“Sela, come back. Early start.” Aby sent out a short message to its faithful companion, urging her to return to their shared core room. It was mildly agitated with the breach of trust; it had fallen into a routine by now and having it so flagrantly opposed made it feel frustrated. The sun hadn’t even started its rise, yet, the only light was the blinding radiance of the core’s own coral and the weak attempts of the reef above to respond.

It watched Sela for a moment, making sure she made it into one of the myriad hidden tunnels that headed downwards, then sent a brief warning to its residents before it gathered up its attention to focus on the intruders. All five of them, standing around in the entrance of Aby’s first floor like pests, apparently celebrating some shared victory.

“-were right, Marrus, that really was just too simple.” Said one of them, a man who looked very much like Arctuross, but smaller and vibrantly red. As he said that, he cast off a cloak of some form, so did the other four, and became quite a bit easier to see, at least visually.

“Hush, Varun, let him concentrate. We’ve been given enough mana stones to fuel a warp and a charge in here, but he still needs not to be interrupted.” The dragonkin was quickly rebuked by a man, covered in splotchy gold and black fur. The two didn’t get to launch into an argument, though, when the person Aby assumed was the cause of the argument finished draining a few more stones with one hand, drawing runes in the air with a tool held by the other.

“Alright everyone, breathers in, we go down.” Said the obvious mage, and Aby was a bit disappointed the bulk of its forces weren’t there quickly enough to interrupt whatever he was doing. The few times the core managed to do just that to people doing the same motions and drawings the rather bland looking humanoid was doing, it made for rather spectacular results.

It didn’t have time to wonder what exactly this specific spell would do before it found out. There was a brief rush of mana, then a sudden ripple around them, and then the core briefly lost them. For a second, it thought they were like anyone else who used some tool to leave its domain, if particularly cowardly for doing so before they even moved, but right after it felt the foreign presences on the wide-open eighth floor reef and its mind quickly moved to them.

That was certainly new, nobody before had ever made such a jump deeper into Aby’s domain, but it wasn’t too worried since they didn’t look like they were setting up to try another one. That may have been thanks to the fact that the entire floor had almost immediately begun trying to attack them, a veritable swarm of sharks descending on them and fighting tooth and tooth.

Unfortunately, the sheer numbers didn’t have the same effect on them that they sometimes did, once they had firmly settled themselves onto the floor. This group was definitely one of the more cohesive ones, which could prove to be trouble, and the bland mage and the dragonkin both were apparent mages, and the three fuzzy people were proficient at mowing down anything that got too close.

It was frustrating, watching its stock get depleted so rapidly that the waters around the group quickly took on an almost opaque red smear, dotted with various swaths of light from dissolving corpses, all churned up by steam and heat from the red dragonkin or simply distorted from the other mage. The core had to call off some of the inhabitants, once things had gotten to this level of carnage any further numbers would only be detrimental.

The lightened assault seemed to be the signal for the group to begin trekking towards the center of the floor, and the passage to the ninth, but Aby was still reluctant to let them go so easily. In the end, though, it hardly had a choice. Even its elites on this floor were limited in what they could do, being much the same as the rest of the sharks except bigger, stronger, faster, or some combination thereof.

Aby took its pound of flesh, however, from the last member of their party, the spotted beastkin. The rest of his team had made the step over the tunnel leading to the ninth, intending to let his weighted footwear carry him down like the other four. He'd hardly started sinking before a portion of the crimson cloud revealed itself to be more substantial, and the man could hardly see the blood-red and ivory striped form of the ennedi shark until her teeth had imbedded into his shoulder, rending apart the sturdy leather and the fur-covered flesh alike.

The shark's unusual teeth had done a number, they may not have been flat and shearing, but the conical amalgam that was each tooth had punched directly through his arm and armor. She was smart in her strike, aiming for the arm that held the man's spear, and in the ambush he was forced to drop the weapon, where it plummeted through the tunnel, impacting the sand at the feet of one of his party.

She wasn’t one to linger, though, and with a single jerk of her near seven-meter body, she was gone again, along with disappointingly little of the invader’s shoulder. That wasn’t to say there wasn’t anything to show for her efforts, it wasn’t difficult for Aby to spot flashes of bare bone beneath his tattered armor, but the core doubted it’d be enough to cripple the group enough for them to leave, or succumb.

