The Power of Ten

Chapter 14-395: Force, Too

This was a scouting mission of sorts. I wasn’t dumb enough to go intruding directly into a dragon’s lair, especially an Ancient dragon. Well, I was if I had a sufficiently strong party with me, but that lot was dungeon-delving down south under the Spire, and I didn’t need them to do this.

I hadn’t even mentioned this to them, because they all wanted to see a true dragon up close, fight and kill it, and then see its hoard up even closer.

It was unlikely to be a truly impressive hoard, as I doubted this dragon had brought its full hoard with him before the Shroud came down, there was little doubt the Mahar would have made offerings to him for his knowledge, and they’d had many years to build up the reserves of silver, gold, and gems to do so, all on the backs of slave labor.

That would all be something for Professor Shellington’s people to address. The Land wouldn’t normally take sides in such an endeavor, but if an outsider were to spread its Bloodline among the Mahar...

I considered the odds that such a thing had not already happened to be small, but I hadn’t infiltrated any of the various Mahar aeries to find out. Half-dragon Mahar would undoubtedly be treated as sacred Bloodlines, and either become Priests or future kings. They would also be incredibly likely to overthrow the previous ruling Mahar soon enough. If so, there would be no need for them to leave their realms, obeying the naturally lofty isolationism of their father, if having a more malicious intent behind it.

Finding the truth of the matter would require knowing trading matters among the Mahar and their slaves, and we didn’t have an active intelligence network here. The Corsar were also unable to help, as their interactions with the Mahar tended to be of the shoot-first, then shoot-second variety.josei

Imperial Cold Blood dragons were not natives to this world. The Land would be very irritated with them, no less than the Demon Dragons whose Bloodline Legion had literally eaten away to remove from the Land. I had not felt that degree of irritation with the Mahar, unlike the festering of Syasstrux’s children dominating thousands of sapients.

Still, it was just something to be aware of, and when it came time for the Mahar to become Karma-fodder, to watch for and act upon.

The underground access naturally had Wards and Seals upon it, attuned to only admit Dragons first, and those with psionic power second.

That might have been a problem, except for the fact that psionic power couldn’t actually manifest here, instantly altering its nature to chi or mana, whatever was closest to its original intent. Passive psionic abilities instead became ki-centered Feats and the like.

Thus, fooling the Wards was simply a matter of catering to their expectations. The ruby-like Orb on Clavus came from that Cultivating Hou Lung, an equally inappropriate creature, but it was a Baneskull to Dragons nonetheless, and so held a Dragon’s Presence I just subbed for my own. Radiating a Psionic Presence was merely expending a mental-based spell, like ESP, and altering the spin of it in the wrong direction.

Of course, I also had to block the effect that alerted the dragon that something was passing his Wards, but when your Dispel Check is in the +58 base, +64 against Draconic Magic, suppressing key effects of spells while not completely unraveling them AND figuring out how to turn them on and off wasn’t actually all that hard.

I made a strong mental note that I didn’t have Psicrafting and I had better pick it up so I’d be fully prepared for this kind of thing in the future. It would be extremely likely that the Dragonheart of this dragon would Awaken me to psionics, if Terra-Luna’s experience was any guideline. We’d expunged the less aggressive Gem Dragons who had invaded us there just as merrily as the Elemental ones once they were discovered.

Still, the dragon could only ‘work in’ some psionic stuff, and still had to obey the magical Laws here as far as how stuff worked. A Spellcraft check at +53 had no problem dealing with his alterations to rote Formations and stuff, and indeed I found it an interesting challenge as the dragon tried to synthesize some form of Cerebral Theurgy here.

I imagined it was also restricted in gaining power under the Shroud, and Dragons tended to be fairly rigid in how they gained power regardless. The Sublime Chord stroked his Wards and spell defenses, and they all parted to let me through, not bothering to warn him of my intrusion.

I looked for the Formations embedded into the tunnel’s very form and shape. It was a trick typical of dragons, using seemingly natural structures as Nodes for complex tricks and traps. Such things didn’t escape my eyes, and I smoothly puzzled them out, suppressed them, and moved past.

A broader Interdiction and Scry Ward had both cut me off from everyone else and forced me into semi-materiality, but the water was still flowing through me undisturbed, so there was no sensing me by waves and flow disruption.

Now, the bigass boulder there might have been a problem, perfectly Shaped to block the tunnel, but Stone Shaping open a crack my immaterial form could squeeze through easily was not hard at all.

I highly doubted the dragon was expecting Druid-based Necromantic Wildshaping to be used to infiltrate his lair, either.

Not disturbing the water was very useful, and so was not disturbing the air. I didn’t have any of the negative energy attack powers of a spectre, naturally, so I didn’t have the Corrupting Presence or Aura of one, either. The best way he might have to sense my presence here might be by looking at the manafield and sensing the Sublime Chord caressing it... but I was also keeping that tight to me.

The exit/entry pool was in a large room with nothing else in it... save more Wards on the walls and the stalactites above, layered with a few more Watchspells and the like. I Suppressed them all into inactivity one by one, discerning how they all worked so that I could repeat the task in the future, and floated up out of the pool and towards the large entry, sized so that an elephant could get through with room. It was all done up in proper elegant arches, with very particular crystalline formations decorating them here and there.

Such décor repeated as I came out into the Shaped hallway there, scored here and there with the telltale markings of claws hard and sharp enough to carve through stone. All the Gem Dragons could dig with supernatural speed. I didn’t know where it had put the excess stone, but it had likely dug out all the rooms and corridors itself, then Shaped them into passages and chambers worthy of itself.

