Trust your instincts, Layla.Adrian spoke now, gazing at her from his vast body as his fire-blue eyes filled with love.Even if we find other places before we find Hunter, trust that we’ve found them for a reason – and that that reason will help us in the end. For wielding the ether is all about understanding love and compassion in the universe. Use your love now. Use your heart, and that deep part of you that still desires to help Hunter find peace, even despite everything he’s done. Use that part of yourself… and we will find what we seek.
As Layla gazed into Adrian’s deeply blue-green eyes, she saw them roil through a million colors now, like sunlight upon the Mediterranean Sea. In his gaze, she saw all his love for her and the steadiness he had found from that love – and all the understanding he had gained about Layla’s heart. Even now, she could not let herself abandon Hunter to darkness; even now, she still hoped there was a way to save him. Because Layla understood the madness a Royal Dragon Bind could be turned to without the proper love and care in their life.
Because it would have consumed her too, without all of her Bound men to lift her back up.
As Layla felt them in the ether now, she suddenly felt her heart glow bright like a star. Something exploded inside her chest, and then a beam of pure gold was shooting from her, illuminating the central node in her vision that Hunter’s thread extended to. Inhaling a deep breath, Layla felt herself sit up tall on the moon-drenched plaza back in the broken realm of Vittria. And then she fixed all of her consciousness upon that dazzling central node, and flooded a command out to all her Bound lovers with it.
Let’s go.
Already going.She heard Dusk chuckle as he fixed his strong Crystal Dragon magic upon that centermost point. And then all her drakes’ powers were flooding up through the Bind, as Adrian opened his massive control over the ether and flooded them out of physical being, and Fury’s enormous might heaved them into the space between realms. As they became discorporate, Dusk rang that central node like a bell and Reginald fixed his furious concentration on it while Rhennic marshaled them together and bolstered their hearts for battle upon the other side. Holding on to nothing but that vast glowing sensation in her heart, Layla felt her intention fix upon that node.
And then they were through, stumbling into being on a vast crystal plain upon the other side.
CHAPTER 23 – VITTRIA
At first, Layla didn’t know what she was seeing as she stared around the vast crystal plain where they had emerged from the ether, horrified. Gazing around with her, her men were as speechless as she; as they took in the terrible place they’d come to, Layla heard an awful rumble like an animal in pain come from Dusk. As he made that sound, bleakness in his eyes, Reginald went to him, corralling Dusk gently in his arms and pouring a soothing wave of oceanic calm through him. Layla felt like she needed it too, as she stepped close to Adrian and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close.
All of them, silent.
As they stared around in a terrible shock, Layla couldn’t help but admire the macabre plain that expanded in all directions from where they stood. Because the plain wasn’t actually made of soil, but an immense, glass-smooth ocean of crystal beneath their feet – extending as far as the eye could see. Beneath that crystal ocean, like dragonflies trapped in amber, Dragons were snarling, motionless; paused forever in mid-strike as Layla saw thousands, even hundreds of thousands of them caught in the middle of fighting long ago. But these were Dragons unlike any she had ever seen; some like combinations of Crystal and Desert Dragons, some like Sirens combined with Storm Dragons, while others looked like Phoenix but massive and festooned with spikes like one of Wahdi Atlamenta’s Black Spear Dragons.
As Layla stared around with her men, she understood that these were the Twilight Realm’s progenitor race of Old Dragons from Vittria. Locked forever down below in that sea of crystal, they were clearly dead; with hollowed eyes and emaciated sinews, though their scales, spines, talons, and fangs had been perfectly preserved in that glassy layer. Below her, Layla felt no life, even through the ether – these ancient Dragons upon their massive battlefield had been killed long ago by whatever had encased them in their ocean of glass. Like dinosaurs perfectly preserved in tar-pits, they were a relic of times long gone.
And the whole realm of Vittria was a relic with them.
“Ummo and all the gods!” Fury spoke at last with a terrible awe. “What happened here?”
“I can only presume battle. Maybe even the battle that tore Vittria apart, long ago.” Rhennic answered quietly as they took in that horrible plain.
“Hunter must have seen this.” Adrian spoke as he gazed down to the Dragons who had died beneath their feet. “I don’t sense any life in this place and nothing here looks like what the Crystal Queen showed us; but Hunter must have seen what we’re seeing now and wondered what kind of power could freeze an entire battle like this.”
