The Heart Grows

It wasn't exactly happy that a dungeon had built so close, but the dungeon had yet to do more than send a minion to scratch its walls. It was unsure what that meant, but so far no further evidence that the dungeon wanted to kill It surfaced.

When It discovered Its soldiers easily throwing off both the goblin and undead attacks, It felt satisfied that It was safe. Further when the strange dragon dungeon attacked the undead with Its own guards in support.

With nothing else to do, It decided It needed to grow and become more. So It slept and grew.

When Northridge awoke, it felt revitalized. Never before had it experienced such clarity and focus. It gazed out through over a thousand eyes, some of which were glaring at the horrid undead dungeon, others were looking around at the various little bits and pieces of itself that comprised their lives.

It stretched out, watching its brave soldiers guarding the walls, a caravan of wagons rolling slowly toward it from the southeast, and even its guard captain playing dice with a kobold—and losing.

Northridge reflected on what it had seen from this dungeon, and what it knew of dungeons from all its flashes of memory. Dungeons came in three kinds, those that were nurtured, those that were exploited, and those that were destroyed. It had two kinds that it could figure out, but also this third one.

The dragon dungeon didn't require nurturing, it wasn't so dangerous it needed extermination, and from what Northridge could tell, it wasn't amenable to exploitation.

There was something Northridge could liken it to, something that all its townsfolk had a good concept of—a city. Musing on the idea, Northridge liked the way it connected and fit their relationship. With that problem settled, it could appreciate the dungeon wanting to shorten the path between them. Reaching out and straining toward that dungeon, it tried to express this change in status.

Northridge lacked the kind of micromanagement that a dungeon would do, but it could give buffs and bonuses to people as part of their work—and did so when it recognized the essential work crews. Those working on its walls got the lion's share, while each of two of the city's greater minions—a merchant and a craftsman—each got their own boosts.

Fascinating as it was to watch and experience everyone's daily routine, Northridge had certain goals it wished to accomplish. Its walls were mighty as they were, and would provide a good fallback point should any large attacks come, but it wanted to grow.

That urge, along with instilling the need to grow larger into its leaders, brought up a memory. It was all instinct at the time when it happened, but the single mason who'd built most of the stone buildings had died and the dungeon had saved them. Northridge mentally recoiled from how it had treated that mason—how it had pushed her away.

It banished that instinctual you're not welcome aspect of itself as foolish and altogether a bad idea from the start. Northridge promised itself it would move forward with the intent of growth—even with a dungeon ally.

Ogmera had never been in a party quite like what she was part of at that moment. They'd been in the dungeon for two days now, slept on rotation at night, and breached ten floors so far—but what she found oddest was having such a competent tank leading the way that not a single undead monster could break into their line.

She also had never experienced dungeon fighting with other dungeon monsters as allies. "This seems too easy."

"Nah. It's as easy as I like it." Fife, too, was exploring new experiences. Some she liked, some she didn't, but so long as it was something different she was enthusiastic enough to keep going. Food was the latest—or lack of it. She hadn't eaten since they'd set out from Travis' dungeon, nor had she slept more than a few hours total. "Wish we'd find the heart of this thing so we can—"

"We can't, Fife. We're fighting down to it, going to have Felna do her thing to it, then we're leaving. This is an open threat to the dungeon to back off." Penelope had her back to the group that were chatting because she was on watch. "And if we get the okay to, we come back in and do the job."

Standing up from her resting crouch, Fife rolled her shoulders and flicked her tail—another new thing she enjoyed entirely because it was new. "Maybe it will be tougher by then, hey?"

"You're a battle addict." Penelope reached a hand back toward Fife and tapped her shoulder. "Mind keeping watch? I want to go back up to the surface and see if there has been some word on it."

Smirking, Fife nodded. "There might be some back-spawns. Be careful."

"It's not like any of the monsters this high up are a problem for me if I keep moving." With Fife in her place, Penelope made her way past the rest of the group and up the stairs to the previous floor. The tunnels were quiet and still—which was not the best indication that they were empty, given it was an undead dungeon.

"How much longer do you want to break for?" Fife asked.

Looking over the non-kobold contingent, Ogmera said, "Five minutes and they'll be fed and ready. You're not going to slow down because we don't have Pen?"

"Do you want us to slow down, or do you want to have her silently impressed that we didn't waste any time?" Fife didn't take her eyes off the tunnel ahead. Just like Travis, the undead dungeon was full of twists and turns, but at the same time she could feel a pull down one path no matter what forks they'd come to. "Because I want to—Incoming archers. Kate, with me."

Stepping past the others in their group, Katelyn took up position behind Fife. In her time since becoming a kobold she'd been in several combat situations, but they had all been defensive fights. Delving into a dungeon was new to her. The sound of arrows hitting a steel shield sent a shiver down her spine—the skeletons were doing their best to kill them, but Fife seemed akin to a wall between their group and danger. "Tell me when."

