New Mines of Pruzonia 2: Ascending Dragon

Verida’s hands released their tight grip on her chair’s armrests as John’s enemy collapsed into dust on the screen before her. The first time seeing her friend in combat and he had taken a rather hefty wound. The only thing that eased her racing heart was that his ability kept him from being hampered by the injury. He could still fight without worrying about bleeding out.

‘At least it’s only John so far,’ she thought as John sat down to recover some mana. ‘I don’t know if I could handle seeing Kiera or Anita fight these things by themselves.’

She was worried about everyone, but her unique link to Kiera, which of course was being suppressed, and Anita’s recent ascendance to full sapience meant they were the ones she fretted over the most. She could only hope that they would run into the others before encountering a golem or other threat.

Fortuna sighed and Verida tore her eyes away from the screens to look at the goddess of fate. She looked a bit disappointed.

“I was hoping for a bit more strategy from him,” she said. “But all he did was smack it a couple of times. How boring.”

Verida felt her ire spike and she ground her teeth to keep her emotions under control before she asked, “And just how did you expect him to deal with the golem? You have given him something of a handicap separating him from Senka.”

Fortuna scoffed. “It’s just a small debuff, he’s fought without her just fine. If he didn’t summon his pet, he’d have more mana and therefore more options.”

“I don’t think you’re being fair,” Verida accused. “Candle helped keep the golem occupied and distracted. Seems like a sound strategy to me.”

“And if he could devote more power to attacks, he likely wouldn’t have needed the help,” Fortuna countered with a pointed look. “If he went all out with the combo he finished the fight with from the start, I think he could have won without taking that shot to his gut.”

“But consider,” Gaia interjected, “if John had beat it handily, he wouldn’t know about its ability to launch discarded bits of itself as a last ditch attack. Now he knows he needs to be fast and strike the core hard to win without invoking that. Isn’t the struggle more important than just steamrolling everything?”

The Highest Star preened at Fortuna, and Fortuna responded by throwing a cheeto at her. Gaia merely waved her hand and dismissed the orange missile into nothingness.

“Showoff,” Fortuna grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Don’t want cheese dust on my dress.” Gaia grinned at her before her eyes flitted over to the screens. “Oh, it seems something’s happening.”

The goddesses’ attention went back to the screens, and Verida’s stomach fell. Kiera was displayed prominently upon one, the bluenette creeping down a narrow tunnel. While it wasn’t a particular exciting scene, Verida knew enough that if Gaia had pointed it out, something was about to happen.

‘Kiera,’ Verida thought, trying to keep her anxiety down. ‘Be safe.’

Kiera’s focus on the faint traces of aura she was trying to track back to her missing comrades left her with little brainpower to think about the terror that threatened to overwhelm her. While her memories were still fragmented, she knew that she had fixated on certain tasks or ideas to avoid thinking about more horrible things in the past, and right now, that method was keeping her from freezing up.

‘I have to find everyone,’ was the thought she kept repeating, trying to pick up on the aura of anyone she was familiar with. It would have been easier if she had taken up any of their auras recently, but she hadn’t used that aspect of her magic in a while. And using her magic this way was not something she was used to.

It was only after Verida’s influence on her magic had expanded her abilities that she could even try to do what she was doing. The goddess’ power had done more to her than giving her draconic arms and letting her float things in her aura’s range. It had shifted things, in ways she wasn’t wholly sure of yet. She hadn’t talked about the new developments her powers were undergoing; there were other things that were more important to worry about, like giving Brenda magic or dealing with the Order. Her slightly changing powers were hardly worth bringing up compared to that.

The flicker of a familiar aura drew her attention to the narrow passage she was in, blinking like a distant lighthouse in a stormy sea.

‘Aeolia could have gotten through here easily,’ Kiera thought. ‘Maybe she came from the other direction and slipped through, thinking it was a better move? Or maybe she was just put on the other side?’

She wished she could talk to Verida, but her connection to the goddess was being suppressed. Kiera could feel an unfamiliar but unmistakably divine aura keeping her link to Verida as weak as possible without severing it. That provided her some comfort as she took it to mean that Fortuna didn’t want to or couldn’t beat Verida and that she was, if not safe, not in grave danger. The small amount she could feel from the goddess of Pruzonia didn’t give off the impression of duress.

