[Ron B] I’ll tell ya, Stacy, for a mortal, he was quite something. Sushi Sam was probably as wealthy as some stage-twos, I’d say.
[Stacy the Snailmermaid] Just look at the stock price now. Poor guy didn’t get a break. For those not in the know, his franchise was worth over five million S-1 crystals at one point.
[Ron B] It’s a shame. If only he was stage-one. Mortals can only get so far.
[Stacy the Snailmermaid] Hey at least he didn’t get eaten. That’s right folks! You heard it here first—Sushi Sam is still alive! In an exclusive interview, the solar kraken gave us the low-down. She divulged that when Sam escaped, she bought up majority stake in his franchise. Sushi Sam’s is now, The Sea Beast Saloon.
[Ron B] Boy that escalated quickly. What ended up happening to Sam? And more importantly—is the Sunshine Unagi Roll still on the menu?
[Stacy the Snailmermaid] Now wouldn’t that be punch to the ovaries, huh Ron?
– KVWN Wavelength 4, Cazoran
Chapter 12 – Glass Ceiling
The dragon’s mountain loomed ahead, a tiny mound against the backdrop of the gas giant above but a prominence fit for a palace, nonetheless. Toki and Edgar picked their way through the adjacent valley's rocky embrace in search of Edgar’s entrance. At this point, if I throw a rock, I’m bound to find a secret entrance.
A chill breeze whispered around them, ruffling Edgar's bright feathers and sending shivers along Toki's spine.
“Ughhh, sometimes Golgheim drives me crazy.” Toki started.
“Yeah. This seems like something we should do after we deal with the horde of dragons coming to Aris… why does he need Dutch Eternal’s beast core anyways?”
“How should I know. He’s barely explained anything to me either.” I know I should trust him—he’s been there for me like grandmother, when mother left, but sometimes he makes it so hard. So. Gods. Damn. Hard.
“Old people. My dad’s the same. They give you lectures, act like hypocrites, then give you busy work. He didn’t even tell the story right. Prometheus gave the sentients fire. That’s why the tyrants were all pissy in the first place. It wasn’t Pandora’s fault.”
“Your father's 'lectures' are secret avian techniques and the 'busywork," heh, you get manacrystals if you manage to learn them. Shards, it’s not like we can dispose of a two-ton dragon corpse and hide away the evidence.” It wasn’t Pandora’s fault, but she probably still felt guilty.
“Eh, yeah. That’s true.”
Toki scoffed.
“Hey at least we have some time. Golgheim said that your lawyers will deal with it.”
“He said they’ll stall for time. Not that they would solve everything.”
Toki continued, “if things work out how he expects it, there’ll still be fighting. But it will be mortals against mortals… er, whelps? Are whelps dragon babies? Or is it wyrms?” Maybe I should have signed up with Wyrm's End. Then again, I don’t want to kill babies.
“They’ll be coming to kill you.” Edgar looked at Toki with concern. “All of us. But especially you.”
“Yeah. I can’t blame Golgheim. All he’s ever wanted was for me to be stronger. You haven’t killed any sentients, have you?”
“No, only direhogs.”
"Shards be damned, she deserved it, Feathers," Toki murmured, her gaze fixed on the craggy path ahead. "She was supposed to help us, Dutch Eternal was supposed to teach us…"
Edgar nodded, his talon-like feet finding purchase among the stones with practiced ease. "We couldn’t have known, Toki. Our entire lives, people have been telling us stories of how benevolent the dragons were. They would regale the tales of streets paved with gold and opportunity. More crystals than you could dream. I still can’t believe you offed her. If we were wrong about dragons, makes you wonder what else we're wrong about."
I bet the streets ARE paved with gold. It's not like they're walking around paving it themselves. Toki considered telling Edgar the truth. That Golgheim had known of their deception. That there were others that knew the secret, too. She didn’t have the heart.
"I bet we were wrong about a lot. Brainwashing is one thing," she retorted, a hint of steel lacing her words. "She was overwhelming, Edgar. To be honest, Susie helped from beyond the grave... her chalice… otherwise, I’d be dead too." Oh gods, her chalice is back at home.
