151. Beyond the Sky (VI) (Patreon)

A/N: Sorry for the late chapter! Half my day yesterday got knocked out by an unforeseen event... this is on me, though. I'll try to write an extra reserve chapter so this sort of thing doesn't interrupt the schedule in future. Sorry again. Y'all deserve a stable schedule. 

Onto the story! 

//

Dorian passed a courtyard stuffed full of men and women as he made his way up to Bin. It was a motley bunch: there were heaps of Heilong soldiers milling about but also greasy-looking Rats, and more—hordes of wide-eyed, shivering Outskirters clinging onto their Sticks like lifelines. These were to be the soldiers who would save the Oasis, apparently!

Dorian sighed. With his Sticks they would hold off the ground troops. The low-level riffraff. Nothing else. He would do the bulk of the legwork. Then again they were wielding his inventions too, weren’t they? He really was doing everything around here.

Bin was standing at the front of the crowd. He raised an eyebrow at Dorian’s new appearance—his super bloated belly especially.

“Congratulations,” he said dryly. “Boy or girl?”

“Ha-ha,” said Dorian. “I’ll need a map from you.”

` Bin frowned. “What sort of map? Of the city? Of the compound?”

“Topographical. Of the region. As big as you’re got—something that covers all of the West Desert, preferably.”

“… Hm.” Bin scratched his chin.” We run defense work for the courriers and the merchants. We’ve mapped out the area around the Oasis a good… hundred-thousand paces in all directions, or thereabouts, I should think.”

“Excellent!” Dorian rubbed his hands together. “Any volcanoes?”

For a moment Bin just looked at him funny. Dorian could see the thought written plain on his face—what could he possibly want with a volcano?

“…Yes, as it happens,” said Bin slowly. “It is said that the network of molten rock which flows under the sands is brother to its aquatic counterpart of the Sinkholes. It’s all nonsense if you ask me. I haven’t seen a lick of proof. But these volcanoes—they do exist. On battleship the nearest one is two weeks away. On Vordor-back you may make it in one.”

“Hmm. Too slow. But I can move faster than either. If a Vordor can do it in a week, I’ll do it in a day.”

“I must ask,” said Bin. “What, exactly, do you want with a volcano?”

“To make a breakthrough, of course!” Dorian grinned up at him. “I know, I know. You’ve never heard of such a strange tactic. Yet I am the Hero and you are not. The things I do aren’t supposed to make sense to you. But they’ve worked so far, haven’t they? Have some faith.”

“The fate of the Oasis rests in your hands,” Bin said sharply. “I shall need a little more than faith to go off of.”

“Put it this way. This journey is the only way we stand a real shot against the Ugoc.” Dorian shrugged. “I’m at a little more than ten times the power of any ordinary Sky-Realm creature they’ve got. They’ve got fleets of them—not to mention the avatar of a God, which is more of a threat than the rest of them put together! At my current stage I’ll still be rolled over. I need one more advance. This, and nothing else, has a chance of putting me over the top.”

“I see.” Bin mulled it over for a few seconds. At last he spoke. “Strange. Your sister came by mere hours ago. She asked the same thing of me. Asked for a map of the Oasis’s surroundings.”

“Did she, now?” said Dorian idly. “What for?”

“She was bored here, apparently. She went out to fight some bigger prey.” Bin snorted. “Truth be told, it’s better for everyone. She made quite a fuss before she got her way.”

Behind Bin, a few of his generals shivered, legs drawing together.

Dorian rolled his eyes. “Really, now?” She’s going to get herself killed, isn’t she—after all that effort and resources I sank into her?

But there was no time to worry about her now. He was annoyed. More annoyed than he expected—surprised at his own annoyance, even. But what was he supposed to do about it, other than make a mental note to make more careful investments in future?

At least he hadn’t sank anything of true worth into her. And by now she was mostly extraneous; she didn’t really matter. Still it needled at him in a way he couldn’t quite explain.

“Whatever.” Dorian held out a hand. “The map, if you please?”

