Chapter 942 — On the Dragon's Back
Blade of Dawn · Page 4 of 4
Around the Deep Blue Well's crater there were now many things that had not originally existed—small fortresses built of some black polymer, small watchtowers that seemed grown from a mixture of plant and stone, strange writhing woods, and figures moving among the woods, fortresses, and watchtowers.
Those figures were several patrol squads, all dressed in the mage uniforms of the ancient Gondo era. Men and women alike had proportions of extreme perfection and features exquisite as though artificially crafted; they were patrolling the areas surrounding the imperial capital—just as they had done seven hundred years ago.
Yet as for those newly appeared fortresses and watchtowers around the impact crater, these patrol squads seemed not to see them at all. They simply went around the obstacles blocking their path, naturally altering their already fixed patrol routes.
They even... looked almost as though they were patrolling the place in order to protect those fortresses.
Along the edge of the impact crater, in the district of black fortresses, the ground and the surrounding structures were overgrown with masses of vines and a gray matter that resembled clumped mycelium. With a great rustling sound, a patch of vegetation at the front of the fortresses suddenly stirred and drew back to either side, and several twisted creatures—things that seemed a hybrid of human and tree, with dry, shriveled bark and a profusion of overgrown branches—crawled up out of tunnels underground.
The leader of these twisted creatures shifted his roots and stepped to the rim of the impact crater. On his dry, wrinkled bark there surfaced an aged face, and the pale yellow eyes set into that face gazed down at the bottom of the crater—at the Hill of Crystal Pillars, surging with radiance, and the blue light that gushed from the crystals, both reflected in those eyes and making them shine ever more with greed and longing.
"The Deep Blue Well... we are only one step away from it..."
The leader of the tree-folk murmured to himself. He shook his branches, and at once a mass of vines at the boundary of the fortress district received the command, rearing high and stretching out toward the interior of the impact crater—but the instant the tips of those vines crossed the boundary line, the Hill of Crystal Pillars at the crater's bottom reacted. With several flashes of bright light, the vines that had crossed the line were burned straight into gas by searing plasma beams.
"Damn it!! This damned tomb, this damned coffin, and these damned gravekeepers! Seven hundred years, and can't this damned lot just lie down and die properly?!"
The leader of the tree-folk, the current "High Pontiff of the Congregation of All Things Final," immediately launched into a torrent of curses.