The Heart Grows

Dungeon Status:

Level 1

Heart 400/400

Experience 65/100

Workers 2/5

Monsters 0/10-2

Traps 8/10+2

Rooms 6

Food 102

Timber 134

Iron 34

Mana 0

Rock 168

Gold 110

Leather 51

Leather Sludge 3

Quest: Make one of your monsters into a boss

Travis was in a panic. "Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap—"

"Calm down, Trav. This is exactly what we planned." Penelope was carrying the wizard—who was now practically naked—down the hall and past the traps. "Are you ready? Just go for it the moment you get the option."

"You think she's useful?" Travis asked, watching as she got the woman all the way to his heart.

"I think she'll probably bleed out soon if we don't turn her into a kobold. Wizards aren't known for their toughness." Slicing her palm, Penelope smeared a bloody print onto the crystal surface.

Accept Willing Sacrifice? [30s remaining]

Accepting a supplicant with the appropriate medium present can integrate them into the dungeon.

Yes/No

The message came up and, despite his misgivings, Travis hit yes. The change was fast, though the wizard was still unconscious as she shrank and reshaped into a kobold.

"Wait, what—? Was that Katelyn? You're turning us into kobolds?!" Staring at the kobold that his sister now was, Robert Arskith's eyes were wide. "You—We—Uh…" Lifting his head up, Robert focused on the heart. "That's the dungeon heart?"

"Yeah, now come over here. I want to see if I have to cut myself every time or if you can go through this without me making more of a mess on Trav."

Travis felt shock. He had a 3rd kobold and was about to have a 4th. "P-P-Pen, make sure he's okay with this."

Penelope let out a sigh. "Travis—that's our buddy there—wants to know if you're okay becoming a kobold. You know you'll be stuck here and—"

"The dungeon is called Travis? What do you mean, stuck? And how does this even work?!" Without any of his equipment—naked as he was—Robert wasn't going to be going to have any way to resist. "Wait. No. That's Katelyn? That kobold?"

"Your sister, right? Yeah." Penelope sounded a little more relaxed. "You get to stay here with her."

"It wasn't meant to go this way, you know? I'd made a special potion that would drug a dungeon heart. We were going to take over and build a tower and everything." As he spoke, Robert walked over to the unconscious kobold. "Hey, sis, I guess you don't have to worry about being ogled by mouth-breathers anymore."

The blood print on Travis' heart was gone, inspiring swearing from Penelope. "Okay, well, no one said life was easy—the first or second." Pressing her knife to her palm again, she opened the cut back up and pressed her hand to the crystal.

Accept Willing Sacrifice? [30s remaining]

Accepting a supplicant with the appropriate medium present can integrate them into the dungeon.

Yes/No

Again the message came up for Travis, and again he agreed. "I'm going to need to upgrade to have more workers at this rate."

"That's not a bad thing, Trav." Penelope picked up Katelyn. "Steph, can you grab this other one and we'll put them in the sleeping quarters."

Katelyn hadn't expected to wake up. She certainly hadn't expected to wake up in the dungeon. Waking up feeling like her body was wrong, in a dungeon, was not even contemplated. She opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was an odd growling chirp.

Slowly, carefully, she ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. The first thing she realized was she had much more inside her mouth than she should have. Flat teeth replaced by sharp and serrated ones were another new thing.

Jerking up, Katelyn looked around the cave she was dumped in. There was a soft pink glow from the only exit and she was sitting on a bunch of animal hides that were thick and soft with fur.

When a clawed and scaled hand reached out and touched hers, she jerked to stare at the kobold beside her. At first she panicked, but the small draconic creature didn't look hostile.

"Hey, you're both awake now? Okay, I guess I should explain some stuff. Yes, you're a kobold now. No, there's no going back. I'm Travis, the dungeon. That's your brother beside you."

The voice wasn't just clear, it didn't echo in the caves and tunnels she knew she was in. It was steady and sounded nice. It also said it was the dungeon. Turning her head to look at the kobold beside her, she stared into its eyes.

In the pink light streaming in, his eyes didn't tell her anything, but when she held up one claw and pushed magic out by snapping her little talons, a red flame jumped into being just above her digits. With that red light reflecting in his eyes now, she recognized her brother in the kobold.

She wanted to tell him it would be okay, that she would burn them a path out of the dungeon, but there was two problems with that. The first problem was she couldn't speak. Every time she opened her mouth to say something, a little chirp or growl was all she could make. The second problem was that—the dungeon felt like home.

Rocking forward, she stood up with an odd, fluid ease. Transferring the flame to her shoulder, she looked around the room and its very square proportions.

"You won't be able to talk well yet. Pen said it takes a bit of practice to work it out. If you want to come out and say hi, I'm in the next room."

It was the dungeon's voice again. There was a strange sense of worry from it, like something was wrong. What confused her was the whole "I'm in the next room" part. If they were the dungeon, she reasoned, they were everywhere. Turning to look at her brother, and finding him standing, she walked to the entrance of the room and saw exactly what Travis meant.

The big crystal looked uncut, but still had broad facets around it. It was as tall as she was, sitting on a slightly raised pedestal, and glowed with the pink light she'd seen in the sleeping quarters.

