Ilyz stood in the large cave room, his true body on full display. Two beautiful wings spread out behind him as he stood on his four legs. There were no more spiderwebs in sight. They had been replaced by lingering fire and smoke as he had unleashed his breath all around him, killing hundreds of the lurking spiders.
He had also burned down the weapons that had been targeting him. It had shocked him that anything had been a danger to him at all. It had been thousands of years since he had felt threatened at all so he had kind of lost his temper for a bit, but he did think it was a good reminder. Like any old being he knew he would one day die and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Death made living worth it in a sense, made you push for what you wanted to do in a way.
He took a look around the now very changed infested cave. Annoyingly enough he did still see some spiders lurking about, having retreated in safe holes or whatever when he had fired up the place. He knew it was kind of useless to go after all the smaller ones. They were clearly under the queen’s control, and the queen was the one he had to kill.
He was a bit too big to fit into the buried complex however and decided to keep his true form. His size however shrunk significantly so he could fit. He was almost too large still, but it would have to do. In truth he felt great in his true body and didn’t want to revert just yet, especially when there was no one to see him around.
He had already melted most of the entrance and the weapon that had been set up inside of it, but the rest was intact. There was an annoying amount of spider webs all around and he kept burning it down. With spells this time, as he didn’t feel like the spiderwebs deserved his true fire. The building was rather large and he couldn’t figure out what it had been for exactly, most of the text and signs had been corroded by something. The spiders? Most likely.
He ventured deeper and didn’t meet any new spiders. It seemed they knew they didn’t stand a chance against him. What really had surprised him and still had him rattled was the fact that they had somehow figured out how to use weapons. Ship weapons and they had managed to take them off the ships and still use them. Like mounted turrets of some kind. It was far smarter than he would ever have thought from spiders and it was a mystery he wanted to solve before he left this place.
He squeezed through the rather large doors and followed the corridors leading him deeper while cleaning out the webs and strange muck he saw about with fire. If he ever wanted to stay here once he was done with the queen, he would need to purge this place with fire. He sighed at the thought of so much work. Even for him something like that would take some time if he didn’t want it to damage the facility too much.
But for now it didn’t matter too much, he would at least burn all the muck on his way and be happy with it. And so he did. It didn’t take Ilyz long before he arrived in a rather large hall. A few weapons fired at him as he entered but he had already spotted them as they had been charging their shots. He casually blocked the projectiles and spat an appropriately sized fireball at each one in turn, casually.
Only a handful of weapons were truly dangerous to him. Some others had been simply because he hadn’t been prepared. Now that he knew what he was up against and the element of surprise was gone? Easy, except for a few exceptions he hoped they wouldn’t have, like any anti-space weapons. But those had been exceedingly rare and outlawed for a long time. They couldn’t have… more, right?
Ilyz pondered for a moment if he should clean up the rather large room. It was hard to understand what it had originally been for. He could fit with his true size rather comfortably in here which begged the question of what it had been for. You didn’t build large rooms for the sake of it, usually. He spotted what looked like an old kind of control panel of some kind. He carefully cleaned off all the yuck and muck while trying to not damage the thing.
He was embarrassed to be so… mediocre at techno-magic. He hadn’t originally believed it would be such a useful and powerful tool. He remembered having argued that it defiled the purity of magic in a time long past. And he still somewhat stood by his point. Techno-magic didn’t help people understand magic. It made it possible to use incredibly complex spells and things without any knowledge whatsoever, which was a very dangerous thing in his opinion. What if the thing wasn’t set up correctly? A neophyte wouldn’t notice something was wrong until shit hit the metaphorical fan.
But the advantages had proved to far exceed even his expectations and the whole world had changed at an unprecedented rate. It had been such a short period of time in the grand scheme of things. He had missed most of it out of a misplaced pride and decision to stop interfering. He didn’t regret that, but he did regret not trying to understand everything, but alas with age he had grown too used to things being a certain way and had resisted change.
Ilyz caught himself and focused back on the present. He was reminiscing more and more these days. He didn’t know if dragons could die of old age, as none ever had, but he still felt like he was becoming a grandpa these days, thinking about the good old days. He smiled despite himself at the thought and brought back his attention to this most intriguing piece of equipment.
It seemed this thing had been used to… do something. It was rather complex actually as he infused a sliver of mana to bring it back to life. The thing spluttered and he withdrew. But he had felt the magical circuits and engravings that had started up and even some obvious damage to them. He was too curious now and actually spent a few minutes opening the thing up. He had rudimentary understanding of techno-magic, but his understanding of magic was probably the best in the world, so as he took it apart he soon recognized the different spells and intentions weaved into the metal. There were an overwhelming amount of them, some so small he had to cast a magnifying spell on his eyes to see them properly.
This truly was fascinating. What was amazing to him was that all of its parts were inherently simple. This was no grand spell, but an amalgamation of hundreds, if not thousands of spells flowing into each other without end to create something else completely. It was the exact opposite of a grand ritual that was one big monstrous construct of magic given life. It was obvious both had their strengths and weaknesses, but he already knew that. These kinds of systems were incredibly flexible in their use, but wasteful compared to a specialized ritual, but the ritual would only do one thing and one thing only. It would do it incomparably better, probably, but flexibility truly was a better quality in a spell than he had ever thought.
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Ilyz spent almost an hour going over and repairing what he could before he stopped. This should be enough to start up the thing, probably. He coursed some more mana into it and the panel and buttons lit up in a gentle hum. A strange interface popped up on a screen in the middle with all kinds of data and commands. Ilyz happily began going through it to elude the mystery that this place was before he saw something that made him stop. In rage and fear he didn’t hesitate to destroy the whole panel with a hulking fist.