The sharp scraping of rocks on her skin broke Kiera’s thoughts and she hissed in pain. The path had grown narrower as she went and she was beginning to think she couldn’t get through. The comfortable clothes she wore were not good at protecting her from the jagged stones and crystals around her.

‘There has to be another way around,’ she thought, her weight shifting as she prepared to slink back to the larger tunnel behind her when the slight sensation she could feel from Aeolia shifted. Before, it had been placid. She wasn’t Teri, divining emotions was hard to do, but the sensation she could feel had been steady. Now it was agitated, fluctuating with a growing intensity.

The panic Kiera had been keeping tapped down began to spill out. Aeolia was strong, but they were in a cave. Could she fly effectively down here? Was she fighting something that could resist her attacks? Kiera believed she had her glaive, but she couldn’t remember seeing her with it at the moment of their teleportation. Did she have John store it in his Inventory?

The what-ifs began to overwhelm her as Aeolia’s aura kept fluctuating. Kiera’s breaths came in pants as a hundred possibilities jumped through her mind, most going to the worst case scenario. And she was the only person who could help.

Among her dark and fearful thoughts, something bright and hopeful came to the fore. It was her mental recreation of Bill’s attack on John and Aeolia. More specifically, it was John drawing one of her former tormentor’s vine hounds away when he had no way to fight it, just to help Aeolia. To help someone he didn’t know, on the first day of having his powers.

And that only a week later, he would help her, someone who was an accessory to Bill’s attack. Someone affiliated with the **** of Aeolia’s guild. Someone he was within his rights to leave with a shattered mind.

Tears threatened to spill from Kiera’s eyes as the shame born of fear and hesitation ate at her. They had done so much for her, helped her recover her mind, twice, gave her a home, gave her the love, affection and companionship she had longed for. And how was she repaying them? By being a coward when one of them needed help.

Blinking away the tears, Kiera felt her resolve hardening. She had to help. She had to pay them back for everything they had done for her. She wasn’t going to let them down. With a deliberate step, Kiera worked her way through the narrow passage, the pain from the stones digging into her ignored as she progressed.

As the way grew tighter, Kiera willed her arms to change, invoking her draconic powers. Her aura now charged with enhanced power, she pushed against the rocks, forcing some away from her, the **** of her new magic cracking stones apart. Aided by her aura, Kiera squeezed her way through the crevice, flowing up and around the obstacles as if she was underwater.

She slipped out on the other side, landing in a wider, more rounded tunnel, and looked around. Aeolia’s aura was still some distance away, and once she got a good lock on it, Kiera ran towards it. The fluctuations remained the same regardless of the distance, which only spurred on Kiera’s steps.

‘What is she fighting?’ Kiera thought, as that was the only thing she could think of that would lead to Aeolia’s aura feeling the way it did. What else could cause such spikes in the intensity of it?

It wasn’t long before she began to hear something other than her footsteps and breathing. It was like a slowly growing wind, occasionally broken up by the deep sound of something falling into water along with a kind of screeching, grinding noise. It was oddly muted and Kiera had to wonder if something was keeping sounds from echoing around the cave.

That thought would have to wait to be pondered more as Kiera turned around a curve of the tunnel and found herself in a larger, oval shaped chamber. A small stream of water poured out from the wall to her left, pooling in the center of the cavern, before another stream carried the water out to her right. And in the center of this small lake, Aeolia was fighting a pale blue crystal serpent.

The avenfae did have her glaive, greatly relieving Kiera, but it seemed that even with the weapon at hand, she was having a hard time. She seemed to have not noticed her appearance on the scene, her focus solely on the monster. Kiera guessed it was about twenty to twenty-five meters long, and as wide as a bus. Its mouth had numerous sharp fangs and it was far quicker than something made of crystal should have been.

It lunged at Aeolia, who shrank down to her innate height and easily dodged the attack. Without wasting any time, the winged woman returned to her full height and swung her glaive into the serpent's neck. The green wind around her blade cut into the crystal, causing a harsh ringing to reverberate around the cavern, and Kiera clamped her hands over her ears to protect them against the sound.

