A Place of Life and Death
It was strange being here now that I was basically fully grown. Or, fully mature, I supposed, given dragons were never fully grown.
I recalled the forest feeling deeper and darker than the current sun-dappled and breezy scene before me.
Though everything seemed clear and bright, there was also the unmistakable air of death to the place.
I was reminded of the time my sister Anna had dragged me and a few of her friends to a 'haunted' house.
It hadn't really been a house... more like an abandoned lot with several rusted and abandoned storage containers, trash, and probably the remnants of a homeless settlement.
But rumors were that a bloody murder had taken place there.
Like now, it had been a sunny day and was about as unscary as one might think.
But it also had a cold and oppressive weight to it.
I don't know if the rumors around that old place had been true, and I know Anna had had a grand old time scaring the pants off her friends and me as we slunk around the rusted containers looking for nonexistent ghosts, but that oppressive feeling had stuck with me, even now.
And that was how this abandoned riverbed currently felt. Haunted and unwelcoming.
"Is that blood?" Benson croaked in a panicked whisper, eyes darting from side to side as if he thought the bandits might still be here, ready to take us all out at any second.
"Yes," stated Kalon. His voice was clear, and there had been no inflection... but like the riverbed, there was a cold and deadly air about him at the moment. He raised his head high, as if stretching his scaly black neck, eyes closed and a faint hum reverberating around the eerily silent landscape.
Along with the humming, I felt the brush of magic over my scales.
Instantly the oppressive feeling vanished, and I was left feeling cold but able to breathe.
I watched as the older dragon lowered his head slowly before stepping forward and setting his snout on the pebbles that were still stained with the blood of my mother.
"W-what was that?" the ever-jittery Benson asked, his voice still hushed, but a little of the panic now vanished.
"A dragon died with great anger in their heart here."
Kalon said, never moving from his position, even as Trent began to let his eyes roam the area.
"Even in death we hold immense influence on the world around us. A dragon's magic, though not always fully under control or intentional, has the ability to change the world under the right circumstances. Though it is not seen that way these days,
with our numbers on the decline and with the pact being made, dragons have long since been seen and worshiped on par with the gods themselves."
"The gods?" I asked, curious. I knew that dragons were powerful; just look at my own magnificent self!
Not even alive a year and already a true specimen to behold!
Still, I wasn't sure if dragons could stack up to gods, not in sheer might at least.
Didn't the gods create the world or something?
Mind you, I really only had vague understandings of gods and religion from a limited pool here and on Earth. I could very well have been wrong.
Lifting his head at last, Kalon looked my way solemnly. "Indeed. The gods were not always the transcendental beings they currently are. Once upon a time, lost even in the inherited memories of the eldest of dragon kind, the gods and dragons both stood at the very top of this world."
"I've heard something similar during my studies," pondered Leon. He now stood an arm's length from me, at the edge of the faded blood pool. Like Kalon had, his head was bowed and his expression somber, as if paying respects.
Kalon nodded. "It would be something that a prince would learn, though I doubt many others of your kind would know this history, as it carries little weight in this day and age. Those who are active within the temples probably have heard of it a time or two,
and the elves speak of it as if the stories were interesting ballads to be sung by their minstrels. It is basically a truth that has passed into myth. But we dragons remember the truth of it."
He sighed and stepped back from where my mother's bones once rested, scanning the area once again, looking for anything we may have yet not seen.
"All that is to say that Allura's dam has left a strong impression here upon the earth, even after her passing."
"She has?" I didn't feel anything that would make me think the ghost of my mother was lingering around the place. And I truly hoped that her spirit was no longer here. Mother deserved to rest, not to be chained to this accursed riverbed.
As if detecting my displeasure, Kalon offered a reassuring glance. "It is just an impression. Whatever great spirit she would have had has passed from this place."
"Good," I growled lightly. I didn't know for sure if ghosts were an actual thing in this world (a question for a less emotionally charged time perhaps), but I'd been through enough 'ghost adjacent' personal experiences at this point to not dismiss the idea completely.
