44.

What lies beneath

The air, dense with mana, only got thicker as they descended. Aster clung close to him, darkness taking over their vision.

Dominic flicked his finger, and a small flame came to life, bobbing above it. He waited a moment in case there was any reflux, but there was no reaction. As long as he kept the amount small, it seemed like he was safe.

Aster stared at it, then quickly turned his gaze away. He felt slightly guilty not explaining it, but it was just too complicated.

They silently stepped down into the hallway at the bottom of the staircase. A gust of wind blew through, ruffling their hair. He could feel a wide, tall hall in front of them by the way the air moved. Dominic increased the flame slightly, focusing on it and forcing it into the shape of a cube. It appeared like a glowing stone, its meager light growing and spreading further in its new form.

He heard Aster gasp as the walls and ceiling were illuminated. The white stone had been intricately carved, statues so realistic it looked as if they might come to life gracing pedestals and alcoves. Instead of heroes like those above, there were dragons, beasts, chimeric creatures. They stretched down the hall and into the darkness ahead.

He looked up. Even from above, there were stone statues of winged animals staring back as if guarding the halls, watching their every move. The security in the room they’d come from had already been excessive. Their unmoving gazes only added to the unwelcome air of the lair.

Aster gulped and scooted closer. They continued forward.

Dominic glanced across the carvings as he walked, and realized how strange the arrangement was. At the entrance, statues of heroes that attacked and automatically healed themselves. A staircase that wouldn’t open unless Kali permitted it. And down here, ever-vigilant beasts that looked like they could pounce at any moment. Something about it didn’t make sense. If the dragon had intended to hide, then they shouldn’t have let there be an entrance at all—they should have just sealed their lair off entirely. And yet there had been a way in, that could only be unlocked with an incredibly precise procedure. If the people that had come didn’t have at least one mage of every affinity, they’d never make it out alive.

Dominic stopped in his tracks as a realization dawned on him.

Before he had even arrived in the room above, the maze had separated all of them. They had all been brought to a different place, forced to be alone.

From the beginning, the dragon had only been looking for one person—the only person who could use all the affinities.

“Aster,” he called, feeling the hairs on his arms beginning to rise as something in the air changed.

“Yeah?”

“Come h—”

He abruptly tackled the boy to the ground before he could finish speaking, the statue of a winged lizard lunging past the space where his chest had just been. It impacted the wall after missing, digging a crater into it. It pulled its head out and locked its slitted eyes back onto them.

The dragon had only been looking for one person. It didn’t need anybody else.

The lizard lunged again, aiming for Aster. Dominic swiped it with the back of his hand, the stone exploding when it met his knuckles. He dragged Aster up and pushed him forward.

“Run!”

“Run where?!” he responded, stumbling.

Dominic looked up. Ahead of them as well as behind, all of the statues were waking up. A small cat leapt at the boy, and Dominic kicked it away. It flew down the hall, crashing into a stone eagle midair.

The statues healed themselves, just like they did before, but none were using magic or particularly advanced techniques. They were just animals, but there were a lot of them.

A statue that looked like an oversized rat grabbed onto the hem of Aster’s clothes and started climbing up. He shouted in alarm and popped back into his crow form, the stone rodent falling to the floor. Dominic quickly grabbed him out of the air and started sprinting forward.

He pushed some mana into his arms, shoring them up with reinforcement magic. It made him slightly nauseous, but it wasn’t enough to cause too bad of a reaction yet. He slapped away any statues that tried to come close, the stone crumbling on contact.

The heavy thud of footsteps echoed from ahead. Dominic looked forward. The hall opened up into a round room, but at the center, the huge statue of a panther with feathery wings had come alive. It moved towards them.

Dominic hugged Aster close, glaring up at it. The others encircled them, looking for an opening.

“Get out of my way,” he ordered, voice low.

It leaned in closer as if trying to get a better look at the crow in his arms. He glanced between its legs. On the far side of the room, a huge set of intricately carved doors sat tightly shut. That was the real entrance to the lair, not this hallway.

“Aster,” he said, “when I tell you to, fly over to those doors and go inside.”

“What if they don’t open?” the crow asked.

“I’ll open them.”

The nose of the giant panther neared, trying to sniff out the presence that didn’t belong. Dominic grabbed it with his hand, digging his fingers into the stone, and held it in place.

“Go!” he shouted.

Aster shot out of his hands and beelined for the doors. He sent the cube of fire with him, the light hitting the stone ahead of the crow and splashing across the intricate, geometric carvings on its surface. His mana glowed gold as it spread from the impact point, outlining the design, and the door slowly began to creak open. It was as he’d suspected. Everything here would open, as long as it was for him.

The statues raced towards Aster. He gritted his teeth and stuck both hands into the panther’s snout, putting more power into his reinforcement spell.

He dug his feet in and tugged. The huge cat toppled over, swinging across the room and sweeping away the wave of smaller statues that were trying to pass him. When he let go, the panther slid across the floor, into the hallway, crashing through and destroying everything in its path.

Before the statues could heal themselves, Dominic turned and bolted for the door.

He quickly ran through the crack, then withdrew his mana, the cube of fire he’d thrown instantly extinguishing. Detecting the lack, the door began closing again, finally shutting with a deep, heavy thud.

He put his back against it and slid down, catching his breath. Aster was there too, in his demon form again, laying spread eagle on the floor.

It was quiet on this side. Dominic looked up and lit another flame above his finger, but it quickly extinguished as he winced in pain.

“Ugh…”

He rubbed his temples. Using so much reinforcement magic a moment ago was now giving him a splitting headache. It wasn’t too bad, considering how violent the reflux had been before, but it wasn’t pleasant.