Even through scrunched eyes, Kiera noticed how little damage Aeolia’s attack did and that the serpent’s crystals around the wound were now glowing with the same color as Aeolia’s mana. Then she felt the slight distortion to Aeolia’s aura she had picked up on and a sinking feeling descended on her.

‘It’s doing something to Aeolia!’ she thought, slightly panicked. ‘But what?’

She was not gifted like Vivian or Estelle in magical theory and didn’t have something like John’s Observe to spell it out directly. However, something about how Aeolia was fighting was causing an idea to bubble up amid the insecure thoughts about her lack of ability.

‘It is somehow keeping Aeolia trapped here?’

Aeolia, while an aggressive fighter, wasn’t someone she thought would do battle while everyone else was scattered about in a mysterious cave. And she was certainly pragmatic enough to try and escape when it was clear the serpent was resistant to her attacks.

‘Can that thing use the mana from her attacks to entrance her?’ Kiera wondered. ‘But, how can I help her beat that?’

Neither Aeolia nor the serpent seemed to notice her, and Kiera had the feeling that Aeolia wasn’t seeing the cavern for what it really was and was unaware of her presence. And from the slight amount of knowledge she’d gleaned from John talking about things in game terms, Aeolia had drawn the serpent’s aggro and it would focus on her until someone else tried anything.

‘Not that I can do anything to it,’ she thought, more bitterly than she expected. She didn’t have the power to overwhelm the thing, or dispel whatever effect it had Aeolia under. She looked down at her transformed hands. ‘No, I can’t just let Aeolia beat against this thing. She’ll tire out eventually and it’ll hurt her. I need to try something!’

Kiera’s mind flashed through all she could do. Could absorbing the serpent’s aura let her find some way to free Aeolia? Could just getting up in its face cause it to make a mistake and expose some vital weak point?

She had no way to know without trying. Kiera closed her eyes and steadied her breathing. She filled her mind with thoughts of her friends, even if they were more than that after yesterday. Of how they didn’t hesitate to jump to the aid of another, even back when they saw her as an enemy. They risked themselves to right her mind, John the foremost among them, and helped to break her connection to Flora’s sword.

She let the courage she’d seen from them stoke her own, and when she opened her eyes, a look of pure determination quite unlike her normal nervous expression burned in her grey orbs. After one more breath, Kiera strode into the cavern fully before breaking out into a run. She hit the edge of the water and kept doing, her draconic enhanced aura pushing against the water like she was a water strider.

It had been a gamble that she could do that, and running on the fluid surface took all of Kiera’s balance to remain upright as the water undulated under her weight and the movement of the serpent. The monster’s attention was still solely on Aeolia as she flew above it, launching several arcs of green wind from her glaive.

Kiera watched as the attacks hit the serpent’s crystalline surface, dealing shallow cuts and sending green lights cascading across its body. Then it lashed its tail out at Aeolia, causing the water to become even choppier. Kiera struggled to both keep moving and stay upright, falling to her knees as the surface under her rippled.

Despite the difficult terrain, Kiera kept moving forward. She had to do this. She had to help Aeolia. She needed to prove, to herself, if no one else, that she could contribute.

As if fate was rewarding her drive, the serpent slid closer and the water grew calmer. With one last burst of speed, Kiera dashed up to the serpent as it waited for Aeolia to make her next attack. She grabbed an uneven portion of the serpent’s body to hold on to and reached for its aura. She shivered as the cold and gritty aura of the serpent washed over her. There was nothing there like a person or even an animal in the monster’s aura. No ripples of emotions to be deciphered, nor pulls of desire twisting its shape into a premonition of its intent.

But, within the serpent’s aura was the lively and tempestuous swirling of Aeolia’s, normally a more playful gust but now whipped into an angry storm. Kiera could feel how the serpent was using Aeolia’s mana to link back to her, to fool her senses into believing she had no way to survive but to beat it. She took hold of this reservoir of power, dimly aware that doing so made her presence known to the serpent.

