Chapter 797 - Heavyweight

Before Sofia could even fully process what she was looking at, Dragon-Crowie had shrunk down to the size of a carriage and ran around the cavern with Bookie on his back.

Without a word, Sofia sat back near the campfire, and started munching on a random fruit from her reserves.

Sonia also kept eating slowly, her gaze following Crowie.

“You don’t seem too surprised,” Sofia noted.

Sonia finished chewing her bite and gulped down before answering, “I am. But my tolerance to weird shit is pretty high. And I more or less understand what happened? It’s not that weird, Liches do stuff like that, right? The crow-dragon combination is certainly not something I ever expected, though, gotta admit.”

“Not something I expected either. But I am pretty happy about it, I think. Crowie was already one of my smartest skeletons, just limited by his weak bones.”

“It’s that crow that stole all my arrows in the duel, right?”

“That crow exactly. Also won me the Tartaros duel.”

“Right. Yeah that bird was far from useless. Good asset to have. Definitely lacks the attitude of a dragon though. I wonder if he can really fight well in that skeleton,” Sonia noted, watching Crowie trip over his own front legs.

“Give him some time to get used to it. I’m more worried about what magic he may or may not have gotten. It looks like he’s got the draconic shapeshifting covered, at least.”

Sonia nodded, “Do you think he inherited a Dragon br– AH!” Sonia jumped back out of nowhere, pointing a drawn bow at Sofia.

“Oh… I forgot about that. Don’t worry it’s one of my summons as well,” Sofia said, reaching out to the Abereth that had just appeared behind her and giving it a spin, “Looks like a rod, spins like a top, likes to teleport next to me at random. Doesn’t do much at the moment but its aura does give projectiles 50% extra speed, so if your arrows go faster than usual it’s the culprit.”

“I see… Say… That thing is a relic from the Deep, isn’t it?”

“Sure is. Got it as a hand-me-down from the system in lieu of an active skill.”

“Is your class secretly Saintess of the Deep or something?”

“It’s Saintomancer but I guess at this point calling me a Saintess of the Deep wouldn’t be totally wrong. Still looking for a reliable way to return there.”

“Return?!?”

“Well, I’ve gone once, I need to go again for reasons.”

“... I’d ask more but I’d like to at least be remembered when I die,” Sonia dismissed, returning to her food.

“It’s not that bad, but sure. You were about to ask about the dragon breath, right? I’m curious too. Breath, no breath… Crow breath?”

“What would a Crow breath even be?”

Sofia chuckled, “If someone could guess that between us two it’s probably the bird beastkin, no?”

“I’m an Owl though, not a Crow. There’s only one Crow family I know of. They’re pretty rare. Crow-like features are more of an Avian thing generally.”

“Fair, I suppose? Did you know that crows are more or less the same in all hero worlds and ours, apparently? Weird coincidence.”

“Not any weirder than most races being human-based in one way or another. Shit, even dragons take human forms, just because,” Sonia continued.

“Here on Veliadren it’s the Fae ancestry explaining why a lot of races look like that. For the hero worlds however…”

“Fairies weren’t a thing in ‘my’ world,” Sonia said, fingers marking the air quotes around ‘my’, “as far as I’m aware, at least. But I’m a tenth generation hero descendant, so I only know so much.”

“Well… Whatever, at least for the dragon breath we can find out right away. Crowie!”

“CA CAWWW!” Crowie took a sharp turn, flinging Bookie away and running to Sofia’s side, shrinking further until he was about dog-sized as he reached her.

In the meantime Bookie unsummoned and re-summoned himself, reappearing next to Sofia before Crowie. He stared at Crowie with crossed arms.

“OORY!” Crowie apologized to Bookie for throwing him off; the vocalisation was strange, unpracticed, but he was clearly saying sorry, or so everyone guessed.

“Wait, you can talk?!” Sofia asked, completely taken by surprise.

“CAAAAW!” Crowie answered, nodding his dragon head up and down.

“Crows can generally copy sounds quite well, even without any magic,” Sonia explained, “Maybe if he’s smart enough he can learn to speak properly given enough time. Seems to understand properly already.”

Crowie continued to nod without trying to speak again.

