Dragonheart Core

Chapter 173: Eight Legs

Slowly, slowly, it awoke.

This was rather concerning to me, considering I was far beneath it tunneling merrily into my planned heart tree, eating away limestone and basalt until dry air heaved at my touch. It was a plummeting kind of space, where beings without wings would feel a lurch in their gut as they stared over the endless drop; even if they were starting on the ground as my tunnel led to, I doubted they would be able to resist the temptation to look down as they climbed, to see the travesty waiting with hungry maws for their fall. Half a missed step, the slip of a hand; gone. A fatal kind of promise.

Oh, I loved this floor, its potential; as soon as Nicau returned with enough plants to fill in the gaps and stuff it full of the danger I needed, it would flourish, blooming much like its namesake into a tangled web of teeth and threats.

But I had been focusing on that, right until a goddess awoke in the forefront of my awareness.

I coiled back, mana smothering my core in protective chains—but the star-burn flitting about my thoughts wasn't attacking, nor particularly aggressive. Just the cold iron that Nenaigch's presence always brought, the thundering slowness of moving tunnels.

And within those tunnels, pulling itself upright, too many limbs by far and eyes black as death, was the arachne.

It—he? they? I had no idea what it would choose—was tall, worryingly so, its back stooped against the cramped corridors of the Jungle Labyrinth. Pale skin, the bristled points of its spine jutting through the canvas, only to disappear beneath a chitinous armour, shadow-black and crawling up its sides. Hair so white it seemed the colour had been stolen from it, hanging ragged over its back and spilling before its face; its face, with eight black eyes arranged like a crown, two largest in the front. A mouth full of mandibles, a collection of fangs already pooling with venom.

And the legs. Hard to miss the legs.

There were eight of them, four on each side, looking all the world like a spider if it wasn't filling the entire godsdamn ten foot width of the tunnels and still needing more room. The same black chitin, armoured over the joints and down to enormous claws on the tips, large and strong enough to puncture through a man's chest.

I floated overhead, mana pulled in and deeply, deeply curious. It was moving slowly, ungracefully, hands clawing at the thornwhip algae as it tried to figure out its balance. Its legs kept lifting and setting down, the ones in the center trying to function like a human's pair but entirely unable. Its thoughts were still sluggish, drifting off evolution, but almost immediately I ran directly into a divided front; the human brain of Gnat melding with the worship of the webweaver.

This could be interesting. And potentially disastrous. I flitted a few points of awareness off to Seros just in case I needed him to rocket up and solve what had the chance to become quite the problem.

But the arachne just stayed there, fumbling about moving as it stared through the surrounding darkness with wide, unblinking eyes. Its thoughts cluttered and clustered up, thrumming with a hungry kind of confusion, wanting to devour but not knowing what to devour. It looked down at itself and rejoiced; it looked down at itself and recoiled. It couldn't pick whether it wanted to be a man or a spider.

That sounded, frankly, exhausting. I hucked a few extra points of mana into its mind if that would help.

But there was another seeking to guide it; Nenaigch floated down, her presence filling the Jungle Labyrinth like a plume of cloud. The arachne stiffened, legs twitching like it wanted to bow but knew that would make it fall over; it stared up as she descended upon it, allowing it fully within its mind.

Unease prickled as she spoke to him directly, a way I couldn't overhead. Something coiled through with iron, the waiting teeth of her mana; but nothing rebounded into my halls, no words, no ideas. Just Nenaigch and the arachne. I might not as well have been there.

But I was, and I wasn't hearing what was happening, and I did not enjoy that.

Finally, Nenaigch pulled back, unsinking her teeth from its head. It sagged back, human torso bending oddly, its clawed hands splaying before its chest in a kind of gesture; the slender points of its claws brought up in a mimicry of her godly symbol. A worshiper.

He will serve, Nenaigch murmured, a rare delight spiraling through her presence. He is mine.

