The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 18/100

Heart 1166400/1166400

Experience 245025/291600

Workers 11/115

Monsters 9/117

Traps 64/279

Food 2459

Timber 7322

Iron 2292

Steel 905

Charcoal 5058

Mana 488

Rock 2739

Gold 1057

Leather 17

Leather Sludge 300

Lava 0

Glass 635

Explosive Runes 5

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 15

Long Guns 40

Bullets 1000

Black Powder 1000

Quest: Kill 200 invaders.

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

Quest: Mine some mithril.

"Was that really Northridge?!" Penelope asked. "It shouldn't be that far advanced yet!"

"If it wasn't, I'd like to know what the heck it was." Travis ran through the conversation in his head. The city seemed welcoming, which was different to how some of his friends had described it previously. "We'll probably find out more when Brayden comes back. The only reason I can think of for losing a worker and gaining one again would be if he had to resurrect either Tannyr or Kelvin."

It was an agonizing wait. With everyone's timers to respawn slowly ticking down, and with three other kobolds out of the dungeon, Travis felt bare. At least, he did until a group of armored figures stepped past the threshold of his forest entrance.

"They're coming in," Travis said. It was a solid line of heavy troops at the front with two ranks of crossbowmen behind them and, bringing up the rear, more lightly armored soldiers rolling two ballistas. "Can you guys see them?"

A chorus of "no"s came back, but Penelope said, "Yeah. It's kinda hard to figure out, though. This is all through lizards' eyes, right?"

"You kinda get used to it. Anyway, I'm going to let them get to the end of that tunnel and then burn them." He had no compunction about killing these soldiers. Given what everyone had said they were doing in the undead dungeon, they were here to enslave him.

When the soldiers reached the corner, Travis set his target as the corner square, reluctantly paid the full mana cost, and cast Rolling Inferno.

As the spell went off, a new group's armored front line stepped in the front door. What he figured were screams from the soldiers were short-lived as they and any flammable equipment they wore was engulfed in the inferno. A flood of XP rushed in, though not enough to level him up.

It was satisfying to know he could protect himself. "That seems to work well on them. I don't know if it's more worrying or less that they are easier to deal with than the undead."

"Can you hold them off for the day needed to respawn us?" Fife asked.

"If I let them get to the bowling alley and into the maze, I think I should be fine. Can I get someone to dig out the new big mana shrines the lizards found?" Knowing that he'd solved a major problem and filled the dungeons with cute creatures was a huge weight off Travis' mind.

The wall was amazing. Tannyr walked up to it and pressed her palm against the stonework—and felt the solidness of it anchored to the world like it was a mountain. She'd sensed, briefly, the touch of the city, and it was no longer angry at her. "Thank you."

Northridge had trouble hearing the words, since no one was close enough, but they were spoken into the wall itself. It was a healing moment. Distractions abound for the city. Brolly was on his feet and giving orders. The guards who'd been brought back to life with him were a little slower, but still managed to get on the wall and had their weapons ready. Weapons that came from the dungeon—Northridge knew.

The other dungeon, the one that was the city's primary food source, was cut off. Northridge wished it had opened a second entrance nearby too, but there was something else the city could accomplish. Pushing the thought out, it assembled a quest in the minds of its three highest officials.

New Quest: Build a tunnel leading to the Verdant dungeon in the southeast

The information came more as an abstract thought than as clear text, but Christine Sellswell, Brolly Windchime, and Howard Tailor all knew what it meant to get a clear sending from a quickened genius loci. While Brolly was too busy organizing guards for the walls, Christine and Howard started making plans and contacting stone workers, though it was Christine in particular who said, "The dungeon…"

"Dying always gives me a sore neck." Tilting his head one way then the other, Jack looked to the group he was walking beside. Ogmera, Felna, Nathaniel, Stratus, and Tom. "Do you get that?"

"Always makes me need to use the jacks. You'd think death would clean you out, but I guess I'm unlucky like that." Nathaniel shrugged.

"My eyes always lose focus for a few hours after I come-to," Ogmera said. "Though I'll have to thank Ludmiller for that knife work. Look, she managed not to ruin my shirt!"

They shared a laugh at that as they headed along the road that had been grown into place by the city itself.

"It was weird enough to hear them talking about the city quickening and growing stronger walls, but seeing this?" Felna walked over to the new section of wall and touched it before realizing that there was a kobold doing the same not much further down toward the dungeon entrance. "Tannyr?"

Turning to look at the new arrivals, Tannyr breathed a sigh of relief that, apparently, everyone got out of the undead dungeon. "Ready to head home? Pen and the others will still be waiting to respawn, so it will mostly be a few of us kobolds and you lot—oh, and the new people we took in."

"Guess we missed that." Ogmera didn't slow down her pace, walking along the path and toward the dungeon. "And don't worry, we all got new talismans."

