Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 47 - Against the Wall (Patreon)

“We can’t keep going like this,” said Eyik, his shoulders back as he stood proudly before Masasha.  In the past, many dragons had taken the deity trial of the Bound Sky as an opportunity to set up various kingdoms.  Some had even been so successful that they had used it as a springboard to creating their own faction. 

Masasha had never cared about any of that.

What she did care about was her responsibility to the people who followed her.  Eyik was her most loyal subordinate, and in any other trial, he probably would have been the one in charge.  Despite that, he had shown no signs of dissent.  Instead, he recognized that she was simply better suited to the task than he could ever be, and he’d used the resultant freedom to work on his own progression.

He was knocking on the door of peak deity, too.  He’d already cleared the final hurdle.  He had climbed the last great wall.  And he had probably exhausted the limits of his potential.

His was not an abnormal situation.

In the grand scheme of the multi-verse, vanishingly few ever made it to his position.  His progress was nothing to dismiss, and the numbers suggested that, even among those who’d reached deity, perhaps one in a billion ever managed to climb to the peak.  The ratio of those who made it to transcendence was even more depressingly anemic.

By all rights, he was one of the empire’s finest.

It just so happened that Masasha was better than him, and in just about every way.  More importantly, he was no leader, even if he’d been thrust into that position simply by virtue of his power.  So, he’d been almost relieved to find that Masasha was willing to step into that role.

For her part, she wished she hadn’t.

Most of the years since arriving in the ancestral world had been spent on various administrative duties.  At times, she led expeditions to fight beasts, but leadership required much more of an investment than she could have anticipated.  That had prevented her from making any progress concerning her true goal – finding her father and bringing him home.

He was out there.

The bracelet was proof enough of that.  More importantly, they’d caught a few orcs who, after interrogation, had told tales of a wild dragon with blue scales.  One of their leaders had captured and tortured him, and from what Masasha had gathered, that blue dragon’s mind had broken.

But minds could be recovered.

There were specialized Healers who could accomplish fantastic feats.  Their services weren’t cheap, and often enough, they only accepted political favors as currency.  However, Masasha felt certain that her clan would do whatever it took to bring her father back from the brink.

He was important, after all.  A powerful deity in his own right.  In the coming conflict, his participation would be invaluable.  And that was saying nothing of Masasha herself.  She had spent a lifetime building cache with her superiors.  They owed her.  And once she brought her father back to the Empire of Scale, she intended to call all the markers due.

But she couldn’t do anything until she found him.  And she couldn’t find him until they overcame the splinter faction of dragons. 

It would have been so much easier to simply make peace.

That wasn’t going to happen though, and for a variety of reasons.  The first was that the situation on Orveth Kaal was a microcosm of the wider conflict within the Empire of Scale.  A border skirmish by another label.  The Vyrins were the enemy, at least for the time being.  And that made peace impossible.

The second reason was a lot more personal.

The killing had already begun, and no one was going to let it go without significant reprisal.  Did the circumstances matter?  No.  The reality was that they’d lost some of their own.  Vengeance was required.

Finally, there was a more practical concern, which was why Eyik had come to her.

“How many not from Bas’eltion?” she asked.

“There are seven from the Vyrin expedition in the top ten on the Ledger,” he answered. “Three are people we don’t know.”

She gripped the arms of her chair.  It wasn’t a throne.  Not really.  It wasn’t nearly as ostentatious as some might’ve had built.  However, it still played much the same role.  The rest of the room was built to match, with soaring ceilings meant for draconic size. 

Out of respect for her choices, Eyik had taken his humanoid form.  Most of the other dragons in Bas’eltion never bothered, even when they’d requested an audience with her.

Masasha would have done the same, but she knew that was a mistake.  Forcing them to adjust to her preferences put her in an advantageous position.  It also told her just how under her control all the others were.

And the answer to that unasked question was disappointing.  Most of the expedition followed her, but she had begun to lose her grip on the strongest among them.  When they came to speak to her, they did so in their dragon forms.

They also failed to show her proper respect.

Masasha almost wanted to simply let someone else take control.  Let them deal with all the problems that came with leadership.  Maybe even Eyik would do it. 

But each time those thoughts entered her mind, they met the same response.  If she gave up control, she would be forced to act according to their plans.  Could she go off on her own?

Certainly.

But in a place like Orveth Kaal, that would be a death sentence.  The orcs were still out there, though they were conducting themselves in an entirely unprecedented way.  They didn’t attack unless cornered, and instead, had spread across the entire ancestral world.  According to some of her Explorers, they’d been spotted searching for and finding the cells meant to be cleansed during the deity trial. 

More troublingly, they seemed to be working with the Vyrin expedition, who sent teams into those cells once found.

That should not have been possible.

Orcs did not work with dragons.

They were volatile, aggressive, and uncooperative creatures.  Even getting them to form complete sentences was a chore, as they repeatedly discovered during their various interrogations. 

What did it mean?  Masasha had no idea, but she suspected that nothing good could come of that alliance.

On top of the threat posed by the orcs, the beasts were always a problem as well.  Then there were the Vyrins, who’d proven they wouldn’t hesitate to kill other dragons. 

And lastly, Illska was still out there. 

Masasha liked her chances in an individual fight against any other dragon.  But against Illska?  Fighting her would test Masasha in ways she didn’t want to think about.  Perhaps she could win.  They had reached similar levels of raw power.  But Illska was Illska, with all the reputation that came with that identity.

The woman who’d gained Mano’leth’s attention was a legendary fighter in her own right. Masasha had no interest in combat against such a dragon.  Even if she won, there would be a price to pay for that victory.

