32nd of Season of Fire, 159th year of the 32nd cycle

  Immediately after the airships landed, Stronggrow approached the Explorer’s Gate group. Newt watched his old retainer, and his heart ached.

  Where Newt looked like he had aged three or four years since awakening, Stronggrow looked like an ancient man, one foot in the grave.

  “Welcome, dear, respected guests,” he bowed, a mere third realm mage standing before sixth and even seventh realm champions, nearly all of their students more powerful than he was.

  “Thank you for coming here and for your offer to help us during the onslaught.”

  “The pleasure is ours,” Darksong, a peak seventh realm champion and the nominal leader of the group, said.

  While the Salamandras helped settle the Explorer’s Gate’s group, Newt went up the tallest tower to look over the land.

  “You do know that numbers won’t save you,” a familiar voice hissed as he climbed the stairs.

  “I know, and I’m not looking for a rescue.” Newt hissed back. “I’m glad you came early; there is something I need to discuss with you.”

  Newt had considered and reconsidered the matter half a dozen times. Would talking with the enemy make him a traitor - undoubtedly, but was the empire actively and intentionally harming his order, his friends and allies? Again, undoubtedly. The final question he had to consider was whether betraying someone who planned to sacrifice you for personal gain really counted as treason?

  Newt didn’t think so. As such, he told Magmin’s grandson everything. Finally, the serpent blinked.

  “I don’t really care.” The flippant statement nearly sent Newt tumbling down the stairs. “My mother wishes to speak with you. You will follow me to her court. As for what happens amongst low-realm creatures, it’s none of my business who eats whom.”

  “How do we get there? What do I do about the rest of my order?”

  “We fly,” Magmin’s grandson answered the first question before proceeding with the second. “I don’t know; you could bring them with us. Mother would appreciate the exotic snack, probably.”

  Newt cleared his throat, panic rising. “What I meant was, what should I tell them? How long will we be away?”

  “Tell them whatever you want. We’ll take three days to reach Mother’s lair. As for how long you’ll stay and how you will return here, if you return at all,” Magmin’s grandson paused as Newt reached the top of the tower, “that’s not my problem.”

  Newt grit his teeth, but there was nothing he could do. As for Magmin’s grandson, if he understood Newt’s frustration, he showed no sign of caring.

  “Fine, wait for me in the jungle. I’ll be there after sundown.”

  The two locked gazes for a moment.

  “Acceptable.” With that, the snake vanished.

  Newt helped his companions settle before gathering the order’s champions.

  “I will go to the Summersweald to scout. I might not be back for a few weeks, but I hope I will return before the imperials start the onslaught.”

  The champions stared at him silently before Darksong, the expedition leader nodded. “If that’s what you think you need to do, then that’s what you need to do. We trust your judgement.”

  The respectful tone didn’t help one bit with Newt’s frustration. “I’ll return as soon as I can, but I think our survival depends on what I manage to achieve in the jungle.”

  Everyone could obviously tell Newt was hiding something, and everyone trusted him, which made him feel even more conflicted about going to parlay with the enemy without anyone’s knowledge.

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  “I guess you’re ready.” Magmin’s grandson appeared before Newt as soon as he had stepped into the Summersweald.

  “I am. What’s your name?”

  The snake squinted at him. “You’re not powerful enough to ask my name. It’s impressive you have grown four realms since we last met, but you are still weak.”

  Four realms? Newt wondered before recalling something Gatemaster Greenthorn had said. So, saurians too mistake my aura for that of a seventh realm awakened.

  “Now, let’s leave.” Magmin’s grandson grew until he was sixty feet long. He sprouted wings and a pair of arms, grabbing Newt into a clawed hand.

  Without batting his wings, the dragon was in the air above the trees, and then with a single flap they were off, the wind mercilessly whipping his face.

  Newt looked around. He moved faster when on outings with his master, but unlike his master, Newt’s grandson didn’t care about the wind whipping Newt’s face. Minutes passed, turning into hours, and neither party said a word. Seeing that was the case, Newt closed his eyes and entered his realm and went back to sculpting.

