Chapter 425 (2/2)
Curiosity bubbled from my companion ‘I wonder where Aldir’s been all this time He’s not exactly inconspicuous, is he? But Windsom pretended to be a shopkeeper, soa bar sohway and out one of thee up to the surface We reached the barren desert at dusk, just as the sun was setting behind the dunes
“How are we traveling?” I asked as Avier wheeled around above me
“I will carry you onto hover in front of me “That will be the fastest way”
I looked the olive-green owl over carefully It was larger, slightly, than a norh to co to work exactly?”
‘Uncois chortled at his own joke
The owl an to grow
Its wings expanded outward at a rapid pace, the olive-green feathers thened, frill-like spikes grew along the spine The thick, scaleless flesh of his wings and frills was a di a reptilian face with a gapinghorns swept back fros ended in curved talons like scythe blades, and a heavy tail dangled just over the sandstone
“You’re a wyvern…” I said, recalling what I’d heard about thely rare, supposed descendants of the dragons that hardly ever interacted with humans, elves, or dwarves And yet this one had been bonded with a human woman, and an Alacryan at that “I never knew”
“Cynthia kept my true form a secret at my request,” Avier said, his voice deeper and richer than in his owl fors kicked up sand all around us, but he landed ainward so he could walk on the journey ahead of us”
“Where are we going?” I asked, notto climb onto his back
He huffed, and the force of his breath blew my hair back “If you do not trust me, you shouldn’t have come this far But I will tell you Aldir is in the Beast Glades I can answer any s you should learn in the proper time, and from the proper source”
I don’t see hoe can refuse, I thought, probing Regis for his perspective
‘If it’s a trap, sending a strange mana beast you haven’t seen since you were, like, fourteen is a weird way to set it,’ he pointed out ‘At worst, I’ eaten by a thirty-foot-long flying lizard into soe to roll aze was leveled intently on ave in and ju in between two separate ridges
Avier wasted no ti out his wings to catch the hot desert breeze Wheeling, he turned away fro sun and shot like an arroard
Despite saying he would answer my questions, we spoke very little as we flew He moved with a speed that rivaled even Sylvie’s, and the wind cutting past his spine fringes howled against hts I felt ht on wyvernback drawingSylvie back to the forefront ofmore attention e flew over the ave way to dense forests, I activated Realh to be a threat The longer we flew, the ed; we passed over barren, lifeless wastes, putrid swalass-smooth lakes We were headed into the heart of the Beast Glades, where S-class beasts that had scared even Olfred Warender resided
Nothing bothered us, though, a fact I attributed to Avier hi an putting off a tre away any predatory ot too close
“What have you been doing out here since Cynthia’s death?” I yelled over the wind, finally voicing a question I’d wanted to ask since Avier revealed his true form in Darv
“While imprisoned, she releasedeasily on the wind “She didn’t wantthe castle to free her I think she had an inkling of her fate and didn’t want me bound to her when it happened At her request, I retreated into the Beast Glades”
“I’h that I didn’t expect him to hear me “She deserved better than what happened”
Avier let out a sharp cry that seeh the air like a blade Once it died away, he said, “She was very fond of you”
I waited, but the wyvern said no htful silence
Not long after, he began descending toward the forest below Trees a hundred feet tall with canopies just as wide and trunks thick as watchtowers rose up to e leaves swayed in a constant breeze,coals
When we dipped below the boughs, though, the shadoere as deep as an overcast night, and my vision was nearly overwhelmed by the abundance of round itself, every aspect of natural groas alive witha forceful th
Yet even these S-classaura
Suddenly we dipped down again, and I thought ere going to crash straight into the ground A deep black shadoithin the diht under the canopy became clear only in the s, catching a gentle updraft and hovering Sloe descended down a natural crack wide enough for tyverns to fly side by side
Strangely, I could sense no mana from within the crevice, but there was an uncoainst my eardrums that made me wary
As we neared the bottom, fla up the floor beneath us, presumably so Avier didn’t accidentally crash into the floor
Chalky white shapes covered the floor, and when Avier touched down, his talons crunched in the detritus The bones of hundreds of mana beasts carpeted the floor
Avier paid this nocarelessly over the boneyard and into a cave that opened up off the ravine The cave seemed dim and empty except for a few more scattered bones, until e set of doors carved fro off Avier’s back and approaching the door Barely visible in the diht, a scene of some sort had been etched into the wood, but it was too dark, and the engravings too faded, to lowed subtly in the dark “Aldir is here?”
