Chương 440: BECMI Chapter 439 – Rites of Rulership

The enormous eyes of seething crimson lightning in pools of ink fixed on the Dragon Ruler who had barely regained control of his tumbling flight. Opal flinched away from directly meeting the gaze of the image looming above the dome of her Throne Chamber, feeling the ire pounding on the back of his eyeballs and echoing in the magic all around and within him." WHAT DOES A DRAGON RULER IN MY LANDS!"

It took all his will not to writhe and bellow in pain as the magic of the spells in his mind THRUMMED with her voice inside his head. He was exquisitely aware THE LADY EDGE was not pleased with him, her fear of him was non-existent, her respect for him had plummeted to that reserved for rash hatchlings, and her readiness to kill him for effrontery was one wrong word away!

It felt like she had reached out into his very thoughts and was prepared to detonate all the spells in his memory, destroying him with his very own magic from within! His entourage was scattered across miles of sky and couldn't even look properly at the image, their plights even worse than his. Aye, some of them were dribbling glowing mana out of every orifice on their heads in pain!" I, I have come to bring home a wayward daughter of the dragons!" he called back, swiftly choosing to change his mission.

Contesting her control of the dragons of these lands, chasing her away to let dragons truly claim this wonderful territory, was obviously not going to be possible. The focus of the gaze seemed to shift down." Go away, Elder. I am where I belong." The winds bore the voice in a traditional manner, even as a section of the dome of the Throne Chamber fell open.

A graceful, powerful form in blues chased with purest cloud-whites, azure lightning sparking about her horn and frill, appeared with disconcerting speed and swiftness in the opening to within, swift as a hunting cat. Her pale eyes, just barely blue, met his across the miles without fear, with a controlled pride that was not born of mere arrogance, but a serene knowledge of who and what she was that even the eldest of dragons rarely managed to accomplish.

It was the gaze of dragon who knew her place in the world, and her place was where she was standing, beneath an elemental manifestation of power that could terrify an Immortal! The crackling eyes of crimson lightning rose to meet the gaze of the Dragon Ruler, and Opal again had to turn his eyes aside as the spells in his mind began to prickle." YOUR INTERFERENCE IS UNWANTED AND UNAPPRECIATED, DRAGON RULER. REMOVE YOURSELF."

His magic grew barbs in his own thoughts, and he knew any refusal was going to be his immediate doom. Without another word, he turned and beat for the distance, back the way he had come, dismissed as coolly as any mortal supplicant.

But this time, that gaze was on him for the entire distance, the barbs in his magic did not cease until he was miles past the Outer Fangs, and the dragons who had watched him arrive in awe and power watched him leave, chastised by the Lady Edge like any other dragon who did not know their place here. He could have called for them to rise up with him, to assault the Castle together, and bring it down with the might of their collected fury, then claim this land as a home for dragons as it properly should be.

He felt the magic in his head fade away, her grip on the very essence of magic, and Opal knew that if he had called to attack her, and the dragons had obeyed as their blood would insist, then every dragon in the Lands of Fire would have died together. He could feel it as surely as death rising before him! This was a matter beyond him. The Great One had dispatched him to settle this problem and see about claiming this land in its entirety for dragonkind, but that obviously was not going to happen.

He would have to leave it to the Great One to handle, if He so dared…

I watched Opal fly off in the distance as Cirru turned away from the roof access and hopped down, not even bothering to spread her wings as she glided back down to the throne, and the access closed up behind her. If he had come with respect, I had been prepared to receive him… warily, and fully ready to chastise him if he proved arrogant. But to demand I come out to him in my own center of power? That was placing me below him in the eyes of the local dragons, which I simply was not going to do.

These were my lands, the dragons just lived here. If I wanted them gone, they were gone, or I would kill them all, and not miss them if I did. They ceded me only scales and eggshells and possible action on my behalf if requested, and I asked little of them, save those sworn directly to my service so they might grow in power more swiftly. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The dwarves and their tithes/taxes gave me more than the dragons, and in return buildings hove themselves out of the dark volcanic rock, basements were excavated, tunnels made, roads leveled, fences went up for miles, whole lines of hills separated into level terraces for growing crops and pasturing livestock, and the like. It took only minutes of my time here and there, given my expanding power, but it saved them days, weeks, and months of work, if not years for some of the terrascaping.

In turn they gave me goldweight, and ever more artful craftcoins to Burn away for magical research into higher order spells. Said research took at least ten times the cost for researching even IX's. With nowhere to draw lessons on the magic from, I had only the roughest guidance from Raising existing spells into Eternal magic to go on… and some extremely explosive consequences for getting things wrong.