"Hey. Travis said you were both awake. He's the big rock there that keeps this whole place together. I'm Pen, and this is your new home." Penelope walked around the room to approach the two. "I'd say sorry about turning you both into kobolds, but let's face it, you weren't here to sell us spices."

The truth didn't hurt. Katelyn hadn't expected to wake up at all, so finding herself still breathing and still able to do magic was two pluses. She pointed to herself and shrugged her shoulders.

"Try to talk. Think about the word sounds you want to make. Your mouth can make them, it just takes practice. As for what to do with you, that's up to you. If you can't do anything else, you can always dig, but I see your magic still works. I don't think his knowledge of alchemy would have gone anywhere either. Trav, is there anything you can—?"

"Actually, yeah. When she cast that fire spell, I had a new room appear in my menu, Library. Also, I got one mana now."

There was excitement in Travis' voice, or so Katelyn could judge. This wasn't how dungeons should be, wasn't how they should act, and turning people into kobolds? None of this was right. "Ugh—" She paused and tilted her head. "Ugh, ergg, ssss…"

"Keep working at it." Penelope pulled her pickaxe out and hefted it to her shoulder. "Okay, Trav, what am I building next? This library, can you make one now?"

"Let's see. Okay, it's telling me it needs four times the space of these other rooms we've been building. Also, lots of timber, some leather, iron, and a pile of rock! Alright! Marking somewhere to dig. You good for it, Pen?"

"Yeah. I can show these newbies how to dig, too. Come on, your hands might be soft, but they're still scaled. Reach into Trav's heart and think about a pickaxe, then pull one out." Turning, Penelope headed down one of the dark tunnels leading away from Travis' heart.

Trying to understand what Penelope had said, Katelyn looked at the heart, but was startled when her brother just reached his arm in and pulled it back with a pickaxe in it. Repeating what she'd just seen, she focused on the same thing and pulled back, but rather than a pickaxe she got a long staff. It seemed strange to her at first, but when it was all the way out of the heart she felt her own magic echo in the staff.

The hovering flame jumped to the end of the staff and the whole thing caught alight in an instant, burned to a smoldering crisp, but otherwise seemed still a usable magic staff. It was almost enchanting the way her magic called to her through the staff. Katelyn had never had such an item before—always preferring wands—but now that she held it she could feel the way it amplified her magic.

"I didn't expect that. Looks like you don't get to dig, I guess. Want to show me what you can do?" Travis asked Katelyn.

To Katelyn, a small square in the distance caught her attention. It was down a long tunnel that had branches leading off from it. She felt like she wanted to dig, but all she had was her staff. Excitement bubbled up.

Pointing the staff down the tunnel, Katelyn let her magic pour along the length of her new staff. As power ran down the length, red embers glowed to life and wisps of smoke poured off the staff before, in the distance, the wall of rock just melted into lava that disappeared.

"Holy shit! I got lava from that! Katelyn, you're awesome!"

The praise was surprising, but more surprising was how good it felt to get it. Seeing her magic literally turn a wall of rock into lava, though, was some really crazy stuff. She started walking down the passage toward the wall to inspect it.

"I could fill a pit trap with lava. We wouldn't get any drops from things, but it would stop most creatures from getting past. Or a few pit traps in a row! This has so many cool ways to be used!"

When she reached the wall, Katelyn examined the burned rockface by running a claw down it. The claw, to her surprise, bit into the rock and sliced a line into the surface. "Niiii—ssss." When the order for more destruction came up, Katelyn's eyes glowed with red fire.

"Lava? Look, Trav, whatever you think you can do with the stuff, it'll be useless. Lava cools too fast and it's not like we can do anything with it in the meantime." Penelope led the way down the side tunnel and into the rear portion of the dungeon. "I take it you're not sending fire-girl down here to help?"

"Well, the lava says it can be used in the smelter to heat it. That's a good start at least. It doesn't seem to be cooling down, uh, wherever it's stored." Travis, despite the dose of reality, still sounded excited. "I'm letting Katelyn practice her magic. Instead of a pickaxe, she got a really cool fire staff from me. She's making more lava! This is so cool!"

Rolling her eyes, Penelope reached the gold vein. "Okay, I can feel you have placed the order on that room to be cleared out, so if you add one to dig up to it from here, we can get a move on."

When she'd dug through to the room, Penelope could feel the massive size of it before even sinking her pick into the rock. "Alright, uh, what was your name?"

"Rrrr—orrr—biiiii—t." It hadn't come out right the first few times, but when Penelope had dug the first incursion into the room, Robert managed to get the syllables out.

"Robert?" When Penelope got a nod, she held out her clawed hand. "I'm Penelope, but just call me Pen. The P sound will be a bit hard at first, but you'll figure it out. Anyway, you feel that need to start digging? That's Trav mapping stuff out for us. He can kinda see the whole place laid out, so it's way better if he designs the dungeon. He's also really good at it—but don't tell him."

Travis' sigh made it to both Penelope and Robert.

"Okay, so we just have to follow our instincts and dig. Don't worry about the rock, it'll disappear and land in a warehouse." Turning to face one of the remaining rock faces, Penelope started getting her digging on.

Behind her, Robert hefted his pickaxe and started swinging away too. After two sections dug each, he seemed to have figured it out enough that Penelope was confident she could just let him go.