Chapter 83: Panic in the Core Room (Patreon)

The entire domain was practically singing, and more than a few denizens were literally singing at Aby’s return, and Aby let itself bask in the ecstasy for a long moment before it began to actively monitor all of the menagerie, realizing that things had gotten a bit dilapidated during its slumber. Corpses were still broken down, and unnervingly it realized that there were the memories of dead invaders that it hadn’t even been aware of floating around in its mind, but nothing had been healing, and the core immediately began to worry as it realized what that meant.

Worry escalated to panic, however, when it realized that one of the single most prominent bonds it had was rapidly deteriorating, not even sending sensation across anymore. Aby immediately turned its attention to the wyvern, still much too sluggish for its comfort, and saw a proper mess. Dozens of rifle shrimp were milling about the scene of a very recent fight, and the draconic spawn was floating limp and lame off to the side, missing a spectacularly unhealthy amount of flesh.

The gemstone wasted no time, blearily fumbling mana across the shared bond to flood into the wyvern, sealing the frothing wounds far slower than if it had been fully awake. Flesh stitched together, swiftly but still agonizingly slow, and the left side of the wyvern was terribly marred as a result. The white-grey hide, almost completely unscarred before this, was covered from the base of the wing to the base of the tail in a hideous scar, a shade of grey darker than the rest and covered in warped scales and exposed flesh.

The leg was just entirely gone, not even a stump to show, and his stomach looked ghastly. There seemed to be almost no flesh, the skin taught against his ribcage and, further down, against his spine, like the organs in that place just weren’t any longer, and a quick check revealed that to be exactly the case. His right still looked mostly unchanged, lean and muscular, a membranous wing attaching towards the base of the ribs and a short leg ending in a wickedly taloned foot.

On his left, the wing was tattered, and even unattached at the base, with scarred ribbons of flesh hanging off the arm, only barely mirroring the right when approaching the wing. Past that, he was skeletal, the aforementioned missing portions of organs, the pockmarked hide, missing limb, and his tail only barely escaped the carnage. It was catastrophic, and Aby genuinely was unsure of whether the wyvern would be able to function again with such horrific injuries.

No doubt if he weren’t a spawn just having most of his internal organs outright gone would be disastrous even for one not as completely reliant on biology as some of the weaker creatures, and it was only Aby being able to perpetually heal him in a way very similar to the drake and the passive non-reliance of food all dungeon spawn benefit from that would keep him alive. Unfortunately, that very healing would be less and less effective the closer he got to invaders, so should the wyvern choose to fight, he might well only be capable of doing so whilst actively dying.

The prospect made Aby feel genuinely ill, a sort of guilt and terror and dread that it simply never had before being faced with the idea of one of its single oldest and most treasured creatures being truly crippled. The rage at the invading core, the horror at Sela’s imminent threat and harm at the hands of a bobbit worm, both eclipsed it in weight, but neither were the sinking, creeping emotional nightmare that this was, and Aby had to split a new portion of its mind just to compartmentalize the pain.

Sela must have felt it too, because her face was twisted into one of intense worry, asking the core what was wrong and not receiving an answer immediately couldn’t have been good for her nerves, but finally the gem managed to give her a concise answer, one that hit Sela even harder than the core’s silence.

“Wyvern was dying, Sela. I don’t want him to die.” It was spoken in the same androgynous monotone as anything else the core said, but it was painted by emotion, and Sela’s heart dropped. The atmosphere in the core changed, then, from joy at the reunion to anxiety at the revelation, and the elemental that had been dancing ribbons around Sela and the core grew still, as did the three spirits flitting around by Sela.

The royal rifle shrimp, as well as Sela’s injured bodyguard shrimp both realized something was amiss, not just from the anxiety that trickled down their bond for an instant before being clamped down on, but just by the behavior of everything else. Aby only then realized the two were even present, mildly curious but mostly just upset at the scene it woke up to.

