himself.

"Were you listening to the Marquesa?"

What kind of question was that? Ealdhere had been there, eyes fixed, hungry for any scrap of information that made it past the fours walls of his existence. "Entirely so."

Gonçal looked at his hand, at the dagger-point claws and bronze scales scattered over the back of his knuckles. A feverish kind of destruction in his eyes, more than words. "She did not mention the dungeon once," he said.

Ealdhere blinked. "She did," he pointed out. "She talked of it rather a considerable amount."

"She did not mention the dungeon as a target," Gonçal stressed. "She talked of mavericks and their potential, and how they seek to destroy Guilds; but not the dungeon. She tried to draw Lluc's attention to the Guild and its weaknesses." He clenched his fist, stared at it like a world's mystery. "She wants to guide his focus."

Oh.

His mind ratcheted back; played over the conversation, one-sided though it had seemed, all the words she'd brought up with that careful, laced certainty of having practiced them before. Hells, she'd brought up fourteen deaths and bodies thrown to back alleys, of mavericks that threatened her in Leóro, all things a fresh-faced Adventuring Guild with rather a lack of charitable communications with other countries wouldn't know about. And of course Lluc would remember this, even if he didn't trust her; a man commanded by Varcís Bilaro was one who needed to perform his task, and all threats to it were threats to him.

She had only mentioned the Guild.

"I see," Ealdhere said, faintly. "Yes, I can see that now. Why?"

"Lluc insulted her," Gonçal said. "And she took offense; or looked like she did. But it was poised. It was what she wanted. She wanted to seem like she was squirreling for a position in the Guild, a defense against mavericks; and when Lluc rejected her, as he always would, she retreated like a cur with her tail between her legs. But now Lluc is thinking of mavericks, of threats to the Guild, and that pulls his attention from the dungeon."

Gonçal looked at him. His slitted pupils were blown wide. "What reason would she want Lluc to look away from the dungeon?"

Precious few. And none of them good.