I spot land peeking over the horizon, distracting me from further analysis. I should be coming ashore between Peak City and the Capital. A quick map check confirms that I have been running in the correct direction. The vague shapes resolve themselves into large dunes and slow down my steps. I’m leaving quite a trail of spray behind me. Running over land with these speeds is guaranteed to leave a large furrow behind me as I will need to literally plough through the soil.
I realise I forgot to let Tree absorb seawater the moment my feet touch land. I cast a quick glance backwards, but decide to move on, the circle contract now screaming in my mind. I have slowed down a lot and need to reinforce the ground with each step I make.
I can fly, but that qi-inefficient mode of transportation will drain me empty before I’ll get halfway. I’ll think about it when I’m closer and time is running out. The dunes blitz by under my feet, and I see a short range of hills before running across flowing grass-covered hills. Copses of trees dot the landscape, and I spot some villages in the distance.
‘A BIRD? A PLANE? SUPERMAN? NOPE, JUST A BIRD.’
There, that should keep the casual observers at bay. I scan one of the villages as I pass by near it. It has some fields behind a range of trees. I also spot small, dirty huts near the fields. This contrasts with the nice stone houses of the village proper and only showcases the differences in quality of living.
‘Out of sight, out of mind’ also seems to apply to this world. Seeing ragged slaves toiling for the food you eat must be an appetite spoiler. I suppress the white knight inside myself at the deplorable conditions the farmers live in and move on. I have to put some extra effort into suppressing that aspect of myself at the sight of thin, fur-covered children working the land.
That does bring up the question though, how did I manage not to see any of these slave farms so far? The first village I came across must have been supplied with Tower loot. Kind of telling that buying supplies from a magical dungeon is preferred over farming by the general human populace.
My previous conclusion on human farming must thus be wrong. Angeta scoffed at the idea, but I suspect that has more to do with the strict caste system the beastkin seem to operate on. Only places where dungeon food can’t easily be transported to seem to be equipped with farms.
Looking ahead, a relatively small mountain range blocks my direct path. I do a quick cost/benefit calculation and decide to cross straight over it instead of running around. Rock is harder than soil, and the extra stepping force I can use there compensates for the climbing.
Ignoring the villages in my path, I make good time. I run around any sentient life with big, smooth turns. My speed causes quite a bit of wind, the field of ‘IGNORE ME’ qi covering doing nothing to hide the trail of rustling trees and grass in my wake. I also ignore the temptation of running directly through the human villages. The locals’ frustration at having their houses suddenly destroyed would just get taken out on the involuntary labour force.
The hills have been gradually rising, the mountains ahead are high enough to have small white peaks. I look up and see a familiar white dot trailing behind me. She is catching up to me again. I gained quite a lead with my sudden departure and while running full tilt across the sea.
I don’t like the fact that my scanning process doesn’t reach her. Again, some frustration at my neutered powers bubbles up. Not being able to scan for multiple kilometres is frustrating after being able to scan entire empires at once. I sigh while jumping over a patch of forest and then jump high enough to reach the rocky foothills.
I hop from ridge to ridge, using calculated amounts of force just shy of shattering the entire face with each step. My scanning process notifies me that a place of interest is ahead. I decide to spoil myself and jump extra high, using the airtime to take a careful look around.
Inside of a bare stone valley I expected, ruins stick up from in between obviously artificial caves. Stone blocks, a metre wide on average, contract an ancient, dilapidated building. Marking the spot on my map for later investigation, I move on. More stone and some snow pass beneath me until I’m running on grasslands again, the Tower now visible as my altitude allows me to see over the mountains.
I narrow my eyes as something seems off about it, but I am too far to really tell what, the jagged end still menacingly sticking up into the sky. I zoom my vision and I see a small pinprick of bright light in the middle of the crooked top. The feeling that something is wrong increases, but I can’t tell what. The entire structure does seem oddly dirty though. This, combined with the fact that I spot quite a few more smoke trails emerging from the city, raises my hackles.
