The dungeon core’s heart thumps harder again. The still fleshy bookshelves all around the room merge back in on themselves with a disgusting wet sound.

Graverra’s own heart hammers in her chest, hardly daring to breathe in anticipation of… she’s still not sure what, but it was a life altering decision either way. She felt she had the right to be a little nervous.

“Now what?” She feels she has to ask after the long moment’s silence.

The dungeon core blinks as if startled back from a thought. “Well, I take a moment to regenerate from the books…”

Capo chuckles from above, “I don’t think he was expecting to get this far.”

Both Graverra and the core scowl, but for different reasons.

“You don’t have a plan for this?” Graverra crosses her arms as she asks. The old suspicion that this would wind up being a trick in the end came back to mind, but plain old ignorance was just as likely to get her killed.

“Well…” The dungeon core grits through non-existent teeth, but even the rest of the room seems to tense with his reluctance. If they finally did figure this arrangement out, Graverra decided they would have to work on that. “This isn’t usually how cores work. I think I told you that.”

“What if there’s a reason for that?” She knows she’d just agreed to it and she probably still would in the end, but…

“It should work!” The dungeon core’s single blue eye seems to glow a little brighter with the force of his enthusiasm. “If you would have read a little more…”

Graverra’s nose wrinkles at the idea. Sure, it was maybe a little counterproductive, but if this core couldn’t explain it to her in simple terms, maybe it wasn’t worth doing anyway. “Why can’t you just explain it to me?”

“Well, it’s a bit difficult when I just showed you how much I’m able to intuit by being a core and you’re…”

Graverra frowns and her tone takes up a warning. “The woman you chose to help build your dungeon.”

“Chose is a bit of a strong word…” Capo chimes in again.

“Look, just- It will work, alright? I’ve thought about it for days. It’s not like I have much else to do in here…” The room rumbles with the core’s frustration.

“Build a dungeon, maybe? Build a dungeon with mobs with bodies perhaps…” Graverra can’t tell if Capo meant for that to be mumbled, but imagines it would have been hard anyway, lacking things like lips.

“We talked about this… Capo.” There’s a mischievous glint in the core’s eye when he uses the skull’s name that causes Graverra to giggle. She may have to admit one day it wasn’t a particularly clever name, but for now, at least it was getting some use.

“Even though most cores lack a humanoid form, they still have a soul and, therefore, a way to interface with mana and such. As an adventurer, you also have a heart and a soul, and a way to make use of mana as well. Obviously. You are a necromancer, are you not?”

That felt like an insult, but Graverra didn’t interrupt.

“We merge the two together, and…” The core bobs in place as if to shrug.

“That part makes sense…” Graverra admits… And she doesn’t want anyone questioning her knowledge of magic any further. “It’s just the specifics that are a little harder to wrap my silly human head around.” She takes up twirling one of her curls again, somewhere between meaning it to be a dig at his previous implication and genuine bait to explain things to her better.

The dungeon core’s eye gets shifty again, suddenly unable to continue looking directly at Graverra. She frowns, instinctually picking up on the fact that he clearly doesn’t think she’ll like whatever it is.

“You’re going to have to consume a bit of my heart.”

“Excuse me?” Maybe she had misunderstood. If she already had given up on the idea of actually reading all that technical nonsense he’d offered before, maybe this was some of what she’d missed.

“How else are you going to get my essence inside of you?”

Graverra shouldn’t answer that honestly and is already mortified to think of Capo doing so on her behalf.

“I just thought you kept saying merge, so…” She says quickly and with a nervous laugh. “I thought it would have more to do with mana, I guess.”

“Oh, I’ll have to have a part of your’s too.”

“My what? My-“ He couldn’t have meant heart. Of course adventurers were, as they said, cut from a different cloth; Allowing for some wiggle room on the whole permadeath part of things so long as one took the proper precautions. Still, Graverra was certain that even if she prepared for it, you couldn’t just revive from being torn in two by the very core of a dungeon.

“Your heart, Graverra. I have to have it.”

“Oh.” That probably wasn’t something anyone wanted to hear under most circumstances… But no part of Graverra had ever been a had to have before. At least not that anyone had ever expressed to her, and it seemed that window of opportunity was quickly closing. “And you really don’t think it would kill me?”

“Not if we do it right.”

Graverra whimpers and bites her lip as she takes another moment to think about it. She considers asking for more details on how exactly the core planned to go about that, but then she realizes maybe she doesn’t actually want to know. She supposes at the end of the day nothing really changes; Either she tries, or she just has to let the core kill her and get on with his life.

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you, girlie?” Capo chuckles and the core squints, maybe sympathetically.

“You did already say yes, remember?”

“I… I know.” Graverra twirls her hair around her finger a little more, finding plenty of reasons to feel embarrassed and overwhelmed and more than a little out of her element. But there was one good way to stop that, maybe for good… if it actually worked.

