Chapter 352: The Summons and the Trap

"It took great difficulty for me to learn of your presence here. If not for that blue dragon's help in deciphering the trail, I might never have found this place at all.Tell me: are there any green dragons left who have not been bound by It, or slain by the Church of Dragonkind? Do any but you remain?"

The silver dragon descended slowly from the heavens, her piercing gaze fixed upon the colossal green one below.

"Oh? So you uncovered the clues I left behind." The green dragon's raspy voice was edged with dark amusement. "It seems that you, too, will not accept the ruin that has befallen our kind. It is well that you should not. If any dragon has strength enough to go against the tide, it would be you. You are the chosen of our people, like the legends once born among the other races.

"As for survivors, among the green dragons, I believe that solely I remain. The blues should have fared better. Their peculiar gifts let them evade both Its gaze and the Church of Dragonkind's hounds more easily."

He shook his massive head. With that single gesture, the swamp itself trembled. The mire churned, dragging up centuries of decay from the depths below and flinging it skyward in waves of foul spray.

"Unfortunately," Aurelian replied, "I have only found one remaining blue dragon: Gorgon. Even their strange powers weren't enough to shield them from Its sight or the Church of Dragonkind's relentless hunt."

Her vast, argent wings beat once as she flew to Goelia's side.

"This bodes ill," growled the other. "Its power grows. Its realm nears completion. Time is no longer our ally. The longer we delay, the worse our plight will become.

"We must stake it all on a final gambit. Perhaps even I, outcast among the greens, must cast aside our characteristic calculative ways and unleash the full measure of my strength."

Goelia turned toward the horizon, toward the Endless Sea. There lay the kingdom of the dragons, their lost homeland. In the depths of his pupils flickered an emotion too deep and complicated to name.

"My purpose here is to confirm that black dragon's whereabouts. You know where he hides, don't you?"

Aurelian spread her aura like a veil of silver mist, cloaking the green dragon's scarred body and herself from all scrying and from Its terrible perception.

"Pompeii?" Goelia rumbled. "Indeed. He broods beneath the Ashen Wastes, in the ruins of an ancient city. That place has severed all ties with the outside world. If not for the fact that only his body can withstand its curse, the city, once built as a prison for sinners, would serve us all as a haven."

With that, both dragons beat their titanic wings and soared into the distance together. In mere moments, they had vanished beyond the Umbral Marshes.

Far below, the mire stirred. Several hydra heads rose warily from the depths, eyes wide with near-human terror, peering to see if the dreadful presences had truly vanished. It had dwelled in this swamp since it was a hatchling, never having known that such a monstrous behemoth slumbered beneath its waters.

On and on Aurelian flew, into a land where flames flared and withered. Frail fire elementals were born near the outer lip of a volcano—only to perish moments later, starved of essence. This was one of the few places in the material plane where such beings could form. It had once been called the Forgepeak; now, it was known as the Dying Crag.

The dwarves had once reigned here in the wintry south of the continent. But during the Abyssal War, they had ignited the fiery veins beneath their halls—veins of lava that had fueled their forges and craft for ages. The unleashed torrent consumed both the dwarves' cities and the abyssal hordes that besieged them, entombing one and all in black obsidian.

Forgepeak, once rich with eruptions and all manner of strange and unusual ores, had fallen dormant since. With the veins below exhausted, its fires ebbed. The heat it provided was now so limited that even the fire elementals born at its heart could no longer endure the environment.

It had since been renamed the Dying Crag, and centuries had passed without a single eruption. Some whispered that its lava beds had vanished forever.

A streak of silver lightning split the skies, pausing only a moment above the volcano's mouth before plunging into the lava below. Down it dove, straight toward the deepest chamber, home to the last remaining vein of fire.

The molten rock did not touch Arelian. A sheath of unseen power parted the magma around her body. Not that it mattered—the heat could not harm a dragon, least of all her. She merely disliked its touch.

Her claws scraped the bed of the lava pool, a floor of thick obsidian. She could sense nothing still alive here. The place seemed empty.

Yet she knew her quarry lay beneath: the last dragon of which she searched. One of the four surviving red dragons, Caesar possessed strength rivaling—perhaps even surpassing—the patriarch of his kind.

"Yes, it should be this way..."

Her awareness descended into the ground. She manifested her domain as a tangible substance, threading it through the anti-magical obsidian, following the dormant vein of fire tens of kilometers down until she found a cavity that defied all reason.

Space rippled. Her form shimmered. In the blink of an eye, she stood within that hollow.

A roar of crimson light met her instantly. A beam of flame lanced toward her, its searing corona alone melting the obsidian walls and turning them into rivers of molten stone.

"Peace, Caesar. I am no servant of the Church of Dragonkind."

Twin silver blades woven of draconic magic flashed into being. With a beat of her wings, she cleaved through the red dragon's breath, splitting the torrent into slender streams that and carved molten pits into the cavern.

Even diverted, the fiery beams had enough power to bore effortlessly through volcanic rock.

"So you are the silver dragon who clashed openly against the Church of Dragonkind," came a voice like grinding boulders. "I know you now. But I will not apologize for my strike."

Out of the molten gloom strode a colossal dragon, its body a tapestry of coiled muscle and brute strength. His massive frame loomed before Aurelian. The left side of his face bore a ghastly scar raking upward from a ruined eye socket to the stump of a severed horn. Both eye and horn had been lost to that single, merciless wound.

"I came too suddenly," Aurelian replied evenly, untroubled by the attack. "That risk was mine to bear."

It was only reasonable for Caesar to attack a spatial rift that had formed in the heart of his territory, bypassing all his defenses.

"What do you want of me?"

Caesar's lone eye fixed on Aurelian.

"To challenge the Church of Dragonkind," she replied. "The ‘Heaven' It seeks to forge grows ever more complete. You, who have fought Its servants head-on, must be aware of their growing strength."

These few dragons she sought were no ordinary survivors. Each bore a singular lineage and was marked by strength beyond reckoning. Only their gifts had allowed them to endure where so many of their kin had perished beneath the cult's chains.

"You are right," Caesar rumbled, claws brushing the savage scar carved across his ruined eye. "They have grown monstrously strong."

His scar was bitter proof. In the war against the cult, he had stood alone, waging battle against scores of dragons enslaved to It and the throngs of cultists who followed. Firestorms had seared the heavens; the earth had been rent beneath his claws.

Like Aurelian upon the Endless Sea, Caesar had defied legions with but his own might. Yet the scar told the end of that tale: he had failed.

"The Archbishop of the Church of Dragonkind dealt me this wound," Caesar began grimly. "That priest drew power from their Heaven and thereby felled me."

The wound still pulsed with alien force. Even now, ages later, Its essence lingered in an infection from which no dragon's body could ever heal.

"We are shorter on time than I feared," Aurelian murmured, lowering her head. "I need your strength."

A harsh laugh rumbled from Caesar's chest. "We have but a thin sliver of hope. Still... count me in."

Caesar, who had stared down the cult's terrible might and been branded by it, knew more than most about their enemy's power. Yet his spirit, like the fire coursing in his veins, refused to be snuffed out. He answered without hesitation.

""Then—wait. Damn it!"

He roared in pain. His scar flared, the searing corruption within it suddenly bursting forth. His buried power spilled outward in waves, as though it had sensed the presence of another dragon.

In that instant, Caesar understood that this was no mere scar, but also a trap. It was both a brand that had maimed him and a beacon to expose any dragon who dared stand beside him.

"So be it," Caesar growled, baring his jagged, terrible fangs in a grin of defiance. "Prepare for a fight. This time, with you at my side, they're biting off more than they can chew."