14th of Season of Water, Year 1 AL - After Liberation

  The dragon, while quickly beaten into submission, was much like Newt, able to fight and overpower those at the higher realm.

  Newt stopped pummeling the creature and retreated to give it space as soon as it hissed in defeat.

  “Emberion would’ve won if we were at the same realm,” Emberion muttered, and Newt didn’t want to argue about its logic, nor the way it talked about itself in third person.

  Newt would grow faster anyway. Instead, he spoke to Magmin.

  “Are you sure I will be able to defeat your daughter? My chances aren’t looking good if she can also fight like she’s a realm higher.”

  “She’s probably not at the peak of the tenth realm, and you should be at the peak of the ninth when you fight her. I think the odds will be in your favor, especially since you will receive even more blessings of fire and earth before the two of you fight.”

  Newt could only hope that was the case. He was an outlaw in the human lands, and one of the rulers of the Summersweald wanted to eat him once she fattened him up enough.

  Emberion was useful because it could lead Newt to its boss, Magminion’s son and underling. The dragon proved more chatty than the rest of its family, and Newt learned that they ruled their portion of the jungle in a mix of tribal nepotism and cannibalistic struggle for power.

  The strong devoured those who proved too weak or incompetent, opening up space for those beneath them to evolve and either become new food or prove themselves competent servants with potential to rise further. Calderion, for instance, hated Magminion, not just because he was named after their legendary grandfather, but because he was much younger, and rose to power after the dragon exalt had devoured her ninth realm daughter.

  Why it had happened, Emberion didn’t know. Magminion’s rise to power had happened long before his grandson Emberion was born.

  Newt had many questions, but he kept them to himself or, more often, asked Magmin.

  “Why is he referring to your descendants as if they only have one parent?”

  “We don’t have sexes and genders like you. We also don’t have mates, even if some live in packs. Or it might be more accurate to say males might develop, but we improve ourselves through personal evolution, not through a species-wide one by mixing with each other.”

  Newt needed a moment to process that.

  “Does that mean all saurians come from a single saurian?”

  “I don’t know. Do all humans come from the same two humans?”

  Newt had never thought about it, but the idea and knowledge of inbreeding probably meant the original two humans were god-like if humans had originated from only two individuals.

  “I don’t think so?” Newt said after thinking about it for a while. “If that’s true, they were probably akin to exalts.”

  Magmin laughed.

  “And if it’s true about my kind, that means they were the lowest of the low, for we all differ in form and ability, trying to reach the peak, while your kind seems to be trying to emulate your ancestor.”

  Newt didn’t agree, but didn’t argue either. He just flew together with Emberion, thinking how obvious it was in hindsight that humans really didn’t belong in the world they lived in.

  Eventually, Emberion led him to his parent, whom Newt warned about the incoming ships, not just those that belonged to the Explorer’s Gate, but other groups too.

  Emberion was tasked with informing the others, while Newt followed his host to meet Magminion.

  The diplomatic dance lasted two days and concluded at the dragon exalt’s volcano, with five ninth realm dragons gathered alongside Newt and Magminion.

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  “Do you have the first year’s tribute?”

  Newt took out two of the bottles the heresy hunters had kindly donated to the cause. For the first time, the dragon exalt truly moved. She uncoiled from around the volcano, rising in all her terrifying magnificence.

  A non-awakened mind wouldn’t have been able to cope with the movement of a creature whose size firmly planted it in the field of geography rather than biology. And even Newt couldn’t take in all of her as she uncoiled from around her volcano, leaving behind not a mountain, but a fiery pit in the ground.

  The mountainous region grew flat as the dragon exalt unfurled her wings, unleashing a cascade of rockslides that buried square miles of the jungle.

  And Magmin says I will one day be able to fight that thing?

  Newt already knew that he really would have the ability, but seeing the sheer size of his future opponent boggled his mind.

  When and if they fought, it would be cataclysmic.

  The two proffered bottles were less than specks of dust as they floated towards the dragon’s maw. She consumed them not by opening her mouth, but by the bottles flying through the cracks between the teeth of her closed mouth.

  The colossal pupils narrowed for a moment before widening, and the dragon exalt visibly relaxed.

  “Your tribute is acceptable. In exchange for offering something like this every year, you may have Calderion’s domain.”

  Following those words, the ash-covered clearing burst into motion. Calderion’s siblings jumped away from him, and the dragon roared in indignation, bursting with flames before pouncing on his mother. The fire slammed into Newt with physical force, and—.

  The dragon exalt had yet to finish her declaration when Newt covered himself in Magma Skin, which he had formed by fusing Granite Crust and Magmin Scales. He jumped away from the disaster site a split second before the dragons.

  Calderion roared, and flames, rocks, and everything in between consumed the world, rolling outwards like a pyroclastic flow. His show of power was terrifying, but with a second’s worth of prescience, Newt was already out of the center of destruction, his defenses burning the heat and deflecting the shrapnel pelting him like hail.

  Calderion smashed into his mother claw-fist, his attack as effective as a lizard trying to bite a rock ten times his size.

  The doomsday outburst lasted less than five seconds before the dragon exalt grabbed her spawn’s head with her own claws. Calderion thrashed and flailed for a moment before the crack as loud as the world breaking echoed.

  The dragon went limp, his head crushed, and his mother pulled at it, and ripped it away from the rest of his body. She swallowed it in a single gulp, then ripped out a hill-sized fistful from his chest and swallowed it as well.

  She threw the maimed corpse towards the rest of the children. Two of them feasted on the remains, while three others just observed.

  “Calderion, my little hatchling, you have underperformed repeatedly, showing a lack of potential and a lack of wit. Either could be ignored on its own, but not together.”

  She then turned towards her five remaining children, who focused on her immediately.

  “Listen to me, my children. These little invaders will be our guests as long as they pay their yearly tribute. Should they miss a payment by more than one moon, we will descend on them and feast.”

  She turned her gaze towards Newt.

  “Eventually, you will miss a payment.” Her voice rumbled like ominous thunder on a lightless night. “The wise thing to do would be to run back to your lands and fight for supremacy at that point.”

  “What about the alliance to fight against the invaders?”

  “You are the invaders.” The accusation was clear in the dragon exalt’s voice, but just like Magmin had said, avarice kept her in check. “I allow you to exist because I will benefit more from you being here than not. My kind allows you to exist only because we cannot and will never agree on who leads us. You might think tenth realm members of your kind are my equals, but they aren’t. Each of my children can fight one of them, and losing would shame my kind. They might not win, and they probably wouldn’t kill those of you at the tenth realm, but they would never die to them.”

  She glared at Newt as if daring him to challenge her. “And you saw how quickly I could dispatch one of them.”

  She killed him as a show, not just to free up land.

  Newt just stared at her calmly, wondering whether the imperials were capable of such cruelty.

  They probably are.

  “As the representative of humankind planning to take residence in your jungle, I say that we understand your terms, and that they will be met. You will have your tribute at the start of every year for my kind, on the morning of the shortest day. The first year has been paid today. Do you accept these terms?”

  “How brazen you seek to get a free moon of ownership.” The dragon exalt’s voice rang with amusement, and Newt was slightly worried that he could catch those details. “But very well. Since you are paying at the start of your year rather than the end, we shall say that after you pay the tribute, you will be safe from me and mine until the next longest night.”

  Newt bowed out of habit. “More senior representatives than me will come in the following days, and we can discuss the terms in greater detail, but we agree that we have reached a general agreement.”

  The dragon snorted, and Newt took it as acknowledgement. Then Newt and the dragons dispersed, while the exalt coiled herself once more and went back to meditation above the flaming pit.