Chương 492: BECMI Chapter 491 – Wakefeast

My Ringlands were not quite the largest of dragon kingdoms on the world, as the Dragonfangs well to the north in Eislas held more true dragons… but it was by far the most stable and powerful, with rather excellent working relationships between the dragons who laired here and the various tribes of humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves who lived below them on the foothills of the Ringfangs.

Part of that was because it had only one true ruler for that entire time period, and even the bravest and most foolhardy of dragons had been extremely reluctant to battle me. The last one had been an intruding Red Wyrm who had acquired an Artifact capable of surrounding him in an Anti-Magic Shell, and so he thought himself invulnerable to me and my magic.

Pierce All Defenses had poked exactly one volley of simul-cast Greater Shards through his little Grayfield and upon him, he didn't have any back-up magicks that could work to protect him, and I had blown him out of the sky in exactly six seconds, frozen and shattering on the way down to the Ring of Fire far below. I was sure the Dragon Rulers had been paying strict attention, seen how I disposed of him, and were congratulating themselves on not trying something similar.

"For a Red, he was a remarkably civil and clever bastard," Cirru nodded, slinking forwards to the beginning of her Wakefeast. The first cuts of meat were already floating up for her attention.

"He definitely knew how to look after his own skin, and never let his urges throw him into his doom, up until the very end. He admitted he would have liked to take a run at me, but he said he felt better forcing me to oversee the dispersion of his hoard among his descendants, and watching the fighting sure to follow." Ignaxilliumvythiux had quietly set up agreements with some of the dwarves who had moved in under his tower, aiding with the melting of steel and the forging of fine implements.

In addition to some rather stunning statues of himself decorating his lair, he'd constantly made a fair amount of gold, and without having to raid and loot, he'd swelled his hoard nicely. Even a thousand gold a year for centuries adds up to a lot of gold, after all! Of course, he had raided and looted, just a very long distance away… and to the west.

Thor and Sif had fine dragon-slaying reputations, centuries for that reputation to spread, and dragons who came into Brightmoor territory with attitudes became alchemical components rather swiftly. The Bright Emperor and Empress didn't put up with dragons in their lands, and their lands were always slowly growing.

"Taumarin and Zelsior walked the Arch, too," I added, as she laid down and let me feed her, slowly savoring every dish. They were two more Eternals, one on Kheper, one of Sif's students. Cirru naturally knew of all those at the Apex.

"With you waking, Keeper Raumdon and Elder Jingill will take the walk, too."

"Not Chivildivil?" Cirru asked around her rumbling purrs of contentment, palest blue eyes rolled back nicely as memories swam up with every mouthful, and Duum polishing her up industriously.

"Our gnomish elder feels he needs some more tempering on the higher technologies first. When he makes his first magitech capacitors, what he wants to call his Dawnstones, he says he's confident he can make it."

"Ah, a unique addition to the magic and technology sphere of knowledge. Of course," she understood.

"The Shaden did not make it up here yet?"

"Emeril is nudging them this way in his guise as the Stûnarch. He likes repeating their stories of the surface back to them to make sure they aren't complacent while staying below. He'll definitely have them up here before the Cataclysm hits." The soul jewels I'd brought over from the Far Shore, allowing them to wield Divine magic, had been extremely important for their survival, but he was also directing them to the Church of the Morning and gods thereof…

which had a heckuva time answering them when the Shaden couldn't see the sun or the heavens to dream of more.

"On the western slopes where they can get a good idea of the things Immortals pulled on their ancestors?" Cirru asked knowingly.

"That does happen to be the most convenient route to the surface, according to the scouts he's had them send out," I agreed, moving on from the first fifty pounds of beef to the next dish, a barrel-full of perfectly seasoned shrimp the size of my hand. Cirru's head was taller than I was now, so each shrimp was just a tiny nibble I floated over to her, bringing back memories of good times at sea, eating lots of fish, coastal communities, salt air, and sunny beaches lazing about all the time.

"Did you dream of anything important?"

"Pearl." I raised an eyebrow at her sharp tone.

"I am hearing whispers on the winds that she's riling up the Chaotics. She may think you sent Ignaxilliumvythiux after her, or is treating him like your subordinate and it was an insult for him to come after her for his Final Fury when he was so clearly your minion." I considered that as very seasoned shrimp drifted over to her polished ivory fangs, electricity snapped, and perfectly braised prawn floated into her mouth, one by one, all of them caressed by a remarkably agile tongue for something that size.

"She really wants the Ringlands, I take it?" The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Yes. And she's incredibly proud and looks down on the mortal races entirely." Dragons most assuredly not one of THOSE.

"The idea of so many dragons working for or obeying a mere elf probably causes her acute gastrointestinal distress, as it were. The fact you humiliated Opal and he isn't doing anything about it likely just makes her crazy. She is definitely whispering to dragons to do something about such a travesty." I just nodded understanding.

