Late Afternoon - Early Summer : Southwestern Holy Kingdom

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As the air between the being and I filled with Hydrogen, I locked my eyes on it and finally opened my mouth. "Who.. are you?"

The cloud-like entity immediately froze as if it had become a statue before eventually speaking with a slightly shaky voice. "~Y..you.. are real..?~" She sounded like she was about to cry, and it only got worse after I reluctantly nodded. "~H..how long has it been since I have heard a voice...~" She quickly started floating toward me. "Child.. tell me.. what is your name?"

I immediately hesitated as I looked past her to see a thick, rope-like tether leading into the structure. -She must be a god that was tethered to that dragon before it died...- I paused and quickly weighed my odds of winning a fight with it in my current state before continuing with a bit of caution. "My name is Vasilias Ragnarok."

"~R..Ragnarok...~" Her voice quivered slightly. "~For a family to be named after it... Were your parents involved in the war?~"

I immediately tilted my head in confusion. "Huh?" -Did she lose track of time?-

"~Is it not called Ragnarok anymore-~"

"The great war ended nearly ten and a half thousand years ago... No one alive today, their parents or even grandparents were alive back then."

The figure froze immediately. "~Huh? N..no one? What about Bahamut, o-or Atlas, or-~"

I immediately shook my head. "I'm almost certain that Bahamut is dead. And among those who went to assist him, Atlas was the only one to technically survive, but even he died a few years later, after being given our family name."

A long silence instantly filled the air between us. "~Ah... So that's how it is...~" The faint hope in her voice that appeared after I first spoke quickly began to fade. "~Seeing as how you.. one of his descendants are still alive though... We must have won.~"

Finally confirming she was on the dragon's side, I eased slightly, but something still felt off. "For you to mention Atlas so casually... Just who are you?"

"~Ah, right... I haven't introduced myself.~" She paused before moving away from me some. "~My name is Hera Monachikós...~"

I felt as if everything around me froze instantly.

"~I was the one called 'The Queen' for many thousands of years, and was a dragon expected to ascend to godhood, but.. now look at me...~"

-Hera.. Monachikós...- It was a name I knew extremely well. The name of the being who ruled over the dragons of the Golden Era whenever Bahamut wasn't present and acted as his substitute.

But she was generally considered a wise and benevolent ruler at the time, but the moment the Great War started, she disappeared, and her glimmering reputation sank like a steel ball in the ocean.

-Even Mother spoke about her like she betrayed Bahamut, but...- Looking back toward the containment center, I felt a mixed feeling begin to swirl in my mind.

"~After being captured by those.. beings.. I expected to be tortured for information about Bahamut, but instead, I simply became their experimental test subject... I can't even remember how long they experimented on me before they eventually left me to die...~"

I stood there, completely speechless for a while, before I finally managed to get a few words out. "W..why didn't you break out..." -She should have been able to easily overpower any kind of technology that could hold her in place...-

But she just let out a painful chuckle. "~Haha.. I couldn't... They flooded the room I was held in with so much mana I could barely remain conscious...~" Finally moving it back to the cube, she came up to the opening and stopped, as if to look at her ruined body. "~That mana is the only reason I am still here though...~"

-R..right.. about that...- "How.. are you still alive."

She immediately hesitated. "~Saying I'm 'alive' would be too generous...~"

Finally shaking off the shock enough to move, I walked up to the hole next to her.

"~Thanks to all that mana they supplied, I managed to accumulate quite a lot of divinity, so once they finally left and I came to my senses enough to see the state of my body, I was able to quickly detach my soul from it.. similarly to what the humans do to become what they believe to be a 'god'...~"

Theories regarding the gods immediately started rushing through my mind, but she continued regardless of that.

