BECMI Chapter 507 – The Beginning of the End

“Mistress, I have two things to report,” Cirru spoke up gravely as I walked into the Throne Room. While I still did my routine Energizing and Infusing, I hadn’t undertaken any large problems since Lunia had Ascended, waiting for the shoe to drop.

“Go on,” I told her, trusting her instincts.

“Onspulvium, a Green, led two of her children on a hunt to the north and east. They have not returned, even though there was no word of combat in the wilds.” She paused to let me consider that, as dragons were always listening for death calls, roars, and distant challenges on the wind. “It is in the same area that the adventuring fellowship of Daskad Grundisson and his Urtho clansmen, the Axes of the North, headed into but a week before, and have not been heard from.”

“He and his boytoys are on the low Master rankings,” I recalled quickly. “Did you Scry for all of them?”

“I did, and found nothing, Mistress.”

My instincts went on high alert. The dragons, or at least their corpses, should be exceedingly easy to locate. The Urtho shouldn’t have been too leery of being checked up on, and could be Scried by a dozen vectors if needed.

She didn’t have my Caster Level, but she shouldn’t have needed it!

“Let’s go, I’ll ride. Duum, with me.”

The massive form of my Bat, easily of a size with the Great Wyrm that Cirruluxul was, shrank down even as he hopped forward, ending up the size of a normal Bat upon my shoulder, while I drifted into the comfortable riding saddle that sprang up on Cirru’s back… the same one that could mount a Gatling laser and make attacking foes very uncomfortable, indeed.

Cirru exploded out the roof access, turning north and west and Linejumping immediately for the horizon, there to turn Invisible as we picked up the path of the Urtho adventurers and began to follow it slowly over the landscape, convinced the discovery of the fate of the one would lead to the other.

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“Mistress, Cirru, I smell dead Green dragons,” Duum murmured from my shoulder, and Cirru immediately stopped beating her wings to sample the air, while I sniffed myself.

I had Scent via my Mask of Bloody Tears, but it was not as acute as either of them.

We had traveled for most of a day over the wild and broken terrain of the northern hills and mountains, a land that was going to be Buraval on the Far Shore. None of this land was settled by civilized peoples, and even human barbarians were rare here, preferring the lands of the Eislas and access to the sea.

Tracking the progress of the Urtho hadn’t been hard, as their universal response to being attacked or intruding upon the local creatures and tribes had been to fight them, a response likely hard-coded by the nearly three years they’d spent plumbing the depths of Dungeon Doomrose.

The remains of the fights weren’t hard to discern, the smell and sight of blood quite clear, and often the remains of the dead still present, if scattered about by scavengers. They left a pretty clear trail up and down the hills and mountains, the Urtho overcoming all natural obstacles with aplomb and either magic or skill, as needed.

Now we’d come to the base of a decent-sized plateau, one that seemed to have nothing of interest about it from the air, but something was wrong.

Dragons didn’t die easily. They affect the landscape as they tumble about, upsetting the ground, leaving tracks. They tend to bleed a lot, and that gets into the ground and doesn’t go away easily, and then they have big bodies that are difficult for many creatures to eat.

Greens tasted like their flesh was infused with chlorine. You had to be very patient and a very good cook to purge their flesh of that smell and taste, a process that took over three months of soaking, drying, tinctures, and washing to accomplish.

You got a hell of a meal out of it at that point, but it was a lot of work, one worth preserving in the ever-recreating larders of the Thisbeann Inn.

Greens thus took a long time to get rid of their corpses. The one thing speeding it along might be intelligent scavengers going for the bones and the scales, leaving the meat behind to rot, which it would eventually do, generally creating an area of twisted trees and thorns about itself as the remains of its body twisted and poisoned the Land, eventually covering up the remains with roots and stalks as nasty as its own life had been.

A mother and two of her Dragonspawn children had died out here. That I didn’t care about, as dragons died all the time.

What I didn’t like was the fact they’d not been found, and their killers identified. Nobody would likely go after them, as Greens didn’t have great family bonds, but knowing who could kill dragons was a subject dragons were quite keenly interested in, for some reason.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Daskad’s party’s trail vanished,” I stated coolly, looking down at where traces of men, boots, and horses had all simply faded from the ground below. I wasn’t the greatest of huntresses, especially from the sky and not inspecting from the ground, but the unnatural absence of the trail was easy to discern. “Their trails were also erased.”

Detect Magic XII, Above and Beyond the Weave of the World.

There was no active magic visible in the valley below, but the whole area SEETHED with powerful residues of magic, enough to make me hiss in surprise and foreboding. A whole bunch of very magically powerful figures had been down below, and vanished without leaving a trace.

Then Dread thrummed, channeling the power of the spell, and registered Immortal Power… at the center of the plateau there, extremely strong and focused… and not bloody visible at all.