"Brayden! We're ready!" Tannyr called out, getting a wave from Brayden by the dungeon entrance. Kelvin was crouched down beside him and she could tell the two had been talking about something pretty deep—it's why she'd wandered off in the first place.

The relief Travis felt as Brayden stepped through his Northridge entrance would have made him sigh aloud if he still had to breathe. "You made it! Can you tell Brolly that they have tried to invade me already, but I dealt with the troops they sent in?"

When Brayden repeated what Travis had told him, Jack nodded. "I'll let them know." He turned and left the dungeon again.

Feeling relief at returning to the dungeon, Tannyr held out her claws and ran them along the wall. Rock. Dungeon rock. She smiled and closed her eyes so she could focus entirely on the feel and smell of rock. "It's good to be back, Trav. It got really crazy out there." She only whispered the words, but knew Travis could hear her. "Now, I think I'm going down to my workshop and calming my nerves by not going into the sunlight for a whole year."

She walked like that, blind and trusting, all the way to the wall she needed to push through to reach the stairs. Down further, she stopped only when she bumped into someone. Opening her eyes revealed a now familiar sight of the second floor. "Hello, Mixie. Out exploring?"

"Shhh! Mom doesn't know I got away." Mixie was hiding around a corner. Completely ignorant of how mangled her speech was, between goblin fangs and a recent growth spurt, the young goblin wasn't the best at enunciation.

"You need to listen to her—at least right now. We have angry people coming into the dungeon. Please don't go out this door." Picking up the squirming child, Tannyr lifted Mixie onto her back to carry. "You can come down and look at what I'm working on, but we have to tell your mom first."

"Do we have to?" Despite having to go fess-up, Mixie was excited to see what Tannyr did. Getting told off was worth that.

Walking into the tavern and then through to the kitchen, Tannyr only had to follow her nose to know that Grace, Mixie's mother, was working. "Grace?"

Turning around to see her daughter riding on the shoulders of a kobold, Grace gave a beaming smile. "Miss Tannyr. Let me get her—"

"She's fine, really. I was going to let you know I'll take her down to my workshop. We have some less desirable types coming into the dungeon, and I don't want Mixie meeting them." The look of dawning realization and relief on Grace's face told Tannyr that she understood things.

"Oh. No, I wouldn't want her meeting—meeting less desirable types. Would you like some dinner before you go?" It was easy for Grace to fall back on what she knew best. The kitchen, once she had figured out how to work with it instead of against it, let her put her own spin on various dishes.

"Actually, I'll take one"—Tannyr rolled her eyes upward to indicate Mixie—"or two, to go. You're about to have a lot of hungry guests. The adventurers we normally have here are coming back down. There're two kobolds and six others."

"I should have enough. Here, take these." Passing over one big bowl of stew and one smaller one, Grace pondered on how much easier it might be if she could simply talk to the dungeon in the same way the kobolds did. There was one problem, though, that kept her from truly contemplating that.

Heading down the back tunnel, Tannyr walked comfortably through the darkness. "You know, I might need to build one of those residences down here." She walked past her stoneworks and on to the gunsmith. Inside, she made sure there was no gunpowder laying around and let Mixie down from her shoulders. "This is where I make all the guns."

"Oooh! Are they good?" Jumping and climbing up onto the workbench, Mixie watched as Tannyr set a rifle down on the bench, followed by two pistols.

"They work, which is the important bit. They're loud and dirty, but there isn't much to rival them. Unless, that is, your name is Fife." Getting a selection of brushes, Tannyr set to work cleaning her weapons after the work she'd done in Northridge with them.

"Will I get to have my own gun one day?" Sitting down to watch, Mixie pulled her bowl of stew closer and started shoveling it into her mouth with a spoon.

"Hrmm." Tannyr paused to eat some of her own dinner. "I'll tell you what, when your mom and dad think you are old enough to start using a gun, I'll make the best one I can for you." The stew was as good as ever. Tannyr had eaten countless meals, but it was rare for even a master stonemason to have her own cook ready to make food whenever it was needed. "Your mom makes good food."

"Yeah! But, getting sick of stew." Despite what she said, the stew still tasted great to Mixie, so she kept shoveling it in.

"Sick of—Stew is the best. There have been times when I would have dreamed of eating a stew like this. I'll never ever get sick of stew." It might have been a little exaggeration, but Tannyr was fine with that. Keeping Mixie safe and busy while her mom did vital work didn't take much out of her. "Hey, Trav, do you have any work for me?"

"Northridge wants more guns. I think they'll be satisfied when everyone in the town has two. Other than that, I have Robert digging out some short tunnels to connect up the two new big mana shrines the lizards found. If you were really bored, you could do that." Travis was distracted—his mind split between Tannyr, the adventurers that stepped into the tavern, and the five friends who were all talking in the place he normally considered his head. And then there was one more situation when he saw Christine Sellswell step into the dungeon entrance. "I might need your help, Tannyr."

Available at: https://www.royalroad.com/profile/220350/fictions

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.