"They're staggering their shots. The dungeon is probably directing them, since it saw us do this so often. Okay… now!" There was something about the way every drop of moisture in the air vanished and the back of her throat ran dry—that made her blood pound.

The burning heat that rushed past Fife and fell upon the skeletons was a heady brew to Fife's love of combat. She kept watch as the only skeleton that didn't get burned to a crisp by the spell fired an arrow. Shifting her shield a little, Fife deflected it from hitting Katelyn. "Nice work."

"Thanks for the block." Katelyn snapped her claws together, sending a little burst of flame to the last skeleton that burned clear through its neck. "We're moving soon? Where did Pen go?"

"Few more minutes, yeah. She went to see if we got permission to empty this hole out properly. I think she wants to give Trav a hug, too." Relaxing her shield arm a little, Fife listened to the noise of their group as they all got ready for more fun (at least fun as Fife thought of it). "Felna, on me. Think you can locate the spawners?"

Shrugging, then realizing Fife couldn't see the gesture, Felna replied, "I can try. Until I can link to that core, I can't tell you for sure. We're good to move."

"How long does that last, anyway?" Stepping forward, experience over the last several days having taught Fife how fast she could move, she started to pay more attention to the tunnels and the crumbling stone around them.

"Before whatever Kate calls what Trav did to me, I could hold it for up to five days if I focused. Now, though, I might be able to go a few weeks. I guess we can test that here." Felna wasn't looking forward to linking her mind to the undead dungeon's heart. "I hate these things."

"Have you ever tried to push back against the dungeon? I remember hearing about two mages fighting a duel in their heads once. Maybe you could—Trap! Hey, some sludge. Luddy, you got Robert's stash, right?"

"Just burn it. You don't need to waste anything special for sludge," Felna said. "Tom, come up here and burn some sludge traps for us."

It annoyed Fife only a little that she couldn't simply march through the traps. Even if it didn't snare her enough to stop her, it would surely cause problems for someone. "Yeah, that's a better option. Okay, come up on my left and we'll move through this when it's gone."

Penelope didn't encounter a single enemy in her run to the surface. The dungeon seemed to be focusing all its resources on defending against the spearhead of the delving team. Before stepping out of the entrance, she stopped and shouted, "It's Penelope. I'm coming out. Don't shoot me or I'll get upset!"

After pausing for a few moments, she stepped into the open with her hands well away from her swords. When there was no crack of a weapon discharging, she relaxed a little. "We're good?"

"Yeah." Standing up from behind the palisade, Brolly was relieved that she'd given the warning she had. "Been boring up here. Are the rest behind you?"

"No. The dungeon's a deep one, though, and I wanted to find out if we could kill it when we reach the bottom." Walking to the wall of logs, Penelope jumped up, grabbed the top, and vaulted over it to land beside Brolly. "So, any news?"

It took a lot of self-control to not try to defend himself, but Brolly did nothing more than tighten his grip on his rifle. "None, but we haven't had our first supplies delivery yet, so we don't know. Any idea how much longer you'll be in there?"

"If you want to leave, I don't think you're needed here after all. The only worry is if the goblins come up here and try to invade. Our group would be ready for that, though." Sitting down with her legs hanging over the edge of the walkway, Penelope looked at the small camp that'd been established. "I might run back home and see if Trav has any news."

"Can you go via Northridge? I'll admit I'm a little nervous about leaving the city short on guards."

Dropping off the palisade, Penelope gave a weak salute and a grin before she started to run.

The boss of a dungeon entering the area around Northridge set off a minor headache for it. Focusing its attention down to the guards on its walls, it peered out through their eyes to spot the half-dragon as it ran to the entrance of its dungeon.

It took every ounce of Northridge's focus to not push the guards to raise their rifles, sight down on the monster, and shoot it. Calm. It steadied itself and found curiosity at seeing the being on such an urgent mission.

As Penelope stepped inside the dungeon entrance, the feeling of being watched left her. Not that she didn't nod to the guards watching her movement, but there was something else that clawed at the edge of her senses to detect. "Trav, are you—?"

"Ten floors! Pen, I get resources every time you reach a new floor! This is why the undead dungeon was attacking! Wait, why are you here?" Travis asked.

"Because it's deeper than we thought and I hoped you might have gotten word about killing the dungeon." Rubbing the side of her head, Penelope was glad Travis had stopped yelling. "So we got some resources out of this?"

"Not just some, a lot of stuff. It's like a bu—It's a pile that doesn't take up space. There hasn't been any news about the killing the dungeon but I don't think I want to, now. Not when we can exploit this too. There must be a timer on how often we can delve to get these rewards. I bet it's three days, which is how often they were attacking us." His mind had been racing since the first reward, the surety that they could use this only growing each floor they took. "I don't care if I have to pay Northridge to build a fort around that dungeon. It's worth exploiting it."

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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.