14-45. Little Sister
“Did you really think there would only be a million potential participants?” asked Tura after they’d gotten back to her hut. She had just informed him that the qualifiers for the Tournament of the First Fang would begin the next day. Those were far more expansive than the actual tournament and would serve to narrow the competitors down to the best of the best. Due to Kirlissa’s sponsorship, Elijah wouldn’t need to participate in those. He already had a spot reserved.
Others weren’t so fortunate.
“One-million, forty-eight thousand, five hundred, and seventy-six,” Sara interjected. She had insisted on accompanying them back to the main planet. She intended to stay the night at Tura’s cabin, then head into the city where her lessons would continue. Based on what she’d told him, Elijah thought it sounded a lot like college, with a focus on math.
Tura fixed her with an annoyed glare.
“Sorry.”
Elijah cut in, saying, “Kind of messed up that I don’t have to qualify.”
“You would destroy them,” Tura responded.
“She’s right,” Sara agreed, fidgeting with the herbs hanging from one of the structure’s support beams. Tura slapped her hand away, and Sara pretended not to notice. “You’re going to see a bunch of no-name drakes and serpentors with barely any Legacy. They just can’t compete with people like you.”
Elijah didn’t know how to feel about that. He was well aware that he was special, at least for a demi-god. There wasn’t anyone on Earth who could really keep up with him. And while the general quality of demi-god was higher in the Empire of Scale, normal people were no closer to him than the people on Earth were.
Still, he didn’t like the idea of dismissing people out of hand, just because they didn’t come from prominent families. Or because they weren’t dragons.
The gap existed, though. All other things being equal, dragons were better than other races. The elder core significantly enhanced their abilities, and that wasn’t even considering the power of the dragon form itself.
Despite that, Elijah was more than a little uncomfortable with the idea of racial superiority. Maybe because of the connotations back on Earth. Or maybe it was because he’d seen people without elder cores do amazing things. After all, there were people like Oscar, Miguel, and Carmen back home.
They made it work.
So, Elijah rejected the idea of dismissing people just because they lacked an elder core.
“Do you want to go?” asked Sara.
“What? Sorry. I was miles away just now,” Elijah admitted. His mind’s tendency to wander was a symptom of spending years alone. It had gotten better since he’d returned from the abyss, but it still crept up on him from time to time.
“I was asking if you wanted to go to the qualifiers,” she said.
“He has training,” Tura stated.
“But he won’t be training all the time,” she whined. Her eyes widened, and she clutched the old drake’s arm. “C’mon, Auntie Tura. Please!”
Tura snorted. “That won’t work on me anymore,” she said.
Sara poked her lip out.
“Fine,” Tura allowed. “If Elijah wishes, he may accompany you to a couple of matches.”
Sara raised her hands in victory.
“But only when Birk declares him ready for a break,” she went on.
Sara stopped mid-celebration. Her hands dropped, and her shoulders slumped. Then, she looked Elijah in the eyes, and in the most self-serious tone she could manage, she said, “I am so sorry.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Birk is just…intense.”
“Really?” Elijah asked. Then, he deadpanned, “I couldn’t tell at all. Where is he, anyway?”
“He has his own cabin a few miles away. He cherishes his privacy,” Tura responded.
“He also trains kids there,” Sara pointed out with a shiver.
“Did he train you?”
She nodded.
“It seems like you might have some bad memories…”
“No. It was fine,” she insisted in the least genuine tone Elijah had ever heard. “Really. It was fine.”
A visible shiver went up her spine.
“Birk is a well-respected trainer,” Tura interjected. “He will help you with combat. Meanwhile, I will try to educate you in other ways.”
“What other ways?” Elijah asked. “Runes?”
“Among other things,” Tura answered. “You may be a prodigy, though I am skeptical about that and will need to see it for myself. However, your education is woefully inadequate. If you had shown up during ascendency, we could have sent you to the Academy like Saraalinisa. But –”
“Sara,” the young dragon said, clutching her fists. “Not Saraalinisa. I don’t like being called by my full name.”
She’d practically stamped her foot. Like a petulant child. He’d categorized her as a teenager, but perhaps his assessment of her relative maturity had been a bit generous.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
For her part, Tura ignored the interruption.
“But considering you have progressed to demi-god, enrolling you in the Academy would be a waste of time. Therefore, you get me. Hopefully, my tutelage will prove beneficial,” she went on. “That is a worry for tomorrow, though. Get out. I’m tired.”
Elijah looked around. “Uh…where am I supposed to go?”
She shooed him away. “I don’t care. Birk has a spare bed,” the drake told him. “Or you can sleep on the ground. It genuinely does not matter.”
It was not the answer he’d expected.
He was going to say more, but Sara pulled him away. When they were outside, she said, “Don’t worry. Auntie Tura gets cranky when she has to go to official functions.”
“I heard that!” came a shout through closing door.
“I know!” Sara yelled back, dragging Elijah away. They kept going for a few minutes until they were well into the jungle. There were trails leading in multiple directions, though they were difficult to see.
Along the way, Sara pointed out which direction he’d need to go to find Birk’s cabin. “He has a whole training facility there. It’s not as pretty as some of the ones in the city,” she allowed. “But it has a certain rustic charm. Plus, Birk really is good at what he does. I think he has a skill that makes him more effective. You wouldn’t believe how many pupils he’s turned down. And from powerful families, too. He’s probably the top trainer on the planet.”
“Impressive,” Elijah allowed.
“In the last rankings, he was in the top thousand in the entire empire, too.”
Given the numbers at play, that was even more impressive, and Elijah said as much. Then, he asked, “Why doesn’t he try to level?”
“Oh, he’s been max-level for centuries. He doesn’t have the Legacy to go any further.”
“Huh.”
That was surprising.
