Dragonheart Core

Chapter 20: Collectors

Nicau bobbed his head in response, shifting his weight between his feet. "Disappeared, yes, right into the mountain. I heard there was treasure there."

That stopped the light table discussion in a remarkably satisfying way.

Three of them, two men, one woman. All rustically dressed, plain tunics with only a handful of bauble earrings or unadorned rings, a sword at each of their sides. He'd picked them out from across the tavern in an instant, regulars getting together in search of their next target; and if you were in Calarata, what else was there to do but drink?

Nightmarket scavengers, a common breed—they made their living by scrounging up illegal or difficult to obtain items and creatures to sell to those either needing them for alchemic reasons or rich enough to want a statement piece. Either way, the type that would absolutely be interested in secret underground treasure and would think themselves strong enough to be able to go claim it.

"What kind of treasure?" The woman said dubiously, but even she had set down her mug of hibiscus sour ale—gods, he wished he could afford to try it—and leaned in to listen. "Gold, untapped ore, some goblin relics–"

"Dragon scales."

And they shut up again. Nicau wished, in some vague part of his mind that spoke in a Romei-sounding voice, that he had someone to brag about how good he was getting at this whole thing.

"That would do it," the taller man said, exhaling. "Gods. Where?"

The merrow they had been talking before he came in rolled her white-ringed eyes, pale blue tail swishing idly below the open-air tavern. She kept listening, though, her frilled ears perking up.

"Near the base. I can show you," he offered, then plumped up his lips and watered his eyes for the parting shot. "Just please find my friend."

They all waved a vague hand in his direction, chairs clattering as they rose to their feet—more desperate for a job than he had assumed, then. The merrow listening gave a warbling hiss and disappeared beneath the water, swimming out to the cove. The trio threw a scattering of copper over the table to pay for their ale and marched to the door, eyes flashing as they murmured to each other.

But the taller man paused in the doorway, looking back. His eyes were a pale, flashing blue. "Nicau, you said?"

He nodded.

"Well then." His smile was sharp. "Lead the way, won't you?"

-

My second greater crab scuttled off into the canal, slightly smaller than the first but a deeper green; I aimed a beautiful glare at its back. Twelve more bloody points of mana.

I was beginning to see why dungeon cores had to be coddled in their first few weeks of existence. If I had tried to just evolve a creature and fill my first floor with them, I would have been killed by the first schmuck to so much as glance in my direction.

That would have been even easier if the gods had given me my first schema.

I was still confused about why I hadn't gotten a starting one—the message of my evolution had changed what it said quickly, but not quickly enough. I knew I was supposed to start with a creature to protect me.

So why hadn't I?

I'd been a dragon, which weren't exactly virtuous beings, but I certainly didn't think I'd done enough to offend a god. A harrowing thought, though. What if I unknowingly continued doing what I had done and I offended them so much they killed me with a glance?

I glared at the wall until my sharpened mana ate a hollow in it. Did nothing, but it made me feel better.

The ironback toad was still sheltered in his little den, swelling up as his evolution grew; the silvertooth's den had almost been raided a few times by silverheads hungry for an easy egg meal, but one snap of their shattered-glass fangs had been enough to scare them off. Not the brightest, those silverheads. With any luck they'd evolve soon.

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A luminous constrictor, merrily stalking her way closer to an unassuming burrowing rat on the first floor, froze.

It took me a heartbeat longer than I'd have liked to notice, too many of my points of awareness aimed at the second floor. But that little blip of time was enough for a human to poke their head into my dungeon.

Panic, of course.

He was thin, covered in studded armour, and wielding two vastly different knives; one with differing sides, one rounded and sharp and the other flat and dull. His other was a thin twig of a blade, barely thick enough to avoid snapping.

I didn't have time to ponder the reasoning why, because two bloody more humans entered behind him.

A taller man, bristling with the same two knives held high in white-knuckled hands, shoulders raised to his ears and lips pursed. He inched his way in, skating carefully around the edges of my whitecaps and green algae. A woman was behind him, holding her knives far more loosely, though her dark eyes were still narrowed.

Unranked, at least, but that certainly didn't make me feel better.

"This is definitely it," she murmured, nudging a mushroom with her boot. The stone-backed toad crouching beneath its cap's thoughts were mad with panic. "Brus, get the quartz-light, will you?"

The taller man nodded, shifting his knives to one hand to tug out a sliver of pale stone, runes engraved onto its surface. He murmured a word I couldn't understand and light bloomed from between his fingers, spilling out over the first floor—and promptly draining my ambient mana to do so. Bastards.

They did take a moment to stare in awe of my fungal gardens, which I appreciated.