"~Unlike those humans though.. I didn't want to simply abandon my body... Immediately after detaching my soul, I created the strongest tether I could and eventually found a way to use it to control some of my body again...~" The mouth of the dragon in the cube immediately opened slightly as if to show me. "~It took an eternity, but I even figured out a way to prevent any mana from rushing out of my reserve to hopelessly heal my body so I could use it all to preserve my brain... But after hopelessly laying here for so many millennia.. my reserve is beginning to dry up...~"

A look of awe came to my face as I looked at the beautiful dragon head attached to the colossal half-mummified, half-rotted body once again. -So she essentially let her body rot for thousands of years to save her mind in the hopes of being saved...- But there was something I still didn't understand. "C..couldn't you use that control over your reserve to absorb more mana?" -The mana here is incredibly dense...-

But she simply stood there in silence. "~Sadly, I don't have enough control to absorb mana whilst still preventing it from leaking out... The only thing I could do would be to remove my restrictions on it, but if I did that, the few remaining drops of mana in my reserve would instantly be used up to try and repair my body.. and the amount of mana I would absorb wouldn't be nearly enough to sustain that healing process... It would only take a few days for my reserve to rupture...~"

-Oh.. r..right...- Although it sounded weird for a moment, I had to quickly remind myself that my reserve was far from the norm, even when compared to a demigod. "So then the reason you detached your soul from your body in the first place..."

"~Was because I would have had to essentially rebuild my body from nothing to heal the damage those experiments did.. and my reserve simply isn't large enough for that... If I had access to food and water I might have tried.. but up here.. there is nothing but cold, dry rock...~" She sounded more regretful the longer she spoke.

Silence quickly encompassed us as I fell into thought. But it didn't take long for me to come up with a stupid idea. "If you theoretically had the ability to absorb enough mana, could you still heal?"

"~Haah, yes.. but it's not so simple...~" She sounded like she had essentially given up hope. "~With the current state of my body, I would have to absorb mana several-fold the rate I could in my prime, and even if I absorbed every drop of ambient mana here, I would only be able to regenerate a small part of my body...~" She slowly floated out of the hole in the cube as she spoke. "~Although mana looks abundant here, it doesn't flow like normal... It would run out long before more mana could take its place...~"

I fell silent as I started to think again. "If you had a source of mana, like a core to pull from, could you create a tether with it as well, and transfer mana from it to your reserve?"

But instead of my idea giving her voice more hope, it just made her skeptical. "~I guess it is possible, but tethers can only be attached to sentient, consenting beings... The only option would be to tether to you if you allowed it, but you clearly don't have the means to sustain the amount of mana I would need.~"

-Hmm...- While she was somewhat correct in saying I couldn't sustain her forever, especially in my current state, I was oddly confident it would be enough to do in bursts, healing bits of her body at a time, and slowly rebuilding everything until she could repossess her body. -But why would I do that?- "Could you wait here for a bit? There is something I'm gonna go grab."

I felt as if she gave me an odd look before finally floating back inside the cube. "~I know I can't hold you here.. no matter how much I enjoy your company... Just.. visit once every few years if you could...~" Her voice was concerningly devoid of hope and filled with sadness.

But even still, a smile was slowly creeping on my face. "I promise I will be right back, don't worry." -Why would I ever pass up such a juicy opportunity...- Quickly letting Ilios off my back, I gently rubbed my head against him before backing away and jumping into the void. *vwoop*

-To think I would actually find such a good use for it...- Hastily looking around, I quickly found the marker I left at the underwater laboratory not far away and made my way to it. -Even if this doesn't work.. it'll give me the ability to more than sustain her so she can tether to me...-

*vwoop-BLUB* Feeling the immense water pressure slam into my body, I opened my eyes and quickly oriented myself to start making my way into the dungeon again. -It hasn't even been that long since I've been here.. why am I feeling nostalgic...-

Quickly winding my way through the serpentining dungeon, I found the antimatter pillars for the containment center down below and clogged them all, essentially turning them off. -Now I'm on the clock...-

Immediately turning and racing through the dungeon again, I hastily found my way to the room with the containment center and was met with a massive, lone fish.

"Get out of the way." *BANG* With a blinding flash, the 100-meter-long creature lunging at me turned into charred chum, with a wide tube of steam appearing where most of his body used to be.

It looked truly pitiful as it sank to the floor of the room. -I guess the guardian really was abnormally strong, even for this depth, huh...-

Quickly shaking my head, I continued further into the room and quickly found the containment center exactly as I had left it.

I truly couldn't help but smile as I approached it. -Oh, you sweet dungeon core, I truly hope you will be nice and compliant with me... I'm gonna help you make a new friend!-