43rd of Season of Air, 85th year of the 32nd cycle

  The sharpbeak had evolved further. The beak and elongated features of his base species were gone, his shape close to the majestic ideal he had dreamed of since inception. He stared at the intruder, aware of its breach into his realm of roiling lava and spires of obsidian from the moment the intruder had appeared there.

  Most puzzlingly, the intruder had a thick, solid aura, as strong as the sharpbeak’s. Stronger. And it wasn’t just powerful, but nearly identical to his. Nearly, but not entirely identical, so the creature wasn’t a heart demon.

  “What are you? And what are you doing in my realm?” The sharpbeak didn’t ask how the intruder got there.

  An instinct told him he wouldn’t like the answer, and the sharpbeak was still a creature of instinct. Not to say that his intellect was lacking. Quite the opposite. He was one of the most intelligent hunters in the jungle. But instincts rarely proved him wrong, and when forced to choose between instinct and reason, instinct always prevailed.

  “I am Newt,” the newt said flatly. “And you are Magmin’s heart demon.”

  The sharpbeak tilted his head.

  “I Am Magmin. And how do you know there was once something different from me?”

  “Magmin! Are you there?” the newt called in perfect snake speech, looking in the direction of the hole in the ground inside which the sharpbeak’s former self hid.

  The sharpbeak twitched at the words. They had touched something deep inside him, rousing a memory long-forgotten.

  “I Am Magmin.” He gathered his composure. “Now, tell me, who are you?”

  “I am Newt,” the evolved newt repeated. “Magmin’s friend.”

  The sharpbeak sifted through his memories. The ones from the fourth and fifth realm were clear in his mind, and he hadn’t met anyone like the newt before him. The ones from further back were hazy, warped… But the evolved newt was an impressive creature, more powerful than he was, despite having a smaller realm. A bad enemy to have.

  “I am glad to have a friend such as yourself,” the sharpbeak started carefully. “But that still doesn’t explain how you have managed to enter my realm.”

  “You are dead,” the evolved newt declared seemingly bored, his voice backed by an unshakeable certainty like an unbreakable obsidian column. “You are a ghost stuck in the remnants of your realm, an echo of your former self frozen in time right before you reached the sixth realm. I am here to help you or slay you, depending on your choice.”

  The sharpbeak carefully circled around the newt, keeping out of its reach, even though the distance didn’t inspire much confidence. He consumed the words in a fraction of a second, then digested them for two full revolutions of languid flight.

  “You’re claiming I’m a ghost?” The sharpbeak spoke calmly, but couldn’t deny the fear the declaration instilled him with.

  “Yes, you can’t know that, and I have no way of proving it save for being here.” The bored newt trampled any request for proof right from the start, giving his story a rotten stench, but kept talking. “I met another realm ghost once. He knew what he was because he intentionally created his realm as he was dying. But he believed he was dead for a week or two, when it’s been thousands of years. And he was at a higher realm than you are now.”

  The sharpbeak stared at the strange creature. It had no scales, no fangs or claws, or even a tail, and yet danger permeated it, making the sharpbeak uneasy.

  What does it use to kill? he wondered. His gut told him it was magic, and the wicked stick the newt carried. It was a treasure, a powerful one, yet the sharpbeak didn’t crave it.

  It was a dead thing, its energy somehow bound.

  “And which realm did I reach, powerful newt, and how come I don’t know about these realm ghosts?”

  “You were a legendary tenth realm dragon when you perished,” the newt said in a tired, bored voice of someone who just wanted to get the conversation over. It reminded the sharpbeak of a higher realm beast telling him to scram from their territory.

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  Sharpbeak roared in laughter to hide his nervousness.

  “Your art of flattery is at an exceptional level. Have you any idea how much time and effort it took to grow my realm this big? To make it as powerful and solid? It felt like shaping a mountain on the foundation of desert dunes. Difficult and precarious, growing harder with each day, with each piece I added. I spent a decade just preparing for the breakthrough. And now, you say I will succeed, and keep succeeding?”

  “I don’t care about your opinion,” the strange newt said, its voice remaining monotonous. “You can either choose to break the barrier and advance your realm, or we can fight ‘till you’re dead.”

  Are you in fact a heart demon? With that flat voice. You’re threatening to kill me unless I advance, and my advancement would only benefit a heart demon. Did the worm find a way to strengthen himself?

