The Heart Grows

Spoiler

Travis had so many lizards he barely knew what to do with them all. There were now eyes on every corner of every tunnel in the first floor, and several were migrating to the second floor. What he didn't realize was how much Ludmiller liked the little guys.

"Not in our bedroom," Wild had told Ludmiller, though Travis could already hear uncertainty in his statement the second time he said it.

"Trav?" Penelope's calling of his name drew Travis' focus to her. She was walking back from a new area for the adventurers that had signed on. "Any digging for me to do? I have some things to think about."

"Huh? I mean, yeah, there is some more to dig in the start of the twists up here."

"Good enough for me." She reached the doors at the end of the tunnel and got through them easily enough. "Digging just lets me focus on my thoughts better. Plus I know we have a ton of digging projects—I can feel them in my head."

"Just don't put down the boulder traps. With Ludmiller doing a lot of the work up here, I don't want to step on her toes." Travis pondered things and made some more additions to planning. "Just adding a few more tweaks here, too. It turns out you need an extra square for the boulder traps."

"I felt that. This whole wall has to go, does it?" As she walked down the tunnel, Penelope ran her claws along the wall to her right. "Well, I might as well start here. Thanks, Trav, for giving us all a home."

"Well, two can play at that. Thank you, Pen, for not leaving me alone." Travis waited for a reply, but when all Penelope did was start digging, he left her to her thinking time. So, turning his attention to the lower floor, Travis linked up a few of the long tunnels with planning to start the ball rolling down there.

He found Robert already making his way to the sleeping tunnels to get through to the right spot. "I'm going to make an extra mana shrine too, when I have the mana. I might even focus on those for a bit to get my regen right up."

"How much did you just plan out to dig?" Robert asked, knocking a hole through the wall before filling it back in.

"Not much. Just a few tunnels and one room. Do you want some more rooms?"

"You can always hook me up later if I finish early. Maybe send Blake down here too if you want some major work done today." Pulling out his pickaxe, Robert lined up on the first bit of digging he found and got to work.

Travis scanned for Blake, only to find him already working on digging in the maze. Ludmiller and Wild, too, were digging away in there. Travis retreated to where Katelyn was in the library and focused his attention on her.

"Hey, Trav. What's up?" Katelyn asked.

"Everyone's working. Well, everyone who wants to is working. I don't feel up to pushing Brayden or Steph to digging if they don't want to." Travis reached out to the pair. Stephan was making more beds while Brayden was talking to the new arrivals. "I wanted to know more about magic." Almost as an afterthought, Travis saw his mana rise over fifty again and created another mana shrine somewhere on the second floor.

"You didn't learn anything from me teaching actual spells, right?" Katelyn stood up and took her research book back to the shelves, then picked out a book she'd purchased about dungeon spells.

"Nope. Wish I could."

"Right, so let's work on dungeon spells." Opening the book, Katelyn smirked and flipped through to the glossary.

The book Katelyn held was The Compendium of Dungeon Hazards - Vol. 3: Dungeon Magic. She flicked to the first page of the actual book and found the fire wall. "I'm surprised you didn't pick these up just by me putting this book on your shelf."

"It doesn't exactly work like that. I could read the books you put there, but I don't get a lot of time for reading and it's all just dry information." Travis tried to explain the problem in a way that was understandable. "Imagine it like someone just stacked books beside your bed. You know there are books there, but you need to pay attention to them and only them to get anything from them."

"I'd read them, then."

"But every time you try, you fall asleep."

Hissing and leaning back a little, Katelyn glared in the direction of Travis' heart. "You just described a wizard's nightmare. Let us go looking for something for you. You know fire walls, a personal favorite, and you know how to collapse a section of tunnel. Floor spikes made from ice?"

"That sounds like fun. Let's learn that."

After twenty minutes of reading about the spikes and explaining it to Travis, Katelyn was about ready to admit defeat. "Okay, let's try something different." Leaving the book behind, Katelyn marched into her spell testing chamber. "Show me how you do a fire wall."

"Just the spell? In here?" Travis caught Katelyn nodding by watching his view bob a little. "Alright. Ready?"

"Go fo—" Katelyn could feel the mana forming just before her and studied the patterns as the wall formed. "Wow. Alright. That's a lot to figure out, so let me get my head around what you just did and use that to show you the pattern for the ice spikes."

Travis waited while Katelyn retreated to her corner of the library and drew on her tablet. She seemed to spend quite some time there, but Travis was determined not to look away unless it was an emergency.

"Okay, Trav, I think I have this. Just a few more—And done." Katelyn closed her eyes, imagining the shape in her mind again. "I hope that seeing this will make you learn it. That seems to be how most of this works, right? You get a trigger and just suddenly—"

When Katelyn opened her eyes and looked at the pattern, Travis had a moment of shock before a message popped up. "I got it! I got it as a spell!"

