The Power of Ten

Chapter 15-407: Good Advice to the End

-Technically we’re all related to you now,- Traveler just /laughed, as Legion shrugged their clothes back on. Shvaughn was safe in the comfortable and worshipful touch of many vines, leaves, and mosses, all responding to her hamadryad status, with a very, very satisfied smile on her face. -Husband to a fey queen and wife to a merman King, lover to fey beauties, and sister, mother, and daughter to how many of us?-

Legion could not deny any of that, and indeed did not have any desire whatsoever to, since it was all true. Indeed, the additional bonds were wonderful to have. -Ughril desires me, too,- they /murmured in reply, and could not help smiling at the thought. Pride and vanity, yes, they had immense amounts of both cycling through them, waves that splattered off the rock at their core, pleasant surges that faded soon enough before their calm center.

They valued that incredible calm in the middle as the priceless thing it was, too.

-She has probably seen numberless Hellbound, but a Heaven-and-Hellbound who has surpassed their Pact? Likely a first, which she would definitely notice. And Pacts at your level are all about personal relationships, anyway.-

Legion smiled despite themselves. -Well, it is not the first encounter with a god I remember, although on very different terms.-josei

-The same.- Legion reflected on the succubus Traveler had Bound some time ago, and just nodded. -However, I will inform you that Shvaughn happily dumped the entire experience of what you were doing over to me, with the smug confidence that I couldn’t possibly survive it.-

Legion smiled and shook their head, glancing once more at the stunning diabolic Amazonian-nymph beauty of the other Warlock Grandmaster. Wrath empowered a short Teleportation to a nearby Lived-Line, and thence a jump to the shores of the Indian Ocean. -Well, she is very competitive,- Legion /noted diplomatically. -Also, I did notice her Night Rose technique was improving in the second hour...-

-She also shamelessly asked for pointers.- Legion laughed softly at that /reply as they stepped out into the surf, and the Waterjump sent them flowing along the edge of All Waters.

A second later, they rose up in a fountaining spray out of the sea near Waterdown, down in the Hollow World.

Four additional arms, skin hues obsidian, golden, ivory, and brown, unfolded out of their sides, bones and muscles adjusting smoothly to compensate, not feeling the least bit awkward. After all, they had over a thousand years of experience being multi-armed like this, and additionally were far, far stronger than Oy-Oy.

The rustle of inner glee at the pet name made them smile as they clenched all their fists, feeling the power there as they stood in mid-air on hooved feet. They could not manifest their draconic Bloodline for this, as the Progenitor of it could then use it to command them... but in truth, they did not need it.

-We are going to go deal with our draconic progenitor. We can verify the Name you received from Ughril afterwards.- The spark of ire that flowed through thousands of their souls at the thought of the dragon having absolute control over them spiked, and none higher than Syasstrax herself... who had passed down that same control and delighted in using it as well, in her turn.

They could not appreciate such freedom while alive, but they could exult in it now. Legion held no regrets or illusions over the process at this point.

They scanned the skies and the world. Unlike the surface, the restricted line-of-sight teleportation basically gave them access to the whole Hollow World.

That Wish from months ago also let them know the specific distance to their Pact Patrons, and Syasstrax had received her authority from her father. Divination protection or no, the combination of a blood link and the Wish was enough to let them know where the Demon Dragon Grobiundlarsh was right now. They could simply Teleport beneath him and rise to his Tier in the clouds.

They reached down to touch the water below, established contact with the ground, and popped away on the winds of Wrath-powered magic.

-------

Their arrival was rather sudden, especially by draconic standards. Their Astral Ward meant Grobiundlarsh the Abyssal Maw, proudest and mightiest of the dragons from the Cold Blood Empire dispatched to this world, did not feel them coming.

So, when they slammed into the venerable dragon’s chest at Mach 1, they took the massive creature totally by surprise.

He couldn’t even bellow, the breath driven completely out of his lungs by the impact, and Legion drove the elder dragon across the sky as Health Qi vented like a sieve and the winds tore at him.

He naturally knew who it was as soon as Legion hit him, of course, but that didn’t help him as the Warlock drove him down upon the rocky scarp of the nearest floating stone island, a probably uninhabited section of rock and wood floating on a cloud. The impact shook the whole island, and more Health Qi vented as bones broke and scales cracked.

The stunned dragon watched in disbelief as Legion stood up, and instinctively he tried to claw at her.

Her nine tails split with her hands, and everything lashed out at the claws as big as she was as she didn’t break stride.

The ten simultaneous thundercracks blew through his claws, shattered bone and scales, and slammed them back down into the stone to embed themselves there. This time he did manage to voice his pain and astonishment somewhat as the reverberating force went right up his forelimbs and shattered the bones there completely.

“Beloved father,” his daughter’s voice came from between Legion’s lips as they were walking up his neck. “I, and all my descendants, have been completely Consumed and subsumed by this person. As you might imagine, they decided that they did not want to be enslaved by my father’s Bloodline, and so they are here to cut that off... and the Empire of Cold Blood.” They tilted their head as heat began to build beneath them.