  If anything dangerous happened, Magmin’s grandson would handle it. If whatever peril struck them proved too much for a ninth realm dragon to handle, it would be too much for Newt too, so he had no reason to remain conscious, and three days worth of flight he could spend sculpting his realm.

  In Newt’s internal world, the landscape changed. It started with the crater from which lava flowed down the infinite mountain. A forest of black, calcified trees surrounded it, followed by a rocky field of his second realm, decorated with crude runic seals. The ring of the third realm had finer, better carved runes both above and below the surface. Even if the latter couldn’t be seen, they were more complex and connected into constellations of seals. Then the ring of the fourth realm was no longer rough rock, but smooth obsidian, a tempered realm with even more precisely carved seals glowing red, the light reflected off the black, glassy rock.

  The fifth realm’s runes hadn’t seen an upgrade in quality, only in quantity, and where glassy obsidian stood in the fourth realm, a pulsating ground decorated in fine veins of fire made the soil.

  Disappointingly, the majority of his sixth realm had normal, regular ground. The only parts fiery and pulsating were the ones present during Newt’s fiery baptisms, and Newt could tell the difference in potency between the seals scribed in regular rock, opposed to those carved in the fiery ground.

  After traveling down the mountain and into the rocky waste, Newt went into a tunnel and started burrowing an underground rune to complete the seal he had started.

  Days passed in meditation, the lava glowing hotter and its flow faster, hinting at the increased concentration of mana in the outside world.

  Newt opened his eyes and saw a smoking volcano, the mountain black and red. He took a moment before realizing the mountain’s rocks followed a spiral pattern, then he spotted the scales.

  The mountain wasn’t a mountain. It was a gargantuan serpent.

  Is it coiling around a mountain or just there all by itself? Is the volcano giving off the smoke or is it the dragon?

  “Mother,” Magmin’s grandson hissed.

  “Magminion,” the answer came from the mountain’s top, and a colossal head moved. Like a landslide, a titanic eyelid opened, revealing an eye the size of a mansion. It was yellow and ancient, giving off the calculated evil feel of emotionless reptilian eyes.

  “I see you have brought the invader.” Newt couldn’t believe the eye of that magnitude could focus on something as small as his form, but somehow it did.

  All of the exalt dragon’s focus pierced Newt, making his realm shudder.

  “Not a speck of curse or resentment. Tell me, invader, where did you find my father’s legacy and how did you earn it?”

  Magminion dropped Newt atop a five-hundred-foot-tall tree two miles away from his mother, then flew away, shrinking back to the size of a small flying serpent. His mother didn’t pay him a smidgeon of attention even if she must have telepathically told him what to do with Newt before asking him to leave.

  For the first time, Newt wondered what exactly to tell the ancient dragon. That his ancestor had purchased her father’s grave, then dug his resting place and earthly remains to excavate manarium? That seemed like not just a good way to commit suicide, but to also doom his clan to extinction.

  “I came across his core by accident. While I don’t know what Magmin—” ambient mana slapped Newt as it kicked into a storm. Only then did he remember Magminion warning him not to mention Magmin’s name. “—your lord father had done, apparently he locked his core behind some unknown defensive mechanism, so it could only be accessed during the celestial alignment of extreme flame.”

  The mana hurricane calmed, and the ancient dragon listened, searching for hints of deceit.

  “I stumbled into his realm, awakening and finding your lord father as he was at the peak of his first realm…”

  Newt continued, never lying, never skipping critical details nor embellishing his actions, but he did choose not to mention what had no impact on the story. Such as him not trusting Magmin and preparing to kill both the snake and the sharpbeak.

  Then Newt explained how Magmin still existed in his realm, and what was once a storm of mana became a thundering tempest. The trees flashed and turned to ash and the earth opened in glowing fissures, the dragon’s stirring emotions changing the world around her.

  “My father still lives?” she asked, and Newt nodded, floating mid-air, wondering how frank he should be. With Magmin’s existence revealed he was probably safe, but his freedom was far from guaranteed.