As the unknown dragon completed their loop, Akevorax thought they’d descend onto the island. Instead, their wings transformed to a dark shadow, eventually a darkness very close to the void he saw not too long ago, but different too as shimmering stars featured on these wings. On their second loop round, while this dragon flew about the blue, open skies peeled away as a hazy night sky replaced it.

Quite literally in this case. The blue sky peeled away like a sticky film ripped off the surface of an image, beneath he saw dark depths of space which mesmerised him in its endless depths.

The five behind stood back up long ago too, no longer suppressed by anything, but also greatly impressed by the sight beholden to them.

As for the elders… They didn’t share those emotions, Casstilandri saying, “Now she’s just showing off. Like we couldn’t do that too.” Her rolled eyes met with agreement from the other four. A veil of night now covered them, but the imagined stars in this sky somehow kept the whole platform lit brightly. With the completion of this, she descended on the mountain peak. Unimpeded by the barriers and spatial modifications which made direct entry normally impossible.

Similar in size to the five elders, she somehow stood at the same height as them but took up so much more room. Just her presence imposed an aura on them all, ignorable to the elders and Akevorax, but not so much to the others.

Although Korridan actually withstood it pretty well, his elemental body contained a portion of Origin Force at this point. His next evolution seemed incredible by all predictions.

Looking up at the immense dragon in front, he saw the crystal-lustre of her purple scales. They seemed to draw his gaze endlessly, not to mention the black wings which twinkled with stars. Both eyes somehow glowed with powerful red irises, and claws sucked in light as though formed of black holes. If one looked at the surrounding mana, they’d see a distorted mess of accretion disks formed around each claw, and the power within everything… Even with Elder eyes enhanced by Origin Force, he only used a single word to name her power.

Endless.

“What’s the matter? You were so strong-willed, threatening them at a distance, but you backed down now that I approached?” She looked down on Akevorax with a gaze refined by endless pride and power, even with the True Will beside him, the anger he felt already converted to fear and concern in her presence. It was a gulf of difference from the five elders…

“How is that a fair comparison… You’re at least stronger than two of them,” Akevorax mumbled under his breath with a swear to top it off. He couldn’t accurately gauge her power, but one solid fact remained well known.

Every draconic clan lord’s might exceeded a demigod.

She smiled at the compliment contained within his complaint, even if unintentional, and finally turned around to face the five elders. All of them stood tall, but their heads bowed in her presence. None of them dared move as her eyes glossed over all of them, finally settling on Gintsetbo at the end. He noticed this too and shook slightly, some muscles clenching all over, but still stationary in the end.

“I– What can I do for the clan lord?” His eyes stayed focused on the ground, repeated gulps followed in the silence after. Besides the other elders, everyone else stood in confusion, unsure of what exactly this matter came from.

Until she acted, a single claw stretched out and scratched stone beneath them. It cut through the impeccable material, which Akevorax couldn’t even crack, easier than a child running their hand through whipped cream, a line dug through the substance before she repeated the action. Just as the final line completed, everyone simply watched as Gintsetbo’s wings fell to the ground, completely detached at the base with a smooth cut.

He didn’t dare regrow them, head lowered as the smooth crystal within gleamed in her starlight. While he withstood the pain and humiliation, the slight shaking finally let up, he stood stably now.

She spoke coldly, but with a dearth of sympathy, “You understand your punishment?”

He hastily replied, “Yes… My losses this time were too great.” The majority of that sentence seemed to be for himself, followed by a sigh and unsure stare at Akevorax. He didn’t truly hold any resentment over this matter, but it still hurt to see the dragon opposite win everything in the end.

However, this only confused Akevorax and the group further. Korridan could take a wild guess at what happened though, and Mala also believed she figured it out right as he began speaking. “So that’s the elder who saved Lostradus back then? And that also means you acquired the phoenix flame through the eternals… Where did the Divinus-wrecking flames come from then?”

Gintsetbo, now wingless, replied to the question in Baranot for them all to easily understand, “Lostradus acquired that on his own, it was by pure luck that I noticed the oddity within him first and hid it from the others.”

Mala naturally followed up with an appropriate question, “Then the punishment?”

“Inciting two young dragons to fight to the death. We have rules to stop our conflicts from seeping through. It more than applies here,” the clan lord answered immediately,

They all nodded in understanding, with a group as old as the dragons, it only made sense that at such an age, personal issues always hid in the undercurrents. Even if these five elders got along well on paper, who knew if the various supreme tiers shared such familiarity.

