The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Tier 2

Level 20/100

Heart 1440000/1440000

Experience 75747/360000

Workers 27/121

Monsters 9/123

Traps 71/294

Food 3603

Timber 7322

Iron 2292

Steel 905

Mithril 3

Mithril Ore 50

Charcoal 4758

Mana 1161

Rock 3263

Gold 1057

Leather 217

Leather Sludge 215

Lava 500

Glass 483

Explosive Runes 5

Triggered Explosive Runes 0

Triggered Explosive Runes (repeating) 0

Long Guns 5

Bullets 300

Black Powder 300

Poison, Greater 1200

Sulfur 700

Quest: Give classes to 10 of your creatures.

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

Quest: Delve to the bottom of a dungeon with at least 20 floors.

Travis ended up spending a whole extra day focused on getting everyone outfitted, getting new rooms finished, and trying to solve an odd problem. He knew he'd lost a few of the smaller mana shrines, but he'd also uncovered a bunch of new ones and linked into them—but he wasn't gaining as much mana as he thought he should.

While Stephan was out presenting their gifts to the city council, Travis had Katelyn check every single mana shrine they had to make sure nothing odd was happening. "Could it be some kind of soft limit to income?" he asked.

"Mana doesn't exactly degrade like that." Circling around to the newer area, Katelyn shook her head when she finished the last of those. "I can't sense anything. No dulling, feedback, or even damage."

"Thanks for checking. I'll keep an eye on it. Oh, I have your class next. Dungeon Mages is another three hundred days of research, but we're burning through it fast now." Travis was nervous about Ludmiller going out again. He'd offered her some mithril armor, but she had refused it because of the noise it made.

"Get me more kobolds, Trav, and I'll get your research humming along faster and faster." Katelyn stopped suppressing her magic, letting it flow down her arms, through her staff, and engulfing her body. "And, Trav, thanks for not pushing me to have a gun."

"You're joking, right? How would you even use one like you are?"

Katelyn made sure to flare brightly with flame. "Exactly! Fife kept telling me I should get two pistols, but I think she's gone a little gun-happy. But, you know, it makes me think. What if I could find another way to fire something from them?"

"What, use magic?" Travis asked.

"Yeah. I couldn't use a wooden handle, but what if I got a rifle barrel attached to my staff, loaded it, then I could cause an explosion behind the bullet and fire it. It wouldn't be much, but then I'd have something to use on magic resistant enemies."

"How common are things that are magic resistant but not physically resistant as well? You're one of our biggest hitters, and besides, we've all worked so hard to be at a point where we don't have to do things we don't want to." As soon as he asked, Travis could see Katelyn deflate a little. "You could still try it if you want. Being a cohort, it wouldn't even matter if you, uh, blew a few guns up in the process."

Pausing, Katelyn shook her head. "I think I'll stick to magic then. Random explosions don't sound fun. Oh, did you get those rabbits from the verdant dungeon?"

"Yeah. About those. I thought rabbits would be tiny things. Barely big enough to feed one or two people. Those rabbits were as big as a dog!"

"Now you see why a verdant animal dungeon is so valuable. Rabbits are the least of their creatures, and they're so much larger than anything you can grow naturally or unnaturally. Wizards have worked for centuries trying to create the perfect set of conditions to grow rabbits that size." Katelyn shifted through a wall to get to the inner sanctum and shorten the distance to her library. "Anything else?"

"Nah. I think we have things in hand for now."

Field Captain Donna was not happy. She was also not willing to put up with the ranting of the other field captains. "Shut up, Astrid!" Glaring at the woman whose job was to build siege engines, Donna snarled. "How many walls have your engineers destroyed?"

"If you don't both calm down, I'll order you stripped and will have you fight to the death of one—or preferably both of you." Field Captain Hilda looked between her two specialists. Of the three, she was higher born, stronger, but younger. Neither had a head for large scale warfare, which was why she'd been put in charge of keeping this border skirmish in order. "Are you done?"

Being dressed down by someone of equal rank fueled Donna's anger more, but Hilda had a point. Both of them had screwed up. Her in trying to take the various dungeons of the area and Astrid in not breaching the walls of the city with her siege engines. Taking a step back and dipping her head to Hilda, Donna said, "I will hold my tongue in your presence."

