[Again, an older, never before released chapter!]

Leo, flanked by four dragons, Lily, and Zir, looked down on a hellish forest in a small valley that looked more crater than true valley. One side of the crater appeared almost melted, with a few rivulets with aspirations to creekhood that dropped over the side and down the mountain.

The trees were all skeletal, with only a few leaves, a sharp contrast to the rest of the Blue Lands Leo had traveled through, which were flush with vibrant life. And between them were the ruins of a small village.

Three of the trees were clearly larger than the rest, towering hundreds of feet into the sky, their topmost branches pointed upward like spears. Hanging from the lower horizontal branches of those massive trees were numerous vines with corpses hanging from them like so much rotting fruit.

And Leo could feel the dark magic of the place, and malevolence that wouldn’t be contained, that felt like insects worming their way into his wood, trying to make him a dark mockery of his former self.

“What… what is this place?” Leo asked, shuddering at the sensation.

Lily shivered as well, and ran her hands down the front of her dress, likely getting sweat off. “This is Zadrid’s Hallow. Most of the sages who have studied this place, for a couple of reasons—including one I’ll show you shortly—think it’s the leftover… presence, really… of a dead progenitor.”

“Like Freyvir?”

“Yes, exactly,” Lily said. “Something that strong, um, died here. And left a permanent presence. It’s dark as all get out, but in its own way it’s a resource, as it acts similar to a dungeon—the monsters come back, over and over, given enough time. And you can gain experience from killing them.”

“It sure doesn’t feel like a resource,” Leo said, again shuddering at the sensation of the magic.

“Well, it barely is, since the dragons really underutilize it.”

Cal spoke. “Well, thith ith on Jal’s lan’, an’ he ith Level ‘wenty, so he oan’t nee’ it.”

“We’re on the land of a Level Twenty dragon?” Leo asked, slightly panicked, visions of Poct dancing through his head.

Hugh snorted. “He’s never made a level in his life. Jal is crazy lazy, and I mean lazy like a cat. But he was born with a huge strength perk and a natural talent for fighting, so he survived to grow old. But that’s like all he did. And he leaves his cave every thirty days or so. And rarely comes this way.”

Zun was facing the hollow, and she shuddered as well. “So, this is where you plan to have me make the levels necessary to fix me?”

Leo wanted to take exception to the derogatory term of ‘fix,’ but he supposed it was accurate enough. “This is where we start the road to making you a god of telekinetic power, yes.”

Zun was silent for a bit, but when she spoke, her voice was raw with hunger. “I know you’ve been engaged in rejecting everything about dragon culture, and to a large degree, I am intellectually convinced. But, by Merdrek’s teeth, I have enough appreciation of their creed left in me that ‘God of Telekinesis’ sounds appealing indeed.”

Leo smiled. “Well, given that every problem you have is the direct result of the abuses of others, I’m sure the idea of a little power is appealing, regardless of your creed.”

“That too.”

“Well, enough of this borderline psychotic talk,” Lily said. “Let’s go make some levels, especially for Zun.”

Everyone started to carefully pick their way down the side of the crater, with Hugh staying by Zun’s side and leading her down. Between her blindness and shattered leg, she was nearly incapable of walking down the cliff, but nearly wasn’t the same as actually. Hugh had proven he could carry Zun if necessary, but he tired very quickly doing that—so occasionally she would walk or climb herself.

Cal stayed near Tea, who could see what she was doing but still had the missing leg.

“Be careful,” Tea said. “Obviously I can’t move fast—but also, the undead here will be considerably less affected by my lightning breath weapon.”

“Is it really that big a concern?” Leo asked. “I mean, I thought you only had enough essence for about two uses.”

Tea snorted. “True. But it’s a very powerful multitarget attack that can save a dragon’s scales in most situations. It even has decent splash damage. We rely on it a lot to open strong or recover a lead in most fights.”

When they came down onto the flatter area, near the trees, Tea and Zun were able to walk considerably better, although still very slow.

Each tree was even more disturbing up close, with swirls in the wood that appeared to be the faint outline of a screaming face, many with slightly surreal features, stretched or pulled as if to become a caricature of the man in Edvard Munch’s The Scream painting. The whole place felt like someone had gone out of their way to make an uncanny-valley nightmare of a situation.