The few villages and small cities around me have less and less farmland surrounding them. Halfway across the grassland between Tower and mountain, the farms stop entirely. Well-used roads are a clear hint that the Tower must be feeding a lot more people than just Tower City itself.
I now clearly feel the strain the containment circle is under. This is all rather suspicious though, the flow of qi I measured before leaving for the north should not have put such stress on it. It should have held for at least a week more, and I suspect that it would just have compressed the loose qi into liquid form for even more energy storage.
I spent quite a bit of qi to get here so quickly, and Tree is starting to run low. Qi in motion makes more qi, but not a lot. I have a solid core, but that only creates a trickle. The mana I breathe in and turn into qi is so little it is of no consequence at my current level. This all means that I can really use the power boost before… acquiring a volcano.
I slow down a bit more as more people appear on the roads. Small caravans are interspersed with single beast drawn carts and loose groups of armed figures. I keep low, using some aspects of Tess’ way of moving to keep close to the ground. That in combination with the thin film of stealth qi around me should keep me from sight.
The tower grows ever bigger and longer as the city walls become visible over the horizon. Then my danger scanner screams at me before another sun blooms high above me. I get shoved into combat mode as all my remaining qi pours into my brain.
Second sun, source? Check shadow is quickest, up and to the left. Move eyes. Wait for eyes to move. Program running movement, bleed off momentum in two steps. Eyes see second sun now. Fireball? No, not just fire. Spectrum indicative of temperature over fifteen hundred degrees. Fire and wind combined? Excess of oxygen or other materials needed for this brightness. Hints of other colours, dirty flames?
Rescan spectrum. More than just white, peaks of red? Block ninety percent of light. Still too bright, ninety-nine. Second sun is five kilometres up. Last kno…
Rhea. Re-Haan. Rhea. Last known location of hot dragon chick is in location of fireball. First step gets executed. Sense dirt exploding from sudden attempt at stopping, not relevant. Focus back on fireball. Expansion rate of explosion? Contracting again. Took half a second for combat mode to engage; enough time for explosion to reach maximum diameter.
Scan spectrum again. Polarise. View through standard visual filter package. Multiple energy sources detected, hotspots mean… molten metal or stone? Confirmed, molten shrapnel is now moving past initial flame front. Override previously planned step. Check qi reserves. New plan will take half. Acceptable, easy qi recharge is near.
Force movement. Muscle tissue in leg bruises from overexertion. Bend knees, use shock of crashing into ground to course correct. Force qi into ground. More. Need to cover at least twenty metres, else dirt will not give enough leverage to kick off from. Sink through knees, lowest point reached. Ignore pain of popping knee joint, contract gluteus and quadriceps groups at maximum.
Override heartcore protest. Acknowledge potential damage to legs, ignore. Execute. Observe rain of stars moving past flame front as leg muscles tear. Repair projection? Half minute for full, effective after ten seconds. Acceptable.
The qi swirling through my brain gets diverted to my legs, crashing me out of combat mode as the world speeds up aroun
d me. The abstract silence of experiences the world at a fraction of normal speed retreats, letting the sound of rushing wind into my mind again. I pull on the qi inside the ground and pull it with me. Who attacked from where? The sun, probably. Rhea used that tactic when I first met her, must be a dragon thing. I see small forms blocking sunlight. They grow bigger as I see wings expand.
Dragon silhouettes. Three of them. Did they attack Rhea? Did they notice the many mana disturbances I caused without receiving any reports from her? There were no reports because of the contract between us. I really hate the law of cause and effect sometimes.
I only see black, winged forms against the sun as I speed towards the fading fireball. A broken form starts falling from the sky. A large lizard-like body with just a single wing. Shit. Shitshitshitshit.
I move some of my remaining qi into my brain, causing my anxiety to fade. Red streaks of mana become invisible to my senses again as I control my emotions. What to do? She is too big for me to easily move. My legs are still busted from the sudden change in direction. It will be like carrying a large piece of styrofoam while my legs are jelly. The weight will not be the issue, the size will be.
