The trip to Alvarez was uneventful. The journey was slow. Arthur was used to using repeated teleportation to travel to the horizon repeatedly, moving at speeds surpassing sound by skipping most of the distance entirely.
This trip he did not have that luxury. He couldn’t even train in high power magic, barely willing to run his Archive non-manifested and keep his Territory Armor up. It led to weeks of boredom on a boat, and the realization that he could have completed the bounty to relax for a week straight here and now. Probably.
There was a paranoia about him. He was going back south and south was where he had enemies. Normal dark guilds, in Guiltina or otherwise, didn’t want to mess with someone at his level of power. But going south there were threats. Acnologia was certainly the largest, and the reason he wasn’t using magic to avoid his notice. Zeref and the Spriggan Twelve were a possibility; but given he was walking straight to their stronghold they didn’t worry him too much. If they knew who he was well enough to come and seek him out, that might actually make things easier. Then there was Tartaros. Arthur’s feelings about Selene had become a lot more complicated, but that didn’t stop him from being low key pissed that she had apparently been feeding Tartaros those foes of his who burned with the desire for revenge. He had considered Tartaros a threat which was ultimately dealt with, and which he could destroy at his leisure. And now they apparently had Edolas magic tools, Spirit Arts from Elentear, and Alchemy from Guiltina. It was all stuff he had beaten on his own, but the idea of bRAIN integrated with their Cube was terrifying even to him.
At least that one he couldn’t blame Selene for. She hadn’t arranged for them to meet with bRAIN. He had. Selene just hadn’t told him this when she first learned it.
The question did come up how much he could trust her, and how much she could trust them. She was in contact with Tartaros through intermediaries. Apparently she was keeping them informed for when he would be vulnerable. If Selene wanted him dead they’d probably attack him on this boat voyage.
That worry kept him from fully relaxing. He could remind himself she’d probably not have told him about it at all if she wanted him dead, but such reminders were not capable of dispelling his fears completely.
But they had done nothing. The voyage was uneventful. The overland trip to the capital was similarly uneventful, save that he managed to buy a Silver Key off of a sailor at the port.
The overland transit was quicker. It was a much shorter trip from the shore to the capital, and the machina train was fast. It almost felt like something you’d find in Edolas. It was still an overnight trip, but by noon the next day he was ready to go to the imperial palace of Alvarez.
Arthur walked up to the gates of Emperor Spriggan’s castle. The gates were open, but two, massive, muscular guards moved to intercept him as he walked towards it. Arthur had considered dressing cinematically, but had settled for something more practical. Visually high quality, and fine clothing - silk - and nakedly displaying a hand which was made of a silvery material - dragon scales but he didn’t expect people to recognize that for certain.
Minerva had followed suit. Her dress was not necessarily the best for fighting, but he trusted she knew better than he did what she could and could not fight in. Tabby was dressed in a hooded black robe, face covered by a cloth, looking like some video game desert bandit stereotype. If they were less than waist high.
“You, strange. What business do you have in the castle?” One of the guards asked as Arthur approached.
“I come to speak with Irene Belserion,” Arthur answered. “I possess magical knowledge which she would be pleased to learn about.”
One of the guards laughed raucously. Another looked at Arthur. “You think you can teach the Scarlet Despair something about magic. We don’t waste the time of the Spriggan 12 with nonsense-”
“Go tell Irene Belserion, that a mage seeks an audience with her, as he may possess the means to reverse her dragonification, and failing that should be able to help her improve the magic with which she maintains a human seeming so that she is able to properly feel again,” Arthur cut the man off.
“Look, guy,” the guard said, puffing his chest out, and lifting a tetsubo larger than Arthur himself. “We don’t go bothering the Spriggan 12 because some crackpot off the street says to. If you’re a mage worthy of their attention they will send for you not the other way around.”
Arthur glanced at Minerva. “Minerva, would you please.”
The guard’s readied their weapons, wary of the attack which might come, and then they vanished.
“I meant something more flashy to announce our presence, like a dragon roar away from structures, but I guess maybe they’ll report we’re here now.”
The wait wasn’t long. The reception was less friendly than Arthur would have liked. A dark haired woman in a dark bodysuit - the kind of bodysock you’d expect from a superheroine or a ninja - launched several lengths of black cloth towards them from behind, even as an orange haired girl leapt over the castle wall from inside, and began to fire blasts of slime at the trio.