Sela tried, successfully, to get the location of the injured reptile, and sped off through the winding maze of hidden tunnels towards the boy, having firmly told the others to stay in the core room, save for the glowing ribbon of mana that Aby hadn’t seen before. Still in somewhat of a crisis mode, Aby didn’t spare the creature much focus, just learning that it was a water elemental and that it held no ill-will towards the core’s companion, and that was enough to set the portion of its mind watching over the Fae at ease.

Sela, unfortunately, did not appear to be much at ease as she raced upwards towards the still limp form of the wyvern, who had by then settled onto the barren limestone floor of the fourth. The shrimp were in something of a state, elated at the success of their firing squad and even moreso by the return of their creator, but muddied by what they knew to be a tragedy. There was an undercurrent of smug satisfaction at the wyvern’s grievous loss, affirmation that, since they killed the things that nearly killed him, they were superior in the defense of the core. The satisfaction was very minor, though, because even without Aby immediately having them form ranks to guard the reptile, the potential loss of such an obvious asset to the core was something to mourn anyway.

Sela did not take overlong to arrive at the fourth floor, though the Fae herself would likely disagree with that sentiment especially in the heat of that moment. All that was irrelevant, however, since Sela swiftly located the heap of scales and scars the draconid had become and was by his side in a moment, worriedly examining as much of his exposed hide as she could. Aby was also looking him over, as it had been for nearly as long as it’d been awake, now, but seeing that the constant influx of mana and healing had, if not cured all his ails, at least stabilized him had let the core ease some of the emotional tension it was feeling, but its nereid companion only grew more horrified as she inspected him.

The wyvern, luckily, was still asleep, crumpled up and shivering in the apparent cold of the tropical floor, so Aby decided to at least try to make the creature a little more comfortable while he recovered. A little flex of intention was all that was needed to summon some of the more hardy looking creatures nearby, large fish and immense snakes and even a few sharks heeding the call, albeit begrudgingly, to help relocate the reptile back to his native floor.

The wyvern had already been surprisingly light, and while nobody in their right mind could even consider the grievous injury inflicted a benefit to the wyvern, it did make him even lighter. The hardest part about moving him wound up being Sela, who tried vehemently to overrule the core’s instructions to the inhabitants, the first time Aby had ever seen her so adamantly opposed to it. The core didn’t like the feeling at all and the only reason it insisted on talking her out of it was the discomfort- rapidly approaching pain- that the wyvern was feeling in the comparatively cold waters.

The Fae finally relented at that, but their bond told Aby that she was only feeling more miserable after hearing that her keeping him there was only making the experience worse for him, even unconscious as he was. Aby then tried making her feel a little better, but the whole experience had made Sela miserable and the core felt immensely guilty for having told her about the wyvern, and ruining the joy she had been feeling- that both of them should have been feeling- at the reunion.

In fact, as Sela worked with the team of newly-minted pack animals to gently but securely affix their injured payload upon them, the core apologized for exactly that. Yet again Sela did something new and surprising and confusing, she froze up and faced the floor, trying and succeeding to level a piercing gaze at Aby as she replied.

“No, no. Don’t you ever apologize for giving me any news, good or bad. I made a promise on my soul that I’ll be with you for as long as I exist and I want to be with you for a very long time, so if you start keeping secrets from me just because you don’t want me to be upset then… I don’t know what I can do but it’ll only make me feel worse when I find out!”

“Okay Sela,” monotoned the core, feeling contrite. It wanted to apologize again, but it felt like then it would just get stuck in a loop and neither it nor Sela needed that at the moment. Eventually, some of the tension left the small spiritborn and she motioned to her entourage to start moving, heading downwards towards the fifteenth floor. Along the way, she spoke up again.

“Aby, I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I am that you’re back. It’s only been a few days but I was so worried that you might never come to, and hearing your voice made me more excited than I have been since I swore myself to you and received my Name. This was a shock, a bad one, and I’m sad and scared and nervous and you already said it best: ‘I don’t want the wyvern to die’.