  The sharpbeak ignored the fact that the advancement would also benefit him. Instead, he sought to buy time.

  “You have brought me great news, and I most definitely don’t want to fight you.”

  The newt had no openings, no safe, easy way for the sharpbeak to slay it. He needed time to think. If the sharpbeak knew one thing, it was that he was no ghost. He was alive, healthy, and about to advance a realm.

  But how do I handle this creature? I can’t let it evolve with me, otherwise it would keep growing stronger. What do I lose if I attack and lose?

  The answer was simple, there was nothing to lose. The sharpbeak dove. There was no surprise. The stick with a rock on the end flashed, and the sharpbeak’s ghostly existence ended.

  ***

  Newt’s neck and head still buzzed with the phantom pain. Magmin had grown into a colossal creature. Without danger sense and reflexes slightly faster than Magmin’s, Newt would’ve died in the realm.

  He closed his eyes and sensed his progress.

  Middling eighth layer.

  Perhaps visiting Magmin’s realm isn’t as worth it as it once was. I have all the order’s resources to expand my realm. Coming all this way to save a couple hundred crystals and risk death isn’t really worth it.

  The only problem was what would happen to Magmin if Newt stopped visiting his realms? Would he stop growing, or worse disintegrate or something even worse? Could Magmin even expand his realm without appropriating the past fragments?

  Whatever happened to Magmin, Newt was fairly certain it wouldn’t impact him negatively, but even that was a matter of his own personal thoughts, not something he knew for a fact.

  As for learning something from Magmin’s realm, Newt was long past that point. In fact, even if Magmin had his entire third realm in tunnels, Magmin obviously never split his realm into above ground and below ground levels at later realms.

  Newt couldn’t comprehend how such a clever serpent failed to take advantage of his unique situation.

  That’s not true. Magmin was intelligent, but his repeated failures to develop wings drove him past the point of insanity. Then the sharpbeak took over, and it was obviously more ferocious and savage, but not as observant and innovative as Magmin was.

  Newt gazed at the pulsating stars. Time passed as he thought about everything that had happened in his life since he had first entered the mines. Finally, his lips stretched into a smile.

  “Halfway there,” he mumbled, then thought about his ancestor and his family’s secret techniques. Even the illustrious ancestor, the clan’s founder, Blaze I, was merely two realms ahead of Newt at the time of his death.

  Newt left the mine and went into the clan’s vault to check out the fifth realm techniques. They were protected by a barrier, one only those of the fifth realm and above could pass. Stronggrow had once told Newt it also checked the bloodline, but he didn’t know of any such spell formations.

  One by one, Newt took them, memorized them, and returned them to their place.

  The techniques were written in a different hand, much more complex than the fourth realm versions, which was expected, and they were of higher quality. They had fewer flaws, and the one who wrote them had greater understanding than the ones who wrote the lower realm versions.

  Considering it was Blaze I in person who wrote the simplified techniques, it seemed logical.

  My ancestors were dabblers, Newt’s lip turned at the realization. The starting arts the founder had practiced must have been decent, but he wasn’t apt at modifying them, and his descendants understood even less.

  The thought was unfilial, but it was the truth.

  Newt sighed and went to check the sixth realm scrolls, but they were protected by another spell seal, one which rejected him.

  Fine, next time.

  Newt said his farewells, taking a long look at his teacher before giving him a sack of fourth realm manarium.

  “For the clan,” he whispered, wondering whether the old man would still be alive on Newt’s next visit.

  Newt hardened his heart and left. Such was the path towards immortality - people you loved and cared about would eventually die. Lady Woodhopper had told him that years ago. Once, it was background noise, now it was his reality.

  He sighed sadly, then focused on himself. Instead of waiting for the airship to pick him up, Newt went on foot. The ruins of Hailstown, which non-awakened once took more than a week to reach from Dragon’s Rest, he passed two hours after setting off. The walls of Thunderbluff, the great imperial city, still bore the scars of the saurian onslaught. The breaches, if any had existed, had been fixed, but light damage, which didn’t threaten the city’s safety, remained.

  I wonder if it’s to show their glory or to remind people of why they need cities like this?

  Irrelevant. Newt dismissed the thought, took the highway, and returned to Explorer’s Island.