Dragonheart Core

I watched Nicau descend.

Chieftess was carrying Kriya, the anaga-human weighing nothing in her arms, the darkness before meaning little to her golden eyes. Nicau kept Otherworld mana in his throat, tense and coiling for any threats, but I smoothed the way before them as they traveled to the Hungering Reef. Kriya was still unconscious, listing from the breaking of her geas, of her enslavement.

I turned away. I would confront that when she was talking.

But for now, I gathered my wits about me, letting my new schemas flutter through my awareness; not enough mana to fully sculpt the eighth floor, considering how large it was, but enough to begin. I dove down through the limestone and basalt, through the empty mountain that protected my floors from the other, and arrived at the future home of my heart tree.

It was a wonderful hell of a place, exactly as I wanted. In comparison to my other floors, it wasn't as large; perhaps some three thousand feet in diameter, vaguely circular, the walls irregular and peppered with dens.

And then the ceiling, a lovely three thousand feet off the ground.

I had rather wanted to make it more, to tunnel down until it was leagues upon leagues that invaders had to climb up, but my dungeon instincts had lurched unpleasantly at the thought. There was a reason dungeons had floors, rather than amorphous spaces; digging too deep meant breaking the orderly composure of our halls. If I dug too far, I would limit the amount of total floors I could build. And already I could sense the faintest strain in my awareness, the knowledge that I was approaching the end of what I could maintain. Even as I allowed more deities to claim my upper floors, to hold them stable with their mana, I was only one core, and I could not control an empire fit to consume the world. There would be a maximum to my number of floors, and one day, I would reach it.

But not yet. I still had time.

So I spread myself over the floor, mana coiled and ready. My dreams were already honed and prepared, waiting at the tip of my core, and all I had to do was breathe them into life.

I had four at my disposal—vampiric mangrove, cloudsire palm, towering cypress, and cobweb banyan. But for the first time, I wanted to limit the mangroves; though they had dominated my floors above, by the time invaders made it to the eighth floor, they would be well-familiar with their tricks. And, well. I didn't want to be predictable.

I'd carved a small pond to one side of the floor, a repository for aquatic beings and a water source for others. I'd even magicked up a small waterfall down one basalt wall, looping an auxiliary tunnel to my higher floors to feed it, though too small for anything but baitfish to slither through. I unstoppered it with a sliver of mana and let the water rush down, the pool blossoming in pale blue—already mist trickled out into the air, humidity raising.

Mangroves around the pond, their thorned roots tangled in the shore, and only there. The rest would be for other trees.

And chief among them was the towering cypress.

Oh, Nicau couldn't have chosen a better schema if it had been him designing the floor; it was tall and enormous and powerful. Not in terms of mana, being rather a passive species, but in terms of presence; there was little that could see the bulwark shape I envisioned and not feel humbled by their own pitiful size.

The cloudsire palms would fit in the corners, helping to bring even more mist and humidity to the jungle space; the cobweb banyans would weave together this land until it was an interconnected mess of a paradise, drowning in branches and pathways for brave creatures. And above all, the strength of the place.

I wanted a heart tree—the heart of a primeval forest, grown so old its mana had no choice but to coalesce into one tree to serve as the beating heart of its depths. Could I make one as they existed? No. I didn't have a thousand years to wait patiently for a tree to decide it wanted to be more, nor did I necessarily have the room for one befitting its station.

But I could cheat. And I did love cheating.

So I gathered my mana, bright and sparking with potential, and began to weave.

First around the edges; I laid the seeds of cypresses, pumping points into their shells until they cracked free and shot up. Their deep, caramel-amber bark, sinuous like muscle and flesh, erupting through the earth; I guided them up and up and up, as tall as their schema would allow. Their roots, rising up like buttresses, lancing through the soil until they formed a maze at their underside.

But even at their tallest, they stretched only perhaps seven hundred feet up, feathery leaves spread to catch the quartz-lights I had filled the walls with. Tall, yes, but not enough.

My solution was simple. I went into the walls, digging out pockets wide as my schema directed, and there I planted more towering cypresses. Then up they grew, seemingly continuing from the trunk beneath them, up at least their caps brushed the stalactites far above.

Was it perfect? Admittedly not. It was rather hard to hide that the trees did end when you got close to them, when you saw new shoots coming from the walls directly. But when you were a hapless invader fleeing for your life through the tangled labyrinth of my jungle hell, all you would see was the canopy of trees, so far ahead.

Actually– I dug more niches into the walls and laid down cobweb banyans, their white-gold bark unfurling as its branches knit around each other. I didn't want just one canopy, three thousand feet over invaders' heads. I wanted multiple, many; each layer they climbed being more inhospitable than the last, bound and wired in like a hell of their own passing.

