Dragonheart Core

Chapter 29: Deeplake

The problem, I was quickly finding, was that upgrading my floors came a mite easier when I had the mana to do so.

Creating the two cave bears had exhausted what last pieces I'd collected from the merrows' souls, and with the vast majority of my creatures dead, my steady stream of replacement from the constant cycle of death in my floors was no longer replenishing me.

Fortunately, I hadn't dissolved their corpses yet.

I slapped a few points of sharpened awareness at a trio of silvertooths feeding on the Priestess' corpse, chasing them away with an apologetic press of mana. They'd gotten their fill from the deaths, but I needed the rest.

The merrow shivered once, twice, and started to blur around the edges; the water stirred and trembled as I tore them apart, learning the detailed intricacies of their biology with, once again, the infuriating lack of a schema. Either a protected race, or one that had earned sapiance that I couldn't recreate. Fantastic.

But they were fascinating creatures.

Ages old, part of the same family as selkies, sirens, and mermaids, although interestingly not the aicaya. Not as transformative as the selkies, not as powerful as the sirens, nor as civilized as the mermaids, but a blend between the three. This particular branch of the species lived in Arroyo, the underwater city beneath the cove, led by the Thirteen Priests all speaking for a different watery god.

And the youngest of those Thirteen had met her violent end in my halls.

An uncomfortable thought. I doubted the merrow would be fond of her final moments.

But while this earned me far less mana than their souls did and deprived my creatures from their well-earned meal, it was still a very welcome twenty-seven points to fill my coffers as the last of them and their equipment dissolved into white motes of light.

The third floor.

It was still my newest and its creation was fresh in my mind; I could piece out where I'd decided to widen the tunnel a touch so that Seros could swim through more easily, where I'd opened up the den entrances to make sure that schools of silvertooths could swim safely in to lay their eggs. That had been the theme, really; openness. I'd wanted something to remind me of the open ocean.

But it wasn't ocean, was it? My little bout with the saltwater had shown me that in a rather pressing reminder. I wanted it to be freshwater, or at least needed it to be. I had only freshwater creatures and those that came through the shiny new entrance in my walls would be safely killed and then promptly adapted to these new waters. And I would be able to gather new creatures, I knew; while freshwater creatures tended to die almost immediately as they lost all of the water in their cells and shriveled on impact, saltwater beings could survive the switch, certainly not indefinitely but a bit longer. They started to absorb water, swelling up and growing slow, but with a quick pop back outside they would be fine. I rather predicted I'd soon have a merry new stream of those hungry for mana poking their head in for a bite.

Although, theoretically, I could turn the third floor into a more brackish environment, with an increased but not level amount of salt. Enough for my creatures to survive and for those of the outside world to come in safely. From what I'd picked apart in the merrow's biology it didn't matter to them whether their water was fresh or salt; they regulated their own internal salt level by means of their separate respiratory system and highly-specialized gills, releasing or holding sodium depending on where they were. They'd find their way through my third floor no matter what I did to the water. Something very important to study for when I did go about changing gathered creatures over, though. Unless I changed my floor over to not-fully-fresh.

…and mangroves were known for surviving saltwater.

I shook my points of awareness. A question for a later day, certainly not at the beginning of my great rebuilding; I needed a lot more mana if I was going to adapt all my surviving creatures into things that could survive such a blended environment. I'd stick to freshwater for now.

First things first. If this truly wasn't the ocean home my starry-eyed naïtivity had tried to make, then I needed to choose what it would be. Not another set of canals, nor river; but a lake. Something for the sturgeons to root around in, the crabs to bury in deep, silty mud, the silverheads to chase distant beams of light from the murky surface. Alright.

It pained me, deep in my heart, to shred the fledgling theme I'd been building and start anew, but it was needed.

For one, I tugged the ceiling down; from nearly two hundred feet deep to half that, shaped in endless twists and bobs and hills. No easy navigation for invaders—my creatures would just have to learn the patterns and follow them. All the advantages they could take would be helpful.

As for the walls, I shredded them into dozens more tunnels, stretching further and further into the gloom. I wove great veins of gold into the most narrow, placing flecks of bioluminescent algae so that the light would catch on the precious metal and attract those with a bigger wallet than sense.

