Chapter 37 - Astlan Dragons and the Eldest (2)

In the depths of a random area of the forest, which I had given a cursory glance at as a precaution, I stripped off the upper half of my attire, leaving the clothing bundled on the forest floor. I drew upon my magic with a raised hand, summoning the familiar black strands of energy and forming them into fire magic, aiming it at my stomach, where the hidden blood mark had been branded by the eldest.

My stomach greedily absorbed the fire magic for some time before finally releasing a soft red glow. There had been no pain involved in the process as the faint red glow eventually turned into a distinctive blood mark—a small, red outline of a coiled dragon about to unleash its fury.

I waited patiently for something to happen, such as the eldest teleporting to my location. Nothing occurred for several minutes, which soon turned into more than an hour. Still, I persevered, standing there patiently.

Finally, the telltale signs of dense, red strands of magic appeared in front of me before winking out as the eldest instantly took his place, replacing the outline with a real body. The process lasted barely a second, making it seem as if the eldest had materialized out of thin air.

In the form of a tall, heavily muscular male, the eldest greeted me. “Ah, my dear Verath. I had been wondering when you would call upon me.” He was entirely nude and bloodied.

I nodded at his greeting before pointing out the bloodied appearance of the eldest. He only gave me a small shrug, not the slightest bit uncomfortable with his strange appearance. “I was playing a game of cat and mouse with a few hundred orcs,” the eldest spoke, his voice tinged with amusement. “It is always fun to see the creatures’ reactions when a little girl of their own race starts to randomly kill them off. Of course, the same goes for other races.” The eldest chuckled at that. “It is why I was so late in coming here.”

I only nodded at his casual revelation of murdering other creatures for fun—the lives of others really did not matter much to me. The most they would get was a bit of hard-won sympathy.

Nothing further was said between the two of us, and the familiar transition of the teleportation magic left me a little disoriented afterward.

I gave my surroundings a brief glance, revealing that I was now back in the eldest's cave inside the mountain. This dark, hollowed-out room was lit by the interspersed rocks that gave off a dim glow from the walls. The sight of the black throne at the far end of the room was also familiar.

The eldest sat down on the throne and looked toward me, his eyes still glowing with a smoldering red hue from the magic he had just used.

“Come tomorrow, Verath, we shall meet the members of our Arkanan clan and your fellow dragons who have finished their own second tribulations. There are also many other dignitaries from other clans, but they are really not of importance to you. Unfortunately, though, you won't be meeting all the dragons of your own generation, as quite a few have been rendered dead from their trials.”

I felt a little stirred by the prospect of meeting other dragons my age. It would be an enlightening experience, and I would be able to observe much more of this clan. But most importantly, I still had not met any other dragons from the other Astlan clans.

I gave the eldest no affirmation of his statement. He had no need for a response from me, as it had been an express command that would brook no objections. The eldest gave a slight nod of his head, then flashed me a small smile full of anticipation, suggesting hidden troubles ahead.

I did not bother to decipher his hidden smile. It would have just been a futile effort.

“This will be quite fun.”

-----

“Tell me, Kiara. What exactly is the purpose of this meeting?” I asked the small, budding girl beside me, whose short frame was inversely proportional to her large breasts. Like me, she was a dragon of my age and had enough magical capacity to undergo human transformation.

“That is strange. Did the eldest not tell you?” Kiara said, giving me a look of surprise that widened her large, liquid eyes of the purest gold, tinted with hints of white and red. “I would have thought you would know the purpose, considering that the eldest is your brood-keeper, after all.”

I shook my head sideways in response.

An excited look crossed her face as she deigned to enlighten me on the subject with her pleasant, soft voice. “The Astlan throne,” she started, posing in a dramatic, cutesy fashion before continuing, “has been empty for generations now, and the adults of the various clans have finally decided to put the eldest of our clan on the throne.”

The revelation hit me like a maddened ox charging at one’s manhood, making me almost falter for a moment as I followed the crowd of various dragons and a few humans—those who had enough magical capacity to undergo transformation.

