Unbound

Chapter Seven Hundred And Forty Two – 742

Vess carefully pulled a crate from the shelf and pried it open with her bare hands. The wood crumbled more than splintered, the low Tier material barely holding itself together. “What is this?” She reached in and pulled out a handful of rocks. “Tier 0 stone. What’s the point of storing something like this?”

“There is no point,” Yintarion said, his Body taking up much of the small room. He twisted about, tendrils twitching. “Unless they’re camouflage.”

Vess and her Companion stood in the westernmost wing of Scalebreaker Citadel, down a disused corridor that the servants hadn't bothered to clean in what seemed like centuries. Dust and grime covered everything, hidden behind numerous locked doors that none but the Head Steward. The two of them had started searching hours prior, after Yintarion had suggested that he was ready to make the attempt on the Dragon eggs he carried within his Spirit

Vess had gone to her father, asking him for a full map of the Citadel. She had explored much of it as a child, but there were many places from which she was barred. Some because they were dangerous and in dire need of repair—the Scalebreaker Citadel had always been constantly modified and updated as defensive measures were discovered and implemented. Other places, however, were simply forbidden. The westernmost wing was one of them.

So, after unlocking a slew of doors and finding their way through labyrinthine corridors, they came here: to a chamber that seemed entirely too shallow for no reason. Measuring only five paces by twenty, it was being used as a storage closet. Dust-caked wooden boxes filled old, dry, rotted shelves that she feared would fall apart if she sneezed.

Her Companion folded around himself, displaying incredible flexibility as he fit into the tiny chamber. His scaled shoulders and long tail came within finger spans of the rotted shelving, but never touched them. “Something is being hidden from us.”

He stuck his long snout between a gap in the shelving and sniffed. “Help me move these, little Dragoon.”

Together they pulled the crates down and stacked them outside the storage closet, followed by the splintered remains of the shelving as they broke those down too. Eventually, they stood before an empty wall. Dusty and streaked with ancient grime, but smooth enough.

"It is here.” Yintarion lifted a claw and pressed it against the plaster, hard. The wall immediately buckled, plaster cracking and large blocks of stone shifting in place. A sharp whistling noise cut through the room as the smallest of holes opened up in the wall. “Help me, Vessilia.”

A single swift thrust blasted the wall inward, taking out a sizable chunk of stone. The rush of air increased to a short roar before fading entirely. She sniffed herself. “Smells stale and…musky.”

Yintarion didn’t reply. He put his shoulder to the wall, shoving through more head-sized blocks that toppled noisily to the other side. Mortar crumbled and plaster littered the floor, unable to contest either of their considerable Strength stats.

With only a few more blows, the wall was opened completely…revealing a familiar shape behind it.

"A Hatchery Wheel," Vess said with relief. “We found it.” She coughed. "It is incredibly dusty."

"It is," Yintarion said. "This Citadel has changed much. Once, it was a bastion of strength and a home of my people. Yet time changes all things. Your Scalebreaker Citadel was once called the Unbroken Heights. Now…” Yintarion looked around in dismay. "Now the Domains have been destroyed. The murals and art were removed and melted down. All traces of our former alliance were sundered into dust. But I had hoped…I had hoped that the hatcheries were left untouched."

Before them, the dusty rooms they had uncovered were broken and vandalized. The sigiladry apparent across the floors and walls and Hatchery Wheel itself was slashed and melted, while other parts were clearly torn and dismantled, piece by piece. It was clear to Vess that some of it had even been used to make part of the wall, meant to seal all of it up. Her heart clenched to see her Companion so upset.

The room, already twenty strides wide, now extended another forty at least. Contained within it were the broken remains of a Hatchery Wheel. According to Yin, it was normally a spherical structure with flat discs filled with depressions meant to fit eggs into, somehow speeding up their hatching process. They also were supposed to have a metal top that sealed the eggs in place, yet there was no evidence of one. The rest was crushed and destroyed, taken apart piece by piece.

