The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 1

Level 4/10

Heart 25600/ 25600

Experience 2500/6400

Workers 8/23

Monsters 0/24+1

Traps 25/45+4

Rooms 45

Food 400

Timber 1383

Iron 1004

Steel 0

Charcoal 0

Mana 27

Rock 1767

Gold 2000

Leather 455

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 51

Glass 800

Explosive Runes 2

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Quest: Have 10 minions in your dungeon

Quest: Get 10,000 gold

What had shocked Travis more than the struggle to protect Tannyr from the necrotic curse of the undead dungeon was the news that there had been others so cursed that they hadn't made it.

Tannyr had seemed odd. She had settled down in his core room with her back to him and just sat there. He felt, he realized, protective of her. He'd already fought off another dungeon to save her, but it had cost her her cultural identification—she wasn't a dwarf anymore.

"You don't have to stay here. You can still work for the town."

She turned her head to the side and looked at him through one eye. He wondered what she felt about all this. Would she be angry at him for making her a kobold?

"I mean it. You didn't ask to be here, you didn't ask to be a kobold, and I don't—"

"Than you." Her words were clipped. Tannyr hadn't been practicing out loud with her voice, but she had apparently been thinking about how to speak with a muzzle, a brace of sharp teeth, and a long tongue.

"Fife said you are a stonemason. I have a lot of stone—well, it's just rock. There's even a special building I can make. Stoneworks. I can't build it yet, but if you ever want to make use of it, it's yours." Sighing, Travis didn't know what to do. He didn't know her. Even Penelope had given him some clues as to her personality before becoming a kobold. "You can stay here if you want, but I need to focus on Pen and Robert. They want some new work done in the dungeon and I need to lay stuff out for them."

Travis didn't expect her reaction. Tannyr jumped to her feet, wobbled a little, then looked directly at him. "Sho me."

After her initial anger at what had been done, Tannyr Stoneshave had to conclude that it wasn't Travis' fault. It wasn't even the townsfolk's fault. There was, in fact, only one thing at fault—herself. She'd turned down a shield so she could more effectively swing her hammer. She'd insisted on being front-line where she could protect others. She had paid the price.

The irony of it all, as she walked through a dark dungeon tunnel, listening to the dungeon's directions, was that she hadn't shrunk at all like the others obviously had. She had gained what she figured on about two inches in height.

The dwarf in her—that was still part of who she was—wanted to examine everything. The darkness had never held a secret from a dwarf's eyes, and Tannyr was relieved that it didn't hide anything from a kobold either.

The mechanisms of the hidden doors, the intricate gold-wrought patterns of the mana manipulator in the heart room, even the smelter she'd walked past (its warm glow calling to her) demanded examination.

But Tannyr walked on, eventually finding Penelope and Robert discussing the designs of a maze.

"… a huge maze that will make them wander around for hours." Penelope pointed upward. "That's what bought us so much time to get down here. They got slowed down in the maze. Why not add another maze?"

Robert pointed at the tunnel where it would join up with the outer ring to make entering easy."Because we need this room to grow. The loop we have around the second floor is great, but it's starting to constrict. The changes we are making here are working, but if we go with a huge design, that limits how far we can build. And, worse, if we build around it, we are limited in how much we can defend."

Looking between the two, Tannyr walked up to the stone wall Robert had been gesturing to and ran her claws down it. "Show me. Map." When neither moved, she frowned at them. "No map?"

"I can make a map. I'll have to get Blake to make it, though," Travis said. "Right now he and Wild are looking at the maze. They say the undead didn't actually leave the main path. They walked directly through the maze without taking any other paths."

Tannyr smirked and nodded to that. "Adven—" She almost choked on what her tongue tried to do. Starting over, she hoped they figured out who she meant. "They make map. Take straig path. Maze not good."

"So a huge long path?" Penelope asked. The inclusion of Tannyr was welcome in her book. She had heard of the sorts of stonework dwarves built—it was a good fit for a dungeon.

"No. Twisting. Run fast in long tun. Slow in twisting." Her mouth was still causing problems, but Tannyr was getting better at it the more she turned her attention to how things sounded. "Trav can make?"

"Yeah, I can make a twisting tunnel that isn't a maze. That's actually a good idea. Thanks, Tannyr." Travis examined his options and figured out the best way to handle it all. "Okay, setting up some planning. Robert, do you want to dig it while Pen escorts Tannyr to town?"

"Town?" Tannyr asked. She'd heard him talk about her going back to her old life, but she was a kobold now. Despite the town's recent embrace of kobold gold, she doubted they were that open to a dungeon race living among them.

Travis could almost feel Tannyr's confusion. "If you want to. At the least you have all your things there. If you want to move here, you're welcome to."

