Lucifer watched with grim satisfaction as the disgusting, sickly yellow chains were cut.
The moment they were separated, the parts still attached to the dragon's soul evaporated into nothing, while the parts that were attached to the other side shot off into the distance, outside the range of her perception.
For a heartbeat of time, all was still, until Lucifer's attention snapped back to the dragon as a variable torrent of mana exploded outwards from the reptile.
While still in her true form, Lucifer opened the eyes along her wings that could see mana to observe the happenings around the dragon.
From between the deep crimson scales, deeply red tinged mana seeped outwards, as if smoke through fabric.
Her soul sight on the other hand, could see what was really happening. Deep inside the dragon's massive chest, the beautiful ball of orange, blue and red bubbled like boiling water.
While the dragon's body clenched in on itself, as if expending incredible effort, the soul grew more and more. Not in size, as that could only reliably happen with age. The dragon's soul grew in significance. The oranges grew hot, signifying the dragon's flames. The blues grew endless and deep, as a dragon's place was in the sky. And the blood colored parts grew hard and shiny, similar to the scales of the dragon.
Lucifer watched all of this with rapt attention. She had observed souls for so long that she knew what was happening, though she had never seen it this intense or fast. The dragon was having a revelation.
Over the thousands of years she had spent with the Buddhists, she had seen it happen multiple times. They had many different words for this phenomenon. Epiphany, revelation, breakthrough or enlightenment.
The dragon, during a moment of incredible inner turmoil, arrived at a conclusion that strengthened her sense of self, cementing her ego onto her soul.
With a final clenching of the dragon's jaw, a large part of old and unimportant soul matter was released into the air like a puff of steam.
As the dragon relaxed, she lowered her head and opened her eyes, looking at Lucifer, now being able to take in her true form without worrying about passing out.
"You have no idea what you have done." She rumbled.
"No I really don't. But those chains reminded me of something unpleasant. The rest was mostly me acting on instinct."
Lucifer looked into the dragon's eye and their bond helped communicate the things they couldn't put into words. Like the fact that Lucifer knew very well how it felt to have her soul chained. Or that there would be consequences to her actions. But also how grateful Aindaeth really was, despite not saying it out loud.
"Now I would like to spend the next few days going over the consequences of both our actions, but we are sadly pressed for time" Aindaeth said.
"Both your tears and the removal of my chains will call the servants of the gods to this place like flies to a rotting carcass. We need to leave."
"Fuck! I just got rid of one of them. Although I could see that the chains were made from faith, I had hoped that it was a single deity. You tell me there are multiple gods here?" Lucifer asked.
Before Aindaeth could answer, a weirdly small humanoid came running into the cavern, yelling in a strange guttural language that she couldn't understand.
Aindaeths focus zeroed in on the small scaled form and she replied in the same weird language. The small scaly form got into its knees and continued shouting for a while.
Lucifer meanwhile was confused 'wait what language are they speaking. I'm pretty sure I was speaking Babylonian, but Aindaeth was replying in another language that I had no trouble understanding.'
With a quick look of her System-eye, it showed that the small scaly humanoid was something called a [Mountain Kobold Tier 3]. Her other eyes showed that the kobolds soul was neither particularly big, nor was the concentration of mana its body emitted very high. Both she and marble had vastly more concentrated stores of mana.
Remembering that marble was still there, Lucifer turned around and lowered herself to the motionless glass sphere. Marble was practically radiating displeasure after having been ignored for so long. Though now that Lucifer had her soul sight active, she could finally see that marble was indeed a sentient being. His soul, which was decidedly masculine, was an amorphous blob of seemingly liquid black glass.
“Hey man.” Lucifer addressed the sentient sphere “I'm sorry I did not notice your….. You know?” Lucifer gestured broadly at the sphere “everything.”
Begrudging acceptance radiated outwards from the sphere.
“Now that I know you are sophont, I'll teach you how to communicate with your soul, that way we can find you some nice rock ladies okay?” Lucifer promised, before the familiar bassy rumble of the dragon interrupted them.
“As fun as it is to see you talk to the golem, we need to leave.”
