As three worrisome days quickly revealed. They’d definitely lose.
Five hours after the calamity began its acceleration towards Icy, the storm finally reached a stable speed, albeit far from good news as it approached thrice as fast as the behemoth. Not to mention, the size of this storm never fluctuated. While unsure of how this ability worked exactly, everyone knew that Sages changed the weather and diverted calamities with singular spells, yet this storm remained?
Of course not, that’s ludicrous. It meant they never reached the region in time.
And even if they do, clearly their rapid calamity killed them before anyone there stopped it. Put between a rock and a hard place, the group entered a discussion for their very lives. Icy gave off some confidence with the behemoth. But now their only chance came in the form of his and Mala’s tinkering.
She threw together random spell structures, and his Auric spirit released Origin Force into it. A process they repeated for all three days. Mala threw together a set of spell rings and selective runes to show Icy once more, somewhere along her thousandth try, and analysed its effects “The stardust has more of a magnetic property too, the spell doesn't synchronise enough. But you get the idea, how hard would it be to transform?”
“None of the inks are working. They’re too weak to withstand great languages. Honestly, I think the stardust might scatter if I include any aura.” He still struggled to say Origin Force. The similarly shared lack of optimism only worsened by the day. The pair returned to their thoughts and muttered to themselves once more. No doubt they’d talk about another test about five minutes later.
“We’ll be in a city tomorrow. Can you finish the condenser arrays in two days?” Korridan’s voice broke the silence, and Icy’s head bobbed back and forth in thought.
“As long as I get one to work, I can set up a dozen more and leave it to collect and condense. But it needs at least a week to gather enough,” his voice wavered with every word, and the last sentence gained confidence, but was too serious of a downside to treat enthusiastically.
That meant 10 days at the minimum for them to finish a research project that some wizards might take years on. If not for Icy’s ability to produce a liquidised Origin Force it very well might’ve taken that long… But even so, weeks or months were a reasonable timeframe. Not 10 days.
Korridan changed the topic at the sight of both stressed faces, all he could do was make an offer to Icy, “Did you need me to lighten the load for a while?”
The dragon nodded in response but returned to his cyclical thoughts, at the same time, veins of purple bulged all over the warrior’s body. His skin grew translucent, and eventually mimicked amethyst. As this crystal darkened, the load on Icy’s mind lightened, and he followed along with far simpler steps. Korridan’s advancements in spatial elements really helped in this regard.
Korridan couldn’t move the veil, but he maintained its form with ease as gravitational fluctuations tugged on the folds created by Icy. This allowed him to rest, or at least remain conscious for days on end even with such heavy loads.
Fabric Warper’s spatial sense gave him a clear idea of how exactly Korridan controlled the surroundings, compared to the initial attempts a week ago, his improvements left a great impression. “Your control is far more precise, just a bit more power and you’ll probably be able to mimic this without my bloodline.” Though, he already explained that even if Korridan perfectly recreated the same ‘fold’ in space for them to hide, it depended on an interactive power of Icy’s World Veiler bloodline to complete the effect.
And that didn’t even go into detail about its true veil which required vast amounts of mana. But just this bit of help saved him a massive headache, literally at most times.
“I’m sorry for dragging you all into this…” The whole group turned as Raccelline spoke up. These past several days, her guilt rose up once more in recognition of this situation.
If not for her, these people, and a dragon, wouldn’t have to risk their lives over and over. If she simply left on her own and hid, then at least no one else would’ve been hurt. And all the while, they claimed none of it fell onto her shoulders. They refused to blame a child. They selfishly accepted that she ought to take no responsibility.
She found that stupid.
“There’s nothing to apologise for, what other options did you really have?”
“I could’ve just stayed in a cathedral. Found a weak place and hid on my own. Stayed hidden on the islands. Or just teleported to a different world!” She saw so many options for safety in the past two years. Options which, if taken, neutralised the threat of eternals and meant none of the six endured calamities like this.
Icy took responsibility for some too, but what frustrated her about that was that they allowed him to apologise for them! So why was it never her fault?
“And then what happens to your dad and uncle?” Jaren riposted with a question, one she just couldn’t possibly answer.
Darak found out during the two years that Raccelline’s father survived that encounter, albeit in an unfortunate state. Manus provided special relics to all emperors of the human race to save them at the final moment. The relic somehow kept its user alive for twenty years, regardless of injuries, and transformed every little part into an indestructible substance. Her uncle escaped to another world in time, and while her father’s soul split in half, it would reform due to the relic.
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But only 16 years remained.
She silently failed to think up any responses, the solution to this core issue remained prevalent as always. They escaped the warring continent, and just when they thought things grew safe, reality smacked them so hard they saw stars.
A shipwreck, stranded with hostile humans, demon elves, chimaeras… And also the demon elf chimaera master yet to come! Not to forget all the things which happened back on their continent.
But in the end, she came up with an excuse instead of an answer, and told them, “He’d be mad that I hurt you to help them.” From what Icy remembered of her uncle, that’d definitely happen. However, he also seemed to forget about the importance of Raccelline at some times when he acquired that Kandir divine relic, so to guess such a person’s exact response was tough.