"You brown-nosing piece of—" The sound of a blade being drawn had not fully registered in Astrid's ears before she felt the edge of the weapon at her throat. Her own blade was still sheathed and she had nothing to stop Hilda from running the exotic metal through tendons, blood vessels, and windpipe.

"Are you done, Astrid, or will I make you be done?" Hilda asked, her tone colder than her weapon. She waited for Astrid's eyes to cast down before taking the blade away from the woman's throat. "We all have had setbacks here. The heretics' damn ghost is slipping through our ranks and destroying your machines. The viciousness of the two pits you encountered, Donna, was not anticipated. The only thing we had going for us was time, and yet even that runs short."

Donna straightened. She would pay for having failed, but Hilda had offered a measure of protection. She hated that her little sister was the one protecting her. "I will assault the greenskin hole to the north. We will—"

"You will not. We have bottled them up in their makeshift fort and I will not send more good soldiers to their deaths in that damned rotting pit. Even an ending poison wouldn't promise victory in that damned hole." Despite sharing blood ties with Donna, Hilda would still have removed her sister's head if she hadn't seen reason. "Do you still have the smaller siege weapons?"

"We lost two in that dragon hole. I have eight others." Donna looked at her sister with more than a little curiosity. "What do you have planned for them?"

What Hilda wanted was an end to the siege, a good bout of sacking, and then returning to their own lands in the north. "From what the scouts tell me, we have at least two more weeks before anything could come to stop us. Four if they want to bring a force that could be problematic. I want to be in that city in two days. Ready the wolf warriors, Astrid. You can regain your honor by fighting at their head and observing the old ways. Build a ram and let's break that door down."

Turning and leaving the command tent, Astrid tilted her head back and sniffed the wind. "Blood, fire, and a noble death." The words made her smile. "I'll take two from three. Raise the wolf standard! We will take the gate by force tonight. Build the howler." Her first sergeant raced off with the news, carrying the good news to the engineers and her own squad of warriors.

The walk to her own tent was short, but each step made Astrid more sure of her role. She would be the first to howl at the moon from within that city's walls. "Prepare my heavy armor. My stole too." She allowed her squires to remove her field armor and replace it with the heavy armor that she called her juggernaut.

Each plate of the metal known as adamantine overlapped two others. All the joints were covered in two layers of mithril chain. It weighed more than she did and cost a large ransom. It took two squires working together to get the breastplate on her. The other pieces were assembled, strapped down, and tightened until only her head was visible beyond the dark armor. "My stole."

The huge wolf pelt, complete with hollowed out head, was draped over Astrid's shoulders. The smell of the skin was intoxicating enough without the old crone bringing a wooden bowl into her tent. As the engineers prepared their equipment and the sun dipped down to the horizon, Astrid drank the contents of the bowl.

The result, firstly, caused her insides to tie up in knots. Cramps all through her gut halted digestion in its tracks and ensured that the toxins in the stew would do their job.

Every muscle in her body was on fire. Energy flooded her and she resorted to the meditation she and every other ulfhednar had been taught since they were first identified to carry the wolf curse. Slowing her heart down, calming her breathing—Astrid stood just inside the entrance of her tent as she felt the world around her narrow.

"How long has she got?" a squire asked the old crone.

"That she hasn't gone wild already speaks well of her spirit. If she isn't berserk now, she soon will be."

The squires looked at each other, worry etched on their faces. Together they moved to the tent and pulled back the flaps.

Full moon. It wasn't required for Astrid's talent, but it helped. Her arms and legs began twitching, the motion hidden well by the heavy armor. Underneath, flesh writhed and skin sprouted a thick pelt of midnight black fur. Reaching out, Astrid clutched the handle of her battleaxe and stepped into the cooling night.

There was no longer a sense of hot or cold—Astrid's whole body was on fire. She wasn't fighting the toxins inside her but embracing them. Ducking under her pennant, she lifted her now inhuman head to the sky and howled.