"Perhaps we could return to Fenwald," Vess suggested. "The hatchery there was in better repair than here."

"It was," Yin admitted, "but even that was damaged, more by time than anything else."

"Felix could potentially fix it," Vess suggested, and her Companion perked up.

"I had forgotten about the Autarch's ability to deny the effects of time, but does it not have to be touched by the Ruin to be affected?"

Vess hesitated. "I am unsure, actually." She recalled Felix using it against Primordials and other things, but there was always a link back to the Ruin. Lost Races, histories, and technologies. A thought occurred to her. "The Dragons were lost, were they not?"

"Indeed, the greatest of the draconics. All that remains is our lesser kin.”

“Felix can restore Nymean ruins, so surely he could restore something associated with another Lost Race."

Yin made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. "Perhaps. It is surely worth a try." He drew himself up, regaining some of the vigor he'd had moments prior. "I will go and find him, and beg for his aid."

"Wait.”

“If you mean to save my pride, forget it, little Dragoon. My pride…it is worthless before saving the last of Hatchlings."

"No," Vess interrupted. "Do you not feel that?"

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Yin tilted his head at her, but Vess said nothing else. Instead she strode closer to the Hatchery Wheel, and felt a tingling in her senses. Not sight, nor sound, nor even smell, but a strange resonance inside of her breast. As she stepped closer to the Hatchery Wheel, it intensified by the faintest of beats. She followed it as if listening to the echo of music playing leagues away, until she came to a wall covered in carvings. Her hands came up, playing across the surface and through layers of grime and dust.

She retrieved a rag from her pouch and began wiping away at the accrued residue of Ages. A small portion came away to reveal glittering, almost metallic fragments set into the wall. "Something is hidden here.”

Yin walked closer, sniffing at the air as his tendril-like mustache twitched. "I suppose I... I feel something, too." He reached out to the wall, pressing his five-fingered claws against it, and dragged it down. Sparks flew from the contact, and while dust and grime were removed, there did not seem to be any damage to the wall itself. "Interesting."

They searched, hunting across the wall with their hands and senses, and at first nothing changed. The feeling, she felt, did not intensify or lessen. It simply remained, a steady beat in the back of her head, until her fingers caught on a piece of tile that didn’t belong. Just like the others, it was metallic and of a regular shape, almost like a scale. But as she grasped hold of it, she felt it shift.

She pressed and twisted but it did not budge until she pulled. Then it extended, pulling out a full finger span before it locked into place with a solid click.

“A lever?”

“A door handle,” Vess said, and twisted the extended bar. It made a metal on metal sound, like armor straps locking tight before a much lower noise vibrated the wall. Weight shifted and a sharp clicking began to spread throughout the entire wall.

A notification popped up before her eyes.

Authority Required.

Submit Dragon Bond.

Unsure exactly how to proceed, she flared her bond with Yin, though the connection would not accept much more than its normal allotment of Mana. It was a passive Skill, after all. Still, it seemed that was enough.

Dragon Bond Received.

Processing...

The clicking intensified within the walls, now accompanied by a rhythmic whirring, like the springs of a giant clock. Vess’ knew the smart thing was to retreat to a safe distance, but she refused to let go of the metal handle. Yin growled, his ears laying back against his skull.

"If it is a trap, I will rend it apart," he assured her.

A sharp chime rang out, as if the smallest of bells had been struck by the tiniest of hammers.

Dragon Bond Accepted!

Be Welcome, Dawn Drake And Companion!

The piece of wall in her hand slipped free, snapping back into the surface as the entire structure rumbled and shifted. Sudden sigaldry flashed up and down the wall before that same clicking and whirring intensified into a deep rumbling and the entire wall split apart. Dust drained down and the noise settled, revealing a long winding staircase into pure darkness.

Yintarion rumbled thoughtfully. “A bond was required to enter. This is promising.”

