“That is basically what happened,” Acnologia said, as he retracted his wings and passed through the thick layers of the clouds.
“Damn, that’s pretty savage,” Nyx said. “I’m kind of eager to meet the guy now.”
“Well then.” A voice rumbled in my mind. “Lucky. You.”
Acnologia extended his wings and floated in the air, just as we descended from the clouds.
A Dragon of silver scales hovered before us, his massive wings outstretched. Their length alone made Acnologia’s feel like a child’s. His eyes were a bright green, like rich emeralds, and stared at us intently, his annoyance clear within them.
“You have some nerve, Acnologia,” the old Dragon muttered, and his rage was obvious from his tone. “Colluding with the Eternals? You are a disgrace to the Dragon Clan.”
“Polaris, this is not the time for misunderstandings,” Acnologia said. “We have something to ask of—”
The old Dragon roared, and a blast of green fire surged from him. Acnologia plummeted down, narrowly avoiding the blast.
“How dare you?” Polaris muttered. “Ekliosis!”
All of a sudden, a pressure wave struck Acnologia from behind, taking all of us completely by surprise. We all fell off the backs of the Dragon in an instant. I looked up, watching as Irmeia and everyone else fell through the air. I turned around, and noticed that the ground was more than a mile beneath us.
That meant a lot of time to escape this fall.
I grit my teeth. Or a lot of speed to smash into the ground with.
“ZORAN!” A voice yelled. Freya streamlined her body and shot down to me, past everyone else between us.
“Freya, what are you—”
“Shut up, you idiot,” she said, and put her arm around my waist. She thrust her hands toward the surface. “Guliora!” she yelled.
A massive twister blasted from the ground, and the dark, hazy winds consumed us within. The speeds of the swirling wind created a cross-breeze that pushed us, slowing our fall. All of a sudden, I went from flying through the air to gently falling through it.
In a few seconds, I touched the ground once again, landing with a tap instead of smashing through it. Everyone else made a gentle touch down as well, just as I had.
“Freya,” I said quietly, my eyes sparkling. “That was amazing.”
“You owe me one,” the elf said, just as the attack cut off.
A roar echoed as I looked past the dying winds, and my eyes widened.
Acnologia hurled through the air, smoked dissipating from his wings. The Shadow Dragon shot through the skies and went crashing into the castle, breaking stone and roof before sliding down one of the tower walls. Polaris’ roared loudly and shot toward his fallen form.
There was no mercy in his eyes.
“Stay here!” I yelled at everyone else, and charged toward the castle. I called out to Acnologia, but the Dragon did not respond to me.
Nyx, I said. Is Acnologia—
“He’s still alive,” Nyx said. “However, he seems to have taken on a great amount of damage. This fight is completely one sided at the moment.”
I saw the castle entrance before me, and as expected of a castle that did not anticipate friends or enemies entering it, this one had no barrier to entry. And so, I ran right through the open entrance, following the sounds of crunches and roars.
I raced forward with my high-leveled agility, and slid to a stop right in front of the ongoing battle. Acnologia stood beneath a tower, with Polaris’ standing a hundred yards in front of him. The Shadow Dragon breathed heavy, and a trickle of blood streaked his dark scales.
“You seem weaker for some reason, Acnologia,” Polaris said. “Or maybe I have gotten stronger since the last time we fought.”
How strong is he? I used my Analyze skill on him.
Name
Polaris, the Star Dragon
Health
???
Race
Ancient Dragon
Mana
???
Level
???
Stamina
???
That. Is. Not. Good. My chest thumped harder with every word. If my Analyze skill displayed question marks instead of numbers, then that meant that person was much, much stronger than I was.
“It is fine, Eternal,” Acnologia said. “I will have to battle this idiot to make him help us. There is no other way.”
“But you’re getting pummeled here,” Nyx said. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s true.”
The Dragon looked at us, and a chuckle rumbled from him. “Such an observation is void when one is holding back.”
My eyebrows furrowed. “Eh?”
“Is everyone away from the castle?”
“Yeah,” Nyx said.
“Very good.”
What’s going on here? I blinked.
“What are you doing, Acnologia?” Polaris’ asked. He opened his mouth, and a blast of green flames surged out of it. Acnologia attacked back as well, summoning his own blast of dark flames. The two beams of colored fire conjoined, and an explosion surged out from the contact point. Smoke and debris flew into the air, and I searched for the Dragons within.
“Zoran,” Acnologia said. “Get away from here.”
“What?” Nyx asked, but I had no such questions. I ran out the same way I had come, and glanced back at me as I did.
Acnologia’s dark form rose into the air. The Dragon hovered in the sky for a second, and then I heard a sole word in my mind.
“Limiter off.”
A silver flame burst around Acnologia, and a monstrous roar exploded into the skies. The very sound tore grass and dust from the ground around me. My heartbeat raced as I watched the dragon sink to the ground, disappearing behind the towers.
“Zoran.” Nyx’s voice trembled. “I just checked Acnologia’s info screen. The details all just turned to ‘???’.”