Arthur’s archive alerted him to the latter, while his overclocked brain made it child’s play to teleport himself Minerva, and Tabby a short distance to dodge the attacks. “Think you can handle them?” Arthur said as the orange haired girl landed a flying kick where they had been with force enough to crater the ground, sending a burst of dust and dirt rising up into the air.
“Two on one? Feels a bit like cheating, but I’m sure they can get reinforcements if they need them,” Tabby said walking towards the girl that had arrived so explosively.
“Work together, this isn’t a game,” Arthur said, but the fight was already on. Alerted and aware of her enemies, Minerva’s territory magic could keep her and Tabby safe enough, and Arthur’s territory armor shouldn’t draw too much unwanted attention as long as they weren’t allowed to focus on him.
For his part Tabby’s battleform gave him the strength and speed to match even these elite mages. When he used dragon takeover with it, transforming his tiger-like battleform into something even more powerful, arms busting with scales - he’d never mastered beyond the arms - he was stronger and faster still, though he seemed to have trouble overmatching the orange haired girl.
Which left Minerva to square off against the ninja. Minerva clearly lost in strength and speed, at least when not using her white tiger dragon slayer magic. But what she lacked in direct physical ‘stats’ she made up for in being able to teleport to overcome overland speed, and her dragon slayer magic.
They were still not actually working together. They were fighting an elite duo from the most powerful mages in all of two continents, and they were treating it like a game. Minerva and Tabby knew how to fight together better than this. The Alvarez mages didn’t seem to have the versatility which Minerva’s territory magic provided; which coupled with Tabby’s raw power in his takeover form should be enough to allow them to isolate one of the two and then deal with her so they could take out the other.
Instead they were fighting two separate fights, when a voice shouted commanding: “Enough!”
It was the Scarlet Despair herself. Even if Arthur didn’t recognize the distinctively scarlet hair the same shade as Erza’s, or the outfit which for some reason had a hole cut in it to show the underside of her breasts and little more, he’d have been able to tell by the sheer crackling aura of power. It wasn’t the most he’d ever felt; he’d felt Acnologia’s before, and Selene’s in her dragon form. But it did scare him. She was stronger than Selene’s human form was, but that wasn’t too surprising. Georg had neared it. And he surpassed it in raw magical power. And Irene made him feel small. How much more powerful would she be in dragon form?
She was, like many women in this world, exaggeratedly good looking. And in a world of exaggerated curves hers stood out, especially in the hips. Her outfit completely baring the sides of her hips didn’t help keep the eye from drifting there, and the hole to expose the underside of her chest, left Arthur feeling like she was screaming for attention.
The two girls retreated to her side as she looked at Tabby and Minerva and then at Arthur himself. She raised a wooden staff and pointed it towards him. Her eyes narrowed. “You claimed you had magic I would be interested in. But before we address that, where did you get your information?”
“That you’re the first dragon slayer?” Arthur’s words made her flinch a little and he couldn’t help but smile. She was strong. She was terrifying. But he did have her at a disadvantage.
“...” Her free hand clenched tight, and she breathed out a hiss of air. “Yes,” She said. “And about… my body.”
“Those are a bit separate answers,” Arthur said. “Selene told me the former, and my experiences with dragonification made me expect the latter.” He didn’t want to come out and say how he’d learned her method of resuming human form was flawed, so he was vague and forced his tone to be relaxed to the point of flippancy.
“Don’t play around with me,” Irene said in a snarl. Then she paused and looked at him. “Who is this Selene who knows so much about me?”
“The moon dragon god.” Arthur’s answer made Irene’s staff lower a bit.
She continued to glare at him, but there was definitely naked curiosity on her face now. “One of the five dragons that keep Acnologia out of Guiltina?” A few years ago she’d have berated him for lying. The dragon gods hadn’t really been the dragon gods before she had become a dragon herself, and since she’d been pulled from her dragonification induced hermitage the dragon gods had been inactive. Except once when Acnologia had gone north. They had made their presence known then. Irene didn’t know the details, but she’d been able to feel it from Alvarez.
Arthur simply nodded. “She has a human form. One which she assures me has a full range of sensation.”
“How would she even know? When was she ever human?” Irene’s eyes flashed, her shout sending spittle flying.
“That’s only the consolation prize,” Arthur said, his prosthetic hand rising, as his dragon staff appeared in it. Requip was probably not too impressive to one of the greatest mages who ever lived. But the material of the hand and the staff was enough to give a touch of pause to someone who knew the power of dragons. “I haven’t tested it on someone who fully succumbed to dragonification, but I was able to reverse it on someone who was on the very edge of it, and you saw the cat.”