"I need to work 'n town." Carefully pronouncing the words, Tannyr got through the sentence almost perfectly. "Can come—come and help here too."

"We know speaking is frustrating. We all went through it too." Penelope reached for the trick that let her withdraw items from the dungeon's inventory, and produced three of the explosive runes. "Come on, we can go now before that undead dungeon spews out any more crap."

Exiting the safest area of the dungeon, Tannyr was surprised by how intricate the design was. The idea of using simple digging and collapsing tunnels as a secret door made her laugh, as did the secret door that bypassed the maze. "I want to see the maze."

Walking through the maze, Tannyr approved of the odd little extra bits that made every twist and turn look like it continued into the dark, though she ultimately thought it all a waste. However, she did love the idea of the self-resetting mines. "What they digging?"

"Basically your idea. That section is a twisting length of tunnel that just eats up time. We'll probably put some more explosives in there. I like it when things die without costing us anything." Penelope led her past there, leaving Ludmiller to digging the tunnel out. "And here on our left is a timber mill, so we don't have to drag trees deeper into the dungeon to process them. To the right… Ah, a new door. Not a bad idea. In here's the bar."

Poking her head in, Tannyr was shocked at how nice the place looked. There was a woman behind the bar that she half recognized. Something about her hard eyes reminded Tannyr of—Then she remembered. "Fife?"

"Tannyr? Figuring out the kobold thing?" Fife finished cleaning the bar and walked around it. "Glad we managed to get you here in time. Normally, that necrotic attack thing kills ya dead in minutes."

"Thank for saving me. For—Thank you too, Trav." It seemed important to say. Tannyr felt like sitting down at the bar and drowning her sorrows—but that would only lead down a rougher path.

"I take it," Travis said, "if she had a talisman she would have been savable?"

Penelope looked at Fife and slowly nodded. "Yeah, but she'd still need to be revived. That isn't free, even if the churches in town were fine to do it. Their gods demand that such acts benefit the church."

"Talk to that priest you met last time. See if he wants to—to start an account. Everyone in town gets a talisman and, if they die, I'll pay to bring them back." With two kobolds just staring blankly, Travis wondered how crazy his idea was. "What?"

"Trav, you're insane." Penelope started laughing. "Tell him, Fife."

"What? You guys need to tell me what he said." When both seemed to break into more laughter, she groaned. "You won't be laughing when I get to be a kobold. And I want to be a floor boss too, Trav!"

"I'm kinda okay with Fife being a kobold if I make her a floor boss too. Only, I think I need a third floor before I can have another."

Curtailing her laughter, Penelope managed to get out not just what Travis' plan was, but also his agreement to Fife's terms. "He said, though, that it might take a while to get a third floor. Haven't seen a dungeon like him before, so no clue how slow or fast floors come."

"Eh, whatever. I'm game for it. I can sit up here and teach visitors the finer points of getting drunk and sometimes bash skeletons." Fife felt a sense of relief at having negotiated her future. The one thing she needed to know, above all else, was what Travis sounded like. "Wait, what was that about talismans?"

"Yeah! He wants to foot the bill for resurrections and talismans for anyone that needs one." Penelope tried to hold back more laughter. "Anyway, do you want to come back to Northridge with us? Taking Tannyr to see if she's fine staying back in town or how she wants to do this."

"Can you get me 50 steel?" Travis asked.

Penelope groaned. "And he wants 50 steel. We'd better get the donkey and cart, because I'm not carrying that back."

They were almost to town and Tannyr still hadn't made up her mind. Her clothes still fit her, which was weird, but her boots had no chance. Not that her claws weren't up to the task of providing her with steady footing.

Everything about being a kobold seemed weird, but not bad. They approached the palisade entrance, that had been rushed to be made usable, and it was Fife who shouted for them to open the gate.

Inside the town seemed different. There were people rushing around doing things, one of her own work crews was shoring up the palisade with bags of dirt, and everyone seemed to have a sword, axe, or hammer either on their hip or a spear close at hand.

"You've returned then, eh?" Brother Rupert wasn't looking at Fife or Penelope—all his attention was on Tannyr. "Dungeon saved you, but twisted you to its own ends? What are your thoughts on this?"

It was a surprise to have the old man see right through her change. Tannyr shrugged her shoulders—something that was much less impressive now she lacked any. "Saved my life. Better alive and owing debt than dead."

"We've got a deal for you," Penelope said, drawing Rupert's attention.

"Follow me. Deals are to be made under the gaze of the scales." Turning his back on the three, Rupert led the way back to his temple. His god wasn't interested in the usual worldly desires. His god wasn't even a god. Rupert adhered to the scales, the balance of debts and deeds that all should adhere to. Pushing open the doors to the temple, he stomped inside. "Mind your feet."