“Oh, your mighty fire. We have resistance to Primal energies via a Vajra. We are immune to fire by my own succubus bloodline, by erinyes Hellish bloodline, by the Ritual of the Burning Heart, and by a Hellpact.” The steady pace of their hooves did not slow, all grace, poise, and every delicate controlled step was like a hammer cracking scales harder than steel, leaving a line of hoofprints behind on his scales that were shaking the elder dragon from nose to tail.

He still exhaled at her, an inferno holocaust of balefire and draconic fury, an engine of destruction that was fully capable of roasting and obliterating fire demons and fire elementals alike with its power.

The coming footsteps didn’t slow down or falter in the slightest as the inferno faded away, leaving green-yellow-black flames momentarily limning the lilitu whose hooves slammed his neck down into the stone with every step.

When the four extra arms of different colors unfolded out of her primary ones, and all six fists cracked in unison, even the dragon’s burning and defiant orbs seemed to dull.

“You are weak, Father, and we are strong,” his daughter said to him, smiling. “The slavery to your Bloodline cannot reach me in here, and we are going to remove it as a problem.” The flickering dragonfire remnants about her hissed and fizzled and went away in protest, doing little more than make Legion’s golden hair dance a bit.

It was just instinct, snapping at her with jaws that could swallow a steer whole, and she batted them away casually, shattering six of his fangs and half his upper muzzle as she did so.

She walked up to his head and stood there, holding his head in place with three hands whose claws cut through the hardest of his scales with dull crunches of protest, right into the bone. Her hooves were grinding down into the thickest scales of his neck, and she was anchored solidly. He could not move her at all.

“Here are your options, Father,” Syasstrax and all her descendants smiled together. “You are weak, and We are strong. We can kill you, and take your Dragonheart as is Our right, purifying it and wiping all that is you away before We give it to some other mortal.

“We can kill you, and let you go into the Shroud, where you will languish in torment with all the other souls until the Shroud is destroyed some time far in the future... or, more likely, you will be drawn out of it, enslaved by some undead lich on some nameless world as a pet and a toy, before being obliterated with all your undead kind when the Shroud there falls, too.

“Or, you may give Us your Truename, and by Blood Right, We will Consume you and claim your power, so that you may serve US.”

Arms tanned bronze, as gold as metal, and as black as jet rose together, clawed fingers curling into fists that thrummed with devastatingly powerful energies before the slitted eyes of the elder dragon.

The thousands of voices he heard in their words all hummed with the underlying power of his own Bloodline. Regardless of anything else, this impossibly strong demoness was burning with the bound power of his own lineage. It was now Sealed and locked away where he could not reach it to command her, but it was there.

There was no doubt whatsoever she was going to take his Bloodline for her own, just as his daughter and descendants could, and so never be commanded by him again. Such was the way of things among dragons and demons, and at this point he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

His one eye turned to the blot of darkness on the landscape thirty degrees away that he could see on the distant surface of the sphere.

He had never worried about his afterlife, but the thought of being a slave to an undead thing was... unpalatable. The victor was king and the loser was sinner, but he was being given a choice of how he lost.

Yielding up his Dragonheart and getting it refined would also wipe him from existence.

Giving up his Truename to this daughter-proxy would also make him her servant... but it would not be tormented slavery in undeath, nor oblivion.

The elder dragon who had always considered himself above caring about his death... suddenly found himself greatly interested in the process.

“I will give you my Name,” he wheezed, barely audible, and the rising fists which he was certain could crush his skull easily tensed. “There is one condition.”

He was in no shape to be demanding anything, so her reply was a simple, “Oh?” that promised nothing.

“You will never hide your Bloodline again.”

Fists of bronze, ivory, and gold paused for a moment. “There are times it must be concealed, but it shall be of Our base form, and proudly,” the many voices agreed, with all of a dragon’s pride behind them.

His Name was not short, but it did not matter, as many words in Draconic were inordinately long. The Tattoos on her face glowed, and new Runes of a very different style danced around the edges of them.

Then her mouth opened, and became all the elder dragon could see.

--------

“Hraggh!”

Dragonflame blazed into the sky above them, a new furnace igniting within them as a true fundamentallum grew spontaneously inside their chest, seething with ancient draconic power. Instantly Runes from multiple Pacts were crawling all over it, and even as it was drawing in energy on its own, the Pacts were pumping in power even faster, priming it as long as they didn’t have anything else to do.

They wanted to get laid again so hard right now. Their entire body was surging with power and glory and draconic fury and might, and the drive to just power into the sky and announce themselves and challenge all of existence.

The waves swept out and back, and every time they did, their weight increased, sinking further and further even as the emotions deepened, settled in, glowed, and pushed at the edge of themselves.

They blew dragonflame towards the sky twenty times before the weight of their own thoughts overcame the wild raging emotion of the Bloodline, and they could sit there and breathe and look up at the endless tiers of clouds reaching up towards the sullen not-sun above them, thinking about anything strong enough to reach up that high, and just how powerful it would have to be.

What were they, to something that strong? Looking over the world? Empress of all they surveyed?

How long would a dragon have to live to grow that strong?

More to the point, how long would a lesser mortal?

Their Primary Pact hummed on the soul at the center of everything, and if the Haze blocked off sight of it, its Source was still there, far higher than this vaunted Sea of Clouds could ever climb to...