Dragonheart Core

If my Heartwood was halfway completed, then my ninth floor would be even less so—but I just wanted my core to be lower. Something to put more space between me and invaders; and if the worst truly came to it, I would just call Seros and my other Named down to defend me, trying to cut out what scraps made it past the previous eight. I was going to survive this threat no matter what happened, this I knew.

And thus my ninth floor had to come together.

In a reverse of what normally happened, I was building this floor off of my creatures, rather than trying to gather them to fit an idea I already had. Gonçal had given me three schemas that didn't fit anywhere else in my dungeon, and I wanted to use them here—even if a part of me hissed at using it. He would know exactly what species they were, perhaps even their weaknesses or how to defeat them. But I just had to hope it was only him and not the entirety of Calarata. I couldn't afford to just let the schemas waste away in my core, scared of the potential of someone knowing them over the potential of their strength.

And they would be very strong. The frozen world was not one of kindness, unforgiving in all the most dangerous of ways, and that was what I wanted to take. Invaders had faced fire and forest, and now I wanted them to freeze.

In terms of the floor's structure, I had a rough idea of what I wanted, mostly born of creating a different challenge than those above. The Heartwood was a cramped land, webbed in by trees and canopies, and the Scorchplains were massive and empty. I knew the cold would be different enough, but I wanted more, wanted an element to pin people as they struggled forward. No one could be allowed to make it.

As a sea-drake, I had not been a creature of the cold. When I ventured into the deep oceans, I had touched it, letting it wash over my scales, but not settled my hoard there. I preferred the warmer waters that carried more prey.

But I was very aware of the dangers of it. And those were what I wanted to harness, because there was little that guaranteed death but a glacier.

In many ways, they were the threat of the high seas, not creatures or wandering heroes. They were enormous, unstoppable, and moved faster than expected when pushed by dancing currents; I had seen corpses crushed between two opposing glaciers, entire islands battered beneath their bulk, frozen schools of baitfish dead before they could swim away.

And now they would be mine. Already I could envision it—an endless expanse of pure white, ice cracking underfoot with every step, fire or heat magic a promise of plummeting below. To create a plain of ice, some parts frozen over frigid waters and others rising in icy pillars, creating an unstable surface similar to the Scorchplains, just reversed. I wanted to see people fall through the ice into water, drowning against the frozen surface—or creating a coastline of fractured glaciers, constantly moving and shifting until no step was safe.