A pause stretched between them, laden with the weight of unspoken fears and grief, before Toki allowed her gaze to drift toward her companion. "Are you ready for this?" She arched an eyebrow, her tone sharpening. "Golgheim expects beasts—vicious creatures caged by Dutch Eternal."
"Of course, I am," Edgar replied, though his voice wavered ever so slightly. His large, expressive eyes held hers, seeking to convey the depth of his resolve. "Susie was my friend too, you know. You both might have had your fights, but she meant as much to me as she did to you. This is payback."
“The dragon’s already dead, Edgar.”
“Well… then I’ll spit on her. My bushido demands it.” His face turned serious.
Toki sighed, "If we encounter something with sharp teeth, you’re not gonna go running, right?"
"Always by your side, Toki. You should know by now," he assured her, his feathers puffing out in a show of solidarity. “At most I’ll be a couple meters *whistle*.” He pointed up, a small smile reappearing on his face.
"Let's hope your courage doesn't molt," Toki quipped, although a sliver of a smile betrayed her appreciation for his loyalty. They exchanged a glance, the kind that friends share when words become superfluous. “Have you ever enchanted with one before? A beast core?”
“No. Susie did—a stage-one though.”
“Figures. She would have.”
Edgar's talons clicked against the stony ground, a subtle yet rhythmic song. "Toki," he began, his voice carrying the buoyancy of feathers on an updraft, "If we encounter danger, I’m confident that you’ll be able to handle it." He put his right hand up with a swish of his golden robe in a thumbs up while patting his katana with his left.
Toki giggled, then with a shared nod, they approached the mountain’s main entrance.
Just two days ago, everything was different.
The gathering near the entrance was amorphous, a congregation of people covered in armor shouting speculative, but likely true, denouncements at the closed dragon’s gate.
This crowd is the same though. Same people, different expressions.
Edgar and Toki navigated their way around, unseen. They moved silently away from the mob attempting to find a way inside the massive gate. As they sidestepped the crowd, Toki looked away. She did not want to see the people. She especially did not want to see Susie’s mother. Oh gods, how much that woman has gone through already.
The thrum of voices gradually settled into a distant murmur, and the duo finally found the hidden crevice that Edgar had spoken of—another secret scar upon the mountain's rugged face. Golgheim has already collapsed his entrance. This is truly a poorly protected mountain. Or is this just dragon-sized arrogance.
The fissure, a mere sliver in the rock, gaped before them like the maw of a small slumbering beast. Toki slipped through the narrow aperture, the confines pressing close. She emerged directly into the vastness of the giant cavern, where darkness draped itself over the landscape.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
We’re three meters off the ground. I’m not a bird, Edgar. As if intuiting her thoughts, he held her hand as she hung down. She dropped down from the remaining distance and rolled out. This was a practiced maneuver—two young miscreants would never be stopped by a simple three-meter cliff.
Looking at the spacious cavern once more, Toki couldn’t help but remember her last passage into the mountain. She had come in through a winding tunnel, one Elara had shown her many autumns ago. She had been foolish thinking she could sway Dutch Eternal by showing off the dragonfly blade. It broke so easily against a simple roar. Toki knew it was a lost cause when she first entered the cavern. She had come here trying to convince a dragon that she was worth an apprenticeship even after losing the Forgeworks. Her paranoia to the politics and perhaps a little petty jealousy were excuses, albeit truth. What she truly wanted was to enchant more, enchant greater. Manasmithing was what truly drove her here.
To see Oberon, of course, weighed on her mind, but she had always dreamed that they would meet once more among the stars.
Pounding on the gate shook Toki out of reminiscence and she approached the cliff face ahead. The abyss below was an enigma. The only clue to what was down there was the sound of shattered glass she had heard earlier. "Looks like we're climbing," Toki muttered, her tone laced with sarcasm.
“Heh, speak for yourself.” Edgar hovered in the air behind her.
Toki began the perilous climb down, fingers finding purchase on the crags that dotted the cliff's face. Edgar fluttered beside her, a guardian of sorts. His keen eyes scoured the dark for signs of malice lurking within the cavern. But mostly he was there for the jokes.
As they descended, the cavern seemed to breathe around them. Toki's muscles burned with effort, each movement deliberate. To herself, she chanted a silent prayer to Purple wishing the rocks would not dislodge. Edgar's presence was a constant flutter at the edge of her vision, a reminder that she was not alone here. As the light began to fade, she ignited her flames.
