Chapter 17-432: Deeper Realms (1/2)

Legion clucked in reproof, and sighed despite themselves. Shvaughn laughed in the distance, and left them to their work with the shadow of a mental kiss.

Such a clever woman, they thought, as they Earthjumped ten miles straight down, and emerged out of the side of the Felldeep cavern beneath Illinois.

This particular cavern was thirty miles long, twenty-four miles at its widest, and reached nearly a mile high in the middle. It absolutely could not exist by physics, and at this depth should have been far too hot for anything mortal and organic to live.

The sky was bright with a combination of white-hot rock and glowing crystals, giving an impression of multiple distant suns and streaks of light flowing between them. The illumination cycled on a regular pattern that basically exactly matched the illumination above.

The vegetation here had mostly died out before the last Ice Age, or perhaps had evolved directly out of such things. The air was warm and wet, thick with the smell of composting materials, and alive with the sounds of a jungle, if subtly different.

There was a lot more reptilian life down here, after all.

The first cavern had been further east, with spurs that had extended up under Detroit. The things that had come up higher from there had mostly been Fey or Elemental spirits of one kind or another, occasionally bringing some magical beast or another with them as battle partners or slaves.

Given how savagely they attacked, they weren’t allowed to go home. They certainly had not been aware of the power of modern firearms.

Thus, one end of that cavern had been dominated by the Earth-based creatures and their homes of organically shaped stones and many stands of crystals, ores spread like paint through the walls and occasionally brought forth and refined into attractive sculptures intrinsically worthy a great deal of goldweight, even before being turned into elemental art.

Exploration-by-force teams would count the area a bonanza for mining, no doubt, and drive off everything to claim it for themselves.

The major threat to the Fey and spirits were dinosaurs wandering out of the plains and jungles nearby. Well, they were a threat if they were ridden by yuan-ti.

Legion was not happy to see the serpent-men here. Even today, nearly eighty years after the Shroud came, yuan-ti were basically killed at birth. Even the Heavenly Churches didn’t speak out against the practice, as the Angelos had informed them long ago that the yuan-ti were an ancient demonic mutation of the human species, born to be Evil, and lacking Free Will. Not a single human who had been transformed into a serpent-folk had proven to be anything other than Evil, and even newly born children had traces of it in their Auras.

It was absolutely horrible, but it was what it was. The blame lay on the progenitors of the yuan-ti, not on humanity itself, which had no way to reverse the Cursed effect.

The birth of a yuan-ti generally meant doom for any chance of having a family, as the couple involved could not risk having another... and not many people would want to try with someone who had already sired a yuan-ti. Thus the evil of the Curse was magnified, as the parents suffered for the birth as well.

Scalefolk were just another bane upon humanity. The tales of the Angelos and Windgraf Mochtal held precious little positive things to say for any of the scaled or reptilian races.

Legion had followed the trail of the yuan-ti back to the connection to the next chamber, and there found the temple fortress they used as a base. The serpentfolk rode Charmed and Dominated dinosaurs of the saurial type, frilled and with colorful scales in various sizes, with herbivorous ones being used for lower classes, messengers, and routine use, while predatory versions were obviously for the important riders and military.

It was noteworthy that they weren’t using any form of pure pteranodon or somesuch for a riding beast... at least, not without magical saddles to completely remove the rider’s weight. Obviously the dinosaurs were not magical fliers.

It was also obvious that while they had access to a good water supply and food supply, there had to be some form of conflict going on. Records of yuan-ti indicated that they were of genius-level intelligence, and they all had innate magical powers they were quite willing to use. Given that and their natural toughness, they should have easily been able to dominate this area... but they didn’t.

They also had very few sauropods laboring for them, always smaller ones as packbeasts.

Something was keeping their numbers in check, and given how the yuan-ti had only fanned out in hunting parties, always wary, it was good at its job.

Legion hadn’t discovered what that was, but just reporting the existence of the yuan-ti meant that somebody would be dispatched to take care of them. Yes, they could have done it, and probably fairly easily... although they had the feeling there were some dangerous secrets hidden inside the sprawling domain of their temple-fortress, given the demonic Aura about it.

If there was a Pact Patron within, wouldn’t that be foul luck...

There were other airborne dinosaurs here, and they kept a wary distance from Legion’s wings and odd appearance. The pteros could probably sense Legion’s draconic Bloodline, too, and didn’t want to test them.

They were wondering if more of the Mahars were around, who would certainly have conflicts of some sort with the arrogant and domineering yuan-ti. Conflicts between them could certainly explain the numbers of the yuan-ti, although Legion didn’t have a high opinion of the Mahars’ intelligence. More than likely, once they met the yuan-ti would have taken them over outright, or killed them off entirely unless their numbers were overwhelming.

A loud roar of challenge alerted them to something, and the air roiled about them as some sort of Druidic magic began to take effect.