Chapter 1564: A Cold Place
A massive gate of pure steel and heavy bolts was forced open by the roaring magnetic field generated by countless lightning rods that surrounded the outer wall.
Arad looked inside, at the darkness behind the gate, only to see nothing. He can see through darkness, so that didn’t make much sense. The darkness behind the steel gate wasn’t just the absence of light; it was elemental darkness, pure, harrowing magic of something much more powerful than he was.
"That’s Linda. Do you know about shadow dragons?" Loki flew closer to Arad and asked with a clear tone. Arad took a second to reply, "I got a wife that is a shadow drakaina, I believe she was supposed to be red before."
"Yes. Shadow dragons are born when a dragon dies in the shadow realm, and their shadow gets locked there for eons." He flew forward and glared at the darkness, "Sister, clear up the path for us."
"She is my older sister, Linda. A Time drakaina that lived in the shadow realm." He slowly turned toward Arad, "She is dead, and this is her shadow. A shadow of an Elder Time drakaina."
"So? I know that Zephyr came from the elemental plane of air. How many of them are there? Including the shadow realm?"
Arad’s question came as a surprise to Loki; he expected someone as powerful as Arad to know.
"The universe is one massive sphere, like an egg. Inside it exist many small pockets which are worlds, and those worlds never exist alone. Like you have organs, they do too." Loki drew on the air with his finger, leaving a trail of glowing magic.
"So you have a world, its elemental balancers of fire, air, water, and earth, the sun, sometimes more than just one sun, a shadow or a mirror realm, an underworld, a link to hell, the abyss, and many more things that even I don’t understand." He turned toward Arad, "By the way, there is only one hell in the universe; it is just that each world gets a version of it based in a separate dimension. I remember mother saying it has something to do with what makes the sinners of hell immortal, but I don’t really get it either."
Arad looked at him, "Okay..." He was both confused and intrigued. For someone who’ll soon have to travel across many worlds to fight the abominations, what Loki just described sounded oddly familiar.
Arad didn’t understand the full picture of what Loki explained, but he could envision most of it, not in images, but as a feeling.
The warmth of the fire plane, the matter from the earth plane, the air, the water, the physical world, and the dark expanses of what lies behind. Even the shadow realm keeps a backup copy of everything in case of a catastrophic failure.
Soon, they were walking down an endless hallway of armored plates, silver light rods, and twisting, snake-like coils of wires crackling with lightning.
"It’s big."
The hallway was massive, enough for five of Arad to walk through it in his draconic form with ease. The walls themselves were extremely hard and reinforced with magic, designed to withstand the assault of great wyrms with ease.
Arad was certain that he could unleash a [Ho-white Nova] in those halls and that wouldn’t be enough to cause any damage. He would need much higher firepower to scratch the Queen’s steel.
"Time," Loki pointed at the walls. "They actively detect both magic and physical movement, then slow time as the object approaches. Explosions are especially ineffective because they happen in a short amount of time." He punched the wall and nothing happened, but when he leaned on it slowly, he could apply force to dent it.
He then rapidly pulled his hand and waved it. "I advise against doing this, though, you’ll die."
What Loki just did caused his arm to age rapidly, which caused it to need more blood than the body could supply, and eventually, rot and die.
Arad looked at the wall, and then, with one powerful swing, he punched a hole in it, causing Loki to jump back with sweat dripping across his forehead.
"Fuck me...what was that?"
He couldn’t believe his eyes, but it was as clear as the day, Arad had punched right through the Queen’s magic.
"Those ways either slow or accelerate time to suit their need. I can do the same..." Arad pulled his fist out of the hole.
If the walls accelerated time, Arad would slow it. And if they slowed time, he would make it go faster, which would cancel any strange effects. Of course, this meant that he is directly contending against the Queen in a time control test, which he couldn’t win.
Arad could only damage the walls when the Queen isn’t actively trying to block him.
At first, the Metallic dragons were certain that Arad could never be a threat to them inside the fortress. They were even confident that they could fight the Chromatic Queen here on equal ground.
But this revelation shattered all of their confidence, explaining a message that the Queen received from none other than the Chromatic Queen.
"He is him. He is a menace."
While the Metallic dragons thought of Arad as someone weaker than the queens, they now understood that they might be wrong.
Seconds after Arad punched a hole in the walls, Loki wasn’t the only one escorting him. The endless darkness from earlier had returned, hiding right at the edge of every corner and crack in the hallways.
Arad could sense her presence, silently keeping an eye on him. At first, Linda was certain her brother Loki would be able to restrain Arad in an emergency, but now, she seems to have changed her mind.
Even Loki’s behaviour changed slightly; he no longer smiles as much and is always on edge.
This might’ve seemed bad for Arad, but to dragons, where power is everything, it meant that they finally gave him some respect. To dragons, one’s words are only as valuable and meaningful as their power. If they don’t have the ability to enforce their will upon the world, then their words are nothing but mumbles and rabbles without weight.
Then suddenly, Arad stopped walking.
Loki froze by his side, sweating and getting ready for a fight. Linda, on the other hand, didn’t even show herself; she instead spread across the darkness and waited to see what Arad was about to do.
"The Party is over." Arad waved his hand and stopped it mid-air, "I’m calling some people, just two."
From Arad’s arm, a massive void veil flew down, and from it, Malina walked out in a silver dress and her hair tied into a bun behind her head. Arad was in the Metallic dragons’ land, and he only had one wife who was a metallic drakaina, so he called her.
The other person, on the other hand, made Loki jump a hundred meters back and even caused Linda’s darkness to slither away into the cracks.
Alcott walked out of Arad’s void, struggling to see two kiss marks, a purple one on his right cheek, and a red one on the left side of his neck.
After wiping the lipstick marks, he looked around and frowned.
"This place is as cold as I remember it."