Beeeppp

Beeeppp...

Beeeppp..

Draconian: "He's waking up! That's a good sign..."

My head rang like Tyson had mistaken me for his morning alarm.

I was like crushed, stunned, burst....

But one thing was for sure, I was dying of pain all over. All my bones were broken... At least, I thought so.

But I tried to open an eye but I must have been so stunned that I don't remember anything after Kate dropped a very powerful bomb. A mini atomic bomb???

"AHHHHHHHH.... the pain"

"Hold him! He must not move!" (draconic)

I was completely stunned and disoriented...

I was in a dragon but I was covered in bandages and had a mega IV and several black Kobolds were working on monitors.

I looked up, unable to move, and saw a giant mechanical spider above me... Robotic arms???

The technology was unknown but very advanced, yet I recognized the numbers and Roman characters. It was a human technology but very very advanced, as I never knew possible.

Medical Kobold: "Don't move, Master Carnage... We are finishing the grafts... You are brave."

Then I saw one of the spider's arms, which must have been about 50 meters in diameter...

I was on a kind of circular mattress and I had pipes everywhere.

Then, on my shoulder, the bandage was removed and showed a horrible burn.

The next moment, a strip of scaly skin was applied and a laser beam, but from a runic crystal "glued" the strip of skin.

It was very, very painful and I was shaking.

On a giant monitor, I could see a figure I recognized: XXXX, the misty dragon.

He looked at me... and then said: "Professor, it's your turn! ...."

And a door opened and the kobolds stopped and gave a military salute.

All of a sudden, the tubes, pipes and everything else that was holding me in place rewound like the plug of a conventional vacuum cleaner.

It was so painful that a small squeak escaped from my mouth.

The creature on the screen turned its head to laugh...

"AHEM..."

The little man was accompanied by an assistant.

"My name is Dubuisson and my assistant Magouviak. And I'm sure you have lots of questions..."

I lifted my head, all sore and I had metal splints, titanium? probably and pins on my legs, neck and tail.

Everything inside me was cracking.

"Be careful, Master Carnage, or if I may speak to a colleague, Professor Reinhardt?

The light glared at me and the dragon on the screen laughed...grimaced...it was uncomfortable, vexing, but I couldn't blame them... I owed them my life, most certainly...

Like a horse coming out of sedation, I had difficulty to get up and I had to do it several times. Obviously with 4 legs...

Dubuisson : "Will you be alright ?"

I had one of these headaches and everything was spinning. As if I had had a binge.

"You have come a long way, professor... but your regeneration is taking over..."

I had my front paw rubbing my eyes, then my temples and I looked at the state I was in.

I looked like a mummy...

"Who are you???"

Dubuisson : "All in good time... take time to adapt yourself.... you received a huge shock and a high dose of ionizing radiation. You had a lot of iron crystals in your organism and that prevented your regeneration to work... Luckily our Majesty XXXX took pity on you and gave you a second chance...."

"Ahhhh... (Sharp pain...) Yes... UH...Ah....Tell him thank you...I am indebted....."

"How much???"

The short chubby man, well into his sixties, baldness too, hesitated..

"How long did it take?"

Dubuisson : "Let us say that time here does not have any more direction... but on your ground, 6 months??? You were in a coma for 6 months...dreamless, unconscious...."

"Shit then!!!! And where are we?"

The professor turned to the giant screen from where the dragoness was watching him...

"We are next to your "mother..." in the black hole... aboard the Bucéphalus...her Majesty's ship..."

"Come, I will show you around..."

I could barely stand upright and so the mention of reptile made sense.

I could only take a few steps and we passed through a large sliding door, revealing a huge hangar with hundreds of shuttles and "small" combat ships.

I was intrigued by the fiber steel structure that looked alive to me.

"Professor, I have never seen materials like this. It was a dream in my day, and I see that everything is made of nanofiber?"

"I'll admit that for a dragon, you're still a scientist... You are not the bloodthirsty barbarian they say you are..."

Cautiously, I touched the passageway and various objects that caught my eye.

"When was this ship built?

"In the 31st century, Professor Reinhardt! But in our world, not yours...

"It is a warship... is there a reason?"

"Yes, the war is over, but this is the 21st century! And this is, let's say, a gift, from your mother to our Majesty... Let's say it's also her den and her new palace... but I can't say too much..."

"Ah, I understand... the paradoxes..."

Dubuisson: "I see that metaphysics is not unknown to you.... that will make things easier...."

I was so motivated and curious that I almost forgot my pain... I was also looking forward to meet my benefactor... it doesn't matter on which foot we met but I was very motivated...

"Professor Dubuisson, I see diamond reactors... I am not mistaken?"

"You have the eye, dear colleague..."

"What frequency of resonance do you use? to extract the maximum of its potential?

Dubuisson : It all depends on its decay rate...Each crystal has its own resonance... OHH sorry....Your Majesty... I shouldn't have told him...well he would have found..."

Dubuisson looked at me.

"Professor, it is the time of the tests... Even if your "mother", the Destroyer, has established a son/mother relationship, she will not spare you the ordeals just as for our majesty who also obeys "mother".

It goes without saying that you have practically failed her expectations. In other words, if our majesty had not extracted you from the lava in superfusion, you would be wandering in the bowels of the planet or you would have ended up cooking for good, especially after the horrible wounds where the lava dug and burned certain zones not protected by your scales which were torn off by the violence of the explosion.

It goes without saying, that she disobeyed and overstepped her role as observer and judge."

On the giant screen in the shuttle bay, XXX appeared.

"Dear Carnage, I dare to hope that you are better than a child devourer... even an elf, a child is still a child.... But I also know that "mother's" orders are absolute and that you did the dirty work... I too have a lot of blood on my hands but I always gave a second chance...

This is your ordeal and also mine. Mine is to devour you... I am still your end and your destruction. But in the meantime, I want to see your resolve, how far you are willing to go and how you will resist me...The hunt is on now that you have had your second chance...

"What do you want from me?"

She then pointed to a shed full of trophies frozen in an expression of absolute terror. In eternal ice.

Ice that freezes time.

And I recognized, hydras, and even Tiamat!

They were the same trophies as Enka! A death without reincarnation because one was not "dead" but in an eternal coma, in a permanent nightmare...

"I was stupid, cruel and ruthless with my enemies, but I never did anything but defend myself and humanity..."

XXXX: "That's why you are not yet in ice!"

"I don't deserve this fate!"

"It's up to you to prove it to me....Watch out, you'll have to hold your breath and it's going to be hot... very hot!"

The next moment, I was teleported out of the ship...

I was back in the lava, a lake of lava and the thermal shock almost made me faint.

Ouch....

It burns! It burns!

As best I could, I arrived in a kind of cavern of incandescent stone where the walls had melted and I recognized the lava bridge... it had resisted!

The base was still there. Only the part before the train had been obliterated but the heart had resisted!!!

Kate blew up the entrance, the lab and the elevator as well as the small underground world where we rested. She had never been in the reactor and the factory.

The train and the caves leading to the village had collapsed, but the passage to the dwarf forges was still passable but needed a lot of repair.

I then entered a local control area, a mini auxiliary command center, but it was a mess everywhere. The ceilings and technical voids were collapsed in places but I had an asset: magic. And one of the most amazing spells : Reparo.

I was alone in this overheated base. In fact, it was a hell, the coldest areas were at 70°C.

To help me, I called in some maintenance golems.

To restart the ventilation and to evacuate the rubble was the priority.