Walking deeper into the temple, Rupert walked up to the scales and focused on the balance they had always played in his life. Filled with the heat of his own conviction, he sat down. "What deal?"

"Talismans. One for everyone in town." Penelope pulled out a sack of gold and set it on the pew beside her. "And more gold to be paid if and when you have to revive people, but only for townsfolk."

Rupert felt more than a little startled, though he managed to avoid showing it. "That won't be cheap. It's two-hundred gold per."

"Are you going to charge us the rate the merchants do?"

Screwing his face up, Rupert spat on the floor beside him. "No. You pay the actual rate at whatever quality your gold is. I won't have economics worked in my temple." He found it humorous that they knew exactly how much the town was skimming from their prices. "The talismans are fifteen each."

"Is there a bulk price? There are a lot of people in town." It was risky to haggle with the man, Penelope realized, but at the going rate it would almost bankrupt them to pay it. "I have five-hundred gold in there."

"A rate for an entire town has never been established." It was an understatement that Rupert was proud of. "But, five-hundred seems fair. Let's make it one-hundred gold per resurrection. I predict a future where this might become a bulk price too."

"That's acceptable. We'll send more gold when we can, so we can ensure you have enough to perform several before you have to come and bang on our front door."

Looking at the sack of gold, Rupert felt the scales shift—the dungeon's influence on the town weighing against the good it was doing. That a lot of gold came into his coffers was a welcome extra weight on that measure. "Your coin is good here, but be aware, some may seek to exploit this."

Penelope didn't doubt that. "I trust your judgment on those cases." She liked the way he smiled. It was a hard smile, but she knew it wasn't aimed at her. "Oh, this excludes any adventurers who try to delve into our dungeon, of course. They can pay for themselves—if they make it out."

Even after seeing Penelope argue with Brother Rupert, something Tannyr had been stunned to see, the question over whether to stay in town or return to the dungeon was a tough one for her. She felt a pull toward the dungeon, but the town needed her now more than ever.

Penelope was leading the donkey around the market, trying to find anyone selling steel. Tannyr, however, spotted a very familiar face. Leaving the little grouping, she approached Howard Tailor. "Howard?"

Stopping when he was addressed by the kobold, Howard took a few seconds to mentally connect the dots. "Tannyr?" When she nodded, he let out a sigh. "So you survived, then. That's—I won't say good until you do. Would you like to talk about it away from the others?" A strange sense of unease seemed to build within him. Seeing his old friend remade as a monster, in his estimation, was to blame.

"Yeah. I need to talk to someone about it." Turning and nodding to Fife, Tannyr followed Howard to a nearby market stall and through the door at the back of it. The building was familiar enough—Tannyr had built it. A smoldering fire was soon coaxed into a full flame and he set a bottle and two glasses on the table between them.

Silence deepened between them, but eventually Tannyr managed to say, "It wasn't the dungeon's fault. Or the kobolds. I just— They offered to let me return to Northridge and go back to my life."

"Do you want to?" Howard poured a glass for each of them and settled back in the chair to enjoy the brandy.

"Yes. No. I want things back to how they were. Building is my passion, you know that. I could build this city for the next four-hundred years and still die with a trowel in my hand and a plan for the next building. The dungeon needs that too. Undead attacked them at the same time it hit the city. They're working hard to come up with ways to remain useful to Northridge and still defend themselves.

"And I get that. I see their tunnels and my hands itched to start building in them. I watched one of them working—tunneling—and it was everything I could do not to find a pickaxe and join in."

"We could get another master mason, Tannyr, but not one like you. Never one like you, old friend."

The tone in Howard's voice hit Tannyr hard. She grabbed the glass and downed the potent liqueur, barely tasting the fantastic vintage. "It's a shame the city is so far from Travis—the dungeon. If we could build a fort around both, together, it would make my decision so much easier."

"With the locus quickened, we can't do that now."

"Yeah, I know. Oh, you need to speak to Brother Rupert. He made a very strange deal with Travis."

"Who is Travis?" Howard sipped some more of the fine brandy.

"Trav is the dungeon. He's alive and thinking and every bit as smart as anyone. You're not just dealing with kobolds, Howard, not even with kobolds that I'm pretty sure were all people before—the dungeon itself can think and negotiate." Reaching her taloned hand out, Tannyr poured herself another brandy. "And you know the crazy bit? He cares for Northridge. He cares for people. He just—The deal with Brother Rupert is to secure talismans and cheap resurrections for everyone in the city."

Howard was appreciative that he'd drunk most of his glass of brandy when it fell from his grip and hit the floor. Even the sound of the finely crafted crystal-glass hitting the carpet didn't get his mind moving again. It took ten seconds before he could get a thought to his mouth. "It what?!"

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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.