Magma Dragon's Heir

47th of Season of Fire, Year 1197 AL

Shimmer battled two invaders on her own, and a third was coming her way, seeing her two comrades in danger. She didn’t use the fact that her enemies had underestimated her to attempt to slay one of them, not because she was kind, but because the odds were incredibly low.

No, instead, she sent a breath of pyroclastic miasma at the group fighting the one who enslaved her.

Despite him being her enemy, despite her wanting him dead, Shimmer had to admit that without him, the world would’ve been lost in the near future and she would’ve died. As such, she unwillingly helped her ally.

The flames consumed the surprised invaders, and while she failed to injure a single one, she distracted them and broke their line of sight for an instant. In that instant, Newt flared like a star of mana. He was upon them like a dragon pouncing on lesser kinds and started a slaughter.

One by one, they fell, and coincidentally, she was the only saurian exalt willing to fight near him. She drove away her ninth-realm spawn and gorged herself, her enemies more than happy that her attention was elsewhere until their reinforcements arrived.

The fools. She could feel her realm swell, rising from the fourth layer to the fifth. The mana was pitiful, and it would’ve been much better had Newt not intentionally destroyed their cores, unleashing the mana into the air for some reason.

Then, Shimmer’s sire escaped Newstar’s chest, and rather than inhale the mana to grow, he condensed it, and sent a massive ball of flame and death into the part of the battlefield where invaders fought against the stampede.

Saurian and invader alike had no time to scream before the ball of flames consumed them, and Magmin flew off into the sky.

Seven more bodies dropped towards the ground, outside Shimmer’s reach, but her spawn gobbled them greedily. Then, instead of continuing to slaughter the opposing exalts, Newt flew into the air, heading for the giant crack. He sat next to it and closed his eyes, Magmin flying beneath him as a guardian.

What are you scheming?

***

“I don’t suppose you could pretend that your feeble, senile grand-uncle isn’t here, now could you?” Yew chuckled as a figure in golden robes approached him.

Unlike the Grand Scholar’s ancient visage, the woman seemed mature, perhaps in her late thirties or early forties. She gazed at him with cold eyes.

“I don’t have to pretend anything,” she said, looking down on him. “You are an exile, a traitor stricken from the family record.”

“Now, now, that’s quite cold.” Yew kept his smile and attitude as easygoing as he could force himself to. “I was just following my grandfather’s will.”

The twelfth empress glared at him. While she was generations and tens of thousands of years younger than him, she was a monster of her generation who balked at nothing if it brought her strength.

“You’re so close to death,” she said as if she hadn’t heard his words. “Why prolong the suffering? I promise I’ll end you quickly and eat your heart with all the familial love you deserve.”

Yew fought back the urge to shudder at the Heartless Empress’s words.

“Neither of us gets anything from fighting to death,” Yew resorted to words.

“That is untrue, you nameless traitor. You gain time you wouldn’t have if you just accepted your fate, and I get the joy of killing a sorry old bag of fart and bones.”

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Yew wanted to say more, but the madwoman charged at him, twin sabers in her hands.

Yew retreated, parrying with his spear and giving ground both to move away from the crowd to reduce casualties, and because fighting the Heartless Empress head-on was stupidity for him.

***

Greenthorn was scared and wasn’t afraid to admit it. While he was an exalt, he was among the youngest of them. His dual elements gave him an edge against those within the same age group, but the battlefield was rarely fair.

He was a self-taught genius of the lightning, but faced with the former Thundertitan king, he was out of his league and he knew it. Right from the start, the man pushed him with his heavy staff. The weapon was beautiful. A relic forged thousands of years ago and nurtured since then, delivering a shock of lightning with every strike while wasting minimal mana from its wielder.

Greenthorn focused on staying alive. He used mana only to defend himself, to retreat and dodge. He was holding up a combatant above his grade, and that was more than anyone could ask for.

Suddenly, the Thundertitan paused, glancing towards Newstar.

“That kid is good. He killed the twenty-sixth emperor after exchanging two blows.” He seemed casual, and Greenthorn would have considered attacking had he been a fool.

“That’s Newstar Salamandra,” Greenthorn introduced his former student, “only thirteen hundred years old. He would’ve won the Sage’s Realm tournament back in his day if not for the rest of his team pulling him down.”

“You’re still pulling him down. And you know how it is with those big events,” the Thundertitan paused as twenty-two exalts charged towards Newt, “those with power never play fair.”

He suddenly lost interest in Newstar, as if the young exalt’s death was sealed in stone. All the while during their chat, the king of antiquity never once presented an opening for Greenthorn to exploit.

He wasn’t in a hurry to help his side either. While he attacked, he was using less than half his full strength, the rest focused on keeping his guard up and monitoring the chaotic battlefield as much as possible, given the ever-increasing turbulence as more and more people started resorting to flashy outbursts of mana.

The man stopped again, and turned towards Newt once more. Three headless bodies were falling towards the ground, then snatched by dragons and other saurians, who tore or swallowed them in a single gulp, depending on how much of their original, absurd size they had kept for the battle.

The Thundertitan frowned, eyes locked on a nineteen-against-one battle, and Greenthorn noticed that quite a few exalts with “weaker” opponents had also stopped to observe the situation.

Greenthorn recognized them for what they were immediately: fence-sitters. Those who stopped belonged neither to the imperial family nor the cults, and they were fighting humans, who also understood what was happening.

Servants recruited under the pain of death and paid with nothing but promises weren’t the most loyal ones. Greenthorn paid more attention to his environment and enemy, who had seemingly disregarded him completely, than he did to Newstar, but that didn’t mean he didn’t see the dragon exalt’s casual attack, and the opening it presented for mankind’s strongest.

He jumped in the middle of them without hesitation, slaying with fist, weapon, and magic. Bodies dropped to the ground and survivors escaped.

The Thundertitan whistled. “Twelve. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”

Since the start of the fight, countless people and saurians had died, but only sixteen exalts, all by Newstar’s hand, and he was far from done. He unleashed his dragon, but instead of flying at the enemy, the giant emanation of mana soared into the sky, towards the rift.

His enemies' attention flickered as they took in their new enemy and the direction in which he was going, and in that flicker, Newstar rushed them again.

“It’s not too late to join us,” Greenthorn said, and he was under the impression he wasn’t the only one offering his opponent a chance to change sides.

Seven more bodies fell down. Going at that rate, Newstar could clear the battlefield of exalts in under a minute.

The Thundertitan knew it too, his hard face and calculating eyes revealing the depth of his loyalty. He was on the verge of giving in, then Newstar too flew into the sky. Every single exalt who had been hesitating looked up as Newstar approached the crack in the sky. Seconds trickled by before he stopped right next to it, sat down, and closed his eyes, floating in the air five miles above the battlefield.

“What is he doing?” The Thundertitan said.

Greenthorn wondered the same. Then mana surged from Newstar and into the crack, white flames flowing along the edge of the golden fissure, burning as bright as the sun.

“He’s trying to sear it shut, to burn away the impurity.” The Thundertitan figured it out a moment before Greenthorn reached the same conclusion. “I guess as long as nobody’s suicidal enough to disturb him, he’s out of the battle. His dragon too.”

Greenthorn could see some regret in the man’s face, but it was gone the next moment.

“Prepare yourself, the break is over.” He squeezed his staff. “And thank you for your offer, but I will be forced to decline. Had he cleared everyone and unified us to fight those monsters before they came back, we might have stood a chance, but now it’s hopeless.”

With that, he swung at Gatemaster Greenthorn, signaling the continuation of the exalt battles.