Chapter 95 Delivering The Message Yourself

  Ori Jikan moved through time at a crawl. In the time it would take a grain of sand to fall through an hourglass in real time, Ori had already moved six hundred feet while simply walking with purpose. The ocean waves beneath her feet held firm as she strode over them. For her, it was easier to walk on top of the ocean than it was for a normal person to walk over desert dunes.

  It was midnight and the sea was black as pitch, but that was fine, Ori knew where she was going. She had just left Isaac and Lenna in the care of the healer that had originally assumed care of the two. The duo in question were going to meditate through the night until morning, Lady V’Nova was healed enough that she wouldn’t be too adversely affected by her mate’s meditation. The only negative effect that Lenna should’ve had would be a reduced amount of incoming mana. She was now healed enough that it wouldn’t prove harmful as long as she wasn’t doing anything stupid. Ori had helped enough as far as she was concerned, yet she was still there, a few dozen miles off the coast sure, but she was still in the general area helping out with something.

  The thing that Ori was helping out with was Isaac’s suspicion that the CSC was being run by a green dragon. If he was right, which Ori would call it a coinflip whether or not he was, then she or one of her oldest friends would’ve been called in to deal with it anyway. If it proved to be a remnant from the last Dragon Surge, Ori would call for backup. She doubted it though, she was fairly certain that they had hunted down all of the ancient soul-bending time-reavers.

  The moon above was pale and brilliant as her light reflected back up towards the heavens off of the ocean’s almost crystalline surface. “Great Lua, if you are listening, might we talk for a while?” Ori prayed.

  Ori felt power stir around her but no mana moved. “Are you going to come see me?” Lua questioned the demigoddess as her greeting. “Out of all of the children that arrive when you hold your little party, I always enjoyed your company the most.”

  Ori smiled. “I will, but, is it alright to have favorites like that?” She asked the hostess of every Council Meeting. She felt the impression of a shrug.

  “If not, who is going to do anything about it?” Lua joked before she turned slightly serious. “But catching up with me is not why you called upon me, is it?”

  Ori shook her head. “The mated pair that you have taken a liking to, are you sure that they are going to make it to demigodhood? The seem almost suicidal.” Ori made known her worry.

  “The future is just as fickle” Ori felt as though the goddess had winked at her. “as the past. Not even I can see what will happen with total certainty. However, that does not mean that I do not have faith in them. They have been fighting uphill battles without even breaking a sweat almost since the beginning. A good scare should do them some good. They should become more careful from now on. If they can survive their recovery period.”

  Ori nodded in agreement and understanding to Lua. She wasn’t going to comment about some of the close calls that the pair had experienced in the past. Ori had seen most of them. “I have another question, though I doubt it will be answered.” Ori went on.

  “I cannot tell you anything about the Dragon Surge or whether or not there is a dragon inside the island that you are traveling to.” Lua replied before Ori could even ask the question. They both knew that if the true dragon gods had heard the words that had just been spoken, there would’ve been hells to pay for both of them.

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  “I understand. I will have to have faith in the Dark up-and-comer.” Ori replied with a sagely nod. “One last thing, if you would oblige this old child.”

  “Go on.” Lua prodded.

  “If I am somehow taken out, please tell Klein or George.” Ori requested. “I do not even want to think about how long it will take for me to come back together.”

  Lua laughed, not at the request but at what had followed it. “I can do that. There won’t be a point in delivering the message yourself in one thousand years.”

  Ori winced. Lua really didn’t let anyone have a secret entirely to themselves. There was a reason why Ori was always so cautious. Her mastery over her timeflow was supposed to be a give-and-take, not a take-and-take-some-more. The issue was, Ori had abused her slowed passage through real time far too much during her early days and was still paying it back. Days like the ones that she had been having were not helping her do so either. One wrong move, one truly brilliant opponent, and humanity would be out a demigoddess for an entire era.

