Master Anala red jaw knelt before a giant red dragon whose bulk took up an entire kingdom, head bowed, hands drawn into her sides. She froze even as her body begged to shiver under the mere strength of the being in front of her.

The dragon with its eyes closed merely kept on breathing large plumes of smoke, by his side was a sword almost as tall as his body, stabbed deep into the ground, it had jagged edges like teeth that gleamed. At her side knelt her child, Kenuran red jaw, also bowed with his head to the ground, his body frozen also with palpable fear that leaked off him.

Anala wasn’t sure what emotion would win in her heart and mind, bitterness over the death of her child by the hand of his own brother, or the endless love of a mother who couldn’t bring herself to kill her last remaining child for the crime he committed.

Not that she had a say in the punishment he deserved, her grandfather and ruler who lay before them was the sole voice of the house, as long as her grandmother, his sister was asleep deep in the nest deep below the walls of their home, there was nothing she could do. The dragon in front of her, physically made up of aether so dense, it crystallized into scales on his body moved a bit, Anala bowed deeply, it was her cue to talk,

“Great dragon, one whose eyes and might reigns supreme above all- “

“I saw it all” came the voice of the dragon ruler and emperor, cutting her off,

“My lord?” Anala whispered,

“What transpired at the nexus point, I saw it all, how my house and name was disgraced” he said again,

“Great Azar- “Anala started again only to get cut off,

“Three sets of weak experts, mortals not even passed the second and third rank of the expert tier managed to survive the combined might of two masters from house Dracon, and a gold ranked expert, to think my house had fallen so low” Azar said again, his voice rumbling like a volcano ready to erupt,

One eye opened and Anala felt the temperature rise up around the entire kingdom significantly, Azar scorching claw was an enigma unto himself, a ruler so old, only those within the age range of the jungle king or the famous but brutal Xerxes of the brigade could match him blow for blow.

He tapped one finger on the ground as master Abraxas appeared, chained with metals forged in the tainted mines on the frontlines, they were used to hold down experts or masters who went against orders, slowly sapping their powers away.

Anala realized this wasn’t a good time to point out that the experts in question had the might of Ajax death blade the disciple of the only man who had scarred Azar himself and Killian stellar blade, rumored child and disciple of Altair thousand blades, the man who had stolen a series of planets under the control of house Dracon.

Master Abraxas groaned to life, his body weak as he shivered, two floating balls of fire by his side that radiated master ranked power. These were the jailers and guardians of the nest, the name of the capital kingdom of house Dracon, well, they were only the welcoming committee to anyone stupid enough to come attacking house Dracon directly.

A particular grim smiling face with golden locks and a golden blade flashed through her memory, but Anala suppressed it, someone had indeed attempted such and had gotten away with it, though only once and the memory was a big shame to house Dracon.

Anala still wasn’t sure what offense Abraxas had committed, the only sign being as they got close to house Dracon space, Abraxas had attempted to escape through a spatial pathway, only to realize his control over space had been locked away by a greater authority, that of Azar.

As stupid as he was, Anala privately thought he could had escaped while they were at the nexus point or at least a good distance away from the nexus point. Unless of course, the destroyed ship she saw floating in the air near house Dracon held space was related to him, but she dismissed the thought, the crest on the ship belonged to an organization hated all over, not even Abraxas would be stupid enough to ally with that group, a cult in the purest terms. She felt Azar shift a little, turning his gaze to Kenuran,

“Kenuran, rise, gaze upon me, you’ve proven your worth in the least”

Anala choked down bile as she felt her son rise, radiating pleasure and an overwhelming amount of ego. She had tried her best, she honestly did, Anala had raised him just as any other dragon would raise an hatchling, she had made him strong, taught him the way of the blade and went through great lengths to see his bloodline abilities maximized to the fullest.

Perhaps she should had noticed the eyes of her grandfather realizing his talent, but what mother wouldn’t be proud of her child being declared heir to a great house, and house Dracon at that?.

Even as he spent less and less time with her, missions taking her across the archailect, both diplomatic and war related, she should had noticed, but she had felt Kenuran safe under the claw of their ruler himself, a sore mistake.

