The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 10/100

Heart 160000/160000

Experience 26600/90000

Workers 9/67

Monsters 1/69

Traps 62/159

Food 2476

Timber 520

Iron 116

Steel 370

Charcoal 308

Mana 355

Rock 2202

Gold 314

Leather 377

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 90

Glass 744

Explosive Runes 20

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 6

Long Guns 9

Bullets 500

Black Powder 500

Quest: Destroy another dungeon.

Quest: Capture an adventurer and put them in your jail.

Quest: Lay siege to the nearby town.

The upswing in XP, from having Kelvin spend the night in the dungeon while his granddaughter had returned to Northridge with a note from Penelope to secure her payment, had surprised Travis. By his reckoning, the old elf was worth almost three times what all the other adventurers he had living in the dungeon were worth combined.

It almost made him want to ask if Kelvin would spend a month just chilling and hanging out—but Penelope had given her word to him and her word was as good as Travis'. "Are we doing Fife at the same time? I feel like she'd want to watch, at least."

"Of course Fife will want to watch. I'll ask her now." Penelope had been making sure the workers on the first floor were safe—standing guard herself until the city got their own garrison built and populated—before passing that duty on to Wild while she headed downstairs.

Travis had asked Tannyr to continue digging out the new safe area on the first floor while Blake, Robert, and Ludmiller were starting on the bottom floor work he'd wanted. When the new kobolds were converted and sleeping off their change, he'd ask Penelope to go work with Tannyr.

Taking the stairs down, Penelope entered the tavern and looked around. "Where's Fife?"

From where he was sitting, talking with Felna and Ogmera, Brayden nodded toward the tunnel into the sleeping area. "She's sparring with that new guy."

Travis was surprised no lizards had made it to the room they were in. As Penelope got closer, though, he could hear the clash of weapons. They'd appropriated the big room with an attached iron vein, and just as Penelope stepped inside, the fighting stopped.

"You're too damn fast by half, old man." Fife was panting, bringing her shield around to her side to clear her view. Spotting Penelope entering, she nodded. "Hey, Pen, what's up?"

"I might ask you the same thing. Trying to get your head pierced or something?" Penelope asked.

Kelvin beamed, twirled his old spear and brought it to the specially placed hook on his back. "I was attempting to teach the young miss to keep her shield below her eye level."

"You old bastard! Pen, he's faster than a snake and has twice my reach. I had no chance of keeping that damn dagger-pole away from me without my shield." Sheathing her sword, Fife walked up to Kelvin and held out her hand to shake. With the little ritual done, the pair turned their attention to Penelope.

"So, I was just thinking, did you two want to go down and become kobolds?"

Fife was buzzing with excitement. Marching down behind Penelope, she couldn't stop her palms from itching to draw her weapons for no reason she could figure out. Sword, shield, and now her own pistol, had always been the first reaction to any excitement. For Fife, excitement usually led to something bleeding. "What's it feel like, Pen?"

"I can't really remember it. Something about dying at the time and all that." Leading the way through the warehouses, Penelope felt a little odd about how this part of the dungeon seemed like the treasure rooms she'd seen in others—but all broken up. "Trav, is there a reason you didn't just build all these warehouses and stuff in one big area?"

Travis was glad he could tune every kobold in the dungeon out of his shout. His mind raced, though, to come up with a good reason. "So that if some hostile group is down here, raiding all our stuff, we can plan out a defense rather than stumbling into a huge, open area."

"That makes sense, I guess, though adventurers tend to do better in tight tunnels than monsters do." When she realized that she was talking to Travis and only giving half of the conversation, she turned her head. "He said it's to slow down pillaging and make it easier to get the party bottled up."

"Seeing as your best fighters are all ex adventurers, from what the young lady here has said, it's a sound tactic." Overall, Kelvin had been rather surprised at the level of calm in the dungeon, given it had several adventurers living within it. It had been a fascinating revelation to find them not just living within, but comfortably so. "Is there a particular process for this—" He cut off mid-sentence as Penelope led them into the heart room.

"Hey, Trav! Are you ready to get in my head?" Fife asked, sauntering over to the heart. When she was within range, she reached her hand out and carefully touched the huge gemstone.

"He says he's been dreading it," Penelope said as she walked up to the heart herself and pressed one palm to it.

Turning to look at Penelope, Fife asked, "Really?"

Feeling more than a little worried about cutting herself with her swords, both of which seemed to be enchanted in some way now, Penelope instead just used one of her claws to prick the index finger of her other hand. "Why don't you ask him yourself?"

Fife's eyes widened and her pupils narrowed to dots at the sight of the blood on Penelope's finger, and then Travis' heart. Getting close enough that her body was touching Travis' heart, she didn't notice Penelope's wing curling around behind her as she raised her hand up—trembling a little in excitement—and pressed it to the blood on the huge crystal.

Watching as Fife shivered and started to collapse, Kelvin took note of how Penelope cradled her and carefully guided her safely to the ground at the base of the huge crystal. Fife had been out of his line of sight for only moments, but she already had a scaly hide and had shrunk several sizes. "Is that how it works?"

"Yeah. I used to slice my palm like an idiot, but this way is much neater. Besides, I don't want to slice my palms with these swords. It might be painful." Pricking another finger, Penelope smeared it on Travis' heart. "The best bit is I don't almost pass out."