They both looked at Tabby. He was still in his battle form, a towering cat-man with gray and white striped fur, and a face like a tiger’s. But his dragon-arms were back to feline ones as he had released the takeover magic.
“So he used the dragon force, most dragon slayers can do that. Or are you saying he’s fine with the risk because you can re-” Irene stopped talking.
Arthur’s body had grown and expanded, stretching out as scales formed across it. His form filled much of the square before the castle, towering over the humans in it. She could feel his magical power swelling as his form shifted, blue scales streaked with white covering his form, great wings resembling those of a dragonfly’s mixed with a scaled bat’s spreading from his back. It was the Gale Dragon, one of the lacrima he held in his chest given form through his magic.
And then he was human again. “Because he knows how to control the process, enabling it, and reversing it.”
Irene stammered for a few moments. “We’re making a spectacle of ourselves. Let’s go inside.” A dragon had just appeared in the capital city, continuing this discussion in full public view might well cause a public panic.
Arthur was more nervous in the throne room than out in front of the castle. It was the occupants he shared it with. 3 of the Spriggan 12. 3 of the strongest mages in the continent, if not the world, were looking at him. Even the least of these - Brandish - was a potential threat to him, and the other two stood unopposed at the pinnacle of the Spriggan 12 first among equals. Though he didn’t know if Brandish was actually a member of the 12 yet. In 5 years she would be, right now she was on the young side, 19 or 20 he’d have guessed. Maybe she wasn’t the Country Destroyer yet.
The other two were certainly threats. Irene Belserion, the Scarlet Terror, grand enchanter, sage dragon, inventor of dragon slayer magic, and among the 2 greatest mages from the era of the Dragon War and prior. And beside her was the Wizard King August, said to be the greatest living wizard with the possible exception of Zeref. Either one of them could put up a meaningful fight against Acnologia, and he’d be hard pressed to win against them. Both of them together… he felt like his head was in a lion’s maw.
“Your offer interests me,” Irene said, leaning across a table from her seat. The table was round, an unoccupied throne was given a space to either side of it, and August and Irene had seated in two chairs on one side of it, and Arthur had been seated opposite of them creating a fair bit of space between them. Her fingers were steepled before her, as she pushed forward as if to get a closer look at him. It wasn’t the first time he’d had an audience with a ruler in this world. And it wasn’t the first time he’d been given the worst chair in the room, and situated where a group of people could stare at him in judgment. At least God Serena wasn’t here to prosecute him this time. “But I have to know what it is you want in exchange?”
“Nothing,” Arthur said, trying to force himself to seem as relaxed as Tabby. Food and drink had been placed on a table, not a true meal but more snacks and luxuries. To help him ‘recover from his journey’. Tabby was helping himself to the food with a gusto. Arthur’s gut was tied into too many knots to consider eating.
August’s silence was unnerving. Besides a greeting and introduction when Arthur had first entered he’d said nothing. Arthur wasn’t even sure if he had blinked; his utter stillness and tranquility made Arthur’s hair stand on end and his eyes kept shooting towards him.
Not that August was non-responsive. Arthur’s Archive was screaming about the Wizard King. Arthur was working it as well as he could without manifesting it, and while maintaining a conversation. August was telepathically communicating with Irene, but he failed to hack his way into the magical missive yet again.
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“Nothing? Certainly you wouldn’t come here to offer me such a boon as you claim to possess when desiring nothing from me. Humans aren’t like that. And I do not like being lied to. If you don’t actually possess the magic you claim…” She paused, but when she resumed the emotion had drained substantially from her voice. Where before it had quaked with feeling - Arthur thought of it as wrath - now she was obviously trying to keep it bottled where it couldn’t be heard. “Let’s just say there will be consequences.”
“Like I told you, I can’t actually promise you it will work. I haven’t tested it on someone who crossed the rubicon into being a dragon,” Arthur paused. Irene had made a face, looking at Brandish and August. Even August had moved, his brow furrowing. “What is it?” Arthur asked.
“You used a strange word is all,” August said. “I am not familiar with what tongue rubicon comes from.”
Arthur blushed a bit, shrinking back into his chair. Idioms did not translate well, and mentioning Italian rivers didn’t really have an equivalent in a world without Italy. “Sorry, it’s an idiom from my homeland. To cross the rubicon is to cross the point of no return. I have returned someone who was on the edge of becoming a dragon but not someone who did in full.”