Ask her to change into humanoid form? I ponder possible scenarios as I cut through the air. I gain altitude quickly now. I feel some relief as I come to the conclusion that I will reach her before the dragons. How did she change between dragon and human form previously? Can I force it somehow? I don’t think she will be very lucid in that torn up state.
She is missing a wing, the attack hit her back, so probably a broken or crushed spine too. What is the effect of shapeshifting in such a state? Only one way to find out. I firm my resolve while the wind screeches around me.
My ears are still ringing from the sonic boom I just made. The sound of the explosion would have taken around fifteen seconds to reach me, getting to her quicker forced me to break the sound barrier. I feel my heartcore growing smaller, using the very qi it is made of to start the repair process of my legs. My energy-loaded blood is only now reaching my femoral artery and is slowly seeping through my torn leg muscles.
I manually shift a loose flap of my rectus femoris into the correct position, allowing the qi-rich blood to start repairing it. The pain gets ignored, but it actually hurts. I decide to focus on the falling figure that is getting closer.
I see pristine white scales surrounding torn flesh. Blackened bones are sticking up from the ruin of her back. The wind’s grip on my figure finally starts winning as I slow down. I hold up my hands and hang still in the air for a single moment, the bloody ruin of a falling dragon smacking into me the next.
Chapter eleven
Unfeeling
“R E-HAAN!”
Her large eyes stay closed as she fails to react to my shouting. I climb across blood splattered scales, attempting to stop us both from spinning. Her single leftover wing is turning this fall into a death spiral. I look towards the tower as it flashes by, but it is too far away to draw any qi from there. I’m sorry Tree, but this will not be pleasant.
I touch my necklace and pull. All the qi inside the pocket dimension that still bears my fingerprints is pulled free. Half of all the qi inside Tree has degraded into other forms, changed into free-floating ambient power. I inhale but choke as a stream of blood splashes my face. I pull some more, and all the neutral qi around Tree gets pulled out.
I feel a passive sort of worry coming from the dimensional nexus point. Golden threads start pouring from the piece of jewellery around my neck, dissolving into colourless smoke. I send a quick mental thanks to the perennial as I clear my airway of the sticky red liquid.
A powerful cough later, the blood is back out and I breathe in what power Tree gave me. I sink it into my braincore and breathe it out again, the qi this time fully under my control. I force it into the massive frame I’m clinging to.
Shit. Shitshit… Stop. I’m not easily gripped by panic, but the fact that I’m clinging to a dying dragon, half-starved of qi, while the formation on top of the Tower is still screaming at me is getting to me.
Another deep breath later I’m calm again. I forcefully push through the natural energy resistance that any living being has and invade her body. Alien structures map themselves out in my mind. I scan totally unknown muscle configurations while pouring more qi into Rhea. Her bones are largely similar to other lizard-like animals, but her internal organs are a mystery to me. No animals or sentient beings I have come across so far are similar to anything I am sensing right now.
Shit, this isn’t working. I ignore the rapidly approaching ground and think through my options. I ignore the world around me even harder as I sense three large shapes diving down towards us.
Dig out the ground? I suspect that Rhea will splatter with the massive damage done to her back if she lands at terminal velocity. We will both reach the ground in twenty seconds, and with the speeds we are going, even I might be hard-pressed to walk away without permanent injuries. A dragon’s terminal velocity is a bit higher than a human’s; an aspect of my threat analysis process tells me.
The blood covering the scales I am gripping on to cause my grip to slip, a small application of qi fixes my hands to Rhea. I cast a glance upwards and an idea sprouts in my mind. I pull a small globe of qi to my palm and stare at it with my full attention, ignoring the splattering blood and screaming wind around me.