The man was left to sink in relative peace after that, the fish above content that one of the invaders had added their own blood to the mix, but not willing to follow him through the rather small tunnel. The rest of his party were quick to rush to his aid when they saw him clutching the wound, a wordless discussion going on between them as whoever passed for the group’s healer went to work, cramming a paste into his mouth before clamping his jaws shut once more and guiding some of her own mana into the wound to further patch it.

But patching was about the extent of what she could do for him, lacking time as they were. She did enough to close the wound, but his arm still seemed rather hampered, if the way he carried it gingerly despite being underwater was any indication. He was given a scornful look by the dragonkin Aby assumed was in charge and picked up the spear he’d dropped during the attack, having to carry it in his other hand. With that, the five turned their gazes towards the next tunnel, sparing hardly a glance at the gaping maw that led to the wyrm’s usual haunt.

They quickly faced their next horde battle as they slowly walked over, and this time seemed much less at ease with it. Being harried by dolphin and swordfish in much the same way that they were by the sharks was manageable to them, the writhing knot of fang and venom that had been congregating on that floor per orders of the wyrm was not nearly as much. They still tore through the masses with too much ease, but seeing them grow more desperate as more and more serpents slipped through the wall of boiling and fractured water was certainly satisfying, especially as a few of them were managing to get bites in, small pinpricks that didn’t always even pierce skin, sure, but bites.

And those few drops that were injected were immediately noticeable, further demanding resources as their healer began to focus on keeping them alive. Eventually, the leader growled in his own frustration, bubbles escaping his lungs and rising through the rosy pink water. He reached into a bag at his waist, pulling out yet another item, some crystal and ceramic plate no larger than his hand and covered in engravings.

Clenching his fist, it was smashed, and a small, shimmering film appeared around his body, clinging to his form like some sort of magical skin that felt intensely upsetting. The rest of his group followed his lead right after and Aby was upset to discover that it acted as more armor, leaving them almost immune to the creature’s ministrations. What it didn’t mind nearly as much was that they seemed incapable of fighting back after smashing their toys, so they had to rush through the crowd of bodies as quickly as they could, something the core tried to stop with sheer numbers but attempted too late.

How some invaders were able to nearly run while underwater, despite needing to wear weighted boots just to keep them grounded, was something that it was keen on finding out someday, but for now, it just wished that they couldn’t. By the time it had thought to plug the hole leading down with bodies, it was too late, and half the group had already started their plummet while one of the final two just decided to break whatever it was protecting them to cut through the spawn that tried. The ninth floor proved too weak for them, and Aby could do little to fix that now.

It had already rallied the tenth floor, however, and by the time the first person was through the opening in the indented ceiling, Arctuross, the wyrm, and the knucker were all varying levels of prepared. Unfortunately, four of the five of that group were still protected by their enchantment, it seemed to be wearing off, though, and they all seemed ready for the assault by the two icy rulers of the floor.

The red dragonkin immediately forsook his own protection, pulled out what the core realized was a fire crystal, from its own halls no less, and ripped the mana out of it to cast a spell. In a second, a pillar of heat and steam that rose from floor to ceiling was given form. The sudden shift from below-freezing to beyond-boiling was enough to furiously agitate the waters, and the resulting expansion was enough to fling most of the animals nearby in every direction, including the party, Arctuross, and the knucker.

From there, it was essentially a race to see who could regain their bearings first, and that race was won, unfortunately, by the interlopers. It wasn’t by a large margin, hardly a second passed between them getting their feet on the icy ground of the floor and Arctuross righting himself, and in that time, he and the knucker had already been whipping the waters into an icy frenzy. But, it was a moment where the outsiders had control and the core’s own didn’t, and they seemed determined to press their advantage.

More spells were formed by the party, lances of heat or steam in the hands of the dragonkin, spears of something Aby didn’t know and liked even less by the boring mage, built up and lobbed at its boss, and leaving a trail of relentlessly kicked up water in their wake. For his part, Arctuross had already erected a wall of ice with practiced ease, and the heat and boiling water had dissipated long before it even reached the cloudy white bulwark.