With the whole Balavian camp going silent at the noise, more howls started to rise here and there. In ones and twos they rushed to Astrid's side. She knew well, even as the call of blood filled her head, when her pack was gathered. The engineers had worked fast to build the ram and line it up—seeing it, she knew what she had to do. "Forward!"

At the last moment someone passed Astrid her helmet which she shoved on over her lupine features. With her heart speeding up, there was no barrier that could hold her back.

When her shoulder hit the crossbeam of the ram, Astrid barely slowed. Almost a dozen others slammed against their own beams and the ram lurched forward into a fast pace. On the wall ahead of her, she could see the glint of steel tubes raised and aimed at her. Astrid no longer cared about the enemy and their weapons—she only had to smash in the door and the pack would feast.

Donna watched in the darkness. Astrid and her wolves slammed the battering ram up against the front gate and started the huge log swinging. The level of noise from less than fifty fighters had even her own blood boiling in sympathy. And that's when the first target presented itself.

Up on the wall, the city guards stepped out from behind merlons with their guns raised to their shoulders. The first, a young sergeant, sprouted five feet of ballista bolt before he could discharge his rifle.

The ballista bows, with an added band of steel on each, would not last the night. The extended range that the modification gave let them snipe the defenders on the wall from outside rifle range.

Swinging the battering ram, Astrid was hidden from the defenders' sight by the large awning over their ram. As the fight went on and the door started to weaken, she was only feeling more excitement. The peculiar sound of splintering wood—poles the defenders were no doubt using inside to reinforce the gate—was music to her ears.

Everything was going perfectly. The ram was breaking more supports with each swing, and Astrid could hear more cracking wood now than she could howls from her pack. One sound, though, registered above the din of battle—leathery wings cutting through the night sky.

"You bastards tried using this crap on us. Let's see how you like it." Fife lit the fuse on the bomb with her alchemical striker. The crackling, hissing cord burned shorter and shorter. "Well, Junior, if we don't make this, I—" She had to cut herself off as a ballista bolt flew through the air where they'd been flying a moment earlier. Patting the shoulder of her wyvern, she looked down to find her target.

The bomb fell from Fife's grip and tumbled through the air as it fell. The fuse was protected enough by a metal tube so that it wouldn't go out. The explosive, though, was the smaller barrel of the two that made up the device.

Astrid turned her head when the smell of crackling black powder drew her attention. A keg had landed in the muck beside the ram and though she was not much more than a slathering beast at that point, part of her connected the dots as to what the bomb was.

Arching her back, Astrid looked up at the moon and howled mournfully as the charge detonated and a thick yellow fog puffed out all around them. It was already too late, she knew, what with being in the middle of the cloud. She would never make it to the edge before falling over dead. Pulling a dagger from her belt, she jumped up onto the roof of the ram and from there onto the wall above the gate.

Digging her dagger in, Astrid saw several other wolves repeat her trick—climbing out of the death cloud. With claws and whatever blades they had available, the wolves scaled the wall as their packmates died in silence below. It was not a good death, they knew, but they would make the soft southerners pay for each wolf slain.

Landing on the wall, Fife shouted, "Pull back! They'll be over the wall soon! Ready your guns!" Something shoved into her side, but her armor held and the ballista bolt was deflected from its attempt to spear through her. Her wyvern, she was happy to see, was screaming its defiance at the army outside.

Drawing her shield with one hand, Fife pulled out one of her new pistols with the other and waited. The first armored head that looked over the wall was gifted a steel shot at close range—what worried Fife was that the round deflected off the heavily armored wolf. "Shit."

Fife had to give full credit to her new equipment; the huge beast's claws weren't tearing away her shield. She thought she was handling it well until another of them blindsided her. The punch collided with Fife's side and threw her off the wall and down to the city street below. Only reflexes kept her sword in her hand. Looking at the wall, she watched as six of the juggernauts stood tall; as if surveying the lay of the city for their next move. "I need that adamantine gear."

Spotting those of his troops not heeding Fife's advice falling from the wall, Brolly Windchime sucked in a breath of worry at the carnage above the gatehouse. They were monsters out of legend. Huge armored hulks with great claws, wolf features, and death in their eyes.

