Chương 532: BECMI Chapter 531 – Eternal Dragon

The Arch of Eternity on Mount Defiance had seen a lot of traffic over the years. Now it was waiting before someone who had waited over two thousand years to take this step. Cirruluxul was by far the oldest Great Wyrm alive now, all those older than her having succumbed to their years. Most had not chosen the two traditional deaths: the fight and Challenge to become a Ruling Dragon, or the slow death of the Last Sleep, where the dragon died upon their hoard and went to join their ancestors in peace.

No, during these last fifteen hundred years, the proper way for a Wyrm to go was in terrifying battle, raging and dominating, using all their power and showing the glory and majesty of a dragon to their enemies, the creatures who had defiled their world, and doing it until they died. Thor and Sif had planned whole minor campaigns around a Great Wyrm undertaking their death-quest.

Whole teams would keep the Great Wyrm alive through fights that should have killed it multiple times over, and the Wyrm would carve themselves a place in history witnessed by whole armies of allies and enemies alike. They went out with Valor, and with Thunder in their hearts. When they finally perished, their bodies were either completely destroyed to deny them to the Carnifex, or they were brought back and turned into items used to kill their foes after their passing.

The most sacred of items made from them were the Torcs of the Elder Wyrm, granting their might and strength to the dragon who wore them, passed down to their descendants. Cirru had had ten clutches of eggs over the centuries. I never asked who the fathers were, and she never bothered to inform me, although the resulting lineage of the children was easy to find out when I was so inclined.

She never took a true mate, for there were no other dragons like her, and her children were either standard Blues or the lineage of the fathers, who were spread between Gold, Ruby, Sapphire, and Blue. I was also pretty sure that the last two clutches were fathered by Opal himself, given they actually shared her coloration fully, whereas her other children were merely edged with white here and there, unique markings but normal for their kind in all other respects.

She had reigned as a Dragon Queen nominal, then true, for fifteen hundred years, and was the matriarch of her clan who none dared challenge. She had children who were Wyrms now. But only Duum and I were with her as we made that lonely trip to a distant mountain, and the Arch upon it that only the worthy could find or see. Even with threads of Immortal Power strengthening her, and the power of an Archsorcerer on top of the former magical wizardry allowed her, her time was coming and she knew it.

She stood there for a long moment, gazing upon it, the most powerful Great Wyrm upon this world, possessed of a hoard that had once been able to buy a nation, now Burned away in this war to protect and defend her lineage without a care, and no harm to her ego. If she asked, I could dig out enough gold to cover the throne room once more. It meant nothing. Only what she carried with her was truly important.

At last her ponderings on her past were done, and she turned her great head to look at me, floating up by her side, waiting patiently with Duum on my shoulder.

"When I walk out of here, my existence will challenge the Dragon Rulers," she stated calmly.

"I do not know how they will react."

"Given their reactions to the Night, Deep, Mountain, and Abyss Dragons, not well, I imagine." These were all unique Dragons, Immortal creatures of lesser stature than the Rulers, sponsored by Immortals and not a part of the hierarchy, and despised or ignored by most dragons.

"But Helos Himself unleashed your Sorcery, and in doing so, for all dragonkind. I think you know who finds you worthy of support."

"Indeed. I begin a new age for Dragons, paid for by the Carnifex. Other dragons will seek to follow me if they can, knowing a fourth path is possible."

"I can think of only three who might qualify at this point. A dragon becoming Eternal is about more than age. It is about being greater than a dragon, and how hard is that?" A sound of rushing wind was her equivalent of a laugh.

"I shall see you on the Road!" she declared loudly, great head rising up tall and proudly, blue lightnings sizzling madly around her now as she stepped forward. The Amulet about my throat pulsed and glowed in a myriad of colors. Her palest blue eye blinked as she felt the gaze of the gods of Heaven upon her, and the display of lightning deepened to quicksilver purple in an instant. It was time. She stepped through the Arch, upon the infinite road there, and strode through to Eternity.

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The bolt of power would have drilled through a mountain. Cirru came out of the Arch of Eternity an age category larger than she'd been, something that was not possible to non-Eternal dragons. It was not an increase in size category, i. e. one of the big changes, but it was still immediately visible and obvious that she'd grown larger. Furthermore, it had been done without having to engage in a dragonsleep, a side benefit of the Arch.

Her scales gave the illusion of staring into a sky when stared at, the white traces and streaks seeming to stretch and flow and making you forget you were looking at a dragon… until she moved, and it felt the entire sky was falling down on you! And that was what happened when she leapt into the sky, the clouds and winds rumbling to greet her as a storm spontaneously arose at the presence of the new Storm Dragon! But this time, I was riding her.