That naturally meant wall carvings to liven things up, display its knowledge, proclaim its status, and awe its underlings. Some minor spells to change the color of the stone and bas-relief Shapings became works of art trumpeting the glory of the maker.

There was his history proclaimed, in abstract and not-so abstract terms. I noted the careful attention paid to frills and joints, as the crystalline-style patterns repeated on the amethyst dragon images. The pattern used here and there as part of the bordering was effectively a fingerprint declaring who he was.

Mated parents, came from a clutch of four eggs. Brought to a new world on The Chase of the Mentos in his youth, perhaps a thousand years ago. Growing in lore, fighting against human Psions, facing other dragons in debates and disputes, mostly non-violent, saving military endeavors for places he had fortified to defend and hold.

He had mated and had several clutches of eggs, raising them as proud Gem Dragons and opening his library to them. The new world his parents had brought him to had given him vast amounts of lore to go through, and his library had expanded over the millennia as they seized control of the world and chased away the Mentos and subjugated those left behind once more, the hapless psionic humans leading them on to yet another world to take from them.

That had not been what had happened here. It seemed something had bargained with them for knowledge of a new world the Empire could expand onto. Intoxicated with the idea of being the first to digest an entire new world’s lore and judge it worthy of being subordinated to dragonkind, he had volunteered to be one of the Elders sent here to assess things for the Empire of Cold Blood. He had left his mate, children, and library-hoard behind to come here and see if this place was worthy of taking over and preserving, or simply eradicating cleanly, as the Elemental Dragons often did, and building a new Draconic Realm from the ashes.

I focused on that entity that had bargained the location here away. This was not all that different from what had been done to Terra-Luna, but I had no idea how the timelines matched up at all. It was just that involving an alternate Earth was screwy no matter how you looked at it, and from the macrocosmic level, that kind of a coincidence simply wasn’t.

If that was true... then cause and effect meant that it might have lured the Empire of Cold Blood here FIRST... and then the Shroud came in and messed things up. Having done that, had it decided it could use the Shroud as a weapon against Terra-Luna, and perhaps play the Empire of Cold Blood again, sending them against Terra-Luna as a distraction, as well? The Empire’s dragons had come well before the Shrouded undead arrived...

That damn psychopomp was one busy bastard if that was true...

A grunt down a side tunnel and the sound of a big body moving had me flitting up to the roof and remaining motionless as something came walking with heavy steps through the tunnel.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a half-dragon saurial, but they didn’t look any friendlier in purple, their dad’s crystal patterns showing their progenitor to anyone who was interested. Unlike normal T-Rex-sized dinos like this, it actually had a low amount of intelligence and cunning, plus wings, and its front claws were actually long and strong enough to be useful.

Still, Int 4 is still pretty stupid by human standards, it was just that this big SOB with the oversized and gleaming crystalline teeth had to be a raw Sixteen, too.

I watched it and its purple crystalline armor-plated hide stride past below me, remaining motionless even though I was invisible. It looked like it was heading for the pool, possibly to indulge in some fish after inheriting dad’s proclivities.

Nope, nope, Gem Dragons didn’t inherit the Empire’s tendencies to take over the local ecology at all, nuh-unh, don’t believe you...

I noted that the crystal pattern extending out of some of the ‘saur’s draconic frill and jaws was also replicated in its scale pattern... as it was in the scales of the dracosnake outside.

Well, that would certainly make it easier to track down anything else with this casually horny bastard’s Bloodline...

After the dracosaur turned into the lake access and I heard the somewhat subdued splash of it entering the water smoothly, I resumed my inspection of the walls.

Importantly, the display of the council of dragons on the wall was done with a level of detail both smug, arrogant, and exactingly polite. The crucial points of horns, spikes, frills, and crests were replicated with exceptional accuracy, and if the amethyst was at the seat of honor, I didn’t much care, as it displayed the other seven dragons that had come here from the Empire in just the level of detail I needed.

A Topaz, a Sapphire, a Pyre, a Hoar, a Mire, a Briar, and a Storm Dragon, along with the lurking, not in the council, figure of the Demon Dragon Grobiundlarsh sulking over there in the shadows. He was darkly menacing, his greater size and power not readily apparent. Not so much an insult as an exclusion...

That indicated that none of the other dragons would be above Ancient in age, and the Pyre, the only breed more powerful than Umry here, had to be younger, or it would not tolerate the Amethyst being displayed at the head of the table. The flaming bastard probably rivaled the older gem dragon in physical might, but the additional psionic powers and hard-to-overcome nature of its Force-based breath weapon probably kept it in check, especially given how easy it was to reduce the effectiveness of dragonfire... and, perhaps, exploit its Elemental vulnerability to Cold.

I coldly imprinted everything there into my Visual File. If we were lucky, nine Cold Blood dragons was all we had to worry about here.

It also meant Legion’s effective Dragonsire had to be killed. This Shrouded Earth had drastically changed planar coordinates, and the Empire wouldn’t be able to track it or find it... unless these Elders called out to them and formed a Beacon to home in on.

Big surprise...

Their plans might or might not be dark. They certainly didn’t care about any other races but their own. Exterminating them was not just the work of Heaven, but a direct service to the Land.

Cold Blood dragons just didn’t have many redeeming features.

This amethyst was going to be mine. Legion would have to take care of their Dragonsire. I could let the others in on the others, give them some more real-world experience fighting dragons...