Chapter 50: The Roots of Azaria
The descent took two days of grueling, blind navigation through the crushed, flooded arteries of the planet.
Eshiren pressed forward alone in the dark. The heavy canvas satchel of chemical explosives cut a deep, agonizing bruise into his shoulder. Cold, thin air saturated with moisture clung to him the deeper he climbed. The familiar squalor of the rebel sanctuaries lay far above him now. Nothing stirred in Azaria’s geological graveyard.
According to Senreno’s ancient leaf-map, the entrance to the First Root lay at the very bottom of a subterranean chasm created by a tectonic shift thousands of years ago.
Dropping from a shelf of limestone, Eshiren landed in freezing water up to his knees. A small spark ignited at his fingertip. The resulting harsh red light of Imperial Dragon-fire forcefully pushed back the gloom, revealing the cavern’s end just ahead.
Before him stood the threshold.
It was not a door. An impossible archway had been carved directly out of the living bedrock. The stone’s glass-like finish defied the crude geology of the surrounding cavern. But the architecture wasn’t what stopped him. The air changed.
Stagnant aquifer water and decaying fungus no longer filled his lungs. Imperial ash was gone. Instead, the scent of rain hitting dry summer soil washed over him, mixed with blooming jasmine. Azaria’s lost spring hung trapped in the dark for millennia.
Filling the archway was the ward.
Unlike an Imperial energy shield, no aggressive hum or geometric runes burned here. A shimmering, imperceptible distortion rippled in the archway like heat rising off sunbaked stone.
Senreno’s hollow voice echoed in his memory. They took exactly one step past the threshold archway and turned into fine, golden dust.
Eshiren stepped to the very edge of the water, stopping inches from the distortion. To test it, he extended his burning finger toward the threshold.
Denial was immediate. The red flame didn’t flicker. It ceased to exist. The ambient mana fueling his fire unraveled at the molecular level, neutralized by the shimmering air. Yanking his hand back, Eshiren bit back a gasp as numbing cold shot up to his shoulder.
If he walked through with his Dragon core engaged, his physical body would be unwritten from reality just like the flame.
Shutting his eyes, Eshiren inhaled the clean air. He forced the dominant beat of his Dragon heart to slow. He drained the violent mana from his right-side channels until only total, unnatural stillness remained.
He reached into his damaged left side and pulled on the Ohn-Thari root.
Instead of commanding the magic like a Vanguard officer, he let the warmth well up on its own. A resonant hum vibrated in his bones. When he opened his eyes, his irises burned with pure, unbroken sunlight.
Raising a hand, his fingers glowing soft and warm, he pressed his palm against the shimmering distortion.
The ward didn’t resist. It rippled outward from his touch like a stone dropped into a pond. His Golden Magic rhymed with the ancient archway. It recognized the resonance of its creator.
The distortion parted smoothly, peeling back like a curtain.
Eshiren tightened his grip on the explosives, took a steadying breath, and stepped into the First Root.
He didn’t turn to dust. The ward sealed silently behind him, plunging him into darkness for a fraction of a second before the ambient magic reacted.
The tunnel awoke.
Faint veins of pure energy pulsed within the smooth stone walls. They traced sprawling geometric patterns down the long corridor, illuminating the subterranean passage with a warm, sepia-toned glow.
Walking forward, Eshiren’s boots made no sound against the polished floor. Awe pushed aside his terror. Imperial magic was distinctively hard, defined by brutal mathematics and kinetic yields. Krazmakor’s blood-crystal citadel grew through forced biological manipulation.
Ancient human architecture operated differently. It possessed a soft, intuitive quality. Whoever made this hadn’t built it; they had coaxed it from the earth with reverence.
As the veins pulsed brighter, the geometric patterns resolved. They were murals.
Approaching the left wall, Eshiren ran his glowing fingertips over the stone. The carvings stretched twenty feet high, preserved flawlessly by the vacuum of the wards.
Shapes emerged from the glow. Dragons.
They were not the tyrannical conquerors of Imperial doctrine. The beasts depicted in the mural were scaled and massive, yes, but they were not alone.
Eshiren walked slowly down the corridor, his eyes wide. His understanding of history fractured with every step.
The murals depicted a cosmic war. In the sky above a strange world, dragons fought a horrifying, formless enemy resembling a swarm of jagged teeth and infinite eyes—the Multiversal Swarm.
The dragons were losing.
Beasts fell from the sky with torn wings, their fire useless against the dark.
Then he saw the humans.
They weren’t cowering in the mud or laboring in ash pits. Humans stood on mountain peaks with arms raised to the sky. Blinding beams of Golden Magic erupted from their hands, piercing the Swarm to shield the falling dragons and turn the tide of the cosmic battle.
Humans fought alongside the dragons. Equals. In some panels, dragons physically bowed their heads to the humans who wielded the light, acknowledging them as saviors.
Eshiren stopped walking, his breath hitching.
The Empire lied.
The foundation of the Dragon Empire—the certainty that dragons were divine apex predators and humanity was a weak labor force—was a fabrication. A thousands-of-years-old lie designed to hide the truth.