“You have to be kidding me,” Eden said from my left side, disdain evident in her voice. Like Kiara, this dragon of my generation had been born with enough magical capacity to transform into a human.

It had been more than two years since I first met the two girls beside me in the chamber of the eldest after the first tribulation. Their human forms, however, betrayed their young ages. Both of them had more curves than “human girls” their age would typically have, with enough left over to spare.

An inch or two taller than me, Eden had long, slim legs that almost seemed to continue forever, along with fairly sized breasts and a sharp, yet delicately tanned face. She would have been considered beautiful by almost all men, except for those who were gender-confused. However, her haughty attitude and short temper, which seemed to explode almost every minute since I met her, detracted from her beauty.

Kiara, on the other hand, was the exact opposite of Eden. She had an elegant face with an aura of tender kindness emanating from her short stature. One would almost think her motherly. However, I was suspicious of her personality, considering the bloody tribulations we had gone through as wyrms. It was difficult to conceive that she had developed a kind personality after enduring such hardships.

Those were among some of the interesting observations I had made, but the most intriguing one was that the human forms of female dragons with enough magical capacity grew much faster than normal. An intriguing observation, but a useless one.

The crowd of dragons and the few humans came to a stop in an enormous clearing. We must have numbered in the hundreds at the very least, but this clearing had more than enough space left over to spare.

At the far end of the clearing were seven of the largest dragons I had ever seen—almost double the size of my mother dragon. Those were the initial estimates I made with my dragon eyes, but I was sure that those seven dragons were most likely more than twice the size of my mother. It was a little hard to judge from such a long distance.

The most intimidating dragon of the seven was the blood-red dragon, which sported four horns and had jagged spikes sprouting from every crevice of his thick, scaly body. The scales were so thick that it seemed as if the dragon's body had been reinforced by multiple layers of scales. His wings were ridged with thick bones and spanned such a great length that it wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest if he could kill someone just from the wind pressure generated by them alone.

How did I know that this dragon was male, even though he had no telltale signs regarding his horns? The answer was quite simple: this red dragon was the eldest—I could have recognized his ancient and unique eyes from anywhere.

So this was what the eldest had been doing after he had left me with these two wyrms, I thought. I was not amused by the fact that he had left out such important details when informing me of this meeting.

Many of the dragons and dragon-humans were muttering to themselves, having never seen the seven eldests of the Astlan clans gathered together. They were an imposing bunch, older and larger than one could imagine.

Six of the eldest dragons, excluding our clan's eldest, turned to look at the assembled audience before them. Then they spoke in one magically enhanced, disconcerting, and eerie voice, as if they had planned this out together. The voice reached across the large clearing, spanning leagues and even more distance.

“Innumerable generations and years have passed since the first Astlan dragon-king died, but now we shall have a second king!” the concerted voice thundered in an eerie crescendo, as if the sound was coming from beside me. “Behold the second king of the Astlan Dragons. This shall mark a new period in Astlan history—the reign of the eldest of clan Arkanan, Navra Bloodseeker!”

Looks of awe spread across the faces of every dragon and dragon-human. Nothing could have prepared us for the powerful, compulsive effect the voices of the six eldest had on all the dragons, including me. I was more than a little surprised. It was akin to the moment I realized I had been born a wyrm.

I gazed in stupefaction at the eldest of clan Arkanan, my brood-keeper, and the second Astlan dragon-king. There was a look of amusement and boredom in his ancient eyes.

And quite imperceptibly, as if noticing my curious gaze, the eldest turned to look at me, picking me out from the crowd of dragons and humans alike. How he did that, I had no clue; it should have been almost impossible to do so in such a crowd.

Then he gave me a small smile, jagged, sharp rows of fangs on display. It would have been a small smile too—if the eldest wasn’t a dragon of enormous size with fangs bigger than my human form.

Interesting, I thought, with just a little tension and nervousness. So my brood-keeper had now become the second Astlan dragon-king. What would happen to me now?