Limitless Path

The rest of the Empyreans disappeared, other than Zel, who said, "Tell me when you return. I must get my equipment."

Zel also disappeared back into the reliquary, leaving just Selene and Beth in the room. Selene then said, "So, care to elaborate?"

"About what?" Beth asked cheekily, draping a hand over her eyes where she still laid on Selene's couch.

"Don't be coy," Selene said, grabbing Beth and lifting her torso so she could slide under her. With Beth's head in her lap, she said, "I'm interested in who they were. And also, your Ideal?!"

"It was something for Mortaine," Beth started explaining.

"Mortaine. Of course," Selene said.

"Does everybody know him? And have an opinion of him?" Beth asked.

"Anybody who's anybody," Selene said. "And yes, people have opinions of him. Don't be fooled by the fact he pretends to be a bumbling fool, either. The man is a living monster crammed into human skin."

"He seems kinda dopey," Beth said.

"He's an Exalted, and he worked for it," Selene said while stroking Beth's hair. "He's also one of the most knowledgeable people in the galaxy. He's forgotten more incredible knowledge than most civilizations ever discover. He's a living example of 'knowledge is power;' he can defeat even another Exalted using little more than his knowledge of how the universe works. It's hard to explain, but he can do things like create separate dimensional spaces with just runes carved in space and trap a person in that space before destroying the space completely."

"Mortaine's strong, got it," Beth said, rolling her eyes. The man was an ancient Exalted, of course he was powerful. "Moving on, the Exalted thing, or rather, the Ideal thing just sort of…happened? Mortaine had built some crazy device of his, trying to crack into sealed pocket spaces or dimensions, not really sure the exact details, but when he turned it on, I just…"

"You had an epiphany related to your Ideal," Selene finished, continuing to stroke Beth.

"Basically," Beth said, shrugging a little. She reached up and took one of Selene's hands, bringing it to her mouth to kiss while she gently held it.

"Can you stay?" Selene asked, passion leaking through in her voice.

"Sadly, not," Beth said with a sigh, levering herself up.

"Going just like tha-" Selene started, but was cut off when Beth leaned back in and kissed her firmly, warmly, even a bit passionately, locking their lips together for some time.

"We've got some stuff to do," Beth said, breaking the kiss off. "We've got to do a small bit of training, if you could guess, and then we've got plans to do a visit somewhere. Once that's done, though, we have time; we do need to get to Ascended, but we don't have to do it tomorrow. We've got stuff we need to do in the Eternal Depths…several things, actually, now that I'm thinking about it, but they aren't necessarily time sensitive. You're an Exalted, Alex is almost there, I'm a mini-Exalted, and Sera just gained immortality; I think we've got time."

"You're such a tease," Selene pouted with a sigh before adding, "Sera is immortal? I'm not dealing with two 'mini-Exalted,' as you call it?"

"No, uh, I didn't mention our Mana Physique stuff to anyone, but my whole team is in Enlightened now. Sera made, uh, an impressive one? A crazy one? Not sure how to describe it, but between its description and the effects that she can feel from it, she's functionally immortal now. She said she probably won't age at all, either, something about age factor mana date and something, I don't really know, but apparently she'll look and essentially stay young forever," Beth explained.

"Well, it must be at least a Diamond Physique for that to be part of it," Selene said, showing a bit of surprise. The greater demoness was normally so calm and cold otherwise, but she let Beth, Alex, and Sera see her true feelings on her face when they were in private.

"Yeah, it is Diamond," Beth said, straightening up and stretching a bit. "Man, using my Ideal to teleport that far was kinda tough."

"You can stay here, you know," Selene said, getting up and standing behind Beth, gently touching her shoulders.

"Thanks," Beth said, turning and giving her a quick kiss. "But, I have to get back. I'll stop by in a little bit."

"Be sure to bring the immortal dragon girl with you," Selene scolded, giving her a wave as Beth slipped out of her office.

Beth returned to whence she had come, using the standard teleportation networks this time and not trying to tear across a dozen solar systems with her Ideal. She had been using it before she tried testing her range, but it still had totally exhausted her to do it. Not only that, but she felt both the distance and the teleport were at the very limit of what she could do right now. She'd have to do some more testing, after resting for a while, but she felt like she wasn't strong enough, and likely certainly not knowledgeable enough, to move multiple people with just her Ideal. She was going have to do a lot more testing to see what she could and couldn't do, and she was sure her capabilities would grow as she understood the Ideal better and as her strength increased.

