Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Chapter 50: Dragon-pride

It took only a few minutes for Kate to place the soulorb onto Alex’s bed and for them to gather around it. They had called Tom-Tom in to join, again, something that Alex just felt was the right thing to do.

Holly stayed in the room with them, and had also called in Allie. As the team’s foremost healer, and with none of them really knowing much about the item or its effects, Holly insisted they be ready for anything.

He agreed, just to hurry things along.

At last, we were surrounding the bed, Tom-Tom, Kate and I all touching the orb together.

“Just like an aether slate. Connect your mind, and we will go in,” I said aloud, reminding Kate, and explaining the process to Tom-Tom together.

“Ready,” Kate said.

Tom-Tom gave a small excited chirp. “Tom-Tom is also ready to meet a dragon.”

“Amnios is an elder Hydra, not a true dragon,” Alex corrected.

The kobold nodded excitedly, his tail swishing madly behind him. “Yes, Tom-Tom understands. But to meet a dragonkin from before the era of the Heavens. This is exciting. Better than even a thousand mushrooms.”

“I’ll be monitoring your vitals the whole time. If something starts to go wrong, I’ll do my best to bring you back out,” Allie added in from the side. She already had a large pack open, pulling out items and neatly arranging them on the floor.

“Alright then, lets go,” he said.

Alex turned his attention to the large orb and directed his mind towards it. Within moments, he felt as though his mind was being dragged from his body and into the sphere, somewhat like an aether slate as he’d mentioned, but this was more visceral somehow.

In a blink, his senses were torn away, the bedroom dissolving all at once and was replaced by a lush tropical landscape of jungle trees and foliage.

The ground beneath him felt real, the air humid and warm. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought he was pulled into a dungeon, but no System screen appeared to inform him of being in a preparation room.

“Kate? Tom-Tom?” he called out hesitantly as he spun, looking all around himself.

“Here!” Kate’s voice reached him from his left and he looked to find her emerging from the brush, and the small form of Tom-Tom close at her heels.

That was a relief, they’d at least be together.

Sniff, sniff.

Tom-Tom’s snout jerked and wrinkled as he smelled at the air. Alex watched the lizard turn one way, then another, before locking in on a particular direction and pointing.

“That way. I smell dragon,” he said proudly.

The thick jungle was somewhat of a pain to push through, but really it was nothing for their refined bodies. What Alex found strange was just how powerful the plants themselves looked to be from his [Aether Sight]. They looked to contain enough energy to be peak mortal plants, but the energy he saw wasn’t aether, at least not the kind he was used to.

Still, they went on, traveling where Tom-Tom directed until reaching an end to the jungle where it opened into an immense gardenscape. Fruits and blooming flowers covered a large field, for what looked to be a mile on either side of a fifty foot wide dirt trail cutting down the middle.

“Follow the flower-bed road?” Kate asked with a shrug.

“Yes, yes, this way, look,” Tom-Tom scampered ahead, still pointing further towards a structure peaking above the garden trees in the distance.

As they got closer Alex could see it was a purely stone construction, containing hundreds of thick pillars holding up even thicker stone slabs in row after row of crossbeams.

It was like a gargantuan open arena, far larger then the Urhara arena where the tournament had been held. And for good reason, as at the center of it, curled up lazily with his seven heads conversing loudly, was the Hydra.

“Amnios!” Alex shouted out to the dragonkin.

Seven heads turned their way, and it looked like one of them sported a smile. Alex still wasn’t great at reading the facial expressions of the multi-headed beast.

“Wyrm-heart, I see you have brought your friends once more. Hatchling Kate and… who is this?” One of Amnios’ heads sank down, moving nearly ground level to peer at Tom-Tom who had run ahead of the two humans.

“Great Hydra, I am Tom-Tom of the Jaurgan Toune Kobolds,” he declared confidently. Tom-Tom’s stature was even shorter than the single head of the Hydra, but the kobold didn’t shirk away or hesitate a bit as he continued. “Tom-Tom is friend of Alex the dragon-blood-one. He comes seeking training with the great Hydra Amnios.”

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The beast's heads chuckled, apparently pleased, or at least amused by the kobold’s bravery.

Alex walked forward, stopping abreast with the little lizard and patted Tom-Tom’s head.

“He’s been quite useful for us, I admit. Even saving our lives at one point.” Tom-Tom’s chest puffed out a bit more at that, his tail raising straight up behind him. “I felt it would be amiss of me to not bring him. At least for an introduction. He too, is dragonkin, after all.”

“Dragonkin is a bit of a stretch,” Kate said. “He’s one third dragonkin, two thirds pain in the ass.”

“Tom-Tom is not ass pain. Tom-Tom is mighty warrior. He knows the power of earth magic, mushrooms, and alchemy-grenade. His ladles know no opponent too grand.” He pulled out his large soup spoons at that point, brandishing them at Kate.

“Well met, dragonkin warrior, Tom-Tom,” one of the hydra’s heads said. Alex saw another give him what he assumed to be a bemused look at the same time.

Alex merely smiled back at Amnios.