The blast of Immortal Power swirled around into Torus, my Hexar Shield whose power was to absorb IP attacks of any kind. An attack that could have bored for a mile or more through the mountains below us converged into a protesting stream of energy off to the side, and vanished. Dread THUNDERED.

The clouds all crackled simultaneously with lightning within them, and Cirruluxul turned her head and breathed a dragonbolt of lightning that had never been seen on this world into the writhing counterstrike, fueled by the energy bouncing out from within Torus and returning their own strike back to them with Spell Turning X, Return the Sentiment. The spell lit off on its way back to those who had launched it.

Getting all of their own attack back at them, as well as a Thunderbolt of the Great Wyrm, up-boosted with Radiance so the fuckers couldn't avoid or tank it, was not how they expected their day to start. Hidden behind illusions and dimensions, they thought their preemptive strike left them untouchable, but the Return followed the same path back as it did when launched.

When it slammed back into them, it had about three times the impact as when it was sent forth, a fact which totally startled those Immortals who had Cast it. It only killed and wiped two of them, the Contingencies of the other three 'porting them away before the explosions of Immortal Power from slain Avatars ruptured time and space in a quasi-nuclear explosion miles above us.

The storm rising around us blew fifty miles out in all directions in seconds as Nown absorbed the Immortal Power happily, and a tithe of it was drawn back down to Dread and the Torc about Cirru's throat. The Torc of the Eternal Wyrm, her own personal adamantine and mithral Artifact for accumulating Immortal Power!

"Someones have been waiting to kill you for a while, Cirru!" I judged, smirking at the vivus-chased clouds all above us, seething and writhing with sapphire-blue lightnings the exact hue of her breath weapon. Cirru was quite aware she would be dead without me there, but that was why I tagged along in the first place.

"I believe I should open my Eternal Valences quickly, yes?" she replied easily enough, resuming her course back south leisurely, me standing right behind her splayed frill and horns, ignoring the lightning that sparked between them as I held onto two horns leisurely, while Duum perched on her frill without a care as well.

"That would be an excellent idea. And now we know at least five of the Immortals involved in limiting the power of dragons who have deduced that you returned Sorcery to them. I'm sure your people will be thrilled to know that." As would the Ruling Dragons, no doubt, although the Great One might have already known.

"Ranks?" she asked shortly.

"The weakest of them were Empyreals, they were the two who lost their Avatars. Two Eternals, one Hierarch," I replied with another glance at the sky.

"That will be good knowledge to have on the Far Shore, Mistress," she murmured to me.

"There is every chance that all three of them 'ported home, which means they are back into the area where the Divine can act freely. Helos has always thought well of you," I reminded her, and her eyes flashed sapphire crackles for a second, proud of being worthy of a god's admiration!

"And a torrent of moonfire might have fallen from the sky and treated them exactly the way they tried to treat me?" she inquired sweetly.

"Or Dame Adama and Molniya beat them home and impaled them as they popped in. Fucking with the servants of gods is seldom wise. You let your own servants do that."

"To be utterly fair, we are both Eternals now. They don't have any servants who could measure up to that, except possibly Immortal Creatures."

"An unfortunate truth that doesn't stop the Divine from chastising them for interfering on the Mortal Plane." I had no sympathy. Immortals were, by and large, no longer natives of the Mortal Plane. That we had a couple that had been created who expressly were, like Himmelstern and Bloodcrown, whose allegiances were completely with Heaven, was very much a Bad Thing in the eyes of Immortal Society.

That we dared to judge them by how they treated mortals and had basically abandoned them for it really hit their arrogance and pride, and, welp, too bad, so sad. The lands we were flying over were still not restored to their prior northern beauty, the mountains cracked and shattered by some of the elemental conflicts that had gone on in this area.

The Arch of Fire had never gone up on this world, but the volcanoes had been here, and hundreds of miles around had been relegated to a Fireland it took us years to clear out with the numbers here, and the open Gates to Fire defended ferociously by expansion-minded Elemental nobles backed by efreet and Enthralled minions of the Carnifex abusing Wishes right and left.

Thirty-two different mountains had been turned into volcanoes, the entire nature of the mountain chain had been changed, and of course the dragons who used to nest in the area were enslaved or eaten outright. The Dragonfangs was just one of the Dragon kingdoms that had fallen to the Carnifex, the dragons involved just in disbelief that one force could do that to them. The Carnifex just did too good a job moving together and hunting their targets, and none of the Dragons had been prepared for them when they acted.

Except for us. There were Pyramids of course, spaced every eighty or so miles, Domains linked, alerting us to whenever Carnifex magic was used in the area, keeping the Spell of Preservation's anti-dimensional and anti-travel options in effect, really cutting down on the mobility of the Carnifex with anything less than Artifacts.