The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 22/100

Heart 1587600/1587600

Experience 366807/435600

Workers 27/139

Monsters 9/141

Traps 114/339

Food 5893

Timber 7322

Iron 2292

Steel 905

Mithril 2522

Mithril Ore 400

Adamantine 1787

Adamantine Ore 1130

Charcoal 4008

Mana 1544

Rock 1243

Gold 1057

Leather 216

Leather Sludge 215

Lava 501

Glass 483

Explosive Runes 30

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 0

Long Guns 30

Bullets 200

Black Powder 1500

Poison, Greater 500

Deadly Scorpion Venom 76

Sulfur 1058

Quest: Kill the boss of another dungeon.

Quest: Half populate your dungeon: Workers 27/66 | Monsters 9/67 | Traps 114/162

Quest: Delve to the bottom of a dungeon with at least 20 floors.

Several things were bugging Travis while Penelope slept. He couldn't figure out what the reward had been for getting ten classes—which was a pain that was all his own—he also had a very large woman sitting in his heart room, her back pressed against him, talking away in her own language.

He couldn't understand it, and that was something that confused him. He could understand the people of the city, he could understand his kobolds, he could also understand Breath of Spring. She didn't seem worried by it, though. She talked and talked, not even stopping when various kobolds came in and picked up tasks from the workboard.

The tone of her voice changed constantly. She ranged from soft and warm to sharp and aggressive, and every combination in between.

Wanting to help her pass the time, Travis made a soft pink glow over the wax tablets in a box in the corner of the room. When Astrid stood up and walked toward them, he made his glow fade. She spoke again, her inflection rising—a question.

Another question from her that he couldn't answer, but she eventually crouched down beside his crystal and made some marks on the tablet. Rune-like symbols that reminded Travis of Celtic art with twirls and lines that joined back up. She tapped the first one, held up a finger, and spoke a clear word.

Travis wasn't sure what she meant until she moved to the second, held up two fingers, and spoke the second word. It hit him that she was teaching him numbers. It was enjoyable to take the time to learn something completely new, and Travis spent a lot more of his focus on Astrid than the rest of his dungeon.

When they got to twenty-five, though, she made a new mark between one and two, then wrote three under it. Travis would be the first to admit that he wasn't the smartest when it came to math, but he'd managed to pick up a fair bit of quasi-Japanese from watching anime and Japanese movies with subtitles, and in high school he'd learned German.

When she wrote down fifteen plus nine, he made a pattern on the wall with his magic: twenty-four.

She laughed, a clear, pure tone that rang around the room. She said the word Travis had learned was twenty-four.

To find out the next part, Travis put the same twenty-four on the wall, then put eleven after it, and wrote thirteen below them.

Astrid, wearing a smile, wrote down the numbers on her own tablet and then added the missing subtraction symbol. They continued, Travis learning multiplication, division, and even managing to get his head around the Balavian version of statistics (from what he could gather, they used them for calculating effectiveness of troops and battle planning).

In the end, they could both quote numbers and sums at each other easily and answer them. Travis, of course, couldn't speak the words, but he'd learned them enough after a few hours that he could readily respond to just verbal challenges.

Walking out into the heart room, Penelope looked on as Travis and Astrid were talking (Astrid was talking, Travis was drawing pictures with his mana). "What's going on? Can you understand that?"

"Hey, Pen. Yeah, she's been teaching me her language," Travis said.

Astrid jerked at the sound of Penelope walking into the heart room. Part of her wanted to call her beast and fight her way out, but part accepted that when there was an intelligent dungeon, its creatures were likely as much so. In the end, she decided giving them a nod would satisfy her code of honor.

"Do you have all that adamantine and mithril processed yet?" Walking up to Travis' heart, Penelope pressed her palm to it and kissed him.

Taking a step back, Astrid surveyed the situation and realized what was happening. "I'll go," she said, knowing Travis would understand her words. She gave a respectful nod to Penelope on her way out of the heart room.

"Uh, Pen? You didn't have to do that."

"Huh?" Freezing, Penelope looked around in a slight daze, unsure what Travis was talking about.

Biting back what he wanted to tell her, about Astrid, Travis thought he'd move on with what she'd asked initially. "There's enough mithril and we'll have enough adama— Oh, we have enough. Well, do you want to do this?"

"Okay. I'll, uh, do it here if you are okay with that?" Penelope walked to the back corner of the room and sat down. She was just getting comfortable when she realized what Trav had tried to say earlier—and what she'd done. "Did I really act like that to show her you're mine?"

About to hit the upgrade, Travis paused. "Yeah, you did. Pen, there's one thing you will never have to worry about."

Pulling her legs up against her body, Penelope asked, "What's that?"

"I will never leave you. Sweet dreams, I love you." He liked the surprised, happy look on her face as he paid the costs, paying a little extra gold to reduce the usage of metals and food.

120,000 gold

14,500 food

1,800 mithril

1,800 adamantine

Not enough gold!

Travis stared at the notice and laughed. "Hold on, apparently we can't afford the Flush version."