“I don’t think you understand what it takes to become a transcendent,” Sara said when she saw his expression. “Most people never get close. And nobody takes it for granted that they’ll get there. It’s literally transcending the system.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“It really doesn’t. Most transcendents are crazy. At least a little. They just find a way to channel that craziness into something productive,” she explained. Then, she looked up at the moon, which was only barely visible past the golden rings. “Yes, I’m talking about you too, mother. You know you’re not normal.”
“You think she heard you?”
“Of course she did. She knows everything that happens on this planet. Or on the hundred or so other worlds in her domain,” Sara explained. “It kind of takes the fun out of it.”
“Where are we going?”
“Just walking. Unless you really do want to go to sleep? I mean, after tomorrow, you’ll definitely pass out. But right now, it’s a nice night. And I don’t get to come down to the surface very often.”
As they walked further from Tura’s garden grove, Sara clearly grew more nervous. When Elijah asked what was wrong, she answered, “There’s a reason they don’t let me come down here alone. It’s dangerous.”
“Really?”
Elijah hadn’t really felt anything aggressive. Sure, there were strong creatures around, but they seemed content to just go about their lives.
“Seems safe enough to me.”
“Because you’re a Druid,” she said, punching him in the shoulder. “The only way you’d be attacked is if you stepped on a blight dragon.”
“I used to be able to turn into one of those.”
“What? Really?”
“Yeah. It was the first evolution of my first form,” he answered. “It changed again a few levels back.”
“Oooh, let me see!”
“Really?”
“Please!” she pleaded. “Please, please, please!”
Elijah rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine.”
Then, he shifted into the Shape of the Scourge. Sara screamed in spite of herself.
“It’s fine. It’s just me,” Elijah assured her.
“Your voice is weird!”
“Is it? I never really noticed,” he admitted. In retrospect, the change was undeniable. It was very much similar, but the difference between a scourgedrake and a human gave the sound of his voice a deep, reverberating undertone. “This is a scourgedrake. I focus on venom, mostly. But it’s strong enough to do some decent physical damage, too.”
“So cool,” Sara said, reaching up to feel the spines around his head.
Elijah didn’t think much about her use of Earth slang, mostly because he was vaguely aware that the system was translating her words. Likely, it just chose “cool” because it was close enough to whatever word she’d actually uttered.
“You want to see my other forms?”
“Yes!”
“Alright. Don’t freak out.”
Then, Elijah shifted into the Shape of Spores. As he grew, Sara cowered in sheer terror.
“You don’t have eyes!”
“What?”
“You don’t have any eyes. How do you see?”
“Uh…”
Elijah had never even noticed the lack. He could see just fine in that form. After a little self-examination, he realized that the fungi covering him served a visual function. He’d been subconsciously using that symbiotic relationship combined with Soul of the Wild to allow for sight.
“Learn something new every day, huh?” he remarked before explaining the Shape of Spores’ function. After that, he shifted into his other forms, including the World Serpent and the giant turtle of Shape of the Sea. That second one was a bit awkward because of its size and the rigidity of its shape.
Sara loved it, though. Her reaction to the massive turtle form prompted him to say, “I knew I liked you.”
“Everyone likes turtles,” she said.
“That’s what I always say!” he agreed. Then, he asked, “Do you want to see my dragon form?”
The answer was a resounding, “Yes!”
So, Elijah shifted. He’d already knocked a couple of trees down when he took on the Shape of the Sea, so there was plenty of room for his comparatively slender dragon form. He arched his neck, then leaned forward.
“What do you think?” he asked Sara.
She just stared at him, her jaw dropped. “Emerald. You’re really emerald.”
“Yeah.”
“Mother said that you were, but…I just didn’t believe it,” she muttered. Louder, she continued, “But you’re not wild, right? You’re not a wyrm, are you?”
“Do I seem like a wyrm?”
She shrugged, reaching out to touch the scales on his neck. “I don’t know. Some wyrms are…I don’t know. Not normal. But not aggressive? Unless you invade their territory or try to take their stuff, I guess. Or frown at them. There’s one that lives in the mountains, but I think that’s just a rumor.”
“I’m not a wyrm.”
“I…I believe you,” she said. “Your wings are…are they branches? Vines?”
Elijah spread them. “Kind of both,” he admitted. When he’d first attained his dragon form, the wings were comprised of a few branches and some leaves. But the combination of his cultivation and reaching the demi-god tier had filled them in with vines and smaller limbs. Now, they almost looked solid.
“What’s your breath?” she asked.
“I’m not sure what to call it. But it’s kind of like concentrated vitality. When I use it, things grow really fast,” he explained. It was more complex than that. The grade of vitality was far higher than he’d found anywhere else.
“Breath of Life.”
“What?”
“That’s what it’s called. It’s rare, even for green dragons,” she said. “But you’re emerald, so…I guess it fits? I don’t know. You’re weird.”
“Thanks?”
“Like good weird.”
Elijah laughed. “I’ll take good weird. Better than weird weird. Or bad weird.”
“Obviously,” she said self-seriously. “I can’t wait until I get demi-god. I really want to fly.”
“I mean…hop on?”
“Really? I’m not a dragoon.”
“You say that like it means anything to me,” Elijah said. He knew a little about dragoons, having encountered them in the Broken Crown. But that was just the basics. “So, want to go for a quick flight?”
She looked around, almost as if she expected someone to suddenly pop up and chastise her for even considering it. But they were in the middle of the jungle, and there was no one around.
So, she nodded and leaped onto his back. “Let’s go!” she screamed, grabbing hold of the ridges between his shoulders and his neck.
As a dragon, Elijah’s face wasn’t quite as malleable as it was as a human, but he managed an approximation of a grin all the same. Then, he leaped into the air, flapped his wings, and took to the skies.