“He would have wanted that power.” Rhennic continued as he gazed long over the glassy plain of death. “If he saw this as a young man, still learning how to portal through the ether, he would have wanted to gain power like these progenitor Dragons – and like whatever it was that killed them, ages ago.”
“Madness.” Dusk spoke softly as he gazed around, still held in Reginald’s arms. “I can’t even tell you how impossible it is for a Crystal Dragon to make this kind of work. It would take a hundred thousand of us to create a sea of crystal like this… and even then, I don’t know if it could be done. Maybe over hundreds or thousands of years, like the caverns that were built beneath the Crystal Plateau in Egypt. But even then, maybe never.”
“But clearly, our Dragon progenitors were far stronger than we are today.” Reginald spoke as he gave Dusk a gentle squeeze around his shoulders, viewing the wreckage. “I wonder how many of them were Royal Dragons and Royal Dragon Binds, and if that kind of power-sharing and multi-magic use was the norm in their day. From the looks of them, like so many different breeds of Dragon intertwined, it seems so.”
“And Hunter would have wanted to figure that out, too.” Fury nodded as he glanced at his twin. “How to be every kind of Dragon at once with his power, changing his body however he liked and manifesting whatever power he wished. Just like Adrian manifested real wings when he fought King Lethou Mathii.”
“I’ve always wondered how exactly my visage-shifting was accomplished, and why I had it when other Royal Dragons didn’t.” Adrian spoke softly as he glanced at Fury, then Layla. “Now it seems to me that it was a manifestation of my own natural ability to use etheric magic, I just didn’t know I was doing it. Recently, I’ve started to be able to do that with my Dragon as well. Manifesting spontaneous changes to my form via the ether.”
“Which Hunter can also do.” Layla mused, thinking back on her experiences of him. “Even last time I saw him shift, he wasn’t nearly as tremendous as he was for our battle at the Paris Hotel. And when he fought the Phoenix King, he wasn’t that large, either. He’s growing his body more and more, the more power he has available. Learning how to be like these ancient progenitor Dragons of Vittria – all-Dragon in their power, and in their flesh.”
“Which is why we need to stop him, before he can become any stronger.” Rhennic spoke as he faced Layla and the group. “We need to get going. Clearly, this isn’t where Hunter is hiding and there’s nothing for us here except what the universe wanted us to see concerning his aims. Let’s get back into meditation and hit the next location.”
Layla couldn’t have agreed more. Though the never-ending plain of battle they had come to was impressive, it was also horrifying; and she prayed with every fiber of her being that Hunter had not grown strong enough to do anything like it. But she agreed with Rhennic; power like this was certainly Hunter’s aim. And total dominance over all peoples.
Just like whatever had created this crystal sea and killed all these Old Dragons.
Facing the group with a deep inhalation, Layla dragged her gaze from the sea of carnage and focused back upon her men. It was still nighttime in this realm, and looking up, she found the stars glittering all through the deep midnight sky, though this pocket of Vittria strangely had no moon. As Layla stepped back into the center of the group to be their focal-point, Adrian, Dusk, and the others encircled her. As they joined hands, it left Layla facing Adrian, who gave her a steadying smile in the night.
She closed her eyes. Within moments, her consciousness was shooting back into the etheric space, bolstered upon strong waves of all her men’s magic coming together, then lancing them all bodily back out into the stars. In her mind, Layla felt drawn towards the leftmost node that she, Reginald, and Dusk had identified earlier; as she focused on it, she felt their entire group shoot there through the etheric universe. They were out quickly, stumbling back into being in the middle of a massive forest of crystal pillars, towering all around.
And tombs, Layla saw as she blinked – hundreds of thousands of crystal tombs.
Each tomb wherever they had arrived now was lovely, a haunting sea of every-color gemstone sarcophagi as Layla turned, her breath stolen by the incredible sight. Not only was the forest of selenite-diamond pillars all around them enormous like the skyscrapers of New York, the massive clearing they’d arrived in was crowded full of the gemstone sarcophagi, each vastly ornate like the tombs in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. But as Layla gazed around, she saw they were all empty, no bodies within. And it struck her suddenly, how much this location looked like the crystal cavern where they’d found Nimir. As Layla had that thought, she felt a deep vibrational tone surge through the crystal forest, resonating into the empty sarcophagi, before sighing away.
A healing vibration just like the cavern in the Thin Ways.
