Story A:
Mage Virimius soared through the air, standing upright. Anti-drag spell, imperceivable wind shield spell, and flight-plus-propulsion spell. The last was a personal innovation, developed after several years working over dozens of spells and finding incantations that could be combined. Conjunction conjurations were especially challenging to form without softening the effect of either spell—the grammar of the resulting chants was especially difficult, and sometimes rather tedious. Virimius had spent an additional two months simply trimming the length of the initial incantation, searching for any tiny syllable that he could enhance, allowing for the removal of a weaker link.
He heard a roar: deep, so loud that even birds of prey fled, and prolonged. It seemed to reverberate throughout the valleys, bouncing off the peaks, dripping with hunger. It sent a shiver down Virimius’ spine, and a wince across his face. He could hardly tell where the still-echoing eruption had come from, but he had a solution: Soundtrace, a spell that had required magistrate approval alongside a military investigation. Virimius prided himself on the acquisition—had he waited seven or more years after the fateful night in his last year at the Rakke-Clemson Institute, he would not have been able to pass the extensive trial that the wallet-shattering purchase required. It had required discipline since his second year, alongside scrupulous budgeting, but it was so, so worth it.
As Virimius banked upwards, remaining close to the cliff formation, he began his recitation. The words had been repeated to him by mouth until he’d remembered them; there was no written copy of it, and to write one would be a severe criminal offense. These words were consigned to the mage’s mind, and the confines of his audio distortion field. As he approached the tip of the mountain, he pushed a button located on a delicate sapphire necklace—cautiously peeking past his robes. The distortion field was now active. The spell was finished after 15 seconds of flight, and Virimius received a visual route, directly in his mind. He adjusted course immediately, rotating his right hand to direct his flight. He rounded a peak sharply, and immediately saw the target: an impressive stone fortress. Even from afar, he noticed that it had sustained some damage. A couple of the towers and a quarter of the battlements had been utterly destroyed. He soared onwards, and quickly reached the perimeter. He noticed a tower with a large chunk of the outward-facing wall missing, and he could see arrow slits on the opposite, intact side. He darted over, robes flapping, being careful not to expose himself to anyone that was within the castle. This required a low approach. He landed as close as he could, and quickly pressed up against the warm stone structure. As he took a quick breather, his mind churned. An option was quickly selected, and Virimius uttered the invisibility spell. As he surged up to the open tower, not bothering to stay out of sight, he took a chance to look past the walls, searching for the target. As he was about to step inside, he noticed it.
The dragon. It was curled in a sleeping position, atop the roof of the largest building within the walls of the keep. Virimius entered the tower, and began examining the beast through an intact arrow slit, maintaining the invisibility spell—just in case. It was a beautiful specimen of a copper dragon. Each scale was shining: the lustrous body resembled a stockpile of the most refined copper and bronze ingots that could grace the mage’s eyes. As the dragon’s form undulated, shifting with every monumental inhale, the sunbeams danced across it. The dragon’s face was nothing extraordinary: a classic tapered snout, and overlapping scale formations; these formed plates of natural armor. From experience, Virimius knew just how sturdy this dragon must be. Overlapping faceplates developed at the one-millenium mark of a dragon’s lifespan. So this one was a proper ancient. Something about the dragon stood out. It had large, impressive horns. They seemed to grow out of the luscious brow-armor plates of the creature, spiraling out to a size that would have bighorn sheep blushing with jealousy.
The mage sat down on the cold stone floor of the tower, and examined the interior. He quickly deduced that the battle here had been fierce. Beyond the fact that the wall had been imploded, probably via a spell or siege weapon, the room was in a state of utter destruction. Papers and books had been flung every which way, burnt beyond recognition. There was clearly furniture missing from the chamber, and arrows with singed shafts were protruding from various exposed surfaces.
Virimius noticed a tome on one of the shelves, and withdrew it. A copy, albeit battered and bruised, of the Magus Lexicanum. One of the foremost introductory texts for a mage. Virimius flipped listlessly through the pages as he concocted a plan: he’d memorized nearly everything between these covers, a necessity for any mage worth their salt. Now, reading through the text brought him a sense of familiarity and comfort. These spells were intimate to him, close friends, rather than challenges to be bested.
By the time Virimius replaced the tome on the battle-scarred bookshelf, he’d thought of a plan. Freeze spell, domination spell, and then the spell. He took another look through his improvised peephole.
To his surprise, the dragon had roused from its slumber. It rested in a half-crouched position, sleepily blinking and inspecting the surroundings. Its eyes were giant pearls of amber, with pupils of piercing obsidian.
Virimius did a mental recitation of the necessary lines, steeling himself. He clenched his invincible fists, checked that the audio-distortion field was still active (it was), and fell backwards out of the open side of the tower. The flight spell took over within a second, buoying his undetectable form with unseen air currents. Sparing no time, he sent himself soaring over the walls, straight at the target.