Again and again there was the Archive alert. August’s telepathic network was something it could sense, but not something Arthur was succeeding at accessing.
“And what about yourself? What I saw outside was not a dragonslayer on the edge of dragonification,” Irene said, sitting a little more erect now. Her senses told her that Arthur was a dragon slayer, but barely a mature one, much less one on the edge of dragonification. And she had met post dragonification ones before as well. Arthur didn’t smell enough like a dragon. He smelled more human than not.
“That was takeover magic. I subjugated my own seed.” He winced at the naked despair that crossed Irene’s face. It was like he had shattered some hope of hers. “It’s ultimately the basis for the technique in the staff. But…” He sighed. “I have an ulterior motive for coming here.”
“I knew it,” Irene said, a touch of rage flashing in her voice. “Out with it.”
“I’ve vowed to end Acnologia. But given his power… Well he was human once. If this can turn you human again, maybe the Dragon King would jump on the same chance, and as a human well he wouldn’t be Acnologia anymore. I figured you would be easier to approach, and less likely to kill me if it failed, especially as I could offer you the spell that the dragon gods use for their human forms which may allow for a more complete sensory experience.”
Irene crushed a metal goblet in her hand. “You expect me to believe you’re doing this all out of the goodness of your heart?”
“It’s the truth,” Tabby said, stepping forward, food staining his fur,and pieces of fish coming out of his mouth. “As a knight he has given his sworn oath to his lady love to slay the dragon who would seek her head.”
Arthur winced. Tabby had just revealed information which would complicate things.
“Why does Acnologia seek his lady love’s head?” Irene asked.
“The cat misunderstands the situation,” Arthur said. “I swore to the moon dragon god, Selene, that I would kill Acnologia in exchange for my life being spared. I try to keep my word. Besides the reward for finishing the 100 year quest to claim his head is appealing, both monetarily and in renown.” Again the alerts from his Archive were going wild.
“With your power there’s certainly far easier ways to get that amount of wealth,” Irene said.
“Yeah, sure,” Arthur said. “But they wouldn’t be doing something as big as killing the Dragon King.”
“So you intend to render him human just to slay him?”
“Not… preferably not,” Arthur answered. “If he’s a man and not the dragon king I’ve still gotten rid of the dragon king.”
“Why does the cat think the moon dragon god is your lady love?”
Arthur inhaled, trying to think of a lie, before he could, Tabby began to speak. “I can speak for myself, my lady of the scarlet tresses,” the exceed said with a grandiose air. “She has given him her love, accepting him as her one true and faithful knight, and even bestowing upon him her favor in the highest form of honor a noble lady can, a kiss not upon the cheek or brow but the very lips themselves, before our journey here.”
Irene looked at Arthur then. “You’re… romantically entangled with Selene?”
“Maybe… possibly. If I can kill Acnologia.” Again the Archive alert.
“The fact that she’s a dragon doesn’t bother you? I thought you lay claim to being a dragon slayer,” Irene said.
“You’re a dragon and I’m here to help you.” Arthur knew he had said the wrong thing as the already deformed goblet was squeezed into a crumpled sphere, pieces of it being pressed out between her fingers as she used the metal like a stress ball. August was talking to her again.
“I will be human again. Are you going to make her human?” Irene hissed, glaring at him.
“If she asks, and it could, maybe. It doesn’t really matter to me if she’s human or dragon.” Another alert from his Archive.
“Tell the truth, wouldn’t you prefer her to be human?”
“No,” Arthur said.
August snickered then, and Irene huffed out loud, glancing towards him. “So what is it that attracted you to the dragon god?” August asked.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Arthur said shamefaced.
“I will decide what’s relevant,” Irene said. “Answer the question.”
“I mean…” Arthur looked down. “It’s gonna sound bad.”
“All the more reason I need to know,” Irene said.
“I didn’t want her to kill me. I wanted her to teach me. And her human form is beautiful. I mean her shape is… she’s good looking. And her face is…”
August snickered more.
“Oi, cut it out, I came here to offer you help and maybe see if you could help me to deal with Acnologia since I thought that was your goal too, not to get interrogated and laughed at,” Arthur said finally beginning to get annoyed.
“My apologies,” August said. “It’s just with the unexpectedness of your arrival, and the inexplicableness of the skills you have professed and even have shown, I was worried that you were something alien and strange and your reason just seems so almost childish. Though I have to wonder, why would you prefer she remain a dragon?”