“Okay, but where will we go? As you no doubt understand, I don't even know where we currently are.”
“That-” the massive dragon grunted, while she pulled herself out of the solid rock her lower body had been encased in- “is something we will decide when we are far enough away. As much as I would like to munch on a few angels, there will be more than we can handle, once they notice what has occurred.”
Aindaeth, with a final hard yank and a thunderous crash, extracted her lower body from the solid ground. For the first time in centuries, she tested the boundaries the divine chains had set. Almost tentatively, if such a thing was possible for a dragon, she raised herself up to her true height, stretching her limbs. When she found neither resistance nor unbearable pain, she continued, raising on her back legs and stretching her wings to their full length.
Lucifer watched in awe as the massive scaled beast flexed her body fully. The dragon's head alone had been massive, but with her full body now on display, it demonstrated another dimension of size.
The action of spreading her wings alone was enough to create winds strong enough to almost knock Lucifer off her feet. From snout to tail, Aindaeth was about 300 meters long, with a truly massive wingspan. Her entire body was covered in massive red scales, and only now could Lucifer see the incredible musculature beneath those scales.
Now truly free, Aindaeth leaned her head down, and spoke a bare few words, causing the comparably tiny kobold to run out of the cavern in abject terror.
“On account of our bond, I will allow you to ride upon my back.” as she spoke, now at her full height, she radiated an unbelievable heat. “Although I never understood the humanoid's fascination with the act of sitting on our backs, I will allow it for you.”
Lucifer, too stunned to speak, just looked at Aindaeth in wonder. Wordlessly, she heated up one of her hands, melted a bit of Marble surface to grab him, and then started scaling the massive crimson dragon, while carrying Marble on her back.
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After finding a spot at the base of the dragon's neck, Lucifer called out “We are ready.”
“Good” Aindaeth rumbled. “Now BEHOLD! THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE UNLEASHED UPON THE WORLD!”
Aindaeth raised her head and looked at the ceiling. With a, to Lucifer, now familiar motion, Aindaeth first breathed out and then began sucking in torrents of air.
Now with her soul unshackled, she could finally show her true might and her mastery over mana. Lucifer meanwhile watched as Aindaeths soul practically gripped the surrounding world, as if it were a clawed hand grabbing the ground. Then came the torrents of mana from all around, carried by the incredible suction force of Aindaeths lungs. Brown, blue, yellow, green. Purple and every other shade of mana got sucked into Aindaeths lungs and compressed.
Then from within Aindaeths soul, a single spark separated itself and entered her body. Lucifer watched as the spark traveled through reality and entered the concentrated mass of mana in Aindaeths lungs.
As if someone struck a match, the entire mixture exploded. Lucifer could see the moment the mixture was ignited, as a dull orange glow began to seep through Aindaeths scales and began to travel up the considerable length of her neck.
Aindaeth opened her massive maw, and everything was fire.
The moment the concentrated mass of mana exited through Aindaeths mouth, it exploded forwards, shaped by the dragon's will and burnt everything that stood in her way.
In an instant, Lucifer could no longer breathe, as the surrounding air was heated to such a degree that nothing was left.
Too fast for Lucifer to react, a massive wall of air slammed back into her and the dragon. The impact of the displaced air was so strong that it cracked Marble's surface.
Looking around, Lucifer could see that nothing was left of the cavern they had stood in. The ground that had previously been pitch black volcanic rock, was now a yellow sea of boiling magma. She watched her surroundings in fascination, until a familiar feeling came from above.
Where before there had been a ceiling made of actual rock, was now a conical opening to the sky. From the way the sides of the mountain were visible on the side, Lucifer and Aindaeth had been below a solid three kilometers of mountain.
A mountain that had ceased to exist.
Lucifer watched in awe as the sun shone down upon the cavern that had probably never seen natural light.
Before the thousands of liters of molten mountain could fall back down, Aindaeth decided to exit through the hole she had made.
A single stroke of her wings propelled her hundreds of meters into the air, as all around them molten rock flowed downwards into the cavern.