"Then we watch for signs of an invasion of Chaotic dragons, and prepare. Given the Rings of Fire, she'll surely concentrate on Reds and Ambers eager to live here." And who had fairly limited representation, all things considered, given their overbearing pride, unwillingness to work with others, and extremely violent tendencies to anything not perfectly obeisant to them… or not overwhelmingly more powerful.

"How advances the rest?" Cirru asked after finishing off the shrimp and starting on a full thousand-pound bluecrest tuna done in sixteen different styles, some of which I was cutting apart as she sat there, thin enough to see through.

"I have all the Pyramids in place, and Nown confirms the Alignment is fine. I don't think there's an intact Entropic Artifact left on the planet, and of course the Annelids have been gone for over three centuries. The Immortals haven't caught on, but it turns out there's more of them buried in the crust, not just in the Hollow World." Her rolled-back eyes opened up and spun back on me, gleaming like palest blue sapphires.

"That… is not good news," she reasoned.

"How many?" she asked grimly.

"Over five thousand of them." A ripple passed over her, and Duum patted her reassuringly.

"In stasis, sleeping?" she asked, calming back down.

"Yes. And a task for Eternal Aspirants. Emeril has discovered the locations of several hundred of them, and is keeping to locating the rest. Nown can't see them directly, only narrow them down to a thousand cubic miles or something, and sometimes not even that accurately if they're near a major lavaflow or something."

"This will be true on the Far Shore!" she hissed out, making the connection.

"Yes. It's more unwelcome news from very ancient times, just bottled up and waiting to explode badly in the future." I paused for emphasis.

"There are ten of them below the Ringlands." Cirru gazed at me, I looked back at her as I continued to artfully carve this fatty, perfectly smoked and seared and braised and boiled and fried and many, many other ways it was treated tuna.

"They were not there before, were they?" she asked tightly.

"Given the way they are almost geometrically located beneath my lands… no, they weren't. They were moved into position some time in the last century from elsewhere, and it was my stumbling onto one when it started to degrade the underlying Darkstone sheet beneath the Ringlands that alerted me to the existence of them.

"Finding the others meant deep-scanning every single area of the mantle underneath us until I found all the locations I couldn't scan, then having to go there and verify their existence with Gina personally. We've learned enough that Nown could narrow the area down to something Emeril can scan through in about a day, and that's been one of his tasks all the while you've been asleep."

"And Immortals are watching…" she whispered, even as she savored those slices so thin you could see through them literally falling apart on her tongue.

"At least Nifl. She really wants an excuse to let go on us. I've seen traces of at least two others, who I'm assuming have taken it upon themselves to patronize the morlocks, garls, and other ape-men, but I don't know who they are. They are probably part of the Primeval clique dominated by Ssa, but my gut says Wulshar pointed them this way after I repeatedly killed his Avatars for messing around in these lands." Wulshar being an Ascended Neanderthal himself.

"The same fools who excavated the Hollow World and Underdark tunnels to begin with?" she nearly spat, then distracted herself with a full steak plopped directly on her tongue in a shower of sparks. Mmmm-mmm!

"Likely the very same. Doro the Explorer and Spock are very much newcomers to those Immortals, so Emeril knows little to nothing of them, and looking for answers invites attention. He's attempting to back-door the discovery by stumbling across planes and worlds they've messed around with and then reporting them, asking for clarification and such, but that's a gradual process."

"They are probably as old as the first dragons, so that is not unusual. I could inquire of the Great One. You know he has a great interest in me," Cirru volunteered. I had the grace to sigh.

"I won't ask that of you. Anything you ask of him is an obligation he can demand in return. The Ringlands aren't his idea of a great dragon kingdom, either, even if mortality rates and infighting are far below that of any other such on the whole planet."

"It might be the whole 'dragons pursuing paths that are not orthodox to the Great One's view on dragons'," she noted with mental quotes in a disparaging voice.

"The fighting between the branches just kills the weak, in his eyes." I literally had four great wyrms working for me, aging gracefully and choosing to stay my subordinates when others had come into Elder status and gone with their racial traditions, mere citizens of the Ringlands now. Two Golds, a Ruby, and a Crystal, the last quite an enthusiast about working with mortals, as Crystals were among the weakest of dragons and tended to get bullied in every other Dragon Kingdom.

We had a higher Crystal population than any other Dragon Kingdom I knew of, although it wasn't blindly apparent, as many of the older Crystals lived among the human populations and had their own followings of human clans that were dozens of generations old now. Cirru stood out as my closest confidante among the dragons, and a Neutral, one of Opal's branch, not one of the Lawfuls under Diamond the Star Dragon as were the rest of the Great Wyrms under me.

She was also plainly not a normal Blue anymore, to the great interest of the dragons! But it could be said that all dragons who used to be my subordinates were exceptional...

"Not an uncommon viewpoint, if completely untrue. Actually, it's the gifted ones who tend to die, as older dragons kill them rather than waiting for them to age, or they overreach themselves with their own egos." All of which I'd been observing inside and outside the Ringlands as dragons did their things over the centuries. Sometimes they dragged me into their affairs as an impartial observer, sometimes Cirru just reported on events from her position as an adjudicator.