Chapter 14-394: Force is all that Matters (2/2)

I then had to find the purple bastard. That wasn’t as hard as it could have been.

First, amethyst dragons like fish. Second, amethyst dragons like stone. This was a combination of our own studies and investigations, and questions asked of Celestials with the appropriate world-spanning information.

Using a cloud island for privacy is fun and all, but no fish and no stone would mean the dragon simply wouldn’t use it. So, I simply had to go looking for an actual floating cloud or hill up in the higher Tiers... and out over the water.

Oh, and I did so after I popped all of his Mahar Dragonpacted, making sure that they all died, and he had no idea how or why.

Cloud islands normally drift around. Cloud islands that stay over water are not really moving around. Thus, it was a matter of verifying where Professor Shellington had met the dragon before, in what had seemed to be a terrestrial lair on an island out in the local sea, and then simply looking upwards to find a cloud island with actual stone on it, and a lake.

How they got a hill of stone up into the sky was a different issue. Probably some old magic, and I didn’t care... okay, I did care, because mass levitation of stuff was sooooo cool, but everything I could see was that it was 10th+ Valence magic, and thus off-limits until you were Eternal. I could look at the stuff, memorize everything I could see, and that was about it. It wasn’t an Intellect thing; it was a spiritual thing with profound implications totally based on Level and Ranks.

There were times I really wished Stats could sub for Ranks, but oh well. It was what it was.

That said, laziness was also a thing. The sea that abutted Waterdown was actually located between the locations of the Mahar, the humans of various types who had Pacts, and Waterdown itself. Once that was apparent, I simply used the island where the Professor had encountered him decades ago as a starting point, and a circling Commune with Nature up in the Cloud Tiers on an invisible Air Walking Sleipner soon located an appropriate place that ‘wasn’t there’ in my Commune, despite being there visually.

Technically I shouldn’t have been able to reach the Twelfth Cloudtier. Realistically, when I was Humming, I could probably reach Tier Thirty, as the magic that discriminated against Levels reacted wildly to my effective Caster Level, especially when Natural Theurgy was active... such as with my Commune with Nature, which basically told the Warding effect to shut up and stay away from me.

From there, noting the Divinatory Wards and the identity of their Caster wasn’t too difficult. Also, the psi-based foundation of the effects here was impossible to miss.

Psi-based stuff didn’t hold together well here, and basically overlapped with magic as far as special effects went. It was also severely genetic-based, and the mortal races here didn’t have the genome... unless they were involved in some very nasty genetic engineering. Sama noted the Templars had succumbed to that, courtesy of exhumed relics of the cephalids, a species whose debased Aberrant remnants still existed in the Felldeep in places nobody liked to talk about or go into.

More shit to prepare for and kill. It never ended, and it never would. The Alignment War and the existence of things Outside Creation made sure of that.

Quite invisible, Sleipner immune by dint of being effectively a bound Construct or magical item by classification, we swooped in on what looked like a mountain lake set atop a cloud, a waterfall pouring out of nowhere from atop it.

It wasn’t that a dragon couldn’t see us coming, but he had to have line of sight to us, and I quickly noticed the crystals jutting out here and there that were emanating Scrying magic. Astral Ward protected me completely, and the dragon wasn’t using a basic light-relay system like optical fibers to overcome the effect. Ergo, the dragon didn’t see us arrive.

Nor did we actually set foot upon the cloud island. Dragons had superhuman senses, and gem dragons especially had Earth affinity. He would quickly hear the sound of anyone walking or rolling over the surface here, and so staying just above the surface was essential.

That didn’t stop me from touching the surface with Clavus, and sending out cautious pulses along the magic here to get the lay of the place.

The lake was stocked with fish, growing fast and fat with the cloud island magic that benefited all the local flora and fauna. Still, there were no random beasts flying about, because this was the Twelfth Tier, and things like small birds, rodents, and the like simply couldn’t survive the pressure up here. I assumed the water was supporting the fish by the dragon’s power, and their mental make-up could definitely feel its presence. It didn’t have Wards set up in the water itself, which made finding the access tunnel hidden under the surface and away from the obvious waterfall entrance not that hard to locate, actually.

From there, it was Wraithform, staying Invisible and unnoticed by any of the aquatic creatures it had linked itself to... including the very large drak-blooded giant constrictor that dwelled in the lake, exactly sixteen Hit Dice in size and probably the main reason why the dragon was lairing here, as up on Sixteen it would be a snack to something really dangerous.

I was expecting the dragon to have a familiar or servant or mentally-dominated monstrous creature outside to both deflect attention and provide early warning, but there’s still a big element of surprise involved when a hundred-foot purple-scaled snake with dragon’s wings comes coiling out of the surface of the crystal-clear lake water a hundred yards away and takes flight in a spray of light-refracting dewdrops.

I thought of Aelryinth’s familiar Feature as I looked at the thing, shrugged, and got to work.

Sleipner and I watched it from out over the surface of the lake, still Invisible. It didn’t have any natural ability to see the invisible, although it would have an excellent sense of smell... which I had naturally suppressed on both of us.

We watched the purple-winged winged draco-snake go flying stiffly out on what was probably a regular patrol route, and a way to display ownership of the island. Something from up Above would know better, things from Below would not, and it was easy enough to believe. The draco-snake wasn’t a very fast flier and was pretty clumsy, so it didn’t go far past the cloud’s edge in its circuit.

There might be something else down there, but the lake didn’t look big enough to sustain another drak-child.

The advances the Nymph was bringing to my Blighter Level had also advanced my twisted Wildshaping Class Ability. Normally I wouldn’t even think of using it, as turning into an undead animal was not appealing and potentially dangerous around Shroudzones. But being able to turn into a spectral animal or form was basically the same as using Wraithform, albeit through warped Natural magic, and could last MUCH longer.

Ergo, Blightshaping myself into a fake spectre, I headed down into the water of the cloud island’s lake, incorporeal and invisible, to do my scouting, while Sleipner withdrew to the coverage of the vegetation along the shore.