“Yes,” Avier confir out one wing, he sent a complicated series of mana pulses into the wood: a code or co open silently, and the dungeon’s fetid breath spilled over us, heavy with death and rot Regis manifested next to me, the flames of his mane stiff, like a ith its hackles raised
Side by side, Regis and I stepped into the dungeon Avier, his wings folded in on themselves as he walked on the knuckled joint, followed As the doors closed behind us,a wide chamber carved out of the dark bedrock Bones, and even some more recent corpses, lined the walls The floor was caked with dark stains that crackled under our feet The instant the torches lit, a shadow flitted down a tall, broad tunnel that opened ahead of us
“What is this place?”
“No adventurers have reached this dungeon to nae,” Avier answered “Its inhabitants are referred to as ebon scourges I expected to be back before the dungeon reset, but you were too long in returning”
There was an edge of wariness in Avier’s voice that made the hairs on the back ofmoved in the dark tunnel ahead of us
Stone crunched, and a jet-black ed out of the darkness It ran on four ested Its body was glossy black like obsidian, with a shovel-shaped, eyeless head that jutted out in front of it like a weapon Three curving horns extended forward, two from the sides of the flat head and one from the bottom, where a chin or lower jaould nor lea on extended wings One talon slae’s neck, which was protected by bony protrusions that extended back froth of its body The round under Avier’s weight, but his talon’s only scraped across the rock-hard exterior of the skull
Wings still extended for balance, Avier used his free talon to rip at the scourge’s side and belly as it struggled against hie three-clawed hand around Avier’s ankle Each claas four inches wide and twice that in length, and, after a th and Avier’s e pierced Avier’s scales, while Avier’s talons struggled to wound the scourge
Aether took for my heel into the floor The world blurred as Burst Step propelleda hole in its thick skull with a crunch
Even with a hole in its skull, thean ar ram
I drove my elbon to block its attack, but the force of the iis was on top of it in an instant With one of the horns locked between his jaws, he twisted its head around The ebon scourge roared in defiance and rage, and Avier’s neck snapped doard like a striking cobra His jaws opened, and a streae’s openand fissuring in several places, allowing tongues of green flame to reach out
Avier’s fire continued for several seconds before he relented The sis stepped back
I brushed ot closer to look at the corpse
The hardened flesh was formed of dense rock, , thin tongue snaked out and licked the bloody wound in his leg Flames curled up from the spot, and the scales healed “Let us continue”
In the next section of the dungeon, we found a chae corpses were scattered across the floor and piled against the walls Some were shattered in half, the stone shells of others scored with deep claw h its throat and into its skull, where it must have destroyed the beast core
“Do thesethemselves?” I asked Avier, but his head was on a swivel, and he did not ih the dungeon from the tunnel to our left, and we ht beside , while Avier circled around to the other side, acrid s a neord and fixingfootsteps resounded down the corridor
Except it wasn’t the squat, bestial silhouette of an ebon scourge that appeared
It was a hulking statue of a ht, flanked by a bearlike any-colored fur and black s like scars down its face
Avier relaxed “Evascir It is good to see you”
The statuesque figure, I realized, was actually wrapped in a layer of stone, like a pilotable golenized this, the stonework manifestation crumbled away, and a muscular ray limestone Inside his earthen armor, he had towered to ten feet tall, but even without it he was still over seven The weight of his aura would have been enough to crush most people to the floor
This , Avier,” theon the wyvern’s injury “Since you weren’t back yet, I decided to clear the dungeon Guess I ardless, you have saved us ”
The asura gave the wyvern a nod before eyeing me speculatively “This is the one you were sent to fetch? Hopefully he is as powerful as he is pretty”
“There’s a reason I call hirin
“Is your initial judgnorant observation?” I asked, aze
The asura—a titan, I thought—let out a booh, pure and joyful “No, not a test, and perhaps a bit biased rather than ignorant, lesser” He gestured to his oversized bear cois, andwretchedness of these dungeons and return home”