Chapter 131: Doors to be Opened

Chapter 131: Doors to be Opened

With teeth and trial, Nenaigch's mana sunk once more into my halls.

It was less blinding than the first attempt, more cloying, the deepening pull of what was already therebut that didn't make it unnoticeable. She didn't have anything to aim it at but I felt the pressure increase, the rising spots where her mana coiled and hissed like a living thing. Two points, for me to choose as I wished, claws bared and waiting.

I preened.

Nenaigch would get her priests, get her second floor, get her passageand I would get power. Always more power, the likes of which I could never have dreamed up in another world.

Soon, I would make the haven, the little paradise within a hellscape of my own creationbut I had a greater mission first, one that would also take another's hands in the process, grubby though they may be.

So I pushed vaguely soothing intricacies to Nenaigch, lavishing as much praise as my soot-black soul could muster, and dipped away from her floor, past the lightning-choked Skylands and into the coiling reefs below, the watery paradise with all its extended teeth. The first room, awash in billowing schools, and then the second, with its sprawling lagoon and shifting trees.

And, in the far back, the den, perched on white sands and crowned in vampiric mangroves. Not the vampiric mangrove, the Ancestral Tree still haunted by her vampiric dryad who had taken to dragging roughwater sharks out of the water and feasting on their desiccated corpses to the remarkable horror of her neighbors.

No, for today my focus was for the kobolds, and their companion within. nove(l)bi(n.)com

Chieftess, halfway through pouring over what was a rather juvenile attempt at a carved map of the Hungering Reefs, tilted her head to the side as she felt my awareness slip into the den, the humming buzz of my intensified mana. She warbled some kind of inane question, rising to her claws, gripping her newly-fashioned spear. Still something that could serve as a staff, her commanding call to her underlings, but with the jagged fang of a slain shark affixed to the tip.

She was not a passive leader. Her scarlet scales had blood to match their hue.

I pushed a point of mana into her for little more than general encouragement before diving into the back of the den.

Tucked in his room, resting on the moss bed and sketching little pictures in the dirt on the walls, was Nicau. Bored, from my initial brush of his surface thoughtsthere was little to do but fight, rest, and hunt, particularly for one who had been used to more dramatic lives.

Well. When he went to Calarata, he could perhaps finally learn how to read, as I'd commanded him, and bring back books for his entertainment.

You, I murmured, something quick and fleeting. Nicau still shook and jittered upright, because my mental voice was a power deeper than any thought, and he flashed an apologetic bow in what could generously be called my direction if he had recently been diagnosed as blind. Go above. Find an entrance. Find a shadow.

A shadow, something hidden and unknown, where perhaps a quiet little opening could appear and be none the worse for wear. A home for the crawling and skittering beasts, where pirates rather had better things to do than poke their ugly noses in.

Something Nicau was uniquely suited to find.

Because while I didn't want this in Calarata, I wanted it closeI could not simply sit back and content myself on ignoring the pirates, letting them bluster and blow themselves out like storms against an unforgiving coast. They were, very irritably, a threat; and one I was determined in crushing.

Therefore, I needed information. And where better than from the throats of those who cursed my name?

Nicau frowned, tilting his head and worrying his lip with his teeth. "Ah," he said, delicately, like one seeing a garotte that hadn't yet wrapped around his neck but was dallying too close for comfort. "Back to Calarata?"

My mana billowed around his mind, shoving in pictures of the Golds that had poured within my hall, and the deal I'd struck with Nenaigcha way in and out without the constant threat of discovery or being closed off. A way for him to leave easier, to keep seeing the world, to continue spreading the epithet he'd so graciously given himself. Pirate Lord, I thought. Dreadfully uncreative. It must have taken him all of two seconds to make it.

Nicau's cheeks flushed.

"Of course, o' dungeon," he managed, pushing off from his bed and fumbling for his dark blue coat, swirling it over his shoulders. His blind loyalty was appreciated. "More creatures?"

