As we were following the Salamander my undead perceived a group of baboons coming their way. The baboons stop and immediately start casting a spell.

What truly surprised me is that these baboons are actually syncing their spells, I can feel the mana moving in them, whatever spell they are going to unleash is going to be big.

My undead do not stop moving, they do not even slow down, charging into the baboons. Not fast enough, the troop releases their spell. I feel the mana wash over my undead, and it changes them.

Their forms warp and shift, they become smaller, their teeth sharper, their spine grows a bony tail and… they become skeleton baboons. Almost 30 undead become primate skeletons, they do not seem to care, seeing as this does not slow them down.

The baboons are clearly surprised though, I can feel them trying to cast spells on my turned undead, to no avail. My clattering troop crashes into the baboons and a bloodbath ensues, the chase continues. The dungeon is still blocking me so I do not know exactly what they were trying to do, maybe they have some way of mind controlling baboons?

Whatever, this transformation should not be permanent.

As we near the cave entrance that the salamander slipped into I notice something weird, very powerful… wave or a vibration? It’s not a sound, it feels… shit, no way.

My undead get inside the opening, it’s a pretty normal cave, they move on faster. They come upon a larger circular room, right in the middle of it there's a weirdly concave hole, looks like a pool or something. I feel that weird vibration getting, not stronger, just more pronounced somehow?

Right after this room the large tunnel opens up significantly, and it slopes downward too. I can tell those vibrations are coming from there, and I can see light from the tunnel… and more.

My undead advance slower this time, we can hear very loud noises now, explosions and crashes of stone and wild distant roars.

The closer we get to the opening the harder those vibrations solidify into my mind, those are dimensional vibrations. I can even see the distortion they are causing as my undead get closer.

This place we are walking into is a pocket dimension, and a big one at that, the fact that it's vibrating is a little problematic, it could mean several things. The most probable are that this pocket dimension is growing, shrinking or turning unstable. If it’s unstable then it will either… well come back to some kind of balance or destroy itself, which is a big problem, though most pocket universes tend to implode and shrink into themselves, which is just a problem for things inside of it, not outside.

The problem is that if they do actually explode outwards is that they tend to cause a lot of unpredictable problems, being teleported into a wall would be one of the mild problems that could happen.

They keep moving, inching ever closer to the opening, the loud clamor of what must be battle growing louder. Then they arrive at the opening, and we see what’s beyond it.

It is gigantic.

I already expected something big from a pocket dimension but this is even bigger. I can see mountains on the horizon. I see tall spires of stone closer, there are large pools of water and rushing rivers and even waterfalls.

Floating in the air are islands, roots branching down their earthy underside.

This opening itself is high in the air, coming out of a wall of stone. Look down, it plummets to a large body of water. A body of water filled with monkeys and lizards.

Both fighting off giant water snakes.

Those are not the worst things I see. Not that far from my position I see large flying reptiles, I can see they are not from the lizard dungeon, at least they don’t look like it. They are flying at high velocities, killing monkeys and lizards, and breathing fire.

I watch as a flying gorilla with bat wings gets body checked by a particularly large and scaled wyvern, the animal plunges down like a meteor and disappears in a shower of gore.

There are other fliers too, mostly snakes and chameleons. All of them bitterly fighting and getting destroyed. But there seems to be no end to them.

The wyverns are interesting too, they seem to be highly individualistic, not helping each other at all, in fact they seem to attack each other as much as the enemy.

There are multiple species of wyvern it seems, though all of them share the same body type, meaning a stinged tail longer than their bodies, two legs and two wings. Some of them have classical bat wings, while others have thicker streamlined leather wings, some even have feathers.

They are not only fighting themselves, the lizard dungeon but also something else, much farther away there seems to be another battlefield, there I see three gigantic… tree trunks moving? What is that? The tree moves in weird ways, two of them seem to have joints and the middle one a weird texture, it seems to be… trembling too? There's something moving inside of it.

The trunks move and kick at the flying wyverns, those trees are at least 20 meters long , so the fact that I see some of these wyverns getting punted like that and getting up again is kind of scary.

I see the weirder shaped tree move, the end of it opens up and a large seed-like object falls, it rolls around smashing anything it passes by, mostly wyverns that fell down.

That’s not a tree, that’s a stick-bug! This thing is bigger than actual trees.

Oh, shit. One of the wyverns fighting the Lizard-monkey dungeon flies off, in my direction.