She flopped on one of the couches in the living room when she was finally back, having taken nearly an hour to make her way through the teleporter network. She didn't bother taking off anything more than her armor and she didn't bother with going into one of the bedrooms, either, as she was a heavy enough sleeper that she would be disturbed if somebody came out of the gate and walked through the room. She had just enough brain capacity free that she remembered to summon Zel from the box in her soul before fully passing out, seeing the man start messing with the recording devices he had left in the room before she teleported. She must have been rather tired, as she was asleep as soon as she had twisted into a horizontal position on the couch and she didn't wake up for more than ten hours.

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After that long sleep, she woke up to find the room still empty, hitting up the bathroom first before getting some food and drink from the kitchen. Sera walked out of the gate right as Beth was smack-dab in the middle of eating, the dragon girl putting her hands on her hips and giving Beth a little frown before walking over. Beth had just looked back with her cheeks stuffed full before returning to the several plates she had before her. Sera sat next to her and draped an arm over the back of the couch behind her shoulders and waited for Beth to finish, a process that did not take all that long. Beth ate the plates clean before leaning back with a huge belch, sighing as she flopped her head against Sera's arm and relaxed.

"Pushing yourself too hard?" Sera asked, stroking Beth's hair.

"Well, maybe a little," Beth admitted. "But I did get to see Selene briefly."

"What?" Sera asked.

"Testing my Ideal," Beth said. "I teleported from here to Selene's office. It was exhausting, though, so not going to be doing much of that any more."

"You need to be a little more aware," Sera said with a sigh. "Still, it's good you're fine. How is Selene?"

"Good. The Ascended followed along the teleport, so she knows about the reliquary now, but I don't think that's a problem," Beth replied.

"I should hope not," Sera said.

"We've got an invite to visit, but we should take care of the rest of our business first," Beth said.

"Speaking of," Sera said.

"Right, right, I'm back to it," Beth said.

She returned to the gate and got back to her combination of testing and training with her new power, working on trying to understand her Ideal and how to use it. She figured out pretty quickly that her Ideal was quite good for spatial manipulation, which should have been obvious, but it was even better when used in conjunction with her spatial skills. Beyond that, the 'flame' properties of her Ideal, the concept of annihilation or total destruction that in incorporated, allowed her to directly use her Ideal to not just attack, but to fully destroy things. It was total annihilation in that there wasn't anything at all left, but it was reducing whatever she attacked to a combination of atoms and mana particles. She tested it on several beasts and, though it was a bit gory, even for her, she carefully observed what happened when she burnt away specific parts with her flame. She also tested burning an entire beast alive, which was also quite brutal, but she needed more information on what her Ideal could do and how it worked.

Those tests showed that, leaning on the annihilating properties of her Ideal, she could destroy anything in a given area. It took quite a while, however, and was hard to do on something that was still alive, especially something over level three hundred. Living things did have some resistance to both foreign mana as well as conceptual forces like an Ideal. The best part of having her Ideal was the boost it gave, but using it in combat on its own was both highly tiring and not particularly efficient. She had much more success when she injured a beast and, during the course of hammering away at it, mixed in flames from her Ideal to further hurt and debilitate the target. She was also able to restrict the space around some of her targets using just her Ideal, which was quite useful, but again, she had Spatial Domain, and the higher she leveled that, the stronger the restriction she could enact. Her Ideal would give that skill a big boost in how far it could lock the space down, and it would add destructive properties precisely where she wanted in the domain without having to use a second skill, but it was pretty clear her skills were much better for even some of the spatial things than her Ideal.

With her testing done, she took a few hours to rest in the gate, only a little over a week having gone by. She hadn't pulled the pocket Ascended out again, but they were still stewing on all the data they got from her last show, so she was content to let them cook. When she was fully rested, she got the other three girls, all of whom were more than ready to head out by that point. They all looked at Sera, who would need to guide them to her clan's territory, and the dragon took the lead with more than a bit of hesitance in her step. Beth walked with her, wearing a nice set of knee-length boots and one of the dresses she had bought made of a black material with a gold inset on the left side. The dress ended at her mid-thigh and had short sleeves and a slightly low neckline, though it was nothing like what Sera usually wore as casual, or even as formal wear.