He had grown brutal as the years went by, his climb to advocate filled with the broken bones and terror of his peers that couldn’t match up to his pace, but whenever she came home, it was to meet a properly behaved dragon hatchling,

Dragons were never properly behaved, but a mother only saw what a mother wanted to see.

Then Vasanz came along and she had again left him under the care of Kenuran and this time, master Abraxas. Dragons were never cuddled from birth, definitely not the dragons of house Dracon anyways, the rivalry between her two children, she had taken as a part of the bond, another sore mistake. Anala dragged her mind away from the obvious moments she could had noticed, watching as Azar gestured for Kenuran to come forward,

“Explain to master Anala why Abraxas has been stripped of his name as a member of house Dracon and will soon be executed” Azar said,

Kenuran gave a deep bow and turned to his mother, pride gleaming in his eyes, Anala felt her heart clench in pain. The red jaw herself had weathered blows from notable masters in the archailect, had fought category 5 blights and even fought a category 6 to a standstill, her body riddled with torn flesh and blight infection, but she had never felt a pain so deep in her heart as she felt the moment Kenuran smiled at her,

Did your brother mean nothing to you Kenuran?,

“Master Abraxas here made a pact with a cult, the cult that sprung up after our greatest enemy was captured, the same enemy that lies in eternal torment beneath the nest this very moment” Kenuran started as Anala’s eyes widened,

Abraxas, you stupid fool,

“Indeed mother, the cult of the undying hand” Kenuran said as reality shifted and a brigade member popped into view,

The master ranked brigade member eyed Azar, then Kenuran. A tall lanky humanoid with blades protruding out of his back and sharp pointed nails,

“You trigger my alert again and I’m dumping you in camp for a whole year” the man, or what Anala assumed was a male due to its voice said,

The brigade member then met the eyes of Azar,

“Ruler or no ruler behind you” he said before vanishing again,

Azar chuckled, but Anala noticed he didn’t deny the words. The brigade while made up of notable names, could only pull stunts like this due to who stood behind them, the two pillars of the order itself, pillars not even Azar could take lightly and if rumors were to be believed, a supreme being, but Anala didn’t believe that.

Still though, she would prefer someone push them to the extreme first and see if the rumors were true, just not her though. The immediate appearance of the brigade at the mention of the cult was enough to explain how dangerous they were to the archailect.

A force of nature and reality themselves, the cult had sprung up after house Dracon had captured the master the group had supposedly idolized, the grim himself, a name most worthy for who carried it.

If Abraxas had made a deal with them, then his fate was sealed, house Dracon would be in their rights to execute him, Anala guessed the primordial shard was what he used to make the deal. Kenuran continued, confirming her theory,

“Using the primordial shard as a bargaining tool, he intended to join the cult, and taking with him the secrets of house Dracon, secrets the guardians of flame have burnt out of his head” Kenuran completed,

“One only wonders why a master would be that foolish to risk all his ascension to accomplish a goal so bizarre like that” Azar said,

“The future” Abraxas croaked,

“We, I, have seen the future oh great dragon of dragons” Abraxas wheezed,

Kenuran moved to strike Abraxas with his blade, a move that wouldn’t even itch a master like Abraxas regardless of his current state, but Azar stopped him, allowing Abraxas to continue,

“You sit from on high and spit on those you consider lesser than you, but how sorely mistaken you are, the days of the archailect are numbered” Abraxas said, laughing and wheezing in an almost creepy voice,

Anala immediately gripped her blade, something didn’t feel right about this situation,

Abraxas raised his head upwards and howled, blood and spittle pouring from his mouth,

“Let the coil of the abyss be revealed, all hail the great one!”

Reality shook and tore like a piece of wet paper in the rain, Azar raised his head up, a serious look on his face as suddenly Anala and Kenuran found themselves in another location entirely, a world of fire and lava, the realm of a ruler manifested on reality.

The sheer physicality of it showed the true might of Azar, but Anala being a master as old as she was could peer through the fold in reality and what she saw was enough for her to fight her way through the compulsion to stay in this realm and reality of her ruler and back into reality proper, where a man in dark robes with a shadowy visage and blue eyes grinned at Azar from behind a portal where he dragged Abraxas through.