I froze, looking to the castle. Just how strong are you, Acnologia? I asked.
An opposing roar sounded now, from Polaris no doubt, but its intensity was nothing compared to the previous one. Acnologia sent its roar into the sky once more. I saw stones and rocks crumble within the tower, breaking from just the sound. I stopped running now, and stood still, my heartbeat frozen in fear.
Suddenly, a massive flame of silver exploded out, consuming the entire castle. What had been stone and glass just seconds ago quickly turned to pure fire. Crumbling and crashing echoed as the castle began to come down.
What’s going on in there? I wondered.
“Limiter off,” Acnologia said.
A shadow surged out of the flames, and the next thing I knew the Dragon thudded into the floor, sending mud and grass flying around as he did. I stepped toward him, and then froze, realizing he had something on the ground before him.
And that something was none other than Polaris, the Star Dragon.
The old Dragon was still alive. However, I could tell from the state of his body that he was in no condition to fight.
“You are merciless, Acnologia,” the Star Dragon muttered. “First colluding with the enemy, and then taking down your own strategist.”
“I did no such thing,” the Dragon said. “I am here to ask for your help, not to collude with the enemy. But if you have such desire of a death wish, I am more than happy to oblige.”
The Dragon chuckled. “Still the cheeky one,” he said. “How shall I help you then?”
“Time Travel,” the Shadow Dragon walked around and stepped over to my side. From the corner of my eyes I could see Freya and everyone else run up to us, no doubt confounded by everything they had just seen from afar.
And why wouldn’t they be? Even I was.
“What about time travel?” Polaris asked. “It is but a theory.”
I sighed. Oh, if you only knew.
“Who do you know of that was looking into time travel?” Acnologia asked.
“Who do I know of?” the Dragon chuckl
ed. “Acnologia, I hardly meet a soul these days. You know of this. Do you really think I would know of some other creature or beast that was learning the knowledge of time?”
“Names, Polaris.” His voice was stern. “You surely have names of people who might do such a thing. Or does the Dragon that pursues knowledge not know these things?”
The Star Dragon raised its head, looking at us, and then lowered back to the floor. “I do not know names,” he said.
“Polaris, do not make me—”
“But I know of a man,” he continued.
Acnologia stopped, and switched into listening mode.
“There is a man that I came across before,” Polaris said. “One that seemed odd to me, but I could not tell why. I had not planned to see anyone that day, but for some reason this man had come across my path. And what was most odd was I hadn’t even been able to tell of his presence before I saw him.”
“How long ago?”
“I do not know, Shadow Dragon,” he said. “This man though, disappeared the moment he caught sight of me. However, before he was aware of my presence, he seemed to have been speaking to someone else, and I caught a phrase of what he spoke.”
“What was it?”
“The warriors from the future.”
I froze, and my eyes went wide at the sound of those words. There was no way he had meant anything but us. Warriors of the future was a generic term, but this man said from.
This is no mere coincidence, I realized.
“Where did you see this man?” Acnologia asked.
“Close to the Tsuyong river,” he said. “I was a mile or so from the banks.”
“That is useful information,” Acnologia said. “Thank you.”
“In return, I would appreciate you telling me why you need such a thing,” he said. “When I saw you, I was certain you were colluding with the enemy. However, these two here—” He looked at me, and then at Irmeia, who had now walked up to us. “Seem like Eternals, but their strength says otherwise. It seems I was mistaken in doubting your faith to the Dragon Clan.”
“That is fine, Star Dragon,” Acnologia said. “As for what we need this for, it is a long story.”
“Stories are knowledge, Acnologia,” he said. “And my thirst for knowledge is unquenchable.”
The Dragon sighed and he started telling the Star Dragon about what was going on, about how we had come back from the future, and everything else. I intervened once, telling Acnologia mentally that this was not a good idea, and all he responded with was ‘I will take care of it’.
I spent the minute or so they talked checking up on everyone and making sure they were all okay. Well everyone but Viola of course, who was still avoiding me. I’d given up on her at this point.
“So that is the tale,” Polaris said when Acnologia finished. “Very well. In return for this knowledge I shall provide you safe passage home.”
A solid wall of light, the shape of an arch, emerged before us, just like the one in the cave.
“This will take you back to where you had come in from,” the Star Dragon said. “I will teleport those Volcanic Bears as well as that odd human creature you left in one of my caves.”
“Odd human creature,” Nyx chuckled and I smiled.
“Thank you, Star Dragon,” Acnologia bowed.
I ushered everyone through the portal. They were all confused about what had just happened, since they had heard neither of the Dragon’s voices, but I promised I’d explain it to them later.
“Oh,” the Star dragon said, just as I an Acnologia were about to enter the portal. “There is one thing I forgot to mention.”
Acnologia stopped before the arch of light. “That is?”
“Before that mysterious man left, I managed to use my Analyze skill on him,” he said.
“And?” the Shadow Dragon asked. “What did you find?”
“I got a Ga’em error message,” Polaris said. “A simple statement of three words.”
I stared at him, my heart thumping like a dragon roar.