“They won’t stand for it,” Eyik stated evenly, referring to the rest of the dragons in Bas’eltion.  They’d come for personal rewards, and the rankings on the Ledger were dominated by others, they would be forced to act.  “They want to move forward.”

“They want a war.”

“They do.”

“Illska is searching for a cultivation opportunity,” Masasha pointed out.  “The second she finds it, she will be incapacitated.  That’s when we attack.”

“And what if she doesn’t find one?” asked Eyik.  It was a valid question.  There were no guarantees when it came to cultivation, especially at their level.  Nearly a century in Orveth Kaal sounded like a long time, but there was a good chance that it wouldn’t be enough for Illska to find what she needed to take the next step.

“Do you want to fight her?”

“We have superior numbers, levels, and cultivation,” Eyik said.  “The others –”

“Are short-sighted fools who believe themselves invincible,” Masasha interrupted.  “They dismiss the threat too easily.  Even if Illska is otherwise occupied, the Vyrins are not without strength of their own.”

“They are few.  We are many.”

“What about the others?  Those demigods aren’t powerless.  You saw what happened to Desia.”

“She was overconfident.”

“Oslo? Araki?”

“They were…”

“Dismissive.  Insane.  On the verge of surrendering to their attunements.  I am aware of their issues,” Masasha said.  The reality was that the Bound Sky had become something of a dumping ground for highly talented but unstable deities.  Often, those dragons were effective within the parameters of the trial, largely because it centered on slaughter. 

They were good at that.

But anything requiring subtlety?  That was much more difficult for them.

“They were still soundly defeated,” Masasha added.  “Desia still hasn’t fully recovered.”

Physically, the dragon was fine.  However, she had been psychologically unprepared for the punishment they’d inflicted upon her.  Sure, she tried to hide it behind aloof dismissiveness, but Masasha recognized it for what it was.  She’d barely left Bas’eltion since that event, and she didn’t seem in a hurry to change that.  Instead, Desia treated it like a holiday, being waited on tooth-and-claw by the drakes she’d brought along as her retinue.

“So we should cower in place?” Eyik asked, his hands flexing in frustration. 

Masasha didn’t immediately react.  Instead, she remained in place, sitting impassively on her not-a-throne. 

“No,” she said at last.

“Then what?”

Masasha took a deep breath.  It was always going to come down to a fight, and sooner rather than later was probably best.  After all, they’d both reached the peak of the deity tier.  Better to kill Illska now before she had a chance to meet whatever cultivation goals she’d set for herself.

“Send messages to our assassins,” she ordered.  “Begin preparations for an all-out attack.  As soon as our people are ready, we’ll set out.”

“The entire expedition?”

“No,” she answered, shaking her head.  “We won’t convince some of them to come.  Speed is of the essence.  Once we leave Bas’eltion, we stop for nothing.”

Eyik let a smile creep onto his face.  “So it shall be.  They will fall.”

                          *

Illska was frustrated.

If she’d been anywhere else, she might have gone out to find something to kill.  Something big and strong that could give her a good fight.  That wouldn’t solve her problem, though. 

She could feel it, just over the horizon.  She had reached the limit of what the system would allow.  If she wanted to progress further, she needed to transcend.  And yet, there was something missing. Something she could neither see nor understand.  It was like a wall, and one far too tall to climb.

Her beloved had tried to give her advice, but it had ultimately turned out to be useless.  She couldn’t follow his path any more than she could breathe with his lungs.  That simply wasn’t how it worked.

Every person’s journey was different.  Every transcendence was personal, characterized by their identity as well as how it related to the system itself.  The most common piece of advice – if such a label existed for a rarity like transcendence – it was that she should know herself.

And she did.

She knew who she was.  She knew what she wanted.  And she knew how she preferred to get there.  But as with every other tip she’d been given, that had proved insufficient to help her meet the ultimate goal.

Time was running out, too.

Not in the literal sense.  She would live for thousands more years.  Tens of thousands, likely – assuming she didn’t run afoul of something too strong to fight on even footing.  With all that time, transcendence should have been assured.

Again, that wasn’t how it worked, though.

Momentum was a factor.  At a certain point, a person’s stagnating progression became an immutable fact of their identity.  Spend too long as a deity – or a demigod – and that became who you were.

People could break past those barriers.

Demigods did it all the time.  But deities?  That didn’t happen.  Few managed to transcend after spending an inordinate amount of time at the same stage of progression.  Most people overcame that by making tiny improvements.  Cultivation.  Attribute bonuses from training.  Feats of Strength.  They all kept a person moving forward. 

But Illska had been sitting still for far too long.

She needed to take another step.  In short, she needed cultivation. 

Yet, the only location within all of Orveth Kaal that could support her was the core itself.  And that would rip her to pieces.

She wasn’t certain she would survive that.

The only reason she even considered it was because Elijah had done just that.  He’d broken through the outer shell and used the very Worldseed for cultivation.  It was proof that it could be done.

But for the first time in her life, Illska had begun to wonder if someone was just better than her.  Sure – she had met plenty of people who qualified for that label.  They were better fighters.  Better cultivators.  Higher levels.  However, she had never felt so distinctly inferior as she had when realizing what Elijah had done.

And he was just a demigod.

If he could do it, then so could she.

Over and over, she continued to tell herself that.  Still, she floated a few dozen miles from the ninth ring, incapable of pushing herself forward.

Finally, after a long time, she took a deep breath, flapped her wings, and began her journey.  She would keep up with her beloved Mano’leth, even if it killed her.