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Wind constantly blew past Carlos's head as he flew head-first through the sky. His hair fluttered as wildly as its few inches of length allowed. He felt like his shoulders bore the main brunt of all the air resistance he was plowing his way through with an amped-up Flight spell. Intellectually, he thought his head probably actually had a greater amount of air resistance pressing on it, but his hair acting as a protective barrier and the rigidity of his skull reduced how much he felt it.
The ground streaked past below at speeds that might normally turn everything into indistinct blurs, but his perception enhancements, in both speed and acuity, enabled him to discern the details with ease. Trees, bushes, hills, clearings, streams, occasional plains, sections of rock, and more, all zoomed past. There were even a few cliffs and fissures, from time to time. Plenty of creatures went about their business as well, of course, ranging from literal insects to building-sized monstrosities. A portion of them were airborne, but even the largest flying beast stayed well away from Carlos's group, thoroughly cowed by the intense aura that Lornera was putting out.
He felt like he'd somehow found his way into Dragonball Z, flying in a horizontal pose supported entirely by mystical energy of some kind, with a whole group of warriors in formation seeking a good place for their next fight. Their expected opponent wasn't accompanying them in the flight, though, so that was one difference from the show. He was also a mage, not a fighter, they weren't actually looking for a fight, and the group included a large purple crystal being carried along telekinetically. Okay, so maybe it wasn't all that similar after all.
[So, dragons, eh? Should I be expecting to watch another grand show of a fight soon?] Trinlen's sense of excitement felt infectious through the mental link.
Carlos realized he was grinning and forced his face back to a neutral expression. He directed his own question primarily to Lornera, but made sure to let everyone else hear too. [More seriously, why do you think visiting dragons might be worthwhile? What is our goal in going there, and what do we need to be prepared for?]
[Hmm?] Lornera glanced back at him from her position in the lead. [Ah, right. You're so new to nobility that you've had no reason to learn about them yet.]
Carlos fired back, [We actually fought a dragon already to secure our wellspring. Buuut, yeah, I know nothing about their society, and other stuff.]
Lornera's mental voice trembled with light amusement. [Congratulations on that achievement. Even the weaker dragons are potent combatants. However, the dragon you faced was at most average by dragon standards, and likely weaker. Their lands are rich in mana, flooded from bountiful wellsprings, and they leverage that resource well by their inborn nature. Dragons instinctively form a specific orichalcum-rank set of soul structures while growing in their eggs, which merges the moment they finalize the last one after hatching. What they follow that up with varies, but it is usually potent in one way or another.]
She paused for a moment. [Hmm. To the topic at hand: Those wellsprings are our goal. You need to absorb more mana to gain more Levels in order to be able to withstand my father's strength.]
Carlos raised his eyebrows skeptically, then realized Lornera couldn't see that with their positions both facing downward as they flew. He made sure to add an impression of it to his mental reply. [And they'll just… let us do that? Really?]
Lornera's laugh met a chorus of shared skepticism from everyone else. [No, of course not. We'll have to impress them enough to even hear us out, then either intimidate them or trade them for it.]
[Riiight. We "just" have to impress a whole damn group of dragons that are probably individually stronger than one that gave us a seriously difficult fight. No problem. At all.]
Lornera shook her head, which Carlos noticed through the resulting movement of her mana. [I should be able to handle that part myself. I think. You'll just need to show that you're not fodder. Speaking of which, you should stop holding back your auras. All of you. Your ward against long-range divinations is fine, but you need to announce your strength to any dragon that's near enough to feel it. They'll see anything else as an insult and a confession of dishonest intentions.]
Carlos understood the logic of it, but the idea felt uncomfortable to him. He remembered when Lorvan had intimidated a dungeon boss monster for them by unleashing his aura, back when they were much lower-Level. He had been a bystander to the event — hell, Lorvan had even specifically been protecting him! — but it had still felt terrifying. Now, everyone else had already followed Lornera's urging, and Lorvan's aura was merely the least weak of the group. By this point, his and Amber's strength outclassed all of their companions except Purple, who seemed to need a claimed domain to express his power through, and Carlos had no desire to inflict that kind of fear on friends and allies.
Before he could get too wrapped up in his thoughts, he felt a hand touch his arm. He looked to his right, where Amber flew beside him, and she met his eyes and smiled. [Come on, Carlos. It will be fine. We can focus it like she is doing.] Her eyes flicked forward toward Lornera for a moment, then returned to him.
Carlos took a deep breath, then nodded to Amber and turned his attention inward. Carefully, he relaxed part of the restraint he had subconsciously been holding on how his soul expressed itself to his surroundings. It felt strange, like he was stepping up on a stage and shouting for attention, combined with relaxing from constant vigilance for any toes he might need to avoid stepping on. It felt like unashamedly sprawling out on a large couch without a care and silently daring anyone to object. He made sure to maintain that restraint toward his sides and behind, but the part of him facing forward felt simultaneously freer than ever and embarrassed about imposing himself on the world so flagrantly.
The aether ahead of him reacted chaotically to the change. Some streams diverted toward him, while others bent away, and still others swirled in place or changed their speed. The churning disturbance in the aether flows stretched for at least a mile in front of him. Lornera cocked her head in response, but didn't look back. [Hmm. A bit awkward, but decent for your first time. We have some time left before we arrive. Try to get used to it and lose the embarrassment. You are strong, and it is your right to have your strength be acknowledged. Remember that, and use your aura to impress your demand upon any dragon you meet for their acknowledgement. If you show a dragon anything less than that, they will have no respect for you.]