It suddenly accelerates and I tell my undead to back off, go back!

They move away from the opening just in time. The wyvern hits the opening of the cave and bursts through it sending rock pieces and dust flying everywhere.

I can see it actually broke the stone around it, making the opening significantly larger. Like… significantly larger, I can actually easily see the ceiling now. Does this fucker think he’s a missile?

This monster is huge, just its body is the size of a medium van, its tail slightly longer and ending in a wicked sharp stinger.

It has no spikes or spines along its body, instead it has scales, almost like a pangolin, except these seem thicker and heavier, besides being a dark black color almost like plates. Its bulky upper body connects with two large wings, the wings have three long digits each with a large black claw, its feet have four digits, also ending in large claws, thicker than the ones on the wings.

Although it does not have horns like I expected, it still has a fearsome mouth full of sharp teeth, and scarily intelligent eyes.

While I’m still stunned it moves, but to my surprise another party crasher appears. From the outside of the entrance two large earth snakes emerge from the stone walls, they open their mouths and blast a stream of small rocks and gray dust at the bulky wyvern.

The rock rain falls and pelts the wyvern, who seems… completely fine in it. One stone hits it at a weird angle and flies off in the direction of my undead, hitting and almost breaking someone's skull.

The wyvern lifts its head and looks at the snakes.

It opens its mouth.

I see orange light coming out of it…oh shit.

It’s not a flamethrower that comes out of the wyverns mouth, instead a single, watermelon sized ball of fire rockets out of the wyverns mouth, it passes like a flash of light and hits the earth snake right below its mouth.

The snake head disappears as a gigantic plume of fire blossoms out of it, the shockwave makes a few skeletons stumble as their bones rattle. The wyverns turns its head and shoots another fireball, again it completely annihilates the earth snake. For a second, I can’t see the ceiling anymore, just flame and smoke.

The wyvern turns its head towards my skeletons. I already see the orange light coming out of it.

Gorger runs down and leaps towards the wyverns. The world slows as I see the fireball leave the creature’s mouth and fly towards Gorger who’s waiting for it with his mouths open.

His tongue shoots out from the belly mouth, on its tip there is a book. His magic book, shining a bright bronze as the fireball touches it.

My vision resets for a second, I hop to Gorger’s vision.

He is looking down at his body, rather at the lack of said body. Everything from his shoulder downward is gone, in fact only a single shoulder and arm survived. The wyvern is fighting something.

Other wyverns? No… Those are the flying chameleons and snakes from the lizard dungeon. They are spewing acid from their mouths, I watch as the cave starts to melt around the scaled wyvern, are they trying to trap it?

“Uoglrrrr” Gorger says out loud, while also sending what he actually means to Stinger. He looks up and I see where the book got blown off to. It’s high up in the tunnel slope, there is an actual impact crater around it, Stinger runs down and kicks the book towards Gorger, who grabs it and immediately opens it.

The book opens and its pages turn, each time they do it shines brighter and a rune is formed.

Gorger looks and sees that the wyvern is still fighting the flying lizards, though they are different now, parts of them have clearly mutated. They are still spewing acid, probably with the intent of trapping it with me.

Suddenly I feel the presence of the Lizard dungeon leaving, I also hear a bunch of explosions, so I guess it has other worries besides spying and irritating me now. I take a closer look at the Wyvern.

Flying Scaled Wyvern Lv58

…Yeah, I’m having everyone run away from this.

The book stops moving, a red rune appears on Gorger’s forehead. He points his finger and casts the spell, using everything he has.

Gigantic tentacles like tongues rise from the floor and walls, they flail around for a second and then wrap around the wyvern, once they do a few of them bludgeon it. Stinger grabs Gorger and makes a run for it, running somewhat awkwardly due to the added weight.

A plan forms in my head. I tell everyone to go up and change my view to one of my drones. I tell the mages to leave the tunnel and for the others to widen it as best as they can, sadly Asterion is too far away to reach the tunnel in a meaningful time.

I go back to the greenhouse and see it on flames and hear a weird whispering voice on the non-existent wind.

Flames, violet, amethyst and lilac flames are burning everything down in the greenhouse. Almost the entire lizard part of the forest is gone, a sea of flames in its place. All the undead are standing around, just staring at the flames, catatonic, unmoving. The undead don’t seem to be hurt at all by the flame, my parts of the woods are mostly fine, though also burning, but my trees are slightly resistant to the necrotic energies radiating out of these flames.