“The trail of the Urthos and many others was magically erased with mild weather control. It looks like the remnants of the dragons were Disintegrated,” I analyzed slowly. “But they didn’t clean up the blood on the ground like they should have.” My eyes tracked sideways. “The residue of magic leads up to the side of the plateau there, and there is an illusion covering a cave there.

“An Illusion braced by Immortal Power. The same Immortal Power that is concealing something atop the plateau.”

“Something with Immortal Power like this should have been noticed by you long ago. It is only three hundred miles from the border of the Ringlands,” Cirru judged, scanning the area carefully as she descended slowly and under perfect control. “I smell no others, Mistress. Not even the Urtho and their horses.”

“Nor I,” Duum agreed, tense on my shoulder and equally suspicious. “The bugs are silent. The birds are absent. Neither normally reacts to Cirru now, although larger things are paralyzed by dragonfear.” He lifted his head and looked around. “Cirru, are there any prey animals within a mile?” he asked.

Her head rose and looked around slowly, studying the hills and valleys with a hunter’s gaze and eyesight that could shame an eagle. “Mistress, I’m not seeing anything bigger than a squirrel anywhere,” she said calmly after a full quiet two minutes of looking around. “That is very unnatural. This area should have herds of deer and buffalo, and wild swine at the very least, along with those hunting them.

“I can’t even see a hare.” She was clearly grimly wary, but not afraid.

I eyed the paths of magic before me, moving off in all directions, some of them using dimensional magic that broke apart into untraceable motes as they departed the area. “They could have very rapidly hunted the area out with magic, and simple Shards leave no trace how such were killed.

“And no, I should have noticed the Immortal Power here some time ago, unless it was very deliberately concealed. This is not a location that mortals were meant to find.”

I let that hang out there, because Daskad not only had, he’d made a beeline for it!

“Someone led the Urtho here. A place hidden by Immortals from mortals is likely a prison or seal for something dangerous,” Cirru reasoned quickly. “Whatever it is, may have been freed by the Urtho…”

I weighed my options. “Down, and to that tunnel into the plateau. I don’t trust an approach from the air.” I pointed for her, and the one and only Storm Dragon of Nown glided silently and invisibly in that direction. “I do not need to tell you that there is a bad feeling about this.”

Dragon and Bat murmured agreement as we descended towards a passage in the side of the plateau a mortal should not have been able to sense, but clearly had done so and entered, as was made obvious when I Dispelled the masking illusion and we saw the very well-made and completely preserved rune-carved doors there, doors obviously opened recently and now equally obviously Sealed by powerful magic.

Not powerful enough, as I cracked it… from fifty yards away and behind the cover of a large boulder.

Cirru, down in her half-dragon halvyri form, looked over my head at the smoking, crackling ruin and blasted crater that had erupted from the two doors after my spell, blowing lines of lightning and fire for nearly a hundred meters straight out from the door, along with explosions around it.

“I think something wanted to kill something,” Duum quipped lightly.

“The magic on the door is different from that Sealing the doors, which is different from the magic traps laid upon it just now,” I said softly. “Casters at the Apex, at least four, contributed to the cavalcade of magic just now. They were not human, and certainly not elven, nor draconic.”

“Powerful Glyphs, a sinister variant of Prismatic Spray, at least two Delayed Fireball variants, and the unleashed Chain Lightning… They have at least access to VII’s, and likely IX’s,” Cirru agreed. “It was an impressive display of trapped magic. Can you pass, Mistress?”

“The doors require physical pressure, Funf’s TK can’t touch them. I imagine that inside are going to be waiting more traps.”

“Ah. It’s going to be one of THOSE tedious dungeon sections, where every step is another trap?”

“I have the sneaky suspicion of yes. Be prepared to wreck the ones we come across.”

Her hands flexed, and very white talons enlarged where her fingernails would normally be demurely. “Of course, Mistress. Let’s go.”

She knew I could tank, but also that I was better with spells, and she was better at tanking than Casting, despite a level of magical power that would have utterly shocked anyone used to fighting dragons with limited spellcasting ability.

A dragon who could Cast IX’s was effectively as magically powerful as a Ruling Dragon!

We headed for the door, Duum staying small and on my shoulder, but alert and ready to hop in if needed, Cirru staying much, much smaller than her Great Wyrm form for the tight quarters here.

The carved doors of Immortal Bronze were basically indestructible to mortals, which wouldn’t stop me, but it meant they could endure mortal extremes without effort and last for basically an eternity.

As well as endure another six spells going off when Cirru pushed open the doors and the Wall of Force went up to take the point-blank explosions instead of her or us.

The ringing impact of the hammers from the Barrier spell indicated that very powerful Priests were in on this, too. I studied the magic, and frowned.

“Priests of Nox,” I said with authority.

“The mother of the undead?” Cirru asked immediately, as I broke the Wall to let us inside.

“And creator of the nosferatu, among others. She’s one of the reasons Sythia has been dying, offering the nobles lives as undying things that feed on their peasants, proclaiming that they’ve beaten death and can give the same gift to their followers.”