  Ori hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye before Lua’s presence left her to her silent journey.

  A while later, Ori arrived on the shore of an island that had almost entirely been turned into a stone fortress. The sand was black and grey, on the beach of which she stood, and filled with small sharp stones. Ori continued on her way at a real speed of around Mach six, but it was just a jog for her. She moved so fast and so silently that no one even noticed her. She jogged past wards that were supposed to be able to catch even the most undetectable of intruders. She slipped around patrolling guards that looked more like pirates than hired guards. She used her sash to walk through doors and intruded on more than one intimate moment of some kind or another. It didn’t take her long to find the slaves.

  Ori had long become callused to the suffering of mortals but that did not mean that she was going to stand by, it just meant that she could be patient. She would work from the top down to make sure that no one important escaped.

  It took Ori quite a while to finally find the entrance to an underground chamber. It was vaulted up like they were afraid of someone breaking in to steal or disturb whatever was inside. Ori naturally just floated through the closed doors. Once inside the first set of doors, there were signs of a very frivolous dragon. There were a dozen paintings of a majestic emerald dragon with glowing indigo eyes in various poses. It looked as though the dragon himself had posed for each one for hours. There was even a statue of the dragon in question in the dead center of the entryway, poised as if it were staring down at whoever entered. Ori just shook her head. ‘They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.’ She grumbled to herself. ‘That confirms it.’ She continued forwards through the entryway, and towards the large double marble doors that led from the chiseled stone entryway into what she assumed to be the domain of the green dragon. The green dragon that she was there to slay.

  Ori got ready to push her timeflow ever further but she waited to see if it was even necessary first. She felt some spells start to go off behind her, but she was so far out of their reach by the time any of the wards realized that she was there, all of them fell short and caught nothing but air.

  Ori entered the green dragon’s lair like the world itself would never even get to know that she was there. The large room was well organized but naively lacking in proper protections. It was a hundred feet across and an almost perfect circle. A massive ritual circle was half finished and looked like it was supposed to span the entire floor of the small cavern. Ori recognized it as an automatically activating Enthrall spell. Well, to call it a spell may have been a stretch. What the ritual would have done, if it had ever gotten the chance to be completed, was to take control of the weak and weak willed. The combination of the dragon’s naturally suppressive aura with the ritual would mean that even people as high as a quarter of the dragon’s power level would be instantly forced into submission. Even if it had been completed, Ori wouldn’t have even noticed.

  The dragon was small. Well, small for a dragon. Ori had expected to see a dragon that was at least five hundred years old, she was not expecting a child. The dragon looked like he was maybe two hundred and seventy at the latest. In all likelihood, he was probably closer to two hundred and fifty. Even so, the odds of Isaac or Lenna killing the dragon weren’t that high. Sure, the duo could win, but there was no way that they would be able to keep up or track the green dragon. They were just simply the second most slippery kind of chromatic dragon.

  Around the dragon, there were seven piles of metals and one small crate of an eighth. None of them were organized beyond that. There was another pile of weapons and another of magic items. The nine piles, and crate, had been arranged in a way that would cause the dragon to cut quite the imposing figure. As soon as Ori had entered his lair, the dragon’s eyes started to open.

  “Sorry child, but, this is personal.” Ori spoke and then got to work. What was found by the navy a day later wasn’t even recognizable as a dragon. Torn and punctured scales, gallons of blood, shattered and cracked bones, and teeth and claws scattered about were all that was left of the once great leader of the CSC. Though, Isaac and Lenna wouldn’t hear of the extent of Ori’s rampage until far later on. At least she rescued the prisoners and killed or captured all of the dragon’s minions before she left. Few of the survivors had spoken of what had happened on the island, but everyone knew who had shown up at midnight in the middle of the sea. The occasional black, white, or red blur was all anyone needed.

  Amaranth Serentia V'Nova Wexler

  Monologue from an over confident would-be assassin