But much like my first floor, this one had a problem; from when the invader managed to find the opening on the second floor and made their way down, they had what roughly accounted for a straight line to my core room. And if they'd already made their way from my first floor, then they'd be expecting another distracting pillar in the center.

I hummed, mana rippling through the water around me; though I'd removed all the excess algae in favor of limiting it only to what grew on the airy ceiling above, mimicking the sun to the best of my abilities, the water was still too clear for the proper murk I desired. I needed something stirring up the silt at the bottom.

And something to keep people from moving forward.

Oh, that was an idea.

Seros raised his head, nosing once at the evolving form of his kobold before slipping into the water to heed my call; he wriggled up through the shifting currents as the floor slowly adjusted to the new tunnels and size I'd carved for or from it, head cocked curiously to the side.

In front of him was a hole.

It wasn't a terribly impressive hole, I'd admit—directly in the center of the floor, maybe twenty feet across, roughly circular and another twenty feet deep. No algae grew near it, shaping for a dark, dreary little place.

Above it, I'd shaped a plateau of a stalactite, extending through the air and maybe ten feet down into the water itself; without my favoured loops of gold and diamond, no one should look twice at it. Just another dip in the already tumultuous ceiling.

Help me, I asked across our connection. Seros churred curiously, bubbles spilling from between his fangs, but reached out with his burgeoning hydrokinesis to meet my shaft of mana.

Together, we started to swirl.

In the ocean, there were what was called in polite company crushing holes; deep pits formed by errant currents that dug forever down, endlessly into the abyss. Forever, of course, because no being could actually survive long enough to go check how deep they went. Something in the area above the water just seemed to tug the current downs, pressure building and building and building until any woefully idiotic being that happened to meander down tended to pop before they could live to regret their decision. Immensely dangerous, almost impossible to escape.

Now, I had no expectations that I would be able to recreate one—though I was holding out hope for a miracle—but I could do my damnedest to mimic it. The water slithered against the surface and then ran abruptly into the stalactite. With nowhere else to go, it went down; and while the majority of it just ran up the side of the stalactite and continued on the other side, some of it went down. All the way to the hole.

The black pit gurgled as there was suddenly more water than it could hold filling its vast maw; but while the water wanted to rise back up, gravity wished to hold it down. It rightly trembled with indecision.

And where it wavered, pressure built.

But currents had to be created by something, and I couldn't very well ask Seros to sit on his claws here and keep spinning the water until my dungeon fell apart. Currents could be maintained by water density differences, gravity, storms–

Or wind.

And I had a delightful new schema I'd been meaning to try.

I left Seros to maintain the spin of the currents, great practice for his hydrokinesis, reached inside to gather up the points required, and–

Hm.

Twenty-seven mana from the corpses of the merrow and all the mana-ladden equipment and weapons they'd brought with them. Not a bad haul, really, and even with the fifteen I'd used on shaping the floor there were still plenty twelve more for creating new creatures. Even for my most expensive creature, a greater crab, I could still make it with that much mana.

Surely the cloudskipper wisp wouldn't be any more intensive than that.

That optimism was failing me as nine points merrily drained away before I'd finished even half of the thing. Not a chance I'd wrap things up with three left.

I grimaced but collapsed the rough ball of wind and water, losing two points to the ineffectiveness of the system; great. More waiting.

Then I settled in, rejoined Seros on spiraling the water, and waited.

-

I aimed the best glare I could at the spinning ball of cloud above the lake.

Almost impossible to measure because the damn thing never stayed still, it was roughly a foot in diameter and made solely of ever-shifting winds and vapours, dozens of "arms" extending in every direction to grab onto surrounding stone to tug it forward with greater speed. It left a trail of mist as it traveled, and the mist eventually collided with other paths and joined together to form low-hanging clouds, heavy and rich with water. Then, inevitably, the wisp would dart right through the center of the cloud, scattering it back to vapour so the process would start again.

Twenty-one points for that.

It was intelligent, though, at least compared to the majority of my creatures; in the first seconds after it had been born it had seen what Seros and I were doing and had perfectly matched its patterns to that, running along the same routes to keep the currents maintained. It seemed to delight in kicking up waves on the surface, sending the algae-light spearing through the water in jagged lines, only partially illuminating the waters darkened by the silt kicked up in its endless currents.