“There’s…light…” Aster remarked between breaths, looking up towards the ceiling.

Dominic followed his gaze. Although dim, there were glowing stones installed in the walls above, bathing the hallway in white light. It was enough to see that instead of statues, this part of the lair opted for paintings.

“The paintings aren’t going to attack us, right…?” Aster said.

Dominic nodded weakly. He was starting to get used to the pattern this dragon used. For now, they were safe. He couldn’t say for sure what would happen if they went further.

“Let’s…sit here for a bit,” he suggested. His head was still pounding.

Aster nodded.

“That sounds good.”

He glanced across the murals as he waited for the pain in his head to die down. They were fairly similar to the ones in the room above—sweeping landscapes, old myths, scenes of worship. He spotted one figure, painted in a fresco high on the ceiling, that felt vaguely familiar to him for a moment. It was a woman with long, wavy black hair and bronze skin, surrounded by floating books and scrolls and holding a quill in her hands. Although he didn’t know who she was, he felt like he’d seen her before.

Dominic searched through his memories, then slowly realized where that feeling of familiarity was coming from. He did know her, at least a little bit. That must be Kali. The statue of her had been made of cold, light grey stone—unpainted. This was what Kali was supposed to look like in color.

Her eyes were iridescent green, and they shined with passion even through the unmoving mural. This was her in her element, quill and ink in hand, unraveling the secrets of Denea, then inventing concepts of her own. An unrivaled genius that would never be seen again. Dominic stared at her figure, wincing as pain, though lighter than before, pounded again through his head.

Unlike Kali, he was no genius. He had an aptitude for magic, but that was all. He could never invent new ideas. He was only good at imitating the things he saw other people do. Dominic had always been just one of the many ‘talented’ children who fell by the wayside once they grew older, and he knew it.

Kali’s emerald eyes shimmered in the dim light of the hall. How difficult it was, that his predecessor had to be her. It was an impossible legacy to live up to, and yet he had no choice. Mars had chosen him for it out of all the people on the planet—out of everyone in the last thousand years.

“Aster,” Dominic called quietly, his voice echoing through the hall, “how long do you want to lie here?”

Aster turned his head to look at him.

“Maybe another minute,” he answered. “Are you okay? You looked like you were in pain earlier.”

“It’s just a headache.”

“Then I can go whenever you’re ready.”

“Alright.”

Dominic rubbed his eyes. The pain was slowly fading, but it was still uncomfortable. Every few seconds, he’d feel his head throb again.

He closed his eyes and reached out his senses, trying to ignore it. The hall led into a large, circular chamber, off of which several staircases and corridors sprouted. It wasn’t a maze, but more like the structure of a multistory building. And it was huge. The sheer scale of every hall and room and corner dwarfed any architecture he had ever heard of outside. The lair had to be big enough to accommodate a dragon, after all. It would take them a long time to get anywhere if they just wandered mindlessly around. He needed to find the gate he was looking for before they set off.

He followed the mana. There was plenty in the lair—thick and almost like an invisible haze—but if a gate was really active inside this place, then it would probably exude more than anything else. Warp magic was one of the highest energy affinities that existed. The trail led straight ahead, down a set of stairs, to the far side of the lair. It ended at two huge double doors, shut tight. There.

His eyes slowly opened. His headache still wasn’t entirely gone, but it had faded. Dominic took a deep breath and pushed himself up from the floor.

Aster sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“Are we leaving, brother?” he asked.

“If you’re ready,” Dominic replied.

“I’m good.”

The boy stood and brushed off his clothes. Dominic continued down the hall, and Aster followed. The sound of their footsteps echoed between the wide walls, making it feel even larger and emptier than it already was.

He led them on the path he’d scouted out, heading deeper into the lair. It took them at least half an hour just to reach the first staircase, the halls designed for a dragon’s lengthy strides.

Aster stared down at the steps, eyes wide. They seemed to go down forever. Dominic was slightly surprised that there were stairs at all, and that they were carved so that people could actually go down them instead of being scaled to fit a dragon’s feet. Then again, he doubted the dragon—Largo, as Mars had said—would even use the stairs in the first place. All he had to do was fly.

They moved downwards. It took them almost ten minutes just to reach the bottom, and after that, another eternity walking through motionless, empty halls to finally reach the doors he had been looking for.

“Is this it?” Aster asked.

Dominic nodded. He put his palm on the stone, just letting it rest there for a second. It was cold to the touch, and covered in a layer of fine dust.

He pushed some of his mana into it. It flooded through the engravings on the surface, glowing gold as it spread—growing like the branches of a tree.

Slowly, the doors creaked open. He looked warily inside, letting the dust settle, then stepped over the threshold.

The doors closed again behind them, which made Aster jump. The circular chamber they had gone into, ceiling vaulted high above, was empty. On the other side, a structure Dominic assumed was the gate was built into the wall, glowing a dim blue.

Before he could move closer to it, a sudden, strong gust of wind blew through, whipping their clothes around. It was so powerful that Dominic had to grab hold of Aster’s sleeve to keep the boy from sliding away.

It settled, a thick silence falling over the room, and a shiver went down his spine. He knew instinctively that he had made a mistake. He should have left Aster outside.

The mana began to move, then solidified like wisps of smoke. First a claw, then a leg, then a torso and head. Translucent wings sprouted from its back, a whip-like tail appearing and sweeping from side to side.

The ghostly dragon, fully formed now, shook itself slightly like it was still waking up. Its body was see-through like fog, complete yet incomplete. It turned its eyes towards Dominic.

And it roared.