Brus stayed very close to the entrance, little coward that he was, but the woman and other man started to poke around; they kept their knives low, using the flat of the blades to shift mushrooms out of the way like they were worried about hidden thorns—if only they knew—and otherwise investigated around. I could see how bright their eyes were even in the gloom.

At least, when they'd only explored a few feet and my creatures had had time to finish waking up, they stopped.

I still didn't want to risk actively going through and instructing my creatures unless the need was dire. I was still burned from Lady Luthia's ability to see the movement of mana, to see how my creatures were being guided by an overhead hand—if suddenly every adventurer knew that, they'd figure out what I was in a heartbeat. No, that had to be avoided.

The shorter man inched closer to the woman, shifting his grip on his knives. "This is just like High Lord Thiago's dungeon," he hissed, and I felt myself freeze.

"Nil, shut up," she shot back, eyeing their surroundings warily. "If it is, we don't want it noticing us. Stay quiet."

Those merryweather fools. There wasn't a chance in seven hells I wouldn't notice them entering my territory.

But apparently they'd noticed something about me in return.

There was a time and a place for subtlety. This was not now.

My creatures rose with a howl of mana, fixing deadly gazes on those damned invaders; even the stone-backed toad, hiding terrified under the mushroom that barely covered a fourth of his bulk, aimed a glare at Nil's calves.

The woman reached behind her and tugged off a bag, something made of patchwork leather with a strap for her shoulders; she popped open a flap on the top and switched its positioning so it bounced in front of her stomach. The two others mirrored her, all with bags of their own. Maybe potions inside, for defense? Were they planning on going further?

Nil crouched, raised the flat side of his curved knife, and promptly cracked my toad's skull in.

He collapsed immediately, not yet dead but absolutely stunned by the hit, and the adventurer was able to easily scoop him up and drop him into the bag without issue.

Gods. Collectors.

I'd heard of them, much in the same way I'd heard about dungeons that were scattered over the world of Aiqith, but I'd certainly never encountered them. No Collector with two brain cells to rub together would ever come after a dragon to try and obtain some of their scales or claws to sell. They went after easier prizes.

Like the dungeonborn creatures, full of mana and possibly completely unique to that dungeon.

Such as me.

My creatures answered my roar, rising up, but the adventurers weren't exactly caught unawares. Knives flashed and two more toads sprawled over the ground, twitching and shaking, and were promptly dropped into bags. A luminous constrictor flicked out her tongue, coiling tighter around a stony pillar—Brus raised his light and the reflection off her pure white underscales did him in. She tried for a lunge, for a strike—she got a full stab through the head for that and ended up in a bag.

Not all my creatures were caught so unaware, though.

One of my cave spiders, narrow and tense, crept his way down a strand of web and sidled closer to the woman. His eight eyes flashed.

"Fuck!" She snapped, swatting at her leg—two perfect bites, already red and oozing amber venom, stood out on her calf.

But if her mention of this… High Lord Thiago's dungeon meant anything, it was that she wasn't a beginner. Hardly half a second passed before she had reached into an outer pocket of her bag, tugging out a pale cloth wrapped in herbs and covered in embroidered runes; she pressed it to her leg and murmured some archaic word. More of my mana disappeared.

The venom that had been merrily rampaging through her system promptly tugged itself out to soak into the cloth.

Gods. My first floor was so weak.

Drawn blood, though. I'd seen how well that had worked out for Luthia.

"Lália!" Nil hissed, gesturing forward—Brus had come just far enough that the glow from his quartz-light had illuminated the entrance to my second floor, the rock pond dark and rippling before it. But they weren't small, scuttling rats or spiders who had to worry about its shallow depths. They were humans.

With one jump of his long legs, he was safely past the last threat of my first floor. The other two followed after swiping off the heads of a few more lacecaps to tuck into their bags.

Wake up, I urged my other creatures before they had a chance to see my mana moving, singing gentle little songs about ripping adventurer heads off. Wake up, get ready, start moving.

When they arrived on the second floor, they fully stopped, eyes wide and awestruck as they looked upon the majesty of my mangrove canals—really needed an actual name for my floors, that wasn't very inspiring—and all those that lived within. Already the luminous constrictors strong enough to make it down were waking up, the jeweled jumper darting over hidden thorns as he raced over towards the entrance. But to them, they saw none of them, just a wide expanse of rivers and trees, the green algae-glow from above rendering their pale quartz useless. Brus said another word and the greedy bastard stopped absorbing all my mana.

"Woah," Lália breathed, knives resting at her sides. "This is a dungeon, isn't it?"

"Has to be," Nil murmured back. "Nothing like Thiago's, though. It feels very… alive."

As one, they moved forward.