As he raised his new mithril rifle, Brolly whispered a prayer to any god that would hear him and to the city itself to guide him. And then he spotted a gap in their armor. The plates of adamantine overlapped on all the exposed joints except for the one that needed the most amount of movement. Stilling his breath, he sighted and fired.

Astrid's victory howl, and the answering howl of her pack, lasted for barely a moment. Heads raised, they'd boosted their own morale and crushed that of their enemies both. One of her packmates had shown a little too much enthusiasm and raised the battleaxe they'd brought up the wall high into the air.

The crack of Brolly's rifle was answered by the stillness of one of the wolves. The round had entered through a gap under its raised arm and the steel shot pinged around inside the hollow cage several times before muscle, bone, and finally brain arrested its motion.

Fife managed to roll to the side to avoid having the beast land on top of her. The axe that had been the wolf's undoing was not in its hand though. High above, Astrid locked her eyes on the man who'd delivered a deathblow to one of her pack and she casually jumped from the wall to the ground below.

"Brogdar, give my allies strength!" The shout, pure and charged with the certainty of a god's backing, spread a wave of power throughout the city. Even Brayden was surprised by the fervor of Brogdar's support.

Still grumbling at Fife having taken off without her, Penelope loped through the city as fast as she could. Her new armor felt amazing and light for what it was, and while she'd been worried her new swords wouldn't be magic, she seemed destined to turn whatever blades she carried into nightmares of acid. She passed Brayden at a run, though he fell in behind her.

Brolly, staring at the axe-wielding monstrosity charging at him, barely managed to lift his pistol and shoot at it. The round pinged off when the wolf was thirty feet away. When it halved the distance again, a second creature stepped up beside and then in front of him.

Flaring her wings, Penelope brought up all her fury and anger into a belch of barely gaseous acid that poured over the charging wolf. She had her blades up to meet it as its hissing axe slammed against her crossed blades.

Expecting the beast to curse at her or say anything, Penelope was shocked to see bloodshot yellow eyes staring back at her from inside the helmet atop its head. She struck one blade at that face while knocking away its axe with the other. What she didn't account for was the claws of its free hand raking her at her left arm.

Stepping up beside Penelope to catch a second wolf's slash on his shield, Brayden snarled out, "Lend me your aid!" and cast his healing magic at Penelope.

Fife got to her feet again after the second wolf passed, looking around to find three of the wolves focused on her. "Ha! Pen only gets two and I get three? Figures. This is what it takes to pay for—" She cut her monologue short and stepped back, blocking a slash from one of the wolves. "...pay for some good armor." As she spoke, she realized they weren't so much focused on her but what was right behind her—the chains that held the gate bar in place. "Ah. So that's how"—she blocked another swing and parried away a probing claw—"it is?"

The fighting intensified. Fife parried and blocked what attacks she could, and when one wolf tried to slap her aside, she took it on her armor and hacked halfway through their exposed wrist to dissuade further attempts to knock her down.

None of the wolves felt the chill as the night air fell upon the city. If they did, they would have certainly noticed it was happening unnaturally fast.

Fife recognized the rime growing on the armor of the wolves, but felt barely the slightest cool breeze herself. When the three seemed to burst into wild and hectic swings to bring her down, she snarled a single word at them, "Riposte."

Time slowed. Fife watched in slow motion as their attacks came at her, and she had infinite time to move and intercept each—then get her own swing back. She sliced talons from their huge hands, cut wrists and hands, and broke every finger on one with a slap of her shield.

Ten seconds had seemed like forever, but it was over in a blink of an eye.

The rime had grown more pronounced and the breath of the wolves hung heavy on the air. As Fife watched, their swings got slower and slower until she could keep up without taking any hits on her armor. She knew of one such spell that would do it mostly because it was one Jack enjoyed using. "I'll give you a kiss you'll never forget you lunatic sorcerer," she said, getting under the guard of one of the wolves and bringing her head into the frozen armor of the wolf's belly.

Adamantine armor wouldn't break, especially not with such a light impact, but Fife's head had the same hardness and resilience as the rest of her, causing the thin layer of ice that had formed inside the wolf's armor to spall and drive small shards into its gut. They weren't much, but they broke the skin and gave Jack's magic a new place to infiltrate.