Blood and Val were walking behind them as they traveled through the teleporter network, the wolf in a set of loose pants, simple boots, a short sleeve shirt, and a half-jacket. Beth might have thought the jacket from Sera, but it was a bit too small to be something the much taller, and rather bustier, dragon had as part of her closet. The style was definitely matching, however, and Beth thought it looked pretty good on the wolf. Val, on the other hand, wore something a bit more complex, her dress having embroidery along the sleeves and down both sides. The fabric of the kresnik's dress was also smooth on the torso but transitioned to a type of layered mesh for the skirt that Beth hadn't really seen before. Despite already being tall, Val had no problem wearing high heels, which she had paired to match with the deep blue dress. Perhaps a bit ruining the look, or completing it, opinions would vary, was a big, wide-brimmed sunhat that Val was using mainly to try to hide who she was, which Beth was pretty sure was a futile gesture.

The teleports took them about two hours, at least to get to a place where they were clearly using dragon clan teleporters. The first one they were able to navigate just fine, as there were plenty of people that used it for various kinds of business, but the second and third teleports were a bunch more trouble. Sera was able to get them through by throwing her weight away, though only metaphorically at that point, but the last teleport gave them all kinds of trouble. Finally, the two guards were cowed into operating the device when Sera more literally threw her weight around, her status in the clan combined with the fact she cleaned the floor with the two guards making everybody nearby scramble to let the four through.

The arrived at their destination, which was quite obvious as soon as the teleport was done, as they were in a massive marble hall that stretched for several hundred feet. It wasn't even the main hall of the place, not by a long shot, but was just the teleportation room, made to a size and wealth befitting not just dragons, but the most powerful of dragon clans. There was nobody else in the room when they showed up, but that changed before they even got all the way to the door, an older woman with silver at her temples and some wrinkles on her face intercepting them. The markers could have been a sign of her age, or it could just be an affectation of hers, as dragons were already very long-lived before they even started rebirthing; even just an Enlightened dragon could live for more than ten millennia, and that was also assuming they hadn't either had some kind of longevity treasure or life-extending treatment or some such.

"Stop right there!" the woman demanded, causing all four of them to just look at each other before looking back at her.

"The hell is this bitch?" Beth asked, causing Val to wince, but Blood just grumbled agreement while Sera outright laughed.

"Seraphinalla Narzareen Andromeda Schwarzdracchen! These are the kind of guests you bring around here! And after being gone so long! I should smack a few scales off of you!" the dragon lady raged.

"Hey, so, question," Beth said to Sera, ignoring the angry elder.

"Yes, my love?" Sera asked. Both the cavalier attitude and Sera's use of the endearment to Beth had driven the old dragon into apoplexy, but Beth didn't care.

"How much trouble would I be in if I beat the shit out of one of your great aunts or whoever this old bitch is?" Beth asked in a fuax sweet voice, giving Sera a big smile.

"Hey, go wild," Sera replied, which got an "Honestly, these two!" out of Val, but had morphed Beth's smile into a massive grin.

"Don't mind if I do," Beth said, turning to the elder with her grin.

"You brats! How dare you-" the old woman was really in a froth, shouting and trying to suppress them with her raw strength.

Maybe if Beth and the others were some fresh-faced noobs with no skill or experience or power, that could have worked. Unfortunately, the old bat was only at about rebirth eighteen, which might be impressive otherwise, but she hadn't pushed her stats all the way. Beth doubted she had even done many Perfect Rebirths, let alone True Rebirths, and it really showed. With a wicked grin, she stepped forward, teleporting in front of the ranting woman and swing in a powerful left straight aimed at her face. The dragon blocked, or attempted to, but Beth redirected her attack as it was flying, turning a face punch into a gut shot, and the older dragon clearly wasn't very skilled in hand-to-hand. The dragon shook of the gut shot admirably, but Beth was already moving and striking, hammering the slower and, frankly, much weaker lady with a rapid series of powerful strikes.

The old dragon couldn't keep up and took quite a bit of damage before trying to use her flame breath to make Beth back off. On anybody else, that would have been a good move, but Beth had a fire-based Mana Physique at Platinum, a sovereign-type skill to control fire, and her Ideal incorporated flame into it. Dragonfire was scary, sure…to other people, not to Beth, and she proved it by walking through the elder's flame breath and punching her in the face. Very hard.