Mother deserved her rest, and I wanted her as far from the realm of disembodiment as possible, thank you very much.
"Her spirit may have passed on, but her very being has left a scar upon this place..." mumbled Trent, kneeling on one knee next to the stained earth. "I doubt anything but the long passage of time will ever see this land cleaned of this stain."
"Indeed." Kalon agreed, eyes back on the scene of the crime.
Honestly, the sheer size of the reddish stain was a testament to the size she had been in life.
She may have even been larger than Kalon...
perhaps because I'd been so small when I'd seen her, or due to the emotional instability at the time, but I hadn't realized just how large she'd been.
"But... where is her body?" Benson pipped up.
Since walking into the clearing of the riverbed, he had been visibly a mix of anxious and solemn.
Maybe he too didn't want to see a ghost today, or it was just his way of showing respect for my mother.
"No way even the monsters of this forest could have made off with the bones of a dragon this size already. Besides, I don't see any drag marks nor the footprints of any other animal activity."
That was true. Other than Mother's body being missing, it looked almost identical to when I'd left this place.
Even the bodies of the so-called bandits still rested where I'd dragged them, back along the edges of the bank, as far from where Mother had lain as my then-tiny form could get them.
They were just skeletons in shabby rags and metal now, but it would definitely seem odd for monsters to make off with the giant corpse of a dragon but leave the easy meal of the humans there to rot.
"Oh... I have Mother, remember," I said, as if it were an afterthought. I mean, I had told them before, hadn't I?
All eyes turned to me at the same time. I wasn't really sure why they continued to be surprised at this point. Wasn't my greatness essentially a given at this point? It felt a little egotistical to say even in my own head... but also accurate.
I shrugged my scaly shoulders. "I didn't want to leave her here. I'm sure I told you just a few days ago."
"How large is your dimensional storage?" Leon asked, sounding flabbergasted. I was a little disappointed. Shouldn't he be the one least surprised?
"Big?"
He looked incredulous for the briefest of seconds before a look of resignation came over him, and he smiled, shaking his head.
"Of course." He let out a little chuckle and patted my shoulder.
"I remember you telling us now. I guess there are just so many amazing things about you that it's often hard to keep track of them all..."
Indeed, this should have been his attitude from the start.
Still, he was just a human. As a being who had also once been human, I really should be a little more understanding of the fact that he could not help but be a little lacking.
It seemed that even great and magnanimous beings such as myself also had their flaws, no matter how slight. Perhaps I should reflect on myself.
...
...
I'll do that later.
Kalon's sigh gusted over us, and the eyes that had been on me drifted to him.
"I see. It makes some sense now..." he said rather unhelpfully.
"What—what does?" Benson asked the question we had all been thinking. "A baby dragon being able to store a dragon of evidently massive size?" Normally quite passive, even Benson seemed to think that 'this makes sense' was stretching probability a little too far.
"No. The reason Allura can do such mind-boggling things." He turned to me and smiled, actually looking relieved for some reason. "You must have consumed your mother's Dragon Heart."
I narrowed my eyes on the older dragon, unsure what to make of his current attitude. "Yes. Mother wasn't able to pass much onto me, but she made sure I knew not to leave that here."
"Your mother must have been quite strong to have left enough points to both learn and max out a skill like Dimensional Storage..."
Trent mused. "That or she was very, very old. It isn't surprising that an elder dragon would have a sizeable number of points saved up, given the skills handed down by the gods are merely seen as toys for mortals by most wild dragons.
They have so much power themselves that the skills are just mildly amusing tricks more than anything."
"Still, a Heart Stone is mainly used to store and process mana." Grysbok stated, his voice rumbling out as he thought over the information. "It's true that some skill points can be transferred over through their consumption... but how many were there?"
I refrained from mentioning the astronomical number of points I'd received from Mother.
I trusted these people, especially Leon...
but whether it was an impression left by Mother or my own abundance of caution in this matter, I really did not want to share this information.
It felt important and personal. Something Mother would not want shared so easily.
A secret that was essential to stay between as few people as possible.