A week later, Lisa informed Bath that the Church of the Dragon was prepped for its true launch.
"It's going to be huge," she exclaimed while spreading her arms wide. "People are starting to treat this seriously after what happened in New York."
Bath glanced over. "You mean the boon bestowal?"
Lisa gave him a look. "Obviously. People are now saying that the Church is legit. After all, we made magical grass houses that filter air and water while providing solar-powered generators. Then, we made a public display of a miracle. Technically, two miracles, if you consider my enhanced strength and speed to be miraculous."
Bath nodded along. "So what's the next step? You've been keeping this under wraps for a few days now."
"That's because I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do," Lisa confessed. "But now, I think I have a fairly good idea."
In the end, they called up Lepochim to see if he would be able to get the kursi into gear. After all, they'd only been under his supervision for a few days.
"They were ready yesterday," Lepochim barked out, then promptly hung up.
"Good, I guess," Lisa snorted. "This is going to be insane, you know that, right?"
Bath gave her a mischievous grin. "Humans have a saying: there are some things so crazy, they must be true."
"I suppose," Lisa chortled. "Well, here goes nothing..."
And so they set off to prepare.
---
20XX-XX-XX 13:37 GMT-04:00 The Church <[email protected]>:
> *Official Miracle of the Dragon*
>
> Tomorrow, at 8:00 pm EST, The Church of the Dragon will be performing its second global miracle in the most populous 100 cities of Earth.
> Note: several other locations will be serviced as well (see list below of all areas).
>
> Based off of your registration data, we have matched you with the following location: XXXXX.
>
> Why show up?
> So far, the Church of the Dragon has performed two miracles: one of them the global Dragonleaf Drop, the second a localized miracle in New York to restore health to thousands of citizens.
> Needless to say, the Church of the Dragon's second global miracle will be an event worth attending. Inform friends and neighbors that good fortune and spectacle await all who come.
>
> Sincerely,
> The Church
> List of serviced locations:
> ...
----------
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---
8:50 am, Tokyo, Japan. (7:50 pm EST)
"Ready?" Lisa spoke into the phone, her hands jittery.
"Everyone is in place," Lepochim stated calmly. They had placed one kursi in each city and a few in other locations that lacked populous cities but had large populations overall.
"They all have dragonleaf?"
"Yes, they're all ready. I told you." His irritation was palpable even over the phone.
Lisa exhaled to relieve some of her tension. "Okay. Thanks."
Lisa hung up, then looked out over the edge of the building. She and Bath were currently on top of some large skyscraper and had a beautiful view of the Tokyo skyline. Lisa had only been to Tokyo briefly when they gave Juserin a tour of Earth; she was still a stranger to the city.
"How's your reach?" Lisa asked, looking to the left. Bath was currently peering out over the city, his face serene.
"I have a good grasp over the area around me," Bath replied. "Everything is fine on my end." He'd already spent most of the day before traveling over the world to transmit a message to the now extremely numerous dragonleaf constructs. In hindsight, he recognized the need to find some way to communicate with them on the fly.
He'd been shocked at how many had popped up. Part of him had suspected that humans would treat something as strange as a grass house with suspicion. Instead, after a few pioneers utilized the dragonleaf and discovered its many merits, millions had constructed their very own dragonleaf houses.
Bath didn't know this, but the housing market was actually undergoing a period of crisis in the wake of dragonleaf's introduction.
"It's time," Lisa announced. Her watch read 7:59 pm, still tuned to eastern time.
"Great." Bath flashed her a reassuring grin, his entire being the incarnation of confidence. Lisa immediately felt better. She let the stress leave her body.
It was time.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She reached out her mind to the millions of people below, touched their massive, collective shell. She knew that the other kursi weren't able to visualize in the exact same way, but all of them had a fairly similar method of combining people's shells together to form a massive shell-construct.
Lisa had been right before when she'd told Juserin that humans had the ability to manipulate shells en masse. It was clearly an ability that came naturally to human kursi with their 8th level affinity. Lisa wasn't sure how her own visualization of collective shells compared to other human kursi's; it was something to research at a later date.
Originally, she'd been hesitant to touch the minds of millions, especially after her natural hesitance to manipulate the minds of bystanding New Yorkers.
However, she'd given the idea some thought after listening to Bath. She could cling to her morals, to not use her power on people indiscriminately...
Or, she could use it to its maximum potential to accomplish her goal.
'In the end, the benefits of using my power will help everyone,' Lisa told herself as she started to manipulate the group shell into an excited, anticipatory fervor. This actually was for the greater good...And this didn't need to set a precedent of 'might making right.' She was the Church, with kursi functioning in place of herself all over the world. The Church didn't necessarily need to be beholden to the tenets of the Church of the Dragon.
Lisa continued to wrestle with this mental turmoil as she made the crowd suggestive and placid. Bath would be making his entrance soon...that would be her cue.
