Chapter 150: Palace |
Unlike most of the structures belonging to draconic nobility, the Dragon King’s Palace wasn’t situated atop a sky island, but rather built into the side of a mountain.
Though mountain might be too weak of a word to describe the behemoth that towered in front of Vivi. Thronemont was almost incomprehensible in size, with even the part that jutted up through the sea of clouds dwarfing a regular mountain. Her mind boggled to visualize what it would look like without the blanket of white obscuring the truth of its bulk.
And yet somehow, the Dragon King’s Palace didn’t look small on that titanic slope. Here was a building that was the culminating effort of the most powerful race in the world… and also the vainest. A structure representing the might of dragonkind, built over who-knew-how-many years. Millennia? These people were immortal, after all, and very concerned with their image.
As far as sheer scale went, nothing came close. The palace clung to the rock face, carved predominantly of polished gray stone. Dragons were fond of strong, imposing shapes—roofs coming to sharp peaks and huge platforms lifted by heavy square columns.
From this distance, not many fine details were visible, but she knew the craftsmanship was unequaled too, every column intricately sculpted and every architectural choice deliberated over by artisans with centuries or millennia of experience. Dragons were people in the end, and that meant some pursued art—and they’d had thousands of years to refine their skills.
“Remember, let me do the talking,” Embralyne said, interrupting Vivi’s admiration of the Palace. “They’ll have detected us coming in, so the Lord Commander will be awaiting me.”
She recognized the title. “That’s the one who knows I should be a prisoner, isn’t it?”
“He knew my mission, yes.”
“So should I put the manacles back on?”
“You’re going to tell him who I am?”
“Rather, I’ll simply decline to explain.”
“You don’t trust him?”
A plume of smoke came out of the dragon’s nostrils. “Hold your tongue. Of course I trust him. He has served my family faithfully for longer than some of your kingdoms have existed. But the first person to know that the Sorceress is in the Sky-Pillar Range will be my father. No one else.”
“I see.” Some of Embralyne’s prickly mood seemed to have returned. Probably anxious to see how all of this plays out. Can’t say I’m any different.
Thronemont and the Palace kept growing and growing as Vivi and Embralyne flew toward them. Despite the sheer speed they were traveling at, it took minutes to arrive. The effect bordered on absurdity; she had already seen the Palace while playing Seven Cataclysms, so she’d been mentally prepared, but the utter, ridiculous mass of the building would’ve left her gawking if not for her body’s resistance to reactions like that.
It’s not just that they’re vain, wealthy, and long-lived, she thought. They also use magic as easily as mortals breathe. Quarrying stone and shaping it isn’t that difficult, not for powerful sorcerers. Normal architectural limitations just don’t apply.
They entered through the bottom of the palace, a wide-open area twenty times the size of an airplane hangar—or larger than that. It was big enough she couldn’t gauge the scale. Certainly, a dragon could fly and maneuver around without worrying about colliding with the walls. There weren’t even pillars holding the massive ceiling up. Magic took care of such mundane details.
Even this foyer, so to speak, was larger than any manmade structure she’d seen. Four of the High King’s Palaces could fit inside, including the surrounding estates.
Just absurd, she thought.
Embralyne’s claws scraped against polished black stone about the same time Vivi set herself down. The gray dragon looked small compared to the open space, but someone like Cinereus wouldn’t make it appear nearly so roomy. Dragons didn’t keep growing infinitely, but it did take a few millennia for them to finish filling out.
Meaning most dragons never reached their full size. Several thousand years was a long time to survive even for immortals. They might not die of natural causes like old age, but in this world, there were plenty of unnatural causes to bring down powerful beings.
Which was another reason Cinereus was so dangerous. Anyone who could avoid death for that long, especially without becoming a hermit who shunned all conflict, wasn’t just powerful, but more than a little shrewd.
Embralyne transformed to Vivi’s side. At roughly the same time, she felt a pocket of space begin to warp a meter to their right, and she turned in that direction by instinct. She realized late that the instant detection of spatial phenomena was probably giving away her magical ability, especially when Embralyne herself hadn’t reacted.
Another dragon in halfdragon form materialized. This one had red-scaled wings, red hair, and yellow eyes. He struck as imposing a figure as any of their people, broad-shouldered and seemingly shaped from marble. Vivi had to look up to meet his gaze. While she might stand six and a half feet in this new form, that was on the short end. Women tended to be smaller than men, the same as with the mortal races.
Weirdly, she felt more comfortable all of a sudden. She’d grown deeply used to being the shortest person in any given room, and it would take a while for that ingrained expectation to go away.
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“Scorian,” Embralyne said.
“Your Highness.” He bowed. “You’ve returned.” The man’s gaze shifted to Vivi, and she could see that he made a note of how she bore no restraints. “With a guest?” he asked curiously.
Vivi assumed this was the Lord Commander of the Royal Guard, then. Embralyne had said he would greet them.
“I have. And yes, a guest. I’m afraid I can’t explain. I need to speak with my father.”
“An emergency?”
“Not as such. But urgent, still. Please make my father aware on my behalf.”
“I see.”
Despite holding high station, the man didn’t question Embralyne, much as the gatekeeper hadn’t. He simply bowed, spared one more look at Vivi, and teleported away.
Embralyne dusted a perfectly clean shoulder off, appearing agitated. She turned to Vivi, then paused. “Why are you frowning?”
“Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“In his eyes.”
“His… eyes?” The dragon seemed bewildered.
Vivi’s frown deepened. Had she imagined it? No, she definitely hadn’t. Before the man had [Blinked] away, some dark sheen had passed through his sclera, like a layer of oil sliding across the white. Not physically or literally—but rather her magical senses detecting something sinister.