With little time to study what the serpent was truly doing, Kiera took the only action she could, she pulled on the collected mass of Aeolia’s mana, drawing it into herself. It was the largest amount of aura she had ever tried to absorb, and she wasn’t sure what would happen to the mana connected to it, but it was better than just not trying at all.

Aeolia’s aura flowed into her like a great gale, and Kiera felt like she was about to be blown over by the ****. She suddenly felt full, like she had gorged herself on Brenda’s wonderful cooking, and her skin prickled as her ability began to reflexively apply Aeolia’s aura to deal with the surge of energy.

Kiera grit her teeth, trying to manage the two applications of her magic. She could feel the warm draconic essence begin to peel away from her arms as Aeolia’s breezy one began to replace it.

‘I can’t let Verida’s power go!’ she frantically thought, already feeling herself beginning to sink into the water as her aura’s power weakened. Desperately, she tried to maintain both auras, focusing Verida’s draconic on her legs and Aeolia’s swirling to her back. Kiera felt her arms continue to lose her scales, but not transform into Aeolia’s toned and tanned skin, remaining her own.

Instead, Aeolia’s essence gathered around her shoulders and back, immediately bringing to Kiera’s mind her wings. She could feel the power pull together, a condensed form of her usual transformation centered on her shoulder blades. In a cascade Kiera couldn’t control, the various auras she held shifted.

In a burst of feathers, wings a perfect match of Aeolia’s burst from her back, ripping the upper portion of her shirt to shreds. Kiera didn’t have the time to wonder why the wings grew out of her back instead of her normal means of transformation as she was yanked back as if caught in strong current.

As Kiera flew back, she noticed Aeolia had stopped herself from firing off another attack, her expression cycling through confusion, concern and settling on determination. Then she dove towards her, quickly crossing the distance between them before the serpent could react. Aeolia reached out a hand and Kiera wasn’t slow in thrusting out her own.

Aeolia grabbed her and adjusted her trajectory. Some level of pure understanding filled Kiera’s mind and she reflexively adjusted the magic giving her lift so as to not slow Aeolia down. Aeolia half pulled, half directed Kiera back into the tunnel she had come from and landed them several meters away from the entrance.

Aeolia let go of Kiera’s wrist and spun around to face the serpent once more, glaive at the ready, but the crystalline monster only stared at them from its spot in the center of the pool.

“Guess it’s territorial,” she breathed out, lowering her glaive before turning to Kiera. She took a deep breath. “I’m guessing it was messing with me, ‘cus this cave was blocked by rocks before.”

Kiera nodded, putting thoughts about how her powers were changing to the back of her mind. “I-I think so. It seemed like the s-serpent was absorbing your mana to fool you.”

“Great,” Aeolia sighed. “The only way forward is through there and… Wait a second. How’d you get here? There weren’t any other paths from where I started.”

“I w-went through a crack in the wall,” Kiera explained. “I sensed your aura and it felt off. I thought it m-might have been because you were fighting, but maybe it could have been because of the illusion you were under.”

“Well, if you could get through there, I definitely can,” Aeolia muttered. “Only reason I didn’t was because I didn’t want to risk it being a one way trip. Okay, we go back to your tunnel and take things from there. You pick up anyone else?”

Kiera shook her head. “I haven’t checked since I got here. And I only sensed you.”

“See if anyone’s pinging from the other side of the lake,” Aeolia ordered. “I don’t want to spend time cutting this thing down, but if someone’s over there, we might have to. Finding everyone’s the main priority.”

Kiera nodded and searched for any of their party. She was a bit afraid she might miss Estelle’s or Anita’s auras due to her just not having as much time to get to know them, so she poured all her focus into her search, straining to pick up even the faintest twinge of aura. The fear of someone stumbling into the serpent’s trap greatly outweighed the prospect of having to get past it.

She was just about to give Aeolia word that she found nothing when a faint glimmer lightly tickled her senses. It was far away but unmistakable.

“I can feel Teri’s aura coming from that direction,” Kiera declared, in a tight voice.

Aeolia sighed and tightened her grip on her glaive. “So, the question is do we fight this thing, or try to race past it?”