Alright. He it was. A little concerning that there might be more Gnat than webweaver, but I supposed if Nenaigch thought him acceptable there was less a chance of him destroying me. Or trying, at least. Because I would not allow it. ?????Ê?

My first instinct was to call him Gnat, use the insult as what it was—but I still remembered roaring myself intangibly hoarse at Rhoborh for daring to use his part of our deal. While I knew I had more freedom in interacting with the gods than I had been before, able to move and adjust their halls so long as I explained my reasoning and didn't remove their teeth, I wasn't comfortable with insulting them directly. I was growing in strength, growing in power, but I was still nothing beneath a god.

And, well. It was nothing but a temporary pleasure. The memory of being a sea-drake, of being indomitable, but that time was passed and my world no longer worked that way. I had to be… more.

So instead I flicked a point of awareness up to Nenaigch, mana flickering around in passive inquiry. What shall he be called?

Not a Name, though. I wasn't that willing to give up my ideals.

Nenaigch hummed, the rumble of the nameless world where all deities resided. Not the Otherworld, nor the world beyond worlds; something high and floating above the rest. Even now, when she was directly interacting with me, it felt like I was looking through a storm; what I saw from her were the flashes of lightning, the gaps in the grey, but the true body of her power hidden. A presence rather than definitive.

I rather preferred it this way, I thought. Better to have that instead of the constant, unending knowledge I was weaker.

Her star-burn wrapped around me, the iron spools of teeth. Gnat is acceptable, she said.

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Fair enough. There was no accounting for taste, I supposed.

Gnat, I murmured, settling in his mind. Two twists—the lurch to obey the Great Voice, the commands from on high, and the desire to shudder and hide from awareness, to curl up beneath Calaratan alleys and wait for danger to pass. The consequence of combining two things that should not have been combined. But it had been, and now I had a priest.

…what to do with said priest.

The Haven was where I had thought to place him, being that I already had the beginnings of a temple and the assertion he would be safe, but looking at him, I was seeing that as less of a problem than it had initially been. Ungainly now, yes, as his two brains fought to establish into one without losing themselves, but his claws weren't just for show. Each of his legs could skewer any lesser prey, and for all he had a half-pathetic human torso, the vast majority of foes would be dealing with his arachnid side. And the venom in his mouth hissed with a fervour. Threats would be acceptable to handle.

Not in the Jungle Labyrinth, where he could barely fit in the tunnels as was; and the Skylands would grant him no favours in places to hide nor spin his webs. The Scorchplains, perhaps, with the drowning dark and no longer of towers to build off; or the eventual heart tree, with its myriad avenues and danger ever-present–

Something drifted back over my core, Nenaigch's ever-watching eyes. A guard, she murmured. For the escape.

Through our limited connection, she showed me the tunnel snaking off of the Jungle Labyrinth, tangling through the Alómbra Mountains until it stuck out of the Overlook above Calarata. My secret fourth entrance, the one I was going to maintain if it killed me; if anyone discovered it, I was bringing the fucking mountain down.

It was also a thin, inaccessible tunnel where no invaders went nor caused problems. Hells, I shuttered it up every time Nicau returned, though my mana-barrier meant I could never close it entirely or risk losing the tunnel. Not exactly a prime spot of location, and I, ah. Wouldn't mind him beating the shit out of invaders, actually. Was she sure?

Her star-burn strengthened, coiling like silk. He is not to be risked, she said, and yeah, that was unfortunately a risk whenever a dungeon came to call. He shall serve me and guard your escape.

That word again—escape. Why escape? I had designed it as rather the opposite, actually; a way from Nicau to return without risk his head, to bring schemas in by the armful. And dungeon cores were, rather by nature, sedentary; we liked moving almost as much as we liked being enslaved. But she called it escape.