Closing the book and dropping her tablet, Katelyn turned around and rushed into her testing room. "Hit it, Trav!"

"It needs ten mana, unless I have a pile of ice."

Tannyr Stoneshave had gotten up early, eaten some of the leftover stew she'd made the previous night, and set about getting all her tools in order. They were special to her. She'd worked with the smith who'd forged them to ensure they would fit her hands and never need more than polishing for all her days—it was the biggest joke to her that they fit her talons just as well.

Rolling the oiled cloth up that held her tools, she secured them to her pack that already held blankets and her holy figurines. Walking around the house she'd lived in since before the city had awoken, she snuffed out the candles and then hefted her pack onto her back.

Outside it was still dim, with false dawn spreading fingers of light across the sky. Despite only wearing a light shirt, it didn't feel particularly cold, and so Tannyr closed the door and made her way to the southern gate of the city.

The wagon train was being formed up around three big wagons. Outside the gate, she could see another dozen horses with logs lashed to drag behind them. She looked around, trying to locate Brolly in all the business. When she finally saw him, he was talking to a bunch of adventurers she didn't recognize.

Walking up, she did her best to ignore the wary looks from the adventurers. "Brolly, when's this lot moving?"

"Tannyr," Brolly Windchime said, turning to face her. "They'll be moving before sunup, I hope. This won't be a fast ride, but we have the numbers to ensure we'll make it. Brayden will be arriving soon."

That was, Tannyr realized, going to be a lot of adventurers in one place. "Okay. I'll just wait to the side, then." To the side, Tannyr clarified in her head, and on the wall where she could keep an eye out. The stonework gate was a marvel that she'd spent half a week assembling. The extra work crews from the south—primed and ready to work for the excessive amount of gold Northridge offered now—had done a good job in finishing the walls off to a far better standard than she'd feared.

The first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon and lit the ground up as true dawn broke. Tannyr spotted, to the south, a group of people approaching, along with a kobold in their midst. But there were too many.

As they got nearer, she realized there was the other adventuring party, the one that'd been clearing the northern dungeon when it had still held nothing bigger than a boot. Climbing back down the tower stairs, she stepped out into the warm morning and came face to hip with Howard Tailor.

"Tannyr. You're certain about this?" Howard had known Tannyr for a good chunk of his life. She was older than him by several decades, and he hoped she'd still be around after his time.

"Yeah. Northridge has its wall, now I need to go and make good on my promise to get the dungeon up to speed too. Did you know the undead have been hitting them every day or two since the fight here?" Tannyr heard the horses out front being worked into motion. "I'm sure I'll be back some day."

"I had heard that. It's part of the reason why we're paying for the escort. The timber, especially, is all profit."

Tannyr looked up at Howard and nodded. "I promised I'd have this town quickened, but if you ever need another boon of me, Howard, you know where I will be." Speaking about the early days of the town becoming a genius loci left her feeling a little melancholy.

Without another word, she started out the gate and in the direction of the adventurers approaching. The moment she left through the gate, she felt a weight ease off her shoulders. Stopping, she turned to look back at Northridge with actual anger bubbling up. "Really? After all I did here and you—you are happy to see me go?"

"Tannyr!" Brayden walked over to the woman. "Leaving with us?"

"Bloody thankless town. Yeah, I am." Turning her back on the fickle town and its genius loci that now, apparently, hated her, Tannyr walked beside Brayden as he doubled back. "You seem to have found some more friends?"

"That other lot? Yeah. Trav paid them a hundred days wages in advance and now they're happy to do whatever they can. Almost like they want more gold." Balancing his mace on his shoulder, Brayden walked alongside Tannyr. "We're due for another undead raid today. That's why we brought the firepower. Plus, two extra priests mean we can shore up anyone lacking healing on the way."

"You said there might be an undead raid?" Brolly asked, stepping up to walk beside Tannyr and Brayden.

"Yeah. They started spitting out undead lords now. Won't be long until we get bloody wizards too." Brayden spat on the ground.

Brolly nodded and made his way to the front of the train of wagons to warn everyone of the news. The adventurers, at least, looked excited for the work.

The attack, when it came, was brushed aside almost with complete ease. The head of the wagon train was just reaching the dungeon when the undead all came into view across the mostly cleared floor of the forest. There was a brief moment where all the teamsters were worried, and then the wizards and sorcerers started doing work.

With two fire and one ice mage from the dungeon, and numerous other ranged attackers, the undead walked into a warzone they were not prepared for. The fight was almost over when Katelyn poked her head out the door, causing the last necromancer—who'd been hiding from the other casters—to implode in a blast of flame. "Welcome to the dungeon, refreshments are inside on your left. We have widened the tunnel out a little to help get this lot stored as quickly as possible."

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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.