“If you have entered my soulspace along with these two, I assume you are here for training as well. If that is the case, I can asses your power, and see where we go from there. Does that sound alright?” Amnios asked.

Tom-Tom nodded furiously.

“Good! Now, I will guess I have been asleep for some days since creating my orb. So you two must be eager to continue your training. Let’s not dally. The fight against the Dark Heavens is never over.”

***

Just as the Hydra said, they went right back into their training.

Alex, Kate and Tom-Tom were split up, moving to different parts of the arena where one of Amnios heads began directing each of them.

With the area they inhabited being Amnios soulspace, he was more than capable of controlling at his will. Growing his own body and heads in size, or shrinking down, as well as shifting the ground and structure they stood inside. Needless to say, stretching his necks to have them all at a distance was easy for him.

Can I do this in my own soulspace? Alex asked mentally.

“Yes, and you have before. Remember when you fought against the curse with that dagger in the Dark Den Dungeon? And how you controlled the draconic energy after stabbing at it? The more you practice, the better you will be at doing things like this.” Obby explained in his mind.

The sentient rock sounded distant, as though they were speaking through a walkie-talkie instead of directly in his head, as usual. Obby was still connected to him through their bond, but he wasn’t in Amnios orb like Alex was.

Doing that was possible, they were sure, but neither wanted to risk the Hydra noticing Obby’s presence and then attacking.

For now, Obby only watched everything from the safety of Alex’s own soulspace, talking and responding from a distance.

“It has been a few weeks, yes? What progress have you made, hatchling? You seem, strained, your presence here wavering and difficult. Have you been injured?” Amnios asked him.

“Well, yes, and no. I’ve made little progress, and yet, a lot has happened since our last lesson,” Alex said.

Without pause, he went into an explanation of the events. How his own training had gone, his failures to tap into the draconic energy of his constitution. Until his fights in the tournament, where he learned to forcefully coax the wyrm-heart awake. Then the following failure at attempting to produce Dragon-fire.

Then his soul damage from the use of his new [Technique], resulting in his current state.

Amnios didn’t seem surprised by the explanation, though he did need Alex to tell him what a [Technique] was.

“This [Demonstrider] form… it sounds like you achieve it in much the same way a dragon creates their fire.” Alex could have been wrong, but to him, the Hydra’s tone sounded like it was impressed, if even a little. “The Heavens might be mimicking the Dragon’s in that regard.”

“What do you mean?”

“As I said before, Dragon fire is a mixture of fine control of one’s inner draconic energy, and a spark of ignition from their soul, creating a unique effect.”

Alex thought that over, realizing Amnios was right. It did sound like what he needed to do to form a [Technique]. A harmony of aether control and body, synergizing with him and him alone to form his own special effect.

“So, if I wish to use dragon-fire, I need to do what I had before, but with draconic essence instead of aether?”

“No, I doubt that will be enough. Even if it was, your understanding of draconic essence is abysmal. You wouldn’t be able to do anything.” Amnios shot Alex down quickly, killing his rising hope. “And the addition of your soulspark requires deep personal understanding. You must know yourself, your needs, your desires, wants, weaknesses, shortcomings; everything.”

“Oh…” Alex’s head fell.

“And again, we are trying to walk with our tails ahead of us. You haven’t even understood your wyrm-heart yet, let alone anything else.”

“Alright, then where do I begin?”

Amnios lowered his head to the ground, resting it on the floor in front of him. “You have made a half-step forward, even if you don’t understand how. You have forced the wyrm-heart inside you to respond to your demands. But you misunderstand why it did so.”

Alex frowned even further. “It’s not because I attacked it?”

“No. It’s because your showed it your determination and bloodlust.”

“My bloodlust?”

Amnios snorted, hot air washing over Alex in a burst. At the same moment, he felt a twinge of that same immense power and fear as when he had first met the Hydra back in the Forge Dungeon. Just as quickly as it had come, it gone.

“A dragon’s instinct are linked to its power and pride. From what you have said to me so far, each time it has activated it was in response to you losing a fight against a stronger opponent. The adept wolf first, the little Prince, the Chimera Queen; each time the threat of you losing a fight coaxed it awake,” Amnios said.

Alex knew he was correct without having to think about it. Those were exactly the times it had happened. Even against the drakes during the early Merit mission, it was the threat of another dragonkin’s presence trying to show its dominance that had awoken it.

The heart’s pride was attacked in all those occasions.

“Your little trick with attacking is no different,” Amnios said. “The attack means nothing, as the heart can’t really be killed that way. But you treating it with such disrespect, the bloodlust you create, and the rage behind it is what the wyrm-heart is responding to.”

“I… see…”

Amnios closed its eyes, and its head morphed, even separating from its main body entirely and changing into a humanoid shape of a man with long black hair, purple eyes and wearing rich purple robes.

Now, that’s new. Very cool. He thought.

“If you want to learn to activate your heart, to control it. You must first establish ownership of it. Show it that you are the dragon, and it has no choice but to obey your will,” human Amnios said.

“So, I need to dominate it?” Alex asked.

Amnios nodded. “A dragon does not kneel,” he said, repeating the exact words Alex had heard from the wyrm-heart multiple times. “Except… to another dragon.”