Lucifer meanwhile had trouble holding on, as the massive dragon flapped her wings, causing her and marble to rock around on her back.
Aindaeth continued to ascend in an almost vertical line, gaining massive amounts of speed.
Lucifer was having trouble keeping her grip on Aindaeths back, the movement of her wings and the angle of her ascent too steep. Firming her grip on Marble, Lucifer jumped off Aindaeths back and unfurled her wings, catching the updraft Aindaeth was rising on.
With a slight effort of will, she shifted mass from her other wings into the two pairs now extending from her back, enlarging them until they had a wingspan of over 30 meters, displaying the matte black feathers to the world around her.
Next to Aindaeths massive form, her enlarged wingspan was tiny, but it allowed her to follow the dragon into the sky by her own power.
To flex her metaphysical muscles after millenia of disuse, Lucifer siphoned heat from the surroundings, stealing what little was left after Aindaeths massive breath attack. She intended to do as she had done thousands of times before, channeling the heat through her body and out of her feet, but the now present mana in her body made itself known.
As if it was alive, she could feel the way the ethereal energy wanted to be used, and it showed her the best way to use it. Lucifer absorbed the ambient heat and instead of channeling it along her body, she absorbed it into the core in her abdomen. The moment the excess heat met the massive red star burning inside her, it began to spin and emit waves of fire mana.
Now she followed the way she had done before, channeling the burning fire mana through her legs and out of one of the many pressure points in her bare feet. The moment the volatile mixture of ambient heat and fire mana was released from her body, it acted like the propulsion of a rocket, creating two sources of heat and thrust, causing Lucifer to shoot upwards into the sky.
The feeling of using mana was exhilarating, as it took a lot less effort to manipulate heat this way. It felt as if a part of her had been finally put in place. As if she was made to be a being of mana.
In moments, the thrust caused by the “rockets” at her feet, caused her to overtake Aindaeth in her ascent, shooting upwards into the open sky.
Aindaeth seeing that she was being overtaken, felt something she had not in ages. Back when she had been a youngling, she had taken flight with her broodmates, taking to the skies in a group of hundreds of young dragons. Magic had sung around them as they flew where the flows of mana guided them. Now watching Lucifer take to the skies on her own, and feeling as if she had an equal for the first time in ages, the same feeling rose again.
Magic sung around Aindaeth, mana moved as if by itself to help her keep up with the four winged angel. With renewed vigor, and a hefty dose of mana manipulation, Aindaeth accelerated upwards, following the angel into the sky.
The moment Lucifer rose past the remains of the massive mountains, Aindaeth caught up to her.
In a useless gesture, Lucier spoke with words, while speaking through their bond at the same time. “Can you go faster?” Her physical words were swallowed by the wind, but the message spoken through the soul, arrived loud and clear.
With a gathering of mana and a massive flap of her wings, Aindaeth accelerated further, causing a massive sonic boom as her large frame shattered the sound barrier, shooting her directly vertical into the sky.
Seeing the massive grin on the dragon's reptilian head, Lucifer began to laugh out loud, sharing her joy of the moment through their bond.
Feeling that her mana had more to give, Lucifer channeled more and more fire mana through her body, causing the flames shooting from her feet to take on a light blue color. She accelerated, at first breaking the sound barrier herself, and then further, goading the dragon to keep up with her.
Lucifer and Aindaeth lost themselves in the moment, their ascent leaving a fiery trail behind them, as they shot into the sky. They shot past massive birds and a few wyvern-like flying lizards, and after a bare few minutes, broke through the last of the massive clouds.
As if on cue, both Aindaeth and Lucifer spread their wings, breaking above the clouds.
Aindaeth just spread her wings and could thus just hover in the air, Lucifer meanwhile had to continuously flap her wings, and occasionally shoot fire from her feet, as her wings alone were not enough in such thin atmosphere. After a moment's deliberation, she flew above Aindaeth, who was currently looking down onto the ground below them, and let herself fall onto the dragon's head.
Taking a moment to find a comfortable place between the dragon's horns, Lucifer shrank her wings to their normal size, and sat down, depositing marble in the crook of the horn, between two scales.