100,000 gold

15,000 food

2,000 mithril

2,000 adamantine

Feeling the magic wrapping her up, Penelope stared at Travis' heart until her face was finally covered. Her last thoughts, she hoped, traveled to him. "I love you too."

"I guess that means I had between one hundred thousand and one hundred and nineteen thousand, or so." It was a lot of gold, Travis realized, but he didn't care. Nothing was too good for his friends.

Watching her army pulling back from their picket lines stung Hilda almost as much as her sister's death. She wanted to be gone from the city, but an orderly withdrawal was tricky to do without losing far more soldiers than she had in trying to take it. "How goes the north side?"

"They're slowly pulling back from the earthworks, ma'am. Should be done in a day or two. The south is going slower—they have Captain Donna's group from the nearby dungeon fort folding into them." Reporting on the progress of her former Captain made Gunhild's jaw tighten in anger. She'd been there when the attack had come and, being honest with herself, she wished it had been Hilda who'd been killed. "The east is the hardest. They're pulling away slower and drawing around the south. They'll be with us and ready to move in a week."

"A week." Spitting on the ground, Hilda felt exposed. Her army's morale was waning now their target had proved a bigger trap than they could handle, but if she could get most of them out they could still look for a second target. "So be it. Hold the withdrawal of the southern forces to cover the east."

Clenching her fists, Astrid crouched, again, in the dungeon's core room. It was a peaceful place that her culture had not prepared her for. Dungeons, or holes as her people called them, were places to be burned out, killed, and destroyed.

But this dungeon wasn't heretical. "What even is a heresy?"

You okay?

The words floated before Astrid. Pure magic—the perfect answer to her question. "I'm still trying to understand everything. It's not easy." Even the cleverest slave she'd met had never picked up her language so fast. Astrid put it down to more dungeon strangeness.

You don't have to do it all in one day.

Astrid snorted. "My entire life is a lie. Dungeons aren't horrible."

Would it help if I told you that most are?

"No." Poking her finger at the magic of Travis' words, Astrid was able to rework it into the rune for no. "I know you are an exception. Felna has told me as much. Has Hilda finished pulling back yet?"

No. Her forces move slowly. I admire that she doesn't want to lose people. Fife wants to use the poison on them, but I told her not to.

The slightest shiver racked Astrid's body. "The poison is bad. Terrible stuff. My pack—"

Your pack was attacking us. Fife was testing out the poison that night and got lucky.

The words didn't always make full sense, but Astrid was able to derive meaning readily enough. "Bad luck for us, good for you. That's how war is."

We sent out fast couriers over a week ago now. Brolly said that if they take more than two or three days, the first forces of a relief army will be here.

It came as a shock to Astrid. "How did you get them out? We didn't see any riders."

Opened a new entrance in the woods to the south. Luddy slipped through the lines and placed it for me, well outside your patrols.

"It is ironic that my people's denial of dungeons has left us unknowing of your tricks. Dungeons in the north are never allowed to get this big, even if you don't have many floors." It had been a surprise that Travis only had three. She'd woken up inside the dungeon and hadn't known that she was barely down two floors. She had since had a chance to look at the defenses, though, and had paled at how much trouble her people would have faced in here. "My pack…"

We haven't disposed of their bodies yet. The priest in the city said that as long as they're kept intact and cold, he can bring them back after several weeks. It can be a choice you make after your people have left.

Travis had mentioned that to her before, but she figured he had dealt with the bodies already. Sitting down on the floor, Astrid turned her full attention to it. They would be angry, afraid, and furious with her. "There is one way to do this that will satisfy all of us.

"Revive them one at a time. I will fight them each, one by one. They can kill me if they wish, and your herat— Your priest can bring me back. If they want to die again, I will grant them the death in battle they will crave. If they want to live—"

I will offer them the same deal as you. Work for a year, then decide their own path.

Nodding, Astrid stretched and tilted her head side to side. "Some will want to die. They will go down screaming and slavering. You know what that means, right?"

Yes. As I said, we can afford to wait. Pen will be her new self and Fife will have found some more armor, I can bet.

Laughing, Astrid had to agree. "She weighs more than I do when I am a wolf—including my armor." At that thought, Astrid grunted. "My armor…"

We have a smith who can make you new armor. He works adamantine well, and is getting better every day.

Astrid nodded. "Yes. If I am to protect you, I will need my armor, a new axe, a sword, and a hatchet." She could still scarcely believe that she was conversing with a dungeon, in her own language, and felt comfortable doing so.

Your wolf form, can it be transferred to another?

"No. Either you are born to the madness of the wolf, or you carry no such burden."

You don't think it's a burden?

Astrid hadn't realized she'd let that slip. "It's what non-wolves call it. Their words, not ours. I feel more alive when I am a wolf. The whole world comes into focus and awaits me to hunt it, kill it, or spare it. When I am not a wolf, I feel small and weak."

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This story is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. If you are paying money to see this or the original creator, Damaged, is not credited, you are viewing a plagiarized copy of the story.