As he flew, he began to chant. Slippery arcane syllables flowed over his tongue. The freeze spell was a tough one, but he’d used it so many times—it felt natural now. When he reached the last clause of the spell, he also reached the center of the stronghold; he floated less than 50 meters from the grand reptile.
The dragon turned and looked straight at him. This didn’t faze the invisible spellslinger, who forged on through the incantation. What did faze him was the sudden narrowing of the eyelids, the focus of the pupils. Virimius knew that the dragon knew. Still, it wasn’t like it could act on—
The dragon roared. It punched right through the audio distortion spell, blowing apart the spell, and Virimius was blown backwards by the resulting gale. As the dragon began to gather a majestic breath, Virimius weighed his options. He pressed the sapphire desperately: no effect. As the dragon opened its mouth, Virimius jerked his hand. The maneuver sent him sideways at a speed that would have broken a lesser mage’s neck. It was barely enough to dodge the beam of molten copper that sizzled through the air towards him. He watched as the liquid metal carpeted the overgrown floor of the stronghold with a hiss, consuming the vegetation and wooden structures unfortunate enough to be in its path.
The dragon took to the air with two motions: a powerful flap of its wings, a leap that only hundreds of years of practice and power could give. Virimius began Plan B, casting as he weaved through the air. The only counter to the overwhelming power behind every claw swipe and tooth bite was maximum speed and agility—even so, each one of the dragon’s attacks came closer and closer. The gap between the lethal talons and Virimius’ bushy beard narrowed with every swing, every step of the dance.
Finally, Virimius completed the recipe for the volume boost spell. Without further ado, he stopped his retreat; he turned towards the dragon, which was getting ready to release another high-velocity stream of glowing-orange copper.
One word was all it took. The domination spell required the arcane equivalent of “stop, listen”, and uttered at a sufficient volume, it would have a pronounced effect on anything. This time, thanks to the mage’s previous spell, the arcane word came out at a deafening volume, on par with the fiercest thunderclap. The dragon winced, its own hearing under attack now. As soon as the wince withdrew from its features, it stopped charging down Virimius. Instead, it hung in the air like a pet, eagerly awaiting orders.
Virimius smiled. He’d already found the perfect spot during his brief occupancy of the broken tower.
His mouth may have been obscured by voluminous facial hair, but the command still came through clearly, “Forget the word you just heard.”
The dragon didn’t move in response to this, but Virimius detected its eyes shifting, mental cogs churning.
He continued ordering, “Great Dragon, land yourself in the spot of that destroyed tower, where naught but the stairs remain.”
The dragon’s face contorted briefly, grasping at words that wouldn’t come. It obeyed. With just a few flaps of its wings, it was in position, sat on all fours like an obedient pup.
“Perfect, now open your mouth, and set your head right at the top of these stairs,” Virimius uttered with unnatural confidence.
The immense reptilian continued to obey. With every decisive motion, the mage could see a pained reaction in its eyes. Nonetheless, the dragon assumed this position perfectly, mouth wide agape, a dark, yawning portal at the peak of the stairs.
Virimius landed at the base of the stairs, dissolving the flight and propulsion spell with a flourish of his control hand. He climbed the steps deliberately, aging knees threatening to buckle. All the while, he was speaking an incantation, firmly, loudly. The dragon could hear every distinct arcane syllable, but it no longer mattered.
Virimius stood at the top of the staircase, looking into a dragon’s mouth: a first. The tongue was a rough, scaly organ, resembling an alligator. It carpeted the dragon’s tough blue flesh, and tickled the grandiose teeth in front of it. Each fang was as large as Virimius, and as sharp as any spear he’d seen. As he finished the last clauses of the spell, he peered down the throat, searching for the glow of molten copper.
There was no sight of liquid metal, and the spell was finished. Suddenly, a horrific sound assaulted Virimius’ ears. The sickening crunch of bone, amplified to a volume beyond anything he’d seen, even in the gladiatorial pit fights. This was accompanied by the gruesome noise of flesh tearing, in quantities that even necromancers would rarely handle! As Virimius continued to peer into the depths, he saw something forming in the dragon’s throat. A pool. Draconic viscera. Deep crimson mixed with various other sickly colors, creating a purple cocktail of gore. Virimius took a few steps back, and checked that the head of the beast was still attached to the body. It was. He peered into the beautiful amber eyes of the creature. They were glazed over: frozen, showing the mixture of fear, pain, anguish, and great wisdom that had gripped the great lizard in its final moments.
Without further ado, Virimius took a running start up the last several stairs, and leaped headfirst into the disgusting pool of sludge.
He emerged into a sunny meadow, surrounded by kilometer high trees, so tightly packed that nothing could penetrate the sturdy trunks. At the center of the meadow was a fortress, just like the dragon’s but fully intact. Every stone was sanded down neatly, polished, and every tower and battlement was accounted for. The bricks on the roofs were bright, not reflecting any of the struggle that the real structure had suffered.
Virimius spent the next several weeks getting acclimated to his new home. If his theories and calculations were correct, then a dragonblood dimension sourced from a millenia-old dragon would last for, well, millenia.