Suddenly, in the sky appeared a giant, visible wind in constantly changing colors. It shifted through the sky like a ribbon at the hands of a rhythmic gymnast, spinning and twirling and eventually splitting into countless strands that raced toward every Tokyo denizen as far as the eye could see. Of course, the wind was really just essence, though here the two were indistinguishable.
A disembodied voice suddenly boomed out, coming at once from everywhere and nowhere. As it spoke, the ribbons of colorful wind twined around the people in the crowd, binding them.
"I am the Dragon." As the first phrase rang out, people were knocked down to their knees by its resulting shockwave. Once down, the bindings served as weights, keeping them on the ground. Lisa imbued the group shell with feelings of reverence and supplication.
As Bath spoke, his message was transmitted by phone to each city. There, Lepochim's kursi put their slightly different plans into action. They each touched a frond of dragonleaf, imparting Bath's audio message to the frond as Bath spoke.
All around the world besides Tokyo, a huge number of dragonleaf fronds now reached out and made contact with the people of each city much as Bath touched the people of Tokyo with his essence. The dragonleaf would serve as his conduit while we was away.
The dragonleaf fronds now imparted a video message to each person within their collective range of contact. They were able to form the pre-created image of Bath's display above Tokyo, the very one that he had transmitted to each dragonleaf plant the day before. Because the scene was transmitted mentally to each person by the plant, they were all able to viscerally sense the power of Bath's booming roar and the twining wind ribbons.
This wouldn't be possible without the kursi smoothing the mental connections along, of course: the dragonleaf fronds had essentially no ability to communicate with human minds unassisted.
To the many people watching what was happening on television screens, it seemed as though the cities of the world were all collectively holding their breaths.
Now the came the second phrase. "The Dragon is one path of many."
Now Bath used the dragonleaf in Tokyo to assist him in transmitting a mental image, just as he had instructed the dragonleaf do all over the world. An image of stars on blackness, of a giant gate, filled their vision. Countless ribbons stretched out from the gate into the black of the night.
Of these ribbons, one was red and had a cross on it. Another was white and had a crescent moon and a star. Yet another was yellow and represented the Star of David. Bath had done a bit of research on human religions before creating this image, ensuring that as many as possible were represented by the vision's ribbons. He included many indistinct, blurry ribbons off in the distance. Off to the side, same as the many other ribbons, was a ribbon the color of sunset and magma, which the vision now panned to.
All of this was transmitted within the span of three seconds.
"It is a path of self-determination."
Now, around all the people present, the rainbow ribbons formed shackles. Elsewhere, the dragonleaf splintered off and formed shackle-like green tendrils around wrists.
The vision abruptly stopped, to be interrupted by an explosion that filled each person's eyesight. Two glowing eyes the color of the orange ribbon appeared on a backdrop of night.
Lisa and the other Kursi instilled within all a sense of anger, of stubborn resistance.
"Break your chains."
As though unable to refuse, all people in the cities struck out their arms and struggled. The point wasn't how hard someone struggled; after all, the elderly, the young, and the disabled might not be able to physically break the wind or dragonleaf bonds. The point was the intent, which the dragonleaf sensed.
Bath simply sensed for movement, allowing the wind bonds to break as a person exerted the first sign of struggle.
Within a few moments, all people had broken their chains, the powerful suggestion of the kursi and the incredibly vivid visions transmitted to them by the dragonleaf seemingly impossible to overpower.
As they freed themselves, the kursi hastened to imbue the group shells with senses of triumph and overwhelming satisfaction.
"The Dragon is the path of all, and may be walked concurrently with any other."
Now, a fierce wind came from above. In the sky suddenly appeared the form of an absolutely enormous dragon. Its wings covered the entire Tokyo crowd, stretching to the very limits of Bath's range of influence. Its form embodied the many shifting colors of the wind ribbons and caused all beneath its form to look on in awe. In other cities, the dragonleaf showed a pre-created image of Bath's form descending that overlayed upon their current surroundings so as to appear real.
"Its church will be waiting."
With that, the sky erupted into a fountain of beautiful flame that burned in colors of violet, blue, and gold. The flames ignited upon the trails of essence; Bath used the essence ribbons create streams of oxygen and minerals that could burn brightly in distinctive colors.
Bath soon disappeared into the flames. All the dragonleaf that had grown only for the display released their self-devouring bacteria and crumbled into the air.
Within a few seconds, there was no record that Bath had ever been in Tokyo, nor that the Church had been working in any city at all.
The area within Bath's influence was frozen. All over Earth, people looked at the sky, at their TV sets, at their phones and computers--whatever they had used to view the spectacle--in stunned shock.
Lisa slumped over and sat on the roof of the building that she'd been using to spectate. As silence lay over the nearby area, an exhausted grin appeared on her face.
"That was epic."