Arthur’s cheeks burned. “Who says I do?” He protested only to receive a glare from the Wizard King. “Power is attractive, and I mean why would I want her to be human forever, when she can be human or dragon whenever she wants… Why am I getting the third degree here?!”
“I apologize again,” August said. “Though I believe I already answered that, though for this question it was just some idle curiosity on my part. Still if you wish to work with us to combat Acnologia, there will have to be further discussion. But if you can actually help Irene as you have suggested I have no objection, and I do not believe that our Emperor would have a serious one. He already has promised to help her to do so in any way he can.”
August looked at Irene. “It is up to you what you will do with this, but if you wish his help, I will inform the emperor I gave you the permission to do so.”
Irene looked at Arthur. “Do you really think you can make me human again?”
“I can try,” Arthur answered.
Explaining what he would be doing, its potential risks, and mechanisms, and just how much this was experimental, took some time. They ended up in a courtyard of the castle, August watching as he leveled the staff on Irene.
The magic wasn’t flashy. No lights. No energy beams. No explosive fire. He pointed his staff and focused his will on drawing the dragon out of Irene and replacing it with something human while doing so.
For a time nothing happened. Then Irene began to scream. It continued for minutes before Arthur stopped and shook his head. “We’re doing it wrong.”
Irene glared at him. Arthur couldn’t be certain what she’d felt, but from the way she had fallen to her knees and howled in pain it had probably been agonizing.
“The spell to force you into human shape interferes. To remove the dragon from you, we’ll have to go with you as a dragon.” It was a bit more complicated than that; perhaps it’d be more accurate to say that it was easier to access her draconic nature when it was on the surface, as the spell was not compressing it like Selene’s - and presumably Zeref’s - for assuming human form. It was draining it off.
“So you’re saying to become human again I have to become a dragon once more,” Irene said. She looked at August, and August looked at Arthur. Then Irene groaned, before she expanded. Scales formed across her form as she traded human shape with that of a dragon. She expanded quickly, and Athur felt the release of compressed power. It was ultimately unimpressive.
She’d been stronger in human form than Selene was. But this level of power was not on the same level as Selene’s in her dragon form. Arthur wasn’t so arrogant to not realize this was still immense power, but he had feared she’d be on an entirely different level.
She snorted on him, a gale of wind from her nostrils as she looked at him. “Better?”
“Hopefully,” Arthur said. This was untested ground. He had theories. But he was playing with dangerous magic.
He began again. And Irene bellowed in pain, her claws cracking the surface of the ground. For 15 minutes he continued, before Arthur stopped. She still looked as draconic as ever.
He’d drained something. But… he was killing her more than restoring her humanity.
“I’m still a dragon,” Irene said, a great, reptilian eye staring at him, her tooth-filled maw pressed towards him. The red-scaled beast was too close for comfort, really.
“I know that,” Arthur said. “But if I continue right now, you’ll not be human, just dead. We’ll need to let you rest a while and try again.”
“I told you if you didn’t live up to your-” Irene was roaring, a bellowing shout which hurt the ears.
“Irene!” August snapped. “Even if you grow tired of him, our emperor will wish to see him.”
The dragon’s head whipped through the air, looking pointedly away from August and Arthur both, and then she reverted to human shape. “You’re right. Even if he cannot live up to his own words he is still a rather impressively unique spec…” She trailed off, holding her arm awkwardly. Her muscles were pained. It was a feeling she only distantly remembered. Pain was one of the few things she could feel for the last 400 years, but it was a long time since she had felt it so sharply.
“Let me try a second time tomorrow before you dismiss my words as mere empty boasts,” Arthur protested.
Irene’s head turned towards him and then back towards August. “I’ll consider it.”
She barely slept that night. It’d been years since her body had bothered her so much; the itch, the cold, the ache. They’d all been a constant element of her existence. And yet she’d never realized before how lumpy and hard her bed was before. And it wasn’t much but she had been able to tell the difference between milk and water by taste alone for the first time since Zeref had given her a human shape.
Irene’s bellows shattered the clouds over the castle, a burst of magic shooting through the depths of one. She’d not felt agony like this since she had become a dragon, and never had before the act of becoming one. Every fiber of her being hurt, and only the iron-clad resolve that if she bear with it at the end she could become human again, that she would be able to feel and be herself again, kept her from lashing out at the foreign mage with his accursed staff.
