Dragonheart Core

It was an odd thing, to be so convinced something was about to fall on my core. Even as I looked over the ninth floor and all the work I had put into it, an instinct older than the stone around me urged me further down. It said great threats were coming, that death was on its heels if I were lucky, and enslavement were I not.

Surprisingly convincing, that. I angled my gaze to far back of the floor.

If I started on the tenth floor, no matter the distance, it would just be an empty room that I had to hope would be enough to keep invaders back; and it would be more distance for Seros to cross before he reached me. Not ideal. What mana I had would be going towards creating creatures for my Heartwood and ninth floor, filling in the arctic wasteland as the water rose and glaciers froze, not creating a new floor that I didn't even know what I wanted yet. I knew that. I knew that.

Still I kept staring at the flat expanse of stone.

Fuck it.

I gathered my mana, what scraps remained, and flew to the end. I wouldn't be making the floor, not yet, but I would be moving my core down—tucking it further beneath the stone, a tunnel leaning down to tuck into the depths. I wasn't full of the farcical hope that invaders would simply turn around rather than descend the tunnel, but if there was even a chance they took a moment longer to locate the proper way down, that would give Seros just a little more time to reach here. And I would take a chance over nothing.

The ninth floor hummed in quiet anticipation, water lapping at the stone as more mana gushed through the cloudy gems. It would be ages until it was full, which was the unfortunate downside of creating my own water instead of siphoning it from the cove, but I rather saw this as the only option. I was not interested in another hole punched through my walls for critters to scuttle through into my lower levels; the War Horde was still too fresh in my mind.

I picked a spot somewhere higher than the water would be, requiring a precarious climb up the broadside of a future glacier, and started to dig.

The limestone crumbled away, devoured by my mana and recycled back into the digging claws; I meandered my way through the Alómbra Mountains, channeling out a path just wide enough to fit Seros moving at full speed. He was the basis of my design, as always. The glaciers of the ninth floor were thick enough to hold his weight; the tunnels were tall enough to fit his horns. There was a certain peace to me at the thought of building around him. Oh, how I still dreamed of him becoming a proper sea-drake, a monster of unfathomable power—but I had been a sea-drake, and still I had died. And something about that was now less important to me, less fundamental to how I viewed the draconic monitor. I wanted him to be a dragon, yes, but I was also content in him just being– him.