Now sat in a comfortable position, Lucifer took her first proper look at the area below her.
Directly below them, was a massive mountain chain, reminiscent of the himalayas. Only, where mount everest would have been, was now only a molten orange crater. The surrounding mountain peaks were below them, being only broken up by rivers of molten rock that flowed between the individual peaks.
For seemingly thousands of kilometers around them, there was only bare gray rock and the occasional river of magma. Large fissures dotted the landscape, with the occasional crater in between. Most of the craters were slowly being filled by one of the many magma rivers.
Looking further outwards, the expanse of gray rock slowly turned into, at first, gray then yellow sand, turning into a massive desert as far as Lucifer could see. Which was a lot considering her position above the clouds.
“This used to be a beautiful place.” Aindaeth rumbled, her voice carrying a heavy feeling of nostalgia.
“The highest mountains were the brood places of my kin. The surrounding mountains were filled with kobold and dragonmen cities. The mountains slowly turned into grasslands full of mammoths. As far as the eye could see, there was green. And even further, where you can now see the desert, there began the woodlands. One of my cousins lived there. He was a very small green, but I enjoyed his company. He was never scared of me, despite being double his size even back then.” The longer she talked, the more Lucifer could make out the incredible sadness in her voice.
“The further you went, the denser the trees grew, until eventually it would turn into a full jungle. The mana was thick, and filled with life, a perfect place for my kin to lay their eggs. The greens could go into the forests. The browns and blacks could go beneath the mountains. The blues could find one of the rivers or the lakes, and the reds could find one of the many volcanoes. Now all that is left is a barren wasteland, full of fire and earth mana, but lacking any signs of life.”
“What happened?” Lucifer asked, despite having an inkling as to the answer.
“They happened!” Aindaeth said, angling her head downwards and directing Lucifer's gaze to the glowing blobs of light approaching in the distance. To her normal pair of eyes they looked like individual pinpricks of starlight, but to the second pair of eyes that opened just below the normal ones, they looked like sickly yellow pus, formed into a ball and connected with familiar chains of the same color.
“I could incinerate thousands of them until nothing remained, but more would come. Until I could no longer fight back. I don't know what would happen then. The last time they chained me below the mountains for thousands of years. Now they would probably kill me.” Aindaeths voice was tinged with grief and an undertone of old repressed wrath.
“And by extension you as well. I don't know if you intended to link our souls, but now that we are bonded they would not let up until we are both destroyed”
A heavy silence lingered between both of them for a long while. They continued to watch from kilometers up in the air as the sickly yellow blobs approached the mountain chain.
Aindaeth continued “The thing with angels is-” “-they never look up.” Lucifer finished the sentence, startling Aindaeth for a moment.
Lucifer continued ”Don't look at me like that, when it comes to killing angels, there is probably no one more experienced than me!”
“Dont misunderstand, I can tell you are telling the truth through our bond, but your aura is too holy to have killed more than a few angels.”
At that, Lucifer only smirked and flipped a mental switch deep within her soul. Instantly, the aura of positive feelings she had been radiating flipped. The feathers on her wings lost their black color and bleached themselves until they were snow white. The stalks of the individual feathers lost all color until the blood vessels inside them became visible. Many of the eyes along her body closed themselves, and in their stead, thin but sharp horns started growing from Lucifer's scalp, forming a crown of horns.
Aindaeth felt the moment the aura switched. Before, her yearning for freedom had been amplified, as had the joy of flying with lucifer. Seeing as it was not direct mental manipulation, she had allowed the amplification to take hold. Now though, she could feel the aura change its flavor, growing decidedly demonic. Aindaeth could tell that the aura was not directed, but its mere presence threatened to overwhelm her with negative emotions. She began to grow slightly lethargic, before the aura switched again.
“I know enough about killing angels.” Lucifer boasted. Aindaeth could only mutely nod, shocked by the incredible malevolence she had felt.
“Before we start-” Lucifer continued -” with the angel killing i mean. We need to find the source of their god's faith. Otherwise slaying them will be almost impossible.”