“He always understood well, always lacked the organs to make any sound, though. But enough getting distracted. Crowie! Since you’re half a dragon now, show us what you can do. Did you get a Dragon breath?”

Crowie continued to happily nod his skull up and down, and when he looked around, his head moved sharply left and right, really looking like a bird stuck in a dragon skeleton. At Sofia's question, he turned around and took some distance.

Pareth jumped in front of him, standing a few meters back with his shield raised, an approbating gaze encouraging the ‘dragon’.

Crowie braced himself, and opened his mouth.

Only a weird gargling sound came out.

“AAAARRLR!” 

Sonia’s expression showed a rare smile, while Sofia struggled to hold her laughter in, not wanting to hurt Crowie’s feelings. But Crowie didn’t give up, his skull trembled, he opened his wings and tried again.

What came out was another gargled bird noise, but this time, Sofia noticed some magical fluctuations. “You almost have it! Try again!” She encouraged him.

Crowie prepared himself, claws digging into the ground, he seemed to breathe in some air, his head rearing up and his thoracic cage expanding. Clumps of magic started forming in between his ribs, swirling inside, and when he breathed out with a violent caw, the magic all spewed out from his mouth in a concentrated stream of fluffy white tufts that looked like a shower of dandelions. 

The harmless-looking white clumps flew straight for Pareth’s shield, hitting it with seemingly no impact, and simply all sticking on it.

It looked like nothing, but Pareth suddenly let go of his shield and jumped to the side.

The shield fell to the ground with a deafening bang, digging a small crater in the ground and making the cavern shake.

Crowie stopped breathing with a satisfied caw, dawdling up to the shield to observe his creation. Meanwhile, the few fluffy white clumps that had missed the shield landed softly on the ground one by one, before they each dug themselves into the ground creating a series of smaller craters.

Are these…

Sofia jumped out to the closest crater, prodding the fluffy white thing at the bottom.

It felt like a ball of sticky cotton, firmly attaching itself to her dragon scale armor, each silky white tendril wrapping around her finger. Just like this, she could already feel herself being pulled down.

She was astonished when she tried pulling her arm up, not only was the single white ball super sticky, requiring a great deal of force to give up on either her finger or the ground, but when the ground finally broke enough under the thing allowing her to pull it up, she could finally feel its weight.

What the hell! This must be at least half a ton!

There were hundreds stuck on Pareth’s shield, which now perfectly explained what happened.

“So… The dragon of heaviness? I don’t even…"

Crowie seemed to shrug at the question, he apparently did not know any more than she did.

“Any other spells?” Sofia asked.

To this Crowie nodded, and tried to cast a spell, before suffering a bone-breaking backlash that forced him to the ground. Sofia’s aura quickly patched him up, but she stopped him from trying again. “Calm down, take things slowly. No need to hurt yourself.”

Crowie answered with a short caw, before trying again. It took him thirty seconds to properly form a weird-looking magic array in the air, before the spell resolved, and everything in the cavern started floating up.

Weightless?

“It’s the dragon of weight!” Bookie excitedly said, swimming in the air toward Crowie, but barely moving at all.

“There goes my fire,” Sonia commented, watching the burning logs, and ash spreading out in the air.

Sofia turned around in the air, “Weren’t you already done cooking?”

“I like the heat.”

“Well, sorry. Speaking of, since storage items won’t work down there, any recommendations for the backpack?”

“Up to you, there are a few things we might need along the way but I’ve got those already, if anything bring an empty pack or two to carry the stuff we find. Oh, and a sealing jar about a head big for the leyline seed would work nicely.”

“The alchemy jars?” Sofia asked, “I’ve got a few actually, need to empty one, then.”

“Yeah, anything to contain the seed, it’ll probably melt through most mundane things like a hot coal dropped in snow, a thick mithril box could work as well.”

I’ll just empty one of my explosive candy jars. Should do.

While Sofia started to organize her pack, the skeletons played around with the current weightlessness. The spell lasted a good ten minutes before everything suddenly dropped back down, as for the white fluff, it showed no sign of disappearing so far. Crowie wiped them off from Pareth’s shield with a swipe of his paws, they reacted to him like they were actual cotton balls, just flying away at the lightest touch.

The atmosphere was light as the group prepared to enter the forbidden layer.