“He and everything else you’ve created are some of the most precious things in my life and I don’t know why I was so lucky to be the one to find them, but you are the only one on Vol who I could never live without. My life is tied to yours, my future to yours, my happiness to yours and I want you to know that I will be with you for as long as we exist.”

Aby was at a genuine loss after that statement, and so it chose not to respond with words, instead just sending a bouquet of raw feeling across the shared bond, conveying so much more and so much less than words could for the situation, Sela seemed to lean into it from her side, letting silence descend upon their journey down. Aby had made sure nothing would interrupt the procession, and they made decent time travelling past the few kilometers between the fourth floor and the fifteenth.

The most difficult part of the journey had been crossing the eleventh and twelfth floors. A few aquatic kobolds had joined to help by that point and Aby planned on using them to dig through the very new sand on the eleventh floor, and have the drake doing labor on the twelfth, but Aby was surprised when it saw the water elemental, strange blue lightshow it put off examining more in-depth until the wyvern crisis ended, just spill out of itself, up along the strange blue sand that Aby also wanted to hold off on learning about until it was in a better state of mind, and shift water up and across.

It was very new, a gentle flood dragged up from apparently nothing that crawled forward like a slug or a slime, with a diverse cast of creatures inside swimming in place at the center.It was an odd sight to some of the kobold Tribe, curious about what made Aby warn them to be on their best behavior if they went to a few specific tunnels, and one or two of the remarkably fast-growing children still had enough of their childlike curiosity to try and play, only to be firmly rebuffed by the water itself. They were casting suspicious glances at every puddle of water for a while afterwards.

Traversing the twelfth floor was even simpler, as the elemental simply reached out and suddenly, half the floor was submerged. The drake didn’t much care for the intrusion, but a combination of Aby’s warning intent and the simple but overwhelming pleasure it felt at having Aby back at all meant that it just rampaged gleefully on the other end of the arena, save a few huffy looks shot at the still slumbering wyvern.

There weren’t any real issues until the group went down the tunnel to the fifteenth floor, even more screaming hot than Sela remembered. No longer was this even a figure of speech, as some of the tube corals had grown large enough and in just the right ways for their chutes to peak above water, insides reaching truly obscene temperatures and pinching the steam generated to create some abominable whistling wails.

The water was still tinted rose, and the extreme manner in which Aby had merged some floors to make the fifteenth left it much taller than it was wide, jagged edges having been mellowed out by coral outcroppings and simple erosion from steam-enhanced currents. While Sela’s favorite biome by far was still the frozen reefs, dancing snow drifting softly upward and mellow blues and whites, she could never deny that this had a beauty all its own.

A beauty Sela thought marred by the very thing that gave them some difficulties on the final stretch of getting the wyvern to his torrid perch. A significant corner of the floor had been claimed by the Flagship, a creature Sela still felt unsettled by. A messy spear of alien blue pierced downwards, standing out against the reds and pinks and heat-bleached whites. The water seemed more subdued, with the odd intelligence behind it forcefully strangling the mana that the coral it claims can produce.

Aby was still fascinated by the thing, it being one of the most difficult puzzles to figure out and even, at times, feeling an odd kinship to it, but now wasn’t the time to try decoding it. It had taken notice of the unusual guests, and also might have noticed something about the wyvern that was off. Aby still had trouble relaying messages and intent to the creature as it did its other residents, feeling like the bond to it, while solid and unbroken, wasn’t fully tangible. Only sometimes could it connect to the familiar mind behind and around the swarm of azure, and this wasn’t one of those times as it began to mobilize and maybe claim a few more bodies for its hoard.

While Aby had been able to thoroughly drill instructions in in the past, some of them being not to kill the wyvern- and whatever it did to creatures was most certainly considered death- and never to even harm Sela, it hadn’t yet impressed upon it not to go after the new elemental until Aby had a chance to examine it, and maybe not even afterwards if it was truly valuable.