Vess peered into the dark stairwell, glaive at the ready. "What could be down there?”

“I do not know." Yintarion looked back at the smashed Hatchery Wheel behind them. “Perhaps something to balance this loss.”

They walked down, step by step. Though Yin was large, as big as a team of Avum strung together, the stairwell more than accommodated the both of them.

Vess almost activated her Elemental Eye to see further down, but as the dark closed in, Yin's scales lit up with an internal illumination. He glowed like the last lights of a sunset, filling the stairwell with a warmth that set a piece of Vess's Spirit into calm.

"I did not know you could do that," she said.

"We are called Dawn Drakes for a reason, little Dragoon.”

The stairwell was a spiral one, and soon Vess observed that the walls were covered in art. Mosaics landscapes filled the space from the steps up to the ceiling which curved above them. They were filled with clouds and trees, mountains and forests, and through them all, Dragons flew. Sometimes free and alone, sometimes accompanied by Dragoons with spears, but always beautiful, always majestic. She leaned closer to the tiles and ran her fingers across them.

"These are not tile at all," she said. "I think these are made of Dragon scales."

Yintarion chuckled. "That is indeed an old art form. We do not lose our scales often." He looked up and around. "To make such a work of art would have taken many, many years." He hesitated. "Or many, many Dragons."

They kept moving and Vess was enraptured by the mosaic. It depicted groups of Dragons flying through the sky in very specific formations, often repeated over and over. She committed them to memory, wondering if perhaps those were once aerial techniques of the Dragoons.

"They were called flights, you know," Yintarion said. "A gathering of Dragons is called a flight."

"That's beautiful," Vess said.

Around them were mountains that she recognized from her travels in her youth. They filled the space the further they descended, many accompanied by beautiful fortresses nestled near their peaks. Soon though, the landscape flattened, or perhaps it simply grew more close up. The ground and trees became larger, and the Dragons smaller. Younger. Wyrmlings swarmed around laughing Dragoons, and Hatchlings rolled free of thick eggshells, until finally they reached the final landing. There, the walls were covered in a depiction of dozens of Dragon eggs, each the size of a dinner plate. They were represented not by scales, but by huge faceted gemstones that glittered in Yin's light.

Such immense wealth and artistry. All to honor the Dragons. The love and care put into these mosaics, it is no wonder that betrayal led to such hatred.

"Sky and sun, little Dragoon, look!”

Vess followed her Companion through the open archway and onto a wide landing edged by an elaborate balustrade. Beyond the railing, a wide chamber opened up into a veritable warehouse. Draped in shadow, she couldn’t quite estimate it’s size other than to say it was enormous, easily taking up an entire wing of the Citadel. There were strange machines hung from the ceiling like ancient terrors with lined tubes dangling from them amid thick cobwebs.

What caught her eye, however, was the massive Hatchery Wheel made of silver-green mithril and thick age-darkened glass plates suspended within the center of the room. Compared to the others she’d encountered, it looked almost pristine, if ancient.

Yin reached out, touching a flattened panel on the edge of the balcony and an array came to life. With a few quick motions, a pulse of Mana rippled through the warehouse, igniting magelights all along the walls and flooring.

Vess squinted against the light.

Incubation chambers, areas that looked to be some sort of pen, and even what resembled an infirmary filled the spaces between the large, unknowable machinery. Those hulks were slowly lit by Mana vapor as it curled across the warehouse and they shuddered, not quite turning on, but beginning to hum. The massive Hatchery Wheel was the last to light up, and it did so from the inside out, shining through the shrouded glass.

Yin bellowed and shot off into the air, only to land astride the curved Hatchery Wheel with the lightest of touches. He pressed his large head into the glass and his long tail lashed. He looked back excitedly at her.

"Eggs, Vessilia!" he exclaimed and her heart lurched in her chest. "There are Dragon eggs in here!"