They were three-quarters of the way down the cliff when a tremor shook the cave. Toki gasped, nearly losing her grip. Before she could react, a strange crunching sound filled the air. The cavern rumbled, a deep-seated groan that resonated through Toki's bones. She froze, fingers clutched tight to the cliff face, as a tremor shook the very foundation of the world around her. With a sound like shattering dreams, crystalline structures began to burgeon from above. A glass ceiling blocked off their path of retreat.
"Edgar!" she cried out, her voice ricocheting against the walls, lost amidst the cacophony of the cave's upheaval.
He was there in a heartbeat, wings beating furiously against the petrified air. "I see it, Toki!" Edgar called out, his tone laced with fear he could not disguise. Together, they scrambled upwards, trying to outpace the relentless advance of the barrier encasing their escape route.
But it was too late. The glass had formed a dome above them, mirroring the mountain's crest—a trap. Edgar, with a surge of determination, launched himself at the enclosure, his katana raking desperately across the surface. It was like watching a sparrow assail the world tree; his bloodline ability—a spark of avian heritage—granted him multiple powerful projections of himself but it was all but useless here.
"Fucking shards. Here. Use this," Toki spat, the curse feeling hollow in her mouth. She carefully pulled her hammer from her bag and threw it to Edgar. Her eyes darted from Edgar to the glass and back again, her mind racing. It couldn’t have been Golgheim, could it? Does he want to trap us down here? Or was this a defense mechanism of Dutch Eternal's forge?
"Focus, Edgar! You can do this!" Toki urged, more to quell her burgeoning panic than out of any conviction. She watched as Edgar, emboldened by her words, summoned the full breadth of his ability once again. His body became a blur of motion as he swung three hammers.
"Crack, damn you!" Edgar's shout echoed hollowly as he battered against the glass. His movements were a flurry. The glass cracked. A tiny crack. But it mended immediately, remaining obstinately whole, a spiteful rebuke to their efforts.
Toki's breaths came flustered as she pressed herself against the cold stone, the reality settling in—they were entombed in the underworld. Questions clawed at her thoughts, each one a paranoid prickle igniting the [Strategist] within: is this the end of our quest? Why? No one but Golgheim knows we're here. I can’t think about this now. LSDKFJSDLF.
"Keep hitting it!" she yelled, though her voice sounded distant, even to her own ears. She clung to the hope that lay in Edgar’s relentless assault, for if they yielded to despair, the darkness would surely consume them whole.
Edgar stopped. “No Toki, there’s no use. We’re trapped down here.”
With a resigned inhale, she cast her gaze downward, where the cavern yawned open. She closed her eyes for a moment.
"We go deeper, I guess. Shards damn, Edgar. Nothing is going my way. Maybe there’s another exit, gods know there's probably half a dozen other entrances," she declared, convinced. The timbre of her voice didn’t betray her fear. No tremor, no hint of trepidation. But it’s there.
"Deeper it is," Edgar concurred, his feathers ruffling with anxiety. He hovered beside Toki, his wings aglow in the eerie luminescence emanating from her flame. That small, capricious light seemed a beacon against their predicament. He handed the hammer back. As Toki had already backtracked to the new glass ceiling, she tested it herself with her monstrous strength. The glass remained pristine.
Descending further was arduous, but with Toki’s strength, rather uneventful. Finally, their feet met the cavern floor. They stood amidst a grim sight—broken instruments, mechanical and what appeared like manatech, now damaged beyond repair; empty cages, broken by impact; and cages full of blood, whose inhabitants now lay broken as well.
Edgar exhaled his lunch seeing the brutalized bodies. He was not feeding a baby bird.
There, at the center of this somber image, lay Dutch Eternal. The dragon was still whole, but blood pooled underneath the body. Toki was reassured that the Dutch was indeed dead. Her scales were dulled by the impact, yet still held a vestige of the majesty that once inspired both reverence and horror. The once-piercing eyes were now vacant orbs gazing into nothingness, guardians of a soul long since departed.
“Ptewi,” Edgar cleared his mouth onto the dragon.
