I was being watched as often as possible now by the Synod and other Sages, on the surface worried about the threat I represented as a ‘free’ agent not bound to any particular human nation. They couldn’t stop or berate someone with such close ties to an Emperor, and it understandably made them nervous, even with the examples of my conduct I’d provided with both deed and word matching up.
Working to save the world and getting distrust and dismay from the Neutrals was always par for the course.
Nevertheless, I didn’t skimp and I did ditch all their surveillance without much difficulty. They didn’t need to know I was going to speak to Infinite Sands, and I didn’t need another triggering event.
I knew a fair bit about Infinite Sands from discussions with Thunderbird, who had been around long enough to see the green forests of Africa buried under the sands of the Sahara, those sands expand dramatically with the coming of the Netherlords and Nirvanans, and the Dark Mana being introduced into the world through Humans.
Infinite Sands was the most powerful of the Drakes, the more lizard-like, wingless versions of the Dragons, as opposed to the snake-like Linnorms and the serpentine Lung and Sea Dragons. He was a master of Earth, Air, and Fire, predominantly the first two. Fire Phoenix Emperor could now probably contest His mastery of Fire, but in Earth, He was definitely the most powerful on the planet.
The Sahara was His domain, and it was dominated by sand. Sure, here and there were oases where the waters that used to stream through it surfaced occasionally, but mostly that was all underground, and if you wanted water you lived in the subterranean realms that supposedly crisscrossed everywhere under the sands.
The realm was dominated by desert creatures of all types, dominated by Snakes and Scorpions, unsurprisingly. However, there were plenty of desert insects, particularly Beetles, Termites, and Ants, along with various kinds of Spiders and Sun Spiders, Locusts, and even Mantises. There were also Lizards of size and power, with Drakes holding the top predatory spots, while the mammals such as Lions, Foxes, and Hyenas who dwelled there were relegated to the lower rungs, only the various dangerous and mostly carnivorous Plants who dwelled there actually lower in importance.
Infinite Sands had the smallest Court of the Emperors, simply because He was so anti-social and uncaring. Auric Tyrant had a much greater following, even as an old True Emperor, simply because He took His position more seriously, where Infinite Sands just did as He wished and paid little attention to or cared much for His followers.
The one thing He did was make the Maze effect that guarded His sands not work on Magical Beasts. Almost any human below a Sage who entered His sands would lose all sense of direction and ability to discern landmarks. They could be a hundred paces from the end of the domain and would be lucky to wander out of it alive. Only actively working with living people directing attention to them could make a trail out and keep them on track, so raiding the area was extremely unwise.
Like the cold of the Antarctic and the depths of the sea, the Curse of the Sahara kept humans out completely from His domain and left the Beasts within safe to do as they saw fit, giving them an unassailable fortress if they chose to raid and run.
That was exactly what they’d done for the past thousand years, inexorably pushing all the humans back as the realm of sands expanded in their wake. Only once near or on the sea did the expansion of the Sahara stop... and when it reached the edge of the Pharaohs’ claimed domain in Egypt.
Thunderbird wasn’t sure exactly what the Netherlords had done, said, or inferred, possibly conveyed between clans of Snakes to Infinite Sands, but His expansion and will to cover and bury Egypt and the Dark Mana that streamed from it had halted.
That hardly meant His influence wasn’t there in the heat and dust, and the fact the Arabian Peninsula was also slowly turning to desert, despite the best efforts of Air and Water mages to keep the land well-watered.
He was a High Emperor, and His power could easily cover a continent. His touch was expanding around the Mediterranean toward Europe, and there wasn’t anything anyone but another High Emperor could do to stop Him. As I’d told Old Mountain Emperor and He’d agreed, Infinite Sands would wear down the mountains and replace all of Europe with sand to suffocate the arrogant Humans who lived there and dared to deal with the Nirvanan interlopers, every bit as much as those in Egypt had sold their souls to the Netherworld to stave off His desert.
And now He had called for me to attend on Him.
Even Ice Emperor, who was considered the strongest High Emperor, would not dare to issue an order to me now, or even jerk me around with sly workarounds that amounted to insults of my status. It did not bode well, and I had some severe misgivings as to the arrogance and ego of a High Emperor Dragon’s expectations... but I actually wasn’t afraid of Him.
I was afraid of what He might trigger in His arrogance. Because if He started something, I was going to have no choice but to use High Imperial Magic to fight back, and there was no way to hide the use of that much power. Given how linked my Song and Magic were to the Manafield, every Sage and even the more-sensitive Archmages were going to know that I was throwing spells no human had ever wielded on the planet before.
A human wielding Imperial Magic, particularly HIGH Imperial Magic, was an absolute gamechanger, and would force a response from the Interloping forces.
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Why? Because they knew Humans had the potential to make Realm Lords. They’d already tried to force Mok Fan up to the status, and chain him to the Nether Realms through his Dark Magic Elements. His Sevenfold Sage status actually gave him the same potential here on the Mortal plane, but it was going to take him a very long time to get anything approaching an Imperial Beast’s true power and status, not to mention he had a TON of Elements to get to Sage status to actually do that.