A couple of them rubbed their heads, struggling to get through to her. To answer such a question was next-to-impossible, because it came down to a matter of a child being a child. She craved that equal status, and so wished to be just as much of an adult as the rest.
Humans and dragons differ far too wildly from birth though.
“He’d be upset that a group of volunteers risked their lives to help a princess? Helped for the prospect of immense personal gain? You’re not an idiot, don’t pretend you never realised why we all agreed to help at first.” Rebecca spoke harshly to her, when it came to personal gain, she saw no reason to sugarcoat what happened. While they understood what she meant with both questions alone, she clearly explained it further for a young child to grasp better.
All of them knew and accepted that their reasons were less than pure that day.
‘Help the empire and receive massive rewards!’, or how about, ‘Obtain the aid and knowledge of a powerful dragon!’
Icy even stated his beliefs frankly. For those first few days at the mountain range, the group literally used one another to obtain what they wanted. They waited to see her response, but she simply sulked over the matter. Occasionally a flash appeared across her face, but that too disappeared.
It’d take some time for her to calm down. Teenagers truly are tough to handle…
* * *
Fingers rhythmically tapped against a stone table, still covered in pages of notes but this time stacked neatly. In front of it, on a wall, something projected a scene of some forest of ash-grey trees. Occasionally, beasts of various sizes walked past but deer and bears made up the common denominator. The image instantly changed to that of a hilly and rocky terrain with patches of exposed stone and ore. For the most part, only smaller animals which easily ascended and descended such hills resided here, with exception of some larger lizards with overlapping scales like pangolins.
“Still nothing… It seems I scared them too much with that attack. They don’t appear day or night, far better stamina than I anticipated. A mistake that I didn’t analyse that beforehand.” He shook his head repeatedly, disparaging such an obvious mistake in hindsight. He thought they used an advanced spell or some sort of special equipment, but chimaeras which saw through both failed to find even a trail. With a pen in one hand, one could just mistake him for a gentle scholar as he observed through various chimaeras.
A fist slammed onto the table in anger, the room shook, and dust spat out of bricks on the ceiling. Thankfully, the table bore no injuries.
With clenched teeth and a deep snort, he softened his breaths to calm down. Albeit rather unsuccessfully after days of lacking searches. Hundreds of chimaeras scoured the vast plains, forests, tundras, deserts, swamps, bogs, lakes, and whatever crappy environments possible!
But nothing!
“How did they hide!!!” His roar shook the room once more, bricks threatened to fall from their places from such force, and even the whole building approached its limit. He did not ask a question, that was done enough in the past days. He demanded an answer by now, from the very heavens themselves if need be!
Suddenly, a painful warmth caused his left sleeve to roll up. On his wrist was a simple bracelet formed of fifty-seven pearl white beads, however, he noted that one of them stood out. This bead flashed red, the entire time releasing a powerful heat which almost burnt his skin, it took a few moments for a mess of thoughts to straighten out. The past however many days spent obsessively stalking these humans left him delirious, although the limited movement and poor lab conditions damaged his psyche just as much. The bracelet’s importance came back to him in due time.
“24 is it? I don’t really have time to confirm that… But I suppose it's bad if anyone left records there,” the confused eyes turned to exasperation on recognition, but as mana entered the pearl to receive a short line of information, the previously tired gaze sharpened back to its most obsessed moments. “Spatial manipulation detected nearby? Why would anyone bother teleporting in? Is there more…”
More mana entered the quietened pearl, and he found out that it actually recorded roughly 15 seconds of this sudden spatial change. However, the inaccurate arrays failed to distinguish more than the fact such manipulation existed, not the precise effects.
He knew better than that.
24 referred to one of 57 hideouts created by their organisation, used to facilitate trade and give shadier members safe havens. As such, every hideout featured a set of arrays dedicated to protection and detection to alert those within, and him, if something suspicious passed by. And 24 was actually a hidden section of a roadside inn’s basement.
Inconspicuous and easy to trust given that it sat halfway between two towns, on a road with no other places to stay. However, if a group walked past this inn, it might take anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds for them to walk through its detection arrays.
He headed the meetings which established these places, obviously, he knew every detail about them!
But the world is large, he placed low odds that his targets travelled north this whole time. Though it made more sense if he instantly jumped to the most paranoid conclusion, in that they somehow received a revelation about his intent…
“Ridiculous. If I’m still alive, then no way I’ve been found out.” His confidence grew once reminded of the past seven months. The relic heated up to the point it scalded his finger, but never again. The gods tried to locate him several times, even calling upon a truly exceptional one, but even they failed to break this relic.
Who the hell believed that a group of humans and their pet dragon beat out against literal gods?
“I’ll just send that Type-B to confirm, it might die, but it’s a small waste for closure.” As he spoke the thoughts aloud to test if they agreed with him, the chimaera master left to awaken another hibernating monster.
Merely a gold tier, and rather slow given the continent’s size… But a week for some answer meant far more than a month with nothing.