The three traveled in complete silence, but they were connected by a weak telepathic link. Perhaps there were four of them, because Sesako’s other was present in Sesako’s mind, though he could not speak.

Hinete had designed the heavy cloaks they wore that wrapped completely around them, covering everything including the face and eyes. They had to remain close to each other, because the cloaks drew directly upon Sesako’s crimson power to create a dense pattern of invisibility that hopefully confused the eyes of what would no doubt be a vast number of remaining defenders on the island.

The invisibility pattern would degrade and then dissolve if it was in a space where there were too many powerful cultivator’s cores that were physically near him. While the pattern remained stable, the crimson power would to make them completely invisible even to a large group of purified cores who were directly watching the point in the air he was traveling through.

Such was the potential of a celestial.

But they still needed to draw away as many cultivators from the island as possible for this to have a hope of working, and it was by no means certain.

As the three of them approached the island, part of Sesako fully expected for them to be seen by the guards when they got close to the entry to the volcanic cone.

The three powerful cultivators in this group had to stay close to each other. If they became separated by more than ten feet, the invisibility technique on Kisiko and Takue’s cloaks would cease to be able to draw directly on his core. After being sent out, they had modified one of the hurlers to throw all three of them — with a corresponding loss in speed.

It took a full two minutes to reach the top of the volcano, belching red magma and magic

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Beneath the cloaks each of them wore heavy armor formed from the molted scales of the dragons. Each had dense lines of protective enchantments carved into them, around and around. Enchanted dragon scales were among the most valuable exports of Yatamo.

This armor could block most crossbow bolts at any range greater than a few dozen feet.

Dragon scales took enchantments better than any other material known to man. Even the mage silk that their cloaks were made of was not nearly as robust and flexible.

Tick-tock.

Almost there.

Sesako said in their link.

Takue made an annoyed grunt, while Kisiko replied, Art thou nervous, young one?

At least the other in his head couldn’t say anything sarcastic.

Sesako thought that the other was wholly focused on the painful effort to hold the fourth dantian as far open as he could manage to flood Sesako’s body with the crimson power.

The technique that they used to ‘see’ through the thick black cloak that covered their faces did not allow Sesako to know what happened in the great battle above them.

Occasionally the thunderclaps of mighty magics and explosions, and three times that peculiarly penetrating, odd, sad, hissing tone of those with a purified core ripping out their second core to use as a fatal weapon could be barely heard by his many times over reinforced ears through the miles that separated them.

That murderous bastard.

And then they were at the top of the cone of the volcano that towered over the rest of the floating island.

The process that was used to fuel it generated an immense heat that burned at their cloaks. Sweat dripped down Sesako’s face.

Sesako whispered a few shaping phrases, and he wrapped more of the crimson power into the cloaks. They would now be preserved from damage. The three of them slowly descended into the mouth of the volcano. It took constant concentration to keep the flow of power flooding into the cloaks.

The spell couldn’t work without his attention, since it was a fundamental rule of enchanting to never create a device that tried to automatically pull power from a cultivator.

A dozen cultivators with purified cores had stood around the edge of the volcano, but none of them were within the wide gaping opening itself.

The heat was great.

Sweat poured down his forehead.

Sesako wanted to see.

He couldn’t expose his face, otherwise the watch wardings would see them, and raise the alarm, and they would be attacked long before they could get close enough to the core of the volcano to do any damage.

Hotter, and hotter.

The sweat soaked through his clothes.

Ten feet down, and the air was hot enough that a human who had no magical talent would cook in his own skin.

As they dropped, they passed a set of openings at which were posted a dozen more guards, hidden behind thick barriers made of heavy metal to keep them from direct exposure to the heat.

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The invisibility spell worked, but the cloaks were slowly unraveling.

This place was a sick place. Sesako’s very body and essence was being attacked by the location. If he was not a cultivator of great power, simply being here would have already poisoned him to death.

The descent took them down nearly a mile, the rock on either side thick and smooth.

It was a straight route, and as they came lower and lower, the heat grew, as did the massive pressure from the steam. The passageway was always a bit more than sixty feet wide.

There were occasionally points with powerful scrying spells built into the walls, hunting for anyone who passed through the point without permission. The linkage back to a cultivator focusing all his attention through these carved wardings was palpable.

Each time they passed such a position, Sesako’s heart jumped to his throat.

The decaying robes could not continue to hide them for long.

They passed the last guard point.

The heat was hotter than in an oven.

And that deadly, killing something which was expelled from its source deep below that had become thicker and thicker.

A cultivator with only a golden core would beyond any doubt be killed here, and one with only a purified core could only survive for minutes.

Lower, and lower.

At the bottom there was nothing but a vast metallic circle that glowed red from the heat.

Sesako at first was confused, staring at it.

Just metal? Where did the heat come from?

They were far enough away from the last guard post that he risked flapping back the cowl of his cloak to look around.