As Leo was being distracted by the trees, the ground suddenly surged upward around the outskirts of their group. Five skeletons climbed out of the ground, two to the left and three on the right, both in small clumps. They carried twisted wood clubs, and their finger bones were sharpened into claws.

Before Leo could issue tactical orders, Hugh ran toward the clump of the right side of their group. Zir ran at the left, slashing and moving, doing little damage but taking absolutely nothing in return.

Leo drew his sword, cursing, and ran after Zir.

As he did, Hugh called out, “Breath weapon toward the sound of my voice, Zun!”

Leo turned, wide-eyed. Hugh was standing behind the skeletons. Zun leaned her head forward and blasted lightning almost perfectly on target, blasting all three to smithereens and also smacking Hugh. Despite his heavy electrical resistance, he let out a strangled grunt, shook, and fell to the ground, obviously not in serious danger, but definitely not happy, either.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“You freaking bird, Hugh!” Tea yelled, her voice a bit panicked. “Are you crazy?!”

Lily ran toward Hugh, but Leo didn’t see the results, as Zir yelled out, “You coming, you blasted uppy elf?”

Leo turned, rushing the skeletons. He slammed his sword into one, the notification box saying he was doing half damage with his edged weapon. But he was still extremely fast and strong, and made rapid work of it while Zir finished off the other. Both collapsed into piles of bones.

Leo got a ‘1 experience’ notification for each of them.

Hugh was standing again, unhurt, with Lily next to him.

Tea hopped up, trying to move fast on her three legs, which was equal parts sad and, Leo admitted to himself with a grimace, hilarious.

She rammed her head into Hugh, who didn’t move. “Stop trying to be tough, Hugh. I get it, you want to impress everyone. Well, we’re already impressed—”

“Speak for yourself,” Zir muttered, and Lily put her hand in front of her mouth, likely to hide giggling.

“—but you can’t just let people shoot you with lightning, by Merdrek’s missing eye! Some of us would miss you!”

Hugh gently butted Tea back. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to help Zun, promise. I’ll be more careful.”

Tea stumbled back despite the gentleness of the bump and huffed again, but didn’t say anything else.

Zun coughed, then spoke dryly. “Well, it didn’t help much, although I really appreciate the assist. Each of those was Level Three, and even though it counted me as the only combatant, they all added up to less than a level. And that was half my breath weapon uses for the day.”

Lily tapped her lip. “Well, the closer we get to the three main trees, the stronger the undead get, although they tap out at about Level Six.”

Leo stepped in. “The tactic wasn’t the worst idea, actually. Let’s wait until we can cluster a couple near each other that are Level Four or Five, hopefully five of them. Then, when we have the chance, we’ll call for the strike, but you shoot to the left—that’s your left—of the voice, okay?”

Zun slowly nodded.

Leo continued. “Since you told me the lightning isn’t as effective on undead, I’m assuming the undead will survive the blast—either Hugh or I will be the one to call for it, and we’ll be the ones to finish them off. That should make you your first level, and you can get telekinesis, rank I—which will give you a new way to make ranged attacks in the directions we call for and gain experience.”

“It still uses essence,” Zun said dryly. “I don’t think that’ll give me a great deal more attacks.”

Crap. “Right. Well, in that case, we’re going to teach Hugh to play a new game—fetch. Hugh, you’ll be in charge of taking skeletons close to Zun so she can bite them.”

“Hurray…” Hugh said, sitting back on his haunches and waggling his front feet in front of him.

Tea laughed. “Hey, you’ve got all that armor now, and they’ve got small claws. It’s not like the lightning. You’ll be fine.”

“I repeat—hurray…”

***

The undead had a lot of nasty tricks, all Entropy magic based. From auras that ate at magic powers to pollution effects to entropic damage that healed at the rate of one a day even with magical healing. That was the minority of them, however. Most of the skeletons, even the higher-level ones, just had sharp claws and enhanced stats, and were essentially physical fighters. Those ones didn’t have a strong counter to Hugh’s defensive abilities. Whenever a fight started, he would grab one in his mouth, usually by a leg, and drag it over to Zun, who would bite it to death. Soon, she made her first level, and picked up telekinesis, rank I.