Amber responded first, full of iron resolve. [We will try.]
Carlos just nodded in silence and set a pair of his minds on the task of delving into his feelings on the matter and sorting out why he felt that way. Independent self-contemplation was a poor substitute for professionally-guided therapy, but it was the best he had available.
He watched more trees and rocks zoom past on the ground below for a few minutes. He doubted he would ever truly feel comfortable projecting his aura at anyone but an outright enemy, but the feeling of awkwardness was fading, at least. More questions returned to mind, and he reached out to ask again. [You're sure they won't care about you being a Kalor? And why is only the Gold Flight worth trying, not the Silver Flight?]
Lornera's reply was swift and certain. [Dragons respect House Kalor, but they do not fear us the way ordinary nations and empires do. They will be wary of me, but not overly concerned. As for the Silver Flight, they are crippled. They lost their best wellsprings in their final battle against Archmage Sandaras. What still remains of their holdings would not bridge enough of the gap between you and my father.]
Carlos blinked, taken aback. [They lost… not just a wellspring, but multiple of them? What did Sandaras do!?]
Lornera shrugged. [He taught them a lesson to leave Kalor Kingdom alone. If you want the details, you'd have to ask him. No one else really knows.]
Amber erupted with pure excitement and immediately blurted out, [Could we actually do that? Do you know where he is? Would he talk to us? Or, wait, your father would find out if we try, wouldn't he?]
Lornera looked over her shoulder at Amber for a second, then laughed. [You could try, but he retired years ago and disappeared. Even the Crown doesn't know where he went. If you do manage to find him, try to keep in mind that he was tired of his fame. He probably won't appreciate an enthusiastic fan accosting him.]
The conversation lapsed again. A mountain range was visible ahead of them by now, though Carlos couldn't judge its distance very well. It was getting closer quickly, though, and their trajectory had been angling upward for a while to maintain clearance from the ground. The peaks were capped with snow, and all greenery tapered out well below. He even spotted a few clouds that were lower than the mountaintops. He looked for any lower sections that might be viable passes for travelers on foot, but didn't find any.
Carlos felt the sentry through his mana-related senses well before he could spot it with his eyes. A powerful soul was flying several miles away on an intercept course, coming from their right. It would reach a position directly ahead of them when they were still about a mile off. He normally wouldn't have felt it from so far away, but it was metaphorically shouting its presence to all and sundry. Even now, a feeling of pressure from it was already building.
In terms of Levels, simple density of the other soul's mana and essence, it was much stronger than Carlos; it was Level 60, 10 higher than his own Level of 50. The pressure also felt much more firm and solid than he had felt from anyone but Lornera and other royals, and maybe Nyralis, but his efforts to push back still found hints of brittle fragility to it. Despite his Level disadvantage, he could bear it easily.
His entourage was another matter, however. Feelings of determination and tightly-suppressed fear emanated throughout the net of Purple's mental communication bonds, and Carlos sensed the surface mana of several people's souls starting to quiver and shake. Then Lornera did… something, and the pressure slid off of a barrier of her will, blocked from reaching everyone else. She pointedly left Carlos, Amber, and Purple outside of that barrier, however.
The pressure grew more intense as the distance shrank, but Carlos could still bear it without issue. The tiny speck that he had identified by looking in the direction where he sensed that soul finally grew large enough to discern its shape. As expected, it was a dragon. In many ways, it looked similar to the dragon he had encountered before: large leathery wings stretching far to each side; a glittering mesh of tiny scales that shone like metal; long, flexible neck, supporting a blunt head with a large, toothy jaw; clawed legs tucked tightly; long tail trailing behind. The main obvious difference was its color: a bright blueish-white instead of silver.
He idly wondered if there was any significance to its color not matching the name of its flight, but Lornera held up her left hand and came to a halt before he got around to asking. He silently imitated her example, stopping and turning upright to float as if standing on nothing, and waited. Lornera was the expert for this, so he would follow her lead.
The dragon was about 200 yards away, hovering in place. It wasn't even moving its wings, as if the laws of physics were irrelevant. Now that it was this close, Carlos was pretty sure this dragon was bigger than the one he'd encountered before, but not by a large margin. Its wingspan was perhaps half a dozen feet broader, and the rest of its body proportionally larger.
To Carlos's surprise, the dragon spoke, not in any guttural draconic language, but in Ganler, the language spoken by every human he'd met in this world. "I see you, scion of Kalor. I am Larantorthilmanel of the Gold Flight. Be warned, I bear the backing of my elders in this duty. For what purpose do you come to Gold Flight skies?"
To Carlos's further surprise, Lornera eschewed all polite diplomacy in her blunt answer. "I seek to use Gold Flight mana wellsprings."
Larantorthilmanel calmly tilted her head, first one way, then the other. "You have wellsprings enough of your own. Unless… Has the famed Kalor loyalty broken?" She chuckled, her booming laugh echoing off the nearby mountain peak. "Even if so, you are already beyond their limits. You seek on behalf of your minions." She glanced at the group sheltered behind Lornera's soul-pressure barrier and snorted dismissively, then looked at Carlos and Amber and narrowed her eyes.
"You two. You are the ones she seeks to empower." Larantorthilmanel slowly walked her gaze up and down each of them, inspecting them. "Your foundation feels solid. Impressively so. But there is more to strength than that."
She paused, and pressure built in her mana. "Prove yourselves. I challenge you!"
Without further warning, a beam of dragonfire erupted from her throat straight at them.
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