Chapter 1046 — Waking from a Great Dream

"Let us set aside their religious predicament for now." Gao Yang exhaled and brought the topic back. "My attention has indeed been too focused on the north of the continent, on humanity itself... The Silver Empire has maintained contact with us for so long, yet they have always remained in my 'blind spot.' Now it seems that a vast 'sample library of divine influence' lies hidden in those warm jungles. The special circumstances of the silver elves... may be able to push our research forward by a great stride."

His gaze swept once more over Belanthea's dignified, elegant handwriting, yet his thoughts seemed to cross the vast wastes and settle upon the elven kingdom at the other end of the continent. He thought of the circumstances Hedy had just described—in the silver elves' three-thousand-year journey of "faith-seeking"... he dimly sensed many points that could be connected to the mysteries of the gods.

After a brief pondering, he put the matter of the elves aside for the moment and began to consider the situation along another line—Tarrond.

Since last night's "insomnia," that figure streaking through space had lingered in his mind. Although the thing he had seen was very strange in form, modified to the point where its original appearance was utterly unrecognizable, Gao Yang could still discern from its general outline a hint of "giant dragon." And it was this tiny clue that had kept him thinking about Tarrond ever since this morning.

Following this line of thought, he thought of the Holy Dragon Duchy and instinctively asked, "The Holy Dragon Duchy should have received our invitation long ago... Has the Dragonblood Grand Duke responded?"

"I was just about to tell you about that," Hedy said at once. "The Holy Dragon Duchy's reply has also arrived, but... I find it somewhat strange."

Gao Qi raised his brows. "Strange?"

"There is no word from Grand Duke Bayang'er. The letter was sent in the name of the Dragonblood Council and Sir Golosh Hicker," Hedy drew a document from the desk and handed it to Gao Yang. "Their wording is very courteous, but they state they cannot attend the meeting in the Month of Revival—because they are busy dealing with certain 'special domestic circumstances.' They did not, of course, mention any specifics."

Gao Yang took the document, opened it, and skimmed it quickly. Its contents were essentially what Hedy had described—a perfectly worded official letter, expressing refusal and apology with proper courtesy while divulging no real intelligence about the internal affairs of the Holy Dragon Duchy. There was nothing else worth reading.

"Amber," Gao Yang said after a moment's thought, turning to the air beside him, "is there any relevant intelligence?"

The moment he spoke, an intelligence chief crystallized out of the air. The half-elf lady landed on the floor and spoke swiftly: "We have not many agents infiltrated into the Holy Dragon Duchy, but they have sent back useful news: Grand Duke Bayang'er has not appeared in public for many days in a row, and Dragonrest Keep, the capital of the Holy Dragon Duchy, has recently been under martial law. There are rumors that the Dragonblood Grand Duke's health has suddenly deteriorated and he cannot appear publicly; there are also rumors that he has left the duchy. But whatever the case, the Dragonblood Council and the duchy's court officials do not seem to be in a panic—they are keeping the situation under control, and the whole of the Holy Dragon Duchy is calm. Only the Grand Duke is gone.

"Ah, yes, and one more piece of news: it is said that residents living around Dragonrest Keep once saw a gigantic silver wyrm circling above the high mountains before flying straight north. The local traders believe it is mostly rumor, but I suspect... it is connected to the Dragonblood Grand Duke's sudden disappearance."

The intelligence was fragmentary, but the conclusion seemed ready to emerge.

Yet that conclusion was still not enough to deduce the true situation in Tarrond.

Gao Qi frowned, speculating about what had happened in the far north, when at that very moment a special Magic Net terminal beside Hedy's desk suddenly sounded an alarm.

Every gaze in the room snapped to the machine that was emitting sound and flashing light.

This was the special direct line of the Empire's Grand Consuls—it only sounded when a special major event occurred at some border, or when the other two Grand Consuls made an emergency contact with the Imperial Capital.

"Connect it," Gao Cen said to Hedy as he walked toward the desk.

Hedy quickly connected the communication terminal, and amid the flickering and rising of a holographic projection, the figure of Victoria Wilde appeared before Gao Yang and Hedy.

"Your Majesty, and Grand Consul Hedy," said the Ice and Snow Duchess, her expression unusually grave, speaking hurriedly the moment the connection was established, "the Eternal Storm has vanished."

For a moment Hetty did not even react: "...What did you say?"

"The Eternal Storm has vanished," Victoria repeated with great patience. "That is—the colossal storm over the northern seas. The final visual observation this morning has confirmed it: the wall of cloud the storm had formed is now utterly gone, and the monitoring station near Northport further confirms that the magical currents in both the ocean and the atmosphere are shifting."

At this she fixed her gaze on Gao Yang, her tone graver than ever before: "Your Majesty, beyond the borders we know, something else may well be unfolding in this world."

Yet Gao Yang did not answer Victoria at once. He merely lifted his head as if by instinct, his eyes snapping to the large map hung upon the nearby wall—to its northern reaches.

…

When the great sun of the polar day once again swept past the lowest point of the horizon and slowly climbed to a third of the way up the sky, a sea wind blew across the lands of Agondor, carrying the tang of salt and the scent of smoke and dust away into the distance.

Metzen Pernia woke from deep slumber with the sense that she had dreamed a very long, very strange, very bizarre, and very terrible dream.

In that dream she had been armed into a bloodless, tearless engine of war for the Uiqa, opposing with an iron will an enemy far harder to overcome than any natural calamity; in that dream, the god she had once both revered and feared had become a ruinous catastrophe, sweeping across the land and devouring all things; in that dream she had watched magnificent Agondor split and crumble, the soaring walls and towers of the Council's palaces toppling from the mountain's peak to lie in ruins together with the ancient, crowded districts of lower Tarondel below, and the dragon nest she had tended with such care for tens of thousands of years had collapsed along with the mountain itself, everything within it burning fiercely in the flames...

She drifted and sank through that dream, yet could not wake, nor think freely, as though her spirit had been frozen in a block of murky amber—able only to watch it all flow past before her eyes with cold indifference, her mind as dead as a corpse, stirring not a ripple.

But suddenly she heard the howling of the wind, and felt the chill sweeping across the land.

Amid the ruins of Agondor, the scarred blue dragon opened her eyes.

"...What the...?!?!"

The dream was real.jpg.

(End of this chapter)