35th of Season of Fire, 159th year of the 32nd cycle

  “Alive is too strong a word for his current state.” Newt carefully started lowering the dragon exalt’s expectations. “Your father exists in my realm as a spiritual entity, and has grown and kept growing ever since I first stumbled across his realm. Given time and a sufficiently powerful realm, I would like to manifest him, but I will need to—”

  “No.”

  Mana quivered, and the world changed. Instead of a burnt jungle with a distant volcano around which a dragon coiled, the world became a blazing mountainside. Up high, Newt spotted Magmin pines, smaller than those in his realm, while flames and fire pits and boiling mud dotted the landscape.

  “In here, you will summon my sire. And I shall speak with him about everything. Especially about how you met and how you have treated him.”

  An impossibly immense dragon descended from the sky. She was thousands of miles long. What seemed like an infinite realm from Newt’s perspective turned into something quite finite and perhaps even constricting in her eyes.

  “But how do I—” Newt didn’t even finish his sentence when a rush of magma-attributed mana roiled around him and surged into his body.

  The energy invaded him and rushed into his core, where it found Magmin and yanked him out like a farmer might pluck a weed.

  Newt’s eyes widened in alarm, but Magmin, poor Magmin, was terrified. He quivered before the regal dragon, easily hundreds of times his size, and she too stared at him.

  “Sire,” she said respectfully, her eyes sparkling with a hungry reptilian light. “Do you remember your life?”

  Magmin just gazed at her, then nodded. “I do. I remember guarding a burning tree around which I coiled. Many came to claim it, feeding me and letting me evolve. I remember slithering between rocks, hunting my peers and those weaker than me back when I first hatched. I remember most of my life.”

  The titanic dragon blinked, her approval washing over her entire realm.

  “And this invader, how has he been treating you?”

  “Newt is my trusted companion.” Magmin chose his words carefully. “We have been together ever since I have regained my consciousness, and he has earned my trust.”

  Newt noticed that the word friend never passed between the two, and neither side seemed overly happy to see the other. Magmin especially.

  “That didn’t answer my question.” The dragon said after mulling over Magmin’s words.

  “He has treated me fairly and benevolently, even putting his life at risk for my own benefit. As I have said, he has earned my trust.”

  The dragon remained silent, letting the realm of lava press down on Newt.

  “Very well.” Her eye shifted a bit to focus on Newt. “Since my father claims he is indebted to you, you may leave.”

  With that, Newt was back on the mountain, his head spinning.

  Magmin?

  “I’m here, and I can hear you.” Magmin’s hisses echoed in Newt’s mind. “I can even see what you’re seeing. We seem to be a step closer to giving me a real body, but please don’t do it where she can see us. She wants to eat me.”

  The exchange took a fraction of a second, and Newt didn’t even have time to feel shock before the dragon spoke.

  “You are at the peak of the seventh realm now, while my sire is at the initial layers of the same realm. I guess he awakens his memories as you grow?”

  Newt nodded, not daring to say a word, fearing she would sense the lie.

  “In that case, you will return here every one hundred years until you reach the tenth realm. If you don’t, I will come looking for you, and I will overturn every rock until I find you, regardless of how many of your kind die in the process.”

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  “There might be a problem with that,” Newt said timidly. “You see, someone will trigger a new onslaught soon, and they intend to use my force to deal with the attackers. Then, once we have defended our positions, they want us to advance into the jungle until we reach the areas inhabited by high realm saurians.”

  The dragon sliced Newt with her gaze. “You’re telling the truth. Why would your kind do that?”

  “They see us as a threat, and they want to use others’ fangs to kill us. The fact that we’re going to break some of those fangs is merely a bonus.”

  The dragon’s vertical pupils narrowed.

  “Someone wants to use me? ME?” Fire flared from her house-sized nostrils. “Very well, if they wish to use me, I shall use them instead.”

  Her anger vanished, and she refocused on Newt. “You have shared a useful bit of information. I will see to it that your area has only the weakest beasts. Disposable wastes of resources unsuitable for expanding my spawn’s realms.”

  Why do you keep them then?

  “Because an earth and water saurian will devour a pure water one, growing from its energy. A pure earth then devours the earth and water. Then you can get the refined mana by devouring the earth one.” Magmin’s voice grew weaker in Newt’s mind, and Newt struggled to keep the connection going. “I can’t see or hear what you’re doing anymore.”

  Then Magmin’s voice disappeared. Newt felt the urge to check his realm immediately and see whether the dragon was all right, but he didn’t dare do so in front of his daughter.

  “We need to prepare and feign weakness—” she stopped talking and looked at Newt. “Why did you share this information with me? It goes against your kind’s interest.”

  “Because they plan to sacrifice me and my friends, and we want to live.”

  The dragon stared at him, keeping silent.

  “I can offer sanctuary for you and a number of your companions.”

  You’re going to lose some cattle and want to recoup the losses? No thanks… Newt considered his answer, then decided to keep the door open. We might need asylum with the saurians as a last resort.

  It was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, but uncertain death was preferable to a certain one.

  “I very much appreciate the offer, and I will take it should we need it.”

  The dragon seemed extremely pleased, her bearing turning smug, and Newt wondered why and how he could read her gesticulations so easily when there was hardly any change in her, and when he couldn’t notice such details about Magminion.

  Just as Newt wondered what they should do next, Magminion approached, descending from the clouds towards the sea of ash.

  “You called, Mother.”

  “Yes, you will take the invader back to his den. From now until he reaches the ninth realm, you will go to his den once every century and escort him here so I can personally check his progress.”

  If Magminion was surprised, he showed not a hint of it, calmly growing in size and snatching Newt to bring him back to the Salamandra clanhold.

  “I must admit I didn’t expect to see you again, let alone return you to the lands you’ve stolen.” The dragon sent the telepathic message straight into Newt’s mind.

  Um, thanks, I guess? Unlike Magmin, though, he didn’t seem able to read Newt’s thoughts.

  “You need to learn how to project your thoughts through mana if you wish to answer. While quieter than whispering, Mother can still overhear us when she’s paying attention, like she is now.”

  “Magminion,” the older dragon’s voice echoed in Newt’s mind, “there is no need to teach him our skills, or even explain them. He has my sire’s trust, and he will learn thought-speech if he is worthy.”

  “Yes, Mother.” That was the last thing Magminion said that Newt could hear.

  Another three days worth of flight awaited Newt. Like last time, he decided he would spend them in his realm. Unlike last time, his first priority was to have a long talk with Magmin.

  He appeared on the mountainside, a trickle of lava flowing a handful of yards away. Magmin wasn’t around, but a moment later, Newt sensed the dragon’s approach.

  “She wants me to reach the tenth realm, then eat me, probably for mana. That or she has some way to read my memories and learn my secrets.”

  Newt nodded, but then said something he had kept quiet about until that moment. “That’s certainly a possibility, but she did let me catch a glimpse of how it feels to project you outside of my realm. Should she do that every time, I will learn how to give you physical form sooner rather than later. And then, there was the weird moment where we were somehow both in my body at the same time. I did my best to follow the threads of mana as they flowed back to my core, but I didn’t sense anything in particular, other than the fact that I had too much mana in my body.”

  It was something worth considering. If he could draw Magmin into his body and supercharge himself, it would be a killer trump card.

  He was already powerful for his realm, his mana purer than it should be. If he could channel draconic power into his body even for a limited time, it could let him get away from a potentially lethal encounter.

  “I need to meditate on this. Perhaps your daughter will help us find what we are looking for.”

  Magmin nodded, quite a human gesture, one his daughter and Magminion didn’t seem to share, and left Newt alone to think.