This place shouldn’t exist.
He had to take care of that pesky spider now rather than later it seemed. If only to make sure it hadn’t discovered too many things about this place. He walked forwards fiercely now, smoke coming out of his nostrils as he was ready to set the whole Piece ablaze. He came out of a corridor and spotted a few spiders. A jet of flame cleansed them away instantly as he continued on his way, determined now.
He noticed a sign that was still somewhat readable and changed course. Of course the pesky queen would be there, he had no doubt in his mind. He soon came to a humongous room. It wasn’t where he was headed but it was on the way so he did peek inside to see how bad things were. The hangar looked like a mess and a few weapons were shooting as he poked his head out. Sadly, it was as he imagined it to be. Spider taking things apart, especially the weapons and destroying everything with their stupid feelers.
He grunted as he spit a bit of fire out of spite. Yet he knew he didn’t have time for this. He continued towards his goal and to his surprise a rather large tide of spiders came at him. They who had avoided him because they knew the futility of it were throwing themselves in his way now? It was clear the queen was trying to gain time so he decided that maybe he shouldn’t be giving her that luxury.
Casually burning the tide of spiders coming at him he accelerated towards his goal. He soon found himself in front of two huge doors and he took his true size again. Yet despite his size back to normal he would easily fit into these doors. He pushed the open with his front arms, ready for anything. He didn’t even have enough time to see through the crack that he felt something activating behind the door and he had to actually dodge.
Despite knowing what was probably waiting for him on the other side he hadn’t managed to dodge all of it. Several small holes pierced his body, not larger than a pebbled in size, but who had gotten through his body cleanly. The holes instantly filled as he had cast a healing spell when he had seen that he wouldn’t be able to dodge it all, but the amount of mana it took to heal himself was tremendous and he felt heavier already.
He finished opening the door with a huff as he looked into what he knew to be a testing chamber. Large enough for several ships. There, in a corner he saw her. A huge spider half his size, bulbous and disgustingly hairy. But that didn’t surprise him, what did was part of her head. It was made of some strange material, half transparent half chrome of some kind. The kind that reflects all the lights at certain angles.
That’s when he felt her try and prod him, telepathically. He recoiled in disgust and shut her out. She had the gift. It was exceedingly rare and he had only met a few entities that had it, but they had all been extremely dangerous. That’s also when he noticed three smaller figures to the side. Humans in cocoons with only their heads free. Something was strapped to their heads and connected to her. Was that how she had become smarter, or was she simply absorbing their knowledge? He didn’t know, nor did he care at this moment.
The weapons that had fired on him earlier seemed to have recharged and he suddenly turned invisible before they could shoot him again. He had also shrunk himself as it was too dangerous to be such a large target. He knew the queen knew he was still here as he felt her prodding at his mental defenses. Ilyz didn’t wait as he cast several delayed spells that would target the weapons he had spotted. He delayed them to not give away his position. He hoped she wasn’t as familiar with magic as him and wouldn’t be able to detect the latent spells hanging in the air before they fired off.
The first fireballs soared through the air and landed on their target and a few of the weapons fired randomly, hoping to hit the rather large target that he was supposed to be. Ilyz couldn’t help but grin. He spotted a few more of the anti-space weapons that were rather well hidden and repeated the trick. It took him a second to notice something was very wrong. A weapon that should have been destroyed fired at him and he dodged in the nick of time. How?
That’s when he somehow noticed all of his fireballs had been slightly off. He shook with rage at having been outsmarted by a spider and opened his mouth wide to fry the offender in his primordial fire. His invisibility seemed to be useless anyways as he shed it and opened his mouth wide. A stream of fire so hot it was white poured out of him at his target and he heaved for a bit after it was done. He saw nothing remained until he noticed that something was off. Shaking his head to try and get her out of his head he finally made a high pitched spell go off to throw her off. It worked and his head cleared. He had shot at an empty corner. She couldn’t truly control him, but it had been enough for her to get enough time to get something ready.
A strange contraption he had never seen started humming as the familiar feeling of anti-space gathered inside it, for a moment he wanted to scoff until he started understanding what it was about to do. But it shouldn’t be possible. Only it seemed that it might be. Ilyz was a cautious dragon at heart, so he did like he often did. One didn’t survive for tens of thousands of years taking risks after all.
He disappeared as he teleported back to the large cave just outside the building just as the weapon went off. He felt it, homing in on him, on his heart and knew he had to get out. Now. Roaring with fury at the injustice of such a weapon, he opened his mouth wide as he poured his fire upwards to collapse the ceiling and get out. It didn’t take long for the whole thing to collapse and he stood in a huge hole with stone falling down on him so he inhaled one more time before blowing it all to smithereens as he flew upwards and out of the hole, conscious that something that shouldn’t exist was after him, after his very life.
As his head finally broke out from under all the falling debris as he broke out, he saw something strange in the sky, a ship halfway destroyed was flying in the sky and was just about to crash on the border of this Piece. Through the glass of the cockpit he saw two unfamiliar faces gaping at him as their ship was about to land without slowing down.
At any other time he would have found it fascinating but he didn’t have time for it. Something was digging a hole effortlessly through everything that separated them and going straight at him. So instead he sped up and did what he knew to be dangerous. He flew straight up at the sky and into the dangerous currents of magic, desperately trying to escape a weapon that should never have been made.