The clan lord was not finished yet, as she said, “Vacate your position by the end of this week, I will select a new elder next week.” Gintsetbo nodded his head without disagreement, in the end he took this matter too far; the elders encouraged young dragons to fight, not kill. Furthermore, the clan lord then spoke to the first elder with a lick of her lips, saying, “I expect all my soulstones by month’s end.”

“Understood, clan lord,” he spoke respectfully, but everyone heard the terseness of the response. It truly pained him to reply this way…

The other four knew of their bets, but how many did he lose to present so much emotion?

“Take him to the gardens when you explain the situation best… As for the four of you, why do you continue to hide those things? Go see Casstilandri after, she can take a look at them,” the clan lord casually said. She skipped from addressing the first elder to the four humans behind Akevorax.

Her tail, tipped with an intimidating purple-black crystal and lilac fins on all sides, resembled a decorational partisan more than a real weapon. It simply pointed to the four of them, and all of them felt the itching on their backs reappear instantly, drastically strengthened as the potion regularly taken instantly dispelled under the tail’s effect. Magic negation was hard, but with an absolute difference in power, everyone knew how easily it could be performed.

None of them even bothered to try to suppress it. They hid unhappy faces with awkward grimaces.

At the same time, they uncomfortably squirmed and forcibly cut holes into the back of their clothes to allow scaled tails to extend outwards. The transformation hurt slightly, especially as the nerve endings on the new limb scraped against hard armour, but all four put up with it. Obviously annoyed that they had to replace their equipment now.

Their tails were not pure red like their crystal hearts, but rather a deep black with fringes of red all over. Fortunately, Raccelline never joined in with the matter, not that such a crystal heart mattered to her.

The magic-centric Casstilandri jumped at the sight, immediately stating initial opinions, “Certainly… Interesting. How was the demon bloodline preserved as well? I’ll need samples from you four later, and Akevorax, you wouldn’t happen to have any leftovers, right?”

Akevorax nodded, but did not yet hand anything over, overall unsure how exactly he should feel.

He didn’t get to choose what came next though, as space instantly folded over him and he appeared on the other side of the mountain, now in front of the first elder at a speed faster than the mithril tier dragon perceived reality. None of them displayed hostility though, even Gintsetbo who lost an unprecedented amount after all the time and effort put into his disciple. It was an off-putting display of apathy… Or perhaps more realistically they held no emotional attachments to younger dragons.

That made sense. After all, only a handful every generation actually made it to supreme tier. Most dragons grew up lonely, at most, they built friendships, but most stuck to allies in their homes. It showed, especially in the solitary caves built throughout the Dragonlands.

Regardless of all this, no one asked his opinion on the matter as the first elder teleported himself and Akevorax once more.

Space completely tore this time round, and Akevorax quickly realised that he left the realm itself as they moved into a sub-realm. Much like the stitched realm, it existed alongside the Dragonlands, but this one contained far stabler space, much like the battlefield he fought Lostradus in. And once more he couldn’t help but present complete confusion at the sight below him.

The two dragons hovered high up in the air, a vast landscape below them in all directions with a great variety of environments and altitudes compressed into a relatively small area. Akevorax didn’t have to beat his wings to fly, the air itself supported him, and that gave ample time to just watch what occurred below.

“What is this place?” Akevorax asked a simple question, obviously disregarding its name which the clan lord already mentioned. Although, was it ‘The Garden’ or just a garden?

“We called it the Dragongarden. Yes, the name is similar to many others dragons have chosen in the past. It’s a relatively new addition to every Dragonlands, ours is the oldest at about 800 years old… I think you can already see its purpose,” the first elder lectured him about the land below them, and even though such a voice should be heard for miles, nothing down below raised their heads. Something likely kept them invisible as well, hardly a tough implementation for a supreme tier.

But when he looked down, his heart couldn’t help but beat intensely. It burned, not from anger or appreciation or interest, but incredulous jealousy. Envy he hardly felt his own.

When was the last time he felt this way?

Down below, whether through vast forests, gentle lakes, scorching deserts, magmatic volcanoes, and perilous jungles, all numbers of beasts lived within their confines kind of like animals in a zoo. None of them were intelligent, merely additions for the true inhabitants of this ‘garden’.

Dragons, nothing too surprising given the location. But none of the dragons here had wings yet, many of them slotted into his own generation, but the largest difference obviously came in the form of a centralised mountain which the few hundreds in this place flocked to. A mountain very much like the Dragonlands as it formed a unified home ground for the species in this sub-realm, but more importantly, Akevorax saw few adult dragons.