Either way, I guessed that was the solution to my problem—taking a beautiful bastard of a monster and shoving him into a side corridor. At least I could rightly terrify Nicau when he returned. But it wasn't worth arguing with a god, not when Gnat had been near entirely her creation; in the future I would wheedle a deal to bring him into my halls proper, but I was content to allow it past for now. Not happy, to be very clear, but content. I had other things to worry about than the man of a man and a spider warring for dominance scuttling through my halls.

I did waver my mana in idle curiosity. Why there?

In the halls of me, Nenaigch said. Farther from Her.

Excuse me?

Nenaigch's presence shifted, a kind of wary anticipation. The mind is not one willing, she settled on. He came to you from a goal apart from thievery. I will keep him within my mana and I am the only one he thinks of.

So Gnat had invaded my dungeon looking for something else, and even newly evolved and remade and blended with a webweaver, there was a chance he wasn't exactly mine, still clawing after the shadowy cabal that taught him cannibalism and apathetic betrayal.

Right. Cool. I loved that, really. I was also moderately more okay with keeping him far from my core.

Nenaigch pulled back, drifting back to the nameless world; and left me as the one to guide him. Gnat.

It was truly a terrible name for an arachne. Gods if I didn't regret things.

But I sunk my mana into his mind, peeling through the cluttered thoughts and desire to attack both others and himself; he twitched, clawed hands pressing to the sides of his head, rimming beneath his crown of eyes. He looked up, head tilted; a garbled attempt at a word fled his throat, something deep and rasping. I nudged a map within his mind.

He worshiped Nenaigch, but the webweaver of him still knew my voice—he immediately clambered off in that direction, fumbling over thornwhip algae and the many-jointed length of his legs. His head cracked against the ceiling and his claws scored deep holes in the limestone, but he was bloody fast when he was driven to be so—I hadn't even needed to keep the other denizens of the Jungle Labyrinth away before hed found his way into the outer passage, clawing further within.

I watched him, taking some points of mana to carve the tunnel wider around his legs so he could walk freely. It was, objectively, a horrible place for him to live; even if he could move he was just a walking wall in the tunnel, nothing to shelter or hide behind. If an invader entered—which they wouldn't—he would have little option but to face them head on. Hopefully Nenaigch would see that.

And if she didn't, well.

I wasn't going to challenge the goddess, not when she had given me this tunnel and the Haven. But I was entirely fine with proving their incompetence to their faces and then showing them a better path.

-

They were moving. Things were moving.

The jeweled jumper sprang, quick as light, and climbed over the shallow hunch of a stalagmite; the grey-green-beasts were clustered and shaking, a bug in the web, pulling back and forth as they attached things to their backs that seemed their attempt at a carapace. The stone they broke, the dens they carved; all things within were pulled out and prepared, wrapped around themselves.

Strange.

He watched from the shadows, ducking beneath stone whenever they got too close. A break in the killings, enough his venom built behind his fangs and hissed displeasure, but he was oddly curious in the activity. Still the strange beasts, still the new threats, but now the grey-green-beasts were done preparing and were leaving.

Leaving. Going elsewhere. He killed them in the shadows and they went to hunt something else.

This was not a home; it had been nothing more than a field for him to do battle upon. And he had done battle, again and again, never losing despite how they tried to stop him; just him, just victory. But now they left.

He was already following them, this he knew. A chance to see what the greater threat was, the challenge, and then kill it before them. To show them who the actual one to fear was.

And they seemed very full of fear.

The Growth, they said, over and over again. Useless think-words but there was something about this one that made him notice its repetitions; how they clung to its sounds like importance. Even now, as they began to walk out of the cavern in long, thundering lines of beasts and creatures and monsters, they said it again. They kept saying it. They feared it.

The jeweled jumper looked around the halls, the corner of rocks he had chosen to lay in wait for his next chance to strike. A perfect gathering for his fangs, his venom.

But it was just stone. It was just the field; he would leave and find another.

And with that, he crept up the walls, claws flashing, and disappeared after the horde.