“Does not exist.”
***
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We stepped out of the portal, an Eternal and a Dragon.
And there before us stood everyone else — a pack of five bears, a still unconscious idiot who was starting to worry me a bit now, and four people who looked like they had a lot of questions to ask me.
“Okay, what was going on back there?” Freya asked, not letting me take even a step before asking me for answers.
Not that I blamed her for that. From their perspective, they’d just seen two Dragons duel it out, then nod and glare at each other silently for about five minutes before a portal summoned itself, bringing them back here. If something like that happened to me, I’d have also had a million questions to ask of the only person in the loop about what had just happened.
“Acnologia and Polaris had a little disagreement,” I started.
“What happened back there was a little more than a simple disagreement,” the elf frowned.
“I know,” I said. “Polaris didn’t like the fact that Acnologia was being friendly with me and Irmeia. He took it as a sign of betrayal since he was talking to us Eternals.”
“And this got resolved?” Irmeia asked.
“Uhhh…yeah,” I said. “Polaris for some reason was comforted by the fact that our levels are not as strong as an actual Eternal’s, and took that as a sign to mean we weren’t really Eternals.”
I could see Freya trying hard to hold back her laughter. Usually I’d have pouted, but I was honestly relieved. It felt like ages since I’d seen her laugh, or even smile for that matter.
“I presume we got what we needed?” Raffyr asked. Viola still stuck behind him, and did not look at me in the eye. At this point I just assumed this girl wasn’t going to ever try talking to me. “We went there to get information from Polaris, correct?” the old man asked.
“Right,” I nodded. “Polaris told us of one man who seems like he should know what happened to us.”
“And who is this guy?” Freya asked.
“We have no idea,” I said. “Polaris himself caught only a glimpse of this man. His identity is a mystery to us all. The only thing we can go on is his location. Polaris saw this man close to the river we’ve been trying to get to — the Tsuyong river.”
“So we’re heading there?”
I nodded. “It’s the only thing we’ve got to go on.”
“Fine,” she said. I looked at everyone else but saw no objections anywhere, other than for Oris of course, who was STILL knocked out.
“Raffyr, can you try and see what’s wrong with him?” I asked. “A person is not supposed to be out of it for that long.”
“I was going to ask the same,” the old man said. “I will take care of it. Give me a few minutes.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “We need a little break before we leave anyway.”
DING!
Congratulations! You have completed the quest: Back to the Future! Though you did not find a civilization, you have found a resource that could help you find a way back to the present. Rewards: Back to the Future II.
DING!
Congratulations! You have obtained a new quest: Back to the Future II! Polaris, the Star Dragon, has told you about a mysterious man he met. This man seems like he might know a thing or two about the time travel situation you are in. Find him to see if you can discover a way back home. Rewards: Unknown.
I sighed as I closed the screens.
In a world as complex as the Ga’em, I had a simple rule for myself. If a system the Ga’em had given out broke in the face of an individual, run away from said individual. Immediately.
And so that’s exactly why we were heading to where Polaris told us, to the find the man who possessed the qualities that I just finished describing.
“So, you don’t want to meet him?” Nyx asked.
Well, if an Analyze skill doesn’t work on him then I don’t, I said.
&nb
sp; “Are you suggesting this man, whoever he may be, is so strong that an Analyze skill doesn’t work on him?” Acnologia asked.
I shook my head. If a man is too strong to Analyze, the Ga’em menu sends back a normal Analyze screen but with questions in the places of normal information. If the Ga’em can’t even display something like that, then there’s something really off about the man.
“I am not saying your theory is off, Eternal,” the Dragon said. “In fact, I also think it is likely this being we are pursuing is of great strength. However, I strongly feel that doting on such possibilities and worrying about them will only hinder us.”
Fine, I said. But we’re going to have to revisit this situation soon.
“By the way, Acnologia,” Nyx said. “Isn’t it an issue that Polaris now knows about the future?”
The Shadow Dragon chuckled.
What? I asked.
“I was able to whisper the spell in silence as we walked away from him. The fact that we gave him information caused the Star Dragon to be very trusting — more than I had ever expected — and that was enough for the spell to work on him properly. Polaris’ is very trustworthy of people that give him valuable information. That’s why I told him about our issues in the first place — so I could get him to trust me.”
Wait. I held up my hand. So Polaris has forgotten about everything we just talked about?
The Dragon nodded.
Raffyr walked up to me. “I haven’t found any problems in this young man,” he said. “There is no brain damage, which is what I suspected at the start. It appears he is just in a very comfortable slumber.”
“Comfortable,” I mumbled.
“What do we do with him then?” Freya asked. “We’ve been lugging him along all this while, thinking he was a threat.”
“He might still prove a threat to us,” I said. “And additionally, he wants the same thing we do, to find a way back to the present. It will not be hard to get him to work with us. There are four of us, and just one of him. He has a significantly greater chance of getting back to the present if he works with us.”
The Eternal: Transcend - A LitRPG Saga (World of Ga'em Book 3) Page 13