‘BEING HUMANOID IS BEST, LARGE IS BAD, LARGE IS LETHAL, HUMAN FORM NOW’
I throw the sphere upwards and follow it up with a thin strand of augur. It hits the closest dragon head on, and I force the strand of augur inside the massive beast. The dragon closest to us is entirely red, scales glistening in the sun as I observe its rugged form. I’m not sure, but the angular and rugged cast of its draconic features causes me to think of it as a male.
Making a thin grid with my augur gives me a very rough grid-shaped cross-section of the beast. I see its eyes blink rapidly while it dives towards us, the blood splatters it is flying through not visible on its red scales. Seconds tick by, and just as I fear that my trick didn’t work, the dragon starts to glow. A weirdly shaped organ in its chest seems to twist like a lock. An unfamiliar energy rapidly spreads through the beast, and with my augur I sense its insides liquefy as the diving dragon shrinks.
Retracting my various senses from the now confused trio following us, I focus back on Rhea. Fifteen seconds left until impact. I locate the organ inside her large frame and feel relief that it seems intact. The attack removed a big part of her back, but the human transformation switch is located deep inside her chest. I gently try to twist it, but it seems stuck. Another second wasted. I force it and feel something snap. The same unknown energy explodes from the small organ, and the scales under my fingers start shrinking.
The two dragons furthest away break off their dive as they attempt to intercept their shining leader. The red dragon is flopping around as the two dragons behind him veer away.
One crisis solved and twelve seconds left. A simple extrapolation tells me that Rhea will be done shrinking in ten seconds. That leaves me with two seconds to slow down and hide from the pursuing trio. I have a fifth of my total qi reserves left. Do I run to the Tower to gather the new energy? I feel for my connection with Tree and sense that its running on fumes, so no refuelling there.
I lose my grip as I feel the scales liquefy. Both lenses of my eyes still have the sunglasses effect dimming the light entering my eyes, allowing me to see the peculiar sight of a shrinking and melting dragon. The bright light seemed unnecessary to me, but this is sort of disturbing. It’s kind of difficult to fear and respect a majestic dragon that melts into a puddle of goo before turning into a human.
Shaking away the unnecessary thoughts, I focus back on the problem at hand. I quickly construct some of the more plausible scenarios. I can’t do anything too fancy with the qi I have left. I glance at my ring. The hidden compartment holds enough qi cores to make this entire situation trivial, but I don’t have the time to feel for
it now. Maybe cut the ground into a spike shape and use the narrowing earthen walls to slow down? I could slice it in the shape of a long spike and bleed off the excess momentum that way. Construct a qi cushion?
Why can’t I use Tree? I take a quick peek and see chaos in the pocket of space. Only Tree itself and the surrounding structures still have coherent form. The surrounding earth is breaking apart in large chunks that disintegrate further. The only reason the land keeps its shape around the centre is thanks to the roots of trees and plants. The newly planted greenery in the further outlying areas didn’t have sufficient time to develop roots yet. Tree also feels very weak; reckless portal abuse would do a lot of damage.
Suddenly it hits me. I want to slap my forehead, but holding on to the fluid form of Rhea is difficult enough as it is with two hands. Instead, I push off to avoid her turbulent wake and dive towards the ground. I start falling faster quickly and manoeuvre myself underneath her with only seconds to spare. Rhea has shrunk down to the size of a human by now, and I see her humanoid shape forming.
I contemplate whether or not I should keep looking in a moment of madness. Patches of skin start covering the forming limbs. She is obviously not in a proper state of mind to form the leather looking armour. Does she store that somewhere? Does the carpet match the drapes?
Slightly horrified at my own thought process in such a situation, I turn my back to her and spread my arms and legs. The wind whirls around my limbs as I bleed off speed. Extending a few threads of qi out of the back of my skull, I latch onto the freshly formed arms and legs of the shapely woman falling just behind me. I pull her closer and onto my back as we speed towards the ground.
‘ZERO G, NO GRAVITY, NO MOMENTUM, FUCK YOU NEWTON’
The Dao of Magic: Book II Page 9