I can hear something through the undead, like a whisper carried by the wind. I take a look at the memories of my undead and see that this fire started… from Merlin? No, from the blood and flesh of the Salamander, the ones that Merlin cut using his blade.

Shit, I don’t have time for this. But maybe it will help.

I call out to my undead and they leave their weird stupor and answer to me, the whispering does not stop, but seems more distant somehow.

I tell the flying skulls to get in position and start my plan. I tell my undead to start leaving the tunnel in 10 seconds.

I concentrate and take control of my mana. I take it and manipulate it to move out into the greenhouse, activating the array at its mouth to push harder.

Then, because of course it would, something goes wrong. The necrotic mana is pulled into the purple fires and ignites itself. The flames travel up, from the greenhouse all the way to me.

I do not falter. I did not expect this to happen, but so what?

I am a wizard, this is not the first nor the last time something will blow up in flames right into my face.

Using every single scrap of will I can find I push the fire back into the greenhouse. The fire changes colors for a second, going from purples to some weird pinkish tones.

The fire moves away from my dungeon and into the greenhouse, and suddenly I feel something going with it.

Me.

The fire is pulling a ridiculous amount of mana and, somehow, my aura. My aura, my mana and the fire all combine into one as they rush out.

A weird feeling fills me, it’s like I am suddenly heavier, as my flames pass my forest and burn away the leaves I feel like I am crashing down, like a bird that suddenly grew in size midair.

My flying skulls join me, they use all their ability, all they can to guide mysel—my flames? To the lizard tunnel. I feel them, I let them guide me, concentrating on moving the bulk of the fire and letting them refine my path and form.

I feel it. {The Dead March} activates, which is funny since they do not have feet to really march, still… I feel it activating on me too, on my flames.

The whispering gets louder.

I hear it clearly now.

And it does not sound like voices anymore, they sound like memories.

Amarantos.

As the greenhouse burns I feel another pull, I am in range of my mages, they join in and start to direct the flaming aurora that I am now.

I move together with them towards the entrance. All the undead are out and I can already see the wyvern coming up.

I hit the entrance like a volcanic eruption, I feel the area around start to melt… and change, my fire is doing something weird to all the rock around me.

I keep going down towards the wyvern, I spit fireballs at me, they do nothing.

That’s like spitting at a wave and expecting it to bow down.

I hit the wyvern and to my surprise it does not die immediately. I keep going and push it back.

As I am pushing it back I feel something, and understand why this thing is not dead. The scales are magic resistant.

My flames pass around the wyvern like water, still I keep pushing it. I feel my flames and push them against the ground, hoping to soften it, instead the ground turns into ash.

A wyvern loses its grip and slides down and my flames follow it. I can feel it, each second that passes I am losing control of the flames.

I push harder and feel the entire tunnel fall down as I pass. The wyverns scales turn from black to a shiny bronze.

Then they start to crack.

Before I am able to open this thing from inside out I push it completely out of the tunnel, the thing falls down and hits the ground while I lose control of the flames.

My vision snaps back to the greenhouse. I can feel it is now mine. My aura is everywhere.

I take a good look around. Everything is covered in ash. Even the area where the insects came in. The walls of the greenhouse are also black and gray from all the ash.

My Ebon Gloomwoods are leafless and probably need moisturizing or something. They are very, very thin. The lizard hole is… not a hole anymore, I can see I seem to have melted a fuck ton of rock, said rock has been transmuted into some kind of obsidian too, which is plugging the cave completly.

That’s… probably for the better, those wyverns seem very dangerous. I am… going to let the lizard dungeon soften them up for me, for a little while, just so I can gather my strength back up.

This isn’t over yet.

I take a look around the greenhouse… All of it is burnt, the only trees are my extremely black and spooky trees. There is a thick layer of ash on the ground and on the lake… what’s that?

I feel undead, one I have never felt before. One of my skulls sees it. It’s... one of the cut pieces of the Salamander.

The thing is just a bunch of burnt arms, though it has weird bright purple and pink veins running all over it, glowing slightly.

Amethyst Ember Husk Lv1

Huh… interesting. Welcome to the family I guess. Welcome to the greenhouse.

I take another look around… Not a single green thing around.

One of my undead calls me. I take a look and see… down, under the ash layer there is a tiny signal of life, of vitality.

A seed. A life attuned seed that somehow survived.

New homework for you guys, find more of these and take care of them, ensure they become trees again!

Hopefully they will have green leaves.