"But we do?" Kelvin nodded to where Fife lay on the floor. He stepped forward, nonetheless, and when he raised his hand to the blood smear on the heart, he sensed the wing looming up behind him. Pausing, he asked further, "How did you do this before you had wings?"

"People fell down a lot more." Penelope caught Kelvin as he started to fold up. She always got a close-up view of the action as skin and hair became hardened hide and scales. She guided him to the ground beside Fife as his face pressed out into a kobold muzzle, and a tail grew behind him. "Two more in one day, Trav. Been a while since we've done that."

"Once, Pen. We got two at a time once. Okay, now it's twice. How are they doing? They both seem a little more out of it than anyone else has been." Travis didn't need to see through Penelope's eyes to see how tenderly she picked them both up and carried each to a room to recover.

It didn't take long for Kelvin to wake. He felt very strange, given he'd spent over fifty thousand mornings waking up as an elf and now he got to experience his first as a kobold. Sitting up, exploring his body, he was surprised to see his weapons and armor sitting in a neat wooden rack at the end of the bed.

Opening his mouth to speak, he paused and closed it again. There were too many teeth, too much tongue, and entirely too much muzzle for him to deal with yet. It took several moments of quiet contemplation for him to realize that the room he was in was pitch black, yet he was able to see clearly—if without color.

"Hey, uh, I guess this is the full introduction time. I'm Travis, though everyone calls me Trav. I guess I should welcome you to the dungeon—me."

"Yorrrrr—" Kelvin bit back his attempt at speech. The words had come in his head, so he wondered if the dungeon could understand his thoughts in reply. After a moment of trying to think loudly, he remembered that Penelope had spoken out loud to the dungeon.

"Sorry to say, but everyone has to get used to speaking with a muzzle in their own way. From what I've seen, trying to make appropriate noises helps. If you need it, you can grab a slate from Pen out in the heart room and write down what you need," Travis said.

Standing wasn't as hard as Kelvin would have thought. He judged his legs as being more capable than the average human's, probably a little less nimble than the average elf's, but their strength seemed far and above both species. He nodded at those and reached for his armor and spear—and realized how much height he'd lost.

In his own estimation, though, that wouldn't impact his combat style as much as some. His reach came from his spear's length, not from his height or the reach of his own arms. Speed and precision were everything to him, and from what he'd managed to evaluate, being a kobold wouldn't harm either once he worked on his muscle tone.

The big gain, from Kelvin's point of view, was how much easier it was to move. Old bones and the damage of a long lifetime of violent interactions had left scars and marks on him that made moving around a series of little pains and restricting stiffness—that was gone.

The new gains from becoming a kobold weren't easy to use at the exact moment, so he turned his thoughts back to Travis. He'd expected a mental influence that would guide his steps and arms. What he'd gotten, instead, was a man that sounded if not old, then not young. "Not—jarrrr. Jarrrr." He stopped and thought about the word and how his mouth worked, then shrugged. "Jarrrk?"

"Not sure what you mean, sorry. Head on out—Fife is already trying to figure herself out."

Shrugging his shoulders (something that felt different in his shoulder joints than when he was an elf), Kelvin walked to the door carrying just his spear and wearing his old shirt. It wasn't that he felt there was a need to cover himself, which was an odd sensation, but rather just a habit.

Pausing at the doorway, he looked down and ran a quick inspection—and found nothing of note. Which was, of course, noteworthy. Kelvin hadn't asked about the intimates of being a kobold, but it wasn't a great loss to him. He had seen his children grow and had even watched their children become adults and raise their own. With a deep breath, he pushed aside the heavy drape that covered the door and walked out into the tunnel. At the end of the hallway a pink light beckoned.

"… can't believe Pen hasn't told you all the best swear words yet! Pen! You are being deficient in your duty as dungeon boss!" Fife had not spent her weeks in the dungeon, among its denizens, idly. She'd studied kobold movement and how their mouths moved when they talked. Speaking had been the easiest thing when she just put together movement and sound.

Travis wished for a brief moment that Fife was having as much trouble speaking as Kelvin. From when she'd sat up in her bed, she'd spent two seconds barking before getting her mouth under control and talking. "I already know plenty of swear words, Fife."

"Really? Because I doubt you've heard goat gro—"

Grabbing Fife, Penelope clamped one hand over her mouth and held her snout closed. "You can regale Trav with your vocabulary later, Fife. Hey, look, Kelvin is out and trying to figure out how to kobold."

Looking around, Kelvin spotted the tablet in Penelope's hand and took it. Figuring out he could use his claw, he started writing in the wax.

This is not what I expected. I hope this isn't some elaborate joke, Travis?

"It's not a joke. I try not to give any orders around here. There's this—Well, if I tell you to do something, without making it a question or a request, you kinda have to do it. It's not right, though. I try not to, but there have been times—"

"Wait, you've actually given orders?" Penelope asked. "When?"

"Uh, last one was when Tannyr was paralyzed by one of the cave dragons when she broke through to their cave. She was just laying there on the ground and they were getting closer and… I commanded her to get up and run."

Struggling free of Penelope, Fife turned to look at the huge crystal. "Trav! That's not a bad thing."

Kelvin nodded in agreement. It was strange, he figured, but as far as potential afterlifes went, this wasn't the worst.

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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.