Every five hundred feet up, I laid down a new layer of cobweb banyans, letting them thread together a perfect net. To fill in the center, I even planted them directly onto towering cypresses, letting their roots wrap around the giant's bark. It would take some fine-tuning as time went on, I knew, to give the cypress enough nutrients to support both it and its parasites, but already the dream was coming together. A layered jungle, half a dozen canopies all coming together into a green paradise.

But that wasn't enough. It was a jungle in name only, merely a collection of trees. It needed more.

I had plants aplenty, thanks to Nicau. Most were those generously given, and others still were Underranked plants that had been tucked in the back of his gourds, caught on his boots; little things, grasses and sedges and other meaningless species. And then those he had gathered specifically, those I had obtained from my higher floors—dozens of species, all waiting.

I gathered every single point of mana I had, consequences be damned, and threw them all into the floor.

First was the canopies; here I wove creeping vines, tangled like a fishnet, over every available surface. They could root into soil or bark equally, and I used that, forcefeeding the parasites until they were content and settled onto the trees of my choosing. I hung them heavy overtop so they would dangle down, snaking through the air until they spanned the entire length of the air. Then between the canopies, filling in with more cobweb banyans until there was hardly a free section of air to breathe in, more vines knotting around each other. I strung funnel gourds around as well, their fat fruits dangling in temptation as serrated leaves wove through the branch cover. 𝘙�

In each divot and pocket I dumped soil, deep brown and vitamin-rich, and there I grew the green of my green hell. The painted ferns, already soaking in the colours of their surroundings, adopting the deep browns of barks or the muted grey of basalt, or even the white sparks of mica from deep within. Their crown-like fronds shivered wide, spores already beading under the surface. Then clovertails, who grew in enormous bushy clumps of emerald leaves, pale flowers the size of a human's face blooming at even a single fraction of gathered mana. Those filled in the majority and from there I laid down crane-blooms. They were smaller, with long leaves bursting from the dirt to spear at their surroundings—and their flowers! They were long-necked and wide, and with each plant I grew I saw new colours; reds, purples, yellows, blues, pinks. More and more points of mana I dumped into them, letting another invading trio of adventurers not worth the dirt they walked on as my kobold tribe killed them just to use their mana right away for more flowers. The only contrast from the ever-present green.

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Every colour and shade of moss I threw around like I was bringing it back from extinction. Billowing moss, with its waving fronds akin to a prairie's grass, I layered over every available surface until it seemed as though there was no ground anymore, just the pale green. Jadestone moss clung to overturned roots and dangling branches, mana already coalescing into heavy jewels at its center. The maraca moss I set up on the creeping vines, a blue-green collection with these large black seedpods that rung hollowly whenever the creeping vine twitched. A funeral toll, echoing through the halls. Even my first schema, the basic green algae, I wove over my quartz-lights so the entire floor was lit up in a dappled green hue, like we were truly out in the jungle.

Then the mushrooms. Already the light was dim enough that they could grow mostly everywhere, and everywhere I put them. Whitecaps and lacecaps filled each shadow cast by the towering cypresses' mighty roots, these layered kingdoms of fungal rebirth, interspaced with razorleaf lichen for any with curious hands. Then, up the cypresses' trunks, I laid laddercaps—they were broad, pale orange things, circular in their extensions off the bark. Already spores clustered heavily over their flat tops, waiting for hapless to carry them to their next growth. Perfect for my creatures to use, and any invaders who thought themselves brave enough. Something I would quickly relieve them of.

Then I settled back.

Already, the entire floor hummed and buzzed and existed, heavy in the air even past the humidity. Even my Jungle Labyrinth was just thornwhip algae filling the tunnels, dark and pressing; but here the greenery was impossible to ignore. Everywhere I turned I saw a new species, a new colour of crane-bloom, a new tapestry of woven cobweb banyan and creeping vine. Already bugs were finding their way within, those Underranked I didn't bother to pay attention to, only half a point needed to spawn an empire's worth of numbers. They flitted from leaf to leaf, filling the air with the cacophony of a million wings, ants plodding underfoot and beetles sheltering beneath strewn rocks and roots. A few of my greater species—hunting mantises, platemail bugs, swarming wasps, eyeblight butterflies, cave spiders—though I only created as few as necessary to create a population without wasting. Bugs would evolve as they did; I didn't need to guide the process too much.

I had drained myself past empty of mana in the making, but the wonderful thing about being an artist was that it took time to lay everything in place. And with the trio of invaders I'd merrily killed, I had enough to start creating some creatures. Not all—unfortunately it did take time for me to regenerate mana, considering my Otherworld supply was near useless with how little I got and I instead had to rely on the fighting of my creatures against each other and any invaders foolish enough to stumble within—but enough to begin the ecosystem.

Which meant starting from the bottom. Which meant prey.

That was a problem I was becoming unfortunately worried about—too many of my creatures evolved into predators, precious few taking another turn around to become food. I prodded through my schemas; for this floor, I had, hm, bounding deer, burrowing rats, stone-backed toads, and a collection of other half-predator half-prey that could be hunted if need be. Which… wasn't enough. Not nearly so. Fuck.