Graverra takes a steadying breath and reaches up to adjust her hat. “Alright. Me first, right?” Somehow it made sense to her… And at least then she got to be the one doing the hurting first. She makes a note of the fact that the core had said he would be gentle, but she guesses if this is how it has to be that wasn’t necessarily the core’s fault.

The core nods. Graverra takes another step closer, the soles of her boots having to peel away from the fleshy floor from standing in one place for so long.

“Wait, wait, wait!”

She nearly trips forward with Capo’s interruption. “What?!”

“Hat off first. Ya know, just in case.”

“In case of what?” The pitch of her voice goes up a little, as does Graverra’s heart rate. They still probably knew something she didn’t, but she didn’t want to know now, and if dungeon cores really were so naturally knowledgeable about how all this mana stuff worked, she should just get it over with already. Then she’d know plenty.

“Wouldn’t want to get it all mussed up and bloody, would you?” There’s still a nervousness to his laugh that gives Graverra pause… but even if that weren’t the case, she certainly didn’t need the skull’s commentary through the rest of this.

“Will it make a difference?” She looks to the core, then continues to explain. “It has a buff on it for my mana regeneration.”

The core’s eye widens. “I think the hat stays on then.”

Graverra nearly laughs again.

“But what about me? I don’t want-“ Capo is cut off mid-sentence by merely ceasing to exist. Graverra gasps and looks to the dungeon core for his turn, explaining something.

“I’ve only sent him back to where I placed him to begin with. If you’d like him back after we’ve finished, you can summon him back yourself.”

Graverra nods - she tries again not to think about the other potential outcome, where she very much couldn’t call anything back to her, because she’s be deader than dead.

Shaking away her jitters, the scene resets and she approaches the dungeon core’s beating, floating, heart-self. She wonders if maybe that was why he’d chosen the form after all, given this wasn’t actually that much more sturdy than a whole body, but that was something they could discuss later, she hoped.

“So I just… bite… you?” She grimaces as she asks, shuffling off to the side so maybe the core doesn’t have to watch this. She certainly wouldn’t want to.

“That seems the easiest route, if you can manage. The less I have to exert now, the more I have for you.”

Graverra gives an uncertain little nod as she continues to psych herself up, then remembers the core can’t see that. “Alright then… Here I go…”

She can’t help herself from leaning in slowly, even if it might be best done and over with as quick as she can manage. Ignoring the part about powers beyond her mortal comprehension, she was still slowly stuffing her face into one huge, throbbing piece of meat.

She sticks her tongue out to it first, realizing immediately that was a mistake. It almost felt like another tongue, or what she imagined that might be like - warm and already wet on its own. Fighting off another grimace, Graverra moves in so that her teeth finally scrape against the sinewy flesh. She squeaks, trying to the core one last ditch warning that she’s really about to do it, then closes her mouth around the dungeon core’s heart.

The entire room shudders like plenty of times before, but it’s less of a growl and more of a groan. Graverra would have pulled a face again if not for the feeling that her teeth were now tangled in muscle. Her nose wrinkles as she tries to bite harder and faster. How Valerea did anything remotely similar to this on a regular basis, no less, Graverra was now 100% certain she would never understand.

There’s an audible tearing sound when she pulls away, she swears. The core cries out this time, drowning out most other sounds. Despite the fact that there really isn’t anywhere for the various valves to be pumping blood towards, there is plenty of it. With her mouth full of dungeon core, she sits back and wipes her bloodied chin with the back of her hand.

“Do you feel anything?” The core asks and even that sounds like a grimace.

Graverra attempts to answer despite the chunk of heart still resting in her mouth, only serving to make nonsense noises and reminding her to chew.

She swallows with a shudder, scraping the taste off her tongue with the back of her teeth.

“Revolted…” She mumbles, but that wasn’t the feeling either of them were after. “I don’t know… Not yet?”

She places a hand over her stomach as if that would help. Maybe she feels something? Maybe it’s just nerves.

The dungeon core sighs and, when she looks up again, has turned around to face her.

“My turn?”

Graverra opens her mouth to answer, but that hadn’t seemed to actually be a question after all. There is suddenly more sticky, pulsating muscle jammed into her mouth, down her throat… Or maybe she’s being smothered again. She can’t tell how it started by the speed with which it happened, but suddenly she is both split in two and completely enveloped at the same time.

Stars burst in Graverra’s vision, like she’s been knocked out. A situation she is at least a little familiar with. She expects the dungeon core to revive her, whether she falls into that odd twilight state of being not quite but nearly dead or not - that had to be some of what he’d saved his own mana for, she hoped. But time already worked oddly in the in-between spaces of life and death. She knew that as a necromancer, and whether it were moments or hours, there was a pause.