The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 18/100

Heart 1166400/1166400

Experience 261025/291600

Workers 11/115

Monsters 9/117

Traps 64/279

Food 2459

Timber 7322

Iron 2292

Steel 905

Charcoal 5058

Mana 1167

Rock 2752

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 13

Bullets 1000

Black Powder 1000

Poison, Greater 1200

Quest: Kill 142 invaders.

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

Quest: Mine some mithril.

The timers hit 0 one by one over the course of a few minutes. Travis felt flooded with relief when, finally, Ludmiller appeared and he was alone with his thoughts again. Not that he minded too much, the alternatives were not appealing, but he was used to having this one place be sacrosanct.

"Did I level up?" Fife asked.

Inspecting her, Travis said, "You sure did. Level four. You have another passive ability, Healthy, and an active ability called Riposte."

"Healthy? Whoa!" Fife grew half a foot in an instant and there was a soft green glow around her. "This is cool. What did it do?"

"Probably means you can take more actual damage, but the other one has a description. It says you will parry every attack for ten seconds and hit back once for each." It was a relief to see something have a description. "Luddy, are you ready for this mission?"

Having spent all the time since her return to a corporeal state either hugging Wild or hugging an armful of lizards, Ludmiller let out a sigh. "Yeah, but I'm going to take a lizard with me. Who knows, maybe that other dungeon will like lizards."

Wild, with a lizard sitting on his head, nuzzled against Ludmiller's neck. "You know that means you'll have to leave them behind, right?"

Looking panicked, Ludmiller let out a little whimper and set down the armful of lizards. "I guess I'm going alone," she said with a light tone.

"Thanks, Luddy. If this works, it'll be a big help and might make us a new ally." Ever since his welcome by Northridge itself, Travis had been feeling a lot better about his personal future. For better or for worse, they were linked now, and he hadn't had any sign from the city that he'd regret the decision to open an entrance close by.

Leaving Ludmiller to arrange what she needed to run to the verdant dungeon, Travis turned his attention to Penelope. "Pen, the city has a whole mess of people that want to come and work here. It'd be really neat if you could interview them and let me know what you think."

"That family, Trav. What's going on with them?" Penelope made her way slowly up to the first floor and to where they planned to build the new tavern. "Also, I wonder if you could convince the city to let us house everyone in here and use the above-ground for business and military?"

"You mean for the butt load of experience? Not a bad idea. We'd be leveling up fast as anything with that, though not from killing anything." The more Travis thought on it, the better an idea it seemed. "We might have to widen the entrance and do a lot more digging. That means we need some new pairs of hands."

Northridge watched as the smallish kobold stepped out of the dungeon and marched to the top of the wall. It was carrying a sling on its back with five rifles and had a vicious pair of knives on its hips. Through the eyes of guards and people of its city, it watched her as she drew level with the merlons on top of the wall—and vanished.

It wondered what was happening, so reached out to the dungeon. "Dungeon, what is the meaning of your invisible minion?"

"I can't build a new opening for some time, but if the verdant dungeon can, I figure asking it is the best shot. Then it could send a minion back with Luddy and open a new entrance in here so we can both support that outpost."

The notion of having the dungeon save itself was novel and appealed to Northridge. Right now their resources were short, and much as it didn't want to give any advantage to the invaders, it also couldn't spare any effort on saving the food-bearing dungeon. "Good. It will be hard enough surviving this without expending more effort on that dungeon. Though, its resources will be missed."

"I'm working on that, too. I can provide food, I'll need to scale up my mushroom farm to do it and build a pile of kitchens. Also, do you think people would mind living on my first floor?"

Despite how far it had come since quickening, Northridge knew that the dungeon was sharper at certain problem solving tasks. "I will not hold them from doing so. You gain from this?"

"I get XP, uh, my ability to level up and become more powerful is based on an abstract statistic. It increases when I have people who aren't my monsters inside me."

Northridge was unsurprised. The dungeon could grow simply by having people living within it. It already had one family and several adventurers within. "That would be acceptable. We both grow stronger as each of us grows stronger."

"I'm glad you think like that, Northridge. I'll have Stephan contact Christine and get that rolling. We also know there are some folk in your city who want to become kobolds. I'll be sending my boss to deal with them."

From Brolly's talk with the subjects, Northridge knew that those seeking to join the dungeon were of no other use to the city. It was prepared to give them homes, since most were skilled in some way and at an age when they could pass those skills on, but truly it would be grateful if they weren't a burden on its now limited food supplies. "I'll give her a quest to assist them."

"Thank you."

Again and again Northridge found curious delight in dealing with its most strange dungeon ally. It had listened to its own townsfolk, and they had this manner of speaking that involved niceties. It was most often used between those showing respect and families. "You're welcome." Northridge was content with its statement being taken in either light.

Walking quietly through the enemy line wasn't hard. The invaders had made hundreds of small camps that weren't joined together, plus they hadn't yet finished the earthworks that would have at least made Ludmiller's initial escape from the siege a little harder. As it was, she was being careful not to make a noise, but otherwise had unbroken ground to move across.