Humanity hadn’t always been weak. They possessed a magic that rivaled the Dragon Gods. The Ohn-Thari weren’t just kings of a dirt planet; they were architects of a power that held back the Multiversal Swarm.
The Dragon Gods hadn’t conquered Azaria for its aquifers. They came to systematically exterminate the only race capable of challenging them! They ruthlessly buried the Golden Magic under mountains of ash and centuries of brutal slavery.
Eshiren stared at a panel depicting a human and a dragon standing side-by-side. Their respective golden and crimson magics intertwined to form a shield.
I am not a bastard mistake, Eshiren thought, his hands trembling. I am exactly what they used to be.
A deep, grinding vibration shook the floor. The ambient golden light flickered and dimmed.
The vibration wasn’t magic; it was mechanical, and it came from above.
Prince Vraek had started the Central Mana-Manifold. The extreme extraction process was tearing at the geological foundations of the planet.
Eshiren broke into a sprint.
The tunnel sloped upward, blurring the beautiful murals. The mechanical grinding grew into a deafening, industrial roar that vibrated in Eshiren’s teeth.
The corridor abruptly widened into a circular antechamber. A wide vertical shaft at the far end led straight up into the darkness. The path to the exposed roots of the manifold.
The path was blocked.
A colossal construct sat in the center of the antechamber directly over a glowing seal. Carved from the same flawless bedrock, it resembled a heavily armored knight with elongated, distorted proportions. A smooth, blank visor served as its face. It held a double-bladed greatsword resting point-down.
Golden veins in the walls flared as Eshiren entered.
The guardian awoke.
Stone grinding against stone echoed over the mechanical roar. The construct slowly raised its head as golden light poured from its armor seams. Lifting the greatsword, it blocked the shaft.
Eshiren stopped dead. His heart hammered against his ribs.
He couldn’t fight this. He was exhausted, burdened by explosives, and his Dragon magic remained actively suppressed. Engaging his core might vaporize him. Fighting physically meant being crushed into a bloody smear.
Taking a single step forward, the guardian’s impact shook the room. The unstable chemical charges in Eshiren’s satchel rattled dangerously. The construct raised the greatsword high.
Eshiren kept his weapons sheathed. He didn’t brace for impact. He remembered the dragons bowing to the humans who wielded the light.
This is not a weapon of war, he thought. It is a weapon of intent.
Dropping to one knee, Eshiren placed his glowing hands flat against the polished floor. He didn’t summon a shield or attack the joints. He simply flooded the room with Golden Magic, projecting his desperate intent into the ancient network.
I am not an invader. The blood of the creators flows through me. My purpose here is to protect the First Root. Let me pass.
The magic flared outward in a blinding, silent shockwave. It washed over the stone guardian just as the greatsword swung downward.
The blade stopped mere inches from Eshiren’s head.
Kinetic force displaced the air, blowing his black hair back. The stone didn’t touch him.
Illuminated by the golden light, the guardian froze. It stopped. The ruthless programming designed to crush intruders evaporated from its ancient aura, prompting it to slowly lower the greatsword to the floor.
With a sound like grinding tectonic plates, the colossal construct took a step backward.
It knelt.
Bowing its faceless head, the guardian acknowledged the authority of the Golden Magic. It yielded the path to the blood of the Ohn-Thari kings.
Its duty fulfilled, the ancient magic holding the stone together ceased. The guardian crumbled into a pile of harmless golden dust.
Standing up slowly, Eshiren’s chest heaved. He had bypassed the final defense not with brutal violence, but with resonant intent.
The mechanical roaring from above spiked. A fissure cracked through the beautiful stone ceiling. The manifold was tearing the earth apart faster than Senreno had calculated.
Eshiren ran toward the vertical shaft, leaping over the golden dust.
Carved handholds lined the natural chimney. Eshiren scrambled upward, the dense canvas satchel pulling against his hip and slowing him down. His muscles burned with lactic acid. His fingers bled as he gripped the sharp stone.
Golden light faded below him, replaced by harsh red light bleeding down from the surface.
Intense heat and the overwhelming stench of burned ozone thickened the air.
Pulling himself over the final ledge, Eshiren collapsed onto a narrow, vibrating gantry of Imperial iron.
He was inside the belly of the beast.
Stretching for miles above him was the complex underside of the Central Mana-Manifold. Thousands of pulsating bio-magical tubes, heavy iron gears, and glowing red extraction valves converged on a colossal drill-head boring through the cavern ceiling.
A physical wall of sound threatened to rupture his eardrums. Blistering heat baked the sweat off his skin.
Standing directly beneath the primary regulatory valves, he had bypassed the fortified Inquisition checkpoints on the surface unseen.
Unslinging the heavy canvas satchel, Eshiren set it carefully on the vibrating gantry. He looked up at the pulsating red valves, his eyes hardening into a cold stare.
The infiltration was over. The ancient history of the universe was behind him.
Now, the Bastard Prince had to blow it all to hell.
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