"I didn’t think you were serious." Toki murmured, her voice a ghostly exhalation swallowed by the cavern's vastness. A complex mix of emotions enveloped her—a fusion of awe at what she'd done and a shiver of dread at the dragon’s dark laboratory. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help herself escape the undercurrent of sorrow as she thought of her grandmother.
"Look at her," Toki gestured, "Even in death, she commands the room."
Edgar nodded, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and fascination. "Even the stones seem to bow before her."
Toki's free hand traced the contours of Dutch Eternal's colossal form, her touch ginger as if she feared awakening the beast from its eternal slumber. Many scales had broken on impact, leaving the muscle beneath exposed. Once an impenetrable fortresses, the body was now marred by perforations. Something, perhaps many things, had feasted upon the leviathan, leaving behind tattered flesh and exposed bone in some places.
She whispered, her voice barely a ripple in the silence, "look at these wounds."
Edgar walked closer, his wings casting erratic shadows. He peered at the dragon, his eyes reflecting the starry luminescence of Toki's flame. "Predators... or scavengers?" he mused aloud, though the tremor in his voice betrayed his trepidation.
"Perhaps what was in the cages," Toki replied, sweeping her flames in a circle to draw out any hidden predators. There was fury behind this desecration, a purpose that eluded her grasp like smoke through clenched fists. She could see the claw marks that scattered around the area as well. They probably weren't happy being caged at the very least.
The two companions combed over the remains with painstaking care, gutting and scanning the entire body. They pulled out large cleavers meant just for this task—a gift from Golgheim.
They sought the beast core, the nexus of Dutch Eternal's once-mighty mana. Such a core would pulse with strong mana. Beasts were different than humans—their aethercore was exposed, seemingly pulled from the Aether, from where it belonged. Perhaps they were scorned by the system in the past—all beast attribute limits were lower. Maybe this has something to do with dragons being a protected class? They count as beasts, right? I’ll have to ask Marsha.
The search yielded nothing but disappointment. Where they expected the thrum of power, there was only the hollow shell of dragon meat. Edgar was covered in guts after digging through the carcass. Thankfully, there were no corpses inside. Toki had profusely honored him for his sacrifice—his stomach was already empty, after all. Though Toki, too, was covered in her fair share of blood.
Toki’s hands hovered over the scales, they were light, but strong. I can craft with them.
"Nothing," Edgar finally conceded, his hands falling to his sides in defeat. "It's not here, Toki. Not a trace."
After we’re done. I’ll skin you and sweep you for all your treasures.
Edgar hovered beside her, his feathers drooping in dejection. "Could it have been taken?"
Whatever secrets Dutch Eternal's body held, they remained hidden. Toki could not shake the feeling that the eyes of the underworld watched them with anticipation.
Her breath formed a wisp in the cavernous gloom, dissipating into the silence that enveloped them. She stood motionless, her pale eyes reflecting back the faint luminescence of her whimsical flame. It was as if time itself had paused, waiting for her verdict.
“I think so. It’s not like we can go back, anyways. We have to go deeper.”
Their gazes locked in silent accord, understanding that their journey into the deep had only just begun. With cautious steps, they traversed the perimeter of the large cavern, seeking signs of passage, a trail left by whatever entity had defiled the resting place of Dutch Eternal. Elara Twice, Susie Q, Oberon Twice, and countless others.
As they circled the dragon's colossal remains once more, the signs of struggle showcased themselves. Scratches marred the stone floor, etched deeply by claws or tools unknown. Broken chains lay discarded, their purpose and origin lost with Dutch Eternal. The very air seemed to hum with the residue of the battle, the echoes of conflict reverberating against the walls.
"Look here," Edgar whispered, gesturing towards a swath of disturbed earth. The ground bore the marks of a scuffle, the indents of massive paws, and the drag of something heavy being removed. "A battle took place, recently."
It was then that the howls pierced the stillness, distant yet chillingly clear. The mournful cries rose and fell. Toki felt a shiver trace her spine, not from the cold but from the realization that these howls were not the product of simple beasts.
The howls crescendoed once more, a haunting lament that seemed to beckon them deeper into the underbelly of the world. Toki put her hand on the handle of her hammer. Edgar too pulled out his katana.
"Let's find our thief," she stated.