Outside of a few in that mountain, this world was purely made for these children… And he envied them immensely.

“You probably have quite a few questions. I don’t think you need to be told of this place’s purpose, but most dragons have the same disbelief when they first come here. My answer is always the same though… This place is a result of a failed experiment that no one wishes to let go.” The first elder’s words confirmed his thoughts on this place, but the final line conflicted gravely with his own beliefs.

He replied, with a conflicted face, “I see children given the chance to act as children.”

“And that is why it failed. Dragons are not children, we never were,” the elder’s harsh words returned a frown from Akevorax, but even the aged dragon sighed from its reality. “About a thousand years ago, we decided to take a leaf out of the humans’ books. Instituted schools in the Dragonlands to train hatchlings in safety before sending them out to the world, after all, if such an innately weak race could rise to dominance with such education, why can’t we?”

“You sound unhappy that they got to live in safety…” Akevorax absently commented, still trying to rearrange his thoughts on the topic as a whole while watching the dragons below crawl about. They casually talked in groups as friends, often times entering the wilderness of this small world to hunt and practise. He found them to be far happier, friendlier, and all-round, ideal.

“Yes… Because we did not nurture dragons. They became the weakest generations, the clans weakened immensely in those years and we receded into the Dragonlands for almost a century to make up for such losses. But still those foolish dreamers lingered, so now the ‘Gardens’ exist,” his words mixed with both ferocity and regret. Akevorax truly couldn’t understand what exactly this elder felt on the matter, but the fact that mimicking such intelligent races caused a temporary downfall countered all expectations. After so many years amongst humans and elves, he wondered why his own race never instituted similar education for dragons, teaching the hatchlings before they left.

But they had! Dragons could not afford to retain rampant conservatism as every other civilisation developed, they tried to follow, but it failed…

Why did it fail?

“A couple of us originally joked about calling these places Greenhouses, but the sixth world found it too insulting, so it was changed to Gardens. We only use this place for the children of supreme tier dragons, we just can’t afford raising every single child, even with the tiny birth rate of our kind.”

“That doesn’t explain why though,” Akevorax spoke with a scoff, annoyed that only the powerful dragons got this option, but from the elders words it sounded like some supreme tiers still sent hatchlings out to the wider world.

“Because fewer awaken their True Wills. In the first place, only about 50 dragons in every generation can awaken it… But with this nurturing, you miss the period to form a truly foundational set of beliefs a dragon may form. Only 10 dragons awakened their wills per generation in those short-lived days. I remember how hopeful I’d been of those methods back then, only recently reaching supreme tier when we implemented it.”

Akevorax couldn’t really argue with it all. His own True Will came from repeated exposure to danger, random meetings, friendships, shock, trust, and just his greatly varied experiences over the years. Though, one other question he still wanted the answer to never came up, as he asked, “How does a True Will even come to be? It’s supposedly a taboo, why?”

“True Wills are not unique to dragons, however, there are extremely few races who can form one. All of them are similar in fact, formed from a manifestation of your will, but have you considered how extreme and refined that will must grow to allow this? What might happen if we explained this, or tried to push a certain mindset which crumbled when presented with a strong enough ‘force’?”

While not the answer he expected, it explained well enough what he asked. A will with the brilliance and hardness of diamond, but soft and malleable like clay.

One breaks against a hard wall; the other bends too easily.

However, this only came as Akevorax’s consideration of it. Other dragons must see their True Wills in other features, and they all came to consider it a taboo as influencing a young dragon’s will, one fed false prospects, only weakened the whole. An annoying power all in all, as you could not teach it, nor even explain it. Simply repeat the line which drove him mad for months on end.

Even now, he muttered it aloud, “Present the True Will of a Dragon.” Voice forlorn and pained.

“You really are something else though. Second-youngest dragon in all our history to awaken your True Will, you did lose by a couple years though.” Akevorax looked over, befuddled for a moment as he realised that the first elder obviously did not mean the age he pretended to be. The larger dragon looked down with a funny smirk, “Few know my powers, but one of them allows me to view a soul’s age. Don’t worry though, I won’t ask how a six-year-old dragon completed their third growth stage already.”

When Akevorax looked away with a dry mouth, he let out a loud chuckle from the back of his throat, the deep reverberations reminded him to not look down on the elders once more.

Finally calmed down with the long discussions, both dragons returned to the Dragonlands. While the other four elders already left, it was now just the first elder and clan lord who stood here. For some reason she held back for him, was there something specific to talk about?