It? Them? I wasn't terribly aware of elemental concepts of gender, but from what I could scrap together from its frankly infuriatingly whimsical thoughts, I got the vaguest sense of a more feminine voice. That would have to do for now. When it evolved up to a proper elemental, it could tell me what it wanted to be called.

For the moment, she spun a dizzying maze of clouds and lines above the lake, never pausing for a second to think about consequences or actions or any silly thing of that sort. Ever running, ever creating mist, ever dancing on her clouds. Wild little thing.

Perhaps it was best she was contained in the few feet of air above the third floor. I shuddered to think of her loose on the second.

But with her expert, innate care of the currents, Seros and I were once again free to wander and take care of our land. Itd taken almost a day of gathering mana before I felt confident enough to try creating her, and I still had almost eight points left. Enough to finish up the third floor's design, though not creating enough creatures to fill it.

Case in point, the piece of bloodline kelp sadly drifting against a piece of limestone it couldn't take root in.

This was still going to be a lake, even if I filled it with brackish water, but I'd be absolutely damned if I wasn't going to fill it with a forest of kelp. The murky, silt-filled water just begged to have an extra threat to swim through.

I dug through an extra piece of floor, churning the limestone into silt, and started to grow a patch. No clue on how to adapt a plant to a freshwater environment, but if I could just watch it die a couple of times, I could poke into what was wrong and hopefully adapt it before the plant started to just absorb my mana instead of change.

Three points later, a beautiful stalk of amber-gold speared through the murk, waving gently as its air bladders inflated and carried its fronds reaching to the surface. Little runners started to grow along its base, ready to conquer the water around it.

I waited rather patiently.

The kelp waved merrily on.

An hour later my incredulity wore out and I dove into the kelp with a great number of points of awareness; but it was fine. Its cells were a little more inflated than normal, the stalk stiff and struggling to bend in the current with its rubbs fully filled out, but the plant was fine. Honestly, in this well-maintained water and ample "sun" above, it was thriving.

I… could kelp survive in freshwater environments? Did it have the same sodium problem as animals? What?

Gods, I was a sea-drake. I shouldn't be having problems with water. This whole mess with the merrows and now this was just turning out to be one gut punch after the other. I should be good at this.

Infuriating.

I slapped two more stalks down to help it grow and stalked off to focus on other things.

My third floor, while not complete—I needed a stronger ecosystem of smaller creatures and apex predators—was certainly looking better than it had been. Not saying I was necessarily excited for more invaders, but I was curious how new ones would fare.

As soon as I could whip up a fourth, anti-merrow floor. Very important step in the process.

In terms of creatures, well. I'd have to wait before I could fully replenish my numbers back to what they had been and even past that, but I could instruct who I had remaining.

The electric eel who had gotten such a lovely kill hadn't moved back to the second floor; he seemed quite content here, slinking through the endless tunnels in all manners of predatory. While his kind were built for canals and rivers, the looming murk of the silt-filled waters and the sheer range his school of electric silverheads allowed him meant that this was still territory he could very much dominate over, and his thoughts were full of an intention to do so. Too long had he hunted lesser prey.

I'd leave most of the electric eels with the mangroves where they could simply follow their instincts, but I'd certainly be asking others to follow him down. This place could do with more ranged attackers.

The singular surviving armourback sturgeon had carefully slunk back down to his feeding grounds, though hesitancy crawled over his thoughts; he had evolved in order to lose that fear of mortal death, trusting his armour to protect him when all else failed.

Well, armour couldn't do anything to internal attacks. He was very aware of that now.

But where hesitancy plagued, anger followed.

He wanted to be protected, to live unburdened by concerns; and if the world couldn't be trusted to give him that, he'd have to take it. I flicked little soothing bits of mana into his mind, filling it with thoughts of his powerful bulk, the strength of his armoured head.

He sifted through the soil with perhaps a touch more determination than before. Three of his brethren had died where he had survived; he couldn't afford to stand meekly on the sidelines.

Silverheads were still cowards, silvertooths were still brawlers with no sense of self-preservation. The most I could do was try and sketch out roughly territories for them to lay stake over, giving them another reason to constantly fight and bloody up the waters a bit. All's the better for competition.

But with that in mind, I had another task. Between all of my floors, the first and the third needed the most long-term help; massive expansion for the first, more creatures for the third.

The second, however, was mostly done. All it needed were a few final touches.