Magma Dragon's Heir

24th of Season of Fire, Year 1197 AL

Newt stared at a very stubborn, city-sized turtle-snake and sighed.

“We don’t have time for this.”

A ray of light condensed on his palm and shot at the turtle’s snake-head. The super-heated magma entered through the nostril, burned its way through the giant skull, passing a yard under the brain, and exited through the soft flesh on the back of the saurian’s head.

“The next one goes through your brain,” Newt hissed in snake-speech. “Will you help us fend off the invaders, or do I have to kill you and take your subordinates with me?”

You saw them in the sky. There’s no way you don’t see the crack. Newt thought as the terrified turtle-snake still hesitated. If it had been a snake-turtle, it would have been more decisive.

Super-heated magma appeared in Newt’s hand, and the turtle snake screamed. “I surrender! I will join you.”

Mana rushed back from Newt’s palm and into his core.

“Gather as many of your ninth and eighth realm subordinates as you can. I’ll be straight there,” Newt pointed, “three days of flight away. You have six days to reach me. Understood?”

“Yes, I will see you at sunset of the sixth day.”

Newt wanted to demand she arrive at noon, but she was a turtle.

“Fine,” he said. “Sunset of the sixth day, or I come here and find you to nourish some of my subordinates before the battle.”

“Yes, yes,” the turtle’s snake head hissed, but Newt was already flying away, and Magmin appeared beneath him.

“That’s thirty-five,” the dragon said.

“Most of them will die.”

“Maybe,” Magmin admitted. “Not every egg hatches; not every risk pays off. The ones who survive will experience quite a surge in their realm. There will be plenty of exalt-level corpses on both sides, and anyone at the ninth realm who proves themself competent enough will have ample resources to become an exalt.”

“Right…” It was the kind of pragmatic thinking saurians had. The sum of mana wouldn’t change, only the distribution. The survivors would grow stronger, the losers would become the food to fuel the winners’ growth.

“Anyway,” Newt dropped the grim topic entirely, “if we make multiple decoys, we agree the only smart move is to hunker down. It signals to your enemy that you want them to move, and I don’t think anyone’s accommodating enough to oblige us and conveniently split their forces.”

Newt thought he and Magmin had exhausted all tactics and strategies, but when he arrived at Soaring Freedom three days later, the already gathered human exalts had an idea he hadn’t even considered before.

“You want to start an onslaught?” It was stupidly brilliant in its simplicity, and Newt would never have considered the option.

“Yes,” the Grand Scholar said, “I’m glad you like the idea. But there’s a problem—they might notice the saurian numbers swelling.”

“That’s not a problem. I know how to handle that, along with transportation and strategic deployment of troops at the same time. I will have to speak with Shimmer and other saurian exalts, though.”

There was still time. They would arrive on the thirtieth, then he would send them far and wide to collect all saurians they could find that had the equivalent of at least fourth realm strength. Ninth-realm saurians would store them in their realms and then unleash them on the imperials after they had surrounded them.

The stampede of panicking saurians would overwhelm the defenders, or at least keep them busy, and tip the odds in their favor at the realms beneath the eighth. Newt could only hope the advantage snowballed.

Even if it doesn’t, it’s gonna be a long battle, and it will turn into a battle of attrition, so forcing our enemies to waste mana on swarms of lower-realm saurians would serve us well.

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“Did anything else interesting happen while I was away?”

Newt didn’t expect an answer, but the Grand Scholar nodded.

“As a matter of fact, this event has revealed one hundred and eighty-seven worshippers of outer gods and cult supporters. For some reason, the descent of the outer gods killed them, withering their bodies over the course of several hours.”

Newt didn’t know what to do with that information.

“Anyone important?” he asked after digesting the fact.

“No,” the Grand Scholar said without hesitation. “They mostly seemed like lost souls and people wasting their lives.”

Newt nodded and forgot the fact. After watching his brother enjoy life, start a family, grow old and die, he didn’t really think that wasting one’s life was a bad thing, just a matter of different priorities.

