Dragonheart Core

My lovely vampiric dryad—Svythe, the draconic word for hooked claws, which fit, considering her… everything. She made a deep, acidic hiss as Otherworld mana flooded through her, head tilted, silver motes drifting over her form. Her Ancestral Tree shifted, twisting its thorned roots until it almost seemed to open, carving a den within the sandy soil—Svythe stumbled towards it, weight shifting like she wanted to raise her arm to nudge away the thorns. But her arm was gone. The thorns moved for her regardless, shifting back so she could curl up in the roots of her Ancestral Tree, the Otherworld mana diffusing overtop.

It had only taken Akkyst a day or two to awaken, and Svythe was far hungrier than him. Oh, she would awake, and she would be powerful. All my Named were.

I hoped Chieftess came back soon. It wasn't necessarily that I disliked having more mana regeneration, but the piddling points from that were little to nothing compared to an invasion, or a wandering creature, or even just the standard fight-and-feast in my halls. No, it was there for Names, and the improvement to my mana pool was for creating more expensive schemas. That was the real point of it.

A simple system, but one evolving. Back on my first floor, I had needed to wait for regeneration enough to build my room, to make any creatures. But that had been when I relied on an underground monitor for all my defense and a single human with a torch tried to enslave me. And already I was butting up against problems with my mana pool, my schemas growing larger and larger until they threatened to be too large for me to make. A threat for a future day, because every time I evolved, all I thought of was more Names. More Named to join my Otherworld mana.

Which would happen, as soon as Chieftess got back. Eventually. Fuck. Why did I let her go before? All I wanted was more Named, more blessings. I was a wretchedly greedy creature at my core, this I knew. Svythe's blessing fascinated me to no need, particularly since the language of the runes was never immediately clear. Seros had hydrokinesis, Nicau could talk and command all, Veresai could see through her follower's eyes, Akkyst made the world speak in runes to him—what would the blessing of the hunter mean? What would that give her?

I was still a shade distracted watching over Svythe, even though I knew it would be at least another invasion before she woke up, when another creature got the jump. Rather, creatures.

Woven throughout the Hungering Reefs, the shadows deep and heavy, my sharks awoke. I preened.

Rammerhead sharks were, fittingly, brutes. Much like my armoured jawfish, the moment silver light drifted off their forms they immediately started to fall, the weight of their new enormous forms dragging them to the sand. Most of it was in their head, which had mightily tripped its way up from cartilage to calcified strength. Not armour, bone or otherwise, just strengthened skin—sharpened skin. Like the roughwater shark it had been, where it let its skin grow sharp to dissuade predators. But now it was a weapon, combined with their weight, to tear apart anyone in their path. Battering rams, combined with teeth and fins and tail.

In as strong a comparison as water and fire, my moray sharks were nightmares.