With his newfound, dungeon-given power, Jack picked out each delicate little shard and poured more ice into the wolf directly. Its organs froze first, then it spread out to its legs and, when it started to fall, its arms.

Fife knew she needed to not get hit by the shards that were coming. Taking a hit from one of the remaining two wolves, she aimed her shield at the frozen, falling wolf as it tumbled toward the stones under her feet.

The explosion was surprisingly (to both Fife and Jack) contained within the armor. No large shards of ice got loose to find other targets. But, just from observing her two remaining opponents, Fife could see that they were less sure of themselves.

Penelope wasn't built as tough as Fife. She could deflect some hits, and parry others, but it was Brayden's healing that kept her upright and brawling with the two seemingly unstoppable monsters. Her blades were starting to have an effect on some of the armor pieces of the wolves, but on the whole she couldn't get past it—and her breath had proved weirdly ineffective on them.

Brayden, too, wasn't having any luck damaging his enemy. He traded blows with the wolf, but he had only escaped being drawn into a battle of strength through the power of his god. All his focus was on the wolf opposite him, and Penelope.

Surveying her options, Katelyn could see that Brayden needed to have the stress taken off him first. While he remained standing, Penelope could too, and from what she could see of Fife, she figured that fight was mostly under control. "Okay, then, I don't think heating all that armor up is something I can do quickly, but here's a neat trick a friend taught me."

With his next heal spell on Penelope, Brayden noticed that the wolf he was fighting had a small dot appear on its helmet. The trail of light behind the dot seemed to shimmer from red to blue to blinding white. The dot grew smaller before a tiny puff of metal left the spot.

The sizzling smell of burning meat met Astrid's nose. She looked around and spotted Katelyn easily enough. "Heretics!" Her shout was half howl and was answered with a few sharp sounds—from far fewer wolves than she'd led into the city. Turning, she looked at the door to see there was only one wolf still fighting to open it.

Fear beat strong in Astrid's heart, but up until then she hadn't seen the certainty of her own death before. A yelp from beside her and that horrid smell again alerted her to her ally's demise and caused what little cognition she had remaining to register the imminence of her death.

"Yield!" Brayden shouted, putting the strength of his god into his voice. "Take a knee, wolf, and you may live! I swear it on my honor!"

Under different circumstances, in a different battle, Astrid would have let the fear overtake her. A gut churning with the berserker poison would not let her bend her knee. With a warm sensation growing on her forehead, she drew her axe back and threw it. The adamantine weapon pinwheeled through the air and buried itself in Katelyn's shoulder, digging deep into her neck.

Without the risk of a mage to fell her, Astrid let loose the psychotic rage that boiled inside. Unleashing ferocity and fervor unlike any she'd felt in her life, the pure state of infinite battle-lust subsumed her. She danced around blades, not caring as they bounced off or bit in. The dragon's blades were the worst offenders, but she grabbed one with her bare hand and threw it aside.

Penelope, with only one blade remaining to her, tried to deflect the next claw only to have her remaining blade snatched away and cast aside. She had no choice but to grapple, hand to claw, with the wolf. "Brayden!"

With a choice between checking on Katelyn and helping Penelope, Brayden realized it was as much triage as battle smarts. "I'm behind you. Brogdar, guide this ally to your path and lend her your strength!"

Fife, with the last of the three wolves now a melting puddle of meat, watched as Penelope grew. She reached the same size as the wolf she was wrestling, and then continued to grow. "Whoa…"

When she was half again as big as the wolf, Penelope transferred its left arm to her left grip so she could hold both limbs in one hand, then reached up and ripped the helmet off Astrid. The wolf inside the armor had blood flowing from its nose and its eyes were stained with crimson as well. "Cleanse it!"

"What?" Brayden asked.

"Poison. Cleanse this wolf of poison, Brayden!" Penelope had to give up her grip on the helmet and grab as Astrid got a hand free.

When Brayden uttered words she barely comprehended, Astrid felt the first tickle of fear again. The magic she feared so much plowed through her. Her righteous fury failed first, then her conviction, and finally her reserves of strength ran out and, eyes wide, she fell to the ground while her heart still beat.

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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.