After all, he soon planned on wasting his life, assuming he survived the imminent battle.

“Anything else?”

“No, but we need to discuss the details and how we handle our armies. Will we have saurians cover one front and humans another? Do we fight together?”

There were plenty of questions to consider. Some of which Newt had already discussed with Magmin.

For instance, saurians beneath the sixth or seventh realm wouldn’t be able to tell apart human allies from human enemies, so they would need to fight separately from awakened allies. As for the seventh realm and above, having humans jump in and break up anti-saurian tactics made by other humans would disrupt the imperial side’s forces, hopefully killing some of them in the confusion.

“How do we handle the Diamondsouls and their spell seals?” Newt asked.

The Grand Scholar straightened, deliberately not smug about what he was about to say.

“I have close to thirty thousand years’ worth of forbidden and expunged spell seals I’ve been spreading around for several centuries. We should be more than capable of dealing with them, hopefully even turning some of their spell seals against them.”

Newt had indeed fallen behind on new spell seals ever since he had reached the eighth realm. Once he had reached the level of brute force needed to stand up to exalts, if not defeat them outright, he had stopped caring about finesse.

I have grown complacent.

“Do you mind sharing those with me?” he asked. “I’ve fallen behind on my scribing.”

The nonchalance with which he had asked for the spell seals caused a ripple. To him, he had three days to kill; to everyone else, it seemed as if he was so confident he could spare time on his pastime.

“I don’t have spare copies with me, but you can ask at the scribes’ association.”

Newt nodded. He would definitely do that; hopefully he could find something interesting for his realm.

Once the meeting finally ended, and Newt was about to leave, Maelstrom’s grandfather approached him.

“Mel left her seclusion. She was furious because the rift disturbed her and made her waste years of effort.”

Newt was happy and sad to hear that at the same time. I can check out the books on spell seals whenever I feel like it.

He didn’t doubt his decision even for a moment, and headed straight home to find his wife painting the living room wall.

“That’s a nice dreadwalker,” he said with a smile.

“I’m painting a field of snow irises.” She didn’t pause her brushwork.

She must have sensed me the moment I stepped into the city. Newt didn’t sense her because he didn’t have a habit of spreading his mana into residences, his or otherwise.

“So, how are things?” Newt asked. “Besides the snow irises.”

“I’ve been better. Woke up from meditation too early, found otherworldly horrors invading my home. My husband was away to play with giant lizards.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m leading a strange life.”

“And you’re painting our living room wall, naked.”

“What can I say? We haven’t seen each other in nearly a decade; the world might end any day now. I guess I’m using my chance to do what I feel like.”

She turned towards him. “And you?”

“I think it sounds like a great idea.” He leaned in and pecked her on the forehead.

***

Three days later at sunset, thirty-five saurian exalts had gathered, along with their one hundred and two ninth-realm lieutenants and over five hundred minions at the eighth realm.

“Thank you all for coming. We have twelve days to gather as many saurians as we can. We’re looking for everyone powerful enough to fight fourth realm awakened humans. That means all trihorns, dreadwalkers, macetails…” Newt listed a dozen common saurian species. “… and everything else of equivalent strength. Your ninth realm subordinates will store them all in their realms, and then you will let those ninth-realm subordinates into your realms, if they can survive in the environment. If they can’t, we’ll do a bit of shuffling.”

“Why would we do that?” Shimmer asked, not seeing the logic.

“Send your followers to accomplish the task, and we can talk.”

Like one, the one hundred and two ninth realm saurians sped into the distance with all they had.

“You asked why? While I know it will mean revealing your capabilities to your subordinates, and you don’t want to do that, there is great merit in the plan.”

Newt explained the high-level strategy and reasons for unleashing the swarm of relatively weak saurians in ridiculous numbers.

The saurian exalts salivated when they heard the expected number and power of their enemies.

While they clearly knew the risks, all they saw was the chance for growth and advancement, and they were all for it.