***

A girl in tattered robes dashed across the hot sands, seeking blood. She left a mangled trail of bodies in her wake; Wyrms, sandwolves, Vordors alike. Each body only stoked that wild hot gold within her; that essence of life which seemed only to flare, rise up, course faster and hotter through her as she dashed along. She didn’t know where she was going precisely. What did it matter? She was going where there was pain to be dealt, and felt, and relished; where the gold within her, this yawning maw she fed with blood and bones, might be quenched—quenched for now. Never satisfied for-ever. She gave herself over to the instinct, laughing freely, filling up with a brightening gold hue, unearthing new and and glorious and terrible powers as she went…

More. More!

***

Dorian had a transportation cheat code. Shadow-jumping had him crossing wide swathes of land in a blink, and it only grew wider as it leveled—

[Level-up!]

[Nightstalker] Lv. 2 -> 3

But the real genius of it was when the sun went down. When he didn’t need to flit between meager shadows cast by the dunes. When the world became one giant landing pad, and the only limit to his speed was his qi pool.

Was it even a pool anymore? As he probed his body with his Spiritual Sense it seemed comically vast—more a qi lake. Perhaps a qi sea. It had its own whirlpools and its own currents and flows, nearly a world unto itself, and it simply did not end!

Almost five hours of continuous jumping. That was how long it took to exhaust it. All there was about these parts were dunes and huge bone-relics sticking out of the grounds. The desert was, predictably, deserted. The map marked out certain landmarks—a spiny shelf of giant rocks sticking out of the ground here, a sandstone monolith there—that told him he was heading in the right direction.

When he ran out of qi he simply dumped down an emperor’s ransom of treasures. Down went an elixir. Down went a garden’s worth of superior herbs. Down the gullet went a bestiary’s worth of cores. It took but a (very expensive) hour for his Sea to fill all the way back up again. And he was off once more!

He was covering ground at a speed even he didn’t expect. This wouldn’t take a week, or even a full day—seven hours straight of hopping and the ground was starting to change. Darken. Soon there were long ashy streaks which stretched out to the horizon, shadows cast by nothing. As he kept dashing along the streaks started to come together until the whole of the sands were turning an ashen color, intermixed with sprinklings of coal black. In the distance the sun was rising and below his feet the sands were heating up. There was an acrid tang on the air: a hint of noxious fumes. The air too grew murkier, grayer, thicker, smudged-up…

I’m getting close. Dorian could feel it. Not in the intuitive sense—in his belly, in the space of his Bloodline, something deep within him had perked up. Up until now all his Bloodline had shown him was density and darkness; but now a certain hotness was rising to the fore, as though reacting by its surroundings, the way a block of coal is merely cool and dark and heavy until it is set aflame. The closer Dorian got the more he started to burn. It brought with it its own energy, stoking some furnace of the heart and blossoming within him a some primal hot-blooded instinct. The farther he went the more he felt like an animal, the more his belly throbbed within him.

Speaking of—by now the thing was starting to disturb even him. Its size he could deal with. The jiggling about like it was a second bigger heart? That… no. Nope! He frowned. Whatever phase came next it had better fix this up. He was shameless, true—in fact it was probably his most admirable quality—but he wasn’t shameless enough to lug about a bubble gut like a very pregnant lady for the rest of his run!

Past a point a gray haze tinged the air, blurring his vision to but a few hundred paces in all directions. He felt as though he was slowly crossing into another land, a gray, lonesome place between the living and the dead. The sands were hardening now. Above him tufts of clouds were rolling in, making the sun a watery mass of pale light which grew dimmer and dimmer the farther he went.

The ground well and truly firmed. This was no longer sand—this was hardened molten rock. Tiny flakes of hot ash drifted by.

And in the far, far distance he saw it: a mighty silhouette stretching deep into the cloud cover—belching out that ashen cloud cover—

He looked down at his leather map, wiped the smudge from it, and saw it was true.

X marks the spot.

The spot where, legends said, the Torchdragons were born, crafted of immense heat and pressure and ceaseless flows of magma. Where they grew their greatest powers.

To ascend to the Realm of the Stars, it seemed he’d need to descend the bowels of the Earth…