She knew what she’d glimpsed. She just didn’t want to entertain the idea, because it explained so many things at once that she felt overwhelmed. And because it spelled nothing good, even for her. A real threat.
“Where can we talk safely?” Vivi asked. She had thrown up her own blockers, of course, but she’d rather leave this entry chamber.
Embralyne furrowed her brow at Vivi’s question. She deliberated for a few seconds, then said, “Follow me.”
The dragon [Blinked] away. Vivi traced the direction and popped into existence six hundred feet up and eastward. She turned in a half-circle as she looked around at her new environment—some ridiculously luxurious waiting room—but she’d seen plenty of displays of wealth recently, and she had something far more attention-grabbing to worry about than the room’s decor.
“That was your Lord Commander of the Royal Guard, I take it?”
“Scorian? Yes.”
“He’s been compromised.”
Embralyne stared at her.
“Mind magic,” Vivi said. “I don’t know to what extent. Total mind control would’ve been more apparent, I think. It was subtle. I would need to run a full analysis, but that’s rather conspicuous even if I take steps to conceal myself.”
Dragons, unfortunately, weren’t on the same level as even Titled mortal mages. She was bound by the rules a little more than normal. She didn’t know where Scorian stood in the global hierarchy, but he was probably as strong as Embralyne, if not even more powerful. Meaning at the very peak of mortal ability or beyond it.
“You’re serious.”
Vivi hesitated, suddenly confused. “You mean this isn’t the problem you brought me here for?”
Of course she had made that assumption. Embralyne’s comment about wanting to keep the Sorceress’s senses intact, along with the woman having gallivanted off to charge the Fourflame Amulet, were both instantly explained by her wanting the Sorceress to detect a mental manipulation threat inside the Palace. It was why Vivi had stood there, reeling, for a moment—her surprise so visible as to manifest as a frown on her face as she parsed all the implications.
Specifically, Vivi suspected that Embralyne’s worries stemmed from her father, which was also the ultimate reason Vivi herself was unsettled. Anything that could take over the Dragon King’s mind was, at a very minimum, an insidious Cataclysm candidate. And on the high end of that threat spectrum, not the low.
So why did Embralyne sound surprised? And at the same time, her silence was telling—she still hadn’t responded.
“You suspected it of your father only,” she surmised, closing the logical gap. “Not that multiple people in the Palace had been taken over.”
That snapped Embralyne out of her previous silence. Her eyes narrowed, and she replied hotly, “My father would never in a thousand millennia be overcome by any assault. Magical, physical, or otherwise.”
Vivi fought an exasperated sigh. “We need to speak plainly. If I’m right, this is serious. The only reason you would run off to empower the Fourflame Amulet is if there was a monumental threat that your father couldn’t solve… or rather, if your father himself was the threat. The one who needed saving. No?”
“The idea that the King of Dragons needs saving from anything or anyone is ludicrous at its very core. I won’t entertain the notion.” The words weren’t as heated this time. In fact, they came out as a mumble, the least certain Vivi had ever heard the woman sound.
A pang of sympathy went through Vivi. Though a few centuries old, Embralyne was, in reality, just into adulthood. And she’d spent her entire life viewing her father—rightfully—as a nigh-impervious, all-powerful being. Cinereus de Caldaros had turned away even the Ashen Hierophant from invading his lands.
“You need to explain what you know,” Vivi said firmly. “I have to understand what I’m up against.”
“You intend to help?”
Vivi fought the immense urge to summon her staff and deliver a thwap onto Embralyne’s head. She thankfully restrained herself. Doing that to her apprentice was one thing, but a prickly dragon princess another.
“Even if I wasn’t indebted to you, and I wasn’t indebted to him, I wouldn’t just let some nascent Cataclysm infest the Sky-Pillar Range.”
She wasn’t afraid of any individual threat. What she did fear was a danger of scale. One of her biggest limitations was that she could only exist in one place at a time. An army of dragons led by a mind-corrupted king scouring the mortal lands would be impossible to contain. And while certain members of mortalkind could fight off a dragon, by collective might, there wasn’t a question at all which society would win in a war.
Embralyne thankfully responded seriously. “Presuming this ludicrous theory is true, it’s still my father we’re speaking about.”
Vivi tilted her head, unsure what the woman meant by that.
“Meaning even you couldn’t defeat him.” Embralyne appeared to wrestle with herself for a moment. “…easily,” she gritted out. “You’ll be in danger. That’s why I’m surprised you’re so nonchalant.”
Vivi didn’t think the dragon would’ve ever admitted the Sorceress could defeat the Dragon King if she hadn’t opened up the sky and summoned a barrage of sky-meteors not two hours prior. “It still needs to be done,” she said with a shrug. “But this is tricky. If he really is compromised—”
She gave the dragon a significant look and received a terse nod and a growled response of “He was possibly acting strangely, hence my expedition.”
“—then depending on how deeply the mind magic has rooted, breaking it all at once with the Fourflame Amulet might be dangerous.”
She studied Embralyne curiously. While the dragon might claim to not be skilled with magic, she had to know that much. Indeed, the princess clenched her fists and stared down.
“I didn’t believe he was… compromised. Merely suspected, against all hope. But if he was, then breaking such an enchantment is my duty, no matter the cost. No matter if his mind is left shattered afterward. My father would disown me for even hesitating, when the alternative is him being left as a puppet for forces that would ruin his kingdom.”
Her sympathy grew. “It’s not going to come to that.”
“Won’t it?”
“No.” The surety in her tone made Embralyne look strangely at her. “But first, you need to explain. We’re well past speaking in circles around each other. So please—start from the beginning.”