She’d been preparing to, only shifting her head at the last moment to launch her blast into the skies instead. And then something was changing. The power of the foreign mage seemed to swell, growing by a staggering amount, almost like he’d undergone dragonification of his own. The pain spiked, and for a moment everything began to turn red, white, and black. Her vision was swimming, and her ears were ringing. It felt like she was on an airship, and dying. Her senses were going wild, and the pain was encroaching on her brain.
She roared again, uncertain where she was screaming at, merely lashing out with the ferocity of a wounded animal against something that was attacking it. And then the pain became simply too much for her and everything went black.
Arthur was left feeling tired as he completed the ritual. If Irene had fought him he’d not have managed it. Well, fought him from the beginning; by the end her dragon’s roar had forced Horologium to appear to protect him and take the blast itself. Even with a cooperative subject, he had had to spend his choice points to purchase Magic Power Level 5.
He had watched as Irene’s draconic form had gotten smaller and smaller, even as she thrashed. That final, wild, dragged out beam which had hammered against Horologium had been substantially smaller than when she had scattered the clouds, though she had maintained it for much longer. Her skin had begun to appear, hair from the head that had horribly looked somewhere between human and dragon. It had been like watching a body horror transformation in reverse.
But this was still the moment of truth. He had, effectively, just forcibly transformed someone else, ripping out her lifeforce and replacing it as he had gone. It wouldn’t have worked if she hadn’t been a dragon. That all meant, though, that she probably needed some medical attention asap.
Even before Arthur, tired by the exertion, and with his Archive fully dedicated to specialized functions to control and guide the spell, could get out of Horologium, August was there.
Arthur wished his Archive had been set to analyze and study magic being used at the moment. He hadn’t known August knew healing magic till that moment, and August used it with skill and deftness. In moments Irene’s eyes were opening, the red-haired woman looking up towards the sky.
Arthur hadn’t expected to be sure if she would live or die even with his own healing magic for maybe an hour. Hadn’t expected her to be awake for at least a day.
“I’m cold,” the sorceress whispered as she wrapped her arms around herself, and August removed his robe and draped it over her. “I feel so weak, and tired,” She repeated. “I’m actually tired.” She rose to her feet, knocking the robe from her body.
“Careful,” Arthur and August said in unison. The rest of their words failed to match but the sentiment was the same. She’d just almost died, and was visibly unsteady on her feet.
Juliet and Heine, the two girl mages she had sicced on Arthur’s group at their arrival, rushed to her side, one sliding under each of her arms. And then she hugged them close to her, burying their faces against her flesh. And she went silent, tears running down her face, her knees buckling. It wasn’t the pain which coursed through every nerve of her body, the soreness which attacked every muscle. It wasn’t even the weakness which seemed to have enervated her entire being. It was the feeling of hair against her flesh. The sensation of the courtyard’s stone floor, reduced to gravel by her dragon form, pressing against the soles of her bare feet. The feeling of air against her skin. And the clearness of her thoughts which she hadn’t experienced in centuries.
She felt human again.
Once Irene was taken to her chamber to sleep, Arthur had excused himself from August’s company on the basis of being exhausted and needing rest. The look of suspicion on the wizened Wizard King’s face, worried Arthur, but he was allowed to retreat to his room.
He used Aqua Aera to create a portal between worlds. He could have used a more direct spell of moon dragon slayer magic; but just in case August was watching him somehow he didn’t want to give the Wizard King a chance to learn it.
He wasn’t traveling to another world to avoid August, though. He was wary of giving Acnologia more reason to investigate. Irene’s power would have masked his during her change, but now… Well Acnologia might notice him. And while Acnologia seemed to have avoided Irene for all these centuries, he hadn’t been so kind to Arthur.
Besides, he’d prepared this place ahead of time. A private little workshop that he had used when in his hermitage. It had the tools he needed to turn a dragon’s heart into lacrima. But in this case he wasn’t doing such a material metamorphosis.
He took an empty lacrima crystal, one carefully crafted to be a receptacle for other magical power, and he touched the staff to it. It was vibrating even now with the power it had taken; the sheer power of Irene’s dragon seed.
And he began to push the seed into the crystal, letting it turn a shade of red like her scarlet scales. The crystal expanded a bit, growing from the power fed into it, but it was actually less than the crystal had been prepared to hold. Once the power had been transferred there was the process of harmonizing it with the lacrima, and ensuring it didn’t explode or leak out. A process which took more than an hour of magical, and chemical, work. But when it was done he held a large, red lacrima. The Sage Dragon’s lacrima.