She wished it wasn't early morning, but it had taken her until the break of dawn to respawn. Night would be so much easier, and she hoped she could bring whatever minion the verdant dungeon could spare back during the following night.

From a pouch at her side she pulled out the little map that Tannyr had drawn for her. She ran. Running with her magical stealthiness made it shimmer and jitter around her. The faster her movements, the more she was at risk of being seen. Still, with none of the invaders in sight, she saw no reason not to run.

The sun slowly rose up the sky—almost to midday when she saw the smaller siege line around the dungeon's fort. Slowing to a trot, she eventually gave that up too and walked to the enemy camp. This was a much tighter formation. They had earthworks constructed and were huddled down behind them. To one side was a group of unarmored workers assembling wooden structures that were bound with rope. As she watched, Ludmiller witnessed the raising of a big upright pair of logs with a pivot on them. As more hardware was added, she whispered one word aloud, "Trebuchet."

She only knew the machine because she'd seen some young men in a town she'd passed through with her party build one for fun. This looked about three times the size of the one she'd seen, and the amount of work going into it—and the size of the boulders that were being rolled over to it—caused her some panic.

It was too much of a threat to risk leaving it. Slipping around the lines, Ludmiller approached the workers who were even now adding the weapon sling to the huge siege engine.

Looking it over, she decided the best place to sabotage it was where it could not easily be examined. With her claws, she started to scale one of the braced uprights and made her way to the pivot. It was a steel fitting that had huge nails hammered through it and was bound over with rope. She inspected the hardware, finding the rope easy enough to cut—but that wouldn't weaken it.

The thing only had wooden parts where more strength wasn't needed, because everything she remembered seeing those young men do with mere rope—was done here with steel. Thinking it over, she felt the huge axle start to turn as they cranked the swing arm down and the massive counterweight into the air.

A plan started to form. It would require her to fail in part of her mission, but dealing with this threat was a bigger issue. The counterweight was a massive metal cable net. Dozens of huge rocks hung in its grip and were suspended under load from the short end of the arm. The cable was not thick, but there was no way for her to cut through that.

Crawling out to the arm, she looked back to see the workers loading a huge stone into the weapon's sling. She wouldn't have long to do this, she realized, so she stood up on the wood and walked along it to where the counterweight hung.

Shimmying down to the net, she reached to her back and the one thing she was carrying there apart from the rifles and their bullets. Working fast, she lodged the small keg of black powder into the net and hoped that it would go off from the shock alone. Behind her, she heard someone call out a complex series of instructions.

She jumped, rolled, and came back to her feet. Walking away from the siege weapon as fast as she could manage without giving herself away, it was hard not to run. Every word she heard from the siege engine crew made her want to dive for the ground.

The worst that happens, she told herself, is that I wake up sharing Trav's headspace again. She got halfway through the camp before the shout came. It was a short word, sharp, and she knew what it would mean.

Creaking wood could be heard as the giant machine reacted to the pull of gravity on its counterweight. As the first rock was hurled into the sky, the counterweight crashed into the ground with impressive force. There was an indescribably short moment of time, barely a sliver, as the keg of black powder was hit with a shock wave from the impact.

The detonation among the rocks of the counterweight sent the rocks flying in all directions at high speed. Both uprights of the trebuchet, many people who'd been working on it, and a large section of the surrounding camp were hit by the rocks-turned-missiles.

Having dropped to the ground the moment she'd heard the call to fire the machine, Ludmiller slowly stood back up after the event and saw the devastation her sabotage had caused. It was, without doubt, a war zone. Men were screaming, some crawling along the ground with what limbs remained to them. She blotted it all out, turned toward the fort (and the one stone that had hit it) and walked away.

By the time she reached the wall, Ludmiller was hardening herself to the horror she'd caused. "They were trying to kill people from Northridge," she told herself as she set her claws into the concrete of the wall. The huge blocks of stone were not easy to climb, but her limbs were built for gripping to rock. When she reached the top, and saw a group of guards watching the mayhem behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'm going to become visible now, please don't hurt me."

The words, from out of nowhere, had the opposite effect to what they intended. All the guards were on immediate alert, drawing their weapons and looking around for who'd spoken.

"Who's that? Show yourself!" Timothy Devin shouldn't have been in charge of the little guard post, but Brolly had seen fit to make him sergeant of his squad. Now, surrounded and with someone he couldn't see speaking to him, he was ready to start cutting at the air itself.

Then, beyond the reach of their swords, a kobold appeared. Sergeant Devin blinked in surprise, barely holding himself back from charging her. The rifles on her back were a welcome sight. "Are you from Northridge?"

"Yes. I'm on a mission for the city and my dungeon. I brought rifles, black powder, and ammo—but I thought you might rather not have that trebuchet hurling boulders at your wall." Ludmiller nodded toward where the siege machine had been as she unhitched the rifles from her back and set down all her load. "Sorry."

"Uh, yeah. Thanks for that. Can you get more?" Passing the weapons to his guards, Devin wished he had the means to fire them now.

"I can, but hopefully we can relieve you in the meantime. The whole city has been besieged, but I'm here to negotiate with your dungeon." It was crazy, but Ludmiller hoped this would work out.

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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.