When they reached the first of the three great trees, they found a huge amalgamation undead, a skeletal dog about six feet in height at the shoulder with an extra-long tail that had a human skull on the end of it. It was sitting patiently, guarding a large piece of black meat that wept a vicious red-black liquid down the side of the tree as it pulsed.

“What… what is that?” Leo asked.

Lily flexed her fingers. “Skeletal amalgamation. Not a huge deal. It’ll be a bit tough, but I think we can handle it without too much trouble. It won’t be much stronger than the rat version we fought in the undercity of the Calasti ruins.”

“I meant the crazy red-black pulsing flesh thing.”

“Oh. Well, that’s one of the reasons researchers believe a progenitor died here. That’s a portion of the heart, one chamber of what is a remarkably mortal heart—human, specifically. Each tree has one.”

“Where’s the last piece?” Leo asked, curious.

“No one knows. All attempts to finally destroy the heart fail—and all attempts to use it for item creation similarly fail. It just loses its magic and reforms here. Some imbuers believe if the fourth piece were found, the entire thing could be used for items or destroyed. It’s also assumed that powerful enough magic could finish it off. Although, why would you want to? If this wasn’t a dragon realm, this would be almost like a little mini dungeon, and quite useful.”

Fascinating.

At the foot of the tree was a small smashed earthenware pot in a style completely unknown to Leo. “What is that?”

“A remnant of whatever builders came before, it’s thought. Nothing grows here outside the current pattern, so a lot of stuff has survived thousands of years. Although, obviously not that.”

“’an I have it?” Cal asked. “Or ’an I get ’tuff ’ike it?”

Leo scratched his head. “You’ve decided to be an amateur archaeologist? Sure.”

“I wan’ a hoar’ that is ’iffe’ent than most ’ragons. If it hath cool ol’ timey ’tuff, it’ll be really neat.”

So getting this guy a telepathy ring. Although he seems to be a bit of an intellectual…

“Mind if I use analyze on you, Cal?”

“’o ahea’.”

Leo reached out with his essence, molded into Mind magic.

Calitehuacan of the Storm Vale, Storm Dragon Juvenile

Level 1(5)

Air

Health: ~34

Stamina: ~8

Essence: ~12

Physical Attacks:

Bite: Damage ~1

Claw: Damage ~7

Magical Attacks: N/A

Defenses:

Armor: ~4

Lightning: ~10

Special Abilities:

N/A

Strength and Toughness: Very High.

Flaw: Missing Jaw. -20% effective Charisma from speech impediment, bite damage set to ‘1’ base. -1 Health.

Flaw: Puny: -2 Strength, -2 Toughness, -2 Endurance

Perk: Organized Mind: +6 Intelligence, +50% additional modifier to intellectual learning skill rate.

Perk: True Storm Dragon: Once he can level, also gains access to Water magic. May gain auras in Water and Air magic ten levels earlier.

Cal’s a nerd. And dragon culture is not friendly to anything but the jocks, and maybe the chads. Clearly, his soul was supposed to be a bookworm somewhere.

Well, maybe he’ll become a dragon archaeologist, but this feels like a pretty generalist build.

“So, we’re going to destroy that amalgamation?” Zun interjected. “I still need to become a telekinetic god. Ever since you uttered those words, Leo, I’ve had a fire in me. It occurs to me—did you know my perks elevate me past natural magical talent for acquiring rare Mind magic abilities?”

Leo had known, or at least guessed, from using analyze on her and reading her chart. “Yes.”

“Well then, I would ask your assistance again along that road. Cal can collect his pots. I want to collect power, and never be helpless or at another’s mercy again.”

While I totally sympathize, she’s sounding a bit like a budding supervillain here. I’ll need to keep an eye on her, try and work through some of her trauma.

Leo hefted his sword. “Sure, let’s do it.”

I can start by really helping her. “In fact, how often does this place reset? I mean, regenerate its monsters?”

“Every day at midnight.”

Leo thought about it. He had a lot to do, but… “Let’s take a week. I think we can all make a level at least if we do that. Then we’ll head back to Star Port. That fair to everyone?”

All his companions, including the dragons, nodded.