I didn't particularly want to send Nicau back into the world, considering I needed him for Kriya and I was rather expecting that whole debacle to take some time, but I didn't see any other route for handling that. So far I had been increasing the ambient mana on floors to provide other kinds of sustenance, but that wasn't a forever solution; it was hardly enough a temporary one. I needed more prey.

Perhaps by putting so many burrowing rats and other similar species on the lower floors would help trigger an evolution, where I would then pick only the most defenseless and largest option. It had worked before.

Okay. I'd try it.

I gathered my mana, what scraps of it remained, and woven hundreds of burrowing rats into existence; they fled from my presence, disappearing under the gentle fronds of painted ferns or scurrying up laddercaps to reach safer dens. Next was stone-backed toads, which croaked as they appeared alongside each other and hopped off in search of accessible bugs. Bounding deer stumbled over their own hooves as they shot off into the surroundings, silverheads splashing around in the waterfall-fed pool, luminous constrictors slithering up to the canopy overhead. Just enough to hopefully trigger some new prey, if not fill in the ranks themselves.

It hurt me—deeply—but I would hold off on predators for now. I would wait until I had a strong enough base to support them, so I wasn't wasting mana constantly replenishing prey that served as little more than a mouthful to my creatures; if I wanted to begin my ninth floor, and quickly, I couldn't be spending my limited mana like that. I had to be more clever, and that meant waiting.

Well. I would hold off on most of them. But a few couldn't hurt. Particularly those I wasn't wasting any mana in creating.

I awoke several points of awareness in the Skylands, drifting through the lightning-stained mana. Several creatures would function well in the heart tree, particularly the Magelords, but I would allow them longer in this space before making the move down. No, I had my eyes set on another.

Curled within a den, feathered tail resting over her nose, the boundless jaguar pricked her ears as I settled overhead.

Come, I murmured, quiet and polite. A land for you.

And in her mind, I showed her just what I meant; the tangle of trees and thickets, the perfect perches for her to watch all those beneath her, the bountiful prey I promised just as soon as I finished. A land for the taking.

Her thoughts hungered. She wasn't Old, not in the way her evolution said she should have been, but she was a creation of hunger still. She rose to her paws, feathered tail swishing over the stone; for too long had she been confined to the Jungle Labyrinth, only able to hunt that which was not under Veresai's command. I would give her a territory for herself, now. She could test what I had created, to show me where I needed to form bridges or thicken up the canopy; the eyes of a hunter to see what my omnipresent dungeon-self didn't notice.

She churred something in her throat and stretched, six limbs digging claws into the stone. Then she padded off to Akkyst, either a goodbye or just informing him of where she hunted, considering very little could keep her from traveling my different floors if she wanted, and from there I knew she would follow the map I set in her mind.

Soon, I would fill in the rest of the floor. Already my mind spun with it; verdant howlers, terrorbirds, mottled scorpions, cavern-mouths. A land akin to my others, but altogether separate. Travel up instead of through. The promise, not threat, of a fall.

As soon as Nicau made it to the Hungering Reefs—he was already partially through the Skylands, moving at a starfish's pace past the Magelord's territory—I would let Kriya decide to either help me or die, then I would Name Chieftess, and then I would figure out what the fuck else I had to do.

But as I looked over my green hell, my paradise in waiting, I couldn't help but feel content.

-

The jeweled jumper followed the masses into the midst.

They moved slow, limited by their lack of limbs, the grey-green-beasts and their mindless walk. All the creatures at their sides, the monsters he took such delight in killing when he could, but on they marched and on they moved, and only now were they stopping.

The halls were unremarkable; grey stone and shadows, much the same as before, but the grey-green-beasts treated it like new territory. They clustered, tucking in, not one separating from the others. Difficult to kill. Difficult to be unkillable.

But the jeweled jumper didn't try, not now. He was curious; an odd thing to be, but he was. Whatever scared them more than him was here.

The think-word echoed like a prayer. Growth, Growth, Growth.

To the stone they turned, a flat section of grey the same as all the others. But this they faced like a threat, and this the largest grey-green-beast stepped forward. Not the one the jeweled jumper had killed, but just as unthreatening. The only difference was a staff it carried in its odd-flat-claws, tipped in bone.

It slammed the base against the rock. The bones clattered, echoing louder than they should have.

Deep within the mountain, something rumbled in answer. A monster.

The jeweled jumper shivered—his carapace felt suddenly hot, bursting at the cracks. His mind, so large, so clever, hungered for that rumble—wanted to know what it was. The grey-green-beasts all huddled and clutched at each other after the noise, and again the leader slammed its staff against the rock. The rumble snarled through the depths again.

And the wall shook. The wall trembled.

The jeweled jumper readied himself, venom hissing over his fangs. The grey-green-beasts picked up their spears and prepared for battle; he did the same.

They had arrived.

It was time to fight.