Anala didn’t even realize the brigade member had arrived, the same bizarre looking humanoid that was suddenly on fire, a mixture of white and golden flames, the signature flame of the brigade,

“DIE” the man behind the portal said with a high-pitched voice and Anala immediately felt the command hit them with the force of a ruler, biting a chunk out of her life force so suddenly, it was only quick thinking and centuries of practice that had her struggling to keep it from taking said life force away.

The brigade member fared better as a golden breastplate Anala assumed was his mantle snapped into place, the command literally bouncing off it with a loud hum, Azar literally swiped at it like a pesky fly and blew flames so bright and so hot, the whole kingdom glowed red with the heat, and that’s not even taking into account the intent and mana that flowed with the flames. The portal closed with the flames and also with Abraxas gone. The brigade member turned to Azar and Anala

“Start talking” he ordered,

Azar rumbled with laughter even as Anala stared hard at him.

**************

Moyo groaned as he and Ashira trekked through the sandy world of Duhiri, glancing skywards in anger at the ship he was sure was orbiting the planet. When the masters had told he and Ashira they were going dungeon delving, he assumed they’d drop them right in front of the portal.

Instead, he had woken up to his master Ajax right in front of his face, his trademark creepy smile on his face and the words “don’t die” as he literally teleported Moyo into the atmosphere of the planet and as he learnt later on while free falling, Ashira.

Apparently, the planet was ruled by a master Ajax wasn’t on friendly terms with, master Killian may have said something along the lines of Ajax flirting with his intended spouse and beating him right in front of the said spouse.

The female in question had publicly hit Ajax on the face while running to the side of her apparent true love, but Ajax had disgraced him, and it didn’t matter that this particular incident had happened over a century ago.

For an entire week they had journeyed through tier three galaxies before arriving at the tier 4 world of Duhiri where expert ranked dungeons were as common as houses on the planet. Masters Killian and Ajax had sent a message ahead to house thousand blades, informing them of their late arrival to the house and planet where they were supposed to go along with the rest of the members going for the tournament.

As Moyo dusted sand out of his robe while fuming quietly, Ashira glanced at him and shook her head,

“Keep doing that and you’ll make us look like peasants robbed by bandits on this planet” she said,

Ashira was dressed in a really dull looking brown robe that had a yellow sash tying it at her waist, her blade wrapped in the same strip of brown material at her back and a pouch of coins at her waist. She looked like a very average ascender, fitting in with everyone else, Moyo with his tall and muscular frame coupled with his frowning face was enough to scare everyone away, even the little children that ran around the kingdom they just entered.

They had faced a little trouble at the gate, appearing out of nowhere, two wandering ascenders without a badge that was the sign of ascenders traveling in this world, plus the fact that Moyo looked ready to beat on the fellow bronze ranked experts that protected the gate.

A handful of silver coins and a sultry smile from Ashira had gone a long way to appease the guards, letting them through the gates as ignorant ascenders looking to find a team with who to dungeon delve with. The truth was he and Ashira intended to delve dungeons alone, they couldn’t afford to spare aether or as he was beginning to understand, essence from the beast that contributed to advancement in the expert stages.

Just to have a recap to himself, he arranged the stages of advancement and their process in his head. First, a new ascender starting at the stage of fledgling would need to choose a class, something he had not been privy to as he had started in a dungeon and also a fact his master Ajax had innocently forgotten to inform master Killian.

Moyo chuckled at the thought as master Killian stared wide eyed at the both of them, master and disciple staring sheepishly at him. It wasn’t a serious issue and Moyo had an idea he wanted to try, informing the masters about it had them pondering with the idea shelved for later.

Once an ascender had gotten a class, then it dictated what sort of form the aether they take in would be based on. Usually, fledglings at this point already had a path they wished to follow, and said path would be given to them, their cores then created. Once the cores are created, they then begin the quick steps into initiate, acolyte and then advocate, advocate was where the true ascension began to take shape.