Their eyes were immediately drawn to my canals, grins wide over their face as the green light overhead caught the reflection of something moving deeper within. My electric eel and his brood were further in, the armourback sturgeon resting near the western wall, but the hundreds of silverheads lazily roaming were spread evenly through the halls.

"There," Brus whispered, and nodded towards a shallower divot of the canal by their feet.

The spot where, so excited over the last time they'd gotten to do this, my little school of silvertooths were waiting impatiently below the surface of the water.

Lália had that cut over her arm, but I wasn't so sure they would get their chance.

They crept closer, seemingly unworried about the vampiric mangrove looming overhead; while they had seemed familiar enough with stone-backed toads to hit them on their head instead of anywhere else and luminous constrictors to not even react beyond collecting them, I knew for a damned fact they wouldn't know about my mangroves.

And not knowing would only make them all the more dangerous.

Nil crouched by the shore of the canal, bracing his boots against a lump of stone to avoid falling in; both Brus and Lália grabbed his shoulders in what seemed like a practiced movement as he leaned over the canal, extending both knives before him.

Knives that, when twisted to catch the light of the algae overhead, flashed over the surface of the water.

Silvertooths, unfortunately, were still evolved from silverheads and their despicable lack of common sense. They saw movement and lunged, raising out of the depths of the water and striking the surface, jagged fangs open and ready.

Nil's knife flashed.

The silvertooth still managed to squirm as it was speared by the thin blade and pulled from the water. A spark of its mana from the kill traveled not to me but to the adventurer, its body going limp.

The rest of the school scattered but the trio hardly seemed to care, eyes impossibly bright as they beheld the foot-long corpse pulled out of the river; Nil placed it in his bag with a sort of reverence. At least the bastards knew how powerful my creatures were.

But so focused were they that they forgot to look up, at the little spider whose ruby-red colouration blended so perfectly with the vampiric mangrove's bark.

The jeweled jumper crept closer, mandibles dripping with venom; he managed to spot the bleeding wound on Lália's calf with its familiarly-sized puncture marks. I could see the moment his rivalry with other cave spiders kicked in and he promptly chose her as his target.

Another second where Lália straightened, peering over the canal like she could see where the rest of the creatures had gone, and he dropped from his perch above her neck and sank his fangs into her skin.

She cursed, swatting at her neck; the jeweled jumper's name wasn't for nothing and he was already well far away, scuttling back up the mangrove's branches to hide behind a pale leaf to watch. "Not again," she groused, reaching into her bag for the cloth. Another mutter of the same word and the cloth glowed as it drew the poison out of her wound, but I'd been correct—the venom had to soak into the cloth, and when it was full, it couldn't pull out any more.

And the jeweled jumper had a lot of venom to give.

Even as she tugged the cloth away, almost dripping with scarlet venom, the jeweled jumper sprang at her upper arm and stabbed her once again.

"Get away from the tree!" She shouted, panting as she slapped the cloth to her arm—but from the sudden fear in her eyes I knew she had seen what I had. The cloth sagged weakly in her hand, dripping venom over the ground, and already amber veins were spreading under her skin. "We have to go–"

Their activity in the river hadn't gone unnoticed.

With a hiss, one of my greater crabs pulled itself onto the shore, emerald green carapace dripping. It brandished its crushing pincer like a sword.

Nil cursed, holding out his curved blade; Lália stumbled back, blood draining from her already pale skin. She slipped over a patch of algae and fell, legs suddenly weak, arms spasming. The jeweled jumper crept closer.

The greater crab approached, bristling bulk nearly two feet tall and four wide; to Nil, it must have looked like an impossible beast. He bared his teeth, knives held before him, elbows pinning the bag closer to his chest.

Lália collapsed to the ground, twitching.

"Nil!" Brus cried, but I had seen his cowardice before and it had only grown since—his head twisted, arms tight as his sides, but he didn't go closer to either of them. Nil roared, swiping at the greater crab as it closed in; but his knives were made for collecting. My beautiful crab's carapace was specifically made not to be collected.

They had made it to the first room of the second floor.

The greater crab hissed and charged, swiping a claw low while the other jabbed to meet his knife; Lália moaned as the jeweled jumper sank his fangs into her arm.

Brus turned and fled.

I sprung to action, hammering my mana deep into the creatures of my first floor; they surged to life, underbellies ready to unleash and mandibles dripping with venom. One more kill and oh, all the mana I'd have–

But Brus was tall and guided by panic. He flew over the rock pond, slipping and stumbling over the water-slick algae, eyes bulging from his head and knives clattering to the ground from loose fingers. One of my serpents made a lunge at his leg but he dodged it, charging, arms pumping wildly at his sides.

And then he promptly ran out of the entrance.

Well. Shit.