It wouldn’t mind as much if some of the less intelligent and less powerful creatures fell to it, but it would be a bit uncomfortable watching one of its kobolds, a creature that was by all rights sapient or just about, become a victim. Plus, it just didn’t want anything unforeseen to happen before it could ensure that the wyvern was not at risk of suddenly dying; his connection was no longer fraying but the life on the other end felt a great deal more fragile, for the moment.

Once again, though, the flagship was unaware of Aby’s intent and the connection stayed slippery and insubstantial, and the main body was swiftly being dragged along the current, a boost given by its own procession of bodies. Aby was certain by that point they weren’t even thralled, and its best guess as to what happened was that the flagship was, somehow, capable of shattering and consuming souls to add to its own, warping the bodies into suitable vessels to shove bits of its own soul back into when needed. It wouldn’t be impossible, in fact, that would be incredibly similar to how Aby gained knowledge and power from invaders, but the possibility was both intimidating and exciting, and Aby was simply glad that it didn’t seem opposed to the core, just very slippery to connect to. It hoped it stayed that way.

Regardless of what may or may not happen any time the flagship claimed another body for its fleet, it never got the chance to as the water elemental continued to surprise. It had returned to the stream of light, ambling gracefully along eddies and flows only it perceived right alongside Sela, but when some of the smaller blue scouting bodies approached curiously, it must have picked up on Sela’s growing anxiety, as it was swift to respond.

The shifting blue streak spread out and became a haze of mist underwater, then did something, and suddenly all the water that it touched was no longer Aby’s. A moment of panicked examination later, it relaxed, knowing that it was still part of its domain, just now the absolute control it had in that area had been wrestled away by the creature, and while Aby was certain it could claim it back if it so wished since the creature was still one of its own creations, it wanted to watch how this played out.

Everything that followed happened incredibly fast, but the dozen or so fish and snakes that were probing the group were stilled, and then they were dead. Some of them were crushed, some burst from within and others still had been shredded so fast that there wasn’t even blood tinting the water, just near instantaneous motes of light. Perhaps most confusing was one fish, and a small area around it, that had been dried out.

It was deeply confusing for the core to look at a patch of water and a dispersing corpse many meters underwater just suddenly become dry, but everything the gem had told it that it just wasn’t wet anymore, despite still being a liquid. Resolving itself not too deeply on that just yet, it idly realized that this incident was the first time in its life it experienced something dry. As a demonstration of what it might be capable of, Aby was suitably impressed, and the flagship was too, if the way it stilled and then rapidly returned back to its slice of the reef was any indication.

Sela just hummed a quick thanks, her voice taking on an oddly reverent tone, and the elemental returned to being a ribbon, performing a little dance around the Fae. Finally, the wyvern was gently placed in the center of the hulking mass of coral, though most of the laborers had fled well before then or, in the case of one unfortunate shark, perished from the heat. Only a few kobolds risked sticking around, and of them, only one actually stayed on the floor after the wyvern was on his perch.

Sela and the water elemental were both spared any ill effects of the heat, but the wyvern was taking to it incredibly well, a relief to Aby and Sela both. Sela still nestled up against the wyvern, and the elemental danced around, revelling in the strange flavor that the water took on being subjected to such incredible amounts of heat, but Aby could finally rest a bit more easily. The wyvern was starting to take on a more healthy color, and his fitful motions had calmed. He still needed constant healing and might for the rest of his life, but Aby was able to put aside the worry and panic now that it seemed to be resolved for the moment.

With the urgent matter taken care of, Aby finally started to spread its mind more evenly across everything else, taking in yet again the entirety of its domain and all the dwellers therein. They all seemed to relish in the attention, and even the original fervor they displayed after Aby woke up didn’t quite compare with the amount of activity going on now. And Aby didn’t blame them, it was just as happy to be back, and even with the crises that it might face it felt simply happy to be there and in very good company.

Now, with contentment and happiness starting to descend once again and its mood steadily on the rise, it began to look over the changes it had undergone in earnest, as well as review whatever rewards it got from the very battle that put it in its state.