In other words, I didn't actually do spell research at the Castle, despite the mana environment being the absolute best for such things. I rather liked doing test castings above, below, or around the strongholds of followers or beasts of Entropy, so that if things went wrong, the side effects fell upon the deserving. Given how devastating some of the'Whoops, this works completely the opposite way it's supposed to at Valence XII' accidents I had, much hilarity was had for one and all.

As the nation of Sythia began to rise to the south and east of me around the great river there, Sif and Thor returned from some of their escapades to begin the process of founding their own nation in the breadbasket region that was Federyn on the Far Shore, taking the Bolle clans and the various wild tribes there and beginning the process of making a strong and secure land there at the borders of the Rings of Fire.

It was a large area of land to clear, and in this iteration, it was going to be expanding south, to the lands claimed in my time for the Shires and Warsherz, to gain access to the sea there, but for now the great central lake would be enough for them. Sythia might have dreams of conquering it at some point, but they were going to find it a very hard nut to crack if they tried to do so.

The first of the Forsaken from the Delphan Empire were Gated in to join them, happy to be away from the magocracy and ready to try a new life on a distant world, where mages stood equal with magic-null warriors, not over them. New mixed blood in time would yield a new people who didn't cling to their pasts like most tribes did, but like the Church of the Morning, looked to the future and a new day.

I watched the Immortals working slowly to gather the tribes of Sythia, forming a theocracy where wizards were subservient to the priests of the nation. But the favor of the Immortals would allow them to create great things and reach heights of magic and power even the Delphans would respect, an empire that would last over two thousand years before it imploded from internal corruption, decadence, and Immortal support turning to scorn.

They would be one of the most powerful cultures sent to the Hollow World to survive, along with the Hellenic remnants, but like so many other Empires, the machinations and contempt of Immortals would bring them crashing down. In a very amusing twist, despite all of their accomplishments, no Sythians had managed to attain Immortality. It was like being blessed by the Immortals had removed that right from them, and so they never gave rise to one of their own. Lean on the Immortals, don't be rewarded for doing so.

At least the Hellenic Empire was killed for disappointing its founders, who had gone on to Immortality and been let down by their descendants… as well as infiltrated by Entropic ideals and betraying their heroic origins. The Gallivants were starting to build a legend that would become myths, however, acting like heroes without being conquerors, kings who could lead without tyranny, priests who could bring faith without intolerance or fanaticism.

The Avatars all had Words of Creation driving them forward, and a Divine Awareness of the power of the Alignments nobody else on this world possessed. Sif and Thor were plenty happy to build foundations for the gods in the new nation they were snarkily calling Brightmoor, building something newer and greater out of the ruins of the old.

It was going to take them a long time, but they were going to be the anchors for a faith that was going to grow across the world, and we'd see how the overconfident Immortals secure in their place and power and not really doing a whole lot to improve the lives of mortals in the world did about a drive to improve themselves that was a religious calling… And thus years rolled by, as I engaged in spell research and building my own sets of surprises around the world, with the full knowledge and approval of Nown.

It was going to take centuries, but things were going to be different here in the future...

In the skies about Castle Doomrose, magic danced. These were the moments that the older dragons treasured the most. Even those engaged in deep sleep would rouse themselves, come to the entrance to their lofty caves, and sit down to watch the magic at play.

Younger dragons had no comprehension of the powers at play here, but the energies sent them joyfully to wing, and they swooped and dove through the winds and the colors that lit up the sky, filled with vitality and excitement and energy and exultation without knowing why. It was considered very lucky by the dragons to use the Nights of Dancing Magic for mating flights, too.

Dragons gazed at colors throbbing in three different spectra, having to use magic of their own to gaze upon them all, and something deep inside them, shackled by wills not their own, stirred as they beheld Patterns, Seals, Formations, Circles, Polygrams of various types, and Runes of mind-aching power and purity swirling amid Thunder of such awful clarity it made their ancient hearts shudder to even feel what such music could represent. There were other places on this world where magic might be singing.

But nowhere save the Rings of Fire did magic DANCE. They couldn't really see her as she moved through the sky, wielding energies with a poise, focus, and control the great wyrms could only envy. On the roof of her Throne Chamber, fortunes in gold and silver Burned away in arcane magic, powering and joining the dance as wealth greater than most of their hoards vanished. Magic danced, and I listened to its Chords as I danced along with it.