If I could reach Realm Lord status without the patronage of either of them, that meant I could potentially become a Realm Lord HERE, and stand a very good chance at denying them the planet, its mortal souls, and the resources it represented. It was entirely likely they’d gang up to defeat me before turning to one another to determine who got the planet in the end.
They didn’t know about the Broom Closet, which had sucked in the dimensional magic of the Mexican Pyramids of the Sun and Moon and was now even bigger and more dimensionally reinforced than before, expanding slowly and steadily as ever-more-numerous Stone Shapers came to the needed strength and skill, and kept growing the plane by adding more layers of Blocks to the Closet’s Pyramid.
So, if I was attacked by Infinite Sands, the end of the world was going to start soon thereafter, and I was pretty sure we did not have enough Faith to punch through the anti-god and Realm Lord-generated interference of this multiverse and reach Aru. We’d have to bail out into the Broom Closet and run until we could raise that Beacon, and the planet was going to be a wasteland of warfare between Law and Evil by the time we got back... and we’d doubtless be blamed for fleeing an unwinnable fight, too.
I was fully prepared to shoulder all of that. While I could probably keep a Realm Lord busy right now, I had my doubts I could actually beat one, but who knew? I was also holding off on a few things, because all my instincts were screaming at me to not take that next step on Terra, as it would start everything exploding.
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My grim thoughts accompanied me over the endless wind-swept dunes of sand, some of them towering a thousand feet and more high, and sometimes there was a mile of sand sitting atop the stone, compacted and crushing down, yet tunneled through with inordinate amounts of life far below visible sight, unseen legions running around in the depths who would rise at His command in scuttling hordes to sweep away all in their path.
There was no Land Emperor who commanded anywhere near the Beasts needed to truly defy the forces of His domain.
The Maze effect of the Curse of the Sahara had no power to forestall me. My senses operated at levels above what it could influence, and it couldn’t infiltrate my mind or my perceptions. Unsurprisingly, He had also used His power with the Earth to add space to the place, and so, just like Deepest Africa (which He’d probably had a hand in creating, I hadn’t looked too closely), the Sahara was bigger the further I went in, mountains turned to sand rising like great, slow-moving waves of slaughtered peaks marching to the will and whim of the High Emperor.
I crossed into His Demesne and felt the instant influence and control over the Earth, Wind, and temperature, as if the sky had opened up and was just letting the sun pound down with all the heat it could. It was hot enough to boil water on the surface of these sands, despite being a mile above sea level at this point, and the updraft of winds was nearly a cyclone all the time, whipping sands up into a constant flesh-shredding cyclone that could score steel and strip flesh from bone in superheated seconds.
Humans didn’t go into the Sahara, and not even Sages dared His Demesne. Ice Emperor only had great cold, which the Ice Element could overcome. You needed to be fully armored, protected against the wind and invasive sand AND incredible heat to survive here, a combination most Sages just didn’t have.
I, however, had plenty of DR, Force Armor, Elemental Command, and localized, very tight Caster Level domination of my surroundings. The winds, and the sands they bore, couldn’t touch me, and if He could pull me down out of the sky at any time He wanted to, He would have to do so directly, as not even a tornado or the worst of sand storms was an impediment to me at this point.
He also couldn’t conceal Himself from me. His ties to this place were utterly obvious to me, as was the way the magic bent around Him, and naturally He’d placed His den, such as it was, at the greatest confluence of magical energies on the landscape. It all basically led me right to Him, although nobody else below a High Emperor could have sensed a thing about where He was, and likely would have just been lost in the enhanced power of the Curse swirling through the sandstorms here.
I swooped down to a particular set of dunes and hovered just above the sands, a globe of air around me channeling the storm of grit on and by me without touching me.
“Healer Fae has come at the request of Infinite Sands High Emperor, and greets Him in His Demesne.”
It wasn’t loud, but it carried through the local manasphere faultlessly, and the Sublime Chord began to hum with a deep basso, breathy beat, and driving rumble of the major Elements present here.
Most importantly, He didn’t know I was there until I actually announced myself.
The nearest dune began to run away like water, churning and flowing away as the great head below it raised itself up effortlessly, tens of thousands of tons of sands falling away as if weightless droplets. Armored scales that could have bounced howitzer shells effortlessly gleamed as if freshly polished, the storm about us pulling up and away just in time for me to admire the crystal-edged gold, black, and crimson patterns on a Drake over three thousand feet long, yet only with four limbs still, rising from the sand dunes that had risen to cover Him and the massive length of His spiked tail in a great near-circle around me.
He had a longer neck than any lizard, and His eyes were dark and cold, cold despite the heat rising from His scales, the sand that fell from Him as much half-melted crystals of glass as anything else. He indeed had only four legs, His claws like massive faceted diamonds, the spread of His crest almost like wearing a swept crown of jewels and precious metals.
Despite the mountains of sands that had poured off of Him, He gleamed as if polished by them, not dusty or gritty in the slightest.
Infinite Sands definitely lived up to His High Emperor booking, and now I carefully added vanity to His probable list of vices. His Aura was Green-Purple, which never boded well.
His head alone was a couple hundred feet long, much like Sea Emperor’s was, able to chomp down and swallow a bus like a candy bar. He also moved with speed very much like a proportional creature, oddly quick and sure, having none of the slow ponderousness that might be expected of such a titanic creature.
Also like the other High Emperors!