Knowledge, I said, and then corrected myself. And creatures.

Nicau nodded, a hesitant little bob. "Yes," he said. "I will. Leave immediately."

Yes, them, and what I hoped was only them. Most aquatic races were fiercely territorial in a way that terrestrial creatures simply couldn't understand, with their open skies and ample resources. Oceans were, by definition, rather empty and yearningfor those like sea-drakes, who slated our fill on other equally large creatures, it was of little concern. But for merrow, mermaids, aicaya, and other like, they needed reefs and kelp forests and shallow lagoons, which were mere pockets in the pressing emptiness. Thus, fiercely guarded.

No, I had little doubts that the merrow were the only ones in this cove, but that was what made it all the more concerning that I was seeing so little of them. A dungeon with water access was a thing unheard of, and certainly not one without a claimed core. They should have been clawing down the mountains in their effort to reach it.

Seros' nostrils flared, tail lashing. No, he didn't think of them with much kindness of any regard. We were quite similar.

Them, I said, still gentle. And more. What is within.

And, with a kind of care deeply antithetical to my being, I pushed the vaguest recollection of the nightmare to him.

Twin maws. Black skin. Hissing through water, through air, through mana, consuming star-bright mana and decaying it to emptiness.

The pitch-shark.

It had come from the cove, from somewhere within the water, and it was not of Aiqith in any way that mattered. Nicau's mysterious rune had spoken of the same idea, the world that had existed before Aiqith, before the Otherworld, before any of the othersup until the Breaking, named so with emphasis, but undescribed. A terribly wretched thing.

And much like the merrow, it didn't make sense I hadn't seen another.

Something was happening in the cove. And I needed to know.

Seros hissed, claws rooting into the stone. But fear, barely a whisper, lurked under his fury. He knew the strength of a pitch-shark when it was caged within cramped corners and belied on all sides; out in the cove, in the openness, it would not be so limited.

But he was Seros. None had ever defeated him, and it wouldn't happen now.

Pride flowed through me, the kind I couldn't have snuffed out and muffled if I wanted; matching bravado in equal turn. His Name had so far manifested as hydrokinesis, the rush and pull of surrounding water; but Nicau could command, and Akkyst could instruct, and I had little doubt there was something more to the blessing of the depths.

The draconic monitor nodded, his iridescent scales catching the light as he slipped back into the water. He'd have a hells of an easier time getting out than Nicau, given there wasn't a great fat Adventuring Guild perched over that entrance, but he'd still have to be quick and clever with it. I had no doubt in him.

I told him so, as he swam up through the coral reefs and into the Skylands, and he preened as he clambered higher through my dungeon. Other creatures watched him with a wariness characteristic of gravitas, budding though it was; they knew he was a threat, long before their eyes registered his size and might. An unconscious understanding of danger.

Draconic monitor for now.

Dragon, soon.

Already outpaced by Seros' elegant movements, Nicau was fumbling his way across the Hungering Reefs, the kobold's prototype raft lashed together from fallen cloudsire palms and desperation, a few kobold hunters doing their best to swim alongside. Neither group was moving particularly fast. But he would make his way across and then clamber up through the rest of the floors, emerge out in the tunnel, and strike to the shadows until he was out in the wider world. Back to Calarata.

And return with schemas and knowledge aplenty.

Now, with my Named striking out for greener pastures and threats embodied by every kind of nightmare, I could settle in, wrapping my sparks of mana around my core in a fruitless little lightshow that did nothing but make me preen.

I had made a goddess rescind her previous deal and strengthen it; to grant me even more power than she had originally given. Made myself strong. And yes, while I would little doubt have to go bother myself against the webweavers and bring myself down to their scuttling level, I had some time before I could do that.

And my sights were set on my side of the bargain for now.

Nicau to Calarata, Seros to seaand me, to paradise.

I grabbed my mana and started to dig.