The broken mage’s magic didn’t, though, neither did Arctuross’ wall seem to do much to slow it down either. Instead, it bored straight through, leaving a hole of slush that had once been his wall, and then treated his abdomen in much the same way. Aby was quick to jump on healing him, already flooding him with the caring touch of its own mana, but the wound seemed much too slow to close, and Arctuross was further distracted, surrounding himself in a second, thicker shield like a bubble.

The other party wanted to push further, instead of turning their sights to the entrance to the next floor. Apparently, seeing the wisps of blue blood in the water emboldened them, and while the beastkin fought off any fish that swam too close, the mages started pumping more mana into follow up attacks. More mana crystals were produced, some elemental and others pure, and the core could see the swirls of foreign mana taking shape in their hands with much more vigor this time.

Having their upper bodies encased in a rapidly forming layer of frost interrupted them, however, especially when that crystalline trap started growing inwards. They very rapidly shifted gears, turning their mana into wild, uncontrolled outbursts to clear the ice before the knucker’s efforts punched through their defenses, but the draconic serpent was nothing if not relentless. The already frigid waters made her magic even easier, as it took only the slightest nudge to turn the magically cold waters to glacially solid ice.

That alone was enough to force a shift in attention from Arctuross’ cocoon and to the former-eel, but with the benefit of being able to directly manipulate the water at a range rather than do as the two mages did and send her magic out, as well as the fact that they hardly had a chance to send that magic out at all, there was very little they could do to combat her.

With Arctuross firmly outside their priorities, the Core was able to focus even more of its efforts at healing the dragonkin, and his own patchwork of ice around the wound in his torso made it easier, since his body seemed to be converting that ice to some pseudo flesh. The core was interested, but needed to file it away for later as it pumped more of the mana on the floor into him, needing to make a much greater effort to control it due to how close the invaders were.

Despite the difficulty and the wasted mana, however, Aby was successful. His viscera knitted back together, the organs pierced growing a thin icy shell before the flesh itself grew back over, leaving naught but an ovular scar on his abdomen, and he collapsed the ice around himself, letting it return to a state of merely gelid water, and he readied himself to assist his companion.

That was when their losing fight rapidly became a lost one, not only was Arctuross in good enough shape to fight, but a gargantuan figure made itself known on the other end of the floor. The party hadn’t noticed the wyrm’s form when they first arrived, too busy being thrown around by the currents they created, but as she rose from beneath the rock and coral she had been, it became nigh impossible not to for the three who were facing that end.

There was no small amount of catharsis to be had for Aby, watching the faces of each of the three fall nearly in unison as they realized what they were looking at. They had been busy trying to hold off the various critters that lived on the floor, the icicle barracuda were the only ones to pose too big a threat, but with them streaming out of the coral, it was already a difficult task to avoid being bitten or stabbed.

The smallest one, the healer, quickly whipped around, trying to alert the other two, before realizing they weren’t in a much better position than they were, fighting against a seemingly inevitable entombment and a barrage of quickly intensifying icicles. Her efforts did get the dragonkin to spare a quick glance behind him, and as he saw the wyrm start lazily swimming over, hood flared and posturing as she did, he too became nearly despondent. With Arctuross also finally having recovered enough to rejoin the fight, there was little more that they could do, as Aby would ensure their trick of pacifistic immunity wouldn't work a second time.

They acted quickly, though, and the dragonkin turned to the other mage, mouthing the words ‘do it now’ to him, and swallowing a mouthful of horribly cold water and spitting out whatever it was he'd been using to breathe as a reward, before pulling out a trinket Aby was familiar with, crushing it, and leaving its halls. The three who weren’t mages also did the same, but the final, very bland mage surprised the core by pulling out something it hadn’t seen before, and a mound of mana crystals.

With haste, he erected three more of those artefact shields around himself, then squished the unknown object in his hands even as a film of ice started surrounding him. Whatever it was seemed to be a ball, made of resin that easily gave way as he squeezed, with a sphere of crystal on the inside. As the sap sloughed away, he began funneling as much mana out of the crystals as he could, channeling it through his body and into the gem.

He grit his teeth in pain as the mana seared its way through him, but he was still able to peel away more of that coating to expose the crystal he was holding to the core’s domain, as more still began dissolving. Aby didn’t need all of its encasing to come off to know what it was in the man’s hands, though. As soon as its water, and its mana through it, touched the jewel, it could tell.

It was another dungeon core, and Aby was livid.