Once an advocate has gotten to the end of the stage, they begin to go through the three steps in preparation for their ascension to expert tier, the three steps of understanding your domain, controlling your domain and wielding your domain.

Sometimes the word domain was interchanged with surroundings but it meant the same thing. Then once those three steps were completed, the overseer of the galaxy would let the world go through a calamity, a swarm peak tier monster or early expert rank with thankfully no core manifestation.

Moyo didn’t let the irony of the fact that house Dracon had unknowingly helped him break through the barrier between advocate and expert with their fiddling of the dungeons and dropping a personal calamity in the form of a scaled down Evon, even now as he remembered the fight, Moyo clenched his fists, now that was a monster.

If an ascender managed to defeat any of the swarm coming at them, they break through to expert rank, gaining a mantle, either an offensive or defensive type. Moyo had mostly come across defensive types, master Killian explaining that swordsmen or ascenders who used intent or weapons usually manifest defensive types seeing as they were offense themselves. He wondered what Annika would get, or Mrs. Martha for that matter.

Once they gained a mantle, those experts who were wise began to train on the art of core manifestation. Usually at that stage, a higher ranked expert, mostly silver ranked or gold would teach the new experts how to undergo the process of core manifestation, helping them get in touch with their path and the idea behind the path, visualizing it to help their core take its new shape. Once that was done, the experts began the process of fusing their willpower and authority into one form now known as concepts, and in Moyo’s case, Ashe.

Usually that took a period of time, needing endurance like never seen before, but Moyo being a well of endurance, breezed through it like the monster he was. Although both masters had informed him that he wasn’t the first to accomplish that and that it was prevalent among body aura users who placed point mostly in strength and endurance. Ashira herself had done so already, hers called trifecta and already she had an idea about an edict she would obtain.

While edicts were according to master Killian, in the realm of masters, they were commands specific to your concept and they carried a lot of power. Even remembering how he felt under the shimmer edict of master Killian made him nauseous.

Once your concept and core manifestations were stable, experts learnt how to fuse their aura and mantle into an evolved form, giving it more power and durability that only grew with time. Then the experts were left to form teams, usually by joining a guild and delving dungeons, gathering aether and essence from monsters and in unfortunate but usually occurring cases, fellow experts.

Essence was the life force of every living thing, aether mixed with the supposed soul of the creature, at least that was how it was explained to him and Moyo learnt that experts needed it to grow their new form that couldn’t exist on just aether alone, seeing as their new core usually have a part that produced aether itself, in Moyo’s case his landscape.

Ashira nudged him as they entered the kingdom of the red dust, ruled by a gold ranked expert. Moyo had asked how a gold ranked expert could rule a kingdom, hypocrisy from his mouth seeing as he ruled an entire continent, but he hadn’t mentioned that to Ashira and the masters had wisely left it alone to him, it was his secret anyways.

Ashira nodded along like she was explaining to someone new in the archailect,

“Truth is, you’re spoilt” she said as a matter of fact,

Moyo looked shocked,

“Excuse me?” he sputtered,

“You, Mr. titan blade, are spoilt. You’ve been hanging around masters like they are pieces of stones you can pick along the road” she said,

“oh” he said,

“Look around you, do you know the number of people who have even gazed upon the master ruling their world?” she asked,

Moyo took a look around the brown crystal walled kingdom, different species like the rucar he was used to killing walking around to different creatures with anatomies so foreign he couldn’t even wrap his head around it. He shrugged,

“a good number?” he asked,

“One, just one” she said,

“One?” he replied, not sure he heard right,

“Yes, one, and that’s the gold ranked experts who ruled this kingdom and every other kingdom on this continent. Even at that, odds are, he or she had probably seen the master once or twice in their entire existence, and that’s when they are summoned by their diamond ranked expert who are usually emperors and rule over a domain, a continent just in case you don’t understand, who in turn are usually summoned by the master who meets with them, probably once a century or when an important occasion or ascender is about to arrive” she explained,

“I see, my view of things might be a bit biased then” he said,

“a bit?” she said with an eyebrow raised,

Moyo just rolled his eyes,

“Come on, let’s find somewhere in this kingdom to ask for directions” he said as Ashira laughed,