The downward passageway had been made of layers of lead and steel, and this cap of lead and steel had been placed here to protect whatever was below from any simple attack that could be dropped in from on top.

A couple of stones empowered with the crimson power that he now had and thrown directly down the throat of the volcano would be enough to batter right through this and smash whatever was below it. Though it would have to be launched from extremely close to keep the defending wizards from deflecting the stones away.

This set up was safe enough from direct attack.

The steam was so thick that Sesako’s enhanced eyes could barely see twenty feet.

Around the sides of this chamber were massive archways through which the heat and the steam billowed in.

They flew through one of them.

Sesako’s heart beat with fear he could not explain to himself.

As soon as they flew over the walls of the metallic cap the intensity with which that sickness-causing substance struck them became stronger.

The portion of his body that was covered by the dragon scale breastplate and helmet was protected, but every other inch of his exposed skin was under attack, and Sesako knew that if he remained here for long, even he would become sick nearly to the death.

There was a vast cavern beneath them, about two hundred feet deep.

At the bottom there was a vast pane of glass, which glowed red, not from heat, but from the emperor’s crimson power, and beneath that a flood of sea water, rushing through, and within the sea water, there was the device.

Sesako could not understand or follow how the magic worked, but there were a set of cylinders below glowing yellow-red with heat, each of them was as thick as his arms.

That sense of wrongness radiated from them.

They also radiated the most powerful flood of magical energy that Sesako had ever felt.

It was like being in the center of a big whale, being eaten away by the digestive juices, but reinforced by the intensity of that spiritual power.

Thousands of cylinders, and the sea water flowed around them. These cylinders produced an unimaginably vast amount of heat. There was an enormous system of pipes lined with magical runes that glowed like the veins under delicate skin. The pressure of the steam around the sides of the device must be enormous. Sesako guessed that the flow of steam powered a mechanism that he did not understand, but which created the force that allowed the island to float despite its enormous weight.

He looked at Kisiko and Takue.

Kisiko looked gray and ill, as though with his age, the effect of the stream of something destructive that came off of that thing ate away at him desperately fast, despite his enormous power. His body glowed blue, as he shielded himself.

Something convulsed through Sesako like shock. A voice, that must have been from the other echoed through him: Holy Fuck. And with it was a sense of recognition, as though the other thought he understood the device below. Since his success in opening the fourth Dantian, Sesako no longer doubted his potential for brilliance.

“We must destroy it,” Sesako said aloud. He grimaced and prepared to fly closer. Gravity pulled him down towards the giant pane of glass, and those glowing hot cylinders.

He didn’t want to come closer.

Fly and hide.

Get back behind the lead and steel and run all the way back to the top of the volcano, and go away, far away. Never come back.

Deep breath. Sesako firmed himself up. It would need to be him, both Kisiko and Takue looked terribly sick in this miasma. He would shatter the pane, and then strike the pods and do… something to them.

Kisiko said, “Be cautious, this is a refinement of deep metal — the emperor discovered that concentrations of this substance would produce heat, an outflow of raw magical power, and a force that sickened those without magical abilities. He had long set great store on experiments with it, but he ever seemed dissatisfied with their results.”

“How deep did he get?” Sesako spoke instantly, and only afterwards realized that the question had been prompted by the Other, and not his own curiosity.

“Five miles deep, beyond that all the rock we found was so hot that it had already melted. Even for the emperor himself could not safely travel in it — he believed that the presence of deep metal might explain why the interior of the world is so hot, even though there is no sunlight.”

Sesako took a deep breath.

Damned, dangerous, frightening cylinders. Deadly. Deadly, so deadly.

But from two hundred feet above them, Sesako did not think he could wreck it with a simple force of magic.

If he had a hurler, Sesako would simply have smashed it into the array, but he did not.

When they had planned this attack, they simply had not realized that it would be dangerous to get physically close to the object they would need to destroy.

A phrase from the mind of the other rose up: If it were done at all, then ’twere well It were done quickly.

Sesako acted.

He swooped down, planning to blast everything to bits with raw magic once he came close enough. And then he felt a terror that was not his own. An image in his head.

Compressing the cylinders with a blow, or with magic, and the substance in them exploding out, killing them all.

The other believed that hitting them hard enough would make them explode, in a way he could not protect himself from.

Sesako gritted his teeth.

He came close to the glass. He drew his hand back, gathering crimson magic in it to strike the vast glass.

And then a laughing figure leapt up to meet him from out of the steam, casting aside its own invisibility spell.

“No, no, my friend. You’ll not dismember my toy!”

Head to toe this man was armored in elegant dragon scale armor. The pieces were perfectly reticulated, and they moved around him like the scales on a snake, which stretched and flowed with his muscles.

Blazing crimson power flickered around him.

He looked like a blot of blood.

“Hello, my lovely friends. Hello!” The Celestial